I’ve asked a few people on the internet if they would allow my Raptors in a tournament they run. Responses I got ranged from “What are the rules for your Raptors? I haven’t seen them, but no, I won’t allow them, sorry.” to “Just run them as Raven Guard–you lose rending bolters; big deal.”
I was particularly amused by the guy who wanted to ban my Raptors without knowing what they do.
Let’s be clear: at this point the arguments for banning FW come down to the wishes of the organizers, and the buck stops with them. Organizers can no longer hide behind GW in their decision to ban FW from their events.
That being said, it seems there are still people out there who are willing to own up to just not wanting FW, period, GW be damned.
The heart of their anti-FW reasoning is relatively consistent: if we allow you to run your rules, we have to let other unbalanced things in too, and it’s too hard to separate them out.
I have a few responses I’d like to share here.
1. If you are banning certain units on the premise of retaining “balance” without a complete knowledge of the rules for all units–how do you know you aren’t doing more harm than good? After all, some of those banned units and rules you didn’t read might be balancing factors. Taking actions meant to impact balance must by necessity be accompanied by a competent knowledge of the whole landscape. Either don’t bother to learn everything and don’t ban stuff, or learn everything and ban things that seem unbalanced.
2. I refuse to accept that it is necessary to ban ALL FW when not all of it is problematic. If you’re going to ban things, look at everything, and ban the things that are problematic and leave the rest in. It’s not too much work. It’s just not.
3. If you MUST ban certain units, what is the use of focusing so heavily on FW? Are the non-FW units and rules perfectly balanced? With everything now allowed at GW events, take a look at the whole of what GW makes and don’t just single out FW.
It’s unlikely I’ll be attending a proper tournament in the near future in any case, but it truly bothers me that other people who run Raptors or any other perfectly reasonable and passionately attended army would be turned away. I just think that’s wrong. If you can’t articulate why a unit or rule is problematic, you don’t have ground to stand on in banning it.