Ok, I have this tournament coming up this Saturday in Sacramento and I hear it is a pretty competitive tournament. Competitive as in Ard Boyz-style competitive but with double-FOC instead. And for a 3-game RTT, the Contest of Champions in Sacramento is actually pretty big. I'm talking about 60-players at this points level and sometimes over 100 players at the lower points levels (when it's at 1750 or less). That's even bigger than most of the GT's in the West Coast!
Also, I am going up with my Team Zero Comp buddies, Grant "Grant Theft Auto" and "Triptide" Adam. And while I am a freelancer, here we are encroaching on someone else's turf. Namely, we are entering Wolf Brothers territory and their rivals, the Sac City Punishers - 2 of the bigger gaming clubs up in Sacramento. There's a little friendly rivalry going on between Team Zero Comp (with Reece, Frankie and friends) and the Sac City Punishers (including SCP Yeeman and Lyzz Foster, the BAO 2013 winner). As a matter of fact, just a few weeks ago, Team Zero Comp had a rumble with the Sac City Punishers and it was Team Zero Comp that came out on top. There is also a rivalry between the Wolf Brothers and the Sac City Punishers, though I'm not too familiar with the score between them. As for me, I am just a friendly observer....though I'd be more than happy to beat face against any who get in the way of my necrons.
In any case, this tournament is probably going to be pretty hardcore. Grant Theft Auto is brining his super-nasty Seer Council Deldar Mechdar army. Triptide Adam is actually going way over-the-top with an 8-heldrake Chaos list (yes, you heard right....that's 8 frickin helturkeys!). As for me, sorry Fun-crons....time for the big boys to come out to play. I'm taking what I feel is the tournament-winner, my Take-Yo-Lunch-Money-&-Make-You-My-Biyotch-Crons! It is a super-competitive, double-FOC, pure necron build that will just beat face. So let me make this disclaimer now:
WARNING - If you are looking for a friendly, fluffy tournament list and report, then GET OUT OF THIS REPORT NOW while you still can!!! However, if you are looking for some seriously hardcore, ultra-competitive competition, then look no further....you're in the right place.
Now my personal goal isn't really to win. My goal is to show that my necrons can beat the supposedly top-tier Tau and Eldar. Now I don't care if I lose to Sisters of Battle, Blood Angels or Chaos Marines, but I absolutely will smash any Tau and Eldar players that I come across. And I hope I get to play against Tau/Eldar/Taudar/Eldau for all my games. As far as I'm concerned, those "pretenders" haven't earned the right to call themselves top-tier until they have proven to me that they can beat my crons....and that is something that just will not happen
You say that you only care about beating Tau and Eldar... so are you specifically building for that? If you're not running a list that you are trying to Take All Comers and trying to win with, I don't know how much merit I would place in the Necrons being more competitive than Tau/Eldar/Taudar/etc. But of course if your intentions are in motivation only and aren't really reflected in the list to that extent, then I think there'd be more to take away from this event.
It's really going to depend on whether or not you can go 2nd each game. Those NS squads are the best objective grabbers in the game and you have the durability to go second each time.
Talore wrote: You say that you only care about beating Tau and Eldar... so are you specifically building for that? If you're not running a list that you are trying to Take All Comers and trying to win with, I don't know how much merit I would place in the Necrons being more competitive than Tau/Eldar/Taudar/etc. But of course if your intentions are in motivation only and aren't really reflected in the list to that extent, then I think there'd be more to take away from this event.
This list has been his staple for Jy2 for a long time and is pretty much a TAC list as there isn't much that he doesn't have an answer for. He has tons of high-medium firepower that can drop fliers/light tanks/infantry. His Lord's can manhandle any high armoured vehicle and take on enemy deathstars by making them punch their own faces. The troops in the night scythes are great for last turn objective grabbing and linebreakers.
Whew....man that is...a nasty list.
What made you decide on more wraiths and another destroyer lord as opposed to a 6th annihilation barge and/or another night scythe+ warriors?
That list is nasty, though I do question the third Wraith squad over a a 6th Annihilation Barge and another squad of Warriors in a Scythe. Even with 4 scoring units I think you will be just fine. No one wants to go second against you and going 1st gives you the best objective grab around.
Talore wrote: You say that you only care about beating Tau and Eldar... so are you specifically building for that? If you're not running a list that you are trying to Take All Comers and trying to win with, I don't know how much merit I would place in the Necrons being more competitive than Tau/Eldar/Taudar/etc. But of course if your intentions are in motivation only and aren't really reflected in the list to that extent, then I think there'd be more to take away from this event.
Nope, it's a very strong TAC list. My assertion is that Necrons are not outdated. They still belong in the upper echelons of competitive 40K, right up there with Tau and Eldar. And I want to show it by beating them. Now what will that prove? Absolutely nothing, but I'll sure have fun doing it.
Dozer Blades wrote: I played a very similar list last night versus quad Riptides... Very tough matchup for the Cronz.
Yeah, my first game against Adam's Triptide Tau was rough, though I look at that game more as an exception rather than the norm.
