Xenomancers wrote:

 Galas wrote:
Guys, theres the Tournament Discussion if you want to discuss about clocks, do we really need two threads to discuss the same thing? Can we leave this thread to discuss the lists, the combinations, the changes in the meta, etc...?

Sure -
How about those 9 man Shining Spears units I was warning about...

Apparently only 1% of Dakka thinks SS are OP but they are the corner stone of the winning eldar list. I wonder if their opinion will change.




Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
I think that question depends on how bad of a problem slow play really is, which is something we don't have much data for.

Based on my experience at NOVA, watching for slow play on the tables around me (because I find watching armies and games in general very fun) as well as my own games, I would say it's fairly uncommon, and when it does happen, it's painfully obvious.

One would see things like someone rolling 5+ invuln saves for a terminator squad 1 at a time after suffering like 8 wounds from a Baneblade Cannon, or making sure their conscripts were exactly 2" apart in a game without templates.

The largest issue is opponents not having a problem with this (and I understand why) and not calling a judge, and the second largest issue is that apparently the TOs/judges don't care anyways.

If slowplaying is really such a huge issue that it has to be micromanaged at every table by the judges, then clocks are probably the best solution. But in my experience, it's not nearly that bad.

We don't need data on slow playing. We know it occurs and that is enough to do something about it. Really - the majority of slow play is probably unintentional or subconscious bias - clocks would really help in this case because if you change the parameters to actually punish slow play ergo (you lose if you run out of time) - it forces you to play faster. It will make everyone play faster - maybe we will see turn 4 sometimes in a GD tournament. Maybe people will start learning their rules and the rules of other players armies if they know it's going to cost THEIR game time to suffer for having to look stuff up during the game.

I just don't see any reason to oppose the chess clock proposal unless you are:
- A slow player because it's hard for you to play fast (you need to get good)
- You play slow on purpose to give yourself an advantage (you won't be able to do this anymore with chess clocks) or subconsciously you do it (your subconscious bias will change when you are hurting yourself by slow playing).
- You trust in the good nature of human beings (you are a naive person.)
- You just don't want to be bothered with it (your laziness is interfering with progress - please step aside and redirect your efforts to something else)

How about:
- You have been to a major tournament (unlike yourself) and know the fatigue and exhaustion that can happen after three days of drinking and gaming and know that adding yet another burden to the shoulders of a regular player for no benefit is silly.

That is also an irrelevant stance. You wont be able to push a button a few times a game because you are too drunk? or hung over? Holy crap man. Tell me you have something else.

"A few times in a game" means:

1) Every time your opponent rolls a save, or more than one save.
2) Every time your opponent uses a stratagem on your turn.
3) Every time your opponent fires overwatch.
4) Every time your opponent chooses a unit to fight with in the Fight phase.
5) Every time your opponent has a minor rules question or disputes a measurement.
6) Every time your opponent resumes his turn after you did one of the above.
7) Every time your opponent denies the witch.
8) Every time your opponent takes a moment to think about denying the witch/using a stratagem / firing overwatch.
9) Every time your opponent stops the clock to argue about the clock with you because of something.
10) Every time you need to look up rules, or call a judge, or go to the bathroom, or any number of out-of-game sequencing issues.

More like "A few times a phase, for six phases in a player turn, for twelve phases in a battle round, for six battle rounds in a game". So... lets be REALLY conservative and say that you swap the clock 4 times in a phase (that's too many for movement and way too few for shooting and assault, but we'll roll with it).

That's ~ 24 clock swaps in a player turn, 48 in a battle round, and 288 in a six-turn game. And if you skip even 1, it could royally feth things up, depending on which one it was, what the situation was, and whether your opponent is going to take advantage of it or not. If he is like Tony, he probably will.

you don't need to do it that way. At the start of the game you ask your opponent - "I don't really want to switch the clock every-time we have to roll - can we agree to roll quickly? and just switch to clocking the turns? " "yeah sure"

As long as you are true to your words it will balance out for both players. If you see them trying to game you - you tell them. "You are taking too much time now so I am going to start switching the clock"

 Xenomancers wrote:
you don't need to do it that way. At the start of the game you ask your opponent - "I don't really want to switch the clock every-time we have to roll - can we agree to roll quickly? and just switch to clocking the turns? " "yeah sure"

As long as you are true to your words it will balance out for both players. If you see them trying to game you - you tell them. "You are taking too much time now so I am going to start switching the clock"

And then you start an argument, just like how Alex said "Let's play by intent and less strictly" or whatever he said, and Tony's grunt in reply.

Anything that depends on your opponent to play by some gentlemanly agreement is something that people (read: TFGs) will feth with at a tournament.

You are worried about it taking over games between non TFG people though. Just pointing out it doesn't need to be that way. Most people will just want to trade off turns with the timer anyways - against TFG though - who cares - the clock is the boss now. Want to waste time? You lose.

 Xenomancers wrote:
You are worried about it taking over games between non TFG people though. Just pointing out it doesn't need to be that way. Most people will just want to trade off turns with the timer anyways - against TFG though - who cares - the clock is the boss now. Want to waste time? You lose.

Right, so you haven't changed anything for the better. Here's what will happen:

1) Non TFG games go essentially the same, with the added potential for more arguments/strife/headaches.
2) TFGs go from slowplaying to clock manipulation and still suffer no penalty for breaking the tournament rules anyways.
3) Rounds still go over time because of Point 2.
4) Honest players feel like they can't bring horde armies since the time is divided evenly in half.

Is this thread sponsored by Casio?

I was really impressed with Ynarri Shinning Spears. If they aren’t OP, they are definitely the unsung heroes of the Eldar/Ynarri lists.

Or it goes like this:

1) Non TFG games go essentially the same, with the added potential for quicker games and more balanced turn times.
2) TFGs go from slowplaying to being clocked out and lose the game. Or they figure it out!
4) Honest players figure out how to play horde armies faster or find a new solution.
5) Profit

 mugginns wrote:
Or it goes like this:

1) Non TFG games go essentially the same, with the added potential for quicker games and more balanced turn times.
2) TFGs go from slowplaying to being clocked out and lose the game. Or they figure it out!
4) Honest players figure out how to play horde armies faster or find a new solution.
5) Profit

What makes you think that your point 2 is more likely than TFGs learning clock manipulation?

Median Trace wrote:
Is this thread sponsored by Casio?

I was really impressed with Ynarri Shinning Spears. If they aren’t OP, they are definitely the unsung heroes of the Eldar/Ynarri lists.

Eldar surely have a good bunch of very good units. But I think making Ynnari not benefit from Craftworld stratagems is the first step to balance them, even more important than balancing specific units (Ok thats important too)

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 mugginns wrote:
Or it goes like this:

1) Non TFG games go essentially the same, with the added potential for quicker games and more balanced turn times.
2) TFGs go from slowplaying to being clocked out and lose the game. Or they figure it out!
4) Honest players figure out how to play horde armies faster or find a new solution.
5) Profit

What makes you think that your point 2 is more likely than TFGs learning clock manipulation?

Prior experience with clocks in other games.

 mugginns wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 mugginns wrote:
Or it goes like this:

1) Non TFG games go essentially the same, with the added potential for quicker games and more balanced turn times.
2) TFGs go from slowplaying to being clocked out and lose the game. Or they figure it out!
4) Honest players figure out how to play horde armies faster or find a new solution.
5) Profit

What makes you think that your point 2 is more likely than TFGs learning clock manipulation?

Prior experience with clocks in other games.

So you really are telling me that absolutely 0 clock manipulation goes on in other games. No one games the system, or otherwise feths with the clock.

Alternatively, you're telling me that those systems have foolproof clock rules, which may or may not be true of a hypothetical 40k clock rulesset.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
(because I've played timed games before too and people actually do fethed up gak all the time with the timer, whether it's a clock or an hourglass or whatever.)

Is Dakka replacing your words with all those nonsense words? It makes it hard to read man

So you really are telling me that absolutely 0 clock manipulation goes on in other games. No one games the system, or otherwise feths with the clock.

Alternatively, you're telling me that those systems have foolproof clock rules, which may or may not be true of a hypothetical 40k clock rulesset.

Yes

 mugginns wrote:
Is Dakka replacing your words with all those nonsense words? It makes it hard to read man

So you really are telling me that absolutely 0 clock manipulation goes on in other games. No one games the system, or otherwise feths with the clock.

Alternatively, you're telling me that those systems have foolproof clock rules, which may or may not be true of a hypothetical 40k clock rulesset.

Yes

Okay. I don't believe you.

 Xenomancers wrote:

 Cream Tea wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:

 Galas wrote:
Guys, theres the Tournament Discussion if you want to discuss about clocks, do we really need two threads to discuss the same thing? Can we leave this thread to discuss the lists, the combinations, the changes in the meta, etc...?

Sure -
How about those 9 man Shining Spears units I was warning about...

Apparently only 1% of Dakka thinks SS are OP but they are the corner stone of the winning eldar list. I wonder if their opinion will change.

There's a difference between "OP" and "top 5 OP in the game" though.

What is the difference?

Balance is never perfect and going in with a goal of perfect balance is generally less viable than aiming for the largest competitive pool possible. If you have a thousand options and 499 of them are OP, you still probably have a very large and varied competitive environment. If 5 options are more OP than the other 494 in a notable way, your competitive environment will be defined by 0.5% of your options. The assumption of a competitive environment is that everything is OP. The difference is what's OP among the OP crowd.

Are these games all recorded and aired somewhere? I think a few were, but why wouldn't GW want to help out (camera set ups, recording, etc.)-- it would be good relatively cheap advertising and I think could possibly alleviate a bit of the TFG syndrome if players know they will have to face public scrutiny.

Here's how you effortlessly game the clock.

Your opponent is carefully moving on the other side of the table.

You hit the switch.

GG

 Marmatag wrote:
Here's how you effortlessly game the clock.

Your opponent is carefully moving on the other side of the table.

You hit the switch.

GG

The sounds like the sort of incredibly blatant cheating that gets you punched in the face.

 mugginns wrote:
They could be =) If a tournament made it clear in the tournament rules!

Really though what you're seeing is, and this comes up on any DD thread where someone proposes a change to 40k: you could come up with edge cases for ten days to deny any kind of change.

Again, you really think enforcing 'slow play' restrictions, something that can't be measured at all, would be easier for 500+ people than using chess clocks? C'mon man.

so thats a no right?
that makes your dice argument a false equivalence....

also this topic makes me somewhat wish there was a pro 40k scene like there is for mtg, my limited knowledge for qualifying events was a rule knowledge assumption as well as judges for each game.

One thing to remember is that in Warmahordes "making your opponent clock out" is (was?) a viable list building strategy. It was a keystone of attrition-focused lists, to make it so your opponent spent so much time trying to kill them that they would run out their Deathclock and lose the game.

 soundwave591 wrote:

 mugginns wrote:
They could be =) If a tournament made it clear in the tournament rules!

Really though what you're seeing is, and this comes up on any DD thread where someone proposes a change to 40k: you could come up with edge cases for ten days to deny any kind of change.

Again, you really think enforcing 'slow play' restrictions, something that can't be measured at all, would be easier for 500+ people than using chess clocks? C'mon man.

so thats a no right?
that makes your dice argument a false equivalence....

What?

 mugginns wrote:

 soundwave591 wrote:

 mugginns wrote:
They could be =) If a tournament made it clear in the tournament rules!

Really though what you're seeing is, and this comes up on any DD thread where someone proposes a change to 40k: you could come up with edge cases for ten days to deny any kind of change.

Again, you really think enforcing 'slow play' restrictions, something that can't be measured at all, would be easier for 500+ people than using chess clocks? C'mon man.

so thats a no right?
that makes your dice argument a false equivalence....

What?

you were comparing time clocks to dice on necessity, unless I'm mistaken and misread.

Wayniac wrote:
One thing to remember is that in Warmahordes "making your opponent clock out" is (was?) a viable list building strategy. It was a keystone of attrition-focused lists, to make it so your opponent spent so much time trying to kill them that they would run out their Deathclock and lose the game.

Wait, clock manipulation does happen?

Say it ain't so!

Mugginns swore up and down that it never happened!

That's not clock manipulation. What you were talking about was essentially cheating - rolling dice willy nilly, requesting rules etc to cause the other player to use their own time when it was unnecessary.

Here's how you effortlessly game the clock.

Your opponent is carefully moving on the other side of the table.

You hit the switch.

GG

= cheating

'Clocking someone' by making it intensely hard to kill your army (that is holding objectives) is good play. If you want to hold that up as your corner case, go ahead. It is essentially almost as bad as using a horde army that takes two or three times as long to do a turn as your opponent in current 40k, which you've stated is fine and good.

 Xenomancers wrote:

 Cream Tea wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:

 Galas wrote:
Guys, theres the Tournament Discussion if you want to discuss about clocks, do we really need two threads to discuss the same thing? Can we leave this thread to discuss the lists, the combinations, the changes in the meta, etc...?

Sure -
How about those 9 man Shining Spears units I was warning about...

Apparently only 1% of Dakka thinks SS are OP but they are the corner stone of the winning eldar list. I wonder if their opinion will change.

There's a difference between "OP" and "top 5 OP in the game" though.

What is the difference?

The difference in this case is that only about 1% of the voters in the top 5 thread consider SS to be OP enough to be top 5 in the game. I think it goes without saying that a lot more would say they're OP, but below top 5. There's stiff competition at the top.

 mugginns wrote:

'Clocking someone' by making it intensely hard to kill your army (that is holding objectives) is good play. If you want to hold that up as your corner case, go ahead. It is essentially almost as bad as using a horde army that takes two or three times as long to do a turn as your opponent in current 40k, which you've stated is fine and good.

Even this isn't really a thing anymore since they introduced turn limits (which 40k already has). It's basically a gear check strategy that only works if your opponent hasn't learned to manage their time well, which.... there's a lot easier ways to win against that caliber of opponent.

 mugginns wrote:
That's not clock manipulation. What you were talking about was essentially cheating - rolling dice willy nilly, requesting rules etc to cause the other player to use their own time when it was unnecessary.

Here's how you effortlessly game the clock.

Your opponent is carefully moving on the other side of the table.

You hit the switch.

GG

= cheating

'Clocking someone' by making it intensely hard to kill your army (that is holding objectives) is good play. If you want to hold that up as your corner case, go ahead. It is essentially almost as bad as using a horde army that takes two or three times as long to do a turn as your opponent in current 40k, which you've stated is fine and good.

Slowplaying as it currently exists is cheating by the tournament. Nothing is done when it was captured live in front of hundreds of people, which is the real problem here. If you are trying to show that clocks stop slowplay-style cheating, then you have to explain why having clock-tapping cheating is better.

as for your "good play" - it's literally as unengaging as possible, at least in warhammer. An army of 360 guardsmen, 9 commanders, 9 acolytes, 9 cyberwolves, and 9 Mortar Squads is like, 1850 points and 400-odd wounds, and sounds atrocious to play with and against. It will run out the clock, that's for sure.

Sounds like a fun meta.

Which do you think is easier to prevent and identify? Slow playing or someone physically cheating someone else's clock?

 mugginns wrote:
Which do you think is easier to prevent and identify? Slow playing or someone physically cheating someone else's clock?

It's completely irrelevant if the judges won't enforce the rules either way.

But if you ask me, it's easier to prevent and identify physical cheating, sure.

But I don't think it's worth the effort. I'll offer to play games against the next few players I play with the clocks on our phones and we'll see how smoothly it goes.

Hitting the clock for whatever reason is no problem even at 288 times for 6 turns. Tell the guy he has 10 wounds ap-2 and hit the clock and let he take his time rolling saves, FNPs and removing models.

Hitting the thing is pure muscle memory after the first 2 times you try it. Just look at chess tournaments.

For rules discussions or things not related to moving models and rolling dice,just stop both clocks and duke it out.

 Cream Tea wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:

 Cream Tea wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:

 Galas wrote:
Guys, theres the Tournament Discussion if you want to discuss about clocks, do we really need two threads to discuss the same thing? Can we leave this thread to discuss the lists, the combinations, the changes in the meta, etc...?

Sure -
How about those 9 man Shining Spears units I was warning about...

Apparently only 1% of Dakka thinks SS are OP but they are the corner stone of the winning eldar list. I wonder if their opinion will change.

There's a difference between "OP" and "top 5 OP in the game" though.

What is the difference?

The difference in this case is that only about 1% of the voters in the top 5 thread consider SS to be OP enough to be top 5 in the game. I think it goes without saying that a lot more would say they're OP, but below top 5. There's stiff competition at the top.

Every Person at my local, all the CWE players online i talked to, and even DE/Quin players all thought that Shiny Spears were good... but for sure not OP, taking 1 unit of something that is good doesnt make them OP. You didnt see 3-4 units of them in armies, you saw.. 1 Just b..c a unit is in the op doesnt make it op either lol.

FFS, There were KABAL WARRIORS than Shiny Spears in the number 1 list, does that make Kabals OP? Please tell me Kabals are op and you plan on doing an army with 100 of them.

 Marmatag wrote:
Here's how you effortlessly game the clock.

Your opponent is carefully moving on the other side of the table.

You hit the switch.

GG

Why is your opponent carefully moving on your time in the first place?

torblind wrote:
Hitting the clock for whatever reason is no problem even at 288 times for 6 turns. Tell the guy he has 10 wounds ap-2 and hit the clock and let he take his time rolling saves, FNPs and removing models.

Hitting the thing is pure muscle memory after the first 2 times you try it. Just look at chess tournaments.

For rules discussions or things not related to moving models and rolling dice,just stop both clocks and duke it out.

For your points 1 and 2, I'm going to bring this up in my next few games to see how cumbersome it is.

For your point 3: how does this help rounds end on time, if the clocks aren't expired yet?

 Xenomancers wrote:
Apparently only 1% of Dakka thinks SS are OP but they are the corner stone of the winning eldar list. I wonder if their opinion will change.

Step up folks and enjoy the newest round of Xenos hasty generalizations and logical fallacies!

The winning list had 1 squad of Shining Spears.

He had 4 squads of Dark Reapers, I think the cornerstone was here, not with the Bikers. Just guessing, based on hearsay while at LVO.

Furthermore, despite generalizing us all in the same category, I think the conclusion of that thread was that SS were very good, perhaps undercosted, but that the data sample size was simply too small to draw a real conclusion.

However, now that we have some actual tournament data from a large tournament, I would agree they probably need to be adjusted for points, as do Dark Reapers. I would still rate Dark Reapers as the greater balance issue.

Sadly, I still don't consider them the super-sayan death maneuver that you like to claim they are.

