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Disclaimer: Out of a field of 18 players, I scored first with a foot army. I'm a competitive player. I like 'Ard Boyz, and hard lists. This isn't a whine rant, and no place for whine rants. I hope we can generate some meaningful discussion.

There were a handful of things that made 'Ard Boyz different from Standard 40k, ala the rulebook. The first, obviously, was the dreaded Scenario 3 Killpoint fest. Mech Marine lists easily gave up mid-30s KPs, IG mid-40s, and Dark Eldar mid-60s. Foot lists, on the other hand, around 18, or roughly 1/3-1/2 of the majority of the rest of the field. Clearly, at least superficially, the structure of the scenario was to act as a disincentive to mech lists. So did it work? In my opinion, no, not at all, if that was actually its true purpose. Looking around my store, the top 5 places (excluding myself) were all at least modestly mech lists that gave up KPs in the upper 20s to mid 30s. What's more, of the top 3 tables finishing, every single battle ended in a massacre. S3 really seemed to be a 'slot machine jackpot' scenario where one player just blew the other guy away; at such high kill point totals, beating the other guy by 7 or more was not difficult, akin to beating someone by 2-3 in a normal game.

The conclusions I drew are: Mech is too fundamentally strong, and too ingrained into the game now, for even an unsubtle and heavy-handed handicap like S3 to really reduce its presence on the tabletop. Nobody wants to chop the legs out of a list de-meching just to do better in S3 if they're going to get pounded in S1 and S2. A lot of people have embraced the mech-centric nature of 5th ed and bought models/adjusted army lists and play styles accordingly; it's now status quo. Even with the 'meta game' offering the opportunity to run a shorter race, people preferred to run a longer race because the horse was faster. As a corollary, the absence of Dawn of War deployment was another huge incentive to run foot lists. Not getting stuck with all your heavy weapons 6" from the table edge is a big, big bonus. S3 was part of my reasoning to take Loganwing as opposed to Mech Guard, but no DoW had a lot more weight; being able to deploy 6 WG missile packs and 3 LF squads on the top floor of every single ruin in my deployment zone is a heckuva lot better than running to whatever scrap of terrain is nearest the table edge.

Another big change is the avoidance of objective missions. Whereas killing your opponent is typically a secondary concern in 2/3 of missions, this time around objectives were in the minority. I don't really have any conclusions to draw from this one, it simply struck me odd that the necessity of troops was pretty minimal. Somebody whose scoring units died in every single game could still score 50/60 points plus bonuses. That's not really typical in most tournaments.

The return of Victory Points was unusual, and the only conclusion I could draw there was how much more intrinsically fair VPs are than KPs. Killing four rhinos simply shouldn't be twice as valuable as wiping two squads of 10 Terminators. Still and all, I did have an appreciation for the ease of KP calculation. VPs, while not a whole lot of work to keep track of, are still significantly more work than just counting how many units are on the pile. Given a choice between the two, I think VPs are more balanced/competitive, but GW should find a middleground between VPs and KPs.

Finally, and I think this was actually the most meaningful change in the entire tournament, set game length of 6 turns made the endgame... easy. I guess I can understand having a hard turn limit in a big point total game where the difference between turn 5 and turn 7 can be 40+ minutes, but I really feel that the variable game length is that last blind luck factor that makes 5th ed matches more dynamic. Late game decisions were so much more absolute; I was perfectly willing to run a Long Fang squad on turn 5 to create a LOS/cover-denial crossfire to wipe out that one last unit, or stretch out a single squad to take two objectives just to let my other scoring unit march into my opponent's deployment for the bonus point. Those are things I probably couldn't "afford" to do in a close game with variable length. I didn't really realize how much uncertainty variable game length added until it was gone. Although that reduction of uncertainty or "luck factor" is exactly what competitive players desire to reduce, I also think it's a necessary element of the game, it becomes too easy to play when the finish line is crystal clear.

