Come now, I think you could write such a thing for IF in about 30 seconds since you already actually did the hard part of figuring out what the purpose of the list is. And you already went through the process of changing it too, so you've even proved that that can work too.

This isn't really aimed at being for the benefit of ACs though, but for NetEA overall and the players who contribute their ideas. I guess it's a bit like management training - the ones who are already good managers don't really need it, and the bad ones won't go unless you force them. (Not that I'm saying ACs are bad, it just hasn't been standard practice)

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Or to put it another way, I don't think this would in any way limit what the AC can choose to do with a list (though we would hope they would reflect the community to some extent if it's an important list). It's the other way round - it tells other people what the AC is currently choosing to do with it.

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This is the bit that I agree with. Quick, run to the windows and see if the world's ending, I agree with Kyrt!

I think it'll greatly assist new voices or returning voices, or newly-interested voices in contributing in a more useful, more focused way if they can read the statement and realise that the list is meant to be X, Y or Z, rather than what their take of the overall feel of their chapter/army/race/war leader might be.

A perfect case in point is right there in the Dark Angels list - it's not strictly a Dark Angels list as a whole, it's a very specific sort of Dark Angel formation for a specific sort of engagement, which sets upon it a very different set of rules, a different weight to priorities and a different outcome to the final list.

Besides, I don't see the 'mission statement' as absolutely immutable - it can change over time as new things come out, new ideas, new ACs take over. It's just as was said - it's intended to be what the current direction is, which is why it should help steer discussion.

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How would it put another road block towards approval? Wouldn't it in fact HELP approval by encouraging and guiding testing, allowing newer people among the community (me, for instance) to make suggestions and criticisms in a more reasonable and more directed way without the constant oversight and commentary of the heads of each list?

The insight and guidance and organisation by each list head is absolutely key, certainly, but all that this suggestion is is a way of any user, at any time, being able to instantly get to that guidance and judgement and common sense. Letting them self-proof his/her own feedback and thoughts and ultimately save everybody a whole lot of time answering questions or debating back and forth over something that turns out to have no place in the specific list! Further, once the list is Approved, the very same statement becomes a useful tool as the first stop to any prospective army builder in helping pick his new army and grant them a snapshot of insight into the fundamental intent and strategic overlay of the list - again saving people a lot of time.

I'm entirely baffled by the resistance to writing up barely one paragraph to identify key features of each list with an eye to directing discussion, improving the quality of feedback and making each list easier to maintain. Such a "mission statement" is usually considered fundamental to pretty much any collaborative effort.

I have to agree with DoomKitten here - most people writing lists already "know" what type of list they are aiming to build, so writing this statement just helps everyone else understand WHY the changes they might be making are being made.
It only takes two seconds, I just did it for the list I'm working on atm, and helps to present the clear focus of the list to others. That doesn't stop debate - it just gives debate something to work with and coalesce around.

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This is where I think the misunderstanding lays. No one is advocating some new thing for lists that the ERC gets involved with and requires and judges for approval. This is more a device for someone newish flipping through the Compendium to grok the theme in a sentence or two. Yeah I'm with you about not making something official with checks and balances and TPS reports. I think the thread title is a bit harsher sounding than intended. More, "it'd be great if there was a theme / intentions statement at the top".

The fact is we've all pretty much done this in our initial development threads but that has several weaknesses:
-some development goes through several cycles and subACs so lack a coherent development thread to refer to making it difficult to understand why we're where we are
-the fact is not everyone is going to come to TacComs just to read 100's of pages or nerd rant to find a list

no one is going to judge any inclusion or no inclusion of the OP. I certainly wouldn't feel any less impressed with the DA list without one but let me end with an anecdote

One of our local players has no time and desire to join here or hang out on the forums. He wants to paint and play with his very limited time available. When he wanted to get a list to play his Eldar with a hoard of guardians and falcons I really couldn't tell off the top of my head what ceaftworld list to try out. The best i could say was, "ummm i guess go read them and see what you like best". He said "yeah that'd be best but i just don't really care to dig through this that much. I barely have any time to game with my kids let alone read all these threads you pointed me to to. darn it I'll play that one from Swordwind..."