But hey, I met you halfway, they probably need a points adjustment. See? Opinions can evolve Xenos, you should try it sometime!

 TwinPoleTheory wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:
Apparently only 1% of Dakka thinks SS are OP but they are the corner stone of the winning eldar list. I wonder if their opinion will change.

Step up folks and enjoy the newest round of Xenos hasty generalizations and logical fallacies!

The winning list had 1 squad of Shining Spears.

He had 4 squads of Dark Reapers, I think the cornerstone was here, not with the Bikers. Just guessing, based on hearsay while at LVO.

Furthermore, despite generalizing us all in the same category, I think the conclusion of that thread was that SS were very good, perhaps undercosted, but that the data sample size was simply too small to draw a real conclusion.

However, now that we have some actual tournament data from a large tournament, I would agree they probably need to be adjusted for points, as do Dark Reapers. I would still rate Dark Reapers as the greater balance issue.

Sadly, I still don't consider them the super-sayan death maneuver that you like to claim they are.

But hey, I met you halfway, they probably need a points adjustment. See? Opinions can evolve Xenos, you should try it sometime!

LOL. Nice try twin-pole. The guy who won the tourney said that the SS were his MVP unit in every game he played. Not the reapers, not the other crap but the SS.

Check the tape if you can, post game interview with Nick. Gushes over how they deleted some enemies entire armies.

MVp doesnt mean OP.

Take out al the Dark Reapers and see if he still says that.

Many units can Delete units, I can WWP a Ynnari 12 man unit a Harlequins with a Shadowseer (in cover or our of LoS, if they can fire at you from DSing, wont matter in a sec), move it after DSing via Shadwoseer, Shoot 12 Melta guns into a unit to kill it, Soulburst "melee" or "Shoot" twice now have either 12 more Mleta or 48 -3ap attacks.

I have deleted units too... doesnt ment that unit is OP, MVP? Sure, OP? No.

 LunarSol wrote:

 Marmatag wrote:
Here's how you effortlessly game the clock.

Your opponent is carefully moving on the other side of the table.

You hit the switch.

GG

Why is your opponent carefully moving on your time in the first place?

I dunno. Pile in / consolidation? Maybe swap out moving for measuring? Maybe swap out moving for literally anything else, maybe he's saying hi to someone else.

People already cheat in 40k games at tournaments.

Implement the clock and the 60% of people who don't already play Eldar will just play Eldar. I need an army that is bonkers fast to play because it's got ridiculous shooting in a unit i spam to the maxxx

I'd rather points be drop to 1500 for tournaments than a clock.

I would rather see Reapers adjusted than Shinning Spears. Reapers just seem to be a unit that allows no interaction in the game. I will be honest, I like seeing Ynarri SS’s do their thing. I am a strict SM player FWIW.

 Amishprn86 wrote:
I'd rather points be drop to 1500 for tournaments than a clock.

I'd rather slowplay rules be enforced than a points drop or a clock.

Maybe then we can get an accurate picture of how long 8th ed games actually take, and can decide what is necessary.

Based on GW's stream, games will come to their natural conclusion in the allotted time. GW chooses good looking armies from among the tournament goers and don't necessarily focus on the top tables.

Based on FLG's stream, games will end turn 3 or even turn 2 when time is called. FLG focuses on the tournament fights at the top table, and doesn't really dip into the vast majority of 'regular players'.

This tells me that slowplaying may be a WAACy or at least tournament-winning (if illegal) tactic, and that most 'regular' games are finishing fairly reasonably. This also coincides with my own experience as a 4-4 middle-of-the-pack player at NOVA, where all of my games finished naturally before time was called.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 Amishprn86 wrote:
I'd rather points be drop to 1500 for tournaments than a clock.

I'd rather slowplay rules be enforced than a points drop or a clock.

Maybe then we can get an accurate picture of how long 8th ed games actually take, and can decide what is necessary.

Based on GW's stream, games will come to their natural conclusion in the allotted time. GW chooses good looking armies from among the tournament goers and don't necessarily focus on the top tables.

Based on FLG's stream, games will end turn 3 or even turn 2 when time is called. FLG focuses on the tournament fights at the top table, and doesn't really dip into the vast majority of 'regular players'.

This tells me that slowplaying may be a WAACy or at least tournament-winning (if illegal) tactic, and that most 'regular' games are finishing fairly reasonably. This also coincides with my own experience as a 4-4 middle-of-the-pack player at NOVA, where all of my games finished naturally before time was called.

Ive had 5 turn 2k games go 2hrs, others 6hrs, its highly dependent on plyaers knowing the rules not just for BRB, but their army and their opponents. Combine with model count. I have played 30 model armies and 130 model count ones.

Lowering the points no matter what will lower the time per turn. OR allow for a "Movement partnet: for armies with 100+ models

 Amishprn86 wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 Amishprn86 wrote:
I'd rather points be drop to 1500 for tournaments than a clock.

I'd rather slowplay rules be enforced than a points drop or a clock.

Maybe then we can get an accurate picture of how long 8th ed games actually take, and can decide what is necessary.

Based on GW's stream, games will come to their natural conclusion in the allotted time. GW chooses good looking armies from among the tournament goers and don't necessarily focus on the top tables.

Based on FLG's stream, games will end turn 3 or even turn 2 when time is called. FLG focuses on the tournament fights at the top table, and doesn't really dip into the vast majority of 'regular players'.

This tells me that slowplaying may be a WAACy or at least tournament-winning (if illegal) tactic, and that most 'regular' games are finishing fairly reasonably. This also coincides with my own experience as a 4-4 middle-of-the-pack player at NOVA, where all of my games finished naturally before time was called.

Ive had 5 turn 2k games go 2hrs, others 6hrs, its highly dependent on plyaers knowing the rules not just for BRB, but their army and their opponents. Combine with model count. I have played 30 model armies and 130 model count ones.

Lowering the points no matter what will lower the time per turn. OR allow for a "Movement partnet: for armies with 100+ models

Right, it varies, that's my point.

2k might fit into 2.5 hours for the vast majority of games. Or it might not, we'll never ever know until slow-playing is reined in somewhat.

1500 in 2.5 hours sounds boring to me, because I could finish it in an hour and then have an hour and a half to... idk. Play a pickup game?

Dropping the game to 1500 points would be a mistake. 2000 is the right number.

Enforcing slow play rules is just the best way to do it.

People obey the speed limit, by in large, because every now and then someone gets a ticket. They see someone getting pulled over and will keep their behavior in line. It's the same thing, really.

My English isnt as good, i think i miss understand slow play.. If you play slow the games will be 5hrs long....

 Amishprn86 wrote:
My English isnt as good, i think i miss understand slow play.. If you play slow the games will be 5hrs long....

It would, but in tournaments the game ends when time is up, whether its over or not. Slow play is intentionally taking too long so the game ends in your favor.

Wait why would 1500 be a mistake? It makes choices more valuable as you have less points to fill In with the strong stuff

 LunarSol wrote:

 Amishprn86 wrote:
My English isnt as good, i think i miss understand slow play.. If you play slow the games will be 5hrs long....

It would, but in tournaments the game ends when time is up, whether its over or not. Slow play is intentionally taking too long so the game ends in your favor.

I think i mean what you mean now, you dont "want slow play" you want "To stop slow play"

When you say, Enforce Slow play, i read it as you want players to play slow lol. I was like "WTF??!?!?!?"

But i still think we should lower the points. Yes a few armies are at a disadvantage, but they are now anyways.

bananathug wrote:
LOL. Nice try twin-pole. The guy who won the tourney said that the SS were his MVP unit in every game he played. Not the reapers, not the other crap but the SS.

Check the tape if you can, post game interview with Nick. Gushes over how they deleted some enemies entire armies.

Fair enough, I stand corrected. I still don't get it, but hey, maybe it's the armies I play where I'm way more worried about Reapers than I am about SS. My LVO list would have welcomed SS and feared Reapers.

I tend to think perspective plays into things a bit.

 Desubot wrote:
Wait why would 1500 be a mistake? It makes choices more valuable as you have less points to fill In with the strong stuff

Choices are always valuable at all points because you and your opponent play the same amount and thus are equally in a bind (unless your Codices are not balanced, in which case you can jam in more OP stuff and your opponent can't or vice-versa).

Creating some fictional hypothetical to back-up your dubious claim (a unit performing better than a recognized OP unit isn't OP) doesn't do anything to rebut that the best player with the best army thinks Ynarri shining spears are more valuable than dark reapers to his winning army.

I really hope he gets interviewed and can explain exactly why he thinks they are so valuable but when a unit is declared across the board OP and then a veteran player says a unit in his army was more valuable for killing things than that unit it should probably be taken with a grain of salt.

He may be wrong in his thinking, which is totally up for debate, but I tend to believe the guy who has proven his knowledge/skill at 40k (not only did he win the LVO but the ITC circuit as well). At least until someone puts some pretty strong numbers in front of me.

Maybe the synergy of dark reapers and shining spears makes them a really good combo or they fill a role that reapers can't but it seems to me they are used to kill things and do that as well as if not better per point than reapers do.

He obviously wouldn't replace that unit with more reapers (but wouldn't replace all the reapers with spears either) so they are probably at least nearly as powerful as an admitted OP unit. He used them in a very similar way (to kill things, not board control, objective camping, chaff, detachment filler or some other army role).

Dismissing the experience of the tournament winner (and the guy who designed BOTH lists in the final) seems a bit of a reach to defend a unit that seems to be very powerful.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

I'm way more worried about Reapers than I am about SS. My LVO list would have welcomed SS and feared Reapers.

I tend to think perspective plays into things a bit.

This could be the secret sauce to how powerful they are. Not in a vacuum but due to the threat of reapers the SS are able to perform so well. If that's the case and reapers can bend an entire meta then their gravity is waaaaayyyy too strong and need more of the nerf katana than the bat.

bananathug wrote:
I really hope he gets interviewed and can explain exactly why he thinks they are so valuable but when a unit is declared across the board OP and then a veteran player says a unit in his army was more valuable for killing things than that unit it should probably be taken with a grain of salt.

Did a bit more research, I think he was maximizing their potential using the Ynnari Soulburst abilities, which makes sense since they're mobile enough that they can easily be within 7" of a unit that's being destroyed by the rest of the firepower in the army. This was probably allowing him to pull off the extra move/shoot/assault/fight necessary to really make them perform at an extremely high level. For that purpose, SS are definitely the tool you want to use as they are relatively tough and can operate effectively in any phase, and fly out of any real trouble they get into as a result.

I doubt he'd be lauding them as MVPs without Soulburst though.

I'm not sure that this points to SS being OP (I agree they are probably a bit undercosted) or if it points to Soulburst being a problematic force multiplier (that costs nothing), but it's already been through one round of nerfs, so who knows.

bananathug wrote:


Automatically Appended Next Post:

I'm way more worried about Reapers than I am about SS. My LVO list would have welcomed SS and feared Reapers.

I tend to think perspective plays into things a bit.

This could be the secret sauce to how powerful they are. Not in a vacuum but due to the threat of reapers the SS are able to perform so well. If that's the case and reapers can bend an entire meta then their gravity is waaaaayyyy too strong and need more of the nerf katana than the bat.

This is something that needs to be looked at. AND dont forget he is using 300pts of HQ's to help SS and Dark Reapers. He was using powers to buff/debuff and Ynnari (with that HQ) to make sure they get 2 Phases in 1 phase

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

torblind wrote:
Hitting the clock for whatever reason is no problem even at 288 times for 6 turns. Tell the guy he has 10 wounds ap-2 and hit the clock and let he take his time rolling saves, FNPs and removing models.

Hitting the thing is pure muscle memory after the first 2 times you try it. Just look at chess tournaments.

For rules discussions or things not related to moving models and rolling dice,just stop both clocks and duke it out.

For your points 1 and 2, I'm going to bring this up in my next few games to see how cumbersome it is.

For your point 3: how does this help rounds end on time, if the clocks aren't expired yet?

3) it doesn't, you'd need a time buffer for that. For substantial delays I imagine TO would get involved regardless, to settle smaller blood feuds.

 Desubot wrote:
Wait why would 1500 be a mistake? It makes choices more valuable as you have less points to fill In with the strong stuff

Because some armies scale *incredibly* well at 1500 and others absolutely do not. Aside from a few problem units and abilities (Alaitoc, Reapers, Guardsmen, Artillery) 8th edition is fairly balanced.

Additionally alpha shooting hurts way more at 1500 points, because you can't tolerate the level of damage as with 2000. Every loss is a bigger percentage of your army, and you're still going to lose a lot of models.

 Marmatag wrote:

 Desubot wrote:
Wait why would 1500 be a mistake? It makes choices more valuable as you have less points to fill In with the strong stuff

Because some armies scale *incredibly* well at 1500 and others absolutely do not. Aside from a few problem units and abilities (Alaitoc, Reapers, Guardsmen, Artillery) 8th edition is fairly balanced.

Additionally alpha shooting hurts way more at 1500 points, because you can't tolerate the level of damage as with 2000. Every loss is a bigger percentage of your army, and you're still going to lose a lot of models.

Well the first point yeah. i guess thats kind of the case. it would lock out a few armies from taking some of the bigger things or what not. but it would also condense down a lot of the more problematic units in the game making them easier to spot then deal with next nerf round. but ultimately its not like they were not being taken in mass regardless of what points level. Also what armies specifically scale good/bad/ugly between 1500/2k? can only really think of like GKs

second point. i dont understand. 500 less points is still 500 points less in alpha shooting as well. it would scale no? outside of some fringe cases i cant think of.

better question would be what would a 1500 point tourny list look like compared to a 2k list.

 Marmatag wrote:

 Desubot wrote:
Wait why would 1500 be a mistake? It makes choices more valuable as you have less points to fill In with the strong stuff

Because some armies scale *incredibly* well at 1500 and others absolutely do not. Aside from a few problem units and abilities (Alaitoc, Reapers, Guardsmen, Artillery) 8th edition is fairly balanced.

Additionally alpha shooting hurts way more at 1500 points, because you can't tolerate the level of damage as with 2000. Every loss is a bigger percentage of your army, and you're still going to lose a lot of models.

And some armies scale incredibly well at 2000 and others absolutely do not. 8th edition is meant to function more or less the same at all points levels; if it's balanced at 2000, it should still be relatively as well balanced at 1500.

Alpha strikes may hurt "more" at 1500, but you're failing to account for the fact at an alpha strike at 2000 is going to consist of 500 more points shooting at you/assaulting you. The main difference between a match at 1500 and 2000 is the amount of time it takes and how many big toys you can put on the field. At the end of the day, they will be balanced relatively the same. Different armies, lists, and list building styles may dominate 1500 compared to what we have now at 2000, but that is not a bad thing.

what was the space wolves army list that placed at this tournie?

Why not drop it to 1000? or 500?

All of your arguments apply.

Certain units are simply not balanced for smaller games.

Have you ever played in smaller point tournaments? It sucks. You see the same meta lists that you see now, except they're more efficient relative to the field. That's the thing about spamming things. It fits in at any point level, and people who can't spam, and need a variety of units to cope with spam, can't hang.

1500pts was the standard suggested general game size for many editions. It is the standard GW held to as their design paradigm for two decades until they just let everyone take whatever whenever and however they wanted.

Playing at 1500pts lets you build and create an effective and thematic army that plays nicely on a 6x4 table. 2k or 1850 lets you fit in all the toys you want, but the idea that its better balanced has no data behind it as far as I can find. Big scary powerful units will be a bit beefier at 1500, cheese reliant on weight of numbers or things like CP abuse will do a bit worse, but probably not in any earth shattering way.

My preferred level is 2k, just because thats what I like to build to, and it lets me field all my cool toys. That said, 1500 isn't a bad level to play at, and and it is dramatically closer in tabletop look and feel, and tactical capabaility, to a 2k game than it is to a 1k or 500pt game. There is nothing wrong with 1500pts for tournaments. Especially given that current 1500pt armies are often equivalent to 1850-2250pt forces from editions like 4E.

Fun. I actually LOVE Combat Patrol back in 5th. Players like to play with their toys, at 400-1k points they cant.

 Marmatag wrote:
Why not drop it to 1000? or 500?

All of your arguments apply.

Certain units are simply not balanced for smaller games.

Have you ever played in smaller point tournaments? It sucks. You see the same meta lists that you see now, except they're more efficient relative to the field. That's the thing about spamming things. It fits in at any point level, and people who can't spam, and need a variety of units to cope with spam, can't hang.

Like what units?

Its not that its worst or better, its a different Meta at 500pts.

OFC a Land Raider is bad at 500pts and yes IG Mortars are good, but at 500pts 1 Vehicle can live long enough to move units.

 Amishprn86 wrote:
Its not that its worst or better, its a different Meta at 500pts.

OFC a Land Raider is bad at 500pts and yes IG Mortars are good, but at 500pts 1 Vehicle can live long enough to move units.

Well that be a good example.

i guess the big cheeses might shift too like girlyman morty and magnum pi.

in that rowboat would have less units to buff while morty and magnus might have less las cannons to deal with but then their armies would have less functional support.

would be cool to see some tourny players give list making a shot to see some hypothetical interactions.

edit: additionally ultimately if the entire concept was to increase the speed of the games by reducing the amount of toy soldiers to push around per game then that would probably do it in most lists.

 nintura wrote:
what was the space wolves army list that placed at this tournie?

The one that lost in the semi (under questionable circumstances)?
some wolves, bunch of characters on Thunderwolves, some blood angels and some guard.

Morty and mag would be a hard nut for most armies to crack at 1500 points. They only just barely get blown off the table before they destroy your army at 2k. And they don't need the rest of their army to destroy 1500 points worth of whatever (maybe a buffing sorcerer and some objective scoring units)

1500 really hurts TAC ability of a lot of armies. Either you can deal with superheavies/LOWs or you can deal with orc hordes coming at you, IMHO not enough points to do both (for SM at least).

I feel like it is longer games or a highly modified tournament balanced CA for 1500 point 2.5 hour tourney games (single LOWs or models w/ 15+ wounds, limits on hordes, no supreme command detachments, some other rules I don't have the time to think about right now)

Outside of that you get into the slippery slope of trying to legislate intent and unless you have the same judge at every table that is going to get subjective and messy quickly (ever seen a poker player call time on another one, that stuff gets tense fast)

 Vaktathi wrote:
1500pts was the standard suggested general game size for many editions. It is the standard GW held to as their design paradigm for two decades until they just let everyone take whatever whenever and however they wanted.