Of the big changes, the S3 Kill Points I think are a bad change, but in a non-issue sort of way. When you come down to it, it just doesn't matter if everybody gives up a similar amount. To really make it meaningful you'd have to widen the bands out. 7 KP, when it represents less than 20% of an army, is too narrow a margin.

VPs are a pain in the ass, but more fair. I wish GW would 'fix' KPs so that the silly MSU versus point-sunk blob squads issue wouldn't keep popping up.

Variable game length should stay. Set game length is a good change (from an 'I want to plan on winning' player perspective), but in a bad way. The game just feels more Yougo/Igo/Yougo/Iwin.

Just my thoughts.

Interesting thoughts.

I took first with a Tyranid army; 16 KPs in scenario 3 (before creating additional Termagants).

Mission 1: The deployment zone was needlessly complicated. Spearhead would have been fine, as would the old "Cleanse 2" triangle deployment.

I faced 5 BA Land Raiders (2 Redeemers, 2 Crusaders, 1 Godhammer), 2 Baal Predators (assault cannons), and 2 Librarian Furiosos. He had next-to-no HtH, and wasn't practiced with his army. I killed everything but the Godhammer and a 5-man assault squad hiding inside it over the course of the game, and held 4 objectives. He was mechanized, but LR spam (particularly with that mix of LRs) can't outshoot Tyrannofexes at range; he had to move forward. It also helped that I had the last turn, and the fixed game-length made sure that contesting his sole objective would be painless.

Mission 2: No complaints on this mission.

I faced BA again, and again a player who wasn't very practiced with his army. He ran out of models on turn 5. Game length was irrelevant here.

Mission 3: The silly KP arrangement let me play extremely conservative - I was 4 BPs up on my opponent, and 15 up on the player in 3rd. Start with most reserves off the board, use the Ymgarl to snipe a Daemon Prince when they arrived, used the Zoanthropes to snipe a rhino when it arrived, killed the second daemon prince when it desperately came forward to try and accomplish something late in the game, and killed 1 CSM squad with some outflanking stealers: 4 units. I lost 8 units, and still won a minor victory.

This game exemplified the potential problem with the mission: by just cherry-picking a few units to kill, I won a mission that by any other measurement I should have lost. It could have been a lot worse - there were only 4 vehicles (rhinos) on the other side of the board to kill, and enough terrain to hide them pretty well from almost any angle; he started with 28 KPs to my 16.

Set game length didn't change much here - I would have had a major victory on a turn 5 ending, and might have been able to pick up a few more KPs with a turn 7, but I had no incentive to do so; first place was mine on a Draw or better.

I agree with you whole heartedly.

VP's are flat out superior. They are inherently better than KP, and no, it is no that difficult to calculate out VP's at the end of a match.

S3 was a failure, IMO. It created auto loss scenarios which is unacceptable in a tournament setting. In our store, the guy with the 2nd most points had to play Horde Orks in S3, where he had 36 KP or so VS 14. That is preposterous.

I also agree that the shift away from objective missions was a poor choice. I think S3 should have been a secure and control mission with KP's as a secondary victory condition.

I think not having DoW is a good idea as it does encourage foot armies to jump in with Mech lists which are so powerful.

On the whole I had fun, but had I been the unlucky bastard to draw the short straw S3 against horde orks (or a similar, powerful foot list) I would have been boned and quite bitter as was the gentlemen who pulled that opponent.

I think the missions would be better if they stuck with what they had but dropped S3 for another objective mission with KP for secondary. That way we would have missions with degrees of victory and that were familiar, enabling players to play the game they know instead of trying to figure out some wacky rules.

I also agree that the games should remain random in length as they avoid situations where you can make crazy moves because of an arbitrary time limit that enables you to do so.

My army and a quickie battle report:
http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/294949.page

Honestly, I don't understand what the whole leafblower thing is all about. Two showed up at my qualifier, both got owned. Neither placed. Not really all that popular here in the midwest, or so I understand.

