The release of Warhammer 40,000's 9th Edition brought with it a change that exposed a widespread problem in the tabletop gaming community. One of the 'leaks' before the edition landed caused uproar across the gaming community's social media.
If your army was painted, and your opponent's wasn't, you started the game with a ten victory point advantage. And it caused madness. Everything from 'it'll ruin the game' to 'it's about time I got rewarded for painting my models'.
I'm not interested in that particular argument. I'm interested in the thousand other arguments that boil down to the exact same thing. "I don't like this particular rule, and now my enjoyment of the game will be ruined because of it."
Without fail, every conversation I saw about that rule (and almost every conversation about this sort of argument) boiled down to people either saying they'd always follow the rule, or they never would.
Now imagine a conversation that could run along these lines: "Fancy a game?" "I'd love to, but your army is painted." "Why's that a problem?" "Well, I've not got my army painted because (insert reason here), and it'll be no fun playing against a 10vp head start." "Well, how about we don't use that rule. That work?" "Sure! How many points?" See what I mean?
Given the right gaming group, there's absolutely no reason you can't adapt the rules to suit what your group finds more fun/realistic or whatever.
Hell, it was even an entry in the first few pages of every Warhammer rulebook till now (I don't have my 9th edition to hand as I write this, so I can't confirm if it's in this latest one. The rules are intended to be a basis for us to develop the game into what we want it to be. And even if that's not the intention - who's going to stop us?
You'll have heard of this stuff happening already; 'house rules', people not using the terrain rules and so on. We have started to adopt our own rules for DGP's Octarius Crusade for two main reasons. First - to get rid of rules we don't like and replace them with ones we do. Second - to make the game of 40K into something that feels more 40K to us.
Whatever reason you have to change the rules (except just to give you an advantage - that's a shit one) is all the justification you need. As long as those you play against agree, what do you have to lose?
And yeah, it won't work all the time - meeting other gamers outside of your group will mean you likely have to explain your own house rules, or abandon them, or whatever.
And of course, you don't have to if you don't want to, or if it feels like too much effort, etc. But next time there's a rule you don't like, or a change that you're dubious about, there's always a better option than taking to social media and bitching about it.
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