Playing at 1500pts lets you build and create an effective and thematic army that plays nicely on a 6x4 table. 2k or 1850 lets you fit in all the toys you want, but the idea that its better balanced has no data behind it as far as I can find. Big scary powerful units will be a bit beefier at 1500, cheese reliant on weight of numbers or things like CP abuse will do a bit worse, but probably not in any earth shattering way.

My preferred level is 2k, just because thats what I like to build to, and it lets me field all my cool toys. That said, 1500 isn't a bad level to play at, and and it is dramatically closer in tabletop look and feel, and tactical capabaility, to a 2k game than it is to a 1k or 500pt game. There is nothing wrong with 1500pts for tournaments. Especially given that current 1500pt armies are often equivalent to 1850-2250pt forces from editions like 4E.

Maybe 1650 then. Some tournaments were experimenting with that the very end of 7th. It's basically 1500 with a little bit extra to squeeze in another unit/HQ. Maybe what is also needed is a percentage limit on LoW choices to stop some douche taking Morty or Magnus at 1500 (or 1650) and dominating; 25% LoW at 1500 is 375 points and at 1650 is approximately 412 points. You'd have to work some things with Knights since they are all LoW but that's easy to add as a sidebar for them as an exception, or even just exclude them completely and say tough, it's for the betterment of the game as a whole.

bananathug wrote:
Morty and mag would be a hard nut for most armies to crack at 1500 points. They only just barely get blown off the table before they destroy your army at 2k. And they don't need the rest of their army to destroy 1500 points worth of whatever (maybe a buffing sorcerer and some objective scoring units)

1500 really hurts TAC ability of a lot of armies. Either you can deal with superheavies/LOWs or you can deal with orc hordes coming at you, IMHO not enough points to do both (for SM at least).

I feel like it is longer games or a highly modified tournament balanced CA for 1500 point 2.5 hour tourney games (single LOWs or models w/ 15+ wounds, limits on hordes, no supreme command detachments, some other rules I don't have the time to think about right now)

Outside of that you get into the slippery slope of trying to legislate intent and unless you have the same judge at every table that is going to get subjective and messy quickly (ever seen a poker player call time on another one, that stuff gets tense fast)

I guess it would depend on the mission. because im envisioning morty or mag running around with most of their army dead trying to deal with flies jumping on objectives all over the place.
Horde probably would be a problem though.

Or only let 1 LoW be taken.

OrSee how the meta works, if players are winning via points why does it matter if Morty/Magnus kill 99% your army if they are not going to even win?

So let me get this straight.

LVO 2016, 3 of the top 8 lists were Eldar.
LVO 2017, 2 of the top 8 lists were Eldar.
LVO 2018 come 8th edition, 5 of the top 8 lists are Eldar.

Am I missing anything here?

 MagicJuggler wrote:
So let me get this straight.

LVO 2016, 3 of the top 8 lists were Eldar.
LVO 2017, 2 of the top 8 lists were Eldar.
LVO 2018 come 8th edition, 5 of the top 8 lists are Eldar.

Am I missing anything here?

I'm not going to crucify GW over this until March. They promise that they're different now, and if that's true then we'll see the Craftworlds receive a hefty nerf. If that doesn't happen... well, it'll be obvious that GW still has a favorite faction.

 Arachnofiend wrote:

 MagicJuggler wrote:
So let me get this straight.

LVO 2016, 3 of the top 8 lists were Eldar.
LVO 2017, 2 of the top 8 lists were Eldar.
LVO 2018 come 8th edition, 5 of the top 8 lists are Eldar.

Am I missing anything here?

I'm not going to crucify GW over this until March. They promise that they're different now, and if that's true then we'll see the Craftworlds receive a hefty nerf. If that doesn't happen... well, it'll be obvious that GW still has a favorite faction.

IG?

 nintura wrote:

 Arachnofiend wrote:

 MagicJuggler wrote:
So let me get this straight.

LVO 2016, 3 of the top 8 lists were Eldar.
LVO 2017, 2 of the top 8 lists were Eldar.
LVO 2018 come 8th edition, 5 of the top 8 lists are Eldar.

Am I missing anything here?

I'm not going to crucify GW over this until March. They promise that they're different now, and if that's true then we'll see the Craftworlds receive a hefty nerf. If that doesn't happen... well, it'll be obvious that GW still has a favorite faction.

IG?

Remember conscripts, commissars, and earthshaker carriages? Yeah. Maybe GW should have preempted IG players just moving on to infantry squads with little consequence but you can't pretend GW hasn't addressed units that proved a problem in matched play.

 nintura wrote:

 Arachnofiend wrote:

 MagicJuggler wrote:
So let me get this straight.

LVO 2016, 3 of the top 8 lists were Eldar.
LVO 2017, 2 of the top 8 lists were Eldar.
LVO 2018 come 8th edition, 5 of the top 8 lists are Eldar.

Am I missing anything here?

I'm not going to crucify GW over this until March. They promise that they're different now, and if that's true then we'll see the Craftworlds receive a hefty nerf. If that doesn't happen... well, it'll be obvious that GW still has a favorite faction.

IG?

I thought 2017 was only 1 Eldar in top 10? lol And i thought chaos had 2, Corsairs had 1?

Or did they do an 8th edition battle as well?

 Marmatag wrote:
Why not drop it to 1000? or 500?

All of your arguments apply.

Certain units are simply not balanced for smaller games.

Have you ever played in smaller point tournaments? It sucks. You see the same meta lists that you see now, except they're more efficient relative to the field. That's the thing about spamming things. It fits in at any point level, and people who can't spam, and need a variety of units to cope with spam, can't hang.

I think the opposite is to some extent true, because you need to make trade offs to get units into your list. If anything is the issue with lower points it is that cheap troops and HQ are much more valuable.

 Amishprn86 wrote:

 nintura wrote:

 Arachnofiend wrote:

 MagicJuggler wrote:
So let me get this straight.

LVO 2016, 3 of the top 8 lists were Eldar.
LVO 2017, 2 of the top 8 lists were Eldar.
LVO 2018 come 8th edition, 5 of the top 8 lists are Eldar.

Am I missing anything here?

I'm not going to crucify GW over this until March. They promise that they're different now, and if that's true then we'll see the Craftworlds receive a hefty nerf. If that doesn't happen... well, it'll be obvious that GW still has a favorite faction.

IG?

I thought 2017 was only 1 Eldar in top 10? lol And i thought chaos had 2, Corsairs had 1?

Or did they do an 8th edition battle as well?

One of the lists was Corsair Bikes, so mostly similar to Eldar.

Good to see the Eldar conspiracies continue, lol

Just take a deep breath....

Did Dark Reapers get a brand new plastic kit? Are they really easy to find right now?

So, GW wants to make a unit that is almost impossible to find the best in the game, because....???. Riiiiight.

Jetbikes are a new kit for Eldar.....and they got nerfed hard in 8th.

It's simply GW not really playtesting as thoroughly as they claim with certain combos compared to the massive gaming community. If reapers were not a thing, would Eldar still be busted? (of course there will always be someone here that thinks that because their shiny marines aren't wiping the floor with everyone they play)

 MagicJuggler wrote:

 Amishprn86 wrote:

 nintura wrote:

 Arachnofiend wrote:

 MagicJuggler wrote:
So let me get this straight.

LVO 2016, 3 of the top 8 lists were Eldar.
LVO 2017, 2 of the top 8 lists were Eldar.
LVO 2018 come 8th edition, 5 of the top 8 lists are Eldar.

Am I missing anything here?

I'm not going to crucify GW over this until March. They promise that they're different now, and if that's true then we'll see the Craftworlds receive a hefty nerf. If that doesn't happen... well, it'll be obvious that GW still has a favorite faction.

IG?

I thought 2017 was only 1 Eldar in top 10? lol And i thought chaos had 2, Corsairs had 1?

Or did they do an 8th edition battle as well?

One of the lists was Corsair Bikes, so mostly similar to Eldar.

Yeah but Corsair bikers are mostly Melee, 3-5man units (2 for more wounds bascially) with +1S rending Power swords. They didnt work like Eldar at all. Even tho they are Eldar, they are completely different like how DE is compare to Eldar also.

Then they had Hornets for AT (A Corsair unit that is like a mix of Vyper and Ravager). You saying Corsairs is Eldar is me Saying SW are the same as Ultramarine.

 nintura wrote:

 Arachnofiend wrote:

 MagicJuggler wrote:
So let me get this straight.

LVO 2016, 3 of the top 8 lists were Eldar.
LVO 2017, 2 of the top 8 lists were Eldar.
LVO 2018 come 8th edition, 5 of the top 8 lists are Eldar.

Am I missing anything here?

I'm not going to crucify GW over this until March. They promise that they're different now, and if that's true then we'll see the Craftworlds receive a hefty nerf. If that doesn't happen... well, it'll be obvious that GW still has a favorite faction.

IG?

Conscript nerf, commissar nerf, earthshaker carriage nerf, plasma nerf on 3+ models, manticore nerf, astropath nerf etc as well as half of our model range languishing in 3rd edition. Believe me, IG players are feeling the love. To top it off, the only time we perform well is when used as fodder for elite armies & then when those armies perform well IG gets nerfed further while those elite armies get ignored.

Until GW enforces the following:

Matched play - No allies. No imperial soup lists. Only pure army lists.

Narrative play - Allies, do whatever you want.

IG is going to continue to get screwed over.

 MagicJuggler wrote:
So let me get this straight.

LVO 2016, 3 of the top 8 lists were Eldar.
LVO 2017, 2 of the top 8 lists were Eldar.
LVO 2018 come 8th edition, 5 of the top 8 lists are Eldar.

Am I missing anything here?

Small sample size. LVO is not representative of all tournaments. Chaos Daemons took the top spot at NOVA or Adepticon at least one of those years.

While I realize international players attend tournaments everywhere these days, there's still a regional element to each one. My bet is that Eldar are well represented by competitive players from SoCal and that's why we see this trend.

Guardsmen, mortars, and other indirect fire are still way too strong. Plasma scions are still too cheap.

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
I'd just like to see 8th not be the third edition in a row where the rest of us have to kneel to our Eldar overlords, but it's not looking too good.

Heh, after the codex dropped I got massively flamed (even got some angry PM's sent my way) when I said that this would probably be the third edition in a row where I'll end up shelving my Eldar because they're so good I won't enjoy playing with them. The fact that I've played them as Alaitoc ever since 3d Edition certainly doesn't help...

I should just sell my Eldar at this point, I haven't really played them actively since 5th Ed...

Martel732 wrote:
Guardsmen, mortars, and other indirect fire are still way too strong. Plasma scions are still too cheap.

So essentially what you're asking for is a blanket nerf to nearly the entire IG codex (we are almost there). You're fine with Eldar dominating every tournament but IG who barely have any presence at all at the top, they are the issue? We've been going over this for months Martel. The results of this tournament back my previous claims that the commissar nerf went to far, that IG as a standalone gets stomped, yet you continue to ask for nerfs to IG in nearly every one of your posts. I don't get it.

 Commissar Benny wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
Guardsmen, mortars, and other indirect fire are still way too strong. Plasma scions are still too cheap.

So essentially what you're asking for is a blanket nerf to nearly the entire IG codex (we are almost there). You're fine with Eldar dominating every tournament but IG who barely have any presence at all at the top, they are the issue? We've been going over this for months Martel. The results of this tournament back my previous claims that the commissar nerf went to far, that IG as a standalone gets stomped, yet you continue to ask for nerfs to IG in nearly every one of your posts. I don't get it.

Nobody is fine with Eldar dominating, it has been stated repeatedly that dark reapers need to and certainly will be nerfed. You're ignoring facts in order to fit your worldview of IG being this poor, persecuted faction.

 Commissar Benny wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
Guardsmen, mortars, and other indirect fire are still way too strong. Plasma scions are still too cheap.

So essentially what you're asking for is a blanket nerf to nearly the entire IG codex (we are almost there). You're fine with Eldar dominating every tournament but IG who barely have any presence at all at the top, they are the issue? We've been going over this for months Martel. The results of this tournament back my previous claims that the commissar nerf went to far, that IG as a standalone gets stomped, yet you continue to ask for nerfs to IG in nearly every one of your posts. I don't get it.

Eldar are propped up by the Dark Reapers for sure. Take them away, and we'll be back to IG stomping face. IG's dominance comes from many small factors adding up, not one grossly miscosted unit. IG as a standalone is still incredibly potent; unfairly so, I think. They also show up WAY to much in Imperial lists in general. IG units still too efficient.

 Marmatag wrote:

 auticus wrote:
Slow play is one reason why I think tournaments fail (that and the bad balance in the game).

I prefer leagues. Where you play a series of games over a certain time frame in days or weeks. That way slow play is never a factor.

People are just used to tournament events being what they are though to change that.

Leagues don't work for competitive ranked play, though.

Both can be competive if they want. Of course 8th ed doesn't work for competive ranked play to begin with.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Vaktathi wrote:

 LunarSol wrote:
It really doesn't. Flipping the clock is not hard.

Nobody said the physical act of doing so was hard. The issue is that 40k has more units, more models, more actions, more interrupt events, more exceptions, more rolling and dice, more range, more variance in army style and size, etc than games like Warmahordes, and that makes it much more prone to error, drama, gamesmanship and simply losing ones place, in addition to imposing an additonal cost for play/event organizing to tackle a problem that, while present, is limited in scale and has other alternatives that are less disruptive.

Clocks work in some games. I would have no issues with a clock in a game like Dropzone Commander for example where force sizes are generally very similar, games can be won without killing a single enemy model, boards are 4x4 may have no more than a dozen ground units in total between both sides, LoS is extremely limited and weapons ranges are restricted, you're almost never rolling double digits worth of dice, saves are rare and interrupts quick actions from a hand of card abilities, and models with more than 1 or 2 wounds are very uncommon even among things like heavy battletanks. For DzC, clocks can work just fine.

But in 40k? 40k is a comparative mess, built inherently around attritional battle, and clocks are just going to add to that mess

BTW where generally clock is positioned? I can't reach generally on both sides of table so what? I need to rush between wide sides to keep smashing the button? Back and forth? That actually means lots of precious time is spent chasing the clock.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Xenomancers wrote:


I just don't see any reason to oppose the chess clock proposal unless you are:
- A slow player because it's hard for you to play fast (you need to get good)
- You play slow on purpose to give yourself an advantage (you won't be able to do this anymore with chess clocks) or subconsciously you do it (your subconscious bias will change when you are hurting yourself by slow playing).
- You trust in the good nature of human beings (you are a naive person.)
- You just don't want to be bothered with it (your laziness is interfering with progress - please step aside and redirect your efforts to something else)

Or you have seen plenty where horde vs less horde gets to play in time but know that horde army takes more time so thus with clock would lose and doesn't want to effectively ban entire armies from tournaments while still having to pay for experience of being banned from it.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Gordon Shumway wrote:
Are these games all recorded and aired somewhere? I think a few were, but why wouldn't GW want to help out (camera set ups, recording, etc.)-- it would be good relatively cheap advertising and I think could possibly alleviate a bit of the TFG syndrome if players know they will have to face public scrutiny.

Maybe because these rule lawyering slow playing games aren't all that good advertisement?

Good advertisement would be more likely to be found on middle tables but non-fans would wonder why not show top tables. It's like TV's not showing premium league matches but instead div III. And advertisement is generally aimed at those not already fans...


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 bullyboy wrote:
Good to see the Eldar conspiracies continue, lol

Just take a deep breath....

Did Dark Reapers get a brand new plastic kit? Are they really easy to find right now?

So, GW wants to make a unit that is almost impossible to find the best in the game, because....???. Riiiiight.

Jetbikes are a new kit for Eldar.....and they got nerfed hard in 8th.

It's simply GW not really playtesting as thoroughly as they claim with certain combos compared to the massive gaming community. If reapers were not a thing, would Eldar still be busted? (of course there will always be someone here that thinks that because their shiny marines aren't wiping the floor with everyone they play)

They don't make new models automatically broken. What they do though is randomly shuffle balance to ensure players have to keep buying models. Bikes were broken in 7th ed so no surprise they nerfed them hard. Got to give incent for eldar players to buy new models.

Putting in some words to competive play section is one thing. Having actual rules that work for that is another.

There is no 40k rule set for competitive play.
GW has never made such a set and I guess they are not intending to make one.

Nobody is fine with Eldar dominating, it has been stated repeatedly that dark reapers need to and certainly will be nerfed. You're ignoring facts in order to fit your worldview of IG being this poor, persecuted faction.

The same should hold for the Primarchs.
They are undercosted for what they can achieve at the battlefield.
But GW does not intend to make a fully balanced game and so you gonna live with it.

 wuestenfux wrote:

Putting in some words to competive play section is one thing. Having actual rules that work for that is another.

There is no 40k rule set for competitive play.
GW has never made such a set and I guess they are not intending to make one.

Nobody is fine with Eldar dominating, it has been stated repeatedly that dark reapers need to and certainly will be nerfed. You're ignoring facts in order to fit your worldview of IG being this poor, persecuted faction.

The same should hold for the Primarchs.
They are undercosted for what they can achieve at the battlefield.
But GW does not intend to make a fully balanced game and so you gonna live with it.

A) The primarchs were nowhere to be seen on the top tables and B) they nerfed Magnus in the Thousand Sons codex, increasing his points cost by 30 and removing his reroll-invuln-saves aura.

You're ignoring facts in order to fit your worldview

A) The primarchs were nowhere to be seen on the top tables and
B) they nerfed Magnus in the Thousand Sons codex, increasing his points cost by 30 and removing his reroll-invuln-saves aura.

ad A) This is good to know.
Primarchs used to be nobrainers when they came out.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:


I'd rather slowplay rules be enforced than a points drop or a clock.

You go on and on and on in this thread about rules being enforced and I don't think you've thought it through.

In the Tony Grippando live streamed 40k top table style matches then YES, you're right, surely there was some oversight to say after 20 minutes of someone's turn "Tony you need to step it up - you've taken almost 20 minute and not finished moving yet" or whatever.

BUT

What percentage of tournament games played worldwide are livestreamed on twitch with a dedicated TO hovering over the board?
vs
What percentage of tournament games played worldwide have one guy or two guys as the TO - with their attention spread across 30 or 50 or 100 or 250 tables... trying to manage the pairings, rankings, missions, rules questions, maybe judge best painted shortlist, maybe deal with the venue problems like "the room is too hot/cold" or "there's no free water" or "i've lost my army" etc.

What you're suggesting (enforcement of rules by the organiser) would require a ton of people to volunteer to go to 40k tournaments on their weekends - not to play, but to be judges and TOs. It's not gonna happen!