The only thing I really disliked was the set game length. It made objective/quarter sniping far, far, far too easy. Of course, it didn't matter to me, since I basically tabled 2 of 3 opponents, and almost tabled the third, but its a principle thing.

Mission 1 -
Janthkin, this was essentially a cleanse 2 deployment, just measured differently (17" from the corner instead of 18"). Do the math on a right triangle where the two short sides are both 12"...

Mission 2 -
Victory points were a blast from the past. I don't really care whether its (standard) kill points or VPs...while superficially similar, they each have quirks that can be metagamed. I think KPs fit more into an objective-focused game.

Mission 3 -
I wouldn't go far as to call Mission 3 a failure. I do think that it should have been the first or second mission played.

If mission three was a surprise, I would understand people being upset with it. It was published prior to the event though, and people had opportunities to change their lists, or their strategies, to account for it beforehand.

In my opinion, any tournament that announces the missions prior to the event, and has interesting changes is a good skill tester. It gives people the opportunity to think around the new parameters and rewards those who do, while penalizing people who do the same old thing every single time.

I had 38 KPs IIRC in the 3rd mission. Tabeled my opponent to win the whole thing with BA.

SO, didnt stop me. Didnt really see that many non mech lists in my area though. Fought a mech SM list for round 3.

I was almost ready to toss out my BA list because of an emotional reaction to S3. I ended up taking it anyway after seeing mech's advantage in S1 & 2. From that I thought I would likely be facing another KP heavy list for S3. My gamble paid off when I drew Mech guard, and his first two turns of shooting were inconsequential.

The set game length was disappointing.

I had a potential of 50 kp's in S3 playing space wolves. Not a comfortable place to be in. Fortunately I was matched up vs another mech marine list and smoked him.

If I played vs foot slogging list? I was dead meat unless I tabled them.

Redbeard wrote:
In my opinion, any tournament that announces the missions prior to the event, and has interesting changes is a good skill tester. It gives people the opportunity to think around the new parameters and rewards those who do, while penalizing people who do the same old thing every single time.

I kind of agree, but mostly disagree. The scenario was published one week in advance, which is plenty of time to adjust, but I know plenty of people that only have one army, or a couple of different ways to build one army. Plenty of peoples' armies do undergo different facelifts as time/editions/codices pass, and old models get scavenged for new models; maybe an IG player traded away a bunch of his platoon squads, or cannibalized his heavy weapon teams to convert Hydras and Vendettas, or put his 320 infantrymen into storage at his parents' place two states away. In general, one week isn't a whole lot of time to reinvent 1500 points of your army.

I agree that new scenarios are a bit of a skill test, but I don't think that a scenario that is obviously created to dick over a single army [type] is a test of skill, any more than unfair officiating at a sporting event creates a competitive environment.

I saw the writing on the wall, shelved my 47 KP mech IG list, pulled out my 19 KP Loganwing list, and went on to massacre in R3, so it's not like I didn't play the meta myself. But I still think it's an ass scenario and I wonder wth GW-USA is thinking if this is the sort of thing they believe the community wants.

It would be a test of skill if an army didnt cost a ton of cash nowadays.. This isnt a video game or MTG

Changing to a totally new army is very very impractical for a massive majority.. I mean I can do 4 armies, but if those 4 got screwed there isnt much even I could do

In my experience, even as a fast player only 1 of my games went 6 rounds and that was due to cheating by my opponent.

Timing is very important for tourney players and something to think about all the time. I don't think variable game length matters much for that.

As for scenarios I think they should be along the lines of hey its like this mission with this deployment with these changes. Deployment remains the same, yadda yadda.

Like mission one, capture and control with 5 objectives. Done, simple, and we know.

I wholeheartedly agree about the fixed turn length. When my opponent in the first mission elected to go first... well... with 5 fast/AV13/dozer-equipped tanks, the game was mine.

The S3 did not seem to cause panic in our groups as they all still came.