Although I think you missed a AB there, shame you can't fit 6 in
I actually still can, assuming I want to drop a couple of wraiths and probably a ResOrb. Hmmmm.....
Red Corsair wrote: It's really going to depend on whether or not you can go 2nd each game. Those NS squads are the best objective grabbers in the game and you have the durability to go second each time.
Do you have the missions?
I can still win going 1st, although I'd have a huge advantage if I were to go 2nd.
I don't have the missions. I didn't see them (the missions) posted on their site, so I'm assuming probably just standard book missions....maybe.
Talore wrote: You say that you only care about beating Tau and Eldar... so are you specifically building for that? If you're not running a list that you are trying to Take All Comers and trying to win with, I don't know how much merit I would place in the Necrons being more competitive than Tau/Eldar/Taudar/etc. But of course if your intentions are in motivation only and aren't really reflected in the list to that extent, then I think there'd be more to take away from this event.
This list has been his staple for Jy2 for a long time and is pretty much a TAC list as there isn't much that he doesn't have an answer for. He has tons of high-medium firepower that can drop fliers/light tanks/infantry. His Lord's can manhandle any high armoured vehicle and take on enemy deathstars by making them punch their own faces. The troops in the night scythes are great for last turn objective grabbing and linebreakers.
Yeah, basically I won the Golden Throne 2012 with a 1500 scaled-down version of this list (though with doom scythes before they got FAQ'd).
IMO, my main weakness will be against psychic-heavy opponents like nids, daemons and eldar even. I think I'd have a hard time with Grant's Seer Council list, though he'd have a tough time with my flyers as well.
iGuy91 wrote: Whew....man that is...a nasty list.
What made you decide on more wraiths and another destroyer lord as opposed to a 6th annihilation barge and/or another night scythe+ warriors?
Resiliency on the ground. AB's have good firepower, though they are more susceptible to fast assault units/armies like daemons and the seer council or drop pod armies. I need more resilient ground units (i.e. my wraithstars) against these types of armies.
Besides, IMO there isn't much difference between 5 or 6 AB's, though I can still include the last AB in my list if I really wanted.
That list is nasty, though I do question the third Wraith squad over a a 6th Annihilation Barge and another squad of Warriors in a Scythe. Even with 4 scoring units I think you will be just fine. No one wants to go second against you and going 1st gives you the best objective grab around.
That's my prediction as well! I guess great minds think alike.
Valkyrie wrote: How is he bringing 8 Heldrakes? He can get 6 with double FOC but where are the other 2 coming from?
Taudar don't want to be in combat with all those wraiths and lords. They're fast enough that most taudar lists won't shoot them all down before at least one unit hits.
If they're focusing on killing wraiths, the barges remain safe and those high RoF tesla hits will wear down serpents, riptides, and broadsides quickly.
Dozer Blades wrote: Tau can pack a lot of intercepting units - my advice is to be careful and not get overconfident... fools rush in where Angels fear to tread.
Dark Angels fear most competitive lists nowadays though
Seriously though, despite this being undeniably a strong list it I believe Taudar to be superior, especially if the competition is as tough as you say.
Get these Batreps up soon! I have a 2250 tournament one week after that... I expect it to be very hardcore. Tough list you have there, but some Tau can trouble it.... I think you have it against Eldar though.
Dozer Blades wrote: Tau can pack a lot of intercepting units - my advice is to be careful and not get overconfident... fools rush in where Angels fear to tread.
Yeah, I've had plenty of practice against Tau interceptors. Namely, Adam's triple riptides with Heavy Burst Cannons, skyfire and interceptor. The only thing worse than that is 4 or 5 of those suckers in a Tau army.
And BTW, wraiths rush in where space elves and space communists fear to tread.
Honestly? Dunno, but I'll tell you after Saturday.
hyv3mynd wrote: Taudar don't want to be in combat with all those wraiths and lords. They're fast enough that most taudar lists won't shoot them all down before at least one unit hits.
If they're focusing on killing wraiths, the barges remain safe and those high RoF tesla hits will wear down serpents, riptides, and broadsides quickly.
Against Tau, I don't even need to assault them. The name of the game is board control. Shoot down any of their mobile units and just watch them try to get to the objectives. Honestly, crons should be a nightmare for most Tau builds.
However, the deciding factor in such a matchup may be the terrain. If there is even a modicum of BLOS terrain, I see wraithwing necrons taking the majority of the games against Tau.
Seriously though, despite this being undeniably a strong list it I believe Taudar to be superior, especially if the competition is as tough as you say.
I predict 2-1 owing to strong play on your end.
You got another 18 you could lend me? LOL!!!
Nah....that's just overkill. It's like bringing 8 helturkeys to a tournament. I think there is a plateau where efficiency peaks. Any more and the list becomes seriously unbalanced, like an athlete who takes way too much steroids to the point where it affects his game negatively.
But seriously, I think its a 3-way tie at the top between Necrons, Tau and Eldar.
Dozer Blades wrote: I agree... Necrons need a strong ally to stay on top versus the truly top competition.
Dozer Blades wrote: I agree... Necrons need a strong ally to stay on top versus the truly top competition.