If instead i could have said, "hey i don't know but each of these has a description at the top" that would gave been a different story, that's all I'm saying. The fact he got it "right" was only a product of chance.

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Think JZ just summed it up. Yes the thread title is deliberately provocative (in as much as it's written in the imperative as it's content).

However I do think the ideal is for the ERC to enforce it, otherwise it won't be universal and thus won't be of benefit to people like jimmy's friend. But when I say enforce, I mean enforce its existence, not its content. I really don't see how it is in any way a barrier

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my issue is that it just gives people more to complain about.....

"but adding/removing X to/from the list goes against the list design statement... waaa waaa"

I prefer Jimmy's suggestion that a brief description of the list might be useful to the more casual gamer, but I personally don't want to write anything more binding than that, because then you have a whole layer of debate as to whether you can add/remove something and still fit the brief, then that leads to the discussion that the brief needs changing etc etc....

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I'm keen to see a "mission statement" for each of the lists, it would certainly help those like myself who aren't AC but try to put our spare time into assisting list development, to understand the AC's intent with respect to the list.

Like many other folk on here, I appreciate a well written mission, and have seen the effect of good and poor mission statements time and time again. In my day job we're very specific about this and most major tasks will not only have a mission statement but the boss articulates it clearly through a purpose (why were are doing this), method (how we will achieve the goals) and endstate (the task will be complete when the following are achieved) statement.

The point being, its a little bit of work for each AC to start with but the benefits in terms of articulating your intent to play testers and list reviewers will be worth while.

On top of a mission statement, I would like to see a review process planned. So we finish a list, it becomes approved but should that be the end of development for that particular list, I don't believe it should. If we have to bring in a new list every time we want a new models or unit, by 2020 we'll have more lists than we can manage. I think each race can probably support no more than 3-7 distinct lists (standard, WE or Armour heavy, Mech or Air assault, elite forces, seige off/defensive, cheap trash etc). However as time goes on there will actually be some good ideas that come from 40k or the black library/forgeworld material that the community will want to adapt (at least in the majority).

Rather than look at creating another list, these new units/concepts should be looked at for inclusion into existing lists, and playtested in parallel to the approved/dev list. Then every 2-4 years, each list is formally reviewed by the ERC along with any proposed new unit/rules, and if approved the updated lists and any new units becomes the baseline list. Not only should this occur for the army lists but the rules themselves, though noting that we all do this as a hobby, timelines would have to be fairly flexible.

but that's not neccesarily a bad thing.
for mine I did a reasonably detailed one, stating what the list was, the intended play style and what the list was NOT.
That meant a list of core units and core concepts that the list had to have to meet the brief, but it meant as list champion i also had to accept what bits were not core, and if people disliked them there was no need to keep them.

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FWIW, I would suggest that the statement should contain the intended weaknesses and rational behind these.

Using a controversial list as an example, the Dark Angels list *might* explain that it is intended to represent the forces available in a particular campaign which is why no a/c are available - or why only particular A/c are there etc.

Yeah, this is basically as the scenario I described above went with two local gamers, both new to epic and interested - who, both well beyond my expectations had actually used the links I gave them and gone away to skim read the rules and lists. However without knowing the game well it was all just numbers to them, and when I started discussing how that list plays (or my understanding of how) they both planned to go back and look again. I remember how the epic web was 3/4 years ago when I got back into it - and with the netea and epicuk sites now it is much more comprehensible. But with official support dropped we need to make it as easy as possible for newbies to comprehend - there's a lot more games out there nowadays, and they are a lot more professional than they used to be!

Ps. Hoping for some new sisters and admech opponents soon ! Fingers crossed !

@ Ginger. Particular campaigns / sectors was always the approach of Jervis from what I have read. Similar to the way FoW or other historical have time periods &regiments attached to their lists. It's never intended to represent the whole German army from 1939-45 in all theatres for example.