It is very marginalized by the fact that most (if not all) the finals matched these lists up against each other.

Only thing I can think of is S3 being unbalanced to the player shooting first.

I wholeheartedly agree about the fixed turn length. When my opponent in the first mission elected to go first... well... with 5 fast/AV13/dozer-equipped tanks, the game was mine.

And it's situations like this where variable game length becomes a big factor.

Do you pop smoke on turns 1-4 knowing you may need the extra survivability on turn 5?

Do you risk charging the objective turn 5 knowing that meltas are 12" away? 18" away? Bet on killing them in one shooting/assault phase?

What's your backup plan if it does go to T6? T7?

Or, just rest in peace knowing that the game ends at a specified point, and your tanks are "totally safe", 21" away, able to contest from halfway across the table.

I am torn on the absolute 6 turn limit.

Either way it goes, it affects the end game.

At least this way, you don't win or lose because someone rolled a 1 or a 2 on a D6.

Hopefully there won't be any oddball missions in the semis. I think they should return to random game length as well.

G

I didn't really find scenario 3 much of an issue. It leveled the field in favor of non-mech, but it didn't kill mech at all:

HQ
Edrad = 210
5x Warlocks w/ spears, 1 Enhance, 1 Embolden = 160
Wave Serpent w/ BL, shuriken cannon, spirit stones = 155
Autarch w/ fusion gun = 80

Elites
5x Fire Dragons = 80
Wave Serpent w/ EML, shuriken cannon, spirit stones = 140
5x Fire Dragons = 80
Wave Serpent w/ EML, shuriken cannon, spirit stones = 140
5x Fire Dragons = 80
Wave Serpent w/ EML, shuriken cannon, spirit stones = 140

Troops
5xDA = 60
Wave Serpent w/ Scatter laser, shuriken cannon, spirit stones = 135
5xDA = 60
Wave Serpent w/ Scatter laser, shuriken cannon, spirit stones = 135
5xDA = 60
Wave Serpent w/ Scatter laser, shuriken cannon, spirit stones = 135
5xDA = 60
Wave Serpent w/ Scatter laser, shuriken cannon, spirit stones = 135

Heavy
3x Warwalkers w/ 2x scatterlasers = 180
Fire Prism w/ spirit stones, shuriken cannon = 135
Fire Prism w/ spirit stones, shuriken cannon = 135
Came in 5th out of 18, 2 pts away from number 4 spot, 4 pts from number 2/3 spot (it was tied), and about 10 from number 1.

1st battle vs. SMurfs
Major Victory for me. I had about 400 more kp than my opponent, so he put up a good fight (and also ended up in the 4th place spot...). I ended up winning the game by DAVU-shocking him off of the objectives on the last turn of the game.

2nd battle vs. ork swarm/hordes
Major LOSS for me. Spearhead deployment against a 192 model ork swarm? By turn 2 I was literally surrounded. In fact, I spent most of the game trying to fight my way out of the corner. Everytime I opened a hole, it was filled back up by the horde. Fire prisms proved to be absolutely useless (which is bad, because I expected them to save me in the (what I thought was an unlikely) event that I went up against a horde army. Everytime I fired the pieplate, at a unit which would have taken a brutal punishing blow... it scattered about 8" to the right... into a unit of ork nobz, which got a nice 4+ cover save, PLUS they had cybork bodies... Can you say I didn't really kill all that much? Yeah...

In the end I missed getting the minor loss (and possibly 3 place) by about 20 pts...

3rd battle vs. blood angels
Massacre for me. I claimed 18 killpts, and I only gave up 9 (2 of which were fireprisms... yeah, those actually ended up being the weakest link in my list, 1 survived the second game... somehow.... but thats about it)...

imweasel wrote:I am torn on the absolute 6 turn limit.

Either way it goes, it affects the end game.

At least this way, you don't win or lose because someone rolled a 1 or a 2 on a D6.

Agree completely.