Indeed, one of the greatest advantages of Tau or Eldar is the synergy both sides gain from alliances with either each other or other battle brothers.
The difference between BBs and AoCs is huge when sides possess such force multipliers as buffmanders and farseers.
Gotta disagree with this. Necrons and Tyranids are probably 2 of the armies that are self-sufficient and self-optimized without the need for allies. Eldar also, but they also shine with allies like Tau or DE.
jifel wrote: Get these Batreps up soon! I have a 2250 tournament one week after that... I expect it to be very hardcore. Tough list you have there, but some Tau can trouble it.... I think you have it against Eldar though.
I actually think it is the other way around. I think Eldar can give my crons more trouble than Tau. Eldar maledictions can be super nasty against wraithwing necrons. Tyranids also. Necron's true weakness is against psychic-heavy armies.
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Ok...on my way there now.
BTW, which two of you fools voted 0-3? Really? Seriously?
Haha....just kidding. Stranger things could happen.
I said 3-0, though I honestly think it's a tossup - you will probably get 2-1 easily enough, though one of your games you may have an opponent who gives you a rough time.
People saying that the Taudar matchup is just too good for Necrons to face is a bit too generalist for me - it can be a solid build, but only good players will actually beat other good players with it. If they don't know how to play it, another top list played by a top player will beat a mediocre Taudar player easy enough.
The main weakness that I see is your ability to score. If I played against you, I would of course make plans for the incoming Wraiths, but when I could, focus on your flyers. If you have 4 squads of Warriors in the back, they're going to have a rough time holding all the objectives, especially if the opponent has deepstrikers or the like to kill them off while your Wraiths are off trying to butcher his army.
It's a strong list though, and you seem to be a strong player, so I gave you the benefit of the doubt. I'd have voted in between 3-0 and 2-1 if I could though, haha!
I voted 0-3 just because I realllllllyyyy wanna see a tactical analysis done up for competitive underwater basket-weaving Good luck man. If you go second each game I still think its a cake walk. For me that's all I need to see to know who will win when one side is necrons or eldar. Windriders and NS are really that crazy for objective grabs. NS are better.
I am guessing 2-1 but not lose to eldar or tau. I bet its gonna be something you just get suprised by. Eldar and Tau you have tons of experience and tactics to beat. The one lose is gonna be that kid that brings Space Marines and something off the wall. It will be like...umm wow how the feth did THAT happen
Man, that was a long day. Just got back after 4 hours of driving (2 hrs each way) and I'm exhausted.
Just a brief preview of my opponents.
Round #1 was against Douglas (aka ShotDownMind) from the Wolf Brothers. He runs a blog dedicated to competitive 40K gaming (I think it's somewhat competitive):
He brought a Dark Eldar/Eldar list with a ton of firepower. This is the type of army that can shoot most armies off the table. He also brought the beastpack with Baron and farseer, and the worst thing was that he got Fortune! Did I tell you guys how much I hate Fortune? Well, I hate Fortune.
I was hoping for more Eldar and/or Tau fun in round #2 but instead, I got Nathan and his Orks/Tau with nob bikers, meganobs, battlewagons, a riptide and broadsides. He looked rather intimidated by my army so I offered to switch up opponents for him. I was hoping he'd say yes so that I could find another Tau/Eldar player to play against, but he decided that he'd preferred to get demolished by my army instead.
So not wanting to wait for chance, I actually put in a request to the TO to play against a Taudar player. Now this wasn't just any ordinary Taudar player....this was against Israel and his beautiful but deadly Tau army. He was probably one of the 2 best Tau players in the tournament. Yes, IMO he is an even better Taudar player than Triptide Adam. And his list was nasty....as in 3 riptides, Buff Commander, Shadowsun, Farseer and 9 broadsides type of nasty! He was also the last guy to beat Grant Theft Auto's seer council deldar list.
I personally made the request to play against him and guess what?....I got him!
Lyzz Foster, the winner of the BAO 2013, was there also. I actually wanted to play against her as well. Too bad she wasn't running Tau or Eldar (she's a daemon player). Sorry Lyzz, we'll eventually play against each other in the future, but for now, I've got my eyes set on destroying some Tau.
I agree Necrons are top tier. We just wrapped up the Michigan GT. First place was Wraithwing and I got 4th with Necrons/Typhus. Out of 56 players and 6 rounds. The best Tau/Eldar finish was Brad Chester in 5th..
..and there was a LOT of Taudar, with 20/56 players running either Tau or Eldar as their primary! The key difference here was player placed terrain, plenty of which was LOSB.
Looking at the stats from it, sorting by primary armies, Necron players combined went 5-0 vs. Tau and 4-2 vs. Eldar. A small sample size for sure, but 9-2 has to say something.
You should do well. It's a really strong army and you know it inside out. I will say it looks incredibly boring to play, at least to me hahaha.
