Game just went to turn 6- it seems Blackmoor was ahead if it had ended at the end of 5? Tony looks poised to move more units into the top left table quarter now...

Is this the last game?

Yeah, it's for the championship.

Hard to tell who is winning in the battle between the red and gray space marines against the red and gray space marines.

I think I see Draigo's Paladin squad mostly intact in the center, Blackmoor's 3 dreads straddling the northwest and southwest quarters, and a crapload of grey hunters forming a ) shape around them with some stewn about.

Huh, well now I have something to watch while I work on my homework!

Massive turn 6 from Tony takes the game. Jaws lined up Draigo and 2 Paladins and Blackmoor failed all three iniative tests. He also failed 5 straight 3+ cover saves on a PA squad sitting on an objective in a ruin.

Oh sh*t. Njal just jaws Draigo's unit. Took out Draigo and 2 paladins!

Tony's SW wins!

Tony wins! Great game!

Tony repeats! Looks like Blackmoor would've had it if it had ended on turn 5.

Congrats!

It looks like Blackmoor screwed up his shooting phase and shot some scouts that were not involved in the objectives instead of a Grey Hunter squad barrelling onto an objective in the upper left. He could have shot 5 paladins and 3 psyrifleman dreads at the greyhunters, but didn't.


Blackmoor lost and really messed up turn 6. Tony screwed him with the Lord of Tempest rule in the middle turns. He insisted it carried over to another turn.


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Where was the psychic hood on the llibrarian for the Jaws? It was in the same squad as Draigo.

Pretty good game...I think Blackmoor knew it was over when they got a turn 6.

Tony Kopach goes 8-0 and wins the Nova Gt

Congrats to Mr. Tony Kopach!

8-0 is impressive, particularly when you consider the field of competitors.

On turn 6 Blackmoor could have also moved his dreads to contest the upper left corner objective, the one the Grey Hunters had to run to in order to claim on the bottom of turn 6. It looks like Allan really gave the game away on the last turn. He had it won the whole time.


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lambadomy wrote:Pretty good game...I think Blackmoor knew it was over when they got a turn 6.

He had it won on turn 5, but Allan still had the game won on turn 6. He shot the wrong unit and didn't move the Dreads to contest the upper left objective. They still eneded up tieing the primary - table quarters - and Tony won the objectives 3-2. (did the strike squad in the bottom left still live at the end? I missed it.) Alan would have then won of KP.

No, the strike squad in the bottom left died :-/. So I don't think he actually was close on turn 6.

I think the squad on the bottom left bit it to random bolter fire, lots of terrible saves in a row. But you're right, there was movement that was skipped or ignored by Blackmoor. I missed the beginning of the game so I was just assuming those dreads were immobilized.

When did the strike squad die? Turn 6?

DarthDiggler wrote:
Blackmoor lost and really messed up turn 6. Tony screwed him with the Lord of Tempest rule in the middle turns. He insisted it carried over to another turn.

Actually I think you could even say that the use of Living Hurricane affected the entire game because it slowed down Blackmoor's Paladin squad with Draigo in it right when Tony was maneuvering away from them. Blackmoor only rolled like a 4 or 5 to move and then failed to roll range to assault a Rhino, which if he had done so, would have put him within striking range to assault a Grey Hunter unit in the next turn if he wanted to.

However, with those negative movement affects, that unit kind of just drifted around the center point of the table never being able to get close enough to do anything worthwhile.

But oh well...them's the breaks.

I think he didn't do it because it didn't matter- Tony had 2 objectives on the right side of the board- right? Maybe he could have killed those grey hunters that ran to contest, would that have made it 2-2?

Alan only had one objective if i remember correctly after turn 6. the middle one.

DarthDiggler wrote:When did the strike squad die? Turn 6?

Yes, I think so.

I thought it was an awesome game. I thought Blackmoor had control of the game for the entire thing, and Tony was merely doing what he could to keep it close. He seemed very flustered on bottom of 5, and things fell his way on 6. I think it was a great game. Really impressive, he is 24-0 in the W/L format for the 3 major tournies that have had that for 8 rounds. Also, considering he was in Europe just a few days ago at another big tourney. Hats off to Blackmoor as well, going 7-1 with a close last game is no small feat. Nice job guys.

Tony used murderous hurricane on the squad not njals table to affect the movement of draigo.

On turn 6 Alan had the middle objective and the lower left objective right? He had to have those two objectives in order to block the lower and upper right objectives Tony had. That means the game goes to KP which alan had.

Living Hurricane should never have affected the Paladins at all because the power doesn't carry over to the next game turn. This really slowed Alan down in the middle on the game and prevented him from assaulting a rhino. Getting to that Rhino would have put him in assault range of a Grey Hunter squad on the next turn. Instead Tony was able to use that unit to help kill off the 3-man paladin squad in the trees.

It appears it would have made a big impact if Living Hurricane didn't carry over from the bottom of turn 3 to the top of turn 4.

The strike squad died in turn 6. Lots of 1s and 2s to storm bolter fire I think. It seemed unlucky.

And I think we're all in agreement that having his movement slowed and missing a charge because of it was brutal for Blackmoor. I've lost games because I went with an opponents interpretation of a rule before that was incorrect but never with this kind of stakes. I wonder if they actually did change the ruling from the FAQ or not. Anyway water under the bridge now.

Darkwynn wrote:Tony used murderous hurricane on the squad not njals table to affect the movement of draigo.

No he Murderous Hurricane the 3-man paladin squad up top. That unit took one wound from it and then had to make 3 dangerous terrain checks on the next turn to move. Tony told Alan that Njalls Tempest power cast Living Hurricane and all his guys within 24" (Alan asked twice about the range) would be moving in difficult terrain on the next turn. On the next turn (top of 4) Alan tried to assault the rhino with Draigo and was told to make a difficult terrain check because of Living Hurricane.

Watch it again. I started posting about that when it happened.

The strike squad in the bottom left died from shooting in turn 6

Darkwynn wrote:Tony used murderous hurricane on the squad not njals table to affect the movement of draigo.

No, he cast Murderous Hurricane on the non-Draigo Paladin unit (which caused them to take dangerous terrain tests when they moved), but when Draigo's Paladin squad (the one in the middle) moved, he also forced him to take difficult terrain tests for that unit because of Living Hurricane (which is incorrect per GW's FAQ).

But honestly, these things happen all the time despite what everyone on the internet wants to moan about. I can guarantee that if you watch ANY game played at a fast pace in any tournament you will find some instances of rules screwed up or played incorrectly from your perspective. Its always going to happen when you have as complex a game as this with so many rules nooks-and-crannies.

None of it takes away from the accomplishment or either player IMHO, just pointing it out.

It of course takes away the accomplishment. It turned the game big time. Tony plays Njall all the time. He should know that one. He's got the Baron's leadership memorized from the DE codex, but he forgets the one thing that kills Njalls Tempest power. The one rule that hampers him and cuts his powers in half. Of course he knew. In fact when Alan questioned it Tony didn't back down.

You can say the 2000pts and the format of the tourney is to much for seasoned players who play all the time with their armies. It's to much for those 'great' tourney players that they need to rush and make mistakes. That doesn't sound to good for futire 2k tourneys, but this wasn't the case. The game wasn't rushed and they finished early.

As much as the live feed gives realtime tourney information and gaming, the amount of calling players cheaters when they mess up some trivial things. Remember that both Dash and Tony were playing 5 games earlier on Fri, 4 games saturday, and 4 games sunday. For me a normal 5 game GT I tire already after game 4. Also the two of them played the whiskey challenge so that is 14 games over the weekend. I remember forgetting to make use of combat drugs back in 4th edition in some games due to mental fatigue.

Most of the players who were in the invitational along with the NOVA reg GT should be given some congratulations for the mental toughness so many games. Too bad NOVA does not have the Iron Man trophy that Adepticon did 4-5 years ago.

I almost never see games played completely correctly, even by top players. Part of it is the way GW writes rules, part of it is there being so many Codexes and rules to know/opponent army unfamiliarity, part of it (less common now) is 4th edition memories...and unfortunately part of it is players taking favorable interpretations of their own armies stuff and hoping their opponent doesn't argue. I don't really think Tony was trying to pull a fast one, but it doesn't appear to be correct from the FAQ.

Which I think is another reason to make the stakes "more models" or "a big trophy". It's just too easy to decide games based mostly on rules errors. Someday mini games will all be on 3d generated terrain with a machine judge that knows all the rules...but until then a pretty big percentage of games will have large rules mistakes influence them greatly

DarthDiggler wrote:It of course takes away the accomplishment. It turned the game big time. Tony plays Njall all the time. He should know that one. He's got the Baron's leadership memorized from the DE codex, but he forgets the one thing that kills Njalls Tempest power. The one rule that hampers him and cuts his powers in half. Of course he knew. In fact when Alan questioned it Tony didn't back down.

You can say the 2000pts and the format of the tourney is to much for seasoned players who play all the time with their armies. It's to much for those 'great' tourney players that they need to rush and make mistakes. That doesn't sound to good for futire 2k tourneys, but this wasn't the case. The game wasn't rushed and they finished early.

People make mistakes, mis-read rules, and interpret things in different ways. Calm down with the e-drama.

DarthDiggler wrote:It of course takes away the accomplishment. It turned the game big time. Tony plays Njall all the time. He should know that one. He's got the Baron's leadership memorized from the DE codex, but he forgets the one thing that kills Njalls Tempest power. The one rule that hampers him and cuts his powers in half. Of course he knew. In fact when Alan questioned it Tony didn't back down.

You can say the 2000pts and the format of the tourney is to much for seasoned players who play all the time with their armies. It's to much for those 'great' tourney players that they need to rush and make mistakes. That doesn't sound to good for futire 2k tourneys, but this wasn't the case. The game wasn't rushed and they finished early.

Again, it doesn't dim the accomplishment because if you take absolutely ANY game of 40K at any level and put it under the microscope of having hundreds of people watching from the comfort of their home watching to see any mistake you will encounter plenty.

The fact is, if the rule seemed to good to be true, then Blackmoor should have asked to see the Codex, and even if he had he probably wouldn't have realized that it was an issue because its a RAW FAQ ruling by GW that you wouldn't necessarily notice if you just read the rule at first glance.

Its obvious that Tony screwed up and wasn't aware of that FAQ ruling, but so what? Blackmoor tried to argue that the Aegis affected Psychic Hood tests. The only reason that didn't happen is because Tony had a hankering that it was wrong. If Blackmoor had known that ruling from the SW codex then he could have called Tony on it.

It is the nature of the beast in a complicated game with time pressure and long days.

That is a bad rule to misplay, with a significant effect on the game.

That said, Blackmoor made multiple mistakes in the game, and I do think Tony outplayed him.

If nothing else the last 3 days of streaming 40k has taught me that a large portion of the internet drama about GT players is manufactured by monday morning quarterbacks. It makes me feel a lot better about my rules confusions, etc.

thehod wrote:I remember forgetting to make use of combat drugs back in 4th edition in some games due to mental fatigue.

I'm sure there is a lesson somewhere.

Then the games are to big and there are to many games in a weekend. Whats the point of playing so many games that at the end, in the championship game, the players are so tired that they are just making stuff up and no one notices. If the mistakes get to be so much, then did the best player win or the one who's "honest screw ups" help him the most.

If that's the case I don't want to read anything anywhere about how the best player won - no matter who it was. It's like have a footrace for the worlds fastest man after all participants just swam 15 miles. Did the fastest man really won?


It was interesting that all of Njalls Tempest powers were ignored until the difficult terrain test came up. If he thought they should have worked on the following turn, then where was Driving Gale making Alans BS minus 1? It's a 24" range power and all of Alans shots are 24". He should have been in range of that.

I was really impressed with Tony outplaying Blackmoor and keeping the game at a fast pace. It was really enjoyable to watch.

Here's another lesson. Never have your games taped. Nothing good will ever come from it. I have talked with some people and I'm in the minority, but I would have never played if the game was going to be taped. I wouldn't want all the fuss, just as I'm doing now.

This is why more active judges would probably be better. But they'd slow the game down. And an active judge that made an incorrect ruling that changed the game would be even worse.

I also think that having games taped invites this kind of analysis. Complaining about armchair quarterbacking is ridiculous. Unlike say, commenting on the NFL...all of us here actually (kind of) know how to play! The Nova open could easily quadruple the amount of players and not have the strength of the field diluted at all. What would you expect other than people saying "Good move, bad move, lucky roll" and "this rule was used wrong"?

Julnlecs wrote:I was really impressed with Tony outplaying Blackmoor and keeping the game at a fast pace. It was really enjoyable to watch.

I don't think Alan got outplayed, until turn 6 and he just didn't shoot the right unit and didn't move his dreads to cover an objective.




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lambadomy wrote:This is why more active judges would probably be better. But they'd slow the game down. And an active judge that made an incorrect ruling that changed the game would be even worse.

Here's another way to fix it. Have fewer games each day and with fewer points. Players are more rested. And don't tape anything and the baby momma drama has no legs. In the past the cry of TO's have been "you weren't there, you don't know." Not anymore. We were all there and with better views than someone standing next to the table.

2 judges on a final table with $1000 on the line would have been an ok decision imo but oh well.

Congrats to everyone that played! Good matches all around

DarthDiggler wrote:Then the games are to big and there are to many games in a weekend. Whats the point of playing so many games that at the end, in the championship game, the players are so tired that they are just making stuff up and no one notices. If the mistakes get to be so much, then did the best player win or the one who's "honest screw ups" help him the most.

If that's the case I don't want to read anything anywhere about how the best player won - no matter who it was. It's like have a footrace for the worlds fastest man after all participants just swam 15 miles. Did the fastest man really won?


It was interesting that all of Njalls Tempest powers were ignored until the difficult terrain test came up. If he thought they should have worked on the following turn, then where was Driving Gale making Alans BS minus 1? It's a 24" range power and all of Alans shots are 24". He should have been in range of that.

I don't remember him ever rolling up Driving Gale. What turn was that?


And as for your analogies, anyone who thinks the player who wins a tournament is the 'best player' is living in a dream world. The person who wins a tournament was the best man on that day, playing through the particular set of circumstances laid before him in that one tournament. If he had run up against a different opponent or played on a slightly different table or had a bad set of rolls, everything could have been totally different...but that doesn't change the skill or greatness of the player.

In fact, the only real way to judge greatness IMHO, is by a track record of quality and by that measure both Blackmoor and Tony have proved their worth. Is it possible that Tony has gone 24-0 in W/L tournaments because he constantly and knowingly abuses the rules and only happens to play against people who don't know enough to call him on it? I'm sure anything is possible. But isn't it a bit more likely that he *is* a good player and like all of us (I'm guessing you too) makes mistakes sometimes when he plays?

In reality, playing in 40K tournaments *is* like swimming 15 miles before running a foot race. The endurance of playing so many games in such a short time is part-and-partial to the event. The only 'mistake' comes in when you try to shoe horn what winning an event actually means. Tony winning today does not make him the best player, nor does it make Space Wolves the best codex. But the fact that Tony has gone 24-0 in W/L tournaments does make a strong case for him being, one of, if not the best player.

Yes, repeating at the Nova Open is just insane!

Also, it seems to me that we have some reallllllly strong warhammer players around here (greater DC area / MD-VA). Scooter (who I think was helping run the fantasy tourney at Nova Open) has won a bunch of the fantasy tournies at Adepticon, and now Tony is just on a tear in 40k both at Nova and Adepticon.

Makes the smaller local events quite hard to win (of course the top players were from all over, just saying it's a tough crowd!)

Sounds like it had a pretty significant impact in the game, but I wasn't there.

I'm not sure if I can entirely agree with you Jon. I agree tournament flubs happen all the time and usually you realize the day after...but not every 40k game is a net broadcast with a (likely) handful of judges nearby. Then again, I don't know what thje judge policy is at Nova (only at request or if a screw up is spotted). I would have expected a judge to speak up when Alan brought it up....if anything else then to avoid this thread.

Great job to both players...and specifically Alan with your Draigo list! I expect a blog post with details!

yakface wrote:
I don't remember him ever rolling up Driving Gale. What turn was that?

On turn 2 he rolls a d3 and adds 2. He gets Driving Gale, Living Hurricane or Howling Cyclone. On turn 2 none of those came up.

lambadomy wrote:This is why more active judges would probably be better. But they'd slow the game down. And an active judge that made an incorrect ruling that changed the game would be even worse.

The problem is also, at what point are the judges/referees then really partially playing the game for the players? And the other issue that comes up with an 'active' judge is that if they are then essentially tasked to 'speak up' when they see a rules infraction. Therefore, if they do fail to catch a mistake then their failure to speak becomes silent permission that the mistake was 'okay' by them.

So say a rule is broken in the first few turns and then the judge realizes it was a mistake late in the game and calls it on the opponent (who is now doing the same thing). The fact that it is a judge failing to call something early on and then trying to enforce it later in the game makes the situation far worse IMHO.

BTW I agree with all of what you said Yak.

good show. now Tony has to try another codex or he is just a good player with a broken list.

AgeOfEgos wrote:Sounds like it had a pretty significant impact in the game, but I wasn't there.

I'm not sure if I can entirely agree with you Jon. I agree tournament flubs happen all the time and usually you realize the day after...but not every 40k game is a net broadcast with a (likely) handful of judges nearby. Then again, I don't know what thje judge policy is at Nova (only at request or if a screw up is spotted). I would have expected a judge to speak up when Alan brought it up....if anything else then to avoid this thread.

Great job to both players...and specifically Alan with your Draigo list! I expect a blog post with details!

The one time they needed a ruling they called over a judge. There was no indication that judges were lording over them and even if they were, I do not believe it is policy for the judges to step in...and even if that WAS their job, this is a rule that lots of people can miss really, really easily. There is literally no guarantee that even if an active judge was monitoring this table they would have caught the mistake just as Blackmoor, who is a longtime player did not.

Until everyone realizes that every single game of 40K is likely played with questionable or mistaken rules (just not under this kind of scrutiny), this sort of drama will go on forever and ever and ever.

Yakface: Extremely well said. It happens all the time, even at "top level" events.

I myself was often screwy with TLOS unintentionally at first in fifth until my gaming group beat it out of me.

Yeah, I agree with all of this - it would be an interesting experiment to see if active judges added anything, but there are too many ways they could instead just make things worse.

I do agree with Darth on the points levels and # of games...maybe I'm just a little burned out on 2000 points but it just seems like things would be better if you played smaller games. They need to play 8 games so they can have one undefeated player with such a large field though.

1500 is a grand level for a game. But really, I dunno if Warhammer (either game) are particularly well set up for tournament play like that.
I mean, compared to warmachine, it's a heck of a job getting your games in for a 40K tournament.

Smaller points games would limit army choices and lists....without some of the extras and points for characters, you'd end up seeing cookie cutter lists.

At that point, you might as well play chess.

1850-2000 allows almost all the armies to field a competitive list, with all the bells and whistles a player could want.

Local game store has 1500 pt tournies...all the marine armies look the same...tac squads in razors or rhinos....and they lose to Orks who outman them because they don't have the points for the firepower they need.

yakface wrote:
Until everyone realizes that every single game of 40K is likely played with questionable or mistaken rules (just not under this kind of scrutiny), this sort of drama will go on forever and ever and ever.

I understand where you are coming from Jon and given the state of 40k rule clarity, most games do have a handful of mistaken interpretations.

That said, I cannot agree (as someone that is a basement gamer) that it was a particulary obscure FAQ...given the popularity of both Njal and the SW codex in general. I also can't be as dismissive about the casuality of this particular game..given how competitive the event is billed, the number of people likely watching and the fact it was at least asked about.

Rambling aside, I do think we agree that it illustrates that as a whole 40k is not overtly competitive in one off tournaments over a weekend...regardless of structure or having a judge at each table. And it doesn't take away from the success of either player (as both have proven they are top players time and time again).

From what I saw of the final round Blackmoor made 2 huge mistakes.

#1. In a table quarter as primary and objectives as the secondary he should have made his non-troops scoring with the Grand Stratigy.
#2. He needs to keep his paladins together when he combat squads them. When he has such a slow army they need to support each other so they do not get picked off by themselves.
#3. He should have not waited until turn #4 to realize that the game will come down to objectives and been so out of position.

Blackmoor wrote:From what I saw of the final round Blackmoor made 2 huge mistakes.

#1. In a table quarter as primary and objectives as the secondary he should have made his non-troops scoring with the Grand Stratigy.
#2. He needs to keep his paladins together when he combat squads them. When he has such a slow army they need to support each other so they do not get picked off by themselves.
#3. He should have not waited until turn #4 to realize that the game will come down to objectives and been so out of position.

Yeah but how good of a view of the game did you have and did you really know what he was thinking?


/Nice job dude

KGatch113 wrote:

Smaller points games would limit army choices and lists....without some of the extras and points for characters, you'd end up seeing cookie cutter lists.

At that point, you might as well play chess.

1850-2000 allows almost all the armies to field a competitive list, with all the bells and whistles a player could want.

Local game store has 1500 pt tournies...all the marine armies look the same...tac squads in razors or rhinos....and they lose to Orks who outman them because they don't have the points for the firepower they need.

Well, my argument would be that said marine players need to adjust their list building and tactics if they are being over-run. If the meta has changed then you bring a new counter.
I'd advocate 1500 because it allows a game to be played easily within time without putting any strain on the players. I'm cool with bigger tournies (I'm a fast-ish player, though I do play horde orks), I just think that 1500 is better for a weekend event.

AgeOfEgos wrote:
That said, I cannot agree (as someone that is a basement gamer) that it was a particulary obscure FAQ...given the popularity of both Njal and the SW codex in general. I also can't be as dismissive about the casuality of this particular game..given how competitive the event is billed, the number of people likely watching and the fact it was at least asked about.

Rambling aside, I do think we agree that it illustrates that as a whole 40k is not overtly competitive in one off tournaments over a weekend...regardless of structure or having a judge at each table. And it doesn't take away from the success of either player (as both have proven they are top players time and time again).

Well, if I were playing I would not have remembered the ruling and it would have happened to me too.