ALSO

Being a judge in a professional setting is hard enough - when refs make decusions in professional sport they get judged back, screamed at, abused, told to F off and so on.

In a social setting like the competitve 40k scene where the judge is likely to be at least an acquaintance if not a friend of the player... saying "Tony I think you are deliberately slowplaying" is very difficult and confrontational.

The reason I think clocks are a sensible option is that it completely depersonalizes the time issues. The clock isn't "on your side" or "unfair". It's just a machine. You also can't argue with it - taking up even MORE time.

--

Finally (phew long post) the "gaming the clock" stuff. I just do not believe that is a problem. People are inventing reasons why something might be bad vs something that's clearly worse.

Even if you do game the clock by pinging it over to your opponent every time they need to make a roll, what happens? You waste an extra 5 or 10 or 15 minutes of time over a game and force your opponent to pay very close attention to the game. It's still better than having an hour long first turn which the opponent can't do anything about and then saying "oh sorry dude I guess you only have a short time to play sucks to be you right by the way you can't move anything else and now its my turn again".

 MagicJuggler wrote:
So let me get this straight.

LVO 2016, 3 of the top 8 lists were Eldar.
LVO 2017, 2 of the top 8 lists were Eldar.
LVO 2018 come 8th edition, 5 of the top 8 lists are Eldar.

Am I missing anything here?

I think you're missing that the ITC Missions are different from the Rulebook missions and encourage a different play-style / meta. The Secondaries alone dis-encourage players to take the Daemon Primarchs for example because of objectives like Kingslayer, where you'd gain a boat load of secondary points (up to 10) for downing Magnus / Mortarion alone.

Its a different meta to the one that GW uses and balances for where you can just take the biggest guns available, form line and try to table your opponent as quickly as possible - tabling / getting a concede in ITC does not automatically nett you the maximum points available.

 techsoldaten wrote:

 MagicJuggler wrote:
So let me get this straight.

LVO 2016, 3 of the top 8 lists were Eldar.
LVO 2017, 2 of the top 8 lists were Eldar.
LVO 2018 come 8th edition, 5 of the top 8 lists are Eldar.

Am I missing anything here?

Small sample size. LVO is not representative of all tournaments. Chaos Daemons took the top spot at NOVA or Adepticon at least one of those years.

While I realize international players attend tournaments everywhere these days, there's still a regional element to each one. My bet is that Eldar are well represented by competitive players from SoCal and that's why we see this trend.

To be fair 2 of those 5 Eldar players are from the North East I believe, so I'm not sure there is a SoCal eldar bias.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Martel732 wrote:

 Commissar Benny wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
Guardsmen, mortars, and other indirect fire are still way too strong. Plasma scions are still too cheap.

So essentially what you're asking for is a blanket nerf to nearly the entire IG codex (we are almost there). You're fine with Eldar dominating every tournament but IG who barely have any presence at all at the top, they are the issue? We've been going over this for months Martel. The results of this tournament back my previous claims that the commissar nerf went to far, that IG as a standalone gets stomped, yet you continue to ask for nerfs to IG in nearly every one of your posts. I don't get it.

Eldar are propped up by the Dark Reapers for sure. Take them away, and we'll be back to IG stomping face. IG's dominance comes from many small factors adding up, not one grossly miscosted unit. IG as a standalone is still incredibly potent; unfairly so, I think. They also show up WAY to much in Imperial lists in general. IG units still too efficient.

IT is important to note that I think Guard is heavily punished in ITC missions especially with the conscript nerf. Guard lists that were doing well in other events get killed for secondary points in the ITC missions. Lets look at what gets played

1.) Lots of weak characters (primaris psykers, officers etc) - give up 1 point each for head hunter
2.) Screens - with conscript nerf these are not smaller squads (10 max) meaning they give up points for reaper, and 1000 cuts pretty easily. Reaper is likely the reason we saw a lot of heavy weapon teams in those units to drop model count below 10.
3.) tanks - give up big game hunter points (pask would also give up kingslayer)
4.) Stormswords - give up points for titan slayer
5.) Bullgryn give up points for gang busters

That may explain to some extent why there were less guard at the top in these missions. Personally I don't think guard is any stronger than eldar overall, at this point. I think they are a very strong addition to soup lists, but as a stand alone they lack a lot of punch if you get in their face.

 Commissar Benny wrote:

Until GW enforces the following:

Matched play - No allies. No imperial soup lists. Only pure army lists.

Narrative play - Allies, do whatever you want.

IG is going to continue to get screwed over.

As a side effect, this also speeds up the game. People only need to know one Codex's special rules instead of 10, only have one book to search through for profiles or whatever, and the number of edge-case uncontemplated rules interactions goes way down.

I feel ITC will need to do this, as GW won't. ITC needs to set things for better tournament play, whether that's dropping the points of the game, making it so you can't take multiple detachments, limiting to 1 faction, adding a percentage restriction on Lords of War, or whatever it may be.

I don't find anything wrong with that. Its okay to have a tournament pack that changes the base construction rules of the game to ensure a better game. But I don't think GW will do (or is capable of doing) that, so the onus IMHO falls onto ITC as the de facto tournament circuit of 40k. The majority of tournaments seem to use ITC rules anyways, so if they come up with a change it will be almost universally accepted, probably more than if it came from GW.

I think at the very least, there needs to be a limit on the detachments. being able to take 3 detachments to min/max CP is a problem in and of itself. Allowing stratagems gained from one to affect another too IMHO. ITC should curb that. Either it needs to be only 1 detachment, or maybe you cannot take the same detachment more than once, or even detachments after the first award no CP. But they need to do something.

 Arachnofiend wrote:


A) The primarchs were nowhere to be seen on the top tables and B) they nerfed Magnus in the Thousand Sons codex, increasing his points cost by 30 and removing his reroll-invuln-saves aura.

And? The lists at the bottom 10 tables were more than likely also highly overpowered if you look at the game as a whole, not just the tourney scene as a self-selected and highly biased sub-sample of the game.

There are thousands of lists I can think of that will auto-lose against any one of the Primarchs. Just because those lists don't show up in the tournament biotope doesn't mean GW game designers get to ignore those.

Thats my problem with the tournament mentality being so strong in the game. The tournament scene has about 5% of the overall game present, but that 5% is to a lot of people 100% of the game and the rest doesn't matter.

There are thousands of lists I can think of that will auto-lose against any one of the Primarchs. Just because those lists don't show up in the tournament biotope doesn't mean GW game designers get to ignore those.

Very well stated.

Breng77 wrote:

 techsoldaten wrote:

 MagicJuggler wrote:
So let me get this straight.

LVO 2016, 3 of the top 8 lists were Eldar.
LVO 2017, 2 of the top 8 lists were Eldar.
LVO 2018 come 8th edition, 5 of the top 8 lists are Eldar.

Am I missing anything here?

Small sample size. LVO is not representative of all tournaments. Chaos Daemons took the top spot at NOVA or Adepticon at least one of those years.

While I realize international players attend tournaments everywhere these days, there's still a regional element to each one. My bet is that Eldar are well represented by competitive players from SoCal and that's why we see this trend.

To be fair 2 of those 5 Eldar players are from the North East I believe, so I'm not sure there is a SoCal eldar bias.

Good point, and, for that matter, if there were a Southwest Eldar bias, it could be assumed that other regional players would have developed counters to a strong Eldar meta.

But I still don't see the trend as representative. Eldar are not dominating other tournaments. They have a good Codex but not as good as 7th edition, with all the D-weapons and undercosted units.

It's okay for them to win with something a little more balanced. : )

Sunny Side Up wrote:


There are thousands of lists I can think of that will auto-lose against any one of the Primarchs. Just because those lists don't show up in the tournament biotope doesn't mean GW game designers get to ignore those.

There's a limit. You can't just take anything and expect to win. There needs to be some accountability on the player's end.

Funny... I've been reading all the AoS rules of late and it's really interesting to see that are some things in AoS that just... well they just SHOULD be in 40k. And I say this as a player whose first love is Imperial Soup. I have Inquisition, AdMech, Marines, Deathwatch, Guard and a Knight.

So anyway in AoS you choose an Allegiance.
Your Allegiance can be a wide one like ORDER (read: IMPERIUM)
Or it can be a single codex one like SERAPHON (read: ADEPTUS ASTARTES)

The benefits you get from taking a single codex Allegiance seem to be huge. And in a 2000 point list you can only take 20% of allies units before you lose your Allegiance and lose access to all the relics, warlord traits and special abilities that are totally central to the power of the codex.

I would welcome this in 40k Matched play. Yes you can have a CHAOS or IMPERIUM army but you just get the generic and slightly rubbish benefits. If you want the BLOOD ANGELS specific benefits you love so much, your list needs to be 80% that with max 400 points of Soup

It would certainly help the total pick and choose situation we have now.

Why would they create this system for AoS and not use it for 40k?? The only reason I can think is Lords of War who are >400 points... like Imperial Knights... you just flat out couldnt take one without screwing your army up

 auticus wrote:
There are thousands of lists I can think of that will auto-lose against any one of the Primarchs. Just because those lists don't show up in the tournament biotope doesn't mean GW game designers get to ignore those.

I lost to Tyranids, Eldar, tied to Space-Wolves.

I tore super-friends apart.

Rock-Paper-Scissors.

At least that's been my experience so far, but I tore up super-friends at SCO also.

I think the LoW-based armies are really starting to show their flaws. If they don't go first they have serious problems.

 Silentz wrote:
Funny... I've been reading all the AoS rules of late and it's really interesting to see that are some things in AoS that just... well they just SHOULD be in 40k. And I say this as a player whose first love is Imperial Soup. I have Inquisition, AdMech, Marines, Deathwatch, Guard and a Knight.

So anyway in AoS you choose an Allegiance.
Your Allegiance can be a wide one like ORDER (read: IMPERIUM)
Or it can be a single codex one like SERAPHON (read: ADEPTUS ASTARTES)

The benefits you get from taking a single codex Allegiance seem to be huge. And in a 2000 point list you can only take 20% of allies units before you lose your Allegiance and lose access to all the relics, warlord traits and special abilities that are totally central to the power of the codex.

I would welcome this in 40k Matched play. Yes you can have a CHAOS or IMPERIUM army but you just get the generic and slightly rubbish benefits. If you want the BLOOD ANGELS specific benefits you love so much, your list needs to be 80% that with max 400 points of Soup

It would certainly help the total pick and choose situation we have now.

Why would they create this system for AoS and not use it for 40k?? The only reason I can think is Lords of War who are >400 points... like Imperial Knights... you just flat out couldnt take one without screwing your army up

Absolutely. Soup is a huge issue in 40k because you can have your cake and eat it too. You can mix and match detachments that get the best of both worlds, while in AOS mixing armies means you lose out on some specific benefits but gain versatility in unit types. It absolutely should be in 40k. In fact, I think the detachment rules are worse than formations were in 7th

I personally think soup armies are infinitely more interesting than pure armies. I've always found 40k armies a little bland and repetitive, but the soup provides a more varied set of roles on the table with the keyword restriction doing a better job of keeping things aesthetically coherent than the allies system did in the past.

I agree with LunarSol on soup armies (a detachment of Sisters of Battle fighting alongside an Inquisitor with some Guardsmen and Mechanicus forces sounds cool and fun, for example).

 LunarSol wrote:
I personally think soup armies are infinitely more interesting than pure armies. I've always found 40k armies a little bland and repetitive, but the soup provides a more varied set of roles on the table with the keyword restriction doing a better job of keeping things aesthetically coherent than the allies system did in the past.

I definitely think it creates a paradigm where you get to see some really inventive lists (which is probably my favorite part of the game). It has it's problems and makes balancing a nightmare, but I prefer the game with it more than without it.

My issue with soup is that there is no downside (or upside) to not doing it.

Breng77 wrote:
My issue with soup is that there is no downside (or upside) to not doing it.

There is plenty downside. You lose traits unless you pay an HQ tax

 TwinPoleTheory wrote:

 LunarSol wrote:
I personally think soup armies are infinitely more interesting than pure armies. I've always found 40k armies a little bland and repetitive, but the soup provides a more varied set of roles on the table with the keyword restriction doing a better job of keeping things aesthetically coherent than the allies system did in the past.

I definitely think it creates a paradigm where you get to see some really inventive lists (which is probably my favorite part of the game). It has it's problems and makes balancing a nightmare, but I prefer the game with it more than without it.

In terms of balance, I agree with you that it causes balance powers yet at same time solves balance issues by creating more tools. So it definitely creates balance problems in many ways that we sort of all agree on in terms of CP batteries, shared stratagems, etc. However, Soup does give you more tools to use to counter a crazy meta list by giving you more options. Instead of being limited to your codex, you now have more tools to counter something. If you were limited to only one faction and you're faction was underpowered or not well-fleshed out, you kind of just had an up the hill battle or was S-O-L. So it's really a back and fro thing.

However, one could argue that Imperium, Chaos, and Eldar don't really need Soup since they are the large popular factions and have always tended to have above average faction rules and models. What about Xenos? Will they ever get to run Soup? If Tau, Orks, and Necrons don't get Soup-like options, then they are going to be at a disadvantage. To compensate, you would have to make an automatically more powerful codex than armies with Soup options since you only have one tool set. Tyranids is just one data point, but I'd be curious to see what happens as more Xenos gets released and what Soup options if any they have...

Soup armies have the potential to be interesting or a good excuse to crack out those two random cool models you like but dont want to build an army around. In practice, most of the time they are cookie cutter mix-n-match lists that are trying to get the best out of multiple worlds without having to eat any drawbacks. Personally, I'd be much happier without soup or having a whole lot more restrictions on them.

Soup lists are also somewhat jarring thematically. In a game the scale of 40k, you wouldnt actually see so many factions interoperating at such a close tactical level so often. It detracts from the setting and immersion when you see the grand panoply of the full Imperium on harmonious display in almost every battle, though I have much the same issue with named characters

 Vaktathi wrote:
Soup armies have the potential to be interesting or a good excuse to crack out those two random cool models you like but dont want to build an army around. In practice, most of the time they are cookie cutter mix-n-match lists that are trying to get the best out of multiple worlds without having to eat any drawbacks. Personally, I'd be much happier without soup or having a whole lot more restrictions on them.

Soup lists are also somewhat jarring thematically. In a game the scale of 40k, you wouldnt actually see so many factions interoperating at such a close tactical level so often. It detracts from the setting and immersion when you see the grand panoply of the full Imperium on harmonious display in almost every battle, though I have much the same issue with named characters

I mean it depends on your narrative interpretation.

I'm reminded of the battle on Chaeronia, which is easily a platoon scale conflict. An Archmagos Veneratus (essentially Cawl version 0.7), 20 Skitarii, and a Tech-Priest data-access lady thing fight alongside a squad of Grey Knight Terminators to retake a Forge World from Chaos Daemons and Dark Mechanicus.

That's like, a platoon scale conflict, with two soup factions on both sides, and makes sense and is conceivably fairly common. I'm not really sure why people would not want this sort of thing to be able to be replicated on the Table Top, even in non-narrative formats.

hoya4life3381 wrote:
To compensate, you would have to make an automatically more powerful codex than armies with Soup options since you only have one tool set. Tyranids is just one data point, but I'd be curious to see what happens as more Xenos gets released and what Soup options if any they have...

Tyranids can soup with GSC and AM at least.

Orks, Tau, and Necrons could use any soup options.

I suspect after they get all the initial codices out and into the wild they may start doing scenario books that contain a units or two for a few different factions. For example, a Battle for Armageddon scenario book may have a couple AM units, a couple Ork units, a couple Chaos units and a couple Space Marine units. Add in a couple relics and/or stratagems also and chances are you're selling that book to a lot of players.

That would be the easy way to gradually adjust balance, introduce new models, and plug holes in various faction lists IMO.

 Vaktathi wrote:

Soup lists are also somewhat jarring thematically. In a game the scale of 40k, you wouldnt actually see so many factions interoperating at such a close tactical level so often. It detracts from the setting and immersion when you see the grand panoply of the full Imperium on harmonious display in almost every battle, though I have much the same issue with named characters

It depends on how they're done. I've always hated how not.... special space marines feel when they're your basic line troop. Including them with guard makes power armor vastly more interesting. I do think the system works a lot better when there's a strong enough incentive to keep detatchments "pure" and while I like named characters, they probably don't quite get the rules they should to keep them from being casually tossed in supreme commands. I think that's a pretty minor drawback overall though and the system as a whole brings the game together in a really exciting way that hasn't worked before. Now if they'd just replace the codex system with something that actually supports this...

 BaconCatBug wrote:

Breng77 wrote:
My issue with soup is that there is no downside (or upside) to not doing it.

There is plenty downside. You lose traits unless you pay an HQ tax

For SM is Celestine a tax?
For DE, is a Farseer or Spiritseer a tax?
For Nids is a GSC Primus a tax?
For SoB is a Captain with 3++, jump, Thunderhammer, or is taking IG Sly Marbo a tax?
For Aeldari is Yvarine a tax?

The answer is no, they are units players will want anyways, or make a use for. A tax is 7th ed Corsairs "Oh you want more than 2 Fast and 1 Heavy? Well you need 1 HQ and 1 Troop to unlock 2FA and 1H" Oh you wanted to play with 4 Heavys? That will be 5 HQ's and 4 troops"

 Amishprn86 wrote:

 BaconCatBug wrote:

Breng77 wrote:
My issue with soup is that there is no downside (or upside) to not doing it.

There is plenty downside. You lose traits unless you pay an HQ tax

For SM is Celestine a tax?
For DE, is a Farseer or Spiritseer a tax?
For Nids is a GSC Primus a tax?
For SoB is a Captain with 3++, jump, Thunderhammer, or is taking IG Sly Marbo a tax?
For Aeldari is Yvarine a tax?

The answer is no, they are units players will want anyways, or make a use for. A tax is 7th ed Corsairs "Oh you want more than 2 Fast and 1 Heavy? Well you need 1 HQ and 1 Troop to unlock 2FA and 1H" Oh you wanted to play with 4 Heavys? That will be 5 HQ's and 4 troops"

Correct this is where theory and real practicality fall apart. An HQ choice is a unit selection tax from a construct point of view. However, if it's so good, then it's not a tax. Reminds me of the old Iron Warriors "tax" in 4th edition. They had to give up 2 FA choices which were garbage to get 1 extra HS choice which could be an IG Basilisk. Yeah giving up 2 FA choices was a "tax", but was it really?

Celestine was that way but I think that's been changed. Assassins were actually less common than I expected in LVO from the lists I have seen so I was kind of shocked. I guess everyone just took Primaris psychers in an AM battalion rather than go for Assassins in a Vanguard.