5x Fire Dragons - Wave Serpent - TL-Scatter Lasers
10x Guardians - Wave Serpent - TL-Scatter Lasers
9x Windrider Jetbikes - 3x Shuriken Cannons
Wraithknight
PREVIEW: In this game, we get The Relic and Emperor's Will. We both get something good this round. I get a scoring Warlord for my Warlord traits. Douglas gets Fortune for his farseer. I went 1st in this game.
2x Broadsides - TL-High-Yield Missile Pods, TL-SMS, Early Warning Override
PREVIEW: Round #2 was Purge the Alien and Table Quarters, only there were 3 table quarters only (both of our deployment zones and No-Man's-Land). In terms of scoring units, my opponent had me beat. But in terms of threats, I had him intimidated. Haha.
I went 2nd in this game.
Round #3 - Israel's Tau + Eldar
Israel's army was gorgeous. He easily wins Best Paint in most of the tournaments he goes to. He is also one of the commission painters for Frontline Gaming ( http://www.frontlinegaming.org/ ) and his army is an example of the Level 3 paint job that you can get from them.
I've never played against Israel before and really wanted to beat....I mean, play against his army.
Israel is also a very, very good Tau player as well. It's almost like going out on a date with a girl who's not only beautiful, but who's got some brains and likes 40K as well. Ok, maybe not to that extent, but Israel's army was beautiful and he was a very skilled Tau player as well, so I had to make this match happen. I'm not leaving my final opponent to chance. The heart gets what the heart wants.
Primary:
Tau Commander - 2x Missile Pods, 2x Shield Drones, Early Warning Override, Velocity Tracker, Command & Control Node, Puretide Engram Neurochip, Multi-Spectrum Sensort Suite, Iridium Armour, Yada, yada, yada....
Commander Shadowsun - 2x Shield Drones
Riptide - Ion Accelerator, TL-SMS, Early Warning Override
Riptide - Ion Accelerator, TL-SMS, Early Warning Override
Riptide - Ion Accelerator, TL-SMS, Early Warning Override
8x Fire Warriors
8x Fire Warriors
8x Fire Warriors
8x Fire Warriors
PREVIEW: Finally, in our last matchup, we get Big Guns on Fire and Purge the Alien. While I've got a fairly resilient army, Israel told me that he has not lost a Purge the Alien mission so far with the new Tau. And I can see why. His VP's are really tough to get, especially if he reserves his weaker units, and he can easily blow most opponents off the board. Fortunately for me, I am not "most oppponents". Then we have Big Guns - my 5 tough to get heavies against his 4 tough to kill heavies. Hmmm....he may actually have a slight advantage here with his Tank Hunter Buff Commander.
But what is most scary of all is the amount of the Intercepting guns that he has! I mean, Holy Emperor on a pogo-stick! I've never seen so many Intercepting units and guns before in my 40K life! I'm not sure if any of my flyers will survive this game. My opponent is going 1st and he'll have 2 turns to soften up my wraiths and AB's before my flyers come in. While intercepting my flyers will make his units somewhat vulnerable to my wraiths next turn, I have a feeling that there just might not be enough wraiths after 2 turns of his shooting to really put the pressure on him. My one only bright spot is that I got a very good Warlord Trait - I get to re-roll my Reserves.
His list definitely has my crons slightly concerned and you know what? I love it! Finally, my crons can play the role of the underdogs and that is a role I definitely relish.
First off, let me start off with the photos of some of the armies at the tournament. There were a total of 36 players and there were quite some good players from Northern Cali.
There were maybe 3-4 IG armies. This one was probably the most impressive that I saw.
A closer look at the IG army. Guess they're waiting for pizza delivery or something.
The new biker marines. White Scars, perhaps?
Tzeentch Chaos, with a helturkey conversion.
Part of Triptide Adam's Chaos list, only he brought only 6 turkeys instead of the 8 that he was going to bring. His list also ended up 50-pts short at 2200-pts.
Grant Theft Auto's Deer Council Dark Mechdar list. You don't know what nasty is until you've played against his army. Grant went 3-0 for the tournament.
One of 3-4 tyranid armies.
More bugs.
Anthony from Shaken Not Stunned and his space marines.
Grey Knights. There weren't too many here today.
Dark Angels.
Ork army with some nice conversions.
2 of his nicely converted dreads.
Mechdar with 2 wraithknights....a very similar build to my own mechdar army. Mike also went 3-0 and had the 2nd highest battle points total in the tournament. I would have loved to play against this army. Should have issued a "challenge" to him on Round #2.
Dark Eldar + Eldar. Cody is a very good player and would finish the tournament #5 overall.
More Ravenwing.
Lyzz's daemons. For those not familiar, Lyzz won the BAOGT 2013, going undefeated in a very competitive field of 144 players. She did really well once again, finishing the tournament in 3rd place overall.
Sisters of Battle + space marine bikers.
Necron Scarab-farm + Grey Knights. Notice all the scarabs in the box to the right?
In the meantime, which games do you think I will win and which I will lose?
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Xaereth wrote: I said 3-0, though I honestly think it's a tossup - you will probably get 2-1 easily enough, though one of your games you may have an opponent who gives you a rough time.
