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.

I liked the missions a lot.

I made my army the way I wanted to, regardless of the missions and I took 3rd so I was pretty happy about it. It's my opinion that good players should be able to make the best list that they can and adapt to the missions as they arise.

Valhallan42nd wrote:
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.

The problem is that it made people question the basic army structure by changing the fundamental victory conditions of the game. It's kind of like changing the rules of baseball to make it so you can only score via homeruns a week before the World Series and then saying "Well, we gave you plenty of notice to rebuild your team." I wouldn't have minded it as much if it didn't create auto-loss scenarios, such as horde Orks versus mech IG or DE.

Scenario 1 was fine but the deployment was a bit wonky as people have mentioned.

Scenario 2 was fine but I will actually say that I like KP's more now that I've played a 4th ed scenario with 5th ed armies.

Scenario 3 I faced another partial mech army. The only thing I didn't like is that we basically just sniped each other's 3 KP units all game. Also, I was playing Doublewing and he was playing Plague Marines so really all we could kill easily were each others' vehicles.

Took third overall with 2 wins and a minor loss (second round vs. Blood Angels).

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

While I didn't take 1st, I was only one point behind. I had a libby, two crusaders full of FNP terminators, three units of scouts, two flamestorm Baals, and three vindis.

I'm very, very pleased with the list.

I got 2nd with my list

Grim

2 10man Assault squads with JP PW, 2 Inferious Pistols
10 man tac with Melta PW Rhino
10 man Tac PW Melta
3 Vindicators
2 Baals
3 Libby Dreads in Drop pods

As for the 3rd mission I had 35KP's versus my opponents 21. I earned 20 from him and he earned 6 from me.

3rd place in our store was 3 Baal Preds, 3 AC/Las Preds, max Las/Plas Razorbacks, max Libby Dreads. MaxOD is very much alive and well.

I hsd shooty counter assault nids. missions one and 3 were a breeze. Mission 2 I pulled a Tally daemon list. A damon prince came down and turned my tyranofex into spawn. 265 points down happened again, another 265 points. There was no way I could come back forn that with Nid shooting, and plague swords would just rip through my MCs. I went from first to barely getting third. I just don't like VP. I think KP are a lot fairer. It's the only think keeping mech from being godlike. Leave 4th edition in 4th please

Double posts suck don't they. I found peole I played were not as rulse savy as I thought they would be.

In the store I played at, the 3KP thing in scenario three had zero change on the outcome of the final placings. Out of 18 people there, over half were normal mechanized lists and the guard player with the most kill points actually massacred in round three to get third place. If anything was a throwback to 4th edition, it was the favoring of heavy drop pods. The SW guy who ran locanwing pods massacred everyone he played other than me in round one.

Did any of the BA players run into guys who tried to say that vindis weren't blast weapons? If so I hope you popped em in the mouth

sexiest_hero wrote:I hsd shooty counter assault nids. missions one and 3 were a breeze. Mission 2 I pulled a Tally daemon list. A damon prince came down and turned my tyranofex into spawn. 265 points down happened again, another 265 points. There was no way I could come back forn that with Nid shooting, and plague swords would just rip through my MCs. I went from first to barely getting third. I just don't like VP. I think KP are a lot fairer. It's the only think keeping mech from being godlike. Leave 4th edition in 4th please

So you think killing 5 scouts is worth killing 30 boyz? That is what kill points say, you take the min squad or max squad and they are worth the same. Vp's are alot more fair.

sexiest_hero wrote:I hsd shooty counter assault nids. missions one and 3 were a breeze. Mission 2 I pulled a Tally daemon list. A damon prince came down and turned my tyranofex into spawn. 265 points down happened again, another 265 points. There was no way I could come back forn that with Nid shooting, and plague swords would just rip through my MCs. I went from first to barely getting third. I just don't like VP. I think KP are a lot fairer. It's the only think keeping mech from being godlike. Leave 4th edition in 4th please

Hmm, spawning (Gift of Chaos or Touch of Chaos or whatever) is a little counter-productive to a Tally list, I would think, since it doesn't rack up tallies (unless Tally says "removed from play" - I can't really remember). It seemed to work though - those VPs started to eat you up, sounded like >.<

jbunny wrote:

sexiest_hero wrote:I hsd shooty counter assault nids. missions one and 3 were a breeze. Mission 2 I pulled a Tally daemon list. A damon prince came down and turned my tyranofex into spawn. 265 points down happened again, another 265 points. There was no way I could come back forn that with Nid shooting, and plague swords would just rip through my MCs. I went from first to barely getting third. I just don't like VP. I think KP are a lot fairer. It's the only think keeping mech from being godlike. Leave 4th edition in 4th please

So you think killing 5 scouts is worth killing 30 boyz? That is what kill points say, you take the min squad or max squad and they are worth the same. Vp's are alot more fair.

In that context, yes, VP's are more fair.

But when you consider that 5 scouts and 30 boyz are equal from an objective holding standpoint (disregarding that 30 boyz can hold more than one objective) then KP's get a lot more fair.

I thought S1 and S2 were okay. There were more table quarters and objectives than most people had troops, but I'm fine with that. It keeps things interesting. I think that there should be more emphasis placed on contesting objectives rather than actually taking them. And the table quarters were only a single point a piece, so that's no big deal. I still feel robbed by S3. I know mech lists are "harder" than non-mech, but it's 'ard Boyz. The brochure says to bring the hardest lists you can with no comp score. There's no fine print saying that they'll add it in later. I was honestly surprised to read in the other threads that there were Mech IG that actually did so well. I'd be very interested to see some of those lists and find out who they went up against. Pretty much every Mech list we had at our store was destroyed that round, and I'm talking a top tier Sisters player, another IG player who I'd never seen play before, but had probably a better assembled list than I did, myself, and then there was a Rhino heavy SM (and assault marine heavy) list that I remember facing in round 1. My list weighed in at a modest 40 KP and would have been 17 KP if it was KP as normal, and Mech already gets hit by KPs hard due to each transport being an additional one. I probably wouldn't feel so burned about the whole deal were I not in first place by a longshot prior to that mission.

Oh well, other than that, it was fun. Everyone there played a good clean game and there was good spirits all around.
</whine>

Please explain how 5 guys on an objective are equal to 30 guys on an objective, and that the 30 guys can easier hold more than one objective?

Also normally KP's and objectives are not used in the same game, same with VP's and objectives.

Valhallan42nd wrote: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.

I saw that, which made this the most difficult ard boyz to prepare for.

The missions were meh at best, but I managed. Ultimately I played the list I brought last year sans the rhinos and drop pod and used those points to grab a MSU and some wargear on the Master of Sanctity.


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Valhallan42nd wrote:
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.

Agreed. While I didn't really change the concept of my army at all, it at least made me really think about what I wanted to run.

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

I think this summarizes the situation ideally from everything in the thread.

I was considering playing again this year, after going to finals last year. Once I heard about crazy S3 I decided not to attend. I think it was a good call.

There is a tremendous Irony in the hardboy. The tournament is suppose to be about the best players and the hardest lists, but the missions can be designed to break the metagame. Which is it. This is clearly not the event it is advertised as for the "best players" and "hardest lists".

It has been interesting to read the various posts about the missions and peoples experiences.

Unfortunately IMO with nonsense missions the entire point of this thing is nullified. For this kind of tourney it ought to be the missions as published in the basic rulebook. Use of custom missions to favor something else only skews the field and detracts from what is suppose to be an event about no holds barred armies and competency of the game.

Schadenfreude has it, I would have seen this as a frustrating waste of time, I for one am glad I didn't bother.

Augustus wrote:

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

I think this summarizes the situation ideally from everything in the thread.

I was considering playing again this year, after going to finals last year. Once I heard about crazy S3 I decided not to attend. I think it was a good call.

Actually, I think it's a better test of a player's skill to mess with the Status Quo of list building. It separates the tacticians from the people that get their "win button" armies off of the internet.

I had about 10 minutes worth of panic when I first read the missions after they went up because I run a very heavily mechanized list. 36 killpoints worth of orks.

I did some quick math about switching in Deff Dreads, or Killa-kans....taking out lone units of deffkoptas and my mostly useless warbuggies and ultimately decided that it was more valuable to play the list I know well than to switch out for something I'm not as comfortable with that would do better in one mission.

I played against a 20 lance, 17 blaster DE list in round 1, Vulkan Salamanders round 2 (2x land raiders, 2x rhinos, 2x vindicators, 2x land speeders, 3x drop pods with 2x dreadnoughts), and a space wolf player round three who's 3 point contributions were two rhinos and a 4 man unit of thunderwolf cavalry.

Did very well (Battle Reports) and despite being heavy on battle points compared to my opponent (36 vs 20) I'm glad I played what I knew.

Monster Rain wrote:
Actually, I think it's a better test of a player's skill to mess with the Status Quo of list building. It separates the tacticians from the people that get their "win button" armies off of the internet.

I've never played against it before, but I'd bet money that I could beat leafblower with my 'Ard Boyz list. It's too heavily dependent on first turn, and besides, "Win button" lists only work if you're a good enough player to understand them well enough to adapt to situations outside of: "Space Marines are advancing on me from their half of the board." There are already plenty of rules in game for generating these situations with things such as outflank, deep strike, etc. Deep strike doesn't help much with the stranglehold that Inquisitor/Mystics have on the game, but that will change by the next 'Oft Boyz. There doesn't need to be an artificial arbitrary "fairness mechanic" imposed in any of the missions. I'm already anticipating next year: "Horde armies are down, so anything that attacks using a blast marker or template weapons is now worth 10 KP."

Danny Internets wrote:The problem is that it made people question the basic army structure by changing the fundamental victory conditions of the game. It's kind of like changing the rules of baseball to make it so you can only score via homeruns a week before the World Series and then saying "Well, we gave you plenty of notice to rebuild your team." I wouldn't have minded it as much if it didn't create auto-loss scenarios, such as horde Orks versus mech IG or DE.

Dannhy Internets hit on a similar point in his thread as well. While this might be a good concept and I see where you are going...

Monster Rain wrote:Actually, I think it's a better test of a player's skill to mess with the Status Quo of list building. It separates the tacticians from the people that get their "win button" armies off of the internet.

What skill is there really in playing a 3:1 handicap S3 KP game?

In the standard mix of KP and Objective missions there are already competing concerns for high scoring unit counts versus KP minimization. This is already a test of play and list building, changing the base mechanics only skews the system.

It wasn't the best players taking that, it was a random win engine or designed for people who could take advantage of the new meta in S3, look at all the accounts. It created S3 games that were complete blowouts (that I can't imagine were very fun or tactically challenging) as everyone knew it would.

daedalus wrote:

Monster Rain wrote:
Actually, I think it's a better test of a player's skill to mess with the Status Quo of list building. It separates the tacticians from the people that get their "win button" armies off of the internet.

I've never played against it before, but I'd bet money that I could beat leafblower with my 'Ard Boyz list. It's too heavily dependent on first turn, and besides, "Win button" lists only work if you're a good enough player to understand them well enough to adapt to situations outside of: "Space Marines are advancing on me from their half of the board." There are already plenty of rules in game for generating these situations with things such as outflank, deep strike, etc. Deep strike doesn't help much with the stranglehold that Inquisitor/Mystics have on the game, but that will change by the next 'Oft Boyz. There doesn't need to be an artificial arbitrary "fairness mechanic" imposed in any of the missions. I'm already anticipating next year: "Horde armies are down, so anything that attacks using a blast marker or template weapons is now worth 10 KP."

I have a couple of anti-Leafblower tricks up my sleeve as well. In fact, they won me a game against a rather nasty IG list in round 3 on Saturday.

I'll post them in August.

Augustus wrote:

Monster Rain wrote:Actually, I think it's a better test of a player's skill to mess with the Status Quo of list building. It separates the tacticians from the people that get their "win button" armies off of the internet.

What skill is there really in playing a 3:1 handicap S3 KP game?

In the standard mix of KP and Objective missions there are already competing concerns for high scoring unit counts versus KP minimization. This is already a test of play and list building, changing the base mechanics only skews the system.

It wasn't the best players taking that, it was a random win engine or designed for people who could take advantage of the new meta in S3, look at all the accounts. It created S3 games that were complete blowouts (that I can't imagine were very fun or tactically challenging) as everyone knew it would.

I had somewhere around 3 times the KPs of my Round 3 opponent. I got a Major Victory with the Vulkan/Mech list that I made long before the Scenarios were posted. I'll just let that stand for itself.

jbunny wrote:Please explain how 5 guys on an objective are equal to 30 guys on an objective, and that the 30 guys can easier hold more than one objective?

Also normally KP's and objectives are not used in the same game, same with VP's and objectives.

If at the end of the game I have a 5 man troops squad on one objective and you have a 30 man troops squad on one objective, they are equal. Obviously a 30 man squad can capture more than one objective and has better staying power but I'll bet that my 5 man squad is a lot cheaper so I can have more of them to claim more objectives.

The point is that KP's are there to balance out the advantage that MSU has in the two objective based scenarios in the core rulebook. VP's don't balance out the objective based games. With VP's, there's no downside to running MSU.

This far into 5th ed I'm surprised I'm still explaining this.

Ozymandias wrote:This far into 5th ed I'm surprised I'm still explaining this.

Indeed, I agree, especially in the hardboy thread...?


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Monster Rain wrote:...I had somewhere around 3 times the KPs of my Round 3 opponent. I got a Major Victory with the Vulkan/Mech list that I made long before the Scenarios were posted. I'll just let that stand for itself.

Well done. That S3 game must have been quite the match.

Just know I'm trying to build a point about the irony of the missions and the hardboy, not criticize you.

I think the worst part about S3 was that it was the last one. I played the best guy there for the third mission. He didn't need help for that one. It would have been much better if it was early on so that people were not necessarily matched by any criteria yet.

daedalus wrote:I think the worst part about S3 was that it was the last one. I played the best guy there for the third mission. He didn't need help for that one. It would have been much better if it was early on so that people were not necessarily matched by any criteria yet.

I would almost argue the opposite. It would be lame to be a good player with a high KP list and get massacred by a new player because he had 1 guy left on the table in the first game. At least getting spanked by a good player isn't as bad.

I can't use the mission to excuse my S3 performance. He had 42, I had 49.

Modest of you sir.

I am not sure I agree about that 42 to 49, that's a diff of 7 right? Wasn't that a massacre condition for S3? A diff of 7 kp?

Assuming equal performance doesn't that mean you were handicapped by enough KP to make a massacre with comparable performances and luck?

I'd say that's a pretty big diff.

If GW US is changing the scenarios around this much, in particular the victory conditions, isn't that basically their way of saying the game developers don't know what they're doing? If Mech IG is the best army build evah, then doesn't that mean the dev team really messed up?

Having some variety is good. On the flip side, the main rulebook is based on three scenarios and deployments, and has (hopefully) balanced the game, including future codexes, according to them.

Yes, nine missions is kinda boring. OTOH, you're playing three of them. And they could combine scenarios to some degree. Primary objective, control more objectives. Secondary, get more KPs. Tertiary, control 3 more objectives than opponent. etc.

Augustus wrote:

Monster Rain wrote:...I had somewhere around 3 times the KPs of my Round 3 opponent. I got a Major Victory with the Vulkan/Mech list that I made long before the Scenarios were posted. I'll just let that stand for itself.

Well done. That S3 game must have been quite the match.

Just know I'm trying to build a point about the irony of the missions and the hardboy, not criticize you.

Oh sure, man. Am I coming off angry? I do hope not...

I'm just respectfully disagreeing and offering my counterpoints. No trouble!

Augustus wrote:Modest of you sir.

I am not sure I agree about that 42 to 49, that's a diff of 7 right? Wasn't that a massacre condition for S3? A diff of 7 kp?

Assuming equal performance doesn't that mean you were handicapped by enough KP to make a massacre with comparable performances and luck?

I'd say that's a pretty big diff.

I completely agree. When the difference in a massacre is less than 25% of your army, and the max possible between the two of your is that same amount, that's still a huge handicap. Look at it this way: In order to massacre scenario 1, you had to have at least 4 more objectives than your opponent. Look at how hard that is. I'm not sure we had any Massacres that weren't a tabling for scenario 1. I was close, but just out of range when the time came. Now, look at the KP mission. That's two Rhinos and a scout squad.

dietrich wrote:If GW US is changing the scenarios around this much, in particular the victory conditions, isn't that basically their way of saying the game developers don't know what they're doing? If Mech IG is the best army build evah, then doesn't that mean the dev team really messed up?

Maybe, but that's also assuming that the dev team sits around and considers every single build from every single angle. Now, compare their manpower to the rest of the 40K fanbase. Someone is going to find something better, more often than not, I'd wager. It wasn't a reaction to the IG codex in general, I would say, rather what players have insisted on bringing out of it. I'm not sure the dev team can be blamed for that. Perhaps they don't look at every codex through the eyes of a WAAC player. Perhaps they should. So, if you're intent on blaming someone, there's plenty of places to point your fingers, including tournament structure, GW writers, fellow gamers, etc., etc.

Augustus wrote:Modest of you sir.

I am not sure I agree about that 42 to 49, that's a diff of 7 right? Wasn't that a massacre condition for S3? A diff of 7 kp?

Assuming equal performance doesn't that mean you were handicapped by enough KP to make a massacre with comparable performances and luck?

I'd say that's a pretty big diff.

It's about 20%, so yeah it's a big difference, but something that is very doable. Less difficult than a 'normal' kp mission with my 25 KP sisters vs a 15 kp Marine list.


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daedalus wrote:
I completely agree. When the difference in a massacre is less than 25% of your army, and the max possible between the two of your is that same amount, that's still a huge handicap. Look at it this way: In order to massacre scenario 1, you had to have at least 4 more objectives than your opponent. Look at how hard that is. I'm not sure we had any Massacres that weren't a tabling for scenario 1. I was close, but just out of range when the time came. Now, look at the KP mission. That's two Rhinos and a scout squad.

Fair enough, it was just a 3 unit difference to make a massacre in S3, but what was the KP levels for Massacre/Win/etc on a 'Normal KP' from last year?

As for Scenario 1, we had 2 or 3 Massacres without Tabling at our location. I handily had 4 objectives at the end of mine.

Augustus wrote:Just know I'm trying to build a point about the irony of the missions and the hardboy, not criticize you.

What is a hard army? Isn't it one that wins across all missions? Well, here are some missions: if your army is hard, you'll win. Otherwise, it's not a hard army.

*shrug*

Now, if your complaint is "these missions reward different builds than the ones in the main rulebook," then simply say that. No reason to try and construct a different point.

dietrich wrote:If GW US is changing the scenarios around this much, in particular the victory conditions, isn't that basically their way of saying the game developers don't know what they're doing? If Mech IG is the best army build evah, then doesn't that mean the dev team really messed up?

I don't think the US Trade Sales department is trying to pass judgment on the game developers. I think it was simply the two things that every tournament organizer must consider: 1) "How do I get separation between players, such that I can identify the top three, when we're only playing 3 games?"; and 2) "Are people bored with the out-of-the-book missions?"

Janthkin wrote:I don't think the US Trade Sales department is trying to pass judgment on the game developers. I think it was simply the two things that every tournament organizer must consider: 1) "How do I get separation between players, such that I can identify the top three, when we're only playing 3 games?"; and 2) "Are people bored with the out-of-the-book missions?"

This.

Even if they screwed it up, I doubt there was a nefarious 'screw mech' plan. I think the intention that Janthkin outlines was there, but the execution may have been flawed.

Or people may just be mad because they got owned on S3.

Janthkin wrote:I don't think the US Trade Sales department is trying to pass judgment on the game developers. I think it was simply the two things that every tournament organizer must consider: 1) "How do I get separation between players, such that I can identify the top three, when we're only playing 3 games?"; and 2) "Are people bored with the out-of-the-book missions?"

I don't know if it was an attempt to pass judgement, but clearly the US Team thought, "hey, mech and fast stuff are too good." If it was a revision to KP scoring based on FOC, then it would hit everyone more or less the same. But, it was clearly designed to hit mech (except for walkers) and other fast-movers where it hurts. If point costs were properly balanced, then the game takes care of itself.

And, honestly, I think GW's dev team does a mediocre job. It could be worse, but there's stronger game systems out there. They don't play test the extreme army builds, they playtest battlebox forces. And they should have realized that people would tire of basically 9 scenarios and developed more. And not Battlemissions (which, I do like, but doesn't attempt to be balanced anymore than APOC or planetstrike), actual balanced tournament ready missions.

Please note his other implicit point- there is no or very little reason to suspect the US Trade Sales team has any motive to criticize or counteract the actions of the Development Studio back in the UK. The more likely explanation for S3 is just to encourage people to buy some new stuff to tweak their army to make it better-suited to that mission. Ard Boys is about selling product, after all.

I agree that it seems a bit odd that they haven’t provided more tournament missions, but if you’ve been playing at least a few years, it makes more sense.

Tournament missions aren’t actually all that hard to design. In 3rd ed and 4th ed it was standard and expected for a tournament to use a variety of missions, only a fraction of which were the book missions. I think in 01 or 02 there were something like a dozen Rogue Trader Tournament missions, which included three or four from the main rulebook. This has historically been a part of the charm and draw of a tournament- that you’re playing something new and different without having to come up with it yourself.

What is literally impossible to do is design a tournament mission which no one complains about. If you’re conservative and careful in your design, you can make good ones pretty easily, but that does limit how interesting you can make them. And you will NEVER come up with one which will fail to draw fire if posted on the internet.

Adepticon has, imho, done a good job of balancing new tournie missions. Sure, any mission can draw flak, and the ones in the rulebook do too. But, there's some that are a low smolder, and some that are a forestfire.

The guys that do Origins 40k posted a mission. Basically the opposite quarter deployment, and you're trying to get a package off the enemy deployment zone. But, since models carry the package, you can start it in a vehicle. Or, if you're Eldar, a fast skimmer with star engines, and get it off the board on Turn 1 without a shot being fired at you. That's not well balanced, and adding a mission later that punishes eldar vehicles doesn't make up for it.

dietrich wrote:...not Battlemissions (which, I do like, but doesn't attempt to be balanced anymore than APOC or planetstrike), actual balanced tournament ready missions.

I played the chaos mission neverending battle(?) I forget the name, the chaos mission where it's KP with (dead) infantry units coming back on the board.

I think it was a lot more balanced than 3xKP for the fast.

Why not use the missions book for event scenarios? I think that makes a lot of sense, and even encourages people to buy that book at the venues that host the events...


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Mannahnin wrote:What is literally impossible to do is design a tournament mission which no one complains about.

Truer words were never spoken, that's also totally hilarious!

Ha ha ha, very sig -able as well.

I love Battle Missions and think it was the best $25 on 40k I've spent in a long time, but it is definitely not balanced.

My friend and I played the defend the center of the board mission. He was Codex marines; I was SW. He got defender. Guess how that went.

Augustus wrote:

Danny Internets wrote:The problem is that it made people question the basic army structure by changing the fundamental victory conditions of the game. It's kind of like changing the rules of baseball to make it so you can only score via homeruns a week before the World Series and then saying "Well, we gave you plenty of notice to rebuild your team." I wouldn't have minded it as much if it didn't create auto-loss scenarios, such as horde Orks versus mech IG or DE.

Dannhy Internets hit on a similar point in his thread as well. While this might be a good concept and I see where you are going...

Monster Rain wrote:Actually, I think it's a better test of a player's skill to mess with the Status Quo of list building. It separates the tacticians from the people that get their "win button" armies off of the internet.

What skill is there really in playing a 3:1 handicap S3 KP game?

What you need to bear in mind is that ‘ard Boyz is not the World Series. It’s one of many events, and is the direct descendent of GW’s old Gladiator tournaments. The Gladiator tournaments were no-sports, no-painting, no-whining, and also specifically advertised as having difficult and unbalanced scenarios. There were often ones that screwed armies. The idea was that when you hit a mission that screwed yours, you fought uphill, and if you really were THAT much of a badass, you’d find a way to win anyway.

By comparison with the old GW Gladiators, the Adepticon Gladiator and the Ard Boys are exemplars of balance and design restraint.

Bear in mind also that Ard Boyz has always also been a Trade Sales promotion, designed to get people to buy more stuff. 2500pts, no painting required, no comp, but WYSIWYG mandatory?

That is GW saying directly: “Give us money to buy the big, bad, nasty army you can’t normally play at your store. You don’t need to worry about painting it or about what your friends would think if you fielded this army at your normal weekly gaming night.”

Scenario 3 really isn’t Trade Sales saying “The UK Studio unbalanced the game, we should re-balance it! That’s the ticket!” It’s them saying “Look at all the mech armies out there. Let’s give people an incentive to buy some more infantry.”



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Augustus wrote:Automatically Appended Next Post:

Mannahnin wrote:What is literally impossible to do is design a tournament mission which no one complains about.

Truer words were never spoken, that's also totally hilarious!

Ha ha ha, very sig -able as well.

Thank you, sir. You are a scholar and a gentleman.

Centurian99 wrote:

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.

Well, player skill and practice play a part in a good army. No matter how good the list, if you dont know its ins and outs before bellying up to the table, your probably not going to do as well as someone with has a lesser list on paper, but is extremely polished with that list.

Mannahnin wrote:
By comparison with the old GW Gladiators, the Adepticon Gladiator and the Ard Boys are exemplars of balance and design restraint.

I remember the overnight Gladiator I went to... The missions were crazy and you got rerolls for chugging 'beverages'. Started late, ended sometime in the morning. You had to fight through sleep, buzz and crazy arse missions to be 'ard.

I would love to see the bitching now for 'You get free rerolls just for chugging drinks! But I have a low tolerance. That completely changes the dynamics of the game. waaah. '

Of course that would just put Dash further ahead since he'll drink even without rerolls.

While I'm still not thrilled with how Mission 3 was constructed, the most interesting thing about it's structure seems to be how easy it was to score a "Massacre" victory in any mech-on-mech match up. (And how hard such a result must have been for a horde-on-horde matchup.) Personally, my Round 3 massacre put me within 2 Battle Points of third place, which is honestly a ridiculous outcome given how disappointing my performance was in Rounds 1 and 2.

Good observation. I had about the worst possible matchup in R3, and I was fighting my hardest just to avoid the massacre.

pretre wrote:The missions were crazy and you got rerolls for chugging 'beverages'.

Hmm... Given how defensive GW is about 40k being a "beer and pretzel war game" this actually makes a certain amount of sense. Perhaps this is what people mean when they talk about playing based on the designer's intent.

Augustus wrote:What skill is there really in playing a 3:1 handicap S3 KP game?

The skill and experience to recognizing that S1 & 2 favored mech.

The skill of realizing that you'll likely face a similar high kp army if you did well in those first two scenarios.

The skill of being at a 3:1 disadvantage and still winning because you tabled your opponent and got the massacre.

Valhallan42nd wrote:

Augustus wrote:What skill is there really in playing a 3:1 handicap S3 KP game?

The skill and experience to recognizing that S1 & 2 favored mech.

The skill of realizing that you'll likely face a similar high kp army if you did well in those first two scenarios.

The skill of being at a 3:1 disadvantage and still winning because you tabled your opponent and got the massacre.

Following the flow of your logic, S3 would be two 'similar high kp armies' facing off, in which case there's no 3:1 disadvantage. Two 40 KP lists fighting over a 7 KP spread would be like two 18 KP lists fighting over a 3 KP spread. It's just too small. This was the part of S3 that I really took issue with, not so much the attempt to 'comp score' the scenario.

Mannahnin wrote:Please note his other implicit point- there is no or very little reason to suspect the US Trade Sales team has any motive to criticize or counteract the actions of the Development Studio back in the UK. The more likely explanation for S3 is just to encourage people to buy some new stuff to tweak their army to make it better-suited to that mission. Ard Boys is about selling product, after all.

If this was the purpose then they would have released the missions more than a week prior to the tournament. A week is not adequate time to obtain, assemble, and properly convert any significant amount of new models for the vast majority of people. This was just comp scoring built into the missions, plain and simple. They have done this in the past, but never so flagrantly.

Valhallan42nd wrote:

Augustus wrote:What skill is there really in playing a 3:1 handicap S3 KP game?

The skill of being at a 3:1 disadvantage and still winning because you tabled your opponent and got the massacre.

Exactly. If you can be this hamstrung going into a match and win you definitely deserve to move on to the Semi-Finals.

I have participated in many competitive events in the past, and this point of view is one that, in my experience, is unique to 40k.

In wrestling, you don't pit a 140 pounder against a 172 pounder and say 'if he wins, he deserves to go to semis'.

Soccer fields aren't built on a 25 degree incline.

Lance Armstrong doesn't ride a Huffy just because he's 'just a better competitor'.

The reason that none of these things happen is because it's quite obvious that they penalize a competitor and skew the results. The playing field is intentionally made as level as possible so that the competition is as pure as possible. If somebody 'wins' because they have 3x the opportunity as the other guy, how is that not just sanctioned discrimination?

sourclams wrote: Two 40 KP lists fighting over a 7 KP spread would be like two 18 KP lists fighting over a 3 KP spread. It's just too small. This was the part of S3 that I really took issue with, not so much the attempt to 'comp score' the scenario.

Not sarcasm, just genuine interest in a hypothetical answer: What would you have preferred as a third scenario? What would you like to see for the semi's in terms of scenarios?

I would have liked to see a 2 objectives mission with Kill Points for the bonus points, personally. Two objectives to massacre is a hugely challenging scenario for R3 when skill matchups should be as equal as possible.

Having such a narrow margin of error makes for a much more universally challenging scenario that can be minimally 'metagamed' by list design.

sourclams wrote:I have participated in many competitive events in the past, and this point of view is one that, in my experience, is unique to 40k.

In wrestling, you don't pit a 140 pounder against a 172 pounder and say 'if he wins, he deserves to go to semis'.

Soccer fields aren't built on a 25 degree incline.

Lance Armstrong doesn't ride a Huffy just because he's 'just a better competitor'.

The reason that none of these things happen is because it's quite obvious that they penalize a competitor and skew the results. The playing field is intentionally made as level as possible so that the competition is as pure as possible. If somebody 'wins' because they have 3x the opportunity as the other guy, how is that not just sanctioned discrimination?

Yes that's true. That's because those are actual, physical competitions that in no way rely on dice. I think you're taking this analogy a bit too far.

Lance Armstrong also doesn't have to cross his fingers for a dice roll that decides who gets to start pedaling first!

* Edit *

Not worth getting into a discussion over KP's and VP's.

sourclams wrote:I have participated in many competitive events in the past, and this point of view is one that, in my experience, is unique to 40k.

In wrestling, you don't pit a 140 pounder against a 172 pounder and say 'if he wins, he deserves to go to semis'.

Soccer fields aren't built on a 25 degree incline.

Lance Armstrong doesn't ride a Huffy just because he's 'just a better competitor'.

The reason that none of these things happen is because it's quite obvious that they penalize a competitor and skew the results. The playing field is intentionally made as level as possible so that the competition is as pure as possible. If somebody 'wins' because they have 3x the opportunity as the other guy, how is that not just sanctioned discrimination?

As previously noted, your confusion stems from the fact that you’re looking for steak in the vegetarian restaurant.

‘Ard Boys is not, and has never been, designed to support a “pure” (ie: rigorously balanced and universally representative) competitive play environment. The facts that it is played at an unusual points size, with unusual (deliberately difficult or unbalanced) missions, make that clear.

This year (so far) and last year have shown a trend toward a more balanced set of missions overall, but that doesn’t mean that trend is deliberate or going to continue indefinitely.

FYI, remember that football games are played with the teams switching ends for half the game to make it so that if one side/direction of play is more difficult, that both teams suffer it as equally as possible. This is analogous to a tournament format in which all the major army “types” are each screwed in a mission, in that each player has their share of “running up hill” or “riding a Huffy”.



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Danny Internets wrote:

Mannahnin wrote:Please note his other implicit point- there is no or very little reason to suspect the US Trade Sales team has any motive to criticize or counteract the actions of the Development Studio back in the UK. The more likely explanation for S3 is just to encourage people to buy some new stuff to tweak their army to make it better-suited to that mission. Ard Boys is about selling product, after all.

If this was the purpose then they would have released the missions more than a week prior to the tournament. A week is not adequate time to obtain, assemble, and properly convert any significant amount of new models for the vast majority of people.

I disagree. It’s a short time to build a whole new army, but it’s easily adequate time to buy and assemble a couple of new units if you want to tweak your army and cut down on the number of 3KP vehicles in it.

This was just comp scoring built into the missions, plain and simple. They have done this in the past, but never so flagrantly.

I disagree entirely. Please feel free to present examples of other ‘Ard Boyz scenarios which you think represent attempts at Comp, though.

I disagree entirely. Please feel free to present examples of other ‘Ard Boyz scenarios which you think represent attempts at Comp, though.

I guess you didn't play last year. The first round featured a kill points mission that heavily emphasized taking troops as they were worth only 1 point each and all other FoC units were worth 2. HQs were worth a whopping 5 each.

Two years ago there were not one but two missions in the preliminaries that featured Dawn of War deployment and allowed you to deploy ALL Troop units rather than just 2.

If you don't think these scenarios heavily stack the deck in favor of Troop-heavy armies then I'm not sure we're playing the same game.

I came 9th in the final last year. I went eight wins and a draw.

The missions you’re talking about do skew the normal army design/play parameters, but I maintain that their intent is clearly just to give unusual challenges and encourage people to buy more stuff. That Comp has nothing whatsoever to do with it. It seems to me that you’re judging them inaccurately based on your existing crusade against Comp, even though that’s boxing with shadows in this case.

And two years ago they used the "modified" kill points, but in those missions you received no kill points for transports.

I took mech sister's to the one two years ago, and the one last weekend. I even tried modifying it a bit and dropped out about 10kp from the list so that it would be in the mid 50's instead of the 60's. So lets think about this two years ago I placed 5th at finals, this year didn't even place in the first round. You can say all you want about skill but when your 55kp army faces a 20kp army (with decent ranged ability), and your opponent has a modicum of skill you aren't going to massacre and you aren't going to table them.

I guess it was just convenient that you forgot about that scenario then, at least for the purposes of our discussion. In case you have also forgotten about the release of the scenarios last year, it was done many weeks prior to the first round. Testing players by forcing adaptation to unusual challenges would be conceivable if they didn't provide the scenarios with ample prior notice.

Forgot about what scenario?

What does the release timeframe of the missions tell us? IMO they probably were just less organized this year, and would have had the missions out sooner if they could.

Danny Internets wrote:I guess it was just convenient that you forgot about that scenario then, at least for the purposes of our discussion. In case you have also forgotten about the release of the scenarios last year, it was done many weeks prior to the first round. Testing players by forcing adaptation to unusual challenges would be conceivable if they didn't provide the scenarios with ample prior notice.

Not sure if this was pointed at me or not. So I'll respond. I just didn't have time in a week to put together model's or switch model's out or in the case of sister's completely switch to a new army to minimize the kp aspect (too much rl stuff going on). I went to ardboyz just to have fun figuring that my mech sister's wouldn't do well in either of the last two missions, at least not well enough to earn a slot at the next round, unless of course I got good matchup's. VP game in corners against a mech ig list for round 2 and a foot eldar list in round 3 sealed it. But this is just like any other tournament where you can get matchups that just hose you. I think it was the level of hose for this one. Even without the additional kp he would have had me almost 2 to 1 which gives him the inherent kp advantage because of me taking mech.

Forgot about what scenario?

The scenario from the preliminaries last year that I already described to support my point. Feel free to read my post again if needed.

Regarding the release of the missions, writing these things isn't exactly rocket science. What on earth would have prevented them from releasing them sooner? Creating a PDF takes all of 5 minutes. Even the artwork is recycled.

Edit: My comment was directed at Mannahnin, I should have specified.

The HQs one? How hard is it to swap out an HQ? I fielded two HQs and won that one. But again, that mission clearly supports spending money. A box or two of additional troops is more expensive than an HQ model. Just like having dedicated transports worth 0 the year before clearly encouraged buying a couple more of them.

As for what prevents them from releasing them sooner, are you joking? What prevents GW from making a more than half-hearted attempt at FAQs? Simply their choice of priorities, the staff they assign to it, and how long it takes said staff to get around to it. It's not hard to make good FAQs, either. Remember that the scenarios for AB are written by the Trade Sales guys, who presumably take this on as a once a year project on top of their regular duties. Writing the scenarios probably just slid toward the back of the pile this year.

OK Mannahnin I shall take up this gauntlet then!

Mannahnin wrote:

sourclams wrote:...somebody 'wins' because they have 3x the opportunity as the other guy, how is that not just sanctioned discrimination?

As previously noted, your confusion stems from the fact that you’re looking for steak in the vegetarian restaurant.

‘Ard Boys is not, and has never been, designed to support a “pure” (ie: rigorously balanced and universally representative) competitive play environment. The facts that it is played at an unusual points size, with unusual (deliberately difficult or unbalanced) missions, make that clear.

Really? Has never been designed to support a pure competitive play environment? Well, look at this quote strait from the GW website:

http://www.games-workshop.com/gws/content/article.jsp?aId=500011a

GamesWorkshop wrote:'Ard Boyz Tournaments are a three-part, competitive series of events hosted by Independant Retailers across North America. For the last two years we've hosted 'Ard Boyz Tournaments for both Warhammer 40K and for Warhammer Fantasy. We plan to add War of The Ring to the mix starting in 2010 to make an 'Ard Boyz event for all three of our core systems!

Unlike the traditional tournament format you may be familiar with, that takes into consideration your painting and sportsmanship, the 'Ard Boyz Tournaments focus on one thing and one thing only; how well you play the game! These tournaments are the place to field that nasty list you felt guilty about playing, or that massive horde army you couldn't hope to paint it in time.

To be more explicit:

GamesWorkshop wrote:'Ard Boyz Tournaments are a three-part, competitive series of events....

GamesWorkshop wrote:...'Ard Boyz Tournaments focus on one thing and one thing only; how well you play the game!....

They are advertised by GW as exactly pure competitive play environments, by games workshops own words for tourneys from the last 2 years, regardless of what may have been run before that.

Slanted mission as hidden comp doesn't really foster that, in fact custom missions don't line up with that either. It ought to be simply the book missions, every year, so the emphasis is how the game is played, not how lucky you got with missions, matchups or day of adaptation to scenario, that's not "the game" it's last minute changes added in.

Your ball.




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Danny Internets wrote:

...present examples of other ‘Ard Boyz scenarios which you think represent attempts at Comp, though.

...kill points mission that heavily emphasized taking troops as they were worth only 1 point each and all other FoC units were worth 2. HQs were worth a whopping 5 each...

Oh Snap!

Way to go Danny Internets!

Let's try and stay focused, shall we? We are talking about a set of tournament missions, not an FAQ. I agree that the FAQ release schedule is horrible, but a lot more thought goes into the various complex arguments put forth regarding tricky rules situations than goes into developing 3 missions, only one of which deviates significantly from the standard rules (past or present).

While I would never be foolish enough to vouch for GW's general corporate competency, I think they are capable enough of finding someone to take 20 minutes out of their day to whip up a few missions. The alternative, that such a simple task was held up for weeks, seems far less realistic to me.

Augustus:

Those are some solid arguments.

I think it’s a good idea to link our sources, too. In the Ard Boyz rules this year I also find the statement

“‘Ard Boyz tournaments are all about commanding large armies and doing your best to blast your opponent to bits.”

http://www.games-workshop.com/MEDIA_CustomProductCatalog/m1080430a_40K_Ard_Boyz_2010_Rules.pdf

Which seems to draw a slightly different picture, though I will concede that the statements you’ve quoted do indicate that they seem to be shifting the focus/intent of the event a bit.

I still maintain that selling more models is the primary goal, however, and that the packet’s not going to say that. And I maintain that the last two years’ scenarios make more sense when viewed in that light than by trying to build a case that the Trade Sales department is trying to enact some kind of de facto Comp.

Danny:

False dichotomy. There are more possible options than just “a simple task was held up for weeks” or “the lists were deliberately sprung on people late to enforce de facto Comp.” Committee decision making can also slow things. Or simple incompetence. Or they might just have another motive for waiting.

One thing I did notice in reviewing the rules packet again is that it does say that the missions will be released about a week before the event. So it does seem that the late revelation was deliberate. One thing I remember about Ard Boyz and Gladiators prior to 2009 (or was it 2008?) was that the missions were always supposed to be a surprise. It was supposed to test your adaptability. They finally started releasing them beforehand, IIRC, because they were leaked the year before, and some people got an unfair advantage by seeing them early because their store owner friend spilled the beans.

Anyway, there can certainly be other motives for waiting. One might be: to see if they, or their independent retailers, can track a sales bump specifically linked to the missions’ release.

God forbid anyone change the status quo....

As I see it, as poorly concieved as the third mission was (a rule mechanic making fast stuff less reliable would be preferable to just KP alteration), they did a good job of spreading the love out in the missions.

Mission one, mandating 5 objectives instead of just rolling them, pretty much favored mechanized troop wagon armies, as they can move around and secure objectives more easily than anyone else. Foot sloggers with low numbers of troop units, not so much.

Mission two, mech and foot are on equal footing. Vehicles suddenly giving half points for immobilization is balanced by the fact that the troops now do the same and generally cost more. Spearhead again put more of an emphasis on mobility.

Mission Three, well if you were mechanized going up against non mech, you probably still had a pretty sound advantage, but if you were the person who brought jump packs or bikes you were royally boned. Foot Sloggers who could bring good firepower had a solid advantage in this mission.

So, Mech was great in one mission, average in another, and poor in a third. Foot Slog, the same. If anything, the army types that really got a boost were the reserve hammer armies and the tiny model count elite armies that had a tough time of it. I mean, guard still won a ton, at least as much as Nids and Orks combined.

Again, the idea behind making missions good and bad for general archtypes is sound, but the execution here left much to be desired....

Mannahnin wrote:The HQs one? How hard is it to swap out an HQ? I fielded two HQs and won that one.

You did?

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

I have to ask the people that are complaining about these missions something...

Have you played in tournaments other than 'Ard Boyz? Particularly RTT tourneys? They have extremely wacky missions, where everything can Deep Strike once per turn or Fast Attack is the only thing that can start on the table and all kinds of insanity. Crazy missions are part of tournaments because they force you to think outside of the box and figure out who the good players actually are.

Augustus wrote:Slanted mission as hidden comp doesn't really foster that, in fact custom missions don't line up with that either. It ought to be simply the book missions, every year, so the emphasis is how the game is played, not how lucky you got with missions, matchups or day of adaptation to scenario, that's not "the game" it's last minute changes added in.

How are changes to scenarios that require good generalship not testing how well you play the game?

...when they handicap one side with KP.

...when they introduce new victory conditions no one has ever seen before.

Basically anything that changes the basic conditions of the game in the original book.

Imagine if they started scoring for style and technique in the triathlon like they do for figure skating at the Olympics next time, or had a timed chess tournament where the queen moved 3 squares max on the black side and like a night on the white side. That's what tripple KP conditions are.

Augustus wrote:...when they handicap one side with KP.

And if it had been casually dropped in on the day, then you would have a leg to stand on, because you didn't have a chance to make an army list to cater for that eventuality.

But you did have the chance.

Which means that better generals are going to have found ways to win, while not as good generals aren't, which means that it was a legitimate test of generalship.

Augustus wrote:...when they introduce new victory conditions no one has ever seen before.

See above.

Augustus wrote:Basically anything that changes the basic conditions of the game in the original book.

See above. The ability to think through a new scenario and work out how best to accomplish the mission is the sign of... wait for it... good generalship.

Augustus wrote:Imagine if they started scoring for style and technique in the triathlon like they do for figure skating at the Olympics next time, or had a timed chess tournament where the queen moved 3 squares max on the black side and like a night on the white side. That's what tripple KP conditions are.

Except that both players have the opportunity to take white. Or black. Nobody dropped a bombshell on you the day of saying that transports are suddenly 3kp. It was known weeks in advance.

WARBOSS TZOO wrote:

Augustus wrote:Slanted mission as hidden comp doesn't really foster that, in fact custom missions don't line up with that either. It ought to be simply the book missions, every year, so the emphasis is how the game is played, not how lucky you got with missions, matchups or day of adaptation to scenario, that's not "the game" it's last minute changes added in.

How are changes to scenarios that require good generalship not testing how well you play the game?

Please explain how it takes good generalship for an Ork horde with 16 kill points to beat a mechanized list with 58 kill points. I'm dying to hear this one.

Except that both players have the opportunity to take white. Or black. Nobody dropped a bombshell on you the day of saying that transports are suddenly 3kp. It was known weeks in advance.

Actually it was known exactly a week in advance, and only if you were watching the internet like a hawk to catch it the second it was released. A week, and more likely less, is not exactly ample time to go out and reconfigure your whole army, unless you're unemployed and have tons of cash to waste.

Augustus wrote:
... or had a timed chess tournament where the queen moved 3 squares max on the black side and like a night on the white side. That's what tripple KP conditions are.

You know, Bobby Fisher came up with a game called Chess960 or Fisher Random Chess, because he felt that traditional chess was too focused on memorizing openings, and didn't reward creative play and original thought enough. There are a decent number of fans of the game.

So this here tournament changed some mission structures to make a more interesting game. They announced this ahead of time. Anyone who attended knew what they were getting into, and despite Danny's assertion to the contrary, a week is more than enough time for anyone to reconfigure, or even make a completely new army if they didn't like how their army would have fared in the tournament. (As proof of this statement, I offer the fact that I not only built, but painted, to award-winning standards, 5500 points of daemons in a week last year. Simply assembling models takes far less effort)

So, you had three options. A) go with your traditional army, knowing what was coming. B) change armies, knowing what was coming, or C) stay home.

People had the opportunity to make educated decisions about which option they would take. Yes, they weren't "by the book" missions, but they made for a more balanced tournament overall. Really, is that a bad thing?

Anyone who attended knew what they were getting into, and despite Danny's assertion to the contrary, a week is more than enough time for anyone to reconfigure, or even make a completely new army if they didn't like how their army would have fared in the tournament. (As proof of this statement, I offer the fact that I not only built, but painted, to award-winning standards, 5500 points of daemons in a week last year. Simply assembling models takes far less effort)

I once wrote a 26 page research paper with over 100 references in 48 hours for a masters level neuroscience course. Does that mean 48 hours is a reasonable amount of time for people to be expected to complete that amount of work? Your argument is ridiculous.

Danny Internets wrote:

WARBOSS TZOO wrote:

Augustus wrote:Slanted mission as hidden comp doesn't really foster that, in fact custom missions don't line up with that either. It ought to be simply the book missions, every year, so the emphasis is how the game is played, not how lucky you got with missions, matchups or day of adaptation to scenario, that's not "the game" it's last minute changes added in.

How are changes to scenarios that require good generalship not testing how well you play the game?

Please explain how it takes good generalship for an Ork horde with 16 kill points to beat a mechanized list with 58 kill points. I'm dying to hear this one.

The Ork horde has to get there first, and it's entirely possible for the Ork horde to be tabled.

Except that both players have the opportunity to take white. Or black. Nobody dropped a bombshell on you the day of saying that transports are suddenly 3kp. It was known weeks in advance.

Actually it was known exactly a week in advance, and only if you were watching the internet like a hawk to catch it the second it was released. A week, and more likely less, is not exactly ample time to go out and reconfigure your whole army, unless you're unemployed and have tons of cash to waste.

If you don't have the cash to revamp your army, it doesn't matter how long in advance you get the notice, you can't revamp it.

My bad on the timeline though. I haven't been sleeping much lately.

The Ork horde has to get there first, and it's entirely possible for the Ork horde to be tabled.

Good players virtually never get tabled because it's exceedingly easy to hide a model or two. I've been playing for over 10 years and I've never had every model wiped off the table. Furthermore, there's no reason for the Ork player to commit 100% of his forces in this situation. Horde armies and mech armies are generally very large in terms of space--getting to the other army is never a problem with 5000 points of models on a standard 4'x6' table over the course of 6 turns.

Lastly, if a player can win simply by not getting tabled how is that a test of their skill?

Danny Internets wrote:

The Ork horde has to get there first, and it's entirely possible for the Ork horde to be tabled.

Good players virtually never get tabled because it's exceedingly easy to hide a model or two. I've been playing for over 10 years and I've never had every model wiped off the table. Furthermore, there's no reason for the Ork player to commit 100% of his forces in this situation. Horde armies and mech armies are generally very large in terms of space--getting to the other army is never a problem with 5000 points of models on a standard 4'x6' table over the course of 6 turns.

Lastly, if a player can win simply by not getting tabled how is that a test of their skill?

If your opponent has a bad list for a scenario while you have a good list, there isn't much skill involved on the table, true.

Does that mean that there was no skill involved?

The ork player used skill in building his army, as did the mech player. If the ork army was the better choice, then the ork player was more skillful. If the mech army was the better choice, then the mech player was more skillful.

And besides all this, the Ork player had to get past other armies to be in a position to screw you over in the first place. The entire tournament is a test of skill. There's always going to be an archetype that has an advantage, simply because of the fact that archetypes exist in the metagame. If you played Mech you made a concious choice to take heavy risk in the third scenario in order to have a good army in the first and second.

I won the Local Ard Boyz with an Ork Horde army. The third scenario against a IG, but not a Leaf blower( not that he didnt have considerable template love) but it was IG reserve love army. so everything was off board.

He had bad luck on reserve rolls, and i had luck.

his vehicles were my target, but frankly i think if he had just started on the board with his templates hammering me from turn 1 it would have been a much different game.

good Mech players didnt lose much sleep about S3, mostly because they knew they had the armies to table horde, or would be playing other mech players in that scenario.

and the results we are seeing with IG armies are the leading army coming out of the prelims, shows that they were not hurt that bad.

if your army design was intended to table your opponents, like leaf blower, then in s3, you just go out and play your army like you intended to and you did fine. if as with most of these games you ended up playing for first place against another mech you just had to ensure you killed more. and if you had the rarer luck of facing a horde army like mine then just beat it like you would in a regular game.

Danny Internets wrote:Your argument is ridiculous.

You're ridiculous. It doesn't matter what the topic, you're always crying about something. My argument, which you seem to have missed entirely in your quest to condescend towards everyone else, is not that people should have rebuilt their armies, but, rather, that doing so was entirely possible, if that was an avenue they wanted to pursue. My argument is that people who went to 'ard boyz knew what they were getting into, and made their decision fully aware of what the missions were to be. No one was forced to attend, and no one who attended was forced to play with a mech army that would auto-lose mission 3.

Much like in the threads about GWs prices, people are unwilling to take the steps necessary to show their displeasure with the choices presented to them. People would rather go to 'ard boyz and complain about the missions that were announced well ahead of time, than stay home and show GW that this is not what they want.

If your opponent has a bad list for a scenario while you have a good list, there isn't much skill involved on the table, true.

Does that mean that there was no skill involved?

The ork player used skill in building his army, as did the mech player. If the ork army was the better choice, then the ork player was more skillful. If the mech army was the better choice, then the mech player was more skillful.

Let's take your argument to the extreme. Say the scenario was standard annihilation, however Dark Eldar armies automatically get a 15 point kill point bonus.

Now let's hypothetically pit a Dark Eldar army versus a Tau army. The Dark Eldar army wins by a landslide, a whopping 10 points. According to your argument, the Dark Eldar player displayed more "skill."

Does that not sound a little silly to you? Granted, the example is extreme, but it's a test of your argument. If your logic is sound then it should hold up no matter what the example. Here, it seems to fall apart.

In typical scenarios, I agree that there will always be some armies that are better at missions than others. However, the third scenario is so absurdly unbalanced that it creates the potential for complete rocks-paper-scissor style 40k. Ork Horde versus mech Dark Eldar would normally be imbalanced but not impossible for the DE player to win in a standard Annihilation scenario. In 'Ard Boyz scenario 3, well, let's just say I'd like to meet the DE prodigy who can pull off a win in that situation versus an even moderately skilled opponent.


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Redbeard wrote:

Danny Internets wrote:Your argument is ridiculous.

You're ridiculous. It doesn't matter what the topic, you're always crying about something. My argument, which you seem to have missed entirely in your quest to condescend towards everyone else, is not that people should have rebuilt their armies, but, rather, that doing so was entirely possible, if that was an avenue they wanted to pursue. My argument is that people who went to 'ard boyz knew what they were getting into, and made their decision fully aware of what the missions were to be. No one was forced to attend, and no one who attended was forced to play with a mech army that would auto-lose mission 3.

Much like in the threads about GWs prices, people are unwilling to take the steps necessary to show their displeasure with the choices presented to them. People would rather go to 'ard boyz and complain about the missions that were announced well ahead of time, than stay home and show GW that this is not what they want.

Tsk tsk. Ad hominem attacks? Please address your criticisms to my argument, not my person.

Danny Internets wrote:

If your opponent has a bad list for a scenario while you have a good list, there isn't much skill involved on the table, true.

Does that mean that there was no skill involved?

The ork player used skill in building his army, as did the mech player. If the ork army was the better choice, then the ork player was more skillful. If the mech army was the better choice, then the mech player was more skillful.

Let's take your argument to the extreme. Say the scenario was standard annihilation, however Dark Eldar armies automatically get a 15 point kill point bonus.

Now let's hypothetically pit a Dark Eldar army versus a Tau army. The Dark Eldar army wins by a landslide, a whopping 10 points. According to your argument, the Dark Eldar player displayed more "skill."

Does that not sound a little silly to you? Granted, the example is extreme, but it's a test of your argument. If your logic is sound then it should hold up no matter what the example. Here, it seems to fall apart.

No, not really. The DE player displayed basic reading comprehension. The Tau player either ignored it or assumed that they could make up the difference, either of which implies bad generalship, and therefore lesser skill.

In typical scenarios, I agree that there will always be some armies that are better at missions than others. However, the third scenario is so absurdly unbalanced that it creates the potential for complete rocks-paper-scissor style 40k. Ork Horde versus mech Dark Eldar would normally be imbalanced but not impossible for the DE player to win in a standard Annihilation scenario. In 'Ard Boyz scenario 3, well, let's just say I'd like to meet the DE prodigy who can pull off a win in that situation versus an even moderately skilled opponent.

And here's what you're missing: The DE player had the option of not bring his DE around, or not trying to pull off a win, but simply trying to keep from losing. If they won big in the previous two games, then that may be all they have to do to qualify, which was the point of going to the tournament in the first place.

No, not really. The DE player displayed basic reading comprehension. The Tau player either ignored it or assumed that they could make up the difference, either of which implies bad generalship, and therefore lesser skill.

This seems to imply that simply fielding a Dark Eldar army would therefore be indicative of more skill at 40k in this situation. This is logically consistent with your argument, but it doesn't sit right with me. Perhaps it's the weighted balance between list building skill and actual gameplay skill. I feel that when the former vastly overshadows the latter, as in my example and also in scenario 3, that it fails to be much of a measure of gameplay skill at all.

So as I detailed in my first post, I'm a mech IG/mech Marines player who saw S3 and intentionally brought a low-KP Marine gunline because there were no DoW style missions and because I gave up 20 KP in S3.

In my playstyle, there was really no emphasis on maneuver or out-thinking or out-gaming my opponents. I simply lined up my models and shot theirs off of the table because my army was heavily rewarded by the scenarios.

I didn't even play S2; my opponent offered the draw, I accepted, and we took an extended lunch while I painted Warmachine minis.

According to the posters in this thread, I am some combination of:

-More skilled than my opponents
-More intelligent than my opponents
-More wealthy than my opponents

I don't know about the third one, but I sure don't think I played significantly better than anybody. I won the event before I showed up because I have the resources and proper meta-anticipation to claim a huge tactical advantage.

So thanks for all of the compliments, everybody whose opinion is I did everything perfectly correctly, but this is my third year in a row winning 'Ard Boyz at my store and I'd say it was by far the easiest.

No scenarios that screw with deployments, clear army advantages based on win conditions? If this is what competition and shaking up the status quo are all about, keep 'em coming GW-US because I like getting $60 worth of free stuff.

Danny Internets wrote:

No, not really. The DE player displayed basic reading comprehension. The Tau player either ignored it or assumed that they could make up the difference, either of which implies bad generalship, and therefore lesser skill.

This seems to imply that simply fielding a Dark Eldar army would therefore be indicative of more skill at 40k in this situation. This is logically consistent with your argument, but it doesn't sit right with me. Perhaps it's the weighted balance between list building skill and actual gameplay skill. I feel that when the former vastly overshadows the latter, as in my example and also in scenario 3, that it fails to be much of a measure of gameplay skill at all.

All in all, yes, I agree, and I would be exactly where you are if scenario 3 was all that mattered. But there were two other scenarios where DE may or may not have had a tremendous advantage (I don't know how to play DE any more than I know how to put my head through a wall). Overall, were DE utterly hosed? Or were they given just as much of a chance as anyone else to take home a qualification?


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sourclams wrote:I don't know about the third one, but I sure don't think I played significantly better than anybody. I won the event before I showed up because I have the resources and proper meta-anticipation to claim a huge tactical advantage.

Do you not think that predicting and preparing for the metagame is a huge component of generalship?

DE didn't really have any more or less of an advantage than any other army in S1-2, which were basically standard 40k.

DE always have an issue with Kill Point missions since they tend to be somewhere in the upper 20s, but most of those individual KPs are worth 3, so literally, they are a 60+ KP list at 2500 points.

sourclams wrote:DE didn't really have any more or less of an advantage than any other army in S1-2, which were basically standard 40k.

DE always have an issue with Kill Point missions since they tend to be somewhere in the upper 20s, but most of those individual KPs are worth 3, so literally, they are a 60+ KP list at 2500 points.

Isn't that exactly the case with MechIG, which doesn't seem to have had much of a problem doing well?

Well put, sourclams. I agree.

sourclams wrote:I didn't even play S2; my opponent offered the draw, I accepted, and we took an extended lunch while I painted Warmachine minis.

Seriously? You didn't even bother to play the game?

except that sourclams should have been DQed for not playing his 2nd game.

he and his opponent avoided playing each other and claimed a draw. thats not exactly cricket. and ensured that one of them would not have a loss in the round.

except that sourclams should have been DQed for not playing his 2nd game.

he and his opponent avoided playing each other and claimed a draw. thats not exactly cricket. and ensured that one of them would not have a loss in the round.

Right, so it was actually a chance for the lower seeds to catch up to the higher seeds, or even pull ahead, since Major + Massacre beats Massacre + Draw.

In both M:TG and chess, both of which far better organized and more competitive than 40k, intentionally drawing is legal and allowed.

My list was so good I won without even playing the 2nd game. What's that tell you about the scenarios?


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WARBOSS TZOO wrote:

sourclams wrote:DE didn't really have any more or less of an advantage than any other army in S1-2, which were basically standard 40k.

DE always have an issue with Kill Point missions since they tend to be somewhere in the upper 20s, but in S3 most of those individual KPs are worth 3, so literally, they are a 60+ KP list at 2500 points.

Isn't that exactly the case with MechIG, which doesn't seem to have had much of a problem doing well?

Not to the same extent. Big difference between 45 KP, which is what my mech list would have maxed out at, and 68 KPs, which is what my friend's DE army would have been had he brought it. IG also have the option to reduce KPs mid-stride with platoon blobbing, and don't have a single vehicle with less than FA AV12, which is far, far more survivable than AV10 open topped. Finally, with the Astropath, IG have the ability to manipulate their reserve rolls to front-load an all-reserve alpha strike if stuck going 2nd. DE have no such luxury.

While I agree that Scenario 3 definitely imposed composition... why not also look at it as a way of imposing some tactical thought to using your transports?

Yes, Mech is the current metagame.
Yes, Scenario 3 somewhat unfairly punished heavy use of fast units- which is the current trend and favoritism from the rules.


But all too often a lot of players will view their transports as just quick ways to get their troops into the fight and then let them get popped without much of a second thought.

Scenario 3 also punished bikers and jump troops, so it didn't completely hate on vehicles alone.

I think a better way to handle it would have been to impose additional damage penalties against vehicles rather than victory conditions.
-- because at 3KP each, fast units WERE the victory condition.

Danny Internets wrote:
Tsk tsk. Ad hominem attacks? Please address your criticisms to my argument, not my person.

You're so quick to point out fancy latin terms when it benefits you, but you're more than willing to present a strawman in place of my actual argument. If you want to babble about fallacies, I'm sure we can go on. Otherwise, try addressing your criticisms to my actual argument, and not some tangent about whether people should be expected to rework their armies.

Let me be very clear about this:

Premise 1: 'ard boyz missions were available before the event
Premise 2: people who attended 'ard boyz had the opportunity to adjust their lists prior to the event, knowing the missions
Premise 3: people had the option to stay home and boycott the event if they felt the missions were unfair
Conclusion: People who went to the 'ard boyz event went with full knowledge of what they were getting into, representing an implied acceptance of the missions.

Your statement, "I once wrote a 26 page research paper with over 100 references in 48 hours for a masters level neuroscience course. Does that mean 48 hours is a reasonable amount of time for people to be expected to complete that amount of work? Your argument is ridiculous." does not address any part of my argument, yet you call my argument ridiculous.

I can only assume you're referring to my second premise, but the fact that you can write a research paper has nothing to do with whether or not it is possible to adjust your list prior to the 'ard boyz event. I think a week is a perfectly reasonable amount of time to acquire and assemble 2500 points of models - even working a full-time job. It's certainly more than possible. Next-day shipping leaves a person 20 hours for construction if they dedicate just four hours a night to the task; that should be more than adequate. Whether the financial burden is worth the chance to win that 3rd mission is a matter of personal choice, but certainly no more so than choosing which army to build in the first place, some armies are intrinsically more expensive than others. Furthermore, that's only the extreme case, where someone feels the need to completely bail on the army they have chosen. More realistically, people should be expected to make minor tweaks with knowledge of the missions. I saw one poster's battle reports who was playing a Tau army, and had blacksun filters scattered throughout his list - wasted points in a tournament where you know there are no nightfight games. And that's a change that would not have involved changing any models.

However, even if I concede premise two (which I don't), my conclusion is still correct - and you still haven't addressed it. The fact that people can choose not to attend, after seeing the missions, does mean that by attending, they're giving their implied acceptance of the missions. Augustus has the right of it - he saw the missions, thought they were dumb, and stayed home. Good for him. If more people acted in this fashion rather than complaining on the internet, maybe GW would start to really learn what we like and dislike. But, as is, they'll see attendance figures, and guess that they got it right.

Redbeard wrote:

However, even if I concede premise two (which I don't), my conclusion is still correct - and you still haven't addressed it. The fact that people can choose not to attend, after seeing the missions, does mean that by attending, they're giving their implied acceptance of the missions. Augustus has the right of it - he saw the missions, thought they were dumb, and stayed home. Good for him. If more people acted in this fashion rather than complaining on the internet, maybe GW would start to really learn what we like and dislike. But, as is, they'll see attendance figures, and guess that they got it right.

This is silly. It's as if you were on a 7 day cruise, and the only food on the entire ship was oatmeal, then the proof that all of the passengers clearly like oatmeal is evidenced by no one starving themselves.

The only tournament GW puts on is 'Ard Boyz. Lots of people think the last mission sucked, including myself, but went anyways just because it's the only tournament that GW puts on. This doesn't mean that it's well run, or has excellent prize support, or reflects the desires of the gaming community. If there's no other alternative, then anybody who enjoys playing 40k more than not playing 40k is going to end up at the event, and if the hobby is expanding, then attendance will be higher just because of a larger player base.

The only bit of 'GW Opinion' I've seen regarding the event is that blurb published by the trade folks that they didn't realize S3 would cause such a bruh-ha-ha and maybe they should just stick to normal missions.

Redbeard, your initial argument was that a week was plenty of time to completely reconfigure and even build an entirely new army. Your support for this position was that you yourself did something similar once upon a time. I merely pointed out that a single instance of someone doing something does not mean it is reasonable to expect all people to be capable of the same. Then you got all hot and bothered and attacked me personally.

I have no problem with the tempered, watered-down argument you have just put forth. My response, having come when you took a more extreme stance, obviously doesn't address it. I'm unclear as to why you're confusing the timeline of the discussion here. I called your first position ridiculous because that's exactly what it was. Your new position is less so as a result of you having moderated it.

Yes, attending the event represents an implied acceptance of the missions, but only to the extent that it doesn't piss someone off enough not to attend. It would be incorrect to think that by attending the event an attendee thinks the mission is good. Some of us just like having the opportunity to play abnormally large games of Warhammer all weekend. That doesn't necessarily imply that we support or even like the mission. We just don't hate it enough to abandon the event entirely.

And on top of those, it's a tournament that you don't have to pay for. You lose nothing by attending except the time spent doing so.

(unless, of course, you has to spend stupid amounts of money to get to it, but still)

I'm still not seeing that s3 is, on the face of it, a tournament destroying experience or anything even close to that, but...

what would you guys have done to make a scenario that favoured footsloggers to the extent that mechs were favoured in s1?

(and sourclams, is there any chance you can give a general rundown of your list? i can guess most of it, but it would be nice to know nevertheless)

>My list was so good I won without even playing the 2nd game. What's that tell you about the scenarios?

nothing. absolutly nothing. but you avoided a loss by not playing. and this year many people were in the running with 50 points.

you only played 2 games, had more time to rest and relax during the day. you were not time stressed and bothered by having to perform during hte 2nd game.

you only played 2 games, and unlike the other players who had to play the middle game were rested and refreshed for the third game.

but then the players that actually had to play hard and earn a draw, are far more deserving than you of their placement.

Intentionally drawing is nothing new to any tournament scene. If I tried to play in any decent sized M:tG tournament and decided that I wanted to risk going x-2 instead of x-0-2 I'd be making a huge mistake that could cost me top 8 placement.

It's unfortunate that GW only puts out the scenarios about a week in advance. As noted above, that's not nearly enough time to make real changes to your list unless you've been playing a long time and/or accumulated a lot of options. I enjoy thinking about lists and optimizing against different missions, so it's a shame to not have much opportunity to do that if you don't have a huge reserve of models to choose from.

I also think that's the best argument against the notion that GW runs 'Ard Boyz in order to immediately move product, as opposed to more generally building goodwill, growing the community, and getting people motivated and engaged to build and play more. I'm sure people buy a fair amount of product for the tournament, I know I did last year for my first 'Ard Boyz outing in order to have a "competitive" 2500 points. But I'm also sure they'd move a whole lot more if the scenarios were known farther in advance.

In general, hitting some of the early commentary throughout this thread, as in most areas of life, I would be hesitant to ascribe sinister motives when different priorities, viewpoints, or simple bad judgement or incompetence will suffice.


Same deal in the missions. Taken individually I would say that S3's rules represents a pretty strong implicit attempt to comp against a particular army type. But, taken alongside the other missions I think there was probably a good faith effort to create interesting overall structure, rewarding one type of Army in the early going and another in the last round. I would not say that is the same thing as comp. Done perfectly it's just a strategic challenge to optimize over competing mission objectives, and if it works out well should be fair to everybody (e.g., reward mech in S1, reward foot in S3). That attempt probably went a little over the top in this case, but I think it's a good idea and wasn't overly bothered by it, despite facing (and losing to) a foot army worth literally half my KP for the critical third round...

Hacksaaw wrote:>My list was so good I won without even playing the 2nd game. What's that tell you about the scenarios?

nothing. absolutly nothing. but you avoided a loss by not playing. and this year many people were in the running with 50 points.

you only played 2 games, had more time to rest and relax during the day. you were not time stressed and bothered by having to perform during hte 2nd game.

you only played 2 games, and unlike the other players who had to play the middle game were rested and refreshed for the third game.

but then the players that actually had to play hard and earn a draw, are far more deserving than you of their placement.

So I would assume that you are a big proponent of bashing your forehead into a wall when unnecessary?

He was so confident in his list that he felt he had more than an even chance of winning the entire tournament without playing the second game. He took an even larger advantage of his list's ability to smoke other lists in S3 that he didn't even bother to play S2. This allowed him to rest, relax and not bash his forehead into a wall so he could be fresh for S3.

Just because you don't approve of draws in 40k tourneys doesn't mean you are correct.

imweasel wrote:He was so confident in his list that he felt he had more than an even chance of winning the entire tournament without playing the second game

Well, yes, except no. He got, what, how many points is a draw?

That he didn't have to play a 2/2.5 hour match for?

His next opponent had to play out the round on their feet, and he got to have an extended lunch.

Does he not deserve the win? Not necessarily, odds are he would have managed a draw if not better, and he might not have needed even that to take out the tournament. But you can surely see where people who think it's a gak move are coming from, right?

WARBOSS TZOO wrote:

imweasel wrote:He was so confident in his list that he felt he had more than an even chance of winning the entire tournament without playing the second game

Well, yes, except no. He got, what, how many points is a draw?

That he didn't have to play a 2/2.5 hour match for?

His next opponent had to play out the round on their feet, and he got to have an extended lunch.

Does he not deserve the win? Not necessarily, odds are he would have managed a draw if not better, and he might not have needed even that to take out the tournament. But you can surely see where people who think it's a gak move are coming from, right?

I can see it as a gak move if only he was allowed to take a draw and take an extended lunch. Everyone was afforded the same opportunity and he exercised it.

Is your whole point that taking a draw is a gak move? Then we will just have to agree to disagree.

imweasel wrote:

WARBOSS TZOO wrote:

imweasel wrote:He was so confident in his list that he felt he had more than an even chance of winning the entire tournament without playing the second game

Well, yes, except no. He got, what, how many points is a draw?

That he didn't have to play a 2/2.5 hour match for?

His next opponent had to play out the round on their feet, and he got to have an extended lunch.

Does he not deserve the win? Not necessarily, odds are he would have managed a draw if not better, and he might not have needed even that to take out the tournament. But you can surely see where people who think it's a gak move are coming from, right?

I can see it as a gak move if only he was allowed to take a draw and take an extended lunch. Everyone was afforded the same opportunity and he exercised it.

Is your whole point that taking a draw is a gak move? Then we will just have to agree to disagree.

Was he allowed to, though? Or did he and his opponent just agree to tell the judge that they drew, in violation of the tournament rules?

Either way, I don't actually care. It really only matters, to me, where he wins points by drawing that he otherwise wouldn't have won, and I don't see this as being the case. Nevertheless, I can see why other people don't like people who do it. They have their reasons. I personally stand on my feet all day erry day, so it doesn't bother me, but still. Empathy, bro.

WARBOSS TZOO wrote:Was he allowed to, though? Or did he and his opponent just agree to tell the judge that they drew, in violation of the tournament rules?

As I stated, everyone was afforded the opportunity too.

How do I know? I was his opponent.

There was little to no point in both of us smashing our foreheads into a wall.

The game might have been played if we had not been stuck in a small room that was full of gamers with no fan blowing. Not that this has anything to do with this discussion.

imweasel wrote:small room...full of gamers...no fan

Well, I can see why you didn't care to stay. /OT

WARBOSS TZOO wrote:

imweasel wrote:small room...full of gamers...no fan

Well, I can see why you didn't care to stay. /OT

So other than your distaste for draws, I guess we will just have to agree to disagree about draws.

Yes, we were doubly smart not to play a hard taxing game in an environment that most of the other players didn't have to expose themselves to.

S1 ended at 1:30pm and we didn't have to play until 5:30pm.

This store is pretty competitive with regular MtG tourneys every friday. Not allowing intentional draws would be to the contrary.

imweasel wrote:So other than your distaste for draws, I guess we will just have to agree to disagree about draws.

Well, sure, except that I don't care one way or the other except insofar as it seems like one party has just given the other part a draw so as not to slaughter them and take them out of contention. I was just outlining why other people might give a gak about it and regard it as unfair to the other players.

imweasel wrote:

WARBOSS TZOO wrote:Was he allowed to, though? Or did he and his opponent just agree to tell the judge that they drew, in violation of the tournament rules?

As I stated, everyone was afforded the opportunity too.

How do I know? I was his opponent.

There was little to no point in both of us smashing our foreheads into a wall.

The game might have been played if we had not been stuck in a small room that was full of gamers with no fan blowing. Not that this has anything to do with this discussion.

It also ensures that both of you played game 3 against opponents who didn't massacre twice; it looks like fishing for easier round 3 games to me.

sourclams wrote:

except that sourclams should have been DQed for not playing his 2nd game.

he and his opponent avoided playing each other and claimed a draw. thats not exactly cricket. and ensured that one of them would not have a loss in the round.

Right, so it was actually a chance for the lower seeds to catch up to the higher seeds, or even pull ahead, since Major + Massacre beats Massacre + Draw.

Yeah, and possibly allow you to play someone who wasn't as good for your 3rd round game.

You cheated, and your win has no merit. Period.

Bingo.

"The game might have been played if we had not been stuck in a small room that was full of gamers with no fan blowing. Not that this has anything to do with this discussion."

and those players who actually did play instead of skipping out, ended up tired and matched against people that didnt skip a draw. just because its allowed by some foolish TOs in other games, does not legitimize skipping a game and manipulating the final scoring without having to actually play.

As Monster Rain says, you ended up not having to face another top player in round 3( that is if you won) you manpulated your match ups. Along with not having the fatigue and exhaustion that 3 ard boyz games in a small overheated room full of gamer stench can provide. Your competition in the tournament did.

You come to play in a tournament of 3 games if you manipulate the outcome of the game, whether through a mutual decision to call it a draw or intentionallly with your opponent during the game, its just bad sportsmanship, manipulating the seed and frankly cheating.


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Which brings us back to s3, which by all reports did not keep mech IG from being the leading army coming out of the weekend. Even DE won some events.

What it might have done in many events is keep 3 massacares from being necessary to win. since i see alot of point totals in the 50s for winners this year. which is a good thing. keeps alot more people in the running going into the final round.

The standings from S1 into S2 were unchanged from S2 to S3. The top 6 people at the end of T1 were the same people that ended up playing each other in T3. The TO knew what was going on and condoned it.

So while "fishing for easier R3 games" does have merit, it didn't actually pan out in this instance.

If I thought that I was cheating anybody, I wouldn't have done it. This is our local store, we play against each other all of the time, 100% of the 18 people who showed up at the tournament were people that we've seen before, and know many by name. We're not going to dick over our entire playing community 'just to do'.

Hacksaaw wrote:...but then the players that actually had to play hard and earn a draw, are far more deserving than you of their placement.

Not necessarily, that's the whole point.

(Maybe they should have brought a better meta mission list?)

He admitted all his advantage came form list building not play, so questioning the integrity of the standings is misplaced.

I like Victory points way more than i like KP. While KP are faster and eaier to figure out, VP give a more complete tally of the damage you inflict on your foe.

I am a huge fan of variable game leangth. It helps make the Wait and then steal a objective strategy less effective since the game could not end the turn you planned for it to end on, it might end sooner or later. I agree that it does introduce an aditional element of luck to the game, but the game features dice driven mechanics so...

I have my own suspicions that Trade sales decided on S3 to give all foot army like Nids a huge boost that they needed to be really competative. I dont believe that nids would have done as well as they did without this bonus.

sennacherib wrote:I like Victory points way more than i like KP. While KP are faster and eaier to figure out, VP give a more complete tally of the damage you inflict on your foe.

But KP aren't about measuring damage inflicted, they're about presenting a counterpoint to the benefits that MSU tactics inherently have. It's why this is a game, not a simulation.

If 5th ed used VP as the default, rather than KP, then there would be no reason not to take more smaller units than fewer large ones. Why take a unit of 2 landspeeders, when you can have two units of one each? They're stronger (not lost to immobilizes), can target more things, can contest more objectives, and require your opponent to shoot with at least two units to destroy them. VP makes this choice a no-brainers. KP makes this choice interesting.

I think that 5e overly rewards mech/mobile armies (compared to more massive armies) too much, and as such has removed another interesting aspect of the game.

In 4th ed, the alternate deployment style was Escalation, which hurt mobile armies and rewarded footsloggers. In 5th ed, Dawn of War rewards mobile armies and hurts foot sloggers. In 4th ed, of the 5 book missions, two (recon and loot counters) rewarded the more mobile army, but two (Take & Hold and Straight VP) were more to the benefit of the larger, less mobile force. (The third, cleanse, is probably a wash, maybe a little advantageous to the mobile player). In 5th ed, 2/3rds of the missions benefit the more mobile player.

These changes, along with the general decrease in price of transports, plus the increase in survivability of the same, have really removed much of the play/counter-play that was found in matching up a slower, larger army against a smaller faster one. Now, the armies that used to operate better as static forces (marines, guard) are all running mobile forces. The armies that can't (necrons, and to a lesser extent nids) are rarely seen.

Mobility gives you the ability to pick the battles of your choosing - that's an advantage in of itself, and really needs to be priced as such. 5th ed has taken that inherent advantage and rewarded it with superior durability and lower costs as well. It's no wonder that you don't see many foot armies in 5th ed. In 4th, the rhino cost you three men, and added a risk. In 5th, it costs you barely two men, and is not only more durable, but safer for the men as well.

I think it is a design failure that has led to everyone having to follow this same trend. And, I think that M3 was a good response to that. I think that the overall mass versus mobility question (and how to tackle it) is one of the most interesting questions in wargames, and I feel that 5th ed has neutered mass armies and buffed mobile armies so much that it's just not a factor anymore. I personally think that's a shame.

Janthkin wrote:It also ensures that both of you played game 3 against opponents who didn't massacre twice; it looks like fishing for easier round 3 games to me.

Considering this is a pretty competitive group of gamers, there was ONE massacre in round 1.

That scenario wasn't going to pan out.


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Hacksaaw wrote:As Monster Rain says, you ended up not having to face another top player in round 3( that is if you won) you manpulated your match ups. Along with not having the fatigue and exhaustion that 3 ard boyz games in a small overheated room full of gamer stench can provide. Your competition in the tournament did.

Unfortunately, only the top players were going to play in that section for some reason.

Hacksaaw wrote:You come to play in a tournament of 3 games if you manipulate the outcome of the game, whether through a mutual decision to call it a draw or intentionallly with your opponent during the game, its just bad sportsmanship, manipulating the seed and frankly cheating.

Interesting. I suppose this 'taking a draw = cheating' must be limited to 40k?

Hacksaaw wrote:Which brings us back to s3, which by all reports did not keep mech IG from being the leading army coming out of the weekend. Even DE won some events.

What it might have done in many events is keep 3 massacares from being necessary to win. since i see alot of point totals in the 50s for winners this year. which is a good thing. keeps alot more people in the running going into the final round.

Multiple massacres are only required to win when the number of players gets 'large'. So the 50ish point totals that won their event probably were in either really competitive stores or from smaller pools of players.

Redbeard wrote:

I think that 5e overly rewards mech/mobile armies (compared to more massive armies) too much, and as such has removed another interesting aspect of the game.

.


I couldnt agree with you more on the comment that 5th ed. rewards mech to much, however massive armies of foot sloggers have an inherent advantage over smaller armies. Massive armies come closer to the mean when you look at the statistical average for damage done from shooting and melee. Orks will roll 120 dice in a charge (extream example but i did it once in a tourni against a stupid tau player whos command unit got a wee bit to close ) The average that you roll always comes closer to the mean with more dice. smaller units have the propensity for big successes and big losses depending on the die. Not so true with hordes. Also hordes are for the most part more forgiving of mistakes.

Me too, it's a tank game now, I like it, but all my armies are MECH now.

Augustus wrote:Me too, it's a tank game now, I like it, but all my armies are MECH now.

A tank game? Even with the results that Orks and 'Nids seem to have come up with?

Monster Rain wrote:

Augustus wrote:Me too, it's a tank game now, I like it, but all my armies are MECH now.

A tank game? Even with the results that Orks and 'Nids seem to have come up with?

Mech is king in normal (5th edition) 40k. Running an event with wacky missions that change the fundamental victory conditions of the game is not normal 40k. Taking the results of this year's 'Ard Boyz preliminaries as evidence of what kind of game 40k is or what's "good" is like looking at a home-run derby in baseball and concluding that pitching isn't important.

Danny Internets wrote:

Monster Rain wrote:

Augustus wrote:Me too, it's a tank game now, I like it, but all my armies are MECH now.

A tank game? Even with the results that Orks and 'Nids seem to have come up with?

Mech is king in normal (5th edition) 40k. Running an event with wacky missions that change the fundamental victory conditions of the game is not normal 40k. Taking the results of this year's 'Ard Boyz preliminaries as evidence of what kind of game 40k is or what's "good" is like looking at a home-run derby in baseball and concluding that pitching isn't important.

I don't buy the analogy. People who weren't already hitting a shocking amount of Home Runs in the regular season weren't picked for the Home Run Derby... if they were, maybe that would add up.

How many tourneys do you play in, Danny? Orks are not to be sneezed at. I'm not busting your balls, dude. I'm honestly asking.

Wow, this discussion is still going on with the main point being people didn't like the scenario becuase fast units were worth 3 points? Did anyone else play the last few years? What about when HQ's were worth 5, or 3 each if you were a wolf and had to take 4? What about when troops were worth 3 per unit? I know I swore a blue streak when I found my guard could give up in excess of 68 points as I ran alot of heavy and special weapon squads. But that is the point, it changes all the time and makes you actually have to think. Do you really need more then a week? Should you really have to go out and buy new models just to assemble and use? No. Not if you know your own force and how to use it. Spend the week thinking of how to minimize your risks and and max out on what you get from the enemy, as everyone has realized, this year didn't kill mech. It did however make them think more. It's just like all the people who went out and went crazy trying to replicate the "leafblower" list. It is an ok list, but not the best that's ever been, it's just that he knew how to use it and had some luck when he did use it.
What about the lack of night fighting this year? Every year and every round is something different. I for one like it, even if it leaves me hurting once in awhile. Yes scenario 3 did favor foot sloggers with no transports. Yes last year favored armies with minimal troop choices, and before that it favored ones with limited Hq's. So face a choice, use what you have better or take something else you don't normally play (otherwise you'd already have it and switching it in/out of your list is nothing more then doing the paper work to change the list) and play with limited experiance on the new list.
On people taking draws rather then playing. I for one would blast them in our store for doing that. Not going to play? Sounds like 2 forfeits to me, 0 points each. Fight and record the game as a draw? At least you played or faked playing. Unless your blatant as hell about it, I'm not going to call someone a liar. Frankly though, as a competitor, I want to see that. In my experiance, it just put them both out of the running in 90% of the tournaments I've played. Or at least makes it a heck of a lot harder for them to take the top spots. Yes you can win after a draw or even a minor loss, but it sure isn't easy, unless we're talking a real small player group, or one that's looking like a dogfight and alot of draws are happening in each game. I think we had 19 people in our qualifier, most we've ever had. 35 pts was the lead going into the third round (and there were several in that range). Alot of massacres the first round, alot of draws (legitimate) the 2nd. Two people tied at 59 at end of third round, think it was around 52 that took thrid. For those who score 58 and placed 5th, how many people were at your qualifier and how were the rounds matched up? Was it top 2, then 3 &4th, then 5&6th, or otherwise? Depends on matchups when it comes to scores to take it all. Given a group of say 18-20 players, if played top vs top, only 3 players can be undefeated after 3 rounds. So 58 would have to place. If you mix and match or go top vs bottom in round 2, then yes, every game is essential to max points, as it's now a race to slaughter the less experianced/less hardcore for max points. No that won't turn them off from playing again, or make them a WAAC gamer later.....
As for being a tank game, it's all in how you play. It does take more to kill vehicles in 5h then it did in 4th, but I thought vehicles were wayyyyy underpowered in 4th. Now they seem about right. If I roll good (or alot) I can kill those tanks and transports without too much hassle. It takes more shots to kill all those troopers, but less strength shots work too. Take all lascannons? Wow is that foot horde going to hurt you. Took all heavy bolters? Tanks are going to love you. Took some of each? You've got a shot at going all way. But that's just my 2 cents. Thanks if you took the time to read it all. HAve a good one and good luck on the 12th!

Monster Rain wrote:

I don't buy the analogy. People who weren't already hitting a shocking amount of Home Runs in the regular season weren't picked for the Home Run Derby... if they were, maybe that would add up.

How many tourneys do you play in, Danny? Orks are not to be sneezed at. I'm not busting your balls, dude. I'm honestly asking.

A lot. In fact, every single one that I can attend.

Orks are a mediocre army and foot Orks represent the most mediocre build that codex can put out. It's a point-and-click list that gets man-handled by good armies in the standard scenarios. If you really want to know how I feel about the codex read this: http://www.baldandscreaming.com/commentary/greenskins-versus-meta-game-are-orks-competitive/

Edit: I think they've gained significant ground due to the deffrollas clarification, but still aren't in line with IG and SW.

Redbeard wrote:

sennacherib wrote:I like Victory points way more than i like KP. While KP are faster and eaier to figure out, VP give a more complete tally of the damage you inflict on your foe.

But KP aren't about measuring damage inflicted, they're about presenting a counterpoint to the benefits that MSU tactics inherently have. It's why this is a game, not a simulation.

If 5th ed used VP as the default, rather than KP, then there would be no reason not to take more smaller units than fewer large ones. Why take a unit of 2 landspeeders, when you can have two units of one each? They're stronger (not lost to immobilizes), can target more things, can contest more objectives, and require your opponent to shoot with at least two units to destroy them. VP makes this choice a no-brainers. KP makes this choice interesting.

I think that 5e overly rewards mech/mobile armies (compared to more massive armies) too much, and as such has removed another interesting aspect of the game.

In 4th ed, the alternate deployment style was Escalation, which hurt mobile armies and rewarded footsloggers. In 5th ed, Dawn of War rewards mobile armies and hurts foot sloggers. In 4th ed, of the 5 book missions, two (recon and loot counters) rewarded the more mobile army, but two (Take & Hold and Straight VP) were more to the benefit of the larger, less mobile force. (The third, cleanse, is probably a wash, maybe a little advantageous to the mobile player). In 5th ed, 2/3rds of the missions benefit the more mobile player.

These changes, along with the general decrease in price of transports, plus the increase in survivability of the same, have really removed much of the play/counter-play that was found in matching up a slower, larger army against a smaller faster one. Now, the armies that used to operate better as static forces (marines, guard) are all running mobile forces. The armies that can't (necrons, and to a lesser extent nids) are rarely seen.

Mobility gives you the ability to pick the battles of your choosing - that's an advantage in of itself, and really needs to be priced as such. 5th ed has taken that inherent advantage and rewarded it with superior durability and lower costs as well. It's no wonder that you don't see many foot armies in 5th ed. In 4th, the rhino cost you three men, and added a risk. In 5th, it costs you barely two men, and is not only more durable, but safer for the men as well.

I think it is a design failure that has led to everyone having to follow this same trend. And, I think that M3 was a good response to that. I think that the overall mass versus mobility question (and how to tackle it) is one of the most interesting questions in wargames, and I feel that 5th ed has neutered mass armies and buffed mobile armies so much that it's just not a factor anymore. I personally think that's a shame.

Very well put. I believe GW internally figured out how to try and earn more money from their product. Vehicles that are cheap in points, but very effective on the tabletop equates to more folks buying vehicles. The overall cost to build an army goes up significantly when you tally up multiple vehicle kits. And because folks have caught on to this and still buy the vehicles, I wouldn't expect this trend to go away in the upcoming codexes or next edition. I really believe GW figured out that they cannot drive miniature sales by cool minis alone; the minis need favorable rules as well.

Danny Internets wrote:

Other than that article has a pretty graph that means literally nothing - which show a distinct lack of higher order mathematical thinking - I feel it's written for fourth edition (lol) and it's 11 months old. Yes it was a lovely discourse on 'tournaments' but it has nothing - nothing to do with playing an ork army in a competitive environment in 2010.

Give us your thoughts on that then eh?

From what I gather, the US tournament scene more often than not use LESS than the recommended 25% terrain on tables. Was this true on your Ardboy event?

Danny Internets wrote:
Orks are a mediocre army and foot Orks represent the most mediocre build that codex can put out. It's a point-and-click list that gets man-handled by good armies in the standard scenarios. If you really want to know how
I feel about the codex read this:

http://www.baldandscreaming.com/commentary/greenskins-versus-meta-game-are-orks-competitive/

The whole article is written in the style of "ignore any data you might see that opposes my view, because that data must obviously be a result of bad opponents". That's how Stelek argued too. It sets you up in a nice defensive position. Anyone shows you data, and you simply wave your hand saying "bad opponent", while continuing to preach from your ivory tower. Come down from the land of ideal opponents and perfect stats and play some games in the real world.

Claiming that orks can only win against uncompetitive armies, or against poor players, is clearly erroneous. They keep performing well at GTs, even when the scenarios aren't designed like S3 at 'ard boyz. Surely not all other players at these GTs are bad players.

Saying that footslogging orks are a point-and-click list is another way of simply not wanting to acknowledge that there are skills involved in knowing how to play the army. It's like me saying that IG or Mech Wolves are point-and-click armies, because the only real skills needed to play them are a good grasp of target priority. That's not true, and it's this sort of mentality that separates the good IG player from the mediocre IG player.

Orks are a lot less forgiving than either Wolves or IG. If anything, it takes more skill to play foot orks well than either SW or IG. If SW get out of position, they've still got a 3+ save. If they accidentally misjudge a range and get charged, they've got counter-assault. An ork army that finds itself out of position dies, quickly. An ork army that lets itself gets charged is in a world of trouble with CR.

But maybe that's what you mean. When you say foot orks are a weak list, what you're really saying is it takes a better player to win with them.

I think this line from the article sums up that up too:

(I still have trouble with Charlie's army, but I chalk that up to him being a good player).

Maybe all the orks that "gets man-handled by good armies" are played by the same average players as the SW and IG lists that get beat by orks are played by. Maybe, the player is more important than the list.

Monster Rain wrote:
A tank game? Even with the results that Orks and 'Nids seem to have come up with?

Imperial Guard and other mech armies seem to out number Orks and Nids in the national results if we go by the reporting on this and other sites.

so its very much a mech oriented game right now, even with a scenario that might have hurt them, in most locations they had allready bounced the non mech armies down the rankings and out by the time the final scenario was played.

and if they were playing against horde in the final game they just had to fall back on normal wipe out the horde tactics that are so effective for armies like IG. if you table your opponent you dont have to worry about all those nasty kill points.

Other than that article has a pretty graph that means literally nothing - which show a distinct lack of higher order mathematical thinking - I feel it's written for fourth edition (lol) and it's 11 months old. Yes it was a lovely discourse on 'tournaments' but it has nothing - nothing to do with playing an ork army in a competitive environment in 2010.

It was written a full year after 5th edition was released so saying it was written for 4th edition is a reading comprehension failure on your part. 4th edition is only mentioned because there are still a lot of people who have failed to adapt to 5th edition both when this article was written and even today. These are the people who generally think Orks are awesome, at least from my experience. In my area, the players were quick to adapt to 5th. As a result, I haven't seen Orks win a tournament (with the exception of this year's 'Ard Boyz, for obvious reasons) since the end of 2008. Orks were mediocre 11 months ago just as they are mediocre now. I would argue that they are worse now after the releases of SW and IG, both due to the power of these armies and their popularity.

Claiming that orks can only win against uncompetitive armies, or against poor players, is clearly erroneous.

Redbeard, you have this curious tendency to read what you want to hear rather than what other people are saying. I have never made the claim that Orks can only win against uncompetitive armies or poor players. I would agree that is erroneous, which might have something to do with why I've never said it.

I simply think that Orks excel at stomping armies and players that haven't adapted to 5th. I think they do so even better than tuned 5th edition armies in some cases. But the degree to which you crush bad armies is of little consequence to whether or not an army is good, at least once you past the threshold of being able to achieve massacres in these situations reliably. No one cares if you can table your opponent or simply beat them badly enough to score 24 battle points.

I do think that an Ork army in the hands of a good player will perform very well, particularly if it is one of the better Ork builds (ie, not a foot horde). I think Dashofpepper is a good example of this. However, I think that given equally good generals, an Ork army will be at a serious disadvantage versus properly built armies from a number of books, including SM, SW, and IG.

Maybe all the orks that "gets man-handled by good armies" are played by the same average players as the SW and IG lists that get beat by orks are played by. Maybe, the player is more important than the list.

Perhaps you should read up on context before making (more) ignorant comments. The army I was referring to was my Vulkan semi-drop pod list, which I explain numerous times in several articles that it is not a powerful army, but is tactically challenging and fun to play. As a follow-up, Charlie permanently stopped playing his Orks after getting tabled by my mech IG several times because he didn't think he had even a remote possibility of winning.

First you say this:

Redbeard, you have this curious tendency to read what you want to hear rather than what other people are saying. I have never made the claim that Orks can only win against uncompetitive armies or poor players. I would agree that is erroneous, which might have something to do with why I've never said it.

Then you immediately after say this:

I simply think that Orks excel at stomping armies and players that haven't adapted to 5th.

Wouldn't a player/army that hasn't adapted to 5th edition be considered poor/uncompetitive? I think you just contradicted yourself in the same post.

FWIW I'd happily play against Horde or Mech Orks with my gunline SW. My tiny army footprint makes it ridiculously easy to refuse a flank and 22 blast templates plus the ability to blow apart Battlewagons with S10 guns, or Trukks with Str-anything guns. Counterattack makes Snikrot a non-issue, and combined assaults with Logan screaming 'boo' murders Boyz squads, even with Ghazzie.

At the risk of becoming another 'Competitive Orks' thread, the most difficult thing about playing against Orks in a tournament is getting the entire game in. From personal experience, games that end early tend to favor Orks; there's still a million on the table covering objectives. It takes til about turn 4 to really hit the tipping point where you do more casualties than their army can absorb, and once Orks lose momentum they just start dying in droves from fearless wounds and low initiative.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Ozymandias wrote:First you say this:

Redbeard, you have this curious tendency to read what you want to hear rather than what other people are saying. I have never made the claim that Orks can only win against uncompetitive armies or poor players. I would agree that is erroneous, which might have something to do with why I've never said it.

Then you immediately after say this:

I simply think that Orks excel at stomping armies and players that haven't adapted to 5th.

Wouldn't a player/army that hasn't adapted to 5th edition be considered poor/uncompetitive? I think you just contradicted yourself in the same post.

I don't think they're mutually exclusive statements. Orks can win against other-than poor/uncompetitive players, but they absolutely excel at stomping on those armies. It's simply a function of an inherently slow assault army (or in the case of Mech Orks, a fairly small assault army) that, when delivered, is capable of rolling a massive pile of dice.

What sourclams said, basically.

To add, saying that Orks excel at stomping bad armies is not at all the same thing as saying they cannot beat good ones.

the thing i find most interesting is that alot of IG players complain about how unfair it is that they give up more kill points than other armies and that makes kill points unfair. I also find it very interesting that IG can put out way more troop units than any other army and that in an objective based mission that is totally fair.


hmmmmmm

Tortuga932 wrote:the thing i find most interesting is that alot of IG players complain about how unfair it is that they give up more kill points than other armies and that makes kill points unfair. I also find it very interesting that IG can put out way more troop units than any other army and that in an objective based mission that is totally fair.


hmmmmmm

(1) Not all IG armies focus on having huge volumes of Troops. Most people run Veterans nowadays as the bulk of or entirety of their Troops (not necessarily the best build, but it seems by far the most common).

(2) Needing Troops to capture objectives is part of the core rules of 40k. Multiplying KP's by a factor of 3 if you mech up is not.

(3) Many of the same players would be just as annoyed if they flipped KP's around so that the person with the most KP's alive at the end of the mission won. We don't like stupid, wacky missions.

It's not about penalizing our particular army. They made a game where mechanized armies are powerful and then decided to run what they bill as a competitive tournament where you're supposed to bring the hardest list possible, but at the last second changed the game so that if you take the hardest archetype of list you get massively penalized (unless you're lucky to get matched up against a similar list).

Danny Internets wrote:It's not about penalizing our particular army. They made a game where mechanized armies are powerful and then decided to run what they bill as a competitive tournament where you're supposed to bring the hardest list possible, but at the last second changed the game so that if you take the hardest archetype of list you get massively penalized (unless you're lucky to get matched up against a similar list).

...or if you just table them, which was the only option for mech in that mission.

That is the same counter I gave to people who thought the mission was fine, "What if they made it so that the most KPs left on the table won?"

Danny Internets wrote:
Orks are a mediocre army and foot Orks represent the most mediocre build that codex can put out. It's a point-and-click list that gets man-handled by good armies in the standard scenarios. If you really want to know how I feel about the codex read this: http://www.baldandscreaming.com/commentary/greenskins-versus-meta-game-are-orks-competitive/

Edit: I think they've gained significant ground due to the deffrollas clarification, but still aren't in line with IG and SW.

I like how you dis on Orks and use your pre-deffrolla arguments as support. But your arguments within that argument pre-suppose that deffrollas don't work against vehicles. So then you add as an after-thought that they've "gained ground"??? Orks now have PLENTY of anti-tank, PLENTY of anti-personnel, and PLENTY of bodies to absorb casualties, and crazy mobility.

But, I'm sure that you opinion is very important to you, so I'll leave you with a quote from your own blog...

With 3 consecutive wins I was able to take 2nd place, 6 points behind a very capable Ork player with a hybrid list

So, Orks suck, and you couldn't do better than the Ork player with your IG list..... A < B && B > C therefore A ? C

But you keep preaching that Orks are not competitive, I like having people underestimate them in tournaments. It makes my massacres that much more enjoyable!>

I like how you dis on Orks and use your pre-deffrolla arguments as support. But your arguments within that argument pre-suppose that deffrollas don't work against vehicles. So then you add as an after-thought that they've "gained ground"??? Orks now have PLENTY of anti-tank, PLENTY of anti-personnel, and PLENTY of bodies to absorb casualties, and crazy mobility

Not all Orks run Battlewagons. Not all Orks armies that run Battlewagons run multiple Battlewagons. Furthermore, it's still a number one priority of armies to kill those Battlewagons before they get to the other side of the board, so it's likely that anti-tank capability will be gone before it can be used.

So, Orks suck, and you couldn't do better than the Ork player with your IG list..... A < B && B > C therefore A ? C

Surely the fact that both Ork players got a free massacre by going up against mech IG in the third scenario had nothing to do with them placing first. Surely. Logic fail of epic proportions.

Lots of people argue that Necrons suck. If GW makes a single tournament scenario that says all Necrons get S10 weapons and Necrons happen to perform well in that tournament, does that mean Necrons are a good army in 40k?

That Orks were even playing at the top tables in the final round gives the lie to your argument.

If Orks were such a mediocre force, then they should have been weeded out- if not one but two different Ork players make top tables in your tourney... maybe Orks aren't -necessarily- as sucky as you'd like to claim.

/plays Orks
//took first at 'ard boyz prelims

Maybe, just maybe, three rounds isn't really enough time to properly sort out the best armies from the merely good.

If that's the stance we're taking, then there's not much data on either side of the argument from a tournament stand point.

I thought Redbeard was spot on in his assessment of the article linked. I'll just add that the graph presented will be IDENTICAL for any given army- of course they do more poorly against better army lists... by definition, ALL lists will have less success as quality of opponent increases.

It just strikes me as bizarre that an army that does as well as Orks do nationally can be sneered at as uncompetitive.

kartofelkopf wrote:That Orks were even playing at the top tables in the final round gives the lie to your argument.

If Orks were such a mediocre force, then they should have been weeded out- if not one but two different Ork players make top tables in your tourney... maybe Orks aren't -necessarily- as sucky as you'd like to claim.

/plays Orks
//took first at 'ard boyz prelims

Do you people actually read things before slamming out responses on your keyboards?

(1) There were ten people at each tournament. Ten. You're using the fact that Orks managed to get a pair of wins (not even massacres!) in a three-round tournament, with 10 people, the vast majority of which brought armies totally unsuited for competitive play, to conclude that Orks are a good army. Think about that for a while.

(2) I don't claim that Orks suck. I've made that clear at least twice before this post (more reading comprehension fail). I said they are mediocre, and, in fact, slightly less so due to the ruling on Deffrollas. Mediocre != bad, mediocre = mediocre. I'm really not sure how to simplify this statement for you any further. Would pictures help?

The article reads like it was written with a 4ed mentality. The graph is meaningless unless it was based upon hundreds or more games, which I doubt is hte case.

G

Black Blow Fly wrote:The article reads like it was written with a 4ed mentality. The graph is meaningless unless it was based upon hundreds or more games, which I doubt is hte case.

G

Right, and all of the other observations in this thread and elsewhere on Dakka are based on controlled experiments performed in a sophisticated 40k laboratory which hundreds of trials. Oh wait.

Of course this is anecdotal evidence. There is no standardized tournament circuit or competitive league from which to pull data for comparative purposes. Your argument discounts virtually every single observation made about this game made by anyone. It is an empty and meaningless rhetorical tactic, not to mention skillful trolling. You'd have a point if I presented my argument as a scientific certainty rather than musings, on a blog no less.

Danny just how are we supposed to take your graph? Is it just another pretty picture? Its very misleading to say the least. If it were based upon the actual outcomes of lots & lots of competitive games it would be very useful. Oh well. Basically all it tells us in general is your games will be harder to win when you play against more competitive armies. Pretty much a no brainer there.

Are orks really mediocre or are they still top shelf? It's very hard for me to say as I rarely ever see them in action. I think that with all the newer armies out now they have lost a lot of their flavour. That in itself does not mean they are mediocre though.

G

Graphs are visual aids used to illustrate points. Unfortunately, you have failed to understand the key feature of the graph (of any graph), which is the curve.

That curve is called a sigmoid function. The point that it illustrates here is how the decline in performance accelerates rapidly with respect to opponent skill (and then decelerates rapidly, leveling off). Again, this is not based on data (which should be obvious given the qualitative axis labels). It is to illustrate the text of the article in an alternative way to facilitate understanding.

In contrast to the sigmoid function, I would peg most other armies as having a straight line rather than a sigmoid curve in this context. The difference between the two is thesis of the article. I'll update the images to make the contrast more obvious.

Danny a sigmoid curve is produced by a mathematical function having an S shape. Sigmoid functions refer to the special case of a logistic function. The main characteristic is the curve quickly saturates over time. Basically there is not much more gain once you past the knee point of the curve. The problem with your cosmetic curve is where you have defined the knee point since it is based solely upon your own opinion and is not reflecting a large sampling of actual game play.

G

Your argument discounts virtually every single observation made about this game made by anyone.

Wow Danny, I'm given how traveled you claim to be I'm surprised we've never met! Given that you've traveled to all the stores here in Colorado and spoken to everyone to gain all of their observations. I guess the last 20 yeas of playing GW games I've just been living in a hole to have never met someone with such an obvious well supported census of every player in the game.

Black Blow Fly wrote:The problem with your cosmetic curve is where you have defined the knee point since it is based solely upon your own opinion and is not reflecting a large sampling of actual game play.

...hence the part about it being ANECDOTAL evidence? You can't sample actual game play (unless you set up a controlled experiment, which would be exceedingly difficult for a large variety of reasons not limited to subject selection) because there is no standardized sample from which to gather data (also already mentioned). Apples and oranges don't make for a good comparative study.

Wow Danny, I'm given how traveled you claim to be I'm surprised we've never met! Given that you've traveled to all the stores here in Colorado and spoken to everyone to gain all of their observations. I guess the last 20 yeas of playing GW games I've just been living in a hole to have never met someone with such an obvious well supported census of every player in the game.

Where did I claim to have have witnessed every game of 40k? All I did was make an argument based on the evidence I have personally gathered through observation and direct personal experience. I've never purported it to be anything but that, despite the constant stream of strawman characterizations you and your ilk have vomited up.

Where did I claim to have have witnessed every game of 40k?

Twist and turn as you might, you can't escape your own words. I wrote

Given that you've traveled to all the stores here in Colorado and spoken to everyone to gain all of their observations.

in response to your post which said

Danny Internets wrote:Your argument discounts virtually every single observation made about this game made by anyone.

Every single observation made about this game made by anyone.... That's a VERY strong statement. You've made a lot of really strong statements, yet you do not support any one of them.

You really should just give it up, because we're having a lot of sport at your expense. I do believe you when you say that Orks are mediocre. But, I believe that you're saying it in response to your perception based on the games and players in your area. But to extend it to all players everywhere just shows that you really don't know what you're talking about.

Hell, my Sisters of Battle army is quite competitive, mostly because most people don't know what it's capable of. I'll also boast that most people couldn't play my list and win with it, because they are not familiar with it. When you start posting some concrete support that any specific army is not competitive, we can have a meaningful conversation. Until then you're spouting your opinion, stating it as if it's a proven fact with absolute statements and pseudo-science graphs, and providing a lot of sport.

despite the constant stream of strawman characterizations you and your ilk

Me and my ilk eh? I'm so glad that you've defined me with such precision. It must be your vast knowledge and experience in which you've watched not only my play style but those I frequently play against.

If you're going to make a statement, either prove it, or be prepared to endure the stones suffered by others who attempt to sway the uninformed through rhetoric and pseudo science. Until then we'll enjoy a good laugh.

Danny Internets wrote:
Do you people actually read things before slamming out responses on your keyboards?

Yes. Perhaps the problem isn't so much reading comprehension of any individual post, but rather, that we read your other posts and draw inferences from them about what you're trying to say without worrying about your plausible deniability that you seem to work in.

What I mean by this is that you say in various posts things like,

... the vast majority of which brought armies totally unsuited for competitive play

And then you say,

... I said they are mediocre, and, in fact, slightly less so due to the ruling on Deffrollas...

Now, this is where the rest of us start making connections. You clearly believe in competitive play. To play competitively, one needs to field a competitive army. You make claims about how many people who go to tournaments field armies unsuited for competitive play. And then you say that orks are mediocre. Mediocre might != bad, but mediocre also != competitive. So, when you say orks are mediocre, what the rest of us get from that is that you don't believe they're competitive, and as such go into the bucket of armies unsuited for competitive play. If they're not suited for competitive play, then from a tournament perspective, they do suck - they're not competitive in an environment that requires such.

You see how this all works together. From a competitive perspective, you're either competitive, or your not, and calling something mediocre implies that it is not competitive and therefore sucks for use in tournaments.

So is it any wonder that when we all see that orks do well in tournaments, we wonder how they can be considered mediocre, and therefore unsuitable for competitive play.

Yes. Perhaps the problem isn't so much reading comprehension of any individual post, but rather, that we read your other posts and draw inferences from them about what you're trying to say without worrying about your plausible deniability that you seem to work in.

I say Orks are great at crushing bad armies, which others (more or less) read as "Orks suck." That had nothing to do with poor reading comprehension, but rather because I've gone to great lengths to craft a position that is immune to characterization? Come on. Read what I'm saying, not what you think I might be trying to say if I were saying something completely different.

Regarding the rest, there is indeed a point in here, but you're jumbling contexts and using terms that are defined very differently by different people. What is competitive to some is not competitive to others, and then you get into the increasingly sticky subject of comparative competitiveness.

Note that I do not say Orks are uncompetitive--in fact, I make it explicit that I do not believe Orks are a "crap army." I say what I mean and do not say what I do not mean. You can call that "plausible deniability," but really it's just frank communication. Furthermore, being mediocre in a competitive context does not equate to being "uncompetitive" just like it does not equate to being "bad." It's just middle-of-the-road, not good and not bad. Not particularly competitive or uncompetitive--basically unremarkable with respect to quality.

Are there Ork armies that can hold their own in a competitive environment? Certainly! Winning games of 40k is not a simple function of army list strength. I maintain, however, that all things being equal (such a generalship), an Ork player with a good list (relative to the codex) will struggle badly against other army builds that I would consider highly competitive. In a nutshell, that is why I consider Orks mediocre.

Of course, there is the issue of Ork players allegedly performing well in tournaments. No two tournaments are the same so comparing results is really an effort in futility. Even when you restrict your analysis to battle points you face insurmountable problems due to the unquantifiable effects of population selection, comp scoring pressure, major rules changes (ie, INAT FAQ), wacky missions, and so on. Mission scoring is another reason why I think Orks are perceived as performing well. If my argument has any truth to it, scoring formats that reward massacres over other levels of victory will tend to favor armies like Orks that are especially proficient at steamrolling lower quality opposition. It is not uncommon to play through a whole tournament without facing a really tough opponent, especially in 3-round events. Even in 5-round events the majority of your opponents tend to be fairly easy. At that point, the winner is whoever clubbed their seals the hardest. Is that really a good measuring stick for the quality of an army? (As an aside, the NOVA Open format overcomes this fundamental problem and if Orks win that I'll happily eat humble pie.)

I have some humble pie in my cubbard. You might need some milk to wash it down.

G

Care to cite some examples of these lists that crush orks?

To be completely honest one of my biggest fears with my SW's is Orks. But then again I do consider them very competitive and have an Ork army that would make my Space Wolves cry if it's run by someone competant. Of course now it'll be said I should build a "better" SW's list

Actually, he'd done a great job of un-painting himself out of the corner. By claiming that ALL tournaments are biased towards Orks, any empirical evidence is completely discounted.

And then, staking his position on the winner of the Nova tournament, is positively genius. Larger tournaments tend to favor the most recently released armies. Look at the number of Guard armies present at Adepticon as an example.

So, assuming that Orks will be under-represented, and that they out of all the other potential armies don't win over-all, then he's "proven" his point? Brilliant! Well done!

So, let's just summarize shall we? If you're playing Orks, and have won a tournament with them, it's only because you played "bad opponents". Either they weren't good players or they had a bad list. It wasn't the strength of your list, nor your good generalship.

And if you've lost to such a mediocre army as Orks, then tsk, tsk, tsk. You must be REALLY bad, or it's those "wacky" scenarios. So put down the green paint boyz and start buying Chimeras, the jig is up! We've been declared mediocre!

Care to cite some examples of these lists that crush orks?

Mech IG
Semi-mech IG
Speeder-heavy mech SM
Mech Vulkan
Immolator spam
Maximum overdrive
Footdar (just kidding)

So, let's just summarize shall we? If you're playing Orks, and have won a tournament with them, it's only because you played "bad opponents". Either they weren't good players or they had a bad list. It wasn't the strength of your list, nor your good generalship.

Oh barontuman, how many times do we need to emphasize the importance of basic reading comprehension? You get your panties in a bunch when I call you out on vomiting up strawman arguments and then you turn around and do it again. I'm beginning to wonder if you're not doing it on purpose, but are genuinely incapable of understanding simple passages like "Are there Ork armies that can hold their own in a competitive environment? Certainly! Winning games of 40k is not a simple function of army list strength." and "I do think that an Ork army in the hands of a good player will perform very well, particularly if it is one of the better Ork builds (ie, not a foot horde)."

In my experience, playing in tournaments, against the lists you mentioned that I've played against (mech ig, semi-mech ig, speed marines, mech vulkan, and maximum overdrive (???? - if that's massed space wolf razorbacks, then I played it with my orks, if not, I have no idea what maximum overdrive is), I've beat them almost every time. I ended up with one draw against a mech-guard army that was able to contest an objective a full 38 inches from its initial position (really lucky on both the drop-line scatter for his vendetta team and then also his run move), which would have been a win apart from that one insane move.

I played mech-guard at Adepticon, and at the last AWC tournament. I've played many games against my friend's semi-mech guard. I played razorback spam wolves at Adepticon, as well as TWC wolves, and biker marines. I don't see a lot of Vulkan, but I did face off against him in a tournament maybe six months ago?

So, either I'm a good enough player that I can beat the lists that supposedly crush orks - probably because they're always played by bad players (in spite of these bad player's finishes in the tournaments), or somehow your theory and my reality just don't intersect. I don't know what else to say. Your position is unassailable, because whenever anyone presents any evidence, you have a reason that it shouldn't count.

I've never played against immolator spam - I think it's a fairly rare list. I do not doubt that it can own orks though...

Mech Vulkan ?? Care to explain that one?

G

mech vulkan. Sounds like you play a marine army with vulkan in a tank

Let's start at the beginning shall we?

Danny Internets wrote:I think they've gained significant ground due to the deffrollas clarification, but still aren't in line with IG and SW.

Danny Internets wrote:Furthermore, while Orks can go mech, their big weakness is that they need to disembark to do anything, which breaks the #1 rule of mounting up: STAY IN THE TANK.

I understand that since you play IG it makes you feel good to think that IG are better than Orks on a fundamental basis. But your claim to ANECDOTAL evidence still isn't sufficient to prove your point. That's something the rest of us are waiting for you to demonstrate.

As an Ork player, I look forward to seeing lists that you've described. Orks EXCEL at killing stuff without getting out of their vehicles. As you've already noted, Boarding Planks, and Deffrollas allow a lot of damage to be done to vehicles without getting out. Further, mobile units like Snikrot Kommandoz and Deffkoptas kill everything except land-raiders with relative ease. And once you do decide to get out of the tank, even the basic troopers are the best in the game for killing vehicles.

So, vehicles aren't really a problem. Though you seem to think that they are.

Is it anti-infantry that you think they lack? Really?

Could it be that the Ork armies you're used to seeing aren't well designed or well played? Or is it more likely that all the OTHER Ork armies in competitive environments are just facing "bad" lists/players? Could it be that you tend to play at low points values where IG are stronger? I've heard it many times that at over 1750 or 1850 IG has already put all their "good stuff" on the table, yet Orks can still expand linearly. Strangely enough, I'm surprised at how balanced 40K actually is. Old books (with exceptions like Necrons) are still quite competitive with the new "wacky" scenarios from the book. Blood Angels aren't the game breakers that people once thought they to be, and even WH can be strong. Do foot-slogging Orks suffer the worst from Mech IG. Yes, I'll admit that easily. But I don't play the Black Horde for my Templars any longer either. If you're complaining that Orks are better at killing bad armies, but are still competitve, that doesn't hold much water either. Seems to me that makes them good against good lists, and great against bad lists.

Really, I'm anxious and waiting for you to actually MAKE A POINT. Perhaps then your claims of a straw-man argument would be valid. Until then, you're doing a lot of hand-waving and double talk to say absolutely nothing. So far, it seems like you're saying "Orks are in the middle, and IG are da best!" Wow, such insight!

IG and SW are in a top tier right now in terms of their potential. This is a fact based on their combination of mobility, surviveability and damage potential. Both armies are high in these areas.

Orks, unfortunately, are lacking. You have the ability to do great damage, but depending on which of the two main builds you are going with (wagons or foot), you are sacrificing your mobility or your surviveability. IG and SW do not have to make this choice (as an example).

Danny Internets wrote:They made a game where mechanized armies are powerful and then decided to run what they bill as a competitive tournament where you're supposed to bring the hardest list possible, but at the last second changed the game so that if you take the hardest archetype of list you get massively penalized (unless you're lucky to get matched up against a similar list).

Yup that's exactly how I see it as well. That's why I decided to skip the hardboy this year. It is basically a farce because of that unique mission. I really liked your Necron example later in the thread.

Been lurking for a while DI, just chiming in to say I agree.

On the Ork topic, I will say it too, I think Orks are mediocre as well.

At Adepticon this year I played an Ork team with battlewagons, meganobs, Warbike Boss, truck boys, buggies and a nice mech Ork list.

Examples of armies that crushed them?

Our Space Wolf mechanized list with long fangs and JOTWW priests.

We killed all their tanks with Long fangs, and swept them off the objectives in melees and destroyed their low I HQs with jotww. High points included killing the battlewagon then killing the warboss and half his retinue inside with Jotww and watching them route off the board in a single turn. They were just outclassed.

Also beat them with mech eldar at last years hardboy multiple times, as the foot sloggers they just had insufficient antitank to knock down the waveserpents, they were totally outclassed in melee by the seer council with Eldraad and Yriel who slaughtered 10-15 orks every round, and they were to slow to even reach all the objectives on the board. Any objectives they had were easily contested in the final turns with tank shocks in 3 inches.

Orks are a troop spam novelty gizmo army. They have awful tanks, poor shooting, non existant psychic defense and the classic T3 poor save dilemma as well. To many detriments to outway with lootas, nob bikers and volume with hidden power claws.

Fearspect wrote:IG and SW are in a top tier right now in terms of their potential. This is a fact based on their combination of mobility, surviveability and damage potential. Both armies are high in these areas.

Orks, unfortunately, are lacking. You have the ability to do great damage, but depending on which of the two main builds you are going with (wagons or foot), you are sacrificing your mobility or your surviveability. IG and SW do not have to make this choice (as an example).

I would have to totally agree with about the surviveability of the SW and IG , both of these armies are in the top tier select. If both of these goes first, most of the time its going to win, with the massive amount of firepower (IG)(SW)and melee power that (SW) have.

I won't dispute that Orks are not as good as SW and IG (given identical list building and generalship), but to call Orks a weak army when all the actually statistical evidence is to the contrary is pure folly. I would venture to say that they are a step down from the top, pretty much in the mix with Vanilla SM and BA, which puts them ahead of over half the armies out there. The army is very versitile and has some of the most point efficient units (outside of Grey Hunters) in the game.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
The death rolla clarification helped a lot, to be sure. Being able to trot 3-4 rollerwagons with KFF protection into multiple mech lines really countered one of the last things the army was weak to (AV14). Even without the Rollaspam, they still had options, though. I mean is anyone honestly going to argue that they are worse than Eldar, DA, GK, SoB, Necrons, or Tyranids?

Augustus wrote:On the Ork topic, I will say it too, I think Orks are mediocre as well.

At Adepticon this year I played an Ork team with battlewagons, meganobs, Warbike Boss, truck boys, buggies and a nice mech Ork list.

Examples of armies that crushed them?

Our Space Wolf mechanized list with long fangs and JOTWW priests.

We killed all their tanks with Long fangs, and swept them off the objectives in melees and destroyed their low I HQs with jotww. High points included killing the battlewagon then killing the warboss and half his retinue inside with Jotww and watching them route off the board in a single turn. They were just outclassed.

Also beat them with mech eldar at last years hardboy multiple times, as the foot sloggers they just had insufficient antitank to knock down the waveserpents, they were totally outclassed in melee by the seer council with Eldraad and Yriel who slaughtered 10-15 orks every round, and they were to slow to even reach all the objectives on the board. Any objectives they had were easily contested in the final turns with tank shocks in 3 inches.

Orks are a troop spam novelty gizmo army. They have awful tanks, poor shooting, non existant psychic defense and the classic T3 poor save dilemma as well. To many detriments to outway with lootas, nob bikers and volume with hidden power claws.

First, orks are T4.

Second, I see your Adepticon anecdote, and raise you - using a Kan wall build, DD1 finished 7th overall (6th in Battle Points). We beat IG, Space Wolves, more IG, and an Ork/IG hybrid, and we did it when 3/4 of us have never used Orks before or since.

Janthkin: When the only tactical option your army has is to run every single unit forward, of course you don't need practice with it.

Fearspect wrote:Janthkin: When the only tactical option your army has is to run every single unit forward, of course you don't need practice with it.

Oh yes. Because THAT'S exactly how we played it. It couldn't have ANYTHING to do with the volume of fire shoota boy units put out, or the counter-assault flexibility provided by Killa Kans, or the durability of Ork units under KFF coverage. Nope, it's all just "Run straight at 'em!"

The Kan Wall is a SHOOTING list.

And you seemed to have missed the point, with your snide one-liner - a "mediocre" army book shouldn't perform that well, regardless of how simplistic the tactics, over a series of 8 games, now should it?

Considering that the 1st place team was also an all-ork team, with a completely different build, and you have to figure that either everyone is only playing lousy players, or maybe the codex does have some teeth, even in a metagame where 30% of the armies were mech-guard and 30% were space wolves.

I did pretty good got 5th but to be honest I hated the mission not having a secondary and Tetiary hurt. It was really win or lose the game on one thing. As much in fun games that might work but in a tourney you can't tell how the game really went by that like the other player might have almost tabled you yet tie on CPs kind of sucks to still draw. (happened to me yay 2 models left for him yay)

Oh and just for fun, back to the graph.

Danny what equation did you use to obtain the wonderful reverse Sigmoid curve?
Where did your data come from?
What is the scale?
What are we actually measuring?
Does this grap actually end at the boundaries or continue forever this isn't clear...
What was your sample size?
Am I to understand that if a player of X skill plays no-ork opponents then their performance will fit a liner model, I'm struggling with the as there is again no scale and we could be looking at an apparently straight section of a larger graph?
If we were to differentiate your S-curve what would the rate of change of orkish success against players of varying skill be at various points be?
Again no scale makes this hard.
One could conclude however that if one's performance with orks was already high then playing opponents of higher and higher skill would not influence ones success, that we can conclude without scale but we can't conclude at what levels of success or skill this happens.

So, just a few of the problems with your 'Graphs'. Which I'll let you know they aren't actually - because of some important elements that are missing from them.

Please stop committing maths abuse and showing off your innumeracy.

Danny Internets wrote:Orks were mediocre 11 months ago just as they are mediocre now.

Danny Internets wrote: I don't claim that Orks suck. I've made that clear at least twice before this post (more reading comprehension fail). I said they are mediocre, and, in fact, slightly less so due to the ruling on Deffrollas. Mediocre != bad, mediocre = mediocre. I'm really not sure how to simplify this statement for you any further.

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/mediocre wrote:
Mediocre

Main Entry: me·di·o·cre
Pronunciation: \ˌmē-dē-ˈō-kər\
Function: adjective

of moderate or low quality, value, ability, or performance

So how are are you not calling Orks bad. So where's the reading comprehension fail? You are calling them of moderate or low quality, value, ability, or performance

The Ork codex has proven with the amount of "ANECDOTAL" evidence of top places and wins in tournaments that it has been one of the best written codexes. Consider the lists that have won. Nob bikers, Kan Wall, Dreadbash, Deffwagon, etc... Orks are not mediocre as the dictionary defines it, nor does it suck.

Orks are fine. There are many good army lists out there to play. Why is it so important to try and get Danny to see this? Why not just let him be in his own world. He doesn't play in many nationwide tourney's so we won't see him anyway. Let him be.

Redbeard - I'd like to get some games in against you with the Foot Eldar. Do you have time coming up?

I might be able to find some time. My schedule is kind of hurry-up-and-wait at the moment, I've got some really painful house repairs that need doing, but juggling the schedules of the contractors is being tricky. I can probably work something out though. PM me if you've got a specific time in mind.

Why is it so important to try and get Danny to see this? Why not just let him be in his own world. He doesn't play in many nationwide tourney's so we won't see him anyway. Let him be.

Good advice. It was fun to watch him squirm for a while, but it has gotten out of hand.

Janthkin wrote:

Fearspect wrote:Janthkin: When the only tactical option your army has is to run every single unit forward, of course you don't need practice with it.

Oh yes. Because THAT'S exactly how we played it. It couldn't have ANYTHING to do with the volume of fire shoota boy units put out, or the counter-assault flexibility provided by Killa Kans, or the durability of Ork units under KFF coverage. Nope, it's all just "Run straight at 'em!"

The Kan Wall is a SHOOTING list.

And you seemed to have missed the point, with your snide one-liner - a "mediocre" army book shouldn't perform that well, regardless of how simplistic the tactics, over a series of 8 games, now should it?

1) lol @ shooty orks

2) I don't get why everyone is taking this so personally. Just because the codex you enjoy playing isn't the best doesn't make you a bad person or player. It is just not optimal and there are better ones out there. This is a fact of balancing so many different armies while keeping them unique in playstyle. Please stop tying your self-worth in the performance (potential or otherwise) of your toys :(

DarthDiggler wrote:Orks are fine. There are many good army lists out there to play. Why is it so important to try and get Danny to see this? Why not just let him be in his own world. He doesn't play in many nationwide tourney's so we won't see him anyway. Let him be.

I don't have any real problem with any stance re armies he takes. What I do have a problem with is his lack of mathematical knowledge, rigor or possibly supporting of misinformation.

Fearspect wrote:

Janthkin wrote:

Fearspect wrote:Janthkin: When the only tactical option your army has is to run every single unit forward, of course you don't need practice with it.

Oh yes. Because THAT'S exactly how we played it. It couldn't have ANYTHING to do with the volume of fire shoota boy units put out, or the counter-assault flexibility provided by Killa Kans, or the durability of Ork units under KFF coverage. Nope, it's all just "Run straight at 'em!"

The Kan Wall is a SHOOTING list.

And you seemed to have missed the point, with your snide one-liner - a "mediocre" army book shouldn't perform that well, regardless of how simplistic the tactics, over a series of 8 games, now should it?

1) lol @ shooty orks

2) I don't get why everyone is taking this so personally. Just because the codex you enjoy playing isn't the best doesn't make you a bad person or player. It is just not optimal and there are better ones out there. This is a fact of balancing so many different armies while keeping them unique in playstyle. Please stop tying your self-worth in the performance (potential or otherwise) of your toys :(

Laugh away. How'd your team do over an 8-game tournament, out of a field of 119 teams, again?

Oh, right. You're expounding these hypotheses without having actually tested them.

It's not "my" army. I've played 4 games with Orks, ever, and will probably never use them again (Yakface took possession of the army after we were done). I just can't let the declarations of internet "gurus" stand unchallenged, when it is contrary to everything that actually happens at tournaments.

No one is claiming that Orks are the "best" codex. And I don't think anyone is linking their own feelings of adequacy to the perceived success of the codex. But slapping a label like "bad" or "mediocre" on one of the more competitive lists available, and one that is successful in a variety of forms, is counter to all available evidence.

DarthDiggler wrote:Orks are fine. There are many good army lists out there to play. Why is it so important to try and get Danny to see this? Why not just let him be in his own world. He doesn't play in many nationwide tourney's so we won't see him anyway. Let him be.

You're right, of course. The horse doesn't HAVE to drink.

(Adepticon was not a 40k tournament)

Except for the part where it's the largest 40k tournament in the world (excepting 'ard boyz, which is actually a bunch of smaller tournaments when you get right down to it), your statement makes perfect sense.

DarthDiggler wrote:Orks are fine. There are many good army lists out there to play. Why is it so important to try and get Danny to see this? Why not just let him be in his own world. He doesn't play in many nationwide tourney's so we won't see him anyway. Let him be.

Uh, this is exactly what I've been saying. MEDIOCRE DOES NOT MEAN BAD. IT MEANS AVERAGE. AVERAGE IS FINE. I've been explicit on this point no less than half a dozen times in this thread already. If all armies were average we'd have a perfectly balanced game.

You did actually read the thread before posting in it, right?

Danny - except mediocre does NOT mean average, it means poor to average.

Stop complaining of reading comprehension problems with others when you're unable to express yourself correctly.

It has two meanings. As a word it once originally only meant average. In a world where everything has to be great, it has gotten the connotation of meaning worse than average. It has two separate definitions. Why is everyone focusing on this one word anyway rather than the actual content?

Fearspect wrote:(Adepticon was not a 40k tournament)

Stop Trolling.

Disagree with me all you like, when you make up rules and change the army structure, you are no longer playing 40k and all the previous balances go right out the window.

Fearspect wrote:Disagree with me all you like, when you make up rules and change the army structure, you are no longer playing 40k and all the previous balances go right out the window.

So in your mind, any tournament that uses any missions not from the main rulebook is not a "40k tournament". Any tournament that uses the very popular Primary/Secondary/Tertiary objective system is not a "40k tournament". Any tournament held at a venue with defined house rules of any sort are not "40k tournaments".

Your idea of a "40k tournament" is getting matched up with an opponent, and then dicing off for the mission and deployment type that you'll play (as instructed to do in the rulebook)?

Danny just give it up. You have lost all credibility with your ceasless whining.

G

I have no problem with (balanced) custom scenarios. Take the Nova Open's scenarios and contrast them with the 'Ard Boyz prelims.

Team games and changes to the FOC however drastically change what is good compared to the normal game. You are no longer talking about 40k at this point, but a new game with different codices as the strongest. The same thing happens when you start enforcing comp rules.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
All of that being said, your list is only a smaller part of what contributes to a win. A player given the best list without any tactical acumen will lose every time.

Oh and just for fun, back to the graph.

Danny what equation did you use to obtain the wonderful reverse Sigmoid curve?
Where did your data come from?
What is the scale?
What are we actually measuring?
Does this grap actually end at the boundaries or continue forever this isn't clear...
What was your sample size?
Am I to understand that if a player of X skill plays no-ork opponents then their performance will fit a liner model, I'm struggling with the as there is again no scale and we could be looking at an apparently straight section of a larger graph?
If we were to differentiate your S-curve what would the rate of change of orkish success against players of varying skill be at various points be?
Again no scale makes this hard.
One could conclude however that if one's performance with orks was already high then playing opponents of higher and higher skill would not influence ones success, that we can conclude without scale but we can't conclude at what levels of success or skill this happens.

Please read the thread before posting. I already explained to GBF that this is not based on data, but is a visual aid used to describe the thesis of the article in an alternative way, hence the lack of numbers and the use of purely qualitative labeling. Is the scroll wheel on your mouse broken?

nosferatu1001 wrote:Danny - except mediocre does NOT mean average, it means poor to average.

Stop complaining of reading comprehension problems with others when you're unable to express yourself correctly.

Let's read that again. "Mediocre doesn't mean average, it means poor to average." Maybe if I had clarified 5 or 6 times that I am, in fact, referring to the upper part of that range, the AVERAGE part, it might be more clear. Oh wait! That's exactly what I've done!

And yet you people still keep insisting that I think Orks suck...

Danny just give it up. You have lost all credibility with your ceasless whining.

GBF lecturing me on credibility? Pot, meet kettle.

Except if the Orks are in the top 5 of a list that includes twelve army lists, then they are not average, are they?

Shouldn't you be busy fluffing on YesTheButtHurts about now?

I think you should all just come to the NOVA Open, hug it all out, and play some games built for *everyone* to enjoy.

I only say this b/c someone mentioned the open here ... and man, being a pretty impartial peruser and poster across the web, seeing the ytth/dakka/etc stuff go back and forth is tiring.

Orks are not one of the worst army books at all ... so, yea.

Top 5:

SW, IG, SM, BA, Eldar.

Other codices that are better balanced than Orks:

Tyranids, Sisters of Battle, Dark Eldar, Tau (the last two because they provide strong obvious choices in each FOC slot).

Still, some good players play Ork armies and thus get wins. Using Orks has nothing to do with you as a player, and more the unfortunate reality of the money barrier being an issue to people continually getting an army from the current best codex (min $500 investment, I imagine). Furthermore, the attachment people develop from painting up their miniatures makes it doubly difficult to give up on your old army.

I saw somewhere else on the Internets that Danny is spouting he is an E-celeb. Hee! Funny that!

G

Guys, we all really need to calm down in here.

That's what I really want to say.

Of course, generalizations are bad, as seen here:

http://www.baldandscreaming.com/

Dakkaitis?

Main Entry: Dak·ka·i·tis
Pronunciation: \’da-kə-ī-təs\
Function: noun
Etymology: New Latin
Date: circa 2010

: inflammation of the stupid

Really?

Bad form there.

I mean, how are we to know that your mouth isn't foaming, and that your fingers are not, in fact, also sausage shaped?

I have no problem with (balanced) custom scenarios. Take the Nova Open's scenarios and contrast them with the 'Ard Boyz prelims.

There are some people that don't think those missions are balanced either. The Nova event is just another GT style event. Thinking it's anything more than that is ridiculous. People really need to get over the fact that you can never truly create the perfect "competitive" environment for 40k. The game simply isn't designed for it.

Karuthors - what may differentiate us is that when I notice a comment like this anywhere on the web, I take the time to inquire about its origins and glean meaningful input from people to better refine the approach we take.

I don't think 40k is a game rendered homogenous across codices to be a perfect competitive environment, or even be the average/quasi-competitive environment of most professional sports.

That said, it's a good thing to pursue as fair and balanced an approach possible within a given format or game system.

I would argue that you have to define what a GT style event is before you brand something as one ... our system/format bears no similarity to Adepticon, for example, in terms of how the event itself is graded/scored/competed in. That said, it's also not a "pure" competitive event either, given the hefty prize support given to "soft" or non-competitive scores.

In any event, if you have some input/critique - especially if it's well thought out and delivered with a positive intent - from those people you refer to as not seeing the NOVA Open missions as "balanced," I'd love to hear it - we've been visibly and openly taking input and critique from the global community of players for months now leading up to the event - more the merrier!

- Mike

PS - Feel free to e-mail/pm to me instead of derailing this thread, if you'd prefer. This is a genuine set of comments from me, not a retort or subtle attack. Just to make sure our unfamiliarity with each other does not combine with the tonelessness of the web to create a firestorm.

Janthkin wrote:

Fearspect wrote:Janthkin: When the only tactical option your army has is to run every single unit forward, of course you don't need practice with it.

Oh yes. Because THAT'S exactly how we played it. It couldn't have ANYTHING to do with the volume of fire shoota boy units put out, or the counter-assault flexibility provided by Killa Kans, or the durability of Ork units under KFF coverage. Nope, it's all just "Run straight at 'em!"

The Kan Wall is a SHOOTING list.

And you seemed to have missed the point, with your snide one-liner - a "mediocre" army book shouldn't perform that well, regardless of how simplistic the tactics, over a series of 8 games, now should it?

Oh Janthkin, we all know why your ork list won, because you are a complete genius. Of course.

It's to bad this thread degenerated into Orks; are they good or not? from the discussion of the hardboy scenarios. It's pretty glaring that they wrote a hardboy scenario explicitly to handicap mech armies. It's pretty obvious that a lot of ork builds are walking. It's not outlandish to claim this is an intentional handicap for armies that are not doing so well, like:

Orks

Also, for those who need a justification why army X did so well at whatevercon how about:

Luck?
Matchups?
Missions?
Players?
Team Synergy?
Collusion?

Lots of possible reasons, besides the codex quality or a player being a genius.


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MVBrandt wrote:...I don't think 40k is a game rendered homogenous across codices to be a perfect competitive environment, or even be the average/quasi-competitive environment of most professional sports.....

Uh? What

Steroids
Salary Caps
Blood Doping
Pinch hitter
Shot clocks

Pro sports is so full of loop holes and cheats, it isn't worth idolizing. Sorry had to throw this rock. I venture 40k is probably a more fair environment, hey at least anyone could sign up?

@Fear-
I don't see how orks can even be remotely considered worse than Eldar. How many truely workable eldar units and builds are there compared to orks? Plus, lets face it, even with Eldratar a single 100 point rune priest pretty much kills your entire army when you are eldar, mech or not.

Sisters fair a lot worse against the top dogs than Orks, both in theoryhammer and in tourney results. Tau are so one dimensional and beatable that I can barely believe you put that up there. Tyranids are not even in the same ball park as orks, hurting even worse in mechanized environments.

Not calling you an idiot, but I seriously doubt that many would agree with your view of their comparitive ranking and the tournamnent results of the last two years certainly does not seem to back you up, either.

Augustus - that would be precisely why I said "average/quasi-competitive" instead of competitive for pro sports!

Augustus wrote:Oh Janthkin, we all know why your ork list won, because you are a complete genius. Of course.

Hey, if you're going to toss out anecdotes as evidence, be prepared to receive them as well. And the Team Tournament is a useful example, as it's an 8-game tournament. (The overall Team Tourney winners played Orks, too.)

It's to bad this thread degenerated into Orks; are they good or not? from the discussion of the hardboy scenarios. It's pretty glaring that they wrote a hardboy scenario explicitly to handicap mech armies. It's pretty obvious that a lot of ork builds are walking. It's not outlandish to claim this is an intentional handicap for armies that are not doing so well, like:

Orks

While Scenario 3 was fairly blatant in its potential effects, what about Scenario 1? That triangular deployment zone, coupled with a mandatory 5 objectives AND a fixed game length was hellish on foot armies. Not only do you have to travel large distances on foot, your opponent also knows exactly when to swoop in with vehicles to contest.

The general philosophy behind 5e "core" missions is that they're NOT balanced individually, but come closer to balance when taken as a whole. Armies with an advantage in Seize Ground (lots of fast-moving/transported scoring units) have things a bit more difficult in KP missions. Low KP armies, contrariwise, have a harder time claiming multiple objectives.

So, for the Ard Boyz, whoever wrote the scenarios tried to achieve similar patterns, while removing "random" elements like game length & objective count. Given the spread of winners reported here, it's reasonable to conclude that scenario 3 did not automatically result in every mechanized list losing their event, any more than scenario 1 automatically cost Ork & Tyranid players the tournament.

What's that leave, then? Are we left arguing the "degree" to which scenario 3 disadvantaged mechanized players, versus the degree to which scenario 1 cost all-foot players?

Also, for those who need a justification why army X did so well at whatevercon how about:

Collusion?

I like this one. So, the reason you beat Orks is that you bribe/threaten your opponents to take falls?

MVBrandt wrote:Augustus - that would be precisely why I said "average/quasi-competitive" instead of competitive for pro sports!

OK, heh.

Phazeal, I have to give you that one, how few eldar builds there are (limited). If thats the judge of a codex, perhaps you are right. There is a lot of junk and overload in that codex to be sure. There is some greater variety in the Ork Dex for builds.

I think it's just a matter of the few mechdar builds being more capable overall and having less vulnerabilities than the ork builds.

I played a lot of mechdar V Ork games, I won them all. Several were in hardboys last year and this year at adepticon, and I can honestly say, it wasn't because of my genius.

I felt like my opponent was playing at a handicap regardless of their build.

Wouldn't you admit, mechdar vs Orks in S3 hardboy this year was a slanted game?

Why was that?


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Janthkin wrote:The general philosophy behind 5e "core" missions is that they're NOT balanced individually, but come closer to balance when taken as a whole....

Interesting, collectively, I see your point, collectively the 1st match was harder than the last. taken to another level this makes matchup even worse, as in those who played mech v mech in R 3 were likely playing an even game while those who played foot v foot in game 1 were likewise equally penalized. So pairing becomes key then...

Is that the best player then? A random pairing determining how much handicap someone gets? I don't think so. a Mech player and a foot player could have the similar stats going into round 3 and the foot player would have be at a significant advatage.

Wheres the sport in that?

Do you think the first scenario was equally bad for foot armies as S3 was for mech? Not a lot of threads about how punishing S1 was.

Obviously S3 penalized more players as mech armies are more common now, isn't this obvious slanting of the grounds, even given your pov?

Also, for those who need a justification why army X did so well at whatevercon how about:

Collusion?

I like this one. So, the reason you beat Orks is that you bribe/threaten your opponents to take falls?

My only issue with the Nova Open is the removal of KP's which MVB and I have talked about. I'm just not a huge fan removing one of the main victory conditions that the rule book gives us but it's their event and I'm still gonna attend if I can. That being said it could easily be pointed out that it isn't a competitive event because it removes one of the key victory conditions given to us by GW.

Oh and Orks are one of the few armies I fear with my Wolves. Which, i think, does say something.

Augustus wrote:
Interesting, collectively, I see your point, collectively the 1st match was harder than the last. taken to another level this makes matchup even worse, as in those who played mech v mech in R 3 were likely playing an even game while those who played foot v foot in game 1 were likewise equally penalized. So pairing becomes key then...

Has this ever not been the case? Matchups in specific missions has always been a huge factor in tournament play.

A couple of years ago, I got the random luck to play Bill Kim in round one of the Adepticon Gladiator and we knocked each other out of the running. If either of us had a different first-round opponent, who knows what would happen. The next year, I was running a mech-eldar list (at the tail-end of 4th, when they were insane with clown wagons), and going into round three, I was somewhere on the top tables, and got matched up with the necron destroyer list that was about as perfect a scissors to the eldar's paper as you could get. It was the only necron list on the top five tables, and looking over the others, I had a shot to win the event if I'd been paired against any of the others.

These things happen. And, they're why 40k simply isn't designed for determining things like who the absolute best player is.

I've seen these things happen time and again. I've been on the winning side of playing against a green tide list with a shooty army and a corner deployment, and I've been on the losing side of missions that rewarded a player with a HtH HQ over a support HQ when I fielded a near-naked inquisitor. That doesn't mean I'm a good player one day and a lousy one the next.

That's why "competitive 40k" is such a misnomer, and why tournaments should be considered an opportunity to get together with friends (or at least acquaintances) and play a few games over a day or two, rather than as something that needs to be addressed with the utter ruthlessness seen in the competitive lists espoused by Danny, Stelek, and their ilk. Because at some point, you're going to benefit from a mission at the right time, and at some point, you're going to get hammered by the mission/matchup nightmare that is simply beyond your control, that you have no answer for.



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Hulksmash wrote:My only issue with the Nova Open is the removal of KP's which MVB and I have talked about. I'm just not a huge fan removing one of the main victory conditions that the rule book gives us but it's their event and I'm still gonna attend if I can. That being said it could easily be pointed out that it isn't a competitive event because it removes one of the key victory conditions given to us by GW.

Not only isn't it a competitive event, it's not even a 40k event, according to some of the other posters here. Rules change!!

If Hulksmash fears the green horde then that says something. He is a solid tourney player with a solid record to back it up. I think the main thing about Orks is in reality they have all the tools needed to matchup well against any army if properly designed. Personally I think Battlewagon orks it the best way to go with some deffkoptaz. Thrakka is still very potent.

G

Danny Internets wrote:
Please read the thread before posting. I already explained to GBF that this is not based on data, but is a visual aid used to describe the thesis of the article in an alternative way, hence the lack of numbers and the use of purely qualitative labelling. Is the scroll wheel on your mouse broken?

Yes and graphs being precise mathematical tools used to present data in visual form - They display relative sizes of numerical quantities - Ie an easy ways to compare numbers.
Means that your attempt to 'visually illustrate' a point with a 'graph' that's only accurate features are the positions of the labels for the axis - which lets face it was a 50/50 chance anyway.

I found a great quote for you "Other times, a graph or chart helps impress people by getting your point across quickly and visually." from http://nces.ed.gov/nceskids/createagraph/default.aspx They have a nifty tutorial on how to create a graph with all the necessary elements.

Next time you want to use 'a visual aid used to describe the thesis of the article in an alternative way' try not to use a mathematical tool incorrectly and use something like this instead, you might just communicate your point visually and effectively.

Augustus wrote:

Janthkin wrote:The general philosophy behind 5e "core" missions is that they're NOT balanced individually, but come closer to balance when taken as a whole....

Interesting, collectively, I see your point, collectively the 1st match was harder than the last. taken to another level this makes matchup even worse, as in those who played mech v mech in R 3 were likely playing an even game while those who played foot v foot in game 1 were likewise equally penalized. So pairing becomes key then...

This is eternally the case. I don't see a fix for it, either - barring absolute balance between the armies, ANY mission will have some bias.

Is that the best player then? A random pairing determining how much handicap someone gets? I don't think so. a Mech player and a foot player could have the similar stats going into round 3 and the foot player would have be at a significant advatage.

Wheres the sport in that?

Going into round 1, a Mech player and a foot player WILL have similar stats, and the mech player likely has a significant advantage. *shrug* You're never going to find the "best" player in a 3 round event, anyway. That's just par for the course; most RTTs are 3 round tournaments. (Note that hockey, soccer, baseball, and basketball all use a series of games between the same teams, when trying to winnow the field down to "best.")

Do you think the first scenario was equally bad for foot armies as S3 was for mech? Not a lot of threads about how punishing S1 was.

Obviously S3 penalized more players as mech armies are more common now, isn't this obvious slanting of the grounds, even given your pov?

As to thread distribution, S1 was a fairly standard 5 objective mission, with some goofy deployment. Anyone playing a "foot" army has to have a plan for those by now, be it outflanking units, or turbo-boosting bikes, Deep Striking units, or something. There's no tolerance for complaints about that mission type any more, as 5e has made it common.

As to PLAYER distribution, I'm not convinced mech armies ARE more common. In a vacuum, sure, mechanized lists are better. At a major tournament, sure - the people who choose to travel for 40k are also the ones most likely to assemble an army that fits the paradigm. But Ard Boyz tend not to see nearly so much optimization at the preliminary level. (Same goes, to a lesser extent, at local RTTs.) People show up with what they have, and the "normal" 40k hobbiest, in my experience, has 1-2 armies, built up over years, and doesn't make drastic changes very often.

Less than half the armies at my prelim round were mechanized. The top 3 tables in round 3 had foot orks, 2 Tyranids, 1 mech Guard, 1 mixed Guard, and dual-lash oblit spam (with 4 rhinos, and 2 foot CSM squads).

The problem wasn't that Mech could win the first easier but lose the third easier, it was that Mech, if good, had a better chance at a major win. Footslogging had a huge advantage to massacre in the third. Very few games that I've heard about weren't massacres in mission 3, which is at least some evidence that it was a lousy mission.

And I think it was a lousy mission. 'Ard boys has always rewarded the player with a deep bench, that can bring 2500pts of steak without resorting to sizzle. This years was an extreme version: if you could bring a solid 2500 foot slogging list, you had a big advantage.

While I find the position that the missions were "balanced" untenable, it was fair. Everybody had the same opportunities, nobody was surprised, and if some of use spent a week building a loganwing instead of running Mech IG, well, that's part of being 'Ard.

Something interesting... I was perusing the net & discovered that Danny came in 2nd place behind an ork army at his Ard Boyz preliminary. Kind of funny.

G

Black Blow Fly wrote:Something interesting... I was perusing the net & discovered that Danny came in 2nd place behind an ork army at his Ard Boyz preliminary. Kind of funny.

G

You have way too much time on your hands if you're taking time out of your day to research how other people who live across the country from you perform in tournaments.

2/10 for trolling, only because some of the more gullible people here will jump on your "research"

It would appear then that the actual discussion of the relevant scenarios ended some time ago and we are, astonishingly enough, re-hashing old disagreements and taking cheap shots at each other. Which means this thread has served it's purpose kudos to those who stayed on topic.