It really is hard to balance this cross-factional world they have developed.

I love the idea of soup-armies, but mainly for narrative play only. I do agree that the unbound/no-penalty nature of them will absolutely up-end and ruin tournaments or the enjoyment some people might get from them. I said many months ago I believe major tournaments will have to create their own limitations on army builds going forward. There's no doubting that something like Chaos or Imperium soup is going to become impossible to counter if you're using just a single codex from another army.

What I'd love to see?

A) I think the "one codex, one army" limitation would be great for tournaments. I do. You'll have a couple of codices which don't cut it, but that's the nature of the game. GW never promised anybody a tight tournament-crushing codex.

B) Something I really wish GW had done was to assign named characters a limitation which applies to the army. Primarchs being limited to an army which shares their specific key word (Guilliman may only be taken if every unit in the army is <Ultramarines>, etc.) and then for lesser named characters - only taken if the detachment matches their specific key word. This should have been introduced (at least in Match Play) from the beginning. However all of my ideas hinder one thing: selling more grey plastic.

GW has moved on 100% away from balance/game rules/fluff. While fun, the game itself is incredibly obviously aimed at pushing more and more plastic. So that means it'll be up to the Tournament organizers to create their own limitations to perhaps balance the game.

What I enjoy hearing though is the teeth gnashing when something ultra-competitive is removed or adjusted. If you think you're good enough to win a tournament, can you prove it without a spammed netlist? I would think a truly competitive player would want the challenge.

 Elbows wrote:
I love the idea of soup-armies, but mainly for narrative play only. I do agree that the unbound/no-penalty nature of them will absolutely up-end and ruin tournaments or the enjoyment some people might get from them. I said many months ago I believe major tournaments will have to create their own limitations on army builds going forward. There's no doubting that something like Chaos or Imperium soup is going to become impossible to counter if you're using just a single codex from another army.

What I'd love to see?

A) I think the "one codex, one army" limitation would be great for tournaments. I do. You'll have a couple of codices which don't cut it, but that's the nature of the game. GW never promised anybody a tight tournament-crushing codex.

B) Something I really wish GW had done was to assign named characters a limitation which applies to the army. Primarchs being limited to an army which shares their specific key word (Guilliman may only be taken if every unit in the army is <Ultramarines>, etc.) and then for lesser named characters - only taken if the detachment matches their specific key word. This should have been introduced (at least in Match Play) from the beginning. However all of my ideas hinder one thing: selling more grey plastic.

GW has moved on 100% away from balance/game rules/fluff. While fun, the game itself is incredibly obviously aimed at pushing more and more plastic. So that means it'll be up to the Tournament organizers to create their own limitations to perhaps balance the game.

What I enjoy hearing though is the teeth gnashing when something ultra-competitive is removed or adjusted. If you think you're good enough to win a tournament, can you prove it without a spammed netlist? I would think a truly competitive player would want the challenge.

So if you can only take Named Characters in armies that match their character...

then why can Guilliman buff Imperium units?
why does Celestine buff Astra Militarum units?
why does Inquisitor Grefax buff Imperium units?
why can Belisarius Cawl repair Imperium units?

Soup is absolutely fluffy (yay!), absolutely intended by the rules (awesome!), can make for a neat-looking army (cool!), and isn't unbalanceable (good!).

 Amishprn86 wrote:

 BaconCatBug wrote:

Breng77 wrote:
My issue with soup is that there is no downside (or upside) to not doing it.

There is plenty downside. You lose traits unless you pay an HQ tax

For SM is Celestine a tax?
For DE, is a Farseer or Spiritseer a tax?
For Nids is a GSC Primus a tax?
For SoB is a Captain with 3++, jump, Thunderhammer, or is taking IG Sly Marbo a tax?
For Aeldari is Yvarine a tax?

The answer is no, they are units players will want anyways, or make a use for. A tax is 7th ed Corsairs "Oh you want more than 2 Fast and 1 Heavy? Well you need 1 HQ and 1 Troop to unlock 2FA and 1H" Oh you wanted to play with 4 Heavys? That will be 5 HQ's and 4 troops"

The idea that having access to a variety of units is a downside or can be referred to as a tax is hilarious.

Especially with HQ slots, which tend to provide rather premium units either in cost or ability.

 BaconCatBug wrote:

Breng77 wrote:
My issue with soup is that there is no downside (or upside) to not doing it.

There is plenty downside. You lose traits unless you pay an HQ tax

So like I said no real downside, paying a 30 point tax for guard with traits is hardly a downside. Unless you are playing a single detachment this is a non-issue. Most people take extra detachment for CP, so you were already buying HQ choices. At which point no tax exists. Essentially there is no actual downside for playing soup armies.

Should there be a downside to souping?

Souping is the status quo of the game right now, so I'm not really sure why it needs downsides. It's the expected, desired outcome.

It doesn't need a downside, it just needs to be controlled. Bring back the concept of allies and allied detachments. Just heavily restricted. (for example, no humans + tau or eldar + tau nonsense).

 Marmatag wrote:
It doesn't need a downside, it just needs to be controlled. Bring back the concept of allies and allied detachments. Just heavily restricted. (for example, no humans + tau or eldar + tau nonsense).

That's essentially what the keyword system accomplishes, no?

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
Should there be a downside to souping?

Souping is the status quo of the game right now, so I'm not really sure why it needs downsides. It's the expected, desired outcome.

The down side to souping is that you dont get to benefit from built in benefits like auras (for the most part)

its also too easy to add in additional detachments to avoid losing other benefits like chapter tactics and stuff.

the only real option outside of rehauling the detachment rules is to limit events to 1-2 detachments or a specific detachment that everyone must build into.

 Desubot wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
Should there be a downside to souping?

Souping is the status quo of the game right now, so I'm not really sure why it needs downsides. It's the expected, desired outcome.

The down side to souping is that you dont get to benefit from built in benefits like auras (for the most part)

its also too easy to add in additional detachments to avoid losing other benefits like chapter tactics and stuff.

the only real option outside of rehauling the detachment rules is to limit events to 1-2 detachments or a specific detachment that everyone must build into.

Why is souping bad?

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 Desubot wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
Should there be a downside to souping?

Souping is the status quo of the game right now, so I'm not really sure why it needs downsides. It's the expected, desired outcome.

The down side to souping is that you dont get to benefit from built in benefits like auras (for the most part)

its also too easy to add in additional detachments to avoid losing other benefits like chapter tactics and stuff.

the only real option outside of rehauling the detachment rules is to limit events to 1-2 detachments or a specific detachment that everyone must build into.

Why is souping bad?

Its not inherently bad. its when people start cherry picking that it could potentially become a problem with list diversity.

 Desubot wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 Desubot wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
Should there be a downside to souping?

Souping is the status quo of the game right now, so I'm not really sure why it needs downsides. It's the expected, desired outcome.

The down side to souping is that you dont get to benefit from built in benefits like auras (for the most part)

its also too easy to add in additional detachments to avoid losing other benefits like chapter tactics and stuff.

the only real option outside of rehauling the detachment rules is to limit events to 1-2 detachments or a specific detachment that everyone must build into.

Why is souping bad?

Its not inherently bad. its when people start cherry picking that it could potentially become a problem with list diversity.

Does that problem exist and need solving, or is it a phantom problem made up by people afraid of souping for... reasons.

Dunno Haus. i never said it was bad. was pointing out that souping has some downsides but it can in general be really easy to get around via detachment shenanigans.

 Desubot wrote:
Its not inherently bad. its when people start cherry picking that it could potentially become a problem with list diversity.

I'm not sure that's entirely fair, copycats will exist in every format, I submit this has nothing to do with souping and more to do with obviously good combos are obviously good, this has always been the case. Also, cherry picking happens, limiting armies to one codex isn't likely to reduce unit spam, if anything I suspect it would increase it, since bad units are bad and don't get fielded because they are bad and should feel bad, locking someone to a single book isn't going to change that.

I think soup has created more diverse lists, you're starting to see some interesting combos getting pulled out from less obvious sources. Pink Horrors and Pox Walkers wouldn't exist without soup (for example), and in my mind, that lack of experimentation would make the game a little more sad.

Also, soup sells models, get used to it, it's not going anywhere.

Make armies lost all specific benefits if they are mixed, instead of being a Detachment thing. So an Imperium army can't have blood angel stratagems, or chapter tactics, etc...

Boom. Soup fixed.

 TwinPoleTheory wrote:

 Desubot wrote:
Its not inherently bad. its when people start cherry picking that it could potentially become a problem with list diversity.

I'm not sure that's entirely fair, copycats will exist in every format, I submit this has nothing to do with souping and more to do with obviously good combos are obviously good, this has always been the case. Also, cherry picking happens, limiting armies to one codex isn't likely to reduce unit spam, if anything I suspect it would increase it, since bad units are bad and don't get fielded because they are bad and should feel bad, locking someone to a single book isn't going to change that.

I think soup has created more diverse lists, you're starting to see some interesting combos getting pulled out from less obvious sources. Pink Horrors and Pox Walkers wouldn't exist without soup (for example), and in my mind, that lack of experimentation would make the game a little more sad.

Was thinking more along the imperial side where a bunch of marine lists of whatever color takes a bunch of mortar imperial guardsmen to all act as cheap and affordable bubble warp.

not all but it does happen. also not saying its not fluffy.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
Should there be a downside to souping?

Souping is the status quo of the game right now, so I'm not really sure why it needs downsides. It's the expected, desired outcome.

IMO it does (or not doing so needs an upside which is the same thing essentially), I want both styles to be viable, right now there is 0 reason not to soup.

Galas wrote:Make armies lost all specific benefits if they are mixed, instead of being a Detachment thing. So an Imperium army can't have blood angel stratagems, or chapter tactics, etc...

Boom. Soup fixed.

I do love it when my Ultramarines fight as Ultramarines on battlefield A of the Campaign, and my Tallarn fight like Tallarn on Battlefield B. But god forbid you put both of them on battlefield C. It's chaos! Ultramarines forget their mental indoctrination, Tallarn stumbling all over themselves instead of advancing swiftly...

Breng77 wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
Should there be a downside to souping?

Souping is the status quo of the game right now, so I'm not really sure why it needs downsides. It's the expected, desired outcome.

IMO it does (or not doing so needs an upside which is the same thing essentially), I want both styles to be viable, right now there is 0 reason not to soup.

Why is that a problem? It is certainly 'viable' not to soup - I don't think that mono-Imperial Guard or mono-BA is in a cripplingly bad spot like you make it seem.

Ynnari units having access to CWE stratagems (because you brought a non-Ynnari CWE detachment) could be considered an abuse of "souping"

Most lists seem to be including the minimum it takes to have some Ynnari (Yvraine + whatever units you wish to have SfD) and the rest of the list CWE (usually even the Ynnari units themselves)
This allows you to use CWE stratagems on Ynnari units that are themselves also CWE.

-

My only real issue with it is just how uneven it is. Imperium have a massive selection to choose from, Chaos has a good amount, the eldars have a decent selection, Tyranids is okay... And everyone else gets nothing.

Now, it's impossible to be completely unbiased, especially when my largest army is one of those that gets nothing, but I don't necessarily begrudge the Imperium their options. Hell, as it is now I'm currently in the process of building a heavily souped army because doing so allows me to field an army who's rules follow a theme I write like, where I intend to have all the models be conversions.

However... It's entirely unfair when one side can bring units in from outside their codex to cover weaknesses when another can't.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

Why is that a problem? It is certainly 'viable' not to soup - I don't think that mono-Imperial Guard or mono-BA is in a cripplingly bad spot like you make it seem.

Well looking at it it looked like a mono BA did ok in the last one. i dont recall how mono IG did.

 Galas wrote:
Make armies lost all specific benefits if they are mixed, instead of being a Detachment thing. So an Imperium army can't have blood angel stratagems, or chapter tactics, etc...

Boom. Soup fixed.

Or, just have people declare a primary faction, and every detachment must be this faction, save one Patrol, which can be allied.

So you could have 2 BA detachments and 1 guard detachment as your allied detachment. I'd be fine with this. This army for ITC scoring purposes would be "Imperium."


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Desubot wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

Why is that a problem? It is certainly 'viable' not to soup - I don't think that mono-Imperial Guard or mono-BA is in a cripplingly bad spot like you make it seem.

Well looking at it it looked like a mono BA did ok in the last one. i dont recall how mono IG did.

They had 1 guy do well, yes. He had favorable matchups, it's hardly indicative of a new mono-BA meta.

IG is so inexpensive across the board, it's incredibly easy to soup. The second an imperial guard player adds even *one* assassin, or Celestine, it becomes IG-soup. And they ALWAYS have the points to do this. If you discount tiny changes, mono-IG were definitely dominant in the event, they just get outclassed by Eldar - like everyone else - right now.

Deadawake1347 wrote:My only real issue with it is just how uneven it is. Imperium have a massive selection to choose from, Chaos has a good amount, the eldars have a decent selection, Tyranids is okay... And everyone else gets nothing.

Now, it's impossible to be completely unbiased, especially when my largest army is one of those that gets nothing, but I don't necessarily begrudge the Imperium their options. Hell, as it is now I'm currently in the process of building a heavily souped army because doing so allows me to field an army who's rules follow a theme I write like, where I intend to have all the models be conversions.

However... It's entirely unfair when one side can bring units in from outside their codex to cover weaknesses when another can't.

This may be fixed, or it may not. I'm not sure it's that "unfair" as un-souped armies are doing fine. There's a ton of mono-armies in the top 100 of LVO.

Galef wrote:Ynnari units having access to CWE stratagems (because you brought a non-Ynnari CWE detachment) could be considered an abuse of "souping"

Most lists seem to be including the minimum it takes to have some Ynnari (Yvraine + whatever units you wish to have SfD) and the rest of the list CWE

This is outright intended by the rules writers as demonstrated by the Death Guard Codex FAQ.

It comes down to as players, do we want pure armies or do we want soup?

Soup isnt bad, but it might not be what players want to see.



I personally play more pure, but will have a small detachment sometimes, just b.c i like the armies i pick. I like DE, i dont like CWE no where near as much. But i do like some CWE models, i like powers, sometimes i'll use a Farseer and Shiny Spears.

 Amishprn86 wrote:
It comes down to as players, do we want pure armies or do we want soup?

Soup isnt bad, but it might not be what players want to see.



I personally play more pure, but will have a small detachment sometimes, just b.c i like the armies i pick. I like DE, i dont like CWE no where near as much. But i do like some CWE models, i like powers, sometimes i'll use a Farseer and Shiny Spears.

Why wouldn't players "want to see it?"

It's fluffy and it makes armies look neater, so if it's balanced, why's it bad?

Deadawake1347 wrote:
My only real issue with it is just how uneven it is. Imperium have a massive selection to choose from, Chaos has a good amount, the eldars have a decent selection, Tyranids is okay... And everyone else gets nothing.

Tyranids can add GSC, but GSC is essentially Tyranids. They're an efficient way to deliver genestealers but at a greater cost. Genestealer cults really shouldn't even be separate from Tyranids in the first place. The lore and fluff are neat but from a tabletop perspective, they should just be the same army. Neither Tyranids NOR GSC should be able to add a detachment of Guard. That's stupid imho.

 Desubot wrote:
Was thinking more along the imperial side where a bunch of marine lists of whatever color takes a bunch of mortar imperial guardsmen to all act as cheap and affordable bubble warp.

not all but it does happen. also not saying its not fluffy.

Absolutely, and honestly, it's something they've needed for a long time. Just like CSM needed Cultists and garbage Daemon units. I think it's just the nature of the game, for the past several editions, that elite armies need flesh and flak to make them work a lot of times. Occasionally someone will put together a really solid elite list, but they tend to require things go smoothly, every failed roll is amplified in elite armies in a way that is just not reflected in armies with large model counts. Likewise the necessary recovery is much more difficult for the elite army than it typically is for the horde, mostly because the model count difference doesn't reflect the disparity in success numbers when rolling the dice.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

Galas wrote:Make armies lost all specific benefits if they are mixed, instead of being a Detachment thing. So an Imperium army can't have blood angel stratagems, or chapter tactics, etc...

Boom. Soup fixed.

I do love it when my Ultramarines fight as Ultramarines on battlefield A of the Campaign, and my Tallarn fight like Tallarn on Battlefield B. But god forbid you put both of them on battlefield C. It's chaos! Ultramarines forget their mental indoctrination, Tallarn stumbling all over themselves instead of advancing swiftly...

Thats the same logic as when you put Ultramarines and Tallarn in the same detachment. You can have unrestricted soup, or you can have balance. Chose. For everything else, Narrative.

 Galas wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

Galas wrote:Make armies lost all specific benefits if they are mixed, instead of being a Detachment thing. So an Imperium army can't have blood angel stratagems, or chapter tactics, etc...

Boom. Soup fixed.

I do love it when my Ultramarines fight as Ultramarines on battlefield A of the Campaign, and my Tallarn fight like Tallarn on Battlefield B. But god forbid you put both of them on battlefield C. It's chaos! Ultramarines forget their mental indoctrination, Tallarn stumbling all over themselves instead of advancing swiftly...

Thats the same logic as when you put Ultramarines and Tallarn in the same detachment. You can have unrestricted soup, or you can have balance. Chose. For everything else, Narrative.

Why is having soup less balanced than having not-soup?

Is me bringing an Inquisitor with my IG army going to make it immensely stronger?

Or a bunch of Custodes bikers instead of Hellhounds?

Is a Supreme Command of Tech-Priest Enginseers from codex Adeptus Mechanicus making my army vastly more powerful than bringing 3 Enginseers from Codex: Astra Militarum?

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 Amishprn86 wrote:
It comes down to as players, do we want pure armies or do we want soup?

Soup isnt bad, but it might not be what players want to see.



I personally play more pure, but will have a small detachment sometimes, just b.c i like the armies i pick. I like DE, i dont like CWE no where near as much. But i do like some CWE models, i like powers, sometimes i'll use a Farseer and Shiny Spears.

Why wouldn't players "want to see it?"

It's fluffy and it makes armies look neater, so if it's balanced, why's it bad?

"it might not be" =! all players, showing you a different persons take doesnt mean its all players pov.

IDK why everytime an example is given people think it means everyone. "Some" players like Pure armies, "Some" players like fluff "Some" players dont care.

Go to other forums where the top lists are posts and see how many hate those lists due to, "to much soup"

I'll say I'd actually prefer "soup" to the old Allie Matrix rules, which allowed you take basically take whatever with whoever with almost no downside
I won several local tournies in early 7E in which I used an Eldar CAD with scatterbikes and a WK alongside 2 Necron Canoptek harvest formations full of Wraiths.
All I had to do was deploy over 12" away and keep out 6" for the game. An easy feat when all you units have 12" move.

I would never play that in a friendly game and it was clearly tourney list that should never have been allowed by the rules (because fluff mostly)

-

Essentially what you're saying is this:

More dice = less variance / better confidence.

A horde army plays similarly game to game. An elite army will be very swingy and fluctuate wildly.

I am not saying one is more or less skill to play than the other, simply that horde based armies, in combat and shooting, are absolutely more predictable in their outcomes.

Consider:
190 points of Grand Master Voldus versus a Wraithknight. He expects to deal 6.07 damage in one round of combat. But his standard deviation is 1.6, meaning 67% of the time he'll fall between ~4.5 and ~7.7. And, 1/3 of the time, he'll fall outside that range. To create an 95% confidence interval, we see Voldus damage range falls between ~3.2 and ~9.3. That's a very wide range of possible outcomes.

190 points of Genestealers versus a Wraithknight. They expect to deal 7.04 damage, but with a standard deviation of 0.79. So 67% of the time they'll fall between ~6.3 and ~7.83. 95% of the time, they'll fall between ~5.5 and ~8.62.

At the end of the day you're paying the same points for relatively equivalent damage *strictly limited to melee, please don't make this example more complicated, I am aware Voldus brings other utility, can shoot, provides a buff radius, casts 3 powers, etc*. However, the Genstealers damage is far more predictable than Voldus. Voldus could spike and deal 9+ damage, or fall flat and deal 3 damage. The odds of the Genestealers dealing less than 5 damage is minuscule, but the odds of them dealing more than 8.5 damage is also minuscule.

This doesn't make the horde army more easy to play, but it does mean that you can plan more effectively for specific outcomes. If the Wraithknight has 5 wounds remaining, you could charge it with your Genestealers and have extreme confidence they'd eliminate it. You would not have the same level of confidence with Voldus. Although you'd still be fairly confident he could finish the job, it's entirely possible that he fails to do so.

My only real problem is how Codex's dont have their own special Detachment that encourages you to take less soup armies.

Like DE for an example

Raider Detachment (all units must be from codex Drukhari)
Hq 2-3
Court 1-2
Elites 0-2
Troops 2-4
Fast 3-6
Heavys 0-2

Gain 3CP

Basically a Outrider with a twist on Battalion and gets 3CP compare to 1.

Why is this not a thing?

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
Should there be a downside to souping?

Souping is the status quo of the game right now, so I'm not really sure why it needs downsides. It's the expected, desired outcome.

the issue is that armies are still designed, balanced, showcased, released, and organized as self contained forces. Armies are intentionally good at some things and worse at others, and allies basically tosses that all out the window.

 Amishprn86 wrote:

Why is this not a thing?

Because it is eerily similar to the 7E snowflake detachments and formations that players complained about.

-

 Vaktathi wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
Should there be a downside to souping?

Souping is the status quo of the game right now, so I'm not really sure why it needs downsides. It's the expected, desired outcome.

the issue is that armies are still designed, balanced, showcased, released, and organized as self contained forces. Armies are intentionally good at some things and worse at others, and allies basically tosses that all out the window.

I think what's missing from this discussion is how they playtest. If GW is playtesting with soup in mind, then let's leave souping alone and hope they realize some factions are a bit overperforming. If they're NOT playtesting with soup in mind, wtf is wrong with them, eliminate souping or balance around it.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 Galas wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

Galas wrote:Make armies lost all specific benefits if they are mixed, instead of being a Detachment thing. So an Imperium army can't have blood angel stratagems, or chapter tactics, etc...

Boom. Soup fixed.

I do love it when my Ultramarines fight as Ultramarines on battlefield A of the Campaign, and my Tallarn fight like Tallarn on Battlefield B. But god forbid you put both of them on battlefield C. It's chaos! Ultramarines forget their mental indoctrination, Tallarn stumbling all over themselves instead of advancing swiftly...

Thats the same logic as when you put Ultramarines and Tallarn in the same detachment. You can have unrestricted soup, or you can have balance. Chose. For everything else, Narrative.

Why is having soup less balanced than having not-soup?

Because factions were designed as stand alone forces. Cultists were worse Guardsmen because they where chaff in a "elite" army as Chaos Space Marines. Imperial Guard had bad meele units because they weren't a meele army.
When Space Marines can take Imperial Guard as chaff and Imperial Guard can take Blood Angels as meele units, the game is less balanced.

And its even worse when you have macro factions like Imperium, Chaos or even Aeldari, and then you have poor Necrons, Orks or Tau.

 Galef wrote:

 Amishprn86 wrote:

Why is this not a thing?

Because it is eerily similar to the 7E snowflake detachments and formations that players complained about.

-

Basicly that.

they could of done more with "formation" based strats like kill shot and line bombardment.

which is kinda like old formations but are restricted by CP.

 Vaktathi wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
Should there be a downside to souping?

Souping is the status quo of the game right now, so I'm not really sure why it needs downsides. It's the expected, desired outcome.

the issue is that armies are still designed, balanced, showcased, released, and organized as self contained forces. Armies are intentionally good at some things and worse at others, and allies basically tosses that all out the window.

 Galas wrote:
Because factions were designed as stand alone forces. Cultists were worse Guardsmen because they where chaff in a "elite" army as Chaos Space Marines. Imperial Guard had bad meele units because they weren't a meele army.
When Space Marines can take Imperial Guard as chaff and Imperial Guard can take Blood Angels as meele units, the game is less balanced.

And its even worse when you have macro factions like Imperium, Chaos or even Aeldari, and then you have poor Necrons, Orks or Tau.

Do you have any evidence for this?

I have plenty of evidence for armies being designed to cooperate together, such as Celestine buffing Guard, AM Techpriests repairing Guard vehicles, Custodes banners that work on all Imperium infantry, Inquisitors that buff all Imperium units... there's a large amount of evidence suggesting the armies are, in fact, designed to be mixed.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
Should there be a downside to souping?

Souping is the status quo of the game right now, so I'm not really sure why it needs downsides. It's the expected, desired outcome.

the issue is that armies are still designed, balanced, showcased, released, and organized as self contained forces. Armies are intentionally good at some things and worse at others, and allies basically tosses that all out the window.

Do you have any evidence for this?

I have plenty of evidence for armies being designed to cooperate together, such as Celestine buffing Guard, AM Techpriests repairing Guard vehicles, Custodes banners that work on all Imperium infantry, Inquisitors that buff all Imperium units... there's a large amount of evidence suggesting the armies are, in fact, designed to be mixed.

All of thats is pure 8th rules. The core principle of the factions is still to be stand alone forces.

And as I said. I'm not opposed to souping. I play a mixed imperial faction. But it should have is downsides. In AoS you can play Grand Alliance (Chaos, Death, Order, Destruction) and min and max whatever you like, or you can play a faction and have all the bonuses to compete agaisn't Grand Alliance armies.
Theres too a 20% max points in allies that don't dissallow you from your bonuses. That would be what Marmatag said of 2 Detachments of your primary army and 1 Detachment of allies. I wouldn't be opposed with that.

 Galas wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
Should there be a downside to souping?

Souping is the status quo of the game right now, so I'm not really sure why it needs downsides. It's the expected, desired outcome.

the issue is that armies are still designed, balanced, showcased, released, and organized as self contained forces. Armies are intentionally good at some things and worse at others, and allies basically tosses that all out the window.

Do you have any evidence for this?

I have plenty of evidence for armies being designed to cooperate together, such as Celestine buffing Guard, AM Techpriests repairing Guard vehicles, Custodes banners that work on all Imperium infantry, Inquisitors that buff all Imperium units... there's a large amount of evidence suggesting the armies are, in fact, designed to be mixed.

All of thats is pure 8th rules. The core principle of the factions is still to be stand alone forces.
<Some irrelevant nonsense about why it has to have downsides and how other games handle it>

Can you prove the bolded statement?

EDIT: Especially WRT factions like Adeptus Astra Telepathica, Inquisition, etc.

If you are gonna ignore half ow that i said and are gonna ask for hard evidence that is right there, in how things have been done for the past 7th editions (Custodes would be the first faction done in the new directive of souping), I'm not gonna enter your game. You win.

Galas wrote:If you are gonna ignore half ow that i said and are gonna ask for hard evidence that is right there, in how things have been done for the past 7th editions (Custodes would be the first faction done in the new directive of souping), I'm not gonna enter your game. You win.

Let me address what you said then:

Galas wrote:And as I said. I'm not opposed to souping. I play a mixed imperial faction. But it should have is downsides. In AoS you can play Grand Alliance (Chaos, Death, Order, Destruction) and min and max whatever you like, or you can play a faction and have all the bonuses to compete agaisn't Grand Alliance armies. Theres too a 20% max points in allies that don't dissallow you from your bonuses. That would be what Marmatag said of 2 Detachments of your primary army and 1 Detachment of allies. I wouldn't be opposed with that.

1) I'm not opposed to souping, though I play a mono-faction.
2) Why should it have downsides? Oh, right, that's what the rest of the discussion surrounds.
3) Personally not really concerned with how AOS does things.
4) Marmatag's post is okay, I guess. Would've replied if I felt strongly one way or another.

Boy that was productive to the discussion.

As for your actual post:
"How things were done in 7th" is both irrelevant (since literally everything about the design of the game has changed since 7th other than "it uses minis") and also wrong, unless you want to argue that Codex: Imperial Agents was a codex not meant for souping.

How is a mixed imperial faction (SoB + Custodes+Tempestus Scions) a mono faction?

And of course theres factions that where designed for allying with other forcers. Thats why Inquisition was the first faction that could be allied with other factions.

Why should it have downsides? Because then monofactions don't have a place in the game.

How I can prove that factions where designed to not have allies in the first place, with strenghts and weakness? Hmmm... Tau? I don't know. Is very obvious that factions were designed as stand alone forces. Even if in 8th they have add more and more cross-codex buffing factors.

 Galas wrote:
All of thats is pure 8th rules. The core principle of the factions is still to be stand alone forces.

But that's not entirely true is it? Obviously the allies matrix in 7th seems to indicate that the concepts of cross-list benefits were first gestated in 7th and that what we're seeing is simply a refinement of that process.

I would submit that stand alone forces are for leagues, narratives and other less strictly competitive game modes, tournament play is more likely to be balanced around mixed lists.

 Galas wrote:
How is a mixed imperial faction (SoB + Custodes+Tempestus Scions) a mono faction?

And of course theres factions that where designed for allying with other forcers. Thats why Inquisition was the first faction that could be allied with other factions.

Why should it have downsides? Because then monofactions don't have a place in the game.

How I can prove that factions where designed to not have allies in the first place, with strenghts and weakness? Hmmm... Tau? I don't know. Is very obvious that factions were designed as stand alone forces. Even if in 8th they have add more and more cross-codex buffing factors.

I play Mono-IG, not really sure where you got a bit about the SOB and Custodes and Scions, unless I brought it up in a hypothetical somewhere. I do have an SOB army as well.

Why does having soup automatically negate mono-factions? I certainly don't feel like my mono-IG is negated by the fact that someone can bring an Inquisitor or some Space Marines with their guard.

Tau might very well get allies, or perhaps be designed as a mono-faction that can compete with soup.

Why is it taken as fact that soup is flat out better than a mono-army without really any evidence existing? I play a mono army, it does fine, *shrug*.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
Should there be a downside to souping?

Souping is the status quo of the game right now, so I'm not really sure why it needs downsides. It's the expected, desired outcome.

the issue is that armies are still designed, balanced, showcased, released, and organized as self contained forces. Armies are intentionally good at some things and worse at others, and allies basically tosses that all out the window.

 Galas wrote:
Because factions were designed as stand alone forces. Cultists were worse Guardsmen because they where chaff in a "elite" army as Chaos Space Marines. Imperial Guard had bad meele units because they weren't a meele army.
When Space Marines can take Imperial Guard as chaff and Imperial Guard can take Blood Angels as meele units, the game is less balanced.

And its even worse when you have macro factions like Imperium, Chaos or even Aeldari, and then you have poor Necrons, Orks or Tau.

Do you have any evidence for this?

I have plenty of evidence for armies being designed to cooperate together, such as Celestine buffing Guard, AM Techpriests repairing Guard vehicles, Custodes banners that work on all Imperium infantry, Inquisitors that buff all Imperium units... there's a large amount of evidence suggesting the armies are, in fact, designed to be mixed.

there are a few things intended to work with other factions, but these are exceptions (and a few exceptions are fine) and some of them are inconsequential (e.g. enginseers fixing other peoples stuff), broadly they do not however.

To the bigger point, armies are still built around concepts. IG for instance have plentiful access to battle tanks and walls of infantry but do not have fast, hard hitting, CC units with multiple deployment options or units that possess inherent extreme durability. Whereas Space Marines have both of the latter but little of the former. With allies, this basically allows one to take advantage of the benefits of all with the downsides of none in many respects, resulting in balance issues that dont exist for monofaction armies or factions that have no meaningful allies.

I still think you're attributing 5th edition think to an 8th edition game.

There's really no indication that mono-faction armies have weaknesses anymore. IG can have walls of infantry and plentiful battle tanks, or it can be an entirely elite force of Bullgryns mounted in Valkyries. It could be Crusaders in outflanking Tallarn Banehammers. It is no longer restricted to its old 5th edition style of "dudes and tanks".

Conversely, you could build Space Marines with gobs of predator tanks and Land Raiders, with Chronus as the HQ, and a bunch of scouts as the troops, who are fairly cheap (about the same as scions IIRC).

Factions no longer have "this faction is obviously just dudes and tanks while this one is fast and hurty but doesn't shoot well" as their taglines. In fact, some factions have almost nothing, and essentially have to soup or else you are forcing badness that is incoherent with 8th edition's soupy philosophy (inquisition and astra telepathica, arguably grey knights... etc.).

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

Why is it taken as fact that soup is flat out better than a mono-army without really any evidence existing? I play a mono army, it does fine, *shrug*.

Because you play the single best monofaction army bar none, if it weren't for Eldar Dark Reapers disrupting the meta, Guard would really stand alone.

Also you run 3 baneblades in a casual environment as you are an admitted non-tournament player. So of course you do well. This isn't some great mystery.

Numerous armies are forced to play monofaction. Basically all Xenos except Eldar. And the evidence is plain as day, you just choose to ignore it. I think the real question is, on what grounds can you dispute massive amounts of tournament data? Your argument is effectively throwing a "#fakenews" reply and being done with it.

 Marmatag wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

Why is it taken as fact that soup is flat out better than a mono-army without really any evidence existing? I play a mono army, it does fine, *shrug*.

Because you play the single best monofaction army bar none, if it weren't for Eldar Dark Reapers disrupting the meta, Guard would really stand alone.

Also you run 3 baneblades in a casual environment as you are an admitted non-tournament player. So of course you do well. This isn't some great mystery.

Numerous armies are forced to play monofaction. Basically all Xenos except Eldar. And the evidence is plain as day, you just choose to ignore it. I think the real question is, on what grounds can you dispute massive amounts of tournament data? Your argument is effectively throwing a "#fakenews" reply and being done with it.

I played mono-faction at NOVA too and went 4-4 in the GT, which is satisfactory, and was with the Index.

All xenos except eldar? I played a Tyranid army with four leman russ tanks in it yesterday.

And the problem with tournament data is you have to look at how many people showed up with mono-faction armies before you get any kind of data. Did half of the players show up with mono armies? A quarter? Like, 3?

I know there were a few mono-armies scattered throughout the rankings, including mono-BA in the top 8, IIRC, and plenty in the top 100 of a 500-person tournament. It's not all doom-and-gloom for them imo.

Mono-BA guy cheated. But maybe a list like that can work. I'm dubious. It's hard to overcome the raw efficiency of the IG.

Martel732 wrote:
Mono-BA guy cheated. But maybe a list like that can work. I'm dubious. It's hard to overcome the raw efficiency of the IG.

.... who are a mono faction themselves.

I still see no evidence that mixed-faction armies are so much better than mono-faction armies that people are getting fethed.

It may be true of individual mono factions (e.g. Grey Knights) because they got shafted so hard that even in a soupless environment they'd be screwed, but that's still not proof that allowing soup somehow completely invalidates mono-factions.

Yes Tyranids can technically bring Guard via GSC, but that should amplify how bad it is for Xenos that can't soup, or soup effectively.

It's an extremely circuitous path to get tanks that have no tactics, stratagems, etc, versus an army that can bring those same models, with cheaper, better chaff, and will have tactics, stratagems, etc. This is an example of ineffective souping, and it's made ineffective by rules.

No, you are not even approaching this right. Count the number of armies in the top 50 that aren't soupable. Imperium, Chaos, and Eldar dominate.

Look at the LVO, as a microcosm of the problem:

There were 0 Tyranids in the top 50.
There were 0 Orks in the top 50.
There were 0 Necrons in the top 50.
There was 1 Tau in the top 50.

So these 4 factions with no soup / heavily restricted/gimped soup had 1 person in the top 50.

Do you feel that's balanced? Do you not see the connection between souping and results?

I don't know about mono vs soup. I think its all about being able to spam undercosted units. I don't think mixing BA into IG makes IG better, myself. I think IG is better off mono than mixing in marines, who are horribly inefficient.

 Marmatag wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

Why is it taken as fact that soup is flat out better than a mono-army without really any evidence existing? I play a mono army, it does fine, *shrug*.

Because you play the single best monofaction army bar none, if it weren't for Eldar Dark Reapers disrupting the meta, Guard would really stand alone.

Also you run 3 baneblades in a casual environment as you are an admitted non-tournament player. So of course you do well. This isn't some great mystery.

Numerous armies are forced to play monofaction. Basically all Xenos except Eldar. And the evidence is plain as day, you just choose to ignore it. I think the real question is, on what grounds can you dispute massive amounts of tournament data? Your argument is effectively throwing a "#fakenews" reply and being done with it.

The question is "why is it a fact that soup is better than pure?" not "why is it a fact that some factions have vaguer definitions of what pure means?"

Ultimately, it comes down to options and while numerous armies are forced to play monofaction, there's no parity in options between mono-faction armies. Orks are monofaction but still have a very large selection of options (outside of troops sadly). There are multiple factions in the game that only have only 1 or 2 options per unit type. It's not exactly "more balanced" for them to be the poorly designed one dimensional gimmicks that they are.

When you take soup into account it really feels like everything has a good range of options. Some of the factions could benefit from more (Necrons and Tau seem to be the most in need of diversity, IMO, but are also kind of... soulless... by design). Take that away though and I think you wind up with more useless factions than we have currently.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Marmatag wrote:
Yes Tyranids can technically bring Guard via GSC, but that should amplify how bad it is for Xenos that can't soup, or soup effectively.

It's an extremely circuitous path to get tanks that have no tactics, stratagems, etc, versus an army that can bring those same models, with cheaper, better chaff, and will have tactics, stratagems, etc. This is an example of ineffective souping, and it's made ineffective by rules.

No, you are not even approaching this right. Count the number of armies in the top 50 that aren't soupable. Imperium, Chaos, and Eldar dominate.

Look at the LVO, as a microcosm of the problem:

There were 0 Tyranids in the top 50.
There were 0 Orks in the top 50.
There were 0 Necrons in the top 50.
There was 1 Tau in the top 50.

So these 4 factions with no soup / heavily restricted/gimped soup had 1 person in the top 50.

Do you feel that's balanced? Do you not see the connection between souping and results?

I think the bigger deal for most of those armies is the lack of a codex, personally.

Martel732 wrote:
I don't know about mono vs soup. I think its all about being able to spam undercosted units. I don't think mixing BA into IG makes IG better, myself. I think IG is better off mono than mixing in marines, who are horribly inefficient.

We're on the same page here.

The underlying argument that's getting lost in the nonsense is that armies should balanced better, and if they're going to balance based on soup, they should dramatically improve the strength of the monofaction armies (Orks, Tau, Tyranids, Necrons).

If they're not balancing based on soup, there should be rules to restrict it, because it's impacting balance.

Soups are fine if balanced against opponents which might only have access to a single codex. Yet it seems fairly likely that being able to combine the strongest performers using each factions niche would give you a stronger combined force. The question becomes whether to balance the soup or each codex contained in the soup against outside (mono codex) forces.

I'm not sure GW (or anyone) is capable of balancing both soup and mono codex's within to match other codex's evenly. Giving a bunch of Custodes a 5++ which they already have isn't worth much but it might be ok for guardsmen and pure gold on Hellblasters or such; who do you balance the ability to? Do Guardsmen need to be more expensive because they can benefit from it in soup? Would that make them useless in pure IG where they don't have access to X ability?

Soup is cool, but seems to be a balance nightmare I'm a little hesitant to trust someone with GW track record with. Though it seems here to stay.

 Marmatag wrote:
Yes Tyranids can technically bring Guard via GSC, but that should amplify how bad it is for Xenos that can't soup, or soup effectively.

It's an extremely circuitous path to get tanks that have no tactics, stratagems, etc, versus an army that can bring those same models, with cheaper, better chaff, and will have tactics, stratagems, etc. This is an example of ineffective souping, and it's made ineffective by rules.

No, you are not even approaching this right. Count the number of armies in the top 50 that aren't soupable. Imperium, Chaos, and Eldar dominate.

Look at the LVO, as a microcosm of the problem:

There were 0 Tyranids in the top 50.
There were 0 Orks in the top 50.
There were 0 Necrons in the top 50.
There was 1 Tau in the top 50.

So these 4 factions with no soup / heavily restricted/gimped soup had 1 person in the top 50.

Do you feel that's balanced? Do you not see the connection between souping and results?

2 Questions:

1) Why are you only looking at the top 1/10th of players? I get where you're going, but you're only talking about a group of 50 people who are only allowed to bring one army each.
2) 3 of those are Index armies that lack a codex, which is more crippling than being able to soup or not.

What I see in the results from LVO is that taking soup away from people will restrict theme armies without harming the top lists. If you forced people to play mono faction, a bunch of Ynnari units would go feth off and die while Dark Reapers fought against Dark Reapers for the title, Guard and BA would do fine, and you'd still probably not have a lot of Orks, Necrons, or Tau in the top. The Tyranids are the only outlier, though without knowing how many showed up, it's hard to tell if they're a real outlier. If only like, 3 people showed up with them, then 0 in the top 50 is expected, whereas if there were 50 or 60 players, that's a bigger deal that they didn't make a showing.

Nothing in your post explains why soup is better than mono. What I see from your post is Indexes are worse than Codexes (a point against which I am not arguing), and Tyranids are anomalous.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Marmatag wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
I don't know about mono vs soup. I think its all about being able to spam undercosted units. I don't think mixing BA into IG makes IG better, myself. I think IG is better off mono than mixing in marines, who are horribly inefficient.

We're on the same page here.

The underlying argument that's getting lost in the nonsense is that armies should balanced better, and if they're going to balance based on soup, they should dramatically improve the strength of the monofaction armies (Orks, Tau, Tyranids, Necrons).

If they're not balancing based on soup, there should be rules to restrict it, because it's impacting balance.

Either modify their strength to match or allow them to soup, yes.

Personally I'm in favour of the latter.

 Marmatag wrote:
Yes Tyranids can technically bring Guard via GSC, but that should amplify how bad it is for Xenos that can't soup, or soup effectively.

It's an extremely circuitous path to get tanks that have no tactics, stratagems, etc, versus an army that can bring those same models, with cheaper, better chaff, and will have tactics, stratagems, etc. This is an example of ineffective souping, and it's made ineffective by rules.

No, you are not even approaching this right. Count the number of armies in the top 50 that aren't soupable. Imperium, Chaos, and Eldar dominate.

Look at the LVO, as a microcosm of the problem:

There were 0 Tyranids in the top 50.
There were 0 Orks in the top 50.
There were 0 Necrons in the top 50.
There was 1 Tau in the top 50.

So these 4 factions with no soup / heavily restricted/gimped soup had 1 person in the top 50.

Do you feel that's balanced? Do you not see the connection between souping and results?

I don't think that correlation is a result of the causation you're suggesting, or at least, it's not the only cause. As has been discussed extensively in this thread (and I'm really not intending to bring this up again), many Ork and Tyranid lists simply weren't getting the rounds in because of time limits, that, which also shouldn't be used as the sole indicator of balance. Eldar play relatively quickly because they sit and shoot quite a bit and only have a few units usually in an army that need to really be moved a lot.

Wrapping the entire thing up and putting a soup bow on it, isn't entirely fair.

I agree they need to work harder to provide additional options for the more esoteric xenos armies, but that takes time, so we'll have to see. If Tyranid lists had been able to play out the full games, would they have done better? Do Eldar excel in a 2-3 round environment because of their style of play?

I think we all have a tendency to want to point to a single point of failure and claim that removing it would fix everything, but that's simply not the case. It's definitely not the case in a tournament environment where the length, style and results of the game rely heavily on so many human factors.

Of course, we'll probably have AI in a year or two that can analyze every permutation and spit out the optimal list for the vast majority of circumstances.

Then what will we bitch about?

Unit, you're ignoring the actual way tournament armies have been built.

No one is just taking a cool Inquisitor for flavor in their Imperium army. What you're mentioning is precisely why soup is fine...for narrative games. It's not balanced at all, and creates entirely unfluffy silly armies which are aimed solely at tournament wins when put in a competitive environment.

If you want a tournament to be remotely balanced, having one player free to pick from 8-10 codices while his opponent has one codex isn't balanced. You're aware of this, stop dodging it.

Another solution:

If i hit the lottery, i'll just host a $100k championship series, where the winner takes home 100,000 us dollars. I'll write my own soup restrictions and rules. They will become the meta because everyone wants a chance to win $100k every few months.

I would also do what MTG does, and have a restricted / banned list. Some units would be banned, some units would be restricted to a specific number.

 Elbows wrote:
Unit, you're ignoring the actual way tournament armies have been built.

No one is just taking a cool Inquisitor for flavor in their Imperium army. What you're mentioning is precisely why soup is fine...for narrative games. It's not balanced at all, and creates entirely unfluffy silly armies which are aimed solely at tournament wins when put in a competitive environment.

If you want a tournament to be remotely balanced, having one player free to pick from 8-10 codices while his opponent has one codex isn't balanced. You're aware of this, stop dodging it.

[Citation Needed] for the red part, and explanation for how the blue part is different than the tournament builds you saw when mono-faction armies existed exclusively.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

Galas wrote:Make armies lost all specific benefits if they are mixed, instead of being a Detachment thing. So an Imperium army can't have blood angel stratagems, or chapter tactics, etc...

Boom. Soup fixed.

I do love it when my Ultramarines fight as Ultramarines on battlefield A of the Campaign, and my Tallarn fight like Tallarn on Battlefield B. But god forbid you put both of them on battlefield C. It's chaos! Ultramarines forget their mental indoctrination, Tallarn stumbling all over themselves instead of advancing swiftly...

Breng77 wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
Should there be a downside to souping?

Souping is the status quo of the game right now, so I'm not really sure why it needs downsides. It's the expected, desired outcome.

IMO it does (or not doing so needs an upside which is the same thing essentially), I want both styles to be viable, right now there is 0 reason not to soup.

Why is that a problem? It is certainly 'viable' not to soup - I don't think that mono-Imperial Guard or mono-BA is in a cripplingly bad spot like you make it seem.

And mono-GK? Admech? Is mono-guard mono regiment or multiple regiments (another form of soup to some extent). I'm not saying those armies cannot be played at all just that generally soup is in the advantage, so why should there not be a bonus to not playing soup to even things out for people that don't want to play soup but still want to compete.

It's worth noting that having access to a large number of codices is less impactful when a large number of those codices have the same units copy pasted across them.

I think the key to soup being balanced though is making sure its worthwhile for detachments to be for the most part pure. The limit of 3 detachments does a pretty good job providing tradeoffs when they grant important abilities like the Custodes +1 Invul or other, similarly important passives.

The need to do something like AOS has; AOS got it right. If you take a mix, you don't get all the specific benefits. This detachment system is a bunch of gak, and is the reason for this problem. You should not be able to take a UM detachment and then a tallarn tank detachment and have both benefit from their own specific abilities. That should be the tradeoff for doing a mixed army versus a mono build.

Wayniac wrote:
The need to do something like AOS has; AOS got it right. If you take a mix, you don't get all the specific benefits. This detachment system is a bunch of gak, and is the reason for this problem. You should not be able to take a UM detachment and then a tallarn tank detachment and have both benefit from their own specific abilities. That should be the tradeoff for doing a mixed army versus a mono build.

I would be fine with this as a balance change in regards to souping.

Wayniac wrote:
You should not be able to take a UM detachment and then a tallarn tank detachment and have both benefit from their own specific abilities.

Why not? It would be one thing if they were benefiting from each other's abilities, but their own seems fine. I'd rather see a UM detachment supporting some guard and tanks than seeing the UM detachment doubled up.

 Marmatag wrote:
Another solution:

If i hit the lottery, i'll just host a $100k championship series, where the winner takes home 100,000 us dollars. I'll write my own soup restrictions and rules. They will become the meta because everyone wants a chance to win $100k every few months.

I would also do what MTG does, and have a restricted / banned list. Some units would be banned, some units would be restricted to a specific number.

In an effort to do good you will do great evil.

Players will work harder than ever to find combos that break the system within it's limits. In addition the tournament will feature some of the most toxic and unsportsman-like behavior.

 TwinPoleTheory wrote:

 Galas wrote:
All of thats is pure 8th rules. The core principle of the factions is still to be stand alone forces.

But that's not entirely true is it? Obviously the allies matrix in 7th seems to indicate that the concepts of cross-list benefits were first gestated in 7th and that what we're seeing is simply a refinement of that process.

I would submit that stand alone forces are for leagues, narratives and other less strictly competitive game modes, tournament play is more likely to be balanced around mixed lists.

Allies should be compliments, not entirely getting rid of weaknesses or crutches

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
I still think you're attributing 5th edition think to an 8th edition game.

There's really no indication that mono-faction armies have weaknesses anymore. IG can have walls of infantry and plentiful battle tanks, or it can be an entirely elite force of Bullgryns mounted in Valkyries. It could be Crusaders in outflanking Tallarn Banehammers. It is no longer restricted to its old 5th edition style of "dudes and tanks".

You can do these things. They dont work terribly well. An elite force of Bullgryns in Valkyries are not going to do terribly well, they're not the equivalent of something like a Smashhammer captain or Shining Spears or TWC's or other such units. Such forces can be physically made, but doesn't mean they have the tools to properly work at the level of other armies.

Conversely, you could build Space Marines with gobs of predator tanks and Land Raiders, with Chronus as the HQ, and a bunch of scouts as the troops, who are fairly cheap (about the same as scions IIRC).

Scouts, while capable of serving as a screening unit, are not the same as fielding infantry the way IG can. Scouts can make a passable screening unit, but are not analgous to IG infantry, same way Scions are, by comparison, elite specialists. Yeah, SM's *can* field a tank army as a result of the detachment rules, but they don't have tanks to cover all the specialties and capabilities IG do, nor do they have the same support elements and rules that the IG do for running tank armies. Chronus, while powerful, is not really a command unit the way an IG Tank Commander or Pask is. SM detachment rules do not allow their tanks to make use of ObSec the way IG do. A Space Marine army in this vein is not generally going to match an IG army in this vein. SM armies rely a whole lot more on characters and their infantry to do the job of fighting, the tanks are support elements.

Factions no longer have "this faction is obviously just dudes and tanks while this one is fast and hurty but doesn't shoot well" as their taglines.

They can all run more varied force compositions, but it doesn't mean they can all be successful or capable with them. We're not going to get Tau armies able to successfully field a heavy infantry melee army in the vein of the GK's or AC. We're not going to see Ork armies with fantastically accurate, high strength long range shooting.

In fact, some factions have almost nothing, and essentially have to soup or else you are forcing badness that is incoherent with 8th edition's soupy philosophy (inquisition and astra telepathica, arguably grey knights... etc.).

These are largely niche factions that arent fully fledged factions. Things like that are fine. Having assassins or inquisitors available as general "Imperium" add-ons is one thing, thats not really an issue. The problems with Grey Knights isn't so much that theyre not supposed to be their own army, GW very much went out of their way to do so (hence why the Daemonhunters codex was replaced by a Codex Gey Knights with a dramatically expanded array of GK units), they just didnt execute it well, as is tradition

The big issue is being able to tailor units and detachments both to optimal internal factions (e.g. regiments, craftworlds, chapter rules) *and* external factions where including elements otherwise unavailable becomes an option.

I'm totally onboard with faction benefit requirements being more stringent and making mixnmatch less accessible, at least for matched play.

I think a big part of why the current system is ultimately important is just that it seems to be how the game is going to grow. New models only have so much value in existing crowded factions and new factions are pretty unrealistic to birth fully formed at this point. Half factions that graft on to existing factions make a lot of sense.

It's not even particularly unique to 40k. Warmachine and Infinity are essentially going the same route. I suspect Malifaux will see the value in it in a few years as well.

I mean malifaux has a lot of cross faction stuff now, but you either pay more for it, or require certain characters, so it is easier to balance.

Breng77 wrote:
I mean malifaux has a lot of cross faction stuff now, but you either pay more for it, or require certain characters, so it is easier to balance.

\

Most of the 10 thunders are exactly that, and there is at least 1 cross faction master in each faction, sometimes more.

I miss the good old days when this thread was about LVO. There were so many cool things about this LVO lke creative lists.

GW are now chasing balance and I'm convinced(with no proof) that they are not testing 8th edition in matched play formats internally and relying on tournaments and external testers to do this. The meta won't be truly evolved until the time comes when all codices have been released. But this Soup thing has me worried.

Fingers crossed for a separate Grot codex with army wide BS4+

 Nithaniel wrote:
I miss the good old days when this thread was about LVO. There were so many cool things about this LVO lke creative lists.

GW are now chasing balance and I'm convinced(with no proof) that they are not testing 8th edition in matched play formats internally and relying on tournaments and external testers to do this. The meta won't be truly evolved until the time comes when all codices have been released. But this Soup thing has me worried.

Fingers crossed for a separate Grot codex with army wide BS4+

That's exactly what they are doing. GW are making changes based solely on ITC perceptions, because they feel for some insane reason that if you aren't playing in a tournament, you are not using Matched Play. So this results in changes being done that affect huge swathes of the game just because they effect a very tiny percentage of tournament players who by their nature are looking to abuse it. They are chasing their tail. The "Meta" is always one step ahead of them, and they are relying on these people to dictate the direction they balance things while constantly ignoring the underlying problems that are allowing this to crop up. If they remove the ability to spam things, a lot of issues go down (bring back actual restrictions). If they didn't let you take multiple detachments and get the bonuses that apply to each, problems go down. If soup lists couldn't have their cake and eat it too, problems go down. None of these things will be fixed by just looking at tournament results and saying "Dark reapers are everywhere, time to nerf them" which is thus far how GW has "balanced" competitive play; by hitting things that are abused at tournaments with the nerf bat, just making all the tournament players go to something else that hasn't been abused yet. Fix the underlying issues that let people abuse it in the first place.

They don't know what to hit until it has been abused. Pretty obvious to me. There are no "underlying issues", just miscosted units.

Wayniac wrote:

 Nithaniel wrote:
I miss the good old days when this thread was about LVO. There were so many cool things about this LVO lke creative lists.

GW are now chasing balance and I'm convinced(with no proof) that they are not testing 8th edition in matched play formats internally and relying on tournaments and external testers to do this. The meta won't be truly evolved until the time comes when all codices have been released. But this Soup thing has me worried.

Fingers crossed for a separate Grot codex with army wide BS4+

That's exactly what they are doing. GW are making changes based solely on ITC perceptions, because they feel for some insane reason that if you aren't playing in a tournament, you are not using Matched Play. So this results in changes being done that affect huge swathes of the game just because they effect a very tiny percentage of tournament players who by their nature are looking to abuse it. They are chasing their tail. The "Meta" is always one step ahead of them, and they are relying on these people to dictate the direction they balance things while constantly ignoring the underlying problems that are allowing this to crop up. If they remove the ability to spam things, a lot of issues go down (bring back actual restrictions). If they didn't let you take multiple detachments and get the bonuses that apply to each, problems go down. If soup lists couldn't have their cake and eat it too, problems go down. None of these things will be fixed by just looking at tournament results and saying "Dark reapers are everywhere, time to nerf them" which is thus far how GW has "balanced" competitive play; by hitting things that are abused at tournaments with the nerf bat, just making all the tournament players go to something else that hasn't been abused yet. Fix the underlying issues that let people abuse it in the first place.