People saying that the Taudar matchup is just too good for Necrons to face is a bit too generalist for me - it can be a solid build, but only good players will actually beat other good players with it. If they don't know how to play it, another top list played by a top player will beat a mediocre Taudar player easy enough.
The main weakness that I see is your ability to score. If I played against you, I would of course make plans for the incoming Wraiths, but when I could, focus on your flyers. If you have 4 squads of Warriors in the back, they're going to have a rough time holding all the objectives, especially if the opponent has deepstrikers or the like to kill them off while your Wraiths are off trying to butcher his army.
It's a strong list though, and you seem to be a strong player, so I gave you the benefit of the doubt. I'd have voted in between 3-0 and 2-1 if I could though, haha!
Yeah, I think player skill is actually more important than the list, to an extent. That's why a lot of the "net-lists" (I really don't like that term) aren't really as successful in competitive play. People take lists that they see from the net but they don't really understand the nuances of the list well enough to really be able to dominate with them. But you take a really good player with a really good list and he will dominate. The only person that can stand in his way is another very good player with good lists. And when I say good list, I don't necessarily mean a "net-list" but rather, a very synergistic list that the player really understands and know how to make work for him. An example would be your Nova Grey Knight-Tau list or any of Reece's or Janthkin's lists.
Scoring is definitely not a weakness of my list. As a matter of fact, it is the strength of my list. Keep that in mind and you have a chance against it. Under-estimate them and you will most likely lose. But you just have to play against it while generaled by a very skilled player to really see how difficult it is to play against. Don't mean to sound cocky, but in the hands of a lesser skilled player, it is already tough to play against. And in the hands of someone like me, Eric Hoerger (who won St. Valentine's Day Massacre 2012) or Tim Gorham (Best Necron player, ATC 2013), it is a monster.
Red Corsair wrote: I voted 0-3 just because I realllllllyyyy wanna see a tactical analysis done up for competitive underwater basket-weaving Good luck man. If you go second each game I still think its a cake walk. For me that's all I need to see to know who will win when one side is necrons or eldar. Windriders and NS are really that crazy for objective grabs. NS are better.
Ahhhhh....so you were one of the 2 (now 4) players who voted that I would be winless! Uh oh....better get my snorkels ready. I'm about to embark on a new hobby/sport/fetish/whatever. LOL.
Yeah, you can't be top-tier without mobile scoring nowadays IMO. While Tau troops are not very mobile, at least they can bring them in as allies.
I think you will crush the ork list, he has reason to fear the quantity of high powered shots you can put out should shred his light tanks and infantry.
The dark eldar I want to say are going to be tough but I just don't see it with that list their running, however fortune isn't to be underestimated but I still see you taking that match-up handily.
I believe Taudar have you beat, your army comes in piecemeal to his which is mostly on the board turn 1, he has tons of interceptor to take away your flyer alpha strike and he is fast enough to delay your wraiths from getting early pivitol charges. Think you lose this one just a bad match-up(for pretty much everyone).
Punisher wrote: I think you will crush the ork list, he has reason to fear the quantity of high powered shots you can put out should shred his light tanks and infantry.
The dark eldar I want to say are going to be tough but I just don't see it with that list their running, however fortune isn't to be underestimated but I still see you taking that match-up handily.
I believe Taudar have you beat, your army comes in piecemeal to his which is mostly on the board turn 1, he has tons of interceptor to take away your flyer alpha strike and he is fast enough to delay your wraiths from getting early pivitol charges. Think you lose this one just a bad match-up(for pretty much everyone).
So I'll say 2-1 on the day.
Thanks for your thoughts.
Yeah, I'd have to say of the 3 armies, Israel's Taudar would hands-down be my toughest challenge. After seeing his list, I actually felt that I might be a slight underdog in this matchup....perhaps a 45-55 underdog (45% chance my win, 55% tau wins). It'll be close, but I'm not liking my flyers' chances against all those guns. Just hope my wraiths can survive long enough to make him seriously think about either firing in Interceptor mode or reserving his shots instead for my wraiths on his turn.
hippesthippo wrote: I agree Necrons are top tier. We just wrapped up the Michigan GT. First place was Wraithwing and I got 4th with Necrons/Typhus. Out of 56 players and 6 rounds. The best Tau/Eldar finish was Brad Chester in 5th..
..and there was a LOT of Taudar, with 20/56 players running either Tau or Eldar as their primary! The key difference here was player placed terrain, plenty of which was LOSB.
Looking at the stats from it, sorting by primary armies, Necron players combined went 5-0 vs. Tau and 4-2 vs. Eldar. A small sample size for sure, but 9-2 has to say something.
You should do well. It's a really strong army and you know it inside out. I will say it looks incredibly boring to play, at least to me hahaha.
Good luck!
Appears that player-placed terrain really makes a huge difference. I actually try to do that in my home games (at our LGS). Both my opponent and I pick some terrain and then we roll off to see who places terrain first. We try to make it even with 2 BLOS terrain, 2 hills, 2-4 ruins, and 2 miscellaneous area terrain. I think that is one of the best ways to play the game as it adds another element of strategy to the game even before the game starts. It also forces you to make a more balanced list - one that truly accounts for any type of terrain as opposed to a list that relies on terrain to be a certain way in order to win.
Congrats on your finish as well. This tournament gives good data to my hypothesis - that necrons are probably the best TAC army in the game. With the perfect blend of mobility, shooting and assault, they are a true TAC army that is less affected by terrain than almost any other army. BTW, was the necron winner Tim Gorham?
As for wraithwing, IMO it isn't really boring to play. Rather, it is boring to watch from an observer's perspective. It's definitely not as challenging to play as, say, my Fun-crons. It's also not as rewarding to play, but when you are talking about high-level competition - against tough opponents with tough lists - this is the type of army that will get the job done. In other words, if I want to win, I take out my competitive crons. That's not to say it is easy to win, especially against all these Tau and Eldar players, but it'll give them a run for their army....or I hope, at least.
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Shandara wrote: Your #2 opponent had a farseer as HQ for his tau allies? I assume an Ethereal?
Yeah, it was Tim. He's obviously got some practice with that list. He took down a Tau/Tau player no problem. When I played him, he won the roll to go second. :( And though he couldn't make a 3++ to save his life, his 5++ jink saves were off the hook for the last three turns. :( :( Those darn Scythes just wouldn't drop.
And I definitely didn't mean easy to play when I said "boring". I was only referring to the lack of variety in the list as there's basically only three different units in the Wraithwing list.
I'm excited to read your match against Israel. Should prove to be a fair challenge.
Xaereth wrote: I said 3-0, though I honestly think it's a tossup - you will probably get 2-1 easily enough, though one of your games you may have an opponent who gives you a rough time.
People saying that the Taudar matchup is just too good for Necrons to face is a bit too generalist for me - it can be a solid build, but only good players will actually beat other good players with it. If they don't know how to play it, another top list played by a top player will beat a mediocre Taudar player easy enough.
The main weakness that I see is your ability to score. If I played against you, I would of course make plans for the incoming Wraiths, but when I could, focus on your flyers. If you have 4 squads of Warriors in the back, they're going to have a rough time holding all the objectives, especially if the opponent has deepstrikers or the like to kill them off while your Wraiths are off trying to butcher his army.
It's a strong list though, and you seem to be a strong player, so I gave you the benefit of the doubt. I'd have voted in between 3-0 and 2-1 if I could though, haha!
Yeah, I think player skill is actually more important than the list, to an extent. That's why a lot of the "net-lists" (I really don't like that term) aren't really as successful in competitive play. People take lists that they see from the net but they don't really understand the nuances of the list well enough to really be able to dominate with them. But you take a really good player with a really good list and he will dominate. The only person that can stand in his way is another very good player with good lists. And when I say good list, I don't necessarily mean a "net-list" but rather, a very synergistic list that the player really understands and know how to make work for him. An example would be your Nova Grey Knight-Tau list or any of Reece's or Janthkin's lists.
Scoring is definitely not a weakness of my list. As a matter of fact, it is the strength of my list. Keep that in mind and you have a chance against it. Under-estimate them and you will most likely lose. But you just have to play against it while generaled by a very skilled player to really see how difficult it is to play against. Don't mean to sound cocky, but in the hands of a lesser skilled player, it is already tough to play against. And in the hands of someone like me, Eric Hoerger (who won St. Valentine's Day Massacre 2012) or Tim Gorham (Best Necron player, ATC 2013), it is a monster.
I don't mean to be dismissive of your list - I think it's really strong in general. You have a lot of threats that would prevent your opponents trying to kill off your troops, and your troops don't actually come to harm when their transports are destroyed. Lots going on to ensure your troops will remain unscathed for the most part. In a 2250 tournament though, I feel like some opponents will be able to kill your Scythes early on, forcing you onto objectives in the backfield.
Everyone has different play styles and perhaps you do things to mitigate these dangers that I'm not foreseeing. I'll be particularly interested to see if your scoring is a problem or not in your final game vs. a list that at least has a few tools to down your flyers early on though I'm not convinced he has enough to kill them efficiently while still dealing with your Wraiths.
As to predictions - I will be surprised if you lose to any of these lists. The first opponent has a bunch of S8 stuff that would mess with Wraiths, but almost nothing to help deal with 5 ABs and your fliers. In contrast, your ABs will butcher his Venoms and their contents, while the Wraiths chew through his WK . Beast squad w/ Fortune is the one difficulty I see - they'll be the reason Game 1 stays close.
Your game 2 will need to be a route - his deathstar loses vs. your 3 mini-stars, and ABs are made to kill Boyz, as are Wraiths and Scythes.
Game 3 also seems easy enough for you - his Broadsides don't quite have the ability to shoot your Wraiths down before they get to you, and the Riptides may or may not take chunks out of your Wraiths, but not fast enough. I really don't think his list will be a match for yours. Not enough balance, IMO - lots of shooting, but nothing to truly counter loads of fast resilient close combat threats.
I predict your biggest difficulty will be with Game 1, though you'll still get a minor win there, and major wins on the next two.
It was really cool seeing all you guys at the 2250 in Sacramento last Saturday at GEG. Sadly I had to work the counter otherwise I'd of brought my con's to the tournament. It would of been a very interesting match up if we'd been placed on the same table. Although I think there were more then a few “soft targets” at the event it turned out to pretty much be a “who's who” of 40K players in Northern California. Congratulations again to all the winners and players for spending the day slugging it out at Great Escape Games. With any luck I'll be seeing more then a few of you at the TLGT in December.
hippesthippo wrote: I agree Necrons are top tier. We just wrapped up the Michigan GT. First place was Wraithwing and I got 4th with Necrons/Typhus. Out of 56 players and 6 rounds. The best Tau/Eldar finish was Brad Chester in 5th..
..and there was a LOT of Taudar, with 20/56 players running either Tau or Eldar as their primary! The key difference here was player placed terrain, plenty of which was LOSB.
Looking at the stats from it, sorting by primary armies, Necron players combined went 5-0 vs. Tau and 4-2 vs. Eldar. A small sample size for sure, but 9-2 has to say something.
You should do well. It's a really strong army and you know it inside out. I will say it looks incredibly boring to play, at least to me hahaha.
Good luck!
Any chance you got a armylist of the wraithwing and yours, just out of curiosity...
Mythantor wrote: Small ray of sunshine in that The interceptors don't have skyfire so they will need 6's to hit your flyers.
Also as a note your first opponent is fielding Venoms with Shuriken Cannons? Where can i get some of those?
Yeah, thank goodness for that, though most of his shooting was twin-linked thanks to the Commander, Guide and Prescience. Moreover, I believe many of his broadsides were twin-linked as well.
Didn't you know that the Space Elves and their dark kin have been know to exchange technologies before?
hippesthippo wrote: Yeah, it was Tim. He's obviously got some practice with that list. He took down a Tau/Tau player no problem. When I played him, he won the roll to go second. :( And though he couldn't make a 3++ to save his life, his 5++ jink saves were off the hook for the last three turns. :( :( Those darn Scythes just wouldn't drop.
And I definitely didn't mean easy to play when I said "boring". I was only referring to the lack of variety in the list as there's basically only three different units in the Wraithwing list.
I'm excited to read your match against Israel. Should prove to be a fair challenge.
While I don't know Tim personally, his necrons dominated at the ATC, where he was the Best Necron player. Scythes are actually more resilient than many people give credit for. I don't think I've had a single game where my opponents have been able to shoot down all of my flyers. My wraiths, yeah. My flyers? No. That's why I kind of scoff at the claim that you can beat this list by killing all of its troops....that is quite a difficult thing to do indeed.
I can definitely see why some people think this type of list is "boring". It's a spam-list and some people just don't care for those types of armies.
Xaereth wrote: I don't mean to be dismissive of your list - I think it's really strong in general. You have a lot of threats that would prevent your opponents trying to kill off your troops, and your troops don't actually come to harm when their transports are destroyed. Lots going on to ensure your troops will remain unscathed for the most part. In a 2250 tournament though, I feel like some opponents will be able to kill your Scythes early on, forcing you onto objectives in the backfield.
Everyone has different play styles and perhaps you do things to mitigate these dangers that I'm not foreseeing. I'll be particularly interested to see if your scoring is a problem or not in your final game vs. a list that at least has a few tools to down your flyers early on though I'm not convinced he has enough to kill them efficiently while still dealing with your Wraiths.
As to predictions - I will be surprised if you lose to any of these lists. The first opponent has a bunch of S8 stuff that would mess with Wraiths, but almost nothing to help deal with 5 ABs and your fliers. In contrast, your ABs will butcher his Venoms and their contents, while the Wraiths chew through his WK . Beast squad w/ Fortune is the one difficulty I see - they'll be the reason Game 1 stays close.
Your game 2 will need to be a route - his deathstar loses vs. your 3 mini-stars, and ABs are made to kill Boyz, as are Wraiths and Scythes.
Game 3 also seems easy enough for you - his Broadsides don't quite have the ability to shoot your Wraiths down before they get to you, and the Riptides may or may not take chunks out of your Wraiths, but not fast enough. I really don't think his list will be a match for yours. Not enough balance, IMO - lots of shooting, but nothing to truly counter loads of fast resilient close combat threats.
I predict your biggest difficulty will be with Game 1, though you'll still get a minor win there, and major wins on the next two.
So say we all
I know you probably understand how my list works. I say the things I said to emphasize to the other readers that it is not easy at all to try to kill off the troops and their flyers. That has not happened to me yet, at least not in 6th. Then again, I haven't really played at over 2K with my crons.
I am actually concerned about my Round #3 Taudar opponent the most. I've learned not to under-estimate Tau, especially when run by a good general. If he can focus-fire his entire army, he should be able to easily wipe out 1 or more of my wraithstar units each turn. Thus, I'm going to have to play somewhat unconventionally against him.
It was really cool seeing all you guys at the 2250 in Sacramento last Saturday at GEG. Sadly I had to work the counter otherwise I'd of brought my con's to the tournament. It would of been a very interesting match up if we'd been placed on the same table. Although I think there were more then a few “soft targets” at the event it turned out to pretty much be a “who's who” of 40K players in Northern California. Congratulations again to all the winners and players for spending the day slugging it out at Great Escape Games. With any luck I'll be seeing more then a few of you at the TLGT in December.
Thanks. Is this Sirus or Mark? It was a great tournament. I'm going to try to make it back for the next Contest of Champions (at 2500-pts). I had a lot of fun and there are some players that I would have liked to play against.
Douglas is a member of the Wolf Brothers from Reno. They are friendly rivals with the Sac City Punishers and usually go to the bigger tournaments here in Northern California, including the BAO, the Golden Throne and the Ard Boyz Semi-finals when it was still running. Doug is also a writer in regards to all aspects of the hobby. You can read about his gaming philosophies on his blog:
In this game, I actually I think I want to go first. That is because for my Warlord Traits, I get a scoring Destroyer Lord. With 1st turn, I can get to the Relic right away. My strategy is to kill off his mobility first and then kill off all his scoring units. Lastly, I will pick off his beastpack for my Secret Objective. With Fortune and Hit-&Run on them, that may be tricky, but I think I can do it.
Doug has got a lot of firepower. I have no doubt that he can whittle away my wraiths quite easily. However, he really doesn't have much to kill my AB's without resorting to assault. If he should disembark his wyches to haywire my AB's, they are as good as dead. Moreover, he doesn't have anything that can reliably take down my flyers so they should be free to wreak havoc on his army. I don't expect any deldar vehicles to be left standing when I am done with them. Teslas are soooo good in taking down AV12 or weaker vehicles.
Map of the terrain. Ouch! I don't like this table....hardly any LOS-blocking terrain at all! Fortunately I'm not playing against Tau here, and I pity the poor bloke who will. However, playing against Deldar on this map doesn't give me great comfort neither.
Oh well, que sera sera....whatever will be will be. And a necron minor victory will still be a necron victory.
For my Warlord trait, I get the scoring Warlord.
For my opponent's psychic powers, he gets Fortune, Guide and Prescience. His Warlord Trait doesn't matter in this game.
Night-fight is on.
Necron deployment. Only my flyers are in reserves.
I deploy rather centrally, with my Warlord directly across from the Relic in the center of the board.
Deldar deployment.
Overview of our deployment.
My opponent fails to seize the initiative and we begin.
Warlord hops onto and picks up the Relic. Most of my annihilation barges move 12".
Necron movement.
My shooting is slightly below average, considering both of his serpents are out in the open. I take 1 HP off of the right serpent and wreck the left serpent for First Blood. My tesla arcing also takes off 1 HP from one of the wyche venoms, shaking it in the process.
Honestly, I was expecting to take out both serpents but just didn't roll well on armour penetration.
My right wraithstar unit then runs 5" to screen out my Warlord's unit.
Deldar 1
Spoiler:
Farseer would successfully cast his powers every turn, with Fortune on the beastpack unit (with the Baron and Farseer), Guide on the wraithknight and Prescience on I-can't-remember.
Eldar movement. You can call this a cluster-f*ck in the middle if you want.
Blasterborn venoms move 6" so that they can fire at full BS. Fire dragons disembark.
I brace myself for the inevitable Deldar alpha-strike.
His beaststar is right up in my grill.
Shooting wipes out all the wraiths from my right wraithstar unit. Many of them get insta-gibbed by the blasters and fire dragons.
He also takes out 1 wraith from my middle unit and takes out my Warlord as well.
Fortunately, my Warlord gets back up and is still in the possession of the Relic.
Onto assault. The beaststar multi-charges both my Warlord's unit and the lone Destroyer Lord (with ResOrb).
Wyches also assault my AB perched up on top of the hill.
I issue a challenge with my Warlord, he accepts with 1 of his beastmasters and I promptly kill him. He then kills off my D-lord and makes almost every Fortuned, re-rollable 4++ save against my wraiths. We stay stuck in combat.
My D-lord fails to get back up despite his ResOrb.
His wyches take off 2 HP's from my AB in assault.
So far, I think my opponent is slightly ahead. I've only taken out 1 of his wave serpents while he's taken out an entire wraithstar unit as well as reduce my Warlord down to 1W remaining.
Necrons 2
Spoiler:
Unfortunately for my opponent, ALL of my flyers come in.
AB's move around and pick their targets. Wraiths jump forwards. I have the option of assaulting a lot of deldar units, including his beastpack.
AB takes out a venom. 3 wyches die in the explosion.
I fire at his last wave serpent but he makes an unbelievable number of cover saves!
His wave serpent survives, but I can't say the same for a large chunk of his army. I blow up both basterborn venoms. The comination of tesla arcing and the 2 explosions kill off both units of blasterborns as well.
I also take out 4 fire dragons, 1 jetbike, a couple of his beastpacks and most of his hellions as well, both with shooting and tesla arcing.
On the other side of the terrain, I take out his other venom as well. He is down to just his 1 wave serpent left.
I decide that my Warlord and his unit doