How can we get through to the haters?

So, today on bols, a " review" of the new dark elder codex was published, and I was reminded of why I stopped reading their blog. They went from a reasonably fan friendly wargaming blog with a focus on war hammer 40k, to the Fox news of wargaming blogs. One of the highlights was complaining that Talos lacked a transport option.

That's right, the poster complained that monstrous creatures didn't have a transport. Now, tyranids don't have a transport for carnifex broods, chaos spawn don't have transports, and this bus for a reason. Their purpose isn't to ride in a pimpwagon.  The talking points based dialogue intentionally avoids discussing this, because it requires more than a sound bytes worth of discussion. It takes understanding that a pack of gene forged cybernetic monstrosities are intended to blaze away at the enemy as they advance, and sitting in a transport that is better used getting warriors into position isn't doing that.

In the article, there were repeated complaints that units lost the ability to take certain grenades, without any consideration for whether  or not such wargear options were balanced, especially given complaints about the performance of walkers versus such units.

To combat this, I think we need to ask that those reviewing a new release be as unbiased as possible, that they avoid talking points, that they provide concrete reasons for claims of poor performance. Too often players claim that rules changes make an army " suck" but fail to cite which changes they are talking about, or how those changes affect performance.

I think we also need to call out players who engage in the stelek fallacy, where they claim to be a brilliant player, and those who fail to win against  a codex are incompetent. This fails to see that, if the person making the claim is so brilliant, how is it that " lesser" players are able to beat incompetent player, but the allegedly brilliant player somehow cannot? Then there is the " cash grab" argument, which makes the foolish assertion that rules changes are driven solely by sales, despite evidence to the contrary.

I think that we should confront these people and press them to give real reasons for their complaints, or stop hatin'. If they put half as much effort into hustlin' as they do into hatin' they might win a few games, and maybe even have a good time doing so...