I somewhat liked S3 at first, to finally see Mech guard players get a good hard kick in the teeth, but after seeing the results of it, well I wasn't too impressed.

It follows the same reasoning I have for disliking comp - the fact that it invariably hurts other armies more than the one it's intended to balance out.

DE and BA had a huge, and I mean a huge disadvantage from the get go, DE especially. Mech guard, not so much (didn't have anyone play it at my store, surprisingly. Our regular IG player was down sick for the weekend)

I think S3 would have worked a lot better overall, if it would have only dinged fast things for two points, but really, it doesn't hurt the top lists much at all, and those who are struggling in the first place, really cripples them.

Im curious to see what winning BA lists people brought.. This is one of the first national tournies with them

I ran foot orks with a kan wall, and S3 was money for me from the second turn- Snikrot comes in, flames an assault squad and multi-charges the remnants and a razorback. 6KPs later, my opponent is able to kill snikrot for... 1 KP. 6 for 1 KP tradeoffs are kind of ridiculous.

I went on to all but table him (we called it on turn 5), so it would not have been a factor anyways, but had it been a tougher matchup (Landraider spam, for example) the 3KP thing may have made all the difference.

I liked the wonky deployment for S1- pleasant change (although it was almost, functionally, a spearhead deployment).

Spearhead isn't great for foot orks, but it's playable.

I hope the semi-missions are more balanced, but also encourage some creativity with lists. All mech, all the time is kind of wearing thin. (says the horde ork player...)

going into mission 3, I was in 2nd, playing the guy in first.

my mech marine list gave up 30 points max. I played against a big bugs nid list that gave up 13 points max.

I killed 9 of those 13 killpoints. he got 14 of mine (including 3 vehicles)

victory points wise, I had a few more on the table at the end. (he had a fex with a single wound, a squad of 3 fexes in a corner, and a tervigon with 1 wound left in combat against a dreadnought... I had a tac squad in a rhino, 4 land speeder typhoons, a land raider, and my dreadnought)

its not like his army needed a boost for killpoints. Even normally he'd have had less than me. I thought transports like rhinos were already being penalized, being the same value as a squad of 3 carnifex. Without the mission bonus of +2 killpoints per fast vehicle, i'd have won, in both victory and killpoints.

Kirasu wrote:Im curious to see what winning BA lists people brought.. This is one of the first national tournies with them

Ask, and ye shall receive: My Blood Angels List.

Darkness wrote:I had 38 KPs IIRC in the 3rd mission. Tabeled my opponent to win the whole thing with BA.

SO, didnt stop me. Didnt really see that many non mech lists in my area though. Fought a mech SM list for round 3.

Indeed.

My 36 KP Mech Orks fought a (17?) KP foot-slogging SW player round 3 - he had two rhinos; everything else was 1 KP. Tabled him for the massacre. Its like nuking from orbit - its the only way to be sure....

My main issue w/ this tourney was that s1 required you to hold 4 more obj's than your opponent (Requiring lots of troops, preferably mech for mobility) to massacre while the other scenarios were KP missions and one of them punished mech play.

so lists that excel in s1 fail at s3, and s2 games were just kill-a-thons where anything worked.

Dashofpepper wrote:

Darkness wrote:I had 38 KPs IIRC in the 3rd mission. Tabeled my opponent to win the whole thing with BA.

SO, didnt stop me. Didnt really see that many non mech lists in my area though. Fought a mech SM list for round 3.

Indeed.

My 36 KP Mech Orks fought a (17?) KP foot-slogging SW player round 3 - he had two rhinos; everything else was 1 KP. Tabled him for the massacre. Its like nuking from orbit - its the only way to be sure....

I only brought 25 KP with my Eldar, which I felt pretty good about. Placed 2nd with back-to-back massacres in the last two scenarios.

Also, anyone notice that in Scenario 1, tabling didn't equal a Massacre? If you tabled your opponent, you got a Major Victory. It was specifically outlined in the rules. It makes me wonder if that was another attempt to curb Leafblower.

Kungfuhustler wrote:My main issue w/ this tourney was that s1 required you to hold 4 more obj's than your opponent (Requiring lots of troops, preferably mech for mobility) to massacre while the other scenarios were KP missions and one of them punished mech play.

so lists that excel in s1 fail at s3, and s2 games were just kill-a-thons where anything worked.

Agreed, last years missions were excellent in that you only had to have MORE objectives + more kill points to score a massacre.. None of this "I have sucky troops in my codex so im at a huge disadvantage" bs.. I thought GW would have learned that last year had great missions and went with it.. Not reverted

In scenario 3 my 12 VP army went up to 36 VP as every single unit in my list gave the bonus. I ended up fighting an Eldar army who's 17 VP went up to 25 VP. I killed 10 units 3 of which were transports giving me 16 points, and lost 3 units giving up 9 points resulting in the bare minimum for a massacre result.

I made it to the semi finals and had 2 massacre victories yesterday one of which was scenario 3, and looking back on it scenario 3 was a bad idea. It's entirely possible for specific armies to kill twice as many enemy units (Say 12 to 7) and completely lose the game because their score of 12 to 7 now converts to 12 to 21. I see really crazy scenarios as a way of imposing an nonofficial comp system into ard boys. There are other ways to can attempt to impose comp. If the want to penalize gun lines they could create missions where all 6 turns are under night fight rules, and I think doing so would be an equally bad idea. The last thing I want to do is win semifinals because I end up fighting a gun line under night fight rules with my very fast CC army. I don't need or want a charity mission to hand me a massacre result on a silver platter. To be honest I would rather get screwed over by a mission like scenario 3 that get a freebie. Ard boys should be hard and difficult battles, where is the challenge if a mission just hands over a victory?

It's a no comp tournament. I just feel crazy scenarios should not be used in the place of a comp system.

Good luck to all my fellow semi finalists I just hope we get good honest bloody battles.

I feel like I was the only one at my store that liked the scenarios even the 3rd one and I play airforce DE. I did have beef with the last one but only on one ruling. I felt that Drop pods should have been 3 KPs like it was in the first posting. but my reasoning is because with my DE lord I can equip him with combat drug dispenser and one of the abilities is 12 inch assault (can only be done at the beginning of combat phases) and that automatically made him worth 3 KP even though I could almost never use it (he was with a bodyguard). I guess I didn't have to get the CD but then again SM players didn't have to buy Drop pods either.

Kungfuhustler wrote:My main issue w/ this tourney was that s1 required you to hold 4 more obj's than your opponent (Requiring lots of troops, preferably mech for mobility) to massacre while the other scenarios were KP missions and one of them punished mech play.

so lists that excel in s1 fail at s3, and s2 games were just kill-a-thons where anything worked.

I interpreted that as the point. Do you build for scenario 1? Or for 3? Or try and balance between them?

I held 4 objectives with 2 troops choices. You can guarantee that at least 3 of them are close together during mission placement (a triangle w/12" sides), and a unit of about 7 models can easily hold all three by standing in the middle.

Janthkin wrote:

Kungfuhustler wrote:My main issue w/ this tourney was that s1 required you to hold 4 more obj's than your opponent (Requiring lots of troops, preferably mech for mobility) to massacre while the other scenarios were KP missions and one of them punished mech play.

so lists that excel in s1 fail at s3, and s2 games were just kill-a-thons where anything worked.

I interpreted that as the point. Do you build for scenario 1? Or for 3? Or try and balance between them?

I held 4 objectives with 2 troops choices. You can guarantee that at least 3 of them are close together during mission placement (a triangle w/12" sides), and a unit of about 7 models can easily hold all three by standing in the middle.

I think a lot of people failed to see the inherent balance in the mission structure. It also made people question their basic army structure, and it was simple. I liked the missions in retrospect.