Actual restrictions, I've played since 3e and there has never been a case where I couldn't take 3 units of Dark Reapers
limiting multiple detachments doesnt stop me from taking 3 units of Dark Reapers
Limiting soup lists doesn't stop me from taking 3 units of Dark Reapers
Dark Reapers are everywhere because 3+ unmodifiable to hit, good range, good str, good ap, multiple damage with a 3+ save should cost more points.

That isn't to say GW shouldn't take a look at detachment/soup abuse but I don't get the blame being put on Competitive players for wanting a more balanced game. That benefits everybody.
Whether its undercosted Reapers, or moral immune guard or any of the other things GW has 'nerfed' is for the benefit of all.
I don't want to have to work to create 'bad' lists so I can play my buddies and have a fun game.

Soup exists in a couple of different ways: At the detachment level (soup units still granting Battleforged status), and at the army level (soup detachments still granting Battleforged status). Consequent to this is improved efficiency when attempting to min/max synergies, which is where the problem, from a competitive-balance perspective, lies.

If we're talking about restricting detachment-level soup (mixing units); I support that idea. If we're talking about restricting army-level soup, I'm not particularly for that. I'm not arguing that army-level soup is 'easier to balance' than detachment-level soup, rather that an army comprised of an Eldar detachment, a Dark Eldar detachment, and a Harlequin detachment has the potential to be super-cool from a hobbying/theme perspective. So, restricting players to mono-faction (mono-codex) armies for the sake of competitive balance would sacrifice something I see as more valuable.

DCannon4Life wrote:

If we're talking about restricting detachment-level soup (mixing units); I support that idea. If we're talking about restricting army-level soup, I'm not particularly for that. I'm not arguing that army-level soup is 'easier to balance' than detachment-level soup, rather that an army comprised of an Eldar detachment, a Dark Eldar detachment, and a Harlequin detachment has the potential to be super-cool from a hobbying/theme perspective. So, restricting players to mono-faction (mono-codex) armies for the sake of competitive balance would sacrifice something I see as more valuable.

I largely agree with this. I think most armies are getting a special rule strong enough to provide a good penalty for taking detachment level soup though. The outstanding issues seem to be mostly stuff that has yet to get these bonuses from a codex and a decent number of HQs that don't benefit much from army bonuses (or don't have them) and pile into supreme commands pretty trivially.

A game should be balanced with competitive play in mind. Casual games largely take care of themselves, and the tournament meta will filter down to all these tables. Most of the people reading this forum are so eager to post lists and discuss tactics of what is good and what isn't, and to absorb knowledge from tournament players. As an example there is a discussion in the Tyranid tactics thread about the quality of units and how they perform, with those of us who have played them in tournaments sharing our experiences. There are absolutely casual players in that thread reading it and absorbing the knowledge. I would assume this happens as well in the Eldar, and Guard threads, as well. So you have casual Jake going online and buying reapers because competitive Bill said they won him a tournament. So if you want the game to not be balanced around tournaments, find a group of like minded players who don't ask for advice or do research into what works and what doesn't. Ultimately you'll come to the same conclusion, it will just be a longer, more circuitous (and expensive) path to the truth.

On the second note, GW simply doesn't test with Reaper spam - or any spam - in mind. For one *model* to reshape how the entire meta functions is really difficult to accept. It's simply not healthy for the game to have people bringing as many units of the same thing as possible. When lists have like 10 units of dark reapers in them, that's a problem. When lists can soup various different factions and still have all the same buffs and tricks despite having different Craftworlds, for their soupy reapers, that's a problem, too.

For a codex like Tyranids, or an Index like Orks/Tau, you have a different spam problem. The only way to get even remote success right now is to spam one model, because a lot of the codex/index doesn't hold up. Tyranids, spam Flyrants, you won't do well, but you will do better than if you don't; Orks, spam boyz, same reason; Tau, spam commanders, same reason. I refuse to play spam because (a) it stands to reason it will get 'patched' and (b) at some point you have to play for enjoyment.

I would like 40k to be more than, "is the best unit in your codex better than the best unit in my codex?"

I'd like to take that further. I'd like 40k to be more than "is your spreadsheet coefficient larger than mine". I'd like it to be "can you maneuver and engage and withdraw and prioritize objectives better than I can"

 auticus wrote:
I'd like to take that further. I'd like 40k to be more than "is your spreadsheet coefficient larger than mine". I'd like it to be "can you maneuver and engage and withdraw and prioritize objectives better than I can"

Try the new ITC missions, they really take a major step in this direction. Even in casual play they are fantastic.

I'll look into that. I've been doing Open War cards. Those have also been fun.

 auticus wrote:
I'll look into that. I've been doing Open War cards. Those have also been fun.

I found them to be pretty fun, but also created games where it was a non-starter.

 Marmatag wrote:
A game should be balanced with competitive play in mind. Casual games largely take care of themselves, and the tournament meta will filter down to all these tables. Most of the people reading this forum are so eager to post lists and discuss tactics of what is good and what isn't, and to absorb knowledge from tournament players. As an example there is a discussion in the Tyranid tactics thread about the quality of units and how they perform, with those of us who have played them in tournaments sharing our experiences. There are absolutely casual players in that thread reading it and absorbing the knowledge. I would assume this happens as well in the Eldar, and Guard threads, as well. So you have casual Jake going online and buying reapers because competitive Bill said they won him a tournament. So if you want the game to not be balanced around tournaments, find a group of like minded players who don't ask for advice or do research into what works and what doesn't. Ultimately you'll come to the same conclusion, it will just be a longer, more circuitous (and expensive) path to the truth.

On the second note, GW simply doesn't test with Reaper spam - or any spam - in mind. For one *model* to reshape how the entire meta functions is really difficult to accept. It's simply not healthy for the game to have people bringing as many units of the same thing as possible. When lists have like 10 units of dark reapers in them, that's a problem. When lists can soup various different factions and still have all the same buffs and tricks despite having different Craftworlds, for their soupy reapers, that's a problem, too.

For a codex like Tyranids, or an Index like Orks/Tau, you have a different spam problem. The only way to get even remote success right now is to spam one model, because a lot of the codex/index doesn't hold up. Tyranids, spam Flyrants, you won't do well, but you will do better than if you don't; Orks, spam boyz, same reason; Tau, spam commanders, same reason. I refuse to play spam because (a) it stands to reason it will get 'patched' and (b) at some point you have to play for enjoyment.

I would like 40k to be more than, "is the best unit in your codex better than the best unit in my codex?"

I try to tell myself that, but having been trying to do even decently with orks since the 6th edition ork codex and now the awful index.... I just can't enjoy losing every game turn 2 never reaching the enemy unless they are also an assault army and then they stomp me in cc. I built and love my speed freaks army, 50 ork bikers, some nobz etc. they just vaporize before doing much of anything. the only way to even chance with them is spaming ork boyz, still will nto beat imperial soup but hey I get to be wiped in turn 4 instead of turn 2.

on the lvo portion though chess clocks totally should be a thing, and GW should do digital codexes and modify them to adjust points as things are proven to be too weak/strong. no need to wait a full year to adjust dark reapers or Leman Russes in the next chapter approved, or to bring up the power level of underperforming units like commisars or ork biker boyz, just do it digitally or release an errata and correct it.

I hate the chess clock idea so much.

But I do like digital codexes.

I would much rather pay a yearly subscription to the rules, and have digital searchable access to every codex and every rule, than have to buy a book once per year. Included in this subscription would be a sanctioned list builder that would limit illegal lists.

"Can i see your list?"
"Yeah here, enter my ID, and then click 'send list to opponent.'"
"Ok, done. Ok, I see yours."
"Great, all the rules are here."

I mean why this isn't a thing is beyond me. GW is one of the only companies i've seen that seems to openly reject the digital age.

 Marmatag wrote:
Try the new ITC missions, they really take a major step in this direction. Even in casual play they are fantastic.

Agreed, my regular play group use these pretty consistently, partially because they help us prep and plan for the next ITC tournament, but also because they create some really interesting decision dynamics over the course of the game. They can also make a pretty big difference in deciding to go first or not. However, ITC is not perfect, it encourages some levels of aberrant list construction as people try to avoid building lists which provide full secondary objective points, but this is honestly pretty nit-picky on my part.

Open War deck is pretty interesting also, but I think it only scratches the surface, while the ITC missions tend to provide significantly more nuance.

 Marmatag wrote:
I hate the chess clock idea so much.

But I do like digital codexes.

I would much rather pay a yearly subscription to the rules, and have digital searchable access to every codex and every rule, than have to buy a book once per year. Included in this subscription would be a sanctioned list builder that would limit illegal lists.

"Can i see your list?"
"Yeah here, enter my ID, and then click 'send list to opponent.'"
"Ok, done. Ok, I see yours."
"Great, all the rules are here."

I mean why this isn't a thing is beyond me. GW is one of the only companies i've seen that seems to openly reject the digital age.

Corvus Belli's system is far and away the best I've worked with; though I'd like an official app instead of a web page so internet access is less of an issue. Malifaux's new app has some excellent communication ideas but is pretty flawed from a playability standpoint. War Room 2 definitely converted me to digital only in general though. It's UI is a huge step up from its predecessor, though its got some challenges in sharing info. Overall though I will be very happy when War Room 2 is the baseline for the industry and not an exception.

 TwinPoleTheory wrote:

 Marmatag wrote:
Try the new ITC missions, they really take a major step in this direction. Even in casual play they are fantastic.

Agreed, my regular play group use these pretty consistently, partially because they help us prep and plan for the next ITC tournament, but also because they create some really interesting decision dynamics over the course of the game. They can also make a pretty big difference in deciding to go first or not. However, ITC is not perfect, it encourages some levels of aberrant list construction as people try to avoid building lists which provide full secondary objective points, but this is honestly pretty nit-picky on my part.

Open War deck is pretty interesting also, but I think it only scratches the surface, while the ITC missions tend to provide significantly more nuance.

Agree, reaper is probably the dumbest one. It should just be 1 point for 10+ models, end of story.

I like Open War for the twists, some of the weirdo deployment maps, and the advantage cards that don't come with a win condition.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
The Tyranids are the only outlier, though without knowing how many showed up, it's hard to tell if they're a real outlier. If only like, 3 people showed up with them, then 0 in the top 50 is expected, whereas if there were 50 or 60 players, that's a bigger deal that they didn't make a showing.

Just for reference, it looks like they finally fixed the faction listings on the best coast pairings site. There were apparently 35 tyranid players.
https://www.bestcoastpairings.com/r/q09y1gw9

So returning to the topic of the LVO, I think i've shown fairly well in the other thread that the average game length at the LVO was just shy of 4 turns. That's not great, because I don't feel like an average game length of four turns is not sufficient to get to end game conditions, and a four round game makes a concessions way more valuable they they should be. An average of five turns would probably be the right goal, which means games need to happen at about 125% of the speed of current games.

Once again two ways we can do this, we can try to make the game faster via clocks, threats of forfeit, and judges slapping players hands with rulers. However I don't think the competitive scene needs to be more stressful, and none of those idea to make 2k work make the game better.

The other option is to reduce points at tournaments which will make games faster by stint of there being less going on. It will also make a lot of the problem lists we see at 2k much harder to pull off. Reducing points to 1500 would be a 25% reduction, and that's certainly my vote, but to be fair I don't think it's necessary to go all the way down to 1.5k to fit in a two hour window.

I think 1750 will get us close enough, because a reduction in points also comes with a reduction in other time taking aspects of the game, that's a hunch though, so we would definitely want to test that. I also think the current meta could survive a change to 1750 without too many upsets, and it wouldn't play like a completely different game.

Reducing the points is not a good idea. You still have to spend a significant amount of time in movement on turns 1 and 2 to protect your lines from the deep strikers. This won't change magically by reducing the points. You have to look at where the time is being spent. The nature of 8th edition is that turns 1 and 2 will take a lot longer than 3-5. Games are generally decided by turn 4 anyway, so the need to go to turn 5 is pretty rare.

Also, if you were to drop the points from 2000 to 1750, that's a reduction to 87.5% of the points. If that had the same percentage effect on a 2 hour, and 15 minute game, you're effectively adding ~20 minutes to the game time.

A better solution is to simply increase the max game time to 3 hours, and set games to end at turn 4 rather than turn 5. To be completely honest i would be fine if the game was changed to end at turn 3, going to turn 4 only if there is a tie or the game is reasonably close. The need to see turn 4 and 5 is wholly overblown.

Increasing the max game time would work.

In a perfect world we'd have unlimited game time, but of course that's absurd.

Sadly, however, it's the situation Warhammer 40k is written for.

See, I think players should just mark turn (not game) time on score sheets. Players who chronically don't make it to Turn 5 AND take more than half the time of the whole match on their rounds should get a negative points modifier. Done and done.

You lower point values and you're going to make elite armies like Imperial Knights and Custodes almost impossible.

I get the impression people advocating for clocks, and time adjustments, have never played a horde army. They take time to set up, they take time to move, they take time to shoot, fight, etc.

Dropping my points would change none of this. I would simply have less of the same problem. Dropping a squad of Boyz for instance by 5 models each is not going to magically double the turns that army sees.

I feel like you're trying to solve a problem that doesn't really exist. We started with slowplaying, and then now we're in reducing points and adding clocks. Thank god this forum isn't in charge of tournament formats.

I feel like the game could certainly benefit by having its conclusion tinkered with. The turn 5 ending isn't particularly important to the cadence of the game and its generally a pretty anti-climatic turn in general. A 4 turn game could certainly work, but I think to do so scenarios need to be worked into something more decisive. It's a good train of thought in general though.

Also, for whatever reason my brain hates 1750 as a number. If more than 1500 was desirable (and I think it is) I'd vote for 1600 or 1800 first.

 LunarSol wrote:
I feel like the game could certainly benefit by having its conclusion tinkered with. The turn 5 ending isn't particularly important to the cadence of the game and its generally a pretty anti-climatic turn in general. A 4 turn game could certainly work, but I think to do so scenarios need to be worked into something more decisive. It's a good train of thought in general though.

Another positive to ending at turn 4: Armies that generally play slower wouldn't be a such a disadvantage compared to armies that can see later turns.

And seriously, I play a horde army, and I make it to turn 3 at least in every game. Just cap the turns at 4 and give us an extra 30 minutes.

 Marmatag wrote:

 LunarSol wrote:
I feel like the game could certainly benefit by having its conclusion tinkered with. The turn 5 ending isn't particularly important to the cadence of the game and its generally a pretty anti-climatic turn in general. A 4 turn game could certainly work, but I think to do so scenarios need to be worked into something more decisive. It's a good train of thought in general though.

Another positive to ending at turn 4: Armies that generally play slower wouldn't be a such a disadvantage compared to armies that can see later turns.

And seriously, I play a horde army, and I make it to turn 3 at least in every game. Just cap the turns at 4 and give us an extra 30 minutes.

I'm not sure I fully buy the "but horde armies" argument. I'm not saying all horde players engage in intentional slow play (or even are slower than your average 40k player), but I feel we, as a community, don't stress speed and efficiency enough for tournament play. When I was at NOVA last year, I only had one game take over two hours in the whole GT I think. The speed record was a 5 round match that started and concluded in approximately forty-five minutes (Ynnari Vs. Ultramarines).

I think we can hold players to a reasonably decent speed standard without ending the world and we can do that by artificially lowering scores of players who routinely take more than 1.5 hours in a 3 hour match and still don't make it to turn 5. That means you're not finishing games AND you're eating up your opponent's share of the match time.

The current standard already punishes horde armies. There is no reason to punish them further.

The example of slowplaying was someone playing an army that is FAST TO PLAY. Not a horde. Seriously you guys are trying to create rules to stop slowplaying but in doing so you'd ruin Orks, Tyranids.

You want to solve the slowplaying problem? Have judges enforce the rule. End of story.

 Marmatag wrote:
The current standard already punishes horde armies. There is no reason to punish them further.

The example of slowplaying was someone playing an army that is FAST TO PLAY. Not a horde. Seriously you guys are trying to create rules to stop slowplaying but in doing so you'd ruin Orks, Tyranids.

You want to solve the slowplaying problem? Have judges enforce the rule. End of story.

Another thing that would help would be to drop the tournaments down to 4 rounds instead of 6, you could still do two longer games each day (~4 hour time limit instead). There would be more chance of ties in overall scores, but it shouldn't wildly skew things in that regard.

 Marmatag wrote:
The current standard already punishes horde armies. There is no reason to punish them further.

The example of slowplaying was someone playing an army that is FAST TO PLAY. Not a horde. Seriously you guys are trying to create rules to stop slowplaying but in doing so you'd ruin Orks, Tyranids.

You want to solve the slowplaying problem? Have judges enforce the rule. End of story.

Well there's two slow play problems. There is intentional slow play, which we can fix with judicial enforcement of current rules, but then there's also unintentional slow play. Allowing horde armies to just swallow everyone else's time in each match is, arguably, as unfair to elite armies like Custodes and Imperial Knights as clocking would be to horde armies.

As a horde army myself playing mostly ork boys now I will say as long as you prepare you can knock out movement quick and I often run 200+ boys in a list. cut a small ruler or stick at ~4 inches so you touch the base and move the base to the front of the stick. adjust based on base size and then just lay down said flat stick (coffee stirrers work great too, even wood glue on another so you have a handle) and it takes only a second or 2 per boy. you can also pre count some dice. I keep out 72 (2 bricks) on the table constantly reverting them into groups of 5. if my opponent is ok I roll their successful wounds as saves and they roll my successful wounds dice as saves too.

the biggest time sinks I see are on the table are indecisive players waffling on everything. the "I moved that and that and that... and shot that and that and still have to shoot this and this...

 G00fySmiley wrote:
As a horde army myself playing mostly ork boys now I will say as long as you prepare you can knock out movement quick and I often run 200+ boys in a list. cut a small ruler or stick at ~4 inches so you touch the base and move the base to the front of the stick. adjust based on base size and then just lay down said flat stick (coffee stirrers work great too, even wood glue on another so you have a handle) and it takes only a second or 2 per boy. you can also pre count some dice. I keep out 72 (2 bricks) on the table constantly reverting them into groups of 5. if my opponent is ok I roll their successful wounds as saves and they roll my successful wounds dice as saves too.

the biggest time sinks I see are on the table are indecisive players waffling on everything. the "I moved that and that and that... and shot that and that and still have to shoot this and this...

This is what I'm talking about. Experienced Horde players know how to move their models quickly. I started playing 40K with Nids and quickly learned how to make my turns happen quickly (often quicker than many of my Marine opponent's turns)

So I agree with G00fysmiley: The biggest time sinks are indecisive players, NOT necessarily players with lots of models.

So really, slow play comes from 2 sources: Inexperienced players, or TFG.

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