And god forbid I ever play on a televised table, as I make mistakes constantly. People think I know every rule off the top of my head because of my work on the INAT, but the reality is I'm much better at remembering where rules are (to look them up) then I am actually remembering every single rule.

So if I were on a televised table I would make a bunch of mistakes, ask my opponent for leniency and the internet would apparently claim:

1) I obviously don't know any of the rules so I have no business working on the INAT.
2) If I won and made any number of mistakes then apparently my achievement is somehow suspect.


Do you see the double-edged sword this opens up? There is a reason that sporting events tend to not reverse a bad call by a referred after the game has ended...because that kind of second guessing ruins the whole point of competition. What happens in the moment happens in the moment and it is what it is. Tony should not have made that mistake and Blackmoor should have called him on it, but he didn't and even if we did, we have no idea how the game would have progressed.

So at the end of the day Tony won the game fair and square because what happened on the table happened on the table, right or wrong.

yakface wrote:So at the end of the day Tony won the game fair and square because what happened on the table happened on the table, right or wrong.

This is the bottom line.

Does anyone here ever actually watch sports? There's blown calls all the time, particularly in baseball! There was a pitcher last year that got completely robbed of a perfect game by a blatantly blown call by the first base umpire. At the end of the day, however, the stats hit the books and that blown call was a base hit. I only bring it up to say this: mistakes and calls made by officials are part of any competitive event. Don't even make me bring up Bill Buckner.

KGatch113 wrote:

Smaller points games would limit army choices and lists....without some of the extras and points for characters, you'd end up seeing cookie cutter lists.

That's completely false. 1500 has long been the standard outside the US, and lists are extremely varied. And you see cookie cutter lists at 2000 and 2500 much more so.

The meta is different at 1500. Infantry armies do better, so people who take heavy antivehicle are in trouble. But then if you take heavy antihorde, you might get screwed by a heavy armour list. Then people are sad that they can't spam antivehicle and antitroop, which they can spam easily at the higher point levels. So then they want to raise point levels, because the alternative is not spamming, and we can't have 40K without that.

I watch sports all the time. 40k is a tabletop game with set rules. Most sports blown calls are made in wham-bam plays in which it is difficult to determine what happened. And most sports are trying to incorporate more and more instant replay in order to minimize mistakes. None of this is true of 40k.

Now, I do agree with the sentiment that the game is over, Tony won fair and square, because the players are adults and are working together to make rules decisions with the help of a judge and mistakes get made. But pretty much every ruling could have the time and thought behind it to be comparable to the longest instant-replay reviews in a sport like football, with the added bonus of the possibility of always getting it right with no "well it's too close to call" type rulings. Until that happens I think it's pretty fair to say that ref mistakes in a 40k game are not as forgivable as they are in a sporting event.

lambadomy wrote:I watch sports all the time. 40k is a tabletop game with set rules. Most sports blown calls are made in wham-bam plays in which it is difficult to determine what happened. And most sports are trying to incorporate more and more instant replay in order to minimize mistakes. None of this is true of 40k.

I'm not saying it's the exact same thing, but there are parallels. Even at that high level of competition, like a Superbowl or a World Series or something, there are still errors and penalties and blown calls. To act like a game of space manz should be immune to this sort of thing is kind of mind boggling.

lambadomy wrote:I...it's pretty fair to say that ref mistakes in a 40k game are not as forgivable as they are in a sporting event.

I'd say that they are more forgivable given the lack of all of the tools that sports have at their disposal, but this is probably a discussion for another time. I think we both understand each other's points.

Relic_OMO wrote:

KGatch113 wrote:

Smaller points games would limit army choices and lists....without some of the extras and points for characters, you'd end up seeing cookie cutter lists.

That's completely false. 1500 has long been the standard outside the US, and lists are extremely varied. And you see cookie cutter lists at 2000 and 2500 much more so.

The meta is different at 1500. Infantry armies do better, so people who take heavy antivehicle are in trouble. But then if you take heavy antihorde, you might get screwed by a heavy armour list. Then people are sad that they can't spam antivehicle and antitroop, which they can spam easily at the higher point levels. So then they want to raise point levels, because the alternative is not spamming, and we can't have 40K without that.

IMHO, you are right in your comments. I would also like to add that you have to think on your choices more at the 1500 point level than at the higher level games.

yakface wrote:
Do you see the double-edged sword this opens up? There is a reason that sporting events tend to not reverse a bad call by a referred after the game has ended...because that kind of second guessing ruins the whole point of competition. What happens in the moment happens in the moment and it is what it is. Tony should not have made that mistake and Blackmoor should have called him on it, but he didn't and even if we did, we have no idea how the game would have progressed.

So at the end of the day Tony won the game fair and square because what happened on the table happened on the table, right or wrong.

Now, I don't believe that's completely fair--as I stated a few times that this takes nothing away from either Tony's or Alan's success, in fact I went out of my way to point out they have obviously proven themselves a couple of the top 40k players (several times over).

In addition, I think that analogy of reversing an entire game is a bit poor. We do have a system of stopping the game 'in the moment' before play proceeds--and it's utilized in major sporting events as well. It would be silly to attempt to reverse a game after the fact and I certainly wouldn't (and haven't) advocated doing so.

I do agree that it would be a terrible idea to use taped games to reverse standings. I don't agree that it's a terrible idea for a table dedicated judge at the final game for a sizable amount of money to speak up and say "Hey, actually since he brought that up---the FAQ specifically addresses that question and XYZ is the answer". Then again, I don't know what the judge directive was/is--and maybe they weren't aware of the FAQ either.

Relic_OMO wrote:

KGatch113 wrote:

Smaller points games would limit army choices and lists....without some of the extras and points for characters, you'd end up seeing cookie cutter lists.

That's completely false. 1500 has long been the standard outside the US, and lists are extremely varied. And you see cookie cutter lists at 2000 and 2500 much more so.

The meta is different at 1500. Infantry armies do better, so people who take heavy antivehicle are in trouble. But then if you take heavy antihorde, you might get screwed by a heavy armour list. Then people are sad that they can't spam antivehicle and antitroop, which they can spam easily at the higher point levels. So then they want to raise point levels, because the alternative is not spamming, and we can't have 40K without that.

I actually kind of agree, 1500 certainly makes list-building harder, and can limit the normal spam that is seen. That said, it merely changes the common meta-game into something new and inevitably we'd still be left with certain lists that were able to bring "everything they need" at that points level, so you'd likely just see a redefining of the tiers.

Can I just say there was none of this drama there... and there was a good 20-30 of us watching the second half of both the final games. I am not sure I agree that there need to be REFs enforcing rules on players if the players don't ask for intervention... not to mention I am not sure the judges are any more experienced than the players and may not catch many of these 'issues' unless they look it up.

Day 1 was fine with time and breaks. I had time for lunch, dinner and a run to the room. Today, Day 2 was brutal... No lunch, no dinnfer. Barley 30 Minutes between games if you played a full game, and people were being late like mofos so if you were 'on time' for your match you probably spent 15-20 waiting for delayed matches.

Fantastic event despite the internet metadrama! Eff i'm tired.

Friggin awesome event and some epic games today. Gotta say tgellhere were some stunning results such as dash being tied for best Sportsman.

Hell somehow I ended up going 4-0 today! All in all, NOVA is already getting my time request put in.

Blackmoor wrote:From what I saw of the final round Blackmoor made 2 huge mistakes.

#1. In a table quarter as primary and objectives as the secondary he should have made his non-troops scoring with the Grand Stratigy.
#2. He needs to keep his paladins together when he combat squads them. When he has such a slow army they need to support each other so they do not get picked off by themselves.
#3. He should have not waited until turn #4 to realize that the game will come down to objectives and been so out of position.

Congrats on an awesome tourney, Blackmoor!! The third person analysis is pretty great

@ yak- I really don't think it has to be so black and white. A mistake was made, there's no denying it. Blown calls in sports are scrutinized aplenty... it's a part of having a televised competition, after all. I don't think the analogy is a good one, though- in warhammer you're often making the calls on yourself... as Tony was in this case. Blackmoor asked about the ruling and took his word for it. Those things happen, and it's really hard to know the FAQ entries for other armies- you're usually hoping that your opponent has those rules down stone-cold.

Totally agreed that it doesn't take away from either player, it's just the nature of the beast.

Tony won fair and square and props to him.

Another mistake I made was that I should have charged him with my paladin squad when he got out and rapid fired me. That would have slowed him down if I could have won the combat to deal with them. Instead I tried to run back to my objective.

I shot the scout squad because there was a good chance that we were going down to tie breakers and I was looking for easy kill points.

I did not move my Dreds to contest because Tony seemed unaware of the objectives and I did not want to draw his attention to them. Still they were pretty far away and I thought that he would have trouble getting to it.

I failed my assault into that rhino and I gave up shooting that squad to do it. The reason why I went after it was I needed the extra movement to go after Tony' objective. I was going after his so he would end up with the middle and the other objective. That way we can tie and go to kill points. That failed assault meant that I had to abort that plan because I did not have enough turns to get there and kill what needs killin'.

I really need to make my interceptors scoring so they could have held an objective. I also regret throwing them away, but at the time they seemed unnessisary.

I think Tony won fair and square. But it is really odd that he doesn't know about such a clear and explicit ruling on his preferred HQ from his own FAQ. It's weird.

Unholy_Martyr wrote:Friggin awesome event and some epic games today. Gotta say tgellhere were some stunning results such as dash being tied for best Sportsman.

Hell somehow I ended up going 4-0 today! All in all, NOVA is already getting my time request put in.

Congrats! Awesome job! Which bracket did you win, U_M? And what army did you field?

Unholy_Martyr wrote:Gotta say there were some stunning results such as dash being tied for best Sportsman.

Way to go Dash!

Relic_OMO wrote:

KGatch113 wrote:

Smaller points games would limit army choices and lists....without some of the extras and points for characters, you'd end up seeing cookie cutter lists.

That's completely false. 1500 has long been the standard outside the US, and lists are extremely varied. And you see cookie cutter lists at 2000 and 2500 much more so.

The meta is different at 1500. Infantry armies do better, so people who take heavy antivehicle are in trouble. But then if you take heavy antihorde, you might get screwed by a heavy armour list. Then people are sad that they can't spam antivehicle and antitroop, which they can spam easily at the higher point levels. So then they want to raise point levels, because the alternative is not spamming, and we can't have 40K without that.

Completely wrong. Players end up taking the same lists because they can' t afford characters etc....you might see variations, but they are the same variations.

Again, the game becomes vastly different...you might as well play chess.

Blackmoor wrote:Another mistake I made was that I should have charged him with my paladin squad when he got out and rapid fired me. That would have slowed him down if I could have won the combat to deal with them. Instead I tried to run back to my objective.

Nick Rose and I were debating the moves on the live feed while you were in-progress. Nick thought you should have consolidated your pallies all on the center objective. I argued that you should have driven the non-Draigo squad deeper into his quadrant or made an assault on Njal's unit to assassinate him. Either way you're moving the fight more toward that side of the board and keeping his stuff off your two (from your perspective right-side) quadrants.

Blackmoor wrote:I shot the scout squad because there was a good chance that we were going down to tie breakers and I was looking for easy kill points.

I did not move my Dreds to contest because Tony seemed unaware of the objectives and I did not want to draw his attention to them. Still they were pretty far away and I thought that he would have trouble getting to it.

I failed my assault into that rhino and I gave up shooting that squad to do it. The reason why I went after it was I needed the extra movement to go after Tony' objective. I was going after his so he would end up with the middle and the other objective. That way we can tie and go to kill points. That failed assault meant that I had to abort that plan because I did not have enough turns to get there and kill what needs killin'.

I really need to make my interceptors scoring so they could have held an objective. I also regret throwing them away, but at the time they seemed unnessisary.

Yeah, the choice of Grand Strategy puzzled me. More scoring units would have been good. The Dread thing made us wonder too, but I can see what you were thinking there. Should have realized that a player who's won as many as Tony and has that many scoring units in his army is not going to forget about objectives.

Blackmoor wrote:Tony won fair and square and props to him.

Another mistake I made was that I should have charged him with my paladin squad when he got out and rapid fired me. That would have slowed him down if I could have won the combat to deal with them. Instead I tried to run back to my objective.

I shot the scout squad because there was a good chance that we were going down to tie breakers and I was looking for easy kill points.

I did not move my Dreds to contest because Tony seemed unaware of the objectives and I did not want to draw his attention to them. Still they were pretty far away and I thought that he would have trouble getting to it.

I failed my assault into that rhino and I gave up shooting that squad to do it. The reason why I went after it was I needed the extra movement to go after Tony' objective. I was going after his so he would end up with the middle and the other objective. That way we can tie and go to kill points. That failed assault meant that I had to abort that plan because I did not have enough turns to get there and kill what needs killin'.

I really need to make my interceptors scoring so they could have held an objective. I also regret throwing them away, but at the time they seemed unnessisary.

Class Act as always Blackmoor!

KGatch113 wrote:

Relic_OMO wrote:

KGatch113 wrote:

Smaller points games would limit army choices and lists....without some of the extras and points for characters, you'd end up seeing cookie cutter lists.

That's completely false. 1500 has long been the standard outside the US, and lists are extremely varied. And you see cookie cutter lists at 2000 and 2500 much more so.

The meta is different at 1500. Infantry armies do better, so people who take heavy antivehicle are in trouble. But then if you take heavy antihorde, you might get screwed by a heavy armour list. Then people are sad that they can't spam antivehicle and antitroop, which they can spam easily at the higher point levels. So then they want to raise point levels, because the alternative is not spamming, and we can't have 40K without that.

Completely wrong. Players end up taking the same lists because they can' t afford characters etc....you might see variations, but they are the same variations.

Again, the game becomes vastly different...you might as well play chess.

This is not going to end well. Most of the world still plays 1500 as the primary point size. The US did too in past years, when the GTs were newer and more similar to the UK originals.

Variety exists at 1500 as at 2000.

@Mannahnin

I was in bracket 10 with Aardvark85 (I think, he's the guy from 19th legion. I played Space Wolves and will probably post the list later on after a few drinks.

Mannahnin wrote:Nick Rose and I were debating the moves on the live feed while you were in-progress.

Was this connected to the video at all? I'm sorry I missed it! I mostly just heard the table being mic'ed and then a commentator afterwards... but I didn't tune in until the very end of turn 3.

I dont even know if it was still a debate, but I didnt see Tony roll to hit with JotWW. I guess that settles it in my mind.

KGatch113 wrote:

Relic_OMO wrote:

KGatch113 wrote:

Smaller points games would limit army choices and lists....without some of the extras and points for characters, you'd end up seeing cookie cutter lists.

That's completely false. 1500 has long been the standard outside the US, and lists are extremely varied. And you see cookie cutter lists at 2000 and 2500 much more so.

The meta is different at 1500. Infantry armies do better, so people who take heavy antivehicle are in trouble. But then if you take heavy antihorde, you might get screwed by a heavy armour list. Then people are sad that they can't spam antivehicle and antitroop, which they can spam easily at the higher point levels. So then they want to raise point levels, because the alternative is not spamming, and we can't have 40K without that.

Completely wrong. Players end up taking the same lists because they can' t afford characters etc....you might see variations, but they are the same variations.

Again, the game becomes vastly different...you might as well play chess.

That argument makes NO sense. Might as well play chess? So... you need to think and play strategically instead of just throwing dice?

This was a lot of fun to watch; I'm pretty new to the game, but I'm ravenous for it, and I found this format extremely followable. I knew for the most part what was going on, who was doing what, and it was clear and made sense.

Now, from the perspective of someone who can count on his fingers the number of times he's actually played a game of warhammer 40k, I find it absolutely unbelievable that someone wouldn't know a FAQ ruling about their own army, and a marquee HQ at that. I am not making a personal judgement here on anyone, but I do think it is unacceptable for someone to be at a final table, and not know their FAQ backwards and forwards. I just played in my first 'Ard Boyz as Blood Angels, and I can tell you I knew my FAQ, and had it printed out. Whether he knew and was pushing for advantage, or didn't know and let it slip, it's unacceptable either way.

Again, I'm not trying to take away from the victory, but at this level there are no excuses, not even TV, or a long weekend, for not knowing important information like that. It's really a bit stunning to me.

Nova's FAQ said that you do not need to roll to hit with JotWW.

Awesome event, mvbrandt and co! The zero comp team will be there next yeaf, money was an issue this year.

Way to be blackmoor. I wss pulling for you, bud. You almost had it.

RiTides wrote:

Mannahnin wrote:Nick Rose and I were debating the moves on the live feed while you were in-progress.

Was this connected to the video at all? I'm sorry I missed it! I mostly just heard the table being mic'ed and then a commentator afterwards... but I didn't tune in until the very end of turn 3.

UStream has the Social tab and the Chat tab. The Chat tab was full of people discussing the game in progress and generally shooting the breeze.


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40ktwitch wrote:I dont even know if it was still a debate, but I didnt see Tony roll to hit with JotWW. I guess that settles it in my mind.

As Blackmoor said, NOVA's FAQ specifically ruled that it didn't have to.

Blackmoor wrote:Nova's FAQ said that you do not need to roll to hit with JotWW.

Nice contradiction of the main rule book FAQ.

Bummer SW won again......

Congrates to the guy who won, just not his army

I would also like to point out that I was not feeling very well after game #2 today. It is hard the play 13 games over a weekend and since I am from the west coast I was starting at 5:00am pst. The jet lag was kicking my butt.

I watched you on ustream you kept your spirits up and played well. Class act all the way!

Blackmoor wrote:I would also like to point out that I was not feeling very well after game #2 today. It is hard the play 13 games over a weekend and since I am from the west coast I was starting at 5:00am pst. The jet lag was kicking my butt.

You did great, was rootin' for ya the whole time. Total class act and I loved hearing the 80's movie references

Did not see the last game with Tony but I enjoyed the hell out of the game with Neil.

*Stallone on top of the Russian summit..*

DRAIIGGOOOOOOOOO...........DRRRAIIIGOOOOOOOOO

FeindusMaximus wrote:

Blackmoor wrote:Nova's FAQ said that you do not need to roll to hit with JotWW.

Nice contradiction of the main rule book FAQ.

Not a FAQ contradiction... JOtWW has no effect on "hitting" so rolling to hit is pointless. The initiative test is triggered by being touched by the line drawn, not by being"hit".

wisdom like silence wrote:

FeindusMaximus wrote:

Blackmoor wrote:Nova's FAQ said that you do not need to roll to hit with JotWW.

Nice contradiction of the main rule book FAQ.

Not a FAQ contradiction... JOtWW has no effect on "hitting" so rolling to hit is pointless. The initiative test is triggered by being touched by the line drawn, not by being"hit".

Wrong all physcic shooting attacks roll to hit

Well, that's the benefit of being able to have the final say in a rules argument and you run the tournament...you snuff it before it learns to walk.

wisdom like silence wrote:

FeindusMaximus wrote:

Blackmoor wrote:Nova's FAQ said that you do not need to roll to hit with JotWW.

Nice contradiction of the main rule book FAQ.

Not a FAQ contradiction... JOtWW has no effect on "hitting" so rolling to hit is pointless. The initiative test is triggered by being touched by the line drawn, not by being"hit".

really, in the SW codex JoWW is a pyskic shooting attack (read the profile). FAQ = all pyskic shooting attacks require you to roll to hit. Seems pretty straight forward to me.


I was really surprised when GW made this ruling . Arn't the space puppies the new FACE of the imperium (usurping Ultramar). Now the Rune Priest has to make 2d6 <10 and 3+ to hit to kill instant.

I am pretty sure everyone knows the rules. They just like forgetting some.

Congratulations Tony!

FeindusMaximus wrote:

really, in the SW codex JoWW is a pyskic shooting attack (read the profile). FAQ = all pyskic shooting attacks require you to roll to hit. Seems pretty straight forward to me.

There are several threads about it on YMMDC if you want to revisit THAT issue.


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KGatch113 wrote:
Completely wrong. Players end up taking the same lists because they can' t afford characters etc....you might see variations, but they are the same variations.

Why is that a bad thing? I'm sick of seeing same characters over and over again. Special characters are supposed to be special.

Backfire wrote:

KGatch113 wrote:
Completely wrong. Players end up taking the same lists because they can' t afford characters etc....you might see variations, but they are the same variations.

Why is that a bad thing? I'm sick of seeing same characters over and over again. Special characters are supposed to be special.

Special characters haven't really been anything special in a long time, most people just call them characters now. Some of them might be over the top in some people's view, but I would almost bet that many of them at the NOVA, and most events for that matter, are selected to open up certain army wide options (Crowe for Purifier troops, Belial for Deathwing, etc). While not all characters serve that purpose in an army, it has been the the game development staff has chosen to allow players to field those types of armies from the Fluff. Or at least approximations of them.

Blackmoor wrote:Tony won fair and square and props to him.

Another mistake I made was that I should have charged him with my paladin squad when he got out and rapid fired me. That would have slowed him down if I could have won the combat to deal with them. Instead I tried to run back to my objective.

I shot the scout squad because there was a good chance that we were going down to tie breakers and I was looking for easy kill points.

I did not move my Dreds to contest because Tony seemed unaware of the objectives and I did not want to draw his attention to them. Still they were pretty far away and I thought that he would have trouble getting to it.

I failed my assault into that rhino and I gave up shooting that squad to do it. The reason why I went after it was I needed the extra movement to go after Tony' objective. I was going after his so he would end up with the middle and the other objective. That way we can tie and go to kill points. That failed assault meant that I had to abort that plan because I did not have enough turns to get there and kill what needs killin'.

I really need to make my interceptors scoring so they could have held an objective. I also regret throwing them away, but at the time they seemed unnessisary.

Tony was making an ungodly number of armor saves. At one point he made 9/11 and then 11/11 all in a row. That pace (4 armor saves, 1 dies) was kept up all game long. I was waiting for the dice to turn, but they never did. When someone is hot like that there is little you can do. You just have to hope they screw up moving something.


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Mannahnin wrote:I think Tony won fair and square. But it is really odd that he doesn't know about such a clear and explicit ruling on his preferred HQ from his own FAQ. It's weird.

I agree with both sentiments. I would tend to quibble with the idea that Njalls Tempest power can only be understood from the FAQ. It says in the codex under Njall that the power only works for that game turn and the main rulebook defines a gameturn. With no FAQ whatsoever the rule is clear to follow. The FAQ was published to quell any wishful thinking at the time. Once again the NOVA had it's own faq and they could have changed the rule.

KGatch113 wrote:
Completely wrong. Players end up taking the same lists because they can' t afford characters etc....you might see variations, but they are the same variations.

Again, the game becomes vastly different...you might as well play chess.

I don't even know what you're trying to say with things like 'same variations'. And of course you can afford characters - there's no character in the game that costs more than 1500 pts.

In fact, you can afford anything at 1500. It's high enough that you can include what you need. It's not high enough that you can include everything you want, especially if you want 3 of everything. Which is why list-building is more of a challenge, and the meta becomes different.

Yes, different codices are more powerful at 1500 than the ones that are powerful at 2000. I'd argue that more of the codices are able to compete, which is a good thing.

Don't think that Tony's saves went unnoticed by me. I poured a to of shooting into his long fangs and he seemed to roll above average on saves. Then when I shot his grey hunters I could not kill anything. That is one of the reasons why I shot his scout squad was because psycannons can kill them easier.

If Tony did misapply the Tempest rule, then he should offer to give back the trophy. That simple. That's sportsmanship. That's how you PROVE you were not cheating. That's how you discourage other people from cheating in the future. That's how you avoid having a tainted, asterisked win.

Knowing your Codex and the FAQ is fundamental to playing the game, friendly or tournament. The SW Codex FAQ seems directly on point here.

It is so different from a blown call in a football game that I won't debate it. Let me just point out that there is a commercial on television where a player in a basketball game corrects a call on a tip out of bounds. This should be the same.

I hope that Tony will be the real winner, acknowledge his mistake, and make the offer.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
could someone post Blackmoor's list? I'm going shopping today.....

Relic_OMO wrote:

KGatch113 wrote:
Completely wrong. Players end up taking the same lists because they can' t afford characters etc....you might see variations, but they are the same variations.

Again, the game becomes vastly different...you might as well play chess.

I don't even know what you're trying to say with things like 'same variations'. And of course you can afford characters - there's no character in the game that costs more than 1500 pts.

In fact, you can afford anything at 1500. It's high enough that you can include what you need. It's not high enough that you can include everything you want, especially if you want 3 of everything. Which is why list-building is more of a challenge, and the meta becomes different.

Yes, different codices are more powerful at 1500 than the ones that are powerful at 2000. I'd argue that more of the codices are able to compete, which is a good thing.

You take a 1500 point list and add say, Vulkan. Your list is now vastly different. And it is at 1690. Throw in a couple of speeders and a dreadnought and you are at 1850. The amount of time you save playing as opposed to a straight 1500 is negligble.

By same variations I mean someone's list will have the same core units, maybe with landspeeders or attack bikes. But in essence, the armies tend to be the same. At 1850+ you can afford a character without lowering the ability of your army. a 1500 point list with Marneus is not as powerful as the same list with 250 or so points spent on extra troops. An 1850 list is.

As pointed out elsewhere, you need expensive characters to open up army traits. As I have just shown, 200 points spent on a character means most armies are actually close to being 1500 points. By lowering the points of a tournament, you get rid of the diversity characters bring.

As for the chestnut about other places playing 1500, I've seen numerous posts of people who are....jealous...at the US allowing higher points.

Finally, and again I'll make this point...at 1850 almost all of the armies are competitive. At 1500 you leave a larger number of armies at home.

Still recovering, but, the GT had no cash prize. Just a plaque and a few goodies.

We ref the Invitational games, but for fairness it's on a player to call in a judge on a rules question.

Allan and Tony seemed to have a great game, judging by the bits I was able to actually observe.

Ended 4-4 with Daemons, and 2-3 in the Invitational. Got a total of 5 Grey Knights players, beat one, lost to the rest. Also lost to DE venom spam after getting the wrong wave, mishapping half my army, and getting torrented of the board. Also had atleast two games where, the first shots of the game, caused 2 saves on Fateweaver, failed both, re-roll, failed both, leadership check, double 6's. Doh. Had fun though

I went 3/5 but had a really good time. Would I have enjoyed it more if I hadn't had to play GK 4 times? You bet.

And I can't fault anyone for making a mistake in game play after that many hours. Should he have known his own rules well enough to know he was wrong? Certainly, but we all make mistakes when we're so tired we can barely remember our own names.

Congrats to Tony on the win. Blackmoor, you are a true class act by taking your loss gracefully and complimenting on the winner. That was a tough loss.

My list:
Draigo
Libby w/shrouding, might of titan, quicksilver, santuary

10 Paladins w/brotherhood banner, 4 psycannons (1mc), 3 swords (1mc), 4 halberds (1mc), 2 hammers

6 GK Strike Squad

10 GK Intercepters w/2 psycannons, psybolt ammo, justicar w/mc demonhammer

3 psyflemen dreds

That is it. 31 models that fit very nicely in a suitcase w/5 days of clothes so I did not have to check my luggage

A few notes about it:
When the paladins don't combat squad they are the feathered from hell. They are where other deathstars go to die.

The strikes were worthless and just were there to fill up a troop spot. They just hung back in games and sat on an objective. I tried to make them a 10 man unit but I just did not have the points. That is one of my big advantages is that you can combat squad so you can change your number of units depending on what kind of mission you are playing.

My strategy was to win KP missions. If KP was the first objective it is an easy win. If it was table quarters and KP was the second objective I can hold 2 table quarters very easily and contest and then win on KP. If it was objectives first, and KP second then I wanted to hold 2 objectives and contest one and win on KPs. My biggest weakness is in missions where it has KPs last because it is hard for me to hold both table quarters and objectives at the same time because I do not have the units for that. That is why I knew I was in trouble going in to the final round when I was looking at the missions the day before.

mikeguth wrote:If Tony did misapply the Tempest rule, then he should offer to give back the trophy. .

I think that's to much and it doesn't need to go that far. All this scrutiny is directly because of the camera at the table. That's what had to go.

Blackmoor - I've played with that Paladin list (similar) a bunch of times and finally had to let it go. It became to hard to keep enemy GK's from getting the charge on my Paladins, especially when they are coming out of a LR or Stormraven. Maybe I'm the only one who would put 10 Purifiers and grenades in a Stormraven, but that unit just owned my Paladins. You are a better man than I that you were able to avoid that mess.

I will agree you should have been able to torrent his units off the table. Paladins don't always need to assault to be effective. 16 psycannon shots on the move is damn deadly enough in it's own right.. Add in the 3 dreads and some pot shots from the strikes and interceptors and you have a hell of a shooty list you can spring on people.

I think it is safe to say that in all of the years I have been wargaming (20 or so) that the number of games where NO major rules botches took place can be counted comfortably on one hand. It happens all the time. I guarantee that it happened in every game that didn't happen to be on camera. It is just the nature of the beast.

mikeguth wrote:It is so different from a blown call in a football game that I won't debate it.

I think you missed the main point of that post.

Blown calls were an example of how any competition involves a certain element of human error, and all of the cheating accusations in this thread are silly and unnecessary.

To all the people that say never have your game taped and streaming is bad bla bla bla. I had a blast watching the tourney. I think what needs to happen is on day 2 top table need a ref for the day. Not a Jude a Ref like in the invitational. Having these games broadcast can only help the hobby and game play not hurt it. Look in Golf people on TV call in and report rules violations and people get docked strokes all the time. When you are playing for money pries=$ you are going to come under more scrutiny. I think this can only be good. There will be growing pains with this but the simple fact was people that wanted to go to the NOVA that couldn't got to watch it on tv follow there friends, bloggers and Podcasters. So I say the more coverage the better.

A lot of people think that paladins are an assault unit but they are both assault and a shooty unit.

My worst match- up is grey knights. I played against 3 over the weekend and 2 of them had storm ravens. I hate mindstrke missiles, and since they are faster they get the charge and with stupid psych- out grenades I am in trouble.

Blackmoor wrote:A lot of people think that paladins are an assault unit but they are both assault and a shooty unit.

My worst match- up is grey knights. I played against 3 over the weekend and 2 of them had storm ravens. I hate mindstrke missiles, and since they are faster they get the charge and with stupid psych- out grenades I am in trouble.

What made you ultimately decide to go all foot in your list? Do you feel that this type of list is and should be slogging, or are you just catering to a playstyle that you feel more comfortable with?

I agree with you that the worst matchup for this sort of list is another GK army...and with the lack of mobility inherent in a footslogging list, it can be hard to dodge an assault as you said.

Glad to see you do very well with it though. =]

Were the streams of these games archived, and if so where could a person find them? I work nights and was unable to watch :(


Congratulations on your results, Blackmoor! Hopefully we'll get to play again sometime (maybe not a kp mission )!

Congrats Blackmoor, maybe well see each other at the Smackdown. I was unable to attend but watching the live feed made me feel better about it (I think taping these things is great and interesting to watch).

@Russ, the streaming site link at the begining of this thread has all the games on there to watch.

Blackmoor wrote:A few notes about it:
When the paladins don't combat squad they are the feathered from hell. They are where other deathstars go to die.

The strikes were worthless and just were there to fill up a troop spot. They just hung back in games and sat on an objective. I tried to make them a 10 man unit but I just did not have the points. That is one of my big advantages is that you can combat squad so you can change your number of units depending on what kind of mission you are playing.

My strategy was to win KP missions. If KP was the first objective it is an easy win. If it was table quarters and KP was the second objective I can hold 2 table quarters very easily and contest and then win on KP. If it was objectives first, and KP second then I wanted to hold 2 objectives and contest one and win on KPs. My biggest weakness is in missions where it has KPs last because it is hard for me to hold both table quarters and objectives at the same time because I do not have the units for that. That is why I knew I was in trouble going in to the final round when I was looking at the missions the day before.

This explanation was awesome, and really helps me understand your list / strategy more.

Blackmoor wrote:
The strikes were worthless and just were there to fill up a troop spot. They just hung back in games and sat on an objective. I tried to make them a 10 man unit but I just did not have the points.

You thinking about going back to the Troop Terminators?

It really was interesting to watch your games, the running diatribe was excellent.

By the way, if Tony made a mistake on the rules it is no big deal. I made a mistake about the psychic hood and aegis (it had never come up before because nobody has offensive psychic powers anymore). If I had not looked it up and asked a judge to confirm it I would be getting murdered today.

I lost the game only because I did not make my Intercepters troops so they could shunt back to my objective that had no one on it.

@Blackmoor:

Thanks for posting the list, and good job in the tourney. I've always been a fan of minimized killpoints for an advantage, and having KP in every mission just helps that. Too bad about all those saves...

@MVBrandt:

Thanks for the clarification of the prizes for the open, obviously a lot of our griping was about something not real. It looks like you ran a really great event, I've never flown or even really made a long drive for an event before but suddenly I'm interested.

Why did I choose that army?

There are a lot of reasons why. I like small durable armies like my thousand sons army I played all through 3rd edition. I also like to stay away from all of the common builds and try different things. Since everyone plays with either Crowe or Coteaz, I want to try Draigo. That is why in 4th edition I played foot Eldar when everyone played mech eldar.

I will be retiring my grey knights soon because there are a million GKs running around and I do not want to add to the problem. That is why I have thousand of points of SW that no one has ever seen. So it is on to demons (tzeentch for life baby!!!)

atta boy blackmoor. more daemons the better. wow that's really weird, last night I started writing up a tzeentch list to counter the current builds.

Your history of playing (and winning) with unorthodox armies is well known Blackmoor--speaks to the talent of the player Congratulations again!

Blackmoor wrote:Why did I choose that army?

There are a lot of reasons why. I like small durable armies like my thousand sons army I played all through 3rd edition. I also like to stay away from all of the common builds and try different things. Since everyone plays with either Crowe or Coteaz, I want to try Draigo. That is why in 4th edition I played foot Eldar when everyone played mech eldar.

I will be retiring my grey knights soon because there are a million GKs running around and I do not want to add to the problem. That is why I have thousand of points of SW that no one has ever seen. So it is on to demons (tzeentch for life baby!!!)

It's the same reason I play Draigo - plus I like the pure GK aspect and tend to stay away from the henchmen/inquisitors.

I'm glad to hear you're going Daemons! I'm a big fan of Tzeentch bolt/Fatecrusher variants and have had some good results with them lately. A player of your caliber should be able to take Daemons pretty far. (Not to say they aren't good, but they're a bit more chancey, as we all know) Looking forward to see what you can do with them.

I'm glad to hear that the army I would have made (see my sig, lol) is tactically sound. Congrats on the 2nd place win! (2nd out of all the players is still a win in my book)

Well done to all the participants, especially Blackmoor for almost going all the way.

Since Allan has said that his own decisions lost the game and not any rules issues, can we please let that die?

Blackmoor wrote:By the way, if Tony made a mistake on the rules it is no big deal. I made a mistake about the psychic hood and aegis (it had never come up before because nobody has offensive psychic powers anymore). If I had not looked it up and asked a judge to confirm it I would be getting murdered today.

I lost the game only because I did not make my Intercepters troops so they could shunt back to my objective that had no one on it.

Congratulations on your outstanding showing, Blackmoor!

Your responses in this thread show that true sportsmanship (and class) is not dead at these events.

Ozzy, come to the next BAO! I am pulling the friend card on this one! Haha

And the cameras were fething awesome! It was so fun to watch the games and talk to buddies about it as it was happening. I think that this will only improve the hobby to broadcast matches, that is a seriously cool move and every iteration of it gets better.

I played on one of the streamed matches at the Adepticon finals and I can honestly say it is not big deal. You forget it's there after a few seconds because you are so focused on what's going on.

We had 24 people tie for 8 EXCELLENT/Best Game Ever votes over the course of their 8 games.

Dash of Pepper won best sportsmanship, though he'd passed out with his equally tired touristing wife by the time of awards, and we passed it down to Sean Nayden.

We had less unpleasant votes ("one of worst games ever") over the entire 800+ games played in the 40k GT ... than tied-for-best sportsmen. We're pretty happy w/ the sportsmanship.

Let's start streaming Fantasy games too!

The live streaming was impressive. I am curious what equipment or resources would be needed to increase the number of feeds.

I can honestly say that the quality of the games and opponents were way above average. People overall were just in a really good mood and were having a good time. I am glad to hear the number of 'incidents' was minimal.

http://ustre.am/:18Ng9

Cheating for all to see at 33:10. Noob mistake then the cheat....

Cannot wait to hear the spin at YTTH on that one.

Can you elaborate? I didn't catch it.

He cheats by moving a missile launcher dude from behind the hill to the top of it where it would have better line of sight.

This happens after the game was in progress.

actually, what happened was that he took a casualty in a long fang pack...

...the pack leader, who was maintaining unit coherancy from the middle. This would cause the unit to have to move in his following turn, keeping them from being able to fire.

After he removed the pack leader he then picks up a missle launcher from the unit and replaces the pack leader with it....

Nice cheat.

Take the cheating accusations somewhere else. Ugh.

lol Oh he's dead, but theyre always on the outside edge, dont worry he's dead ...

Smooth


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pretre wrote:Take the cheating accusations somewhere else. Ugh.

More than an accusation there lol

jdjamesdean@mail.com wrote:

Automatically Appended Next Post:

pretre wrote:Take the cheating accusations somewhere else. Ugh.

More than an accusation there lol

Exactly.

Accusation...and obvious evidence caught on video AND audio.

Oh, yeah, well I heard that everyone cheated everyone there. It was a big old cheaty orgy, and none of us should care about nova open, or the terrible stains everyone woke up with afterwards. They all opened up their perfect automaton mode switched and turned them off, so the crafty bastards could cheat and call it human error. Pfft. Everyone on dakka knows there is no such thing as human error.

sharkticon wrote: Everyone on dakka knows there is no such thing as human error.

That's a laugh.

Tell me, is it an "error" in chess if while your opponent isnt looking you pick up your Queen and put her in a position that you can checkmate your opponent on the next turn?

Cheating?...or error?

Beerfart wrote:

sharkticon wrote: Everyone on dakka knows there is no such thing as human error.

That's a laugh.

Tell me, is it an "error" in chess if while your opponent isnt looking you pick up your Queen and put her in a position that you can checkmate your opponent on the next turn?

Cheating?...or error?

You seen to have amazing psychic powers that let you know what everyone is thinking, and their intent, so you tell me. I'll be the guy with the tin foil hat.

Beerfart wrote:

jdjamesdean@mail.com wrote:

Automatically Appended Next Post:

pretre wrote:Take the cheating accusations somewhere else. Ugh.

More than an accusation there lol

Exactly.

Accusation...and obvious evidence caught on video AND audio.

Okay, how about 'Go take your grudge somewhere else.'

sharkticon wrote:

Beerfart wrote:

sharkticon wrote: Everyone on dakka knows there is no such thing as human error.

That's a laugh.

Tell me, is it an "error" in chess if while your opponent isnt looking you pick up your Queen and put her in a position that you can checkmate your opponent on the next turn?

Cheating?...or error?

You seen to have amazing psychic powers that let you know what everyone is thinking, and their intent, so you tell me. I'll be the guy with the tin foil hat.

I guess that hat is covering your eyes and ears then. I don't claim to know anything, but I know what I saw....and what I saw was an obvious cheat. It's cute how you can shut your eyes and stick your fingers in your ears while repeating "lalalalalalalalalala" when there is a video that specifically shows what went down.


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pretre wrote:
Okay, how about 'Go take your grudge somewhere else.'

What grudge? This is tournament discussion news.

Prominant blog-owner who claims to be the best out there and has a mission statement of improving people's games caught cheating at a GT during a "Friendly" game.

I'm sure there are people interested in seeing that.

MVBrandt wrote:We had 24 people tie for 8 EXCELLENT/Best Game Ever votes over the course of their 8 games.

Dash of Pepper won best sportsmanship, though he'd passed out with his equally tired touristing wife by the time of awards, and we passed it down to Sean Nayden.

We had less unpleasant votes ("one of worst games ever") over the entire 800+ games played in the 40k GT ... than tied-for-best sportsmen. We're pretty happy w/ the sportsmanship.

You didn't give him the award cause he was tired and left?????

@Beerfart: Next year, why don't you go to NOVA, it seems like everyone there had a much more relaxed time than you have had watching it!

....one more thing.

Look, before we talk about grudges and what a jerk I am for being so "accusing". Take a second and THINK about the purpose of these live podcasts.

They're there so you can watch games in progress. It's a form of entertainment and it's designed to make us gamers discuss what went on during the game and see how people play.

Both players knew that they were being watched and listened to, THEY KNEW THIS.

If you cheat during a game like this how can you do anything but EXPECT to be called out on it. I was at the tournament and I know that this was a big issue with many people at the time that it happened. We watched it on the computer that night...and it was a source of MUCH discussion.

Discussing what happened during the game is why those games were recorded in the first place. If someone is caught messing up (just like what happened here) it should be shown as an example of a dickish move and what "not to do".

It's not a question of having a grudge or picking on someone. The man knew he was being recorded. He knew his behavior and gameplay was going to be analysed by gamers all over.

I go to his site all the time...I'll be looking for an explanation.

In the meantime, here at dakka, it's tournament news. It's posted as an example of "What not to do".




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sharkticon wrote:@Beerfart: Next year, why don't you go to NOVA, it seems like everyone there had a much more relaxed time than you have had watching it!

I WAS there guy. I went 7 and 1 in the 40k Tournament, and had bags of fun being there. FANTASTIC tournament....

...but....

This was a big deal in some circles.

Friendly game with prominant blog author participating....and he cheats.

That's not news?

Hey all - I was "that tyranid player" (/braces self). Although I've been a GW player and fan since 2e, my play history in 5e is 2 friendly games, 1 very small 3-game FLGS tournament, and NOVA. With that in mind, I'll post a few comments to earlier posts about the 3 games from day 1, especially having had high expectations after the games from the day before. I obviously never expected that I would *ever* be on table 1 at NOVA, and even asked Mike if he was okay with me being on camera/miked up given my (lack of) experience. Big kudos to Mike for letting a new player enjoy a little limelight, feel a little special going 3-1 on day 1 at a huge tournament (and all the well-earned vinegar that goes with said limelight /grin).

If you're familiar with the tournament format, my initial random seed on Saturday was table 2 in bracket 1 (where the camera was), and wins pushed me to table 1 for the rest of the day.

Magilla Gurilla -
I can agree that the top table was not the most "appealing" games to watch.
I also saw some pretty shady things going on with the Tyranid player; however, I am willing to chalk it up to being new(er) to the game.
Having said that....
...I have no doubt that MVB is aware of the situation; and will do what he can to make sure all the parties involved are aware of any possible problems.

In my opinion two thumbs up for the willingness to have an event like this broadcast from beginning to end.

First - thanks for the benefit of the doubt: I'll own up to being uneducated/inexperienced any day of the week as that's absolutely accurate; deliberate cheating: not in a million years. After my initial flgs tournament experience I was very sensitized to my slow play, and intentionally took a smaller list to NOVA to help compensate, but clearly not enough. As far as the "situation" of I and my opponents only getting through 3-4 turns, Mike was definitely aware, as was John, the head judge. Mike and I talked about it, and he asked me to work on speeding up after the 2nd game; and then again, he, John and I all talked about it after the 3rd game. I was definitely stressing about it and did for the rest of the tournament, and appreciated Andrew pushing me in the 4th game.

hyv3mynd -
From the little I watched, there was a tyranid player under the camera for 2 games that only finished 3/4 turns. Wasn't very familiar with his own unit's stats and rules.

I understand there's added pressure playing under a camera and I've never done it. Even still, I've played nids exclusively for a year and you really have to move to finish 2k games in a time limit. Assaults with multiple initiatives, rending, armor, and FnP really slow the game down.

Tomorrow should be a lot better as hopefully the most experienced players play under the camera at a better pace with more solid rules knowledge.

Tiny bit of validation perhaps... thanks hyv3mynd.

whoadirty -
I would consider myself sort of a novice player, so it's interesting to see some of these guys not know the codex they are using. Or they are cheating. Just watched a Tyranid player playing against Grey Knights and when his Tervigon died, he said he only had to put wounds on one squad. There were a couple other instances I have seen in another game (for an army I don't even play) where the guy had to look up the rules. Is this common? I kind of expected guys to know their codex at a tourney like this.

This was a huge mistake on my part - and was so concerned about the slowplay aspects was not about to look into a rulebook unless forced to; and Andrew just said play on. I should have had this one down though.

Warlocke21 wrote:Hey all - I was "that tyranid player".....
.....This was a huge mistake on my part - and was so concerned about the slowplay aspects was not about to look into a rulebook unless forced to; and Andrew just said play on. I should have had this one down though.

Two thumbs up for "manning" up. As I said in my quoted post, I chalked up a lot of what I saw to you being a newer player. We have all been there at one time or another...
...most of us didn't have to do it while our games were being recorded!

@Warlocke21:

Thanks for the rundown of your experience and for talking about what happened - I don't envy you having to be on camera for multiple games without a ton of 5e experience.

@sharkticon:

People at the NOVA open would obviously be more laid back because they're busy playing their own games. Only people not playing have time to watch the games that are being streamed unless they're going back to their hotel after playing 4 games of 40k to go watch another game of 40k.

If the stream is there, and you watch it, and you see someone doing something illegal, especially something like model replacement which is often easy to hide from an opponent...it's kind of stupid not to call it cheating. Rules mistakes can always be explained away by confusion or brain farts or just not knowing and always playing it wrong until called...but this would be different. There's no reason to accuse people of having grudges...they watched a game and saw something. Are you actively NOT seeing this happen in the stream? Do you think he just pulled the model from the wrong unit first? It seems pretty straightforward.

Some things of note:

Blackmoor being a true class act and putting the controversy of his game to rest, and now an admittedly "new" tyranid player owning up, posting, and being, again, a class act about his experience.

Who says sportsmanship and class are dead in 40k? This, in my opinion, is the true state of the 40k community these days!

Hoard armies are hard to play in a competitive enviroment (lots and lots of models to move). But that is no excuse for others (mech boys) to hate on them.
I did notice that the set up time for the GK player was quite long compared to the size of his army.

Props for making it to the top tables, Ghostin. You did a lot better than some of us armchair generals would have done. I can't imagine how I would have performed under a camera with 125 nerds watching me. I'm sure it was a humbling experience for many of us watching and made us feel more human in reflecting on our own tournament performances in the past.

Beerfart wrote:http://ustre.am/:18Ng9

Cheating for all to see at 33:10. Noob mistake then the cheat....

Cannot wait to hear the spin at YTTH on that one.

Welcome to several days ago and a few pages back.

If you listen to the audio he asked his opponent's permission. Doesn't change the noobiness and it certainly is more funny cause of who he is.

winterman wrote:

Beerfart wrote:http://ustre.am/:18Ng9

Cheating for all to see at 33:10. Noob mistake then the cheat....

Cannot wait to hear the spin at YTTH on that one.

Welcome to several days ago and a few pages back.

If you listen to the audio he asked his opponent's permission. Doesn't change the noobiness and it certainly is more funny cause of who he is.

Ya, if your looking for some cheating. Watch dash play tony in the 7th round. There was a lot that he did but the worst one was contesting with the ravager at the end of the game even though it got immobilized on the top of turn 5 by tony. The other stuff happened still but to have something that almost changed the outcome is a little more unforgiving. Luckily tony had the secondary.

Im happy none of my games are mentioned in this drama
But I can agree with the Warlock, your first few mins under the cam are a bit scary and intimidating and you feel extra dumb if you mess up a rule, which I am sure I did somewhere in my games.
But after about 10 mins or once the dice start rolling, you totally forget about the camera, the mic, the huge rig, and all the people watching. You get enveloped into the game and you just play seamlessly, or at least that's how it felt for me.

On Dashs and steleks, interesting choices regarding casualty removal. Id rather not comment lol

Tomb King wrote:

winterman wrote:

Beerfart wrote:http://ustre.am/:18Ng9

Cheating for all to see at 33:10. Noob mistake then the cheat....

Cannot wait to hear the spin at YTTH on that one.

Welcome to several days ago and a few pages back.

If you listen to the audio he asked his opponent's permission. Doesn't change the noobiness and it certainly is more funny cause of who he is.

Ya, if your looking for some cheating. Watch dash play tony in the 7th round. There was a lot that he did but the worst one was contesting with the ravager at the end of the game even though it got immobilized on the top of turn 5 by tony. The other stuff happened still but to have something that almost changed the outcome is a little more unforgiving. Luckily tony had the secondary.

I believe a wrongly immobilized ravager a believe.

Warlocke21 wrote:Big kudos to Mike for letting a new player enjoy a little limelight, feel a little special going 3-1 on day 1 at a huge tournament (and all the well-earned vinegar that goes with said limelight /grin).

I agree! It's pretty awesome that they didn't "rig it" to have someone super experienced and/or famous on table 1 at the start of the random draw. And props for coming on here and posting... I can't imagine how many mistakes I make per game (honestly, still getting 8e fantasy down...) and having it recorded would be pretty amazing AND pretty stressful . Great job going 3-1 the first day and cheers for coming on and posting about it!




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MVBrandt wrote:We had 24 people tie for 8 EXCELLENT/Best Game Ever votes over the course of their 8 games.

Dash of Pepper won best sportsmanship, though he'd passed out with his equally tired touristing wife by the time of awards, and we passed it down to Sean Nayden.

We had less unpleasant votes ("one of worst games ever") over the entire 800+ games played in the 40k GT ... than tied-for-best sportsmen. We're pretty happy w/ the sportsmanship.

While this is great- I wish Mannahnin's or similar sports scoring would get picked up. There's a certain amount of pressure to put "Best Game Ever" even if, you know... it wasn't!

But it does sound like people had a fantastic time! I wonder if riding out a hurricane had anything to do with the communal feeling

RiTides wrote:
While this is great- I wish Mannahnin's or similar sports scoring would get picked up. There's a certain amount of pressure to put "Best Game Ever" even if, you know... it wasn't!

But it does sound like people had a fantastic time! I wonder if riding out a hurricane had anything to do with the communal feeling

I don't know, I didn't feel any pressure, there were just a lot of great games and people playing them. I do kinda wish there was to rate at the end of the event 'best opponent' but logistically that is probably close to impossible to pull off.

by round 3, you pretty much got to know all the people at the tables around you as the rankings started to line up, so your neighbors were probably your next opponent. There was a communal feeling of the near by tables because of it.

Warlocke21 wrote:Hey all - I was "that tyranid player" (/braces self). Although I've been a GW player and fan since 2e, my play history in 5e is 2 friendly games, 1 very small 3-game FLGS tournament, and NOVA. With that in mind, I'll post a few comments to earlier posts about the 3 games from day 1, especially having had high expectations after the games from the day before. I obviously never expected that I would *ever* be on table 1 at NOVA, and even asked Mike if he was okay with me being on camera/miked up given my (lack of) experience. Big kudos to Mike for letting a new player enjoy a little limelight, feel a little special going 3-1 on day 1 at a huge tournament (and all the well-earned vinegar that goes with said limelight /grin).

If you're familiar with the tournament format, my initial random seed on Saturday was table 2 in bracket 1 (where the camera was), and wins pushed me to table 1 for the rest of the day.

Magilla Gurilla -
I can agree that the top table was not the most "appealing" games to watch.
I also saw some pretty shady things going on with the Tyranid player; however, I am willing to chalk it up to being new(er) to the game.
Having said that....
...I have no doubt that MVB is aware of the situation; and will do what he can to make sure all the parties involved are aware of any possible problems.

In my opinion two thumbs up for the willingness to have an event like this broadcast from beginning to end.

First - thanks for the benefit of the doubt: I'll own up to being uneducated/inexperienced any day of the week as that's absolutely accurate; deliberate cheating: not in a million years. After my initial flgs tournament experience I was very sensitized to my slow play, and intentionally took a smaller list to NOVA to help compensate, but clearly not enough. As far as the "situation" of I and my opponents only getting through 3-4 turns, Mike was definitely aware, as was John, the head judge. Mike and I talked about it, and he asked me to work on speeding up after the 2nd game; and then again, he, John and I all talked about it after the 3rd game. I was definitely stressing about it and did for the rest of the tournament, and appreciated Andrew pushing me in the 4th game.

hyv3mynd -
From the little I watched, there was a tyranid player under the camera for 2 games that only finished 3/4 turns. Wasn't very familiar with his own unit's stats and rules.

I understand there's added pressure playing under a camera and I've never done it. Even still, I've played nids exclusively for a year and you really have to move to finish 2k games in a time limit. Assaults with multiple initiatives, rending, armor, and FnP really slow the game down.

Tomorrow should be a lot better as hopefully the most experienced players play under the camera at a better pace with more solid rules knowledge.

Tiny bit of validation perhaps... thanks hyv3mynd.

whoadirty -
I would consider myself sort of a novice player, so it's interesting to see some of these guys not know the codex they are using. Or they are cheating. Just watched a Tyranid player playing against Grey Knights and when his Tervigon died, he said he only had to put wounds on one squad. There were a couple other instances I have seen in another game (for an army I don't even play) where the guy had to look up the rules. Is this common? I kind of expected guys to know their codex at a tourney like this.

This was a huge mistake on my part - and was so concerned about the slowplay aspects was not about to look into a rulebook unless forced to; and Andrew just said play on. I should have had this one down though.

Hey man, it's Andrew! You f'n cheater mccheatersoncheaterfaced me!

Just kidding, we all make mistakes, I read through the chat log and had a good laugh at it. Good lord the internet can be rough, apparently I'm a total scrub, and ALSO a cheat (it took me a bit to figure out what they were talking about during the chat log). During the same end turn, both of us dead tired, me on my 10th game in 2 days (not sure where you were at), I went to ground with Karamazov/Coteaz/1 DCA. I took my magnetized coteaz apart to represent this. Then you shot and killed him and the DCA. During my following turn, I moved karamazov (who had went to ground) and shot at your tervigon (and thank god, missed). In the chat log you're tervicheat, and I'm karacheat I think.

Or perhaps, in a not so sinister world, we were both just tired and forgetful while playing with our toy soldiers...

Don't take the log hard my friend, you played well and were a nice guy to chat with, I look forward to another game in the future!

I think everything went well.

Some things we had planned didn't work out. We had the capability to do on screen drawing, think saturday-night-football-presenter. At the last moment we were informed that Livestream would not verify us, causing us to be limited to 50 viewers, with no search for capability. We chose Livestream because of the better toolset and ability to get the program to work with a on-screen-presenting-tool. We switched to ustream and were unable to get 3 different onscreen tools to work.

Doing Live play-by-play was hard since we found having one of us table side talking, keeping the guys chatting on pic-in-pic, to be too intrusive.

Wireless mic's were doing well (sometimes too well, we audio taped one player taking a leak, the range was apparently greater than distance to restroom), but sucked 9 volts batteries. We used 22 of them, causing us to run around the local area trying to find a place not sold out due to Irene. In testing they lasted 6-8 hours, i guess in a loud hall they transmit more and lasted 3-4 hours. We were afraid background noise would make them useless, but it worked out.

The high-end webcam worked well, although the rig was built to be 8 feet, taking advantage of the camera's HD widescreen quality to easily cover the whole board. This was great for livestream... But we ended up having to use Ustream, causing our rig to be too low, we added 2 feet and lots of ducktape (Steve has a saying for that, which i can't post here). We were unable to get the table all the way in, an inch on each of the short edges was not there.

The rig proved a bit of a problem, we will improve it for more stability next time. In testing we never touched it. In real life, it suffered from multiple 'moon-landings' and spectator bumps, causing us to have to readjust the rig / table each round. Barbed wire and 220 volt capacitors may be in order next year.

We were closer to the table than we would have liked, we forgot a powered USB hub to boost signal, the USB cable could only be 15 feet, before camera refused to work.

Having a lapel mic for the judge would be good next time.

We would like to add side view cams to the rig, and maybe an adjustable camera for the table to zoom in. You are unable to take advantage of features of the camera, such as digital zoom, while Ustream or live stream takes the feed. We will need to find a program that sits between the two.

We found that people (at least from chat feedback) wanted to hear us less, and hear the players more. Which actually works out for us, because we can run the rig on auto, so we could still play in the event. I applaud the Independent Characters for giving up their games to cover the event, with out compensation i may add, but we came to play first, cover second. I dropped from team in favor of covering Invitational, Dave from Eternal warriors was awesome enough to take my place (if i had played, we would not have been 2nd )

If you have a question about equipment, message me. There is too much equipment involved in covering one table to cover more, it took one of our two cars just to transport the stuff. We would need a PC for each rig, laptops just don't have the power to render fast enough. The hotel obviously had fiber, which was a great boost to lag etc.

Leave us feedback, send us your awesome ideas on how to improve.

P.s. on a side note, we did not cover the Nova with video last year. The Gamers lounge did. Bill and Jay did ground breaking work. Independent Characters took it further to perfection. We just emulated and tweaked. They inspired us, i did not want to take their credit. They ran events this year at the Nova.

Pat, you guys did awesome! It was super-entertaining, and you did an outstanding job improvising, adapting, and overcoming multiple unforeseen challenges and difficulties to bring us a great and entertaining show. If you could hear me from there I would stand up and slow-clap.

Please don't judge people too hard, i doubt most people could survive the scrutiny of having up to 257 live viewers at a time watching and listening to a game, while trolling in the chat.

All games (almost all, some were lost in Ustream rendering hiccup) were recorded and saved here: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/the-11th-company/videos

No one refused to wear a wireless mic, if too many people scream cheater and make e-drama, we may not be able to do this in the future...

I was in the second bracket (Dark Eldar player with the really shiny black DE for those who were there) and ended up 5-3. I had an amazing time and got to play some great opponents. Overall great weekend!

Grey Knights are absolutely going to take over. There are so many possible lists that can absolutely crush at the hands of skilled players. Tony Kopac's brother (also an amazing player) brought a list that I actually ran into two times on day two that involves a big termie squad, Coteaz, psyfleman, and tons of psybacks with min henchman who run in from reserves. It's basically the imperial version of Venom spam and is incredibly tough. Both times it destroyed my Dark Eldar.

Finally, to those who want to stir up internet drama...just don't. It's a game. There will be mistakes, especially when you are playing 8 games in two days (even more for lots of the top players). There will always be the occasional bad game in which something happens and two people don't see eye to eye, however the event didn't feature any real big controversy and pretty much everyone seemed to have an amazing time. The armchair qbing from the basement gamers in some of these posts is laughable. Give the people who were on the top table the credit they are due, learn from the battles, but don't be a jerk while doing so.

Some suggestions so far:

Side view cameras on the rig: easily doable, but require someone to flip cameras in stream and man rig.

Provide Casino dice sets to players so dice can be seen when rolled: we discussed this with MVB, some people will insist on rolling their own dice.

Lapel Mic for table judge: working on it

Require players to roll dice in off table tray with camera on it: dice trays etc. are frowned upon at most tournaments.

More player interviews: We can only interview people if they are willing, for example Tony was really bummed out after first invitational loss, we didn't want to bug him.

Cover more tables: Too much equipment needed, doing this requires a lot of computing power.


Let us know if you have any other suggestions. We want to make this better, but do realize we aren't funded by sponsors/Nova/MVB/Donors etc. This is all out of pocket, and all during our main tournament event of the year.

Now you got me afraid to watch my games and read the chat.

Pat 11th Company wrote:Please don't judge people too hard, i doubt most people could survive the scrutiny of having up to 257 live viewers at a time watching and listening to a game, while trolling in the chat.

You guys did fantastic. I think that more streaming will only help the event overall as I really think people enjoy watching these games much like RTS replays and such. I think people need to lay off the drama because it is really between the two players... but it would be really cool to get maybe all 4 top tables as streams but logistically it may not be sound.

Blackmoor wrote:Now you got me afraid to watch my games and read the chat.

Chat logs are not captured. The tyranid player got to me before i saved his game and requested i copy them and email them to him, which i did. After looking over the email, i was some what dismayed on the chat entries. The chat was mostly unmonitored by us (we were logged in, but one of the judges would occasionally reply during games). We tried to reply on breaks.

I guess i can/should ask players if they want a copy of the chat logged before it is wiped between games.

I thought most of the chatters were civilized and having a good time. I wasn't on Sat, though, or during the day Friday.

JGrand wrote:I was in the second bracket (Dark Eldar player with the really shiny black DE for those who were there) and ended up 5-3. I had an amazing time and got to play some great opponents. Overall great weekend!

Grey Knights are absolutely going to take over. There are so many possible lists that can absolutely crush at the hands of skilled players. Tony Kopac's brother (also an amazing player) brought a list that I actually ran into two times on day two that involves a big termie squad, Coteaz, psyfleman, and tons of psybacks with min henchman who run in from reserves. It's basically the imperial version of Venom spam and is incredibly tough. Both times it destroyed my Dark Eldar.

Finally, to those who want to stir up internet drama...just don't. It's a game. There will be mistakes, especially when you are playing 8 games in two days (even more for lots of the top players). There will always be the occasional bad game in which something happens and two people don't see eye to eye, however the event didn't feature any real big controversy and pretty much everyone seemed to have an amazing time. The armchair qbing from the basement gamers in some of these posts is laughable. Give the people who were on the top table the credit they are due, learn from the battles, but don't be a jerk while doing so.

Well said!!!!

I was playing the orange salamanders army and played next to you on day two. I wanted to ask you if you used mothers car polish on those black models hehe. Very shiny hehe.

Most of the chat was ok, but if some of the chatters saw a rules violation or a mistake a few of them would get a little crazy...heaven forbid someone made two advantageous to them rules mistakes.

I thought the streams were great, a good job all around. What exactly is the computing power problem that makes streaming multiple games difficult? Is it just taking the Webcam feed and compressing it? I'm not sure I understand. I am not an expert on it though so I'm just wondering. I do currently work on mobile streaming systems for a living but it's using a lot of high end hardware so I'm just interested in it from a DIY standpoint where I have no experience.

I managed to dodge the cam for the whole event, and though Mike asked me a couple of times to do an interview I kept forgetting Probably both for the best though, as my accent would have had people signing off in droves

I ended up 7 and 1 for the weekend, losing on day 1 to Dark Eldar, which is an awful matchup for my Deathwing. Including the Invitational on Friday I managed to beat up on 4 Grey Knight armies and I was pleased to see two of them end up 4 and 0 at the end of day 1

Pat and I had a great game on Sunday morning and it was nice to put a face to the name on the podcast. The final of my bracket was a lot of fun it was a Wrecking Crew vs Cold Steel Merc captains matchup when I took on Marc Parker's Witch Hunters. Alas for Marc my Deathwing proved too mean for the girls and their crimes will have to go unpunished for a while longer. That's twice we've played now, and I'm looking forward to our next game!

Well said!!!!

I was playing the orange salamanders army and played next to you on day two. I wanted to ask you if you used mothers car polish on those black models hehe. Very shiny hehe.

Those orange Salamanders were very cool. And for the record it was varnish...lots of varnish haha.

Mannahnin wrote:I thought most of the chatters were civilized and having a good time. I wasn't on Sat, though, or during the day Friday.

It was fun shooting the breeze with you thursday night.

Yeah, Hod, likewise.

Why do people frown on dice trays?

I actually had a kid get upset...he didn't say anything, but you could tell he was not happy I was rolling dice in my my box....

I know back in 2000-2001 some guy at a GW run tournament had magnets in his dice and steel sheeting underneath his dtray.....but come on....

Hi

@ Pat - really enjoyed the matches. Great job! Hope you do it again next year.

It kept me motiviated while assembling stuff over the weekend.

Cheers,
Nate

I went 4-4 with a DoA Flesh Tearers list. I'm still recovering from all that playing.

I had a great time, but damn, people... 7/8 armies that I faced were MEQs.

Also, Game 4 of Day One: thanks to Marc Parker for one hell of a good game.

I watched the live coverage and I have a few suggestions. Overall I really enjoyed it, however here are a few areas to improve on.

Give up the idea of "play by play" coverage. 40k is just not a game that lends itself well to this format. The games are driven by the two players involved and simply watching the game on the table is not enough to know what is going on. Putting mics on the turn players is the best idea to happen to this live coverage format. Mic the judge but only activate his mic when he is at the table. Another issue I have with the "play by play" format is the livecasters doing it. It takes just a certain type of person to be good at livecasting. They need to have a good clear voice, tremendous knowledge of the game, and a persona they can project. I'll be frank, none of the guys on camera or on mic had that. I watch a lot of e-sports coverage and they can dig up some really terrible casters, it really ruins the whole livecast. Ditch the "play by play" idea and focus on the game and the players. In my opinion any cut in during the game takes away from what is going on greatly. When the game starts keep the camera and audio on the action.

This leads me to another point I would like to cover. Those players on table 1 are really going to dictate the livecast. There is simply nothing you can do to control this aspect unless you dictate who is playing under the camera. Blackmoor was great during his game, really entertaining and laid back player. Dash and Tony's game was another great game to watch, fast paced and it came down to the wire.

Add your coverage during the post and pre-game periods. For the pre-game coverage, grab the players army lists and post them on the screen. This is where you can get your hosts involved with discussion on play styles, list strengths, table terrain, and so forth. Once the game starts cut this chatter and get to the game. Resume your coverage during the post game. Discuss what went on during the game and generally talk about the game we just watched. The setup time between games is when you want to invite guests on, tourney organizers, and judges. Talk about what is going on over the whole event. I thought you did a great job this year getting people to talk about the event and what is going on at other tables. I'm also curious what happened to the meatball sub on table 1?

The camera rig was good in my opinion. Getting dice rolls on camera is just not going to happen in these fast paced games. As long as the players on these top players are talking about what is going on, I don't see the need for this. What happens when horde orks shows up on table 1? Are you going to provide 30 casino dice to roll? 30 casino dice won't even fit on a table without knocking stuff over.

I didn't like the picture in picture stuff, I tuned in to watch the game.

Keep up the good work I look forward to watching again next year.

KGatch113 wrote:

Why do people frown on dice trays?

I actually had a kid get upset...he didn't say anything, but you could tell he was not happy I was rolling dice in my my box....

I know back in 2000-2001 some guy at a GW run tournament had magnets in his dice and steel sheeting underneath his dtray.....but come on....

I was regularly rolling batches of 30+ dice and tried my best to roll in a valley between terrain to keep them from going all over the table. I think I could have really used a dice box. I never understood the dislike of them. How much time is lost re-rolling cocked dice, dice off the table or hunting dice who hide under tanks.

I think the Nova was well run especially when you consider the size of the undertaking and the challenges they faced. The terrain was a little crazy but I can't complain even though I was playing a very shooty GK army. I think many of the older books are much stronger with the Nova terrain and mission.

W/L is just not as good as MoV. It is alot more interesting and rewarding for people when they can score points. Tons of people were dropping on day 2 each round. I know some people were dropping because of the hurricane but still the drop rate is way higher in W/L. When the tightest game you have played in a long time is scored 15/15 out of 30 it is alot better than getting a loss and being taken out of the running. That being said I would still go to the Nova if I could afford to next year.

I would really like to see one of these 7-8 game events be set up over 3 days so that the rounds could be 150 or even 165 minutes and you could play a super tight game at a relaxed pace. There is a serious conflict between the amount of points we want to play with and the amount of time we are willing to spend. Having to wake up early and play super late blows, I want the time to go to dinner and hang out. Getting done late and having no options besides ordering pizza is lame. I go to these things because I am driven to compete but almost more importantly I go to hang with my buddies from around the USA. I would be willing to pay more for that level of relaxation, GTs are the only vacations I take.

Shinkaze wrote:I think the Nova was well run especially when you consider the size of the undertaking and the challenges they faced. The terrain was a little crazy but I can't complain even though I was playing a very shooty GK army. I think many of the older books are much stronger with the Nova terrain and mission.

W/L is just not as good as MoV. It is alot more interesting and rewarding for people when they can score points. Tons of people were dropping on day 2 each round. I know some people were dropping because of the hurricane but still the drop rate is way higher in W/L. When the tightest game you have played in a long time is scored 15/15 out of 30 it is alot better than getting a loss and being taken out of the running. That being said I would still go to the Nova if I could afford to next year.

I would really like to see one of these 7-8 game events be set up over 3 days so that the rounds could be 150 or even 165 minutes and you could play a super tight game at a relaxed pace. There is a serious conflict between the amount of points we want to play with and the amount of time we are willing to spend. Having to wake up early and play super late blows, I want the time to go to dinner and hang out. Getting done late and having no options besides ordering pizza is lame. I go to these things because I am driven to compete but almost more importantly I go to hang with my buddies from around the USA. I would be willing to pay more for that level of relaxation, GTs are the only vacations I take.

All this +1.

It seems events are adding more games each year and some are increasing points levels also. It's a great hobby and fun to get a bunch of games in on a weekend. I rarely have had or seen issues between players, but moods definitely change when you hear "30 minutes left" and you're starting turn 4. People will often get loose, sloppy, or forgetful when they're sweating the last few minutes as we saw on camera a couple times.

I wonder if surveyed, would the NOVA attendees prefer fewer points or less games over the current format? Is more games worth potential frustration of individual game results that were decided by a time limit instead of random game length.

I've played Nids for a year and GK for 4 months and I can tell you my GK games finish much more quickly. As a result, I tend to make less mistakes and am generally more relaxed and less stressed when playing my GK because I go into the game knowing I don't need to rush. How fast can you play a game and still enjoy it for the hobby it is?

I'm not saying there's any faults with NOVA's schedule, just wondering how feedback will effect next year's schedule. I think every single player that's commented has mentioned how 8+ games is draining and/or how tired they were on day 2. Whether there are changes or just minor tweaks to the system, this event is high on my wish lists for tournament travel if timing a cash flow are more favorable next year.

hyv3mynd wrote:
All this +1.

It seems events are adding more games each year and some are increasing points levels also. It's a great hobby and fun to get a bunch of games in on a weekend. I rarely have had or seen issues between players, but moods definitely change when you hear "30 minutes left" and you're starting turn 4. People will often get loose, sloppy, or forgetful when they're sweating the last few minutes as we saw on camera a couple times.

I wonder if surveyed, would the NOVA attendees prefer fewer points or less games over the current format? Is more games worth potential frustration of individual game results that were decided by a time limit instead of random game length.

I've played Nids for a year and GK for 4 months and I can tell you my GK games finish much more quickly. As a result, I tend to make less mistakes and am generally more relaxed and less stressed when playing my GK because I go into the game knowing I don't need to rush. How fast can you play a game and still enjoy it for the hobby it is?

I'm not saying there's any faults with NOVA's schedule, just wondering how feedback will effect next year's schedule. I think every single player that's commented has mentioned how 8+ games is draining and/or how tired they were on day 2. Whether there are changes or just minor tweaks to the system, this event is high on my wish lists for tournament travel if timing a cash flow are more favorable next year.

Most events won't be like the NOVA, I think it has emerged as a unique experience - a one of a kind mecca of a wargaming event that people will flock to. Most 2 day events will stay in the 5-6 round range, I imagine.

Pat 11th Company wrote:Let us know if you have any other suggestions. We want to make this better, but do realize we aren't funded by sponsors/Nova/MVB/Donors etc. This is all out of pocket, and all during our main tournament event of the year.

It was awesome!! Thanks for doing this and I hope you can again . Felt like I was there for the final game... so, so cool

Shin, hyve, this is a continuation of what we discussed after Throne of Skulls. ToS only had five rounds, but we had 2.5hrs for 1500pts, which was luxurious.

Yak and others also made the point that more time/smaller points opens up more armies as playable. Hyve, you chose not to run your nids because you found it difficult and stressful to try to play a full game with them at this points size, and I'm sure you weren't the only one. I'm sure many ork and other players felt the same. This format is awesome, but the tight schedule undoubtedly pushes a lot of players to play smaller, MEQ armies. Which reduces the variety seen at the event. The high preponderance of SW & GK armies undoubtedly wasn't just because they're strong, but because they can play relatively fast.

The proponents of the 2k points level often advocate it with the opinion that the game is more balanced at that level, and more armies can compete. But that doesn't seem to be what we're seeing; at least nt in these time constraints.

@targetawg:

Hey man, it's Andrew! You f'n cheater mccheatersoncheaterfaced me!

Just kidding, we all make mistakes, I read through the chat log and had a good laugh at it. Good lord the internet can be rough, apparently I'm a total scrub, and ALSO a cheat (it took me a bit to figure out what they were talking about during the chat log). During the same end turn, both of us dead tired, me on my 10th game in 2 days (not sure where you were at), I went to ground with Karamazov/Coteaz/1 DCA. I took my magnetized coteaz apart to represent this. Then you shot and killed him and the DCA. During my following turn, I moved karamazov (who had went to ground) and shot at your tervigon (and thank god, missed). In the chat log you're tervicheat, and I'm karacheat I think.

Or perhaps, in a not so sinister world, we were both just tired and forgetful while playing with our toy soldiers...

Don't take the log hard my friend, you played well and were a nice guy to chat with, I look forward to another game in the future!

Given the GK hype, that being my first game vs. GK, having gone 3-0 in the first place, facing the other 3-0 in our bracket, on camera, slowplay, plus knowing you'd been at the invitational and play regularly with with the NOVA crew, etc... - I was intimidated as hell. Maybe all that just made it more fun. Pressure and fatigue alway breeds mistakes: that's why military/police etc... practice relentlessly. As far as Karamazov, I just figured his "choose to pass/fail morale" meant he could just stand up and didn't question it. We had some good laughs - we both played hard - indeed looking forward to the next time. The logs don't bother me at all.

@Pat/11th

Chat logs are not captured. The tyranid player got to me before i saved his game and requested i copy them and email them to him, which i did. After looking over the email, i was some what dismayed on the chat entries. The chat was mostly unmonitored by us (we were logged in, but one of the judges would occasionally reply during games). We tried to reply on breaks.

I guess i can/should ask players if they want a copy of the chat logged before it is wiped between games.

I absolutely think the logs should be shared with the players on request, if not made available outright, as they are one of the few ways to get a quick rundown on critical moments of the match without having to watch through 2 hours of 4 arms waving on a green background. I was updating the chat room during last year's final day matches, and had a good idea what to expect. So much of this hobby at this level is built on internet relationships, I think it's important to allow players to see what is said about them and who is saying it in that venue. Theoretically it introduces some degree of responsibility to those chatting to not be complete trolls, and ultimately will help the players to have the critiques. I can pretty much guarantee I'll never forget the Tervigon rule again, and seeing comments like "... just wish he had looked at his codex more" are the sort of feedback I need to get better. There were some pretty brutal comments, but they really have no value from a critique standpoint so there's no reason to pay attention to them.

Thanks for saving it off and mailing it - and setting up and broadcasting, getting and setting up the mics etc... none of this would be possible without it. Thanks for letting me share my day with my family!

Warlocke, I gotta agree with the others that you're showing some pretty impressive grace under fire. Your attitude toward learning and grabbing any source of useful feedback is commendable too, especially the willingness to sift through the crap to find the nuggets of gold (okay, maybe copper).

I also think you've got an excellent point that keeping the logs makes folks a bit more accountable and hopefully less likely to spew venom.

I was very lucky to play on table 1 two times during the invitational. I didnt know I was going to be there, as my giant bald spot could have used a hat. I usually dont see myself from the top down.

Wireless mic's were doing well (sometimes too well, we audio taped one player taking a leak, the range was apparently greater than distance to restroom)

Guilty! I laughed kinda hard when watching the replay at the sound of the mike in the bathroom, so embarrassing!

Anyway, I second the saving of the chat logs. I had to watch the daemon game again to check my play mistakes, the chat log would have been so much easier. Though in hindsight the casino dice I brought were a pain the whole rest of the event (sorry Joe Johnson!), they did show up really well on the replay, enough so that I was able to see my rolls to determine if I was rolling bad or having selective recall.

My suggestion would be to have a dice section in a separate area. Right next to the 2 short table edges in a little channel would be fine. That way everyone would be able to see what was rolled a lot easier, and the dice could roll free without hitting models/terrain.

@Pat I would like to see the objectives at the botom of the screen (KP/Cap&cnt/Sieze). you did it with the game turn(most of the time) and the name of the player/what army they were playing so it shouldnt be that hard. +1 on going over the lists more indepth befor the matches and with talking about the game afterwords.

Whew! I finally got home.

I am dead tired and want to go to bed, but I have to wait for the air conditioning to get the house below 100 degrees.

Oh, and Pat, I would like to see the chat logs.

Watching some ustream vids now and I have to say this is a fantastic idea.

Of course there will always be some internet drama in the aftermath. People make mistakes, and when the game is being scrutinized by "backseat generals" there is going to be some tension. I'm not pointing any fingers...I have watched any games yet and even if mistakes are made I don't think you can call anyone a cheater after 2 days of hardcore gaming. People are tired and mistakes are bound to occur.

Overall I see this as a tool to help others with their own gameplay. Being able to see the pro's at work will give some really good insight for those wishing to improve their game and I would think actual REAL cheaters would be less inclined to blatantly do so knowing there are cameras on their game...you just can't get away with that kind of thing.

Thanks to all involved for allowing me to see some of these amazing battles all the way over here in Shanghai.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Also loving the chat in your game vs Neil's GK. Looks like it was a fun game. I know I'm late to the party but hey...

lambadomy wrote:Most of the chat was ok, but if some of the chatters saw a rules violation or a mistake a few of them would get a little crazy...heaven forbid someone made two advantageous to them rules mistakes.

I thought the streams were great, a good job all around. What exactly is the computing power problem that makes streaming multiple games difficult? Is it just taking the Webcam feed and compressing it? I'm not sure I understand. I am not an expert on it though so I'm just wondering. I do currently work on mobile streaming systems for a living but it's using a lot of high end hardware so I'm just interested in it from a DIY standpoint where I have no experience.

I am not sure what the computing problem was. The laptops we had couldn't handle it. I run a Quad intel 1.8ghz with 4gig mem and a graphics card meant for gaming, i was occasionally having hiccups. Neil's desktop is newer and was handeling jsut fine.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Grimgob wrote:@Pat I would like to see the objectives at the botom of the screen (KP/Cap&cnt/Sieze). you did it with the game turn(most of the time) and the name of the player/what army they were playing so it shouldnt be that hard. +1 on going over the lists more indepth befor the matches and with talking about the game afterwords.

good suggestion, problem with talking indept about the games was that i/we actually didn't see most games as we ourselves were playing our own games. One of the problems with the going over lists part, was that initially it was hard for us to get staff to tell us what was going on/ who was winning and the pairings etc. We will need to communicate better next time with MVB and staff.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Blackmoor wrote:Whew! I finally got home.

I am dead tired and want to go to bed, but I have to wait for the air conditioning to get the house below 100 degrees.

Oh, and Pat, I would like to see the chat logs.

The chatlogs have to be manually copy and pasted at the end of each game before we save the game to Ustream. I do not have any logs except for the one i emailed to the tyranid player as he asked for them just in time for me to salvage them, sorry...

Shinkaze wrote:I think the Nova was well run especially when you consider the size of the undertaking and the challenges they faced. The terrain was a little crazy but I can't complain even though I was playing a very shooty GK army. I think many of the older books are much stronger with the Nova terrain and mission.

W/L is just not as good as MoV. It is alot more interesting and rewarding for people when they can score points. Tons of people were dropping on day 2 each round. I know some people were dropping because of the hurricane but still the drop rate is way higher in W/L. When the tightest game you have played in a long time is scored 15/15 out of 30 it is alot better than getting a loss and being taken out of the running. That being said I would still go to the Nova if I could afford to next year.

I would really like to see one of these 7-8 game events be set up over 3 days so that the rounds could be 150 or even 165 minutes and you could play a super tight game at a relaxed pace. There is a serious conflict between the amount of points we want to play with and the amount of time we are willing to spend. Having to wake up early and play super late blows, I want the time to go to dinner and hang out. Getting done late and having no options besides ordering pizza is lame. I go to these things because I am driven to compete but almost more importantly I go to hang with my buddies from around the USA. I would be willing to pay more for that level of relaxation, GTs are the only vacations I take.

Super +1 this.

I don't think I got back to my room Saturday night until like 8:30 or so and I had to leave early Sunday because of how late things were running that day. The tournament finishing at 7 was already pushing it for me since I had to pack up, drive home, check for any storm damage, and be up at 3am Monday morning for work. After starting 45+ minutes minutes late Sunday morning and then another 30-45 for the second round I just couldn't stay. Was discussing this with my wife on the drive home, we thought that starting it Friday might be a good idea if the 2000 point value stays. Play 2 Friday, 4 Saturday, and 2 Sunday so everyone can leave at a decent time. Or shrink it down to 1500, which I think I might like more.

Having said all of that though, I had a great time and I got to at least turn 5 on all of my games and there was only 1 that we didn't outright finish before time was up and that game got to turn 5.

DevianID wrote:I was very lucky to play on table 1 two times during the invitational. I didnt know I was going to be there, as my giant bald spot could have used a hat. I usually dont see myself from the top down.

Wireless mic's were doing well (sometimes too well, we audio taped one player taking a leak, the range was apparently greater than distance to restroom)

Guilty! I laughed kinda hard when watching the replay at the sound of the mike in the bathroom, so embarrassing!

This is hilarious . You only live once, right?

Blackmoor wrote:Whew! I finally got home.

I am dead tired and want to go to bed, but I have to wait for the air conditioning to get the house below 100 degrees.

Oh, and Pat, I would like to see the chat logs.

You didn't miss much.

• Some guys said you were overly cheery at the beginning.
• They said your Aegis/Psyhood argument was BS.
• One guy said he thought you had the game won on turn 2.
• Other people said they thought Tony had it won when he disembarked all his Wolf Guard at once.
• They kept asking if you didn't already destroy different Rhinos/Razorbacks of Tony or whether or not stunned rhinos of his were moving without extra armor or not.
• Someone brought up that Tony was playing Njal's ability wrong.
• They complained about the NOVA's FAQ in regards to rolling to hit with JotWW.
• People were amazed at Tony's ability to roll saves at the end of the game.
• They were amazed by you failing all your saves and JotWW rolls on the last turn.
• They thought you gave up on Turn 6 when the game failed to end and questioned your last turn moves.


And that was about it!

Hah Brad I also watched our replay and noticed a sound of bathroom activities on the recording for a second. Well done
I wish I thought of it first. Also watched your game against Tony, well played. I didn't get to see much of it in person even though I was on the table next to you guys.
It would have been interesting to see the chat logs during our game also. But, we didn't tell Pat, so our bad. But thanks to Pat and his guys for setting everything up and being there the whole time.
I really enjoyed re-watching some of my games and then watching the GT when I got home.

yakface wrote:

Blackmoor wrote:Whew! I finally got home.

I am dead tired and want to go to bed, but I have to wait for the air conditioning to get the house below 100 degrees.

Oh, and Pat, I would like to see the chat logs.

You didn't miss much.

• Some guys said you were overly cheery at the beginning.
• They said your Aegis/Psyhood argument was BS.
• One guy said he thought you had the game won on turn 2.
• Other people said they thought Tony had it won when he disembarked all his Wolf Guard at once.
• They kept asking if you didn't already destroy different Rhinos/Razorbacks of Tony or whether or not stunned rhinos of his were moving without extra armor or not.
• Someone brought up that Tony was playing Njal's ability wrong.
• They complained about the NOVA's FAQ in regards to rolling to hit with JotWW.
• People were amazed at Tony's ability to roll saves at the end of the game.
• They were amazed by you failing all your saves and JotWW rolls on the last turn.
• They thought you gave up on Turn 6 when the game failed to end and questioned your last turn moves.


And that was about it!

That is awesome!

Al I recommend not going back and watching your game. It just makes you sick to your stomach.

Either way you should be proud on what you accomplished. Keeping it together for 8+ games is tough.

yakface wrote:

You didn't miss much.

• Some guys said you were overly cheery at the beginning.
• They said your Aegis/Psyhood argument was BS.
• One guy said he thought you had the game won on turn 2.
• Other people said they thought Tony had it won when he disembarked all his Wolf Guard at once.
• They kept asking if you didn't already destroy different Rhinos/Razorbacks of Tony or whether or not stunned rhinos of his were moving without extra armor or not.
• Someone brought up that Tony was playing Njal's ability wrong.
• They complained about the NOVA's FAQ in regards to rolling to hit with JotWW.
• People were amazed at Tony's ability to roll saves at the end of the game.
• They were amazed by you failing all your saves and JotWW rolls on the last turn.
• They thought you gave up on Turn 6 when the game failed to end and questioned your last turn moves.


And that was about it!

Hehe, yeah pretty much. There was also some discussion about your Grand Strategy choice; discussion regarding the clumping of the interceptors (was it a gambit to keep shots away from paladins, a mistake, etc); some discussion on whether murderous hurricane rolls to hit; some discussion about not using dreads aegis to its fullest; a few comments regarding what each player should do at that time (mostly toward blackmoor for some reason); lotta folks trying to decide who had quarters and then objectives (is Njal in that squad? etc).

I'm definitely glad I had an opportunity to volunteer with Mike and everyone else to make the NOVA such a huge success. It was a lot of work, but I met a lot of incredible people and definitely plan on getting more involved in the 40K community. Best part for me was paint judging all the incredible armies that people brought, and reffing the Invitational games on Friday. Everyone was a real pleasure to work with, and Mike did an astounding job of running the tournament and making sure everyone had a good experience. John Moore (the 40K TO and head of operations) worked tirelessly to get the grunt work done, and special recognition should go to Kevin and Rachel for the monumental task of running the bracket system and dealing with player drops and other unusual circumstances.

I'm glad the guy liked his 0-8 trophy.

Did Nova's FAQ require JoTWW to roll to hit?

Beer4TheBeerGod wrote:
I'm glad the guy liked his 0-8 trophy.

Its going to be sitting at my lgs. among the ard boys finals hammer, the various other trophies, the 3 golden demon awards, will sit the 0-8 trophy.

SonsofVulkan wrote:Did Nova's FAQ require JoTWW to roll to hit?

Nope, because whether or not you roll to hit for JotWW it makes no difference on how the power is resolved. Or in other words, JotWW uses a totally distinct method of determining how models are hit, just like a template weapon.

yakface wrote:
• People were amazed at Tony's ability to roll saves at the end of the game.

They were not the only ones who were amazed by it.

• They were amazed by you failing all your saves and JotWW rolls on the last turn.

I wish it surprised me, but it didn't.

• They thought you gave up on Turn 6 when the game failed to end and questioned your last turn moves.

Either he went for the objectives on turn #6 or he didn't. That is what was going to determine who will win. In hindsight the correct move was to move a dreadnaught to within 3" of the objective but I didn't.


Tony and I played in the Invitational on Friday night as well. I will not say that he got lucky, but I will say that I got very unlucky. I had 2 5-man paladin squads charge grey hunters and I got my rear handed to me. I ended up totally whiffing a lot of attacks (in both combats) and I killed about 2 guys, and he attacked back and butchered me. The only thing that saved me was that when I failed me leadership he managed to catch me (doing ever more wounds, but at least I did not get escorted off of the board). I ended up winning the combat though in the next round and Draigo and 3 wounded paladins advanced to a rhino with guys in it. Now this rhino was previously immobilized but he managed to repair it, and it had it's storm bolter shot off, so I unloaded my whole army into 1 rhino and did about 7 penetrating hits to it and all I did was rolls 1s and 2s for damage. So I was unable to charge the contents and was gunned down.

I guess he thought my luck might be different because in our finals game Tony was in no hurry to get into assault with me. In fact I do not think that we had one single assault.


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winterman wrote:
There was also some discussion about your Grand Strategy choice;

They were right there. That is where I screwed up and it cost me the game. I have to make my units troops in games where objectives are ahead of kill points.

discussion regarding the clumping of the interceptors (was it a gambit to keep shots away from paladins, a mistake, etc);

I thought I was out of LOS from the Long Fangs. When I looked at it from a models-eye-view he can just barely see the edge of a shoulder pad. My guys are in scenic resin bases that are higher than GWs bases by about a 1/4 of an inch and that base cost me.

Eidolon wrote:Its going to be sitting at my lgs. among the ard boys finals hammer, the various other trophies, the 3 golden demon awards, will sit the 0-8 trophy.

Glad to see it found a good home!

It seems events are adding more games each year and some are increasing points levels also. It's a great hobby and fun to get a bunch of games in on a weekend. I rarely have had or seen issues between players, but moods definitely change when you hear "30 minutes left" and you're starting turn 4. People will often get loose, sloppy, or forgetful when they're sweating the last few minutes as we saw on camera a couple times.

I wonder if surveyed, would the NOVA attendees prefer fewer points or less games over the current format? Is more games worth potential frustration of individual game results that were decided by a time limit instead of random game length.

I've played Nids for a year and GK for 4 months and I can tell you my GK games finish much more quickly. As a result, I tend to make less mistakes and am generally more relaxed and less stressed when playing my GK because I go into the game knowing I don't need to rush. How fast can you play a game and still enjoy it for the hobby it is?

I'm not saying there's any faults with NOVA's schedule, just wondering how feedback will effect next year's schedule. I think every single player that's commented has mentioned how 8+ games is draining and/or how tired they were on day 2. Whether there are changes or just minor tweaks to the system, this event is high on my wish lists for tournament travel if timing a cash flow are more favorable next year.

I'd prefer fewer games. Lower points kills alot more builds than it opens up. When you think about it, with the number of 200 point characters now being used to unlock army abilities, most armies are in the the 1500 point range, with the character and 1 more unit/vehicle.

Lower the points, there goes the character, there goes the viability of the build. At 1500, I don't take Logan, Eldard, or Pedro. In the end, I take a vanilla Marine list with a librarian. By closing down variablity in builds, the game ends up become more cookie cutter, and at that point, why not throw a chess tournament.

Yes it is a pain with horde armies. I used to run a black guardian heavy Ulthwe army....it was annoying not just moving, but also packing up. If you are going to bring a horde, you should be experienced enough to be able to play fast.


How about this idea......Someone should invent a GW clock, similar to a chess clock. Turn 1, I start my clock. I move. I shoot. I assault.My assault phase ends, I turn off my clock, my opponent runs his until the end of his assault phase, and so on.

Both clocks allow you 2.5 hours of play time. Let's say for some reason, at the end of turn 4 you are out of time, while your opponent has 1 hour left. Guess who is not moving or shooting anymore? This eliminates slowhammer, and ensures both parties get the same amount of time to play.

For a major event, 3 days also does not seem out of the question, but you have to take into account rent of the space etc.

KGatch113 wrote:
How about this idea......Someone should invent a GW clock, similar to a chess clock. Turn 1, I start my clock. I move. I shoot. I assault.My assault phase ends, I turn off my clock, my opponent runs his until the end of his assault phase, and so on.

Both clocks allow you 2.5 hours of play time. Let's say for some reason, at the end of turn 4 you are out of time, while your opponent has 1 hour left. Guess who is not moving or shooting anymore? This eliminates slowhammer, and ensures both parties get the same amount of time to play.

Game is not balanced around or designed for equal play. Most phases are interactive so all this does is shifting slowplay to your opponents phases. I play orks and the turn I Waaaagh and assault will be a single long assault phase but both players are rolling attacks. If I am penalized and lose future turns for that, it has broken the game. My army needs that assault to be effective, and a marine army is balanced to withstand the assault. This also shifts the meta further in favor for a defensive shooty army as you never have to worry about tactical movement or long assaults on your phases.

I don't think I would play in an event with a chess-timer 'equal time' model. Not all long phases are slow play... Slow play is like porn, we can't define it but we know it when we see it.

I play Orks and the only armies that have slow played me consistantly are gaurd and tau. It dosent't take that long for target priority and we all know what happens to an assaulty army that only gets to turn 3 or 4 against IG and Tau.

Could turn the clocks off after charges and let combat and resolution be a freebie -- one can still sandbag (ok so how am I gonna allocate, hmmmmm) but most slow play (intentional or accidenetal) takes place in the move and shooting. Assaults just suck time regardless.

Also nothing says the clocks have to work like chess -- could just be a tool to determine if someone is slow playing for TOs and so slower players know they need to up the pace.

That all said, I agree with others that 40k is not really the place for a chess style clock. Better to set a reasonable time and point level in my opinion.

@MVB when are you guys going to post all the seed/placing/armies data?

I had a great time helping out Mike with judging and 11th Company with the podcast. If you haven't had a chance to help run a tournament I highly recommend it. You would be amazed at how much effort goes on behind the scenes to get things running as smoothly as they did.

Loved the live feed! Love the dramatic aftermath!

Mannahnin wrote:Shin, hyve, this is a continuation of what we discussed after Throne of Skulls. ToS only had five rounds, but we had 2.5hrs for 1500pts, which was luxurious.

Yak and others also made the point that more time/smaller points opens up more armies as playable. Hyve, you chose not to run your nids because you found it difficult and stressful to try to play a full game with them at this points size, and I'm sure you weren't the only one. I'm sure many ork and other players felt the same. This format is awesome, but the tight schedule undoubtedly pushes a lot of players to play smaller, MEQ armies. Which reduces the variety seen at the event. The high preponderance of SW & GK armies undoubtedly wasn't just because they're strong, but because they can play relatively fast.

The proponents of the 2k points level often advocate it with the opinion that the game is more balanced at that level, and more armies can compete. But that doesn't seem to be what we're seeing; at least nt in these time constraints.

I agree with this comment fully.
I will not go cross country to any tournament and spend a lot of money knowing that I can not finish a game at the allotted time period given for a game above the 1500 point army list. I want to finish my game. I do not want to win or lose because we are out of time.
Winning in this manner cheapens the win to me and losing in this manner annoys the hell out of me as well.

2.5 hours for a 1500 point game is awesome. There is plenty of time in playing against your opponent. The chances of nerd rage are reduced (IMHO) due to the time allotment allowed. There is plenty of time to think and to relax and enjoy the game.

And that is when I'll spend lots of money at a quality ran tournament, which generally means lost of partying afterwards with people that I do not know and hopefully will make new found friends. That to me is what a tournament is all about.

In response to Mannahnin and Adam Longwalker regarding the time constraints. For the NOVA Invitational we had 2 hours for each 1750 game, I had no issues with the time. My first game finish with 30 minutes free, my second finished with about 20 minutes left. My third game we got through 5 turns then the judge stopped us at the end of our 5th(for fun I rolled it and it would not have kept going). My fourth game finished with 40 mins left, my last game ended on turn 5. I ran into foot angels, deathwing, eldar, GKs and Mechguard. I honestly dont think you need more than 2 hours for 1750 points. Two adequate players who know their rules can get a game done in less than 2 hours if they are a playing to their best abilities without slow playing. For 2000 points 2.5 hours is easily enough time. I know people who play orks, nids and other larger armies. But During the invitational there was a full mechguard player who got his rounds finished. There was multiple foot armies that finished their games. I really dont think two good players who know their rules wont finish. I have yet to not finish a turn 5 in the past year of playing in tournaments against dozens of armies. Sure, it would be cool to have 2.5 hours for the invitational, you wouldn't have to play efficiently and quickly. But that isn't realistic for a 5 game competition. If you know all of your rules, and every other army, the games go quick.

@Clauss:

I agree with you that those times for those points numbers are enough for players to finish their games. But one of the problems is you only have control over yourself. Your opponent may not understand your army. Your opponent may have a rules interpretation ingrained in them that is incorrect, and requires a long session with the judge. And of course, you can prepare a lot, but if you don't know a lot of people who play with Njal or someone similar you may take a little longer than normal to deal with his rules and the effect he has on the game.

Any of these things can quickly turn enough time into not enough time. I think those times/points levels work great but the reality is that people don't know their opponents armies cold, and sometimes don't know the rules cold.

The streamed game between Tony and Dash is actually a good example - they only played turn 6 because they were allowed by the judge due to a long discussion. They're about as good as it gets in terms of knowing how to play but it doesn't always work out.

If you increase the time or lower the points numbers, it just makes it possible to play at a reasonable pace but not worry about a rules dispute that comes up, or a particularly brutal multiple combat, or a player who thinks a lot before making their moves, because you'll feel like you still have plenty of time to finish. As it is, with these times, there's just not a lot of margin for error before your games suddenly aren't finishing.

Of course, this is coming from a notorious slow player who's had to spend a lot of time working on speeding it up. When Grimgob says "the only armies that have consistently slow played me are IG and Tau" I read it as "Lambadomy slow plays me with his Tau" .

Other than absurdly long times for very low points values, slow or bad players, or intentional slow players ... kinda don't finish games regardless of points value and time limit.

If you're running a smaller GT with only enough time for 5 rounds or so, and are OK with awarding arbitrary generalship awards based on picking one person among many without losses ... cool. You'll still have unfinished games and slow play regardless.

Beer4TheBeerGod wrote:

Eidolon wrote:Its going to be sitting at my lgs. among the ard boys finals hammer, the various other trophies, the 3 golden demon awards, will sit the 0-8 trophy.

Glad to see it found a good home!

This is great

It isn't just about finishing games...it's about enjoying the games, and the question of whether or not what you need to do to finish the games in those time amounts (2:30 for 2000 or 2:00 for 1750) is that fun.

The bad or really slow players...yes, they often don't finish, but there is a wide spectrum here of Great, Good, Pretty good, blah blah, playing Hordes, elite armies, etc...as for who is finishing and who isn't, I don't pretend to know.

I think when your basic idea is that you want to have 256 players and have one clear winner (so you need 8 rounds) then this becomes more important actually. You could do less points and keep the rounds the same length. This may actually cut down on the amount of unfinished games, change the amount of horde armies taken, cut down on the amount of players dropping out, etc. Or it might do nothing. I'm just saying that just because two good players can finish their game in the allotted time doesn't make it the right amount of time or right points level for the optimal experience.

Clauss wrote:For the NOVA Invitational we had 2 hours for each 1750 game, I had no issues with the time. My first game finish with 30 minutes free, my second finished with about 20 minutes left. My third game we got through 5 turns then the judge stopped us at the end of our 5th(for fun I rolled it and it would not have kept going). My fourth game finished with 40 mins left, my last game ended on turn 5. I ran into foot angels, deathwing, eldar, GKs and Mechguard. I honestly dont think you need more than 2 hours for 1750 points. Two adequate players who know their rules can get a game done in less than 2 hours if they are a playing to their best abilities without slow playing.

I think some armies certainly can. Other armies, which have more models and throw more dice, much less so. IIRC your invitational list was pretty darn low model count. Not to mention that you save time in the deployment stage. Even the mechanized version of a DE army, for example, had a fast player like Dash running out of time. They just have a lot of units and throw a ton of dice every turn. Orks even moreso.

Clauss wrote:For 2000 points 2.5 hours is easily enough time. I know people who play orks, nids and other larger armies. But During the invitational there was a full mechguard player who got his rounds finished. There was multiple foot armies that finished their games. I really dont think two good players who know their rules wont finish. I have yet to not finish a turn 5 in the past year of playing in tournaments against dozens of armies. Sure, it would be cool to have 2.5 hours for the invitational, you wouldn't have to play efficiently and quickly. But that isn't realistic for a 5 game competition. If you know all of your rules, and every other army, the games go quick.

IMO 2.5hrs usually is enough, though some armies are still going to struggle with a high model count at 2k. And I agree completely that for an event of a format like this one, you need the higher number of rounds. That's part of the draw and the unique appeal of NOVA, and I love getting a ton of games in a weekend, so that definitely appeals to me. I do worry, however, if a significant percentage of games are running up against the the time limit. And when I see what appears to be an even higher-than-usual percentage of lower model count MEQ armies in attendance (and read comments like Hyvemind's), it does make me suspect that a lower points size might be a smart choice.


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MVBrandt wrote:Other than absurdly long times for very low points values, slow or bad players, or intentional slow players ... kinda don't finish games regardless of points value and time limit.

If you're running a smaller GT with only enough time for 5 rounds or so, and are OK with awarding arbitrary generalship awards based on picking one person among many without losses ... cool. You'll still have unfinished games and slow play regardless.

Hey Mike, did you use Jon (Yakface's)'s idea? Did you have the number of turns played and whether the game ended due to time or came to a "natural" end on the results sheets? It would be awesome to see some numbers on this and be able to tell whether this is all anecdotal perception or if it's a real issue.

lambadomy wrote:


Of course, this is coming from a notorious slow player who's had to spend a lot of time working on speeding it up. When Grimgob says "the only armies that have consistently slow played me are IG and Tau" I read it as "Lambadomy slow plays me with his Tau" .

We had one slow game and you admit you were a slow player in general at the time, we have also had games that completly finished so I don't think you slow play deliberatly (but its still funny you remember that game ). I'm just a competitive person and sometimes I get caught up in the heat of it (sorry if I came off like a jerk at the time) but seriously I could count on my hands the games I felt someone was actually being shadey in their play. I'd also like to add I feel slow play is not getting past turn 3 as I play pretty fast unless there is a huge multi assault. I do mean IG and Tau though as they dominate the first half of the game and I've noticed that when BW are barreling down at them and dont get blown up till turn 2 and we only make it to end of 3 someone is taking way to long in the shooting phase.

Grimgob our game went pretty fast at the slaughter in space

nkelsch wrote:

KGatch113 wrote:
How about this idea......Someone should invent a GW clock, similar to a chess clock. Turn 1, I start my clock. I move. I shoot. I assault.My assault phase ends, I turn off my clock, my opponent runs his until the end of his assault phase, and so on.

Both clocks allow you 2.5 hours of play time. Let's say for some reason, at the end of turn 4 you are out of time, while your opponent has 1 hour left. Guess who is not moving or shooting anymore? This eliminates slowhammer, and ensures both parties get the same amount of time to play.

Game is not balanced around or designed for equal play. Most phases are interactive so all this does is shifting slowplay to your opponents phases. I play orks and the turn I Waaaagh and assault will be a single long assault phase but both players are rolling attacks. If I am penalized and lose future turns for that, it has broken the game. My army needs that assault to be effective, and a marine army is balanced to withstand the assault. This also shifts the meta further in favor for a defensive shooty army as you never have to worry about tactical movement or long assaults on your phases.

I don't think I would play in an event with a chess-timer 'equal time' model. Not all long phases are slow play... Slow play is like porn, we can't define it but we know it when we see it.

Uhm, maybe I was not clear.....

both players with clocks get 2.5 hours to play the game. Without clocks, both players get 2.5 hours to play the game. Whether one particular phase is longer or shorter, it makes no difference. The goal is, you control the time...you can see on your clock how much time you have left. You can't be slowhammered. ( ok, in reality, you'd have 1.25 hours, as your clock does not run while your opponents does).


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Clauss wrote:In response to Mannahnin and Adam Longwalker regarding the time constraints. For the NOVA Invitational we had 2 hours for each 1750 game, I had no issues with the time. My first game finish with 30 minutes free, my second finished with about 20 minutes left. My third game we got through 5 turns then the judge stopped us at the end of our 5th(for fun I rolled it and it would not have kept going). My fourth game finished with 40 mins left, my last game ended on turn 5. I ran into foot angels, deathwing, eldar, GKs and Mechguard. I honestly dont think you need more than 2 hours for 1750 points. Two adequate players who know their rules can get a game done in less than 2 hours if they are a playing to their best abilities without slow playing. For 2000 points 2.5 hours is easily enough time. I know people who play orks, nids and other larger armies. But During the invitational there was a full mechguard player who got his rounds finished. There was multiple foot armies that finished their games. I really dont think two good players who know their rules wont finish. I have yet to not finish a turn 5 in the past year of playing in tournaments against dozens of armies. Sure, it would be cool to have 2.5 hours for the invitational, you wouldn't have to play efficiently and quickly. But that isn't realistic for a 5 game competition. If you know all of your rules, and every other army, the games go quick.

You are correct sir. It's not the points, its the players.

I've pointed this out several times....in today's 40K, many players have 200 or more points tied into characters. At 1750 (( which was a made up value by the GW staff one year...why not 1650 or 1800 or 1900?) that means you are really running a 1500 point list with one more guy.

Yes, some armies don't spend that much on characters and are larger as a result. GUess what, my guard army drops...a tank...to get from 1750 to 1500. I'm still running lots of models on foot, which is one of the reasons for games taking so much time.

So the real solution is to A. Find a way to let players know how long their turns are taking or B. Give them more time.

I've played many games with a chess clock to try to speed my own play and just pay attention to how much time my turns take.

The problem is that your opponent has plenty of opportunity to stall or play slowly on your turn, purposeful or not.

You shoot someone...and then wait for them to roll saves (I assign this one to him...and this one to him...and oh wait there's two plasma saves? let me start over). aults and both players are rolling a lot of dice on the 4th and 5th turns. There are just too many things you can end up punishing a player for in a straight up equal time system, mainly in the assault phase but also in the movement phase for horde armies.

You assault them and then both players roll their attacks, work on their initiative, etc...you do a complex multi assault and even if you do it quickly, maybe your opponent takes a while sorting out which squad member is going to attack who.

You do almost anything on your turn and your opponent can have a rules question about it.

The only way this could work is if you were doing things like starting your clock, moving your units, not being interrupted by your opponent, and then when you start shooting, every time your opponent needs to save...it goes to his clock. Then once you assault, you break everything down by initiative and then roll your stuff, switch clock, let him roll, switch clock, saves, etc, back and forth. If you have a rules question, or ask for a judge...it goes on your clock. Etc.

This may be possible, but it feels like it would be difficult and time consuming and slow the game down.

Some turns in 40k take much longer than others. Early turns can be quick, while late turns full of assaults or difficult decisions drag. Some armies play quickly but end up bogged down in a lot of assaults on the 4th and 5th turns. Other armies are just time consuming to move and shoot but are otherwise perfectly reasonable 2000 point armies.

That being said, I still encourage anyone to at least try to time their turns just to see how they're doing. Obviously one of the main culprits of slow play is inexperience in actually trying to play quickly. But that doesn't mean that longer rounds or smaller armies wouldn't help even experienced players. it also doesn't mean that smaller armies or longer rounds wouldn't have an affect on what kind of armies people brought.

christianA wrote:Grimgob our game went pretty fast at the slaughter in space

That wasnt a game, that was a slaughter plus you have very good target priority with an army your very experianced with. hope to see you this weekend. and as a side note most if not all my losses in my sig this year are from IG.

@Grimgob: Yeah, I was just trying to be funny based on your comment. You didn't come off as a jerk that time, or any time. I just tend to remember games (playing relatively seldom helps with that).

If I get off my butt maybe you'll get revenge against my Tau this weekend...assuming we meet in the first round, because otherwise I don't think we'll be on the same tables

I understand why the NOVA folks want to run enough games to determine an absolute winner. What I cannot understand is why they are dead set on that points value.

The very heavy majority of our games finished all of their natural turns. I don't even know where this depth of presumption came from, other than maybe the gaunt spamming nid player on his first dfew games ever played.

MVBrandt wrote:The very heavy majority of our games finished all of their natural turns.

What's an acceptable percentage of games not to finish all of their natural turns? 20%?

Significantly less than that. Slow players and people who play slow ... are slow players and people who play slow. It is a straw man that dropping a tank or a troop unit suddenly causes a mass percentage of games to all finish. It's why I don't put much stock in that sort of argument.

It's only a false claim if an insignificant number of games are running short by hitting the time limit. Did you collect the data to find out?

-------

That aside for a second, I want to take a minute to congratulate you, Mike, for what was by almost all accounts a great event.

That it's only your second year and you're already considered one of the top events in the country, worthy to be mentioned in the same breath as Wargamescon and (especially) Adepticon is a heck of an achievement. That you've got guys flying out from California and even Britain is awesome (about a half dozen guys also drove down from my local store up here in NH, a couple of whom were in that Perfect Sports role call), and demonstrates that people are really interested in this kind of event, and grateful that someone out there is knocking himself, his friends and family out with their efforts to put on a National-class event. Especially given some of your obstacles this year (little thing called a Hurricane pulling some of your judges away), you've clearly done a heck of a job. Having the work ethic and the commitment to this event to crank out huge amounts of (apparently good-quality) terrain to fill all those tables, and to run this huge number of rounds are not things to be taken lightly or for granted. Having the intelligence and humility and self-confidence to accept criticism and feedback and tweak and adjust is really gravy on top. Every organizer of one of these things has a vision of what he wants to do, and will naturally run the kind of event he himself would best love to play in. The fact that you've been so open to feedback is one of your several admirable qualities. So I hope people's comments and feedback don't come off as nitpicking, and are more a testament to your openness and desire to further perfect an already-great event.

To everyone else:

I'd like to make sure that Mike, who is here in this thread posting a day later rather than just sleeping the whole monumental effort off, is acknowledged and thanked properly for his work. Congratulations, sir! And well done.



21 bolter salute:

That was one of the nicest things anyone has written or said on the internet. We do try very hard to accept criticism and improve our format year in and year out. We're already talking about ways to spread out the rounds and give people more comfort zone, etc. (several ideas are on table).

Thank you. If we do the NOVA for anything at all, it's for the socializing and appreciation. There's no money in it, no fame worth wanting, and it's a ton of work ... the thanks mean more than I can express!

I consider myself an average player and have never attended such a tournament as Nova but it sounds like it was a fantastic time and a great job by all who made it work.

On the issue of game time. I wonder what the correlation is between game time and the majority of armies that showed up to play. You would expect a healthy amount of the newer and powerful 5th edition dexes to be present. However, are players bringing lower model count armies because that is their usual army or did some decide not to bring larger armies because of concerns for time?

Nids have problems with the dex in addition to time issues if fielding a horde type army, so I wonder did any players decide not to go with a horde-type nid army because they felt the dex was not strong enough compared to other 5th edition books or because a horde army can easily be pressed for time (or a combination of both)? I think this is important because if the time significantly favours low model count armies to the point that horde armies (or significantly larger model count armies) are not deemed practical that will affect the type of armies that show up to a tourney. Certainly not the only factor but it is one to consider.

MVBrandt wrote:That was one of the nicest things anyone has written or said on the internet. We do try very hard to accept criticism and improve our format year in and year out. We're already talking about ways to spread out the rounds and give people more comfort zone, etc. (several ideas are on table).

Thank you. If we do the NOVA for anything at all, it's for the socializing and appreciation. There's no money in it, no fame worth wanting, and it's a ton of work ... the thanks mean more than I can express!

Yeah, I'm definitely looking forward to the follow-up meeting! I'm sure a lot of us are on the same page about some changes for next year.

It would be interesting to see the average model count per year, to see if time limits do reduce how many units people bring.

I will add the congratulations to Mike - having run small fry tournaments in comparison to NOVA i know how much work they can be, so to put on something that in only 2 years has an international following, huge presence and essentially just "amazing, but tweak...." comments is a huge vindication of your abilities and work ethic. Keep it up - you've certainly gotten a lot of people thinking about the next step in gaming, while you're busy doing it.

Hi

I find that people are constructing a time issue troubling. For myself, 1850 in two hours is the standard and it isn't an issue for most players in my area.

Last fall, I played with a 194 model ork horde at one event and completed all of my games. It usually took 90% of the time alloted but I play very quickly when I choose to bring a horde of that size.

At Adpeticon this past spring, in the team tournament my partner and I had a round where we played 7 turns with 219 models and finished with 35 minutes to spare.

There are simple things I do to speed things up:
- I only measure the exact distance moved for the leading edge of my horde units and for distinct models (for example, the nob and special weapons), with the distinct message to my opponent that if it looks like I am moving more than 6" to call shenanigans. This saves a lot of 6" checks.

- After moving the leading edge and distinct models, I leap frog the trailing elements to fill the middle rather than move each model. This saves physically moving 10 models per unit - multiply that by 4-5 units of 30 boyz over 7 turns and that adds up to a lot of time saved.

- I know how many dice of a particular colour I have so that I can quickly get things done rather than counting from 1 upwards each time. The first time I roll a big pile, I count it and show my opponent how many dice I have. From then on I know I have 36 green dice, so if I need to roll 28, I will pull 8 out and roll the rest.

- And perhaps most importantly, I plan the particulars of my turn as he is executing his. Usually, I know what I want to accomplish 3-4 turns in advance. When playing a horde, my time to think and plan is while my opponent is doing his thing. At least 80% of my following turn can be planned after he is done his movement. There will be tweaks based on how devastating his turn will be, but I can think through average damage scenarios while he moves, and narrow the choices in my turn X or Y as to what I do next.

Cheers,
Nate

MVBrandt you got the Army list for the top 16 at both the open and the invitational?

Warlocke21 wrote:Hey all - I was "that tyranid player" (/braces self). Although I've been a GW player and fan since 2e, my play history in 5e is 2 friendly games, 1 very small 3-game FLGS tournament, and NOVA. With that in mind, I'll post a few comments to earlier posts about the 3 games from day 1, especially having had high expectations after the games from the day before. I obviously never expected that I would *ever* be on table 1 at NOVA, and even asked Mike if he was okay with me being on camera/miked up given my (lack of) experience. Big kudos to Mike for letting a new player enjoy a little limelight, feel a little special going 3-1 on day 1 at a huge tournament (and all the well-earned vinegar that goes with said limelight /grin).

If you're familiar with the tournament format, my initial random seed on Saturday was table 2 in bracket 1 (where the camera was), and wins pushed me to table 1 for the rest of the day.

Magilla Gurilla -
I can agree that the top table was not the most "appealing" games to watch.
I also saw some pretty shady things going on with the Tyranid player; however, I am willing to chalk it up to being new(er) to the game.
Having said that....
...I have no doubt that MVB is aware of the situation; and will do what he can to make sure all the parties involved are aware of any possible problems.

In my opinion two thumbs up for the willingness to have an event like this broadcast from beginning to end.

First - thanks for the benefit of the doubt: I'll own up to being uneducated/inexperienced any day of the week as that's absolutely accurate; deliberate cheating: not in a million years. After my initial flgs tournament experience I was very sensitized to my slow play, and intentionally took a smaller list to NOVA to help compensate, but clearly not enough. As far as the "situation" of I and my opponents only getting through 3-4 turns, Mike was definitely aware, as was John, the head judge. Mike and I talked about it, and he asked me to work on speeding up after the 2nd game; and then again, he, John and I all talked about it after the 3rd game. I was definitely stressing about it and did for the rest of the tournament, and appreciated Andrew pushing me in the 4th game.

hyv3mynd -
From the little I watched, there was a tyranid player under the camera for 2 games that only finished 3/4 turns. Wasn't very familiar with his own unit's stats and rules.

I understand there's added pressure playing under a camera and I've never done it. Even still, I've played nids exclusively for a year and you really have to move to finish 2k games in a time limit. Assaults with multiple initiatives, rending, armor, and FnP really slow the game down.

Tomorrow should be a lot better as hopefully the most experienced players play under the camera at a better pace with more solid rules knowledge.

Tiny bit of validation perhaps... thanks hyv3mynd.

whoadirty -
I would consider myself sort of a novice player, so it's interesting to see some of these guys not know the codex they are using. Or they are cheating. Just watched a Tyranid player playing against Grey Knights and when his Tervigon died, he said he only had to put wounds on one squad. There were a couple other instances I have seen in another game (for an army I don't even play) where the guy had to look up the rules. Is this common? I kind of expected guys to know their codex at a tourney like this.

This was a huge mistake on my part - and was so concerned about the slowplay aspects was not about to look into a rulebook unless forced to; and Andrew just said play on. I should have had this one down though.

Sorry to single you out Warlocke21, I was watching and 'nids just happen to be one of armies I play and it just stuck out to me. Like I had said, not having played in a huge event like that I was under the impression that everyone knew their army books inside out. Impressive how well you did with just a few games under your belt ... bravo!

Just would like to add to what Mannahnin said regarding the Nova Open. The Nova open was the single best tournament I have ever attended over my 7 years of playing. I will make sure next year I will be going and hopefully playing as many games as possible.

You guys had amazing support and sponsors which were fun to look at before/after and in the downtime, the Swag bag was great for the event. Laser pointer, shot glass, random bags of bitz, free bases, food, and all types of stuff. It was a warm welcome to the event. You and your staff also were very warm, I saw you greeting dozens and dozens of players and being friendly which really creates a nice atmosphere in the tournament. Not to mention your judges, all of which who were very good with the rules and very well instructed by yourself and John I am sure. It was a very cool experience to have a judge at each table. At first i was scared and hesitant about him watching over my shoulder. But after about 5-10 mins you get used to it and understand that the judge there is merely a safety blanket to prevent any cheating/bullying/or just horrible use of rules.

Also the terrain was the best I have seen at a large tournament, each table had customized terrain that was carefully made/painted and set up, it was very impressive to the see every single table done with the same care.

Thank you Mike, was a great tournament. I will be readily awaiting next year.
-Kurt C

Ventus wrote:
On the issue of game time. I wonder what the correlation is between game time and the majority of armies that showed up to play. You would expect a healthy amount of the newer and powerful 5th edition dexes to be present. However, are players bringing lower model count armies because that is their usual army or did some decide not to bring larger armies because of concerns for time?

This I think is a huge point. That people do not bring certain armies because of the time and the points limit.

I was talking to one of the 19th Legion guys (they are some nice guys from MS, check out their blog) and I played one who was playing tyranids at Wargames Con and asked him if he brought his bugs. He said he didn't because he can't finish his games in time.

MVB is right that almost all of the games finished on time, but I wonder if it is because people left home the armies that they know will struggle with the time limit.

Mannahnin wrote:That aside for a second, I want to take a minute to congratulate you, Mike, for what was by almost all accounts a great event.

That it's only your second year and you're already considered one of the top events in the country, worthy to be mentioned in the same breath as Wargamescon and (especially) Adepticon is a heck of an achievement. That you've got guys flying out from California and even Britain is awesome (about a half dozen guys also drove down from my local store up here in NH, a couple of whom were in that Perfect Sports role call), and demonstrates that people are really interested in this kind of event, and grateful that someone out there is knocking himself, his friends and family out with their efforts to put on a National-class event. Especially given some of your obstacles this year (little thing called a Hurricane pulling some of your judges away), you've clearly done a heck of a job. Having the work ethic and the commitment to this event to crank out huge amounts of (apparently good-quality) terrain to fill all those tables, and to run this huge number of rounds are not things to be taken lightly or for granted. Having the intelligence and humility and self-confidence to accept criticism and feedback and tweak and adjust is really gravy on top. Every organizer of one of these things has a vision of what he wants to do, and will naturally run the kind of event he himself would best love to play in. The fact that you've been so open to feedback is one of your several admirable qualities. So I hope people's comments and feedback don't come off as nitpicking, and are more a testament to your openness and desire to further perfect an already-great event.

Nice post, Mannahnin! And totally agreed... there's no way I'm missing this event next year

Blackmoor wrote:

Ventus wrote:
On the issue of game time. I wonder what the correlation is between game time and the majority of armies that showed up to play. You would expect a healthy amount of the newer and powerful 5th edition dexes to be present. However, are players bringing lower model count armies because that is their usual army or did some decide not to bring larger armies because of concerns for time?

This I think is a huge point. That people do not bring certain armies because of the time and the points limit.

I was talking to one of the 19th Legion guys (they are some nice guys from MS, check out their blog) and I played one who was playing tyranids at Wargames Con and asked him if he brought his bugs. He said he didn't because he can't finish his games in time.

MVB is right that almost all of the games finished on time, but I wonder if it is because people left home the armies that they know will struggle with the time limit.

My nids were my first choice for nova, but they stayed home because I play slow with them. Loganwing to a lesser extent. I picked jumpers primarily because they play fast, and also i knew they would be a very good looking army if I put work into them.

I just want to agree with everything Mannahnin said. I have not been to the NOVA open but everything about it is exactly how I would want a tournament and an event to be. Having a group of people willing to put in the time, effort and expense require to do this is phenomenal.

As for the Time limit/points discussion, it's good to know that most of the games finished on time. The other information we'd need to figure out if that means it's enough time isn't really available. Was there an inordinate amount of elite armies, or are GK just the new hotness? Without information about what people bring to a lot of other tournaments with different points amounts/time limits we really have no idea so we can only make educated guesses.

I'll actually be able to provide all of the army lists and general breakdowns of model counts per army and all of that, but it's going to take me a lot of time.

We also tracked who played who each round, so you'll all be able to plot that data however you like, once we have army lists / etc. to attach to names.

The results, however, will be going up quite soon.

That is awesome info Mike. Thank you for your time to provide us with that data.

Thank you to Mvbrandt and everyone who made the Nova Open possible. Had a good time and will be back next year.

Thank you to those I had great games with Tony K., Chris (Jawaballs) ,Andrew B, Keith (SandWyrm) and 3 of my friend Nick (Yermom), Brad (DevianID) and George.

Didn't get to meet as many people from dakka as I would have liked. Made the thread to see who was going hoping to meet a bunch of people but I did meet Aaron A. and his friend Keith (Sandwyrm) from the Back40k blog who were really cool to hang with and I got a game with Keith and his really awesome Tallarn IG on Thursday.

Would have been nice to meet Mannahnin and others but maybe next time.

All and all was a cool event. Very well run and the swag bags were awesome. Laser pointers is great and some of the bits were pretty useful. Terrain was amazing and so were the prizes. Had some great games and met some cool people.

Congratulations to all the winners.

Haven't had a chance to take a look at the videos or upload my pictures yet since I had to deal with a basement flood. Unfortunately won't be writing tournament reports this time due to time required to deal with basement flooding.

Will definitely be retiring Guard though really cumbersome army to travel with but very fun to model, paint and convert.

Uploading pictures of armies is very possible though. Just not tonight.

Blackmoor wrote:

Ventus wrote:
On the issue of game time. I wonder what the correlation is between game time and the majority of armies that showed up to play. You would expect a healthy amount of the newer and powerful 5th edition dexes to be present. However, are players bringing lower model count armies because that is their usual army or did some decide not to bring larger armies because of concerns for time?

This I think is a huge point. That people do not bring certain armies because of the time and the points limit.

I was talking to one of the 19th Legion guys (they are some nice guys from MS, check out their blog) and I played one who was playing tyranids at Wargames Con and asked him if he brought his bugs. He said he didn't because he can't finish his games in time.

MVB is right that almost all of the games finished on time, but I wonder if it is because people left home the armies that they know will struggle with the time limit.

That is an excellent point that you brought up Blackmoor about people bringing armies so they can finish games due to time constraints. And that does make a great deal of sense to me.

@MVBrandt Credit is given when credit is due. Congratulations on pulling off a tournament during some pretty harsh weather. You must have had your logistics down -AND- had back up plans in case of something causing an immediate change.

I will also congratulate your Support Staff.
You must have had a good crew of people who helped you along the way. Most people do not know the amount of paperwork, the co-ordination that is needed to have a large event such as yours The set up. The take down. The clean up afterwards. And I bet you and your support staff was very tired afterwards.

I know that the support staff hardly ever gets any sort of recognition when things goes well, and they get crapped on when things goes bad. I wanted to make a posting here on Dakka and let them know that there are people who know what they do and appreciate all of their hard work. With out good support, there will not be a good event.

So hats off to MVBrandt and his crew for all the hard work that they did at the tournament.

Thanks to Mike and team for pulling of an awesome gaming experience. I can speak for all of the Iron Fist League guys (dudes in the RED and black bowling shirts) that we had a blast - even got an IFL team pic with Gav Thorpe which capped our weekend. Thanks NOVA Open team!

On a separate note I agree with the allotted time constraining play and impacting player moods. I noticed this when my round 5 game with Devin hit turn 4 with less than 30 min left. I would rather play 6 games and add 30 min per game to allow for a complete 5 turns or possibly 7 given random game length. Then you might see larger horde armies brought to the battles.

One of my IFL buddies only got to turn 2 against an ork player who seemed to drag his feet - he wanted to choke this guy so it ruined his day. To prevent this - look at having a minimum turn length for every game - for example 4 turns have to be played or the game does not end.

Overall a great time and will be back next year.

In response to the time issue I absolutely feel that games were rushed. Now I play death wing, with not a lot of model s and I only throw dozens of dice in assault instead of hundreds. That said, I had several games that just finished on turn 5 with no time for random game length. Clauss, who finished early, runs less than 30 models and doesn't even deploy.

Nova games need to have enough time to play 7 turns, but my experience was that many games involving armies that are not small and elite simply eat up too much time to go the distance. There is a huge difference between finishing a game and rushing through turns before time is called. Being required to play faster is simply less fun regardless of finishing your game or not.

I didn't even get to see 3 of the armies up for painting awards thanks to rushed rounds and short lunches, which is a real shame.

I don't have a particularly large Guard army (<70 infantry & 9 tanks) nor do I think I play particularly slowly. But I believe I only had one game where we rolled to end the game before time was called. Several didn't make it past turn 3. Not that anything would have been all that different if we'd played longer, but I admit to feeling frustrated that that was as far as we got.

Only one of my games ended 'naturally' with a dice roll off. All others ended due to time but we always got through at least 4 turns.

It does help the person going second to play to the point of 'don't start a new turn' because they can simply then poop onto objectives/quarters/whatever and win. Now I know why I went first in almost all my games opponents choice... when you know time may end your game, being the bottom of the turn is a huge tactical advantage.

I don't know if I want or needed longer games, but I would have liked longer breaks... so games that needed to go longer could. I don't know how they could get 4 games in one day with longer breaks, but I can see people upset that they lose because of time because they planed for a turn 5/6 win with cant ever come.

I don't feel like any of my games had slow play issues by either player, but I do play orks and rolling 36 dice takes a little more time than other armies.

That is one huge advantage to playing a 31 model army.

I finished all of my games early.

Normally I would be thinking and taking my time figuring out my turn 5 moves when they would announce that we have one hour left. It was nice to know that I had about 30 minutes to make my decision.

Running out of time was one of the problems with my foot Eldar because they just took a while to play (counting out 20+ dice, then re-rolling to hit, re-rolling to wound, allocating wounds, rolling saves, etc. x5+ ). I lost more games because of the time limit than I did due to losing naturally when the game ended.

I think Blackmoor hit the nail on the head.

Good players with small, elite armies have a comfortable game with time to go to turn 7 should it be rolled.

The same good players with larger armies or forces that work with quantity of shots instead of quality must scramble to finish the same game.

So we can eliminate the player from the equasion, leaving army and tourney time limits. If you dont want to have unintended army comp (aka bring elite armies) then the only thing you can do is up the time allowed for a game.

I for one like the idea someone mentioned that you get a 1 hour break in between each game which goes towards slower players finishing their games.

I think logistics demand more time; most games finished, which is very important, and armies like Kopach's were hardly light on models. There are a number of ways we're looking @ adding time back, some as simple as kicking off the GT on Friday evening.

Adding more time is great for those larger/more dice rolling armies if its practical. But what about reducing the points level a bit?

We track a lot of events, talk to a lot of people, field a lot of feedback, and do a ton of our own playtesting. Truth is, the time difference between 1500 and 2000 is marginal, but the balance difference is considerable. Players like Tony K and others lose most of their armies' advantages against their peers at 2k ... Nids, Tau, etc., can all run over them in the hands of a peer. At 1500 this trims a lot ... and, also, it's kind of just "our thing." Every event has a bit of an identity, and 2k for our GT is one of ours.

We've also found that games just aren't really much faster or slower at 1500-2000 ... the difference in lists is often a tank or two, or bells and whistles that add variety. At 1500 you'll see me (pure example) with 5-6 vet squads, straken, and some vendettas. At 2k I add a lord com and al'rahem and some other tweaky things. This tends to hold true for a lot of players, and the speed of play isn't a major differentiator. Further, lists like Nids and Tau and others that already CAN struggle tend to do even worse when their capacity to properly leverage a weaker FOC is removed.

I.E. for sake of it - at 1500 you'll see a SW list like Tony's still have 6 scoring GH units, a couple razorbacks, 15 long fangs w/ 12 missiles, a scout squad or two, and a rune priest. He'll lose a few models here and there, maybe a scout squad, Njal will get turned into a rune priest ... but the list will effectively be the same. Watch what happens to a 9 Hive Guard, 2 Tervigon, 30 Genestealer, Fex/Prime-star "base" Nid list when it has to drop to 1500. The more flexible and popular codices gain MORE advantages the lower you get, b/c they are ... well, more flexible. That's a huge balance discussion, of course, where everyone has their own hammy $.02 (including me, of course!) ... so the "best" comment to BUOY this stance is that we aren't comfy changing the 2k points level for the GT. We're happy that at 2k you see repeat winners who AREN'T spamming 5-man GH squads in razorbacks or meltavets ... but who are getting it done with less-common special characters and near-full GH squads, etc. etc.

Long story short, we'll figure out a way to increase EVERYONE'S comfort zone by providing more round time and time in between rounds, but dropping the points level isn't one we'll probably go too hard at right now.

MVBrandt wrote:We track a lot of events, talk to a lot of people, field a lot of feedback, and do a ton of our own playtesting. Truth is, the time difference between 1500 and 2000 is marginal, but the balance difference is considerable. Players like Tony K and others lose most of their armies' advantages against their peers at 2k ... Nids, Tau, etc., can all run over them in the hands of a peer. At 1500 this trims a lot ... and, also, it's kind of just "our thing." Every event has a bit of an identity, and 2k for our GT is one of ours.

We've also found that games just aren't really much faster or slower at 1500-2000 ... the difference in lists is often a tank or two, or bells and whistles that add variety. At 1500 you'll see me (pure example) with 5-6 vet squads, straken, and some vendettas. At 2k I add a lord com and al'rahem and some other tweaky things. This tends to hold true for a lot of players, and the speed of play isn't a major differentiator. Further, lists like Nids and Tau and others that already CAN struggle tend to do even worse when their capacity to properly leverage a weaker FOC is removed.

I.E. for sake of it - at 1500 you'll see a SW list like Tony's still have 6 scoring GH units, a couple razorbacks, 15 long fangs w/ 12 missiles, a scout squad or two, and a rune priest. He'll lose a few models here and there, maybe a scout squad, Njal will get turned into a rune priest ... but the list will effectively be the same. Watch what happens to a 9 Hive Guard, 2 Tervigon, 30 Genestealer, Fex/Prime-star "base" Nid list when it has to drop to 1500. The more flexible and popular codices gain MORE advantages the lower you get, b/c they are ... well, more flexible. That's a huge balance discussion, of course, where everyone has their own hammy $.02 (including me, of course!) ... so the "best" comment to BUOY this stance is that we aren't comfy changing the 2k points level for the GT. We're happy that at 2k you see repeat winners who AREN'T spamming 5-man GH squads in razorbacks or meltavets ... but who are getting it done with less-common special characters and near-full GH squads, etc. etc.

Long story short, we'll figure out a way to increase EVERYONE'S comfort zone by providing more round time and time in between rounds, but dropping the points level isn't one we'll probably go too hard at right now.

Very nicely put. Wow, you need to start running GW. You have a firm understanding of the bigger issues with the armies right now. Thats the real stroy.

MVBrandt wrote:We track a lot of events, talk to a lot of people, field a lot of feedback, and do a ton of our own playtesting. Truth is, the time difference between 1500 and 2000 is marginal, but the balance difference is considerable. Players like Tony K and others lose most of their armies' advantages against their peers at 2k ... Nids, Tau, etc., can all run over them in the hands of a peer. At 1500 this trims a lot ... and, also, it's kind of just "our thing." Every event has a bit of an identity, and 2k for our GT is one of ours.

We've also found that games just aren't really much faster or slower at 1500-2000 ... the difference in lists is often a tank or two, or bells and whistles that add variety. At 1500 you'll see me (pure example) with 5-6 vet squads, straken, and some vendettas. At 2k I add a lord com and al'rahem and some other tweaky things. This tends to hold true for a lot of players, and the speed of play isn't a major differentiator. Further, lists like Nids and Tau and others that already CAN struggle tend to do even worse when their capacity to properly leverage a weaker FOC is removed.

I.E. for sake of it - at 1500 you'll see a SW list like Tony's still have 6 scoring GH units, a couple razorbacks, 15 long fangs w/ 12 missiles, a scout squad or two, and a rune priest. He'll lose a few models here and there, maybe a scout squad, Njal will get turned into a rune priest ... but the list will effectively be the same. Watch what happens to a 9 Hive Guard, 2 Tervigon, 30 Genestealer, Fex/Prime-star "base" Nid list when it has to drop to 1500. The more flexible and popular codices gain MORE advantages the lower you get, b/c they are ... well, more flexible. That's a huge balance discussion, of course, where everyone has their own hammy $.02 (including me, of course!) ... so the "best" comment to BUOY this stance is that we aren't comfy changing the 2k points level for the GT. We're happy that at 2k you see repeat winners who AREN'T spamming 5-man GH squads in razorbacks or meltavets ... but who are getting it done with less-common special characters and near-full GH squads, etc. etc.

Long story short, we'll figure out a way to increase EVERYONE'S comfort zone by providing more round time and time in between rounds, but dropping the points level isn't one we'll probably go too hard at right now.

Funny how...

I track a lot of events, talk to a lot of people, field a lot of feedback, and do a ton of playtesting. Truth is, the time difference between 1500 and 2000 is substantial and the balance difference is less considerable. I just played in a 1500 event with 2 1/2 hour games, but only 4 games out of the maybe 100 didn't finish in 1:45 mins. I run 1500 events and the same seems to be true. I play in 1850-2000 and all of sudden I see many players not finishing games. The key is looking at your entire playership and not just the top 16 which your event is focused on. Talk to all the players experienced or not.

As to the your army example. Since (as you believe) Nids are subpar in comparison to Space Wolves does it matter what the Nid list looks like? If Tony brought that list to many 1500 tourneys with players of decent skill he would auto lose the KP game because of the build. At least he wouldn't have to worry about remembering Njal pesky rules. Or he could build a list around minimum scoring units with a few death stars. Or he could build a balanced list with a little of everything. All which work at 1500, but at 2000 40k the Math game starts to take over and 40k the tactical game ends.

OH crap I am wrong about the KP thing because at the NovaOpen he wouldn't have to worry about losing that. Unless he just wanted to feed KPs to his opponent.

@ Byte- Agreed, that's a great post and gives a nice reasoning for the point level... even though I prefer lower point levels (for fantasy... of course, "low" for that is still 2k ) I can see where you're coming from.

tastytaste wrote:

MVBrandt wrote:We track a lot of events, talk to a lot of people, field a lot of feedback, and do a ton of our own playtesting. Truth is, the time difference between 1500 and 2000 is marginal, but the balance difference is considerable. Players like Tony K and others lose most of their armies' advantages against their peers at 2k ... Nids, Tau, etc., can all run over them in the hands of a peer. At 1500 this trims a lot ... and, also, it's kind of just "our thing." Every event has a bit of an identity, and 2k for our GT is one of ours.

We've also found that games just aren't really much faster or slower at 1500-2000 ... the difference in lists is often a tank or two, or bells and whistles that add variety. At 1500 you'll see me (pure example) with 5-6 vet squads, straken, and some vendettas. At 2k I add a lord com and al'rahem and some other tweaky things. This tends to hold true for a lot of players, and the speed of play isn't a major differentiator. Further, lists like Nids and Tau and others that already CAN struggle tend to do even worse when their capacity to properly leverage a weaker FOC is removed.

I.E. for sake of it - at 1500 you'll see a SW list like Tony's still have 6 scoring GH units, a couple razorbacks, 15 long fangs w/ 12 missiles, a scout squad or two, and a rune priest. He'll lose a few models here and there, maybe a scout squad, Njal will get turned into a rune priest ... but the list will effectively be the same. Watch what happens to a 9 Hive Guard, 2 Tervigon, 30 Genestealer, Fex/Prime-star "base" Nid list when it has to drop to 1500. The more flexible and popular codices gain MORE advantages the lower you get, b/c they are ... well, more flexible. That's a huge balance discussion, of course, where everyone has their own hammy $.02 (including me, of course!) ... so the "best" comment to BUOY this stance is that we aren't comfy changing the 2k points level for the GT. We're happy that at 2k you see repeat winners who AREN'T spamming 5-man GH squads in razorbacks or meltavets ... but who are getting it done with less-common special characters and near-full GH squads, etc. etc.

Long story short, we'll figure out a way to increase EVERYONE'S comfort zone by providing more round time and time in between rounds, but dropping the points level isn't one we'll probably go too hard at right now.

Funny how...

I track a lot of events, talk to a lot of people, field a lot of feedback, and do a ton of playtesting. Truth is, the time difference between 1500 and 2000 is substantial and the balance difference is less considerable. I just played in a 1500 event with 2 1/2 hour games, but only 4 games out of the maybe 100 didn't finish in 1:45 mins. I run 1500 events and the same seems to be true. I play in 1850-2000 and all of sudden I see many players not finishing games. The key is looking at your entire playership and not just the top 16 which your event is focused on. Talk to all the players experienced or not.

As to the your army example. Since (as you believe) Nids are subpar in comparison to Space Wolves does it matter what the Nid list looks like? If Tony brought that list to many 1500 tourneys with players of decent skill he would auto lose the KP game because of the build. At least he wouldn't have to worry about remembering Njal pesky rules. Or he could build a list around minimum scoring units with a few death stars. Or he could build a balanced list with a little of everything. All which work at 1500, but at 2000 40k the Math game starts to take over and 40k the tactical game ends.

OH crap I am wrong about the KP thing because at the NovaOpen he wouldn't have to worry about losing that. Unless he just wanted to feed KPs to his opponent.

Lol. Too much pettiness and hate in your life, Nick. Expand your mind, expand your empathy, and you'll find it easier not to be considered less of by the broader TO community out there. You don't care, petty petty snarky snarky blah blah, I know I know.

MVBrandt wrote:Lol. Too much pettiness and hate in your life, Nick. Expand your mind, expand your empathy, and you'll find it easier not to be considered less of by the broader TO community out there. You don't care, petty petty snarky snarky blah blah, I know I know.

Sigh... pretty much the whole post except for the bookends was constructive but just happened to differ with your own experience. But I guess that's just easier to ignore...

It's not constructive when it doesn't analyze reality - i.e. the comment that our event focuses on the top 16 (nothing could be further from the truth, especially in comparison to most other formats out there). This is similar to a post he made on BOK where he thought it was inappropriate of us to offer $2k in cash to competitors, but not to random raffle ... only for him to look absurd in light of the fact that we actually did also give $2k in cash to random raffle.

Similarly, I don't believe Nids are subpar in comparison to Space Wolves, and frequently beat Tony using them ... etc. Or the fact that our event uses KP.

It wasn't constructive at all, b/c it assesses the NOVA as it is not ... and/or is a simple troll. Either the "investigative journalist" of the warhams world is simply terrible at his job, operating with presumption instead of fact ... or he's trying to troll up silliness.

Again, the majority of the TO community out there does not take Nick very seriously ... something that I think is sad in light of his capabilities when it comes to very strong blog design and forum trollage/presence.

The NOVA thrives and survives on aggressive management of player input, constructive criticism, etc., and changes dramatically by the year to address that. When someone bases commentary upon absentee facts or things about the event that don't occur at all int he first place ... it is either ignorance, or a troll ... and not actually constructive at all. Hence, I can't take it seriously ... which is sad! We put in literally thousands of hours of work each year putting on the NOVA at 0 profit for the pure sake of attendees enjoying themselves. The more ACTUAL constructive criticism we receive, the better the event is tailored toward that goal.

RiTides - thank you!

That post is how you should have responded. Anyways... any data on average KP brought to the event for this year compared with the inaugural event? I did see mention of KP calculatons on some of the streams; how were they used as a victory condition/tie breaker this year? Also, did list presubmission catch any mistakes? What did you eventually decide on as a police regarding people using/submitting illegal lists?

Here's what I want to know- what are the winners of the various $1k prizes doing with it

I know only that of the 7 cash prize winners, Nick was putting it toward his college education.

We have monthly tournaments in Chicago at the Battle Bunker as part of the AWC tournament series. We have a different points set each month from 1500-2000pts. Many people take the same army and just adjust their points. Some others, like me, have a specific build for each points level.

My footdar are my 1500pt army. At that points level they do very well. Daemons are my 1650pt army, Chaos is 1750 (sometimes), Blood angels and Bugs are 1850 and Blood Angels alone are my 2000pt army.

Each codex does more at different points levels. The higher we go, the better the newer army books become. The newer books have more options to shoe horn into their lists and they can bring it all at 2000pts. At 1500pts a limited army book, such as Eldar, which does not have as many viable options in their force org slot as the newer books can't take as many effective slots as, say, space wolves.

I can also say that we get new players all the time and we have a steady core of veterans. When two veterans play, no matter the model count, the games go fast and usually finish on time. When we have one 'rookie' (or someone who's more of a hobbiest who paints well and just wants to play some games), the game slows down. That could be for a number of reasons, but it happens.

Blackmoor is right. Certain armies play at certain speeds. Footdar do indeed take a while while 60 space wolves all mounted up (so you move 6 tanks and shoot some long fangs) can play faster. The experience of the player and their list also factors into this.

I'm not sure I agree with the statement that the games aren't faster or slower at 1500pts and 2000pts. Our 1500pt games play at 1:30 and our 2000pt games play at 2:15. The 2000pt games sometimes don't finish on time. The 1500pt games do finish on time.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
One thing I just thought of. Is there a policy about players receiving messages during thier live game feed? Could someone get text messages about there game while it is going on?

potentially they could, but the live feed is usually on a delay, anywhere from 5 to 30 seconds. The receiving text messages part is as likely to go unnoticed as having a buddy try to assist while physically present.

MVBrandt wrote:It's not constructive when it doesn't analyze reality - i.e. the comment that our event focuses on the top 16 (nothing could be further from the truth, especially in comparison to most other formats out there). This is similar to a post he made on BOK where he thought it was inappropriate of us to offer $2k in cash to competitors, but not to random raffle ... only for him to look absurd in light of the fact that we actually did also give $2k in cash to random raffle.

Similarly, I don't believe Nids are subpar in comparison to Space Wolves, and frequently beat Tony using them ... etc. Or the fact that our event uses KP.

It wasn't constructive at all, b/c it assesses the NOVA as it is not ... and/or is a simple troll. Either the "investigative journalist" of the warhams world is simply terrible at his job, operating with presumption instead of fact ... or he's trying to troll up silliness.

Again, the majority of the TO community out there does not take Nick very seriously ... something that I think is sad in light of his capabilities when it comes to very strong blog design and forum trollage/presence.

The NOVA thrives and survives on aggressive management of player input, constructive criticism, etc., and changes dramatically by the year to address that. When someone bases commentary upon absentee facts or things about the event that don't occur at all int he first place ... it is either ignorance, or a troll ... and not actually constructive at all. Hence, I can't take it seriously ... which is sad! We put in literally thousands of hours of work each year putting on the NOVA at 0 profit for the pure sake of attendees enjoying themselves. The more ACTUAL constructive criticism we receive, the better the event is tailored toward that goal.

RiTides - thank you!

I saw the NOVA post on BoK. Mostly 2nd to 3rd hand accounts from people and once again trying to stir some sort of Outrage out of a very well run event. What PastyPaste is trying to do is further split the community and make underhand comments about winning armies or people he does not like. The site was at a loss when there was little to no conflict at the event and was banking on Dash to pull something and to his credit, he won best sportsman. Btw I am not Dash's biggest fan but he at least deserves praise for winning the award. Oh and while Stelek may bash events, he does tell people why he does not like them and how they could be better in his opinion.

I honestly think it is a mistake to simply write off the idea that lowering points costs for a game by 250 points doesn't have any major impact on gameplay time. Are there people out there who are slow players that will fail to finish their games pretty much no matter how much time you give them? Of course, but at the same time, every single point added or reduced to armies will have an impact on game length when looked at an average across a tournament field.

It is folly (IMHO) to assume that because one personally, or even one's friends would only remove a single model (for example) from their army with a reduction of 250 points that this is what everyone, or even most people, would also do. Army composition depends wildly on the personal style of the player, so while everyone you know may only drop a single vehicle or character there may be 5, 10 or 20 people in the field who are dropping a squad of guys.

For just one example, with my Kan wall, when going from 1,500 points to 1,850 I typically add another 20 shoota boyz into the army, which of course adds a tremendous amount of extra time into the game potentially with moving the models, shooting all of them, resolving assaults, etc.

Even going from 1,850 to 2,000 often means I add Snikrot and a unit of Kommandos into the mix. While this one unit, which always arrives from Reserves, may not seem like it would affect the time of a game much, I can say from experience that his presence in my army actually makes my opponents play MUCH slower until he enters play, as they waste time in both deployment and the first few turns of the game worrying about how to castle up to mitigate the damage from his arrival.

These are the kind of intangibles that you can't simply add up by the number of models added or subtracted to an army. Adding Njal to a Space Wolf army, for example (a single model) can add a tremendous amount of extra gameplay time in order to resolve his Storm rules that start to affect the game in later turns.

And even if you're only adding a single model (like a vehicle), while that may not add much extra time towards your gameplay, when that vehicle is assaulted by 30 Orks (for example), then all the time it takes to roll for damage, etc, *is* being generated by a model that wouldn't otherwise be in the game. EVERYTHING added to the army has the potential to lengthen the game, and not only in the conventional ways we always think of.

At the Vegas Throne of Skulls where the games were 1,500 pts with 2 1/2 hour rounds I think nearly every (if not every single) game finished completely and totally. Of course, the VAST majority of people finished way, way early and had to find things to do to keep themselves occupied between rounds, but the point is that obviously adjusting time vs. point values of the games played does allow people (even the slow ones) to finish their tournament games.

I think we can all agree that 2 1/2 hours for 1,500 point games is pretty absurd, but there has to be some sort of happy middle-ground that allows players to take a little bit of time to stop and enjoy their games while playing them. Instead it really does seem that through the years the standard amount of time given at 40K tournaments is based way more on what the event will allow, rather than what the game itself actually needs.

As I've pointed out many times before in many forum threads (so I apologize for beating the dead horse), the constant argument that gets brought up about how X player is totally able to finish all his games playing with a 200+ model Ork army is a terrible, terrible baseline to use. Unless you're dealing with some sort of invitational army where every player is supposed to be a master, then using players who are incredibly experienced as the basis for setting a schedule means you're basically shutting the door on anyone except a master from using such armies.

I think one of the most dangerous things about this type of 'invisible comp' (as someone else coined), is that you won't necessarily hear about its effects from the people who *do* attend your event. For example, if a player thinks that your tournament doesn't offer enough time for its rounds vs. the point values of the games, they may just not attend your event as a result, and you'll likely never, ever hear from these people as to why they chose not to come.

The other thing that troubles me is that sticking to 2,000 points is put forth as being the most balanced and competitive list size for games, yet what if that point size is causing *any* games to finish improperly, then what is really happening to the competitive balance? For example, I know a lot of people who feel as though if they get 5 turns played, then this counts as a 'full' game. I'll use a post about the NOVA from another thread as an example:

Clauss wrote:In response to Mannahnin and Adam Longwalker regarding the time constraints. For the NOVA Invitational we had 2 hours for each 1750 game, I had no issues with the time. My first game finish with 30 minutes free, my second finished with about 20 minutes left. My third game we got through 5 turns then the judge stopped us at the end of our 5th(for fun I rolled it and it would not have kept going). My fourth game finished with 40 mins left, my last game ended on turn 5. I ran into foot angels, deathwing, eldar, GKs and Mechguard. I honestly dont think you need more than 2 hours for 1750 points. Two adequate players who know their rules can get a game done in less than 2 hours if they are a playing to their best abilities without slow playing. For 2000 points 2.5 hours is easily enough time. I know people who play orks, nids and other larger armies. But During the invitational there was a full mechguard player who got his rounds finished. There was multiple foot armies that finished their games. I really dont think two good players who know their rules wont finish. I have yet to not finish a turn 5 in the past year of playing in tournaments against dozens of armies. Sure, it would be cool to have 2.5 hours for the invitational, you wouldn't have to play efficiently and quickly. But that isn't realistic for a 5 game competition. If you know all of your rules, and every other army, the games go quick.

If I'm reading this right, he's saying that 2 of his 5 games (40% of his games) ended on turn 5 because of time. On one, he rolled to see if it would have continued, and it wouldn't so therefore it feels like he finished his full game.

The big problem with this concept is that random game length is absolutely essential to 5th edition 40K and when you know the game is going to end after round 5 because of time (regardless of what the roll comes up with after time is called), then players play differently. In other words, anytime a game ends on turn 5 or 6 due to time being called, competitive balance is being affected because some of the random nature of random game length is being removed.

For example, in the Open finals, if the game had ended on turn 5 instead of turn 6 then Blackmoor would have won instead of Tony. But more importantly, if they had *known* that the game was ending for sure on turn 5 (due to time running out), then they both would have played turn 5 probably much, much differently...and that's the point...when you know the game is going to end for sure, everything changes about the way you're playing.

And that's not even taking into consideration players who realize that time is running down and then rush to finish only to find they make a critical mistake that costs them the game. I know when Tony and Dash were playing they seemed to be running out of time in the end and rushed to finish. I don't think any major mistake was made that wasn't caught, but it easily could have happened (and I'm sure it has happened).

How much is the perceived competitive balanced of 2,000 point lists worth if the outcome of X amount of games is being affected by time constraints? And how much do these balanced lists help larger armies if only the super-experienced players can take them and be sure that they can finish all their games fully?

Now obviously at the end of the day this is your event and you need to do what makes you and most of your attendees happy. However I always just feel like some of the issues created by too many points vs. not enough time for rounds are 'silent' issues that you won't necessarily hear about (so to reiterate):

1) Players that don't attend the tournament due to feeling like they won't be able to finish their games may not (probably won't) let you know about why they're not attending.

2) Players that consciously or subconsciously choose to not take an army with a high model count can result in a form of 'silent comp' that you probably won't hear about (assuming the players even recognize what they're doing).

3) Games that aren't being finished to their true completion (including those that technically 'finish' but the players knew that there was no way they could get in another turn due to time) are definitely affecting the competitive balance of those particular games and therefore the whole event.


And of course this is all just posted from a high-level perspective from someone who (obviously) didn't attend the event and is simply meant as a basic debate topic as opposed to any critique of the NOVA...I don't think I'm qualified to actually critique the event without attending!

Pat 11th Company wrote:potentially they could, but the live feed is usually on a delay, anywhere from 5 to 30 seconds. The receiving text messages part is as likely to go unnoticed as having a buddy try to assist while physically present.

Tony was giving and receiving text messages all though our game. I thought nothing of it at the time, but now it is interesting.

If you are playing on camera you should ban all communication.

I highly doubt that people were getting text assists during games. Kids these days just can't help texting all the time. I saw it more than once around the hall.

Blackmoor wrote:

Pat 11th Company wrote:potentially they could, but the live feed is usually on a delay, anywhere from 5 to 30 seconds. The receiving text messages part is as likely to go unnoticed as having a buddy try to assist while physically present.

Tony was giving and receiving text messages all though our game. I thought nothing of it at the time, but now it is interesting.

If you are playing on camera you should ban all communication.

I watched the entire video of your guys game, and it didn't appear to me that he was suddenly switching tactics or anything. Most of what he did tactically I would have done in that instance with a few changes to target priority and power selection. He would have to have some very poor sportsmanship to accept help via text messages while playing on a live feed. The only time I have used a cell phone in a competitive event for advantage was in a team tournament where my partner and I discussed battle strategy via text messages to avoid giving away our plan to our opponents (who happened to be playing right into it, hence our silent communication). So while it's certainly possible to cheat that way, and I cannot speak for Tony since I do not know him, it did not APPEAR to me that he was intentionally cheating via texts.

I will say, though, that he made a big mistake with Nja's Lord of Tempest's ability, but if I remember correctly from the video, you likely would have had to cross difficult terrain to charge the Rhino anyway. Part of the hill was blocking part of the Rhino, and in order to get the max number of models in contact with the tank you would probably have had to move some of them over the hill. I could be wrong, and I'd have to go back and check the video to be sure, but I seem to remember thinking that at the time. The bigger mistake I think was that you got Weapon Destroyed and Immobilized on a Rhino that was already Immobile, and thus should have been wrecked, and even after you wrecked it, Tony rolled for repair on it and used the Storm Bolter to shoot and kill your Strike Squad on the objective. He also shot with a Rhino earlier that had repaired in the same phase, which he should not have done. Again, I'm not saying he cheated, but it looked like the number of games and the long hours of play were certainly affecting him.

So does anyone actually know tonys exact list?

MVBrandt wrote:

Similarly, I don't believe Nids are subpar in comparison to Space Wolves, and frequently beat Tony using them ... etc. Or the fact that our event uses KP.

Mike, Simply because your nid list (and ability) can match up against Tony and win. Doesn't mean Nids are on par with SWs. The strength of a book is when your tournament or "all comers" list performs at the same level against random competition. The stats are in on nids, they do not perform as well as SWs, they are not taken by top players at the same rate as SW, this is true at most point levels.

I do agree that 2k allows books that have worse troops or have less point efficient books complete at closer to even levels. But it is naive to pretend the gap is entirely closed. Your personal W/L record against any one individual is not relevant.

Greg Sparks does excellent with Footdar all the time. Does that mean Eldar are better without transports or that if Greg beat Tony K, or Stelek, that Eldar are "on par" with SW?

Better players rise above. They always do. It makes no comment on the power level of the book. Just that the tools are present, though likely in lesser quantity or at increased cost.


Also, I agree with Yakface's comments. Most of my games ended on a turn that both players KNEW was going to be the last turn. Be it turn 5 or 6. It definitely changes the way people are able to play knowing there will not be another game turn.

Though I think you already know from feedback that having slightly longer rounds and slightly longer breaks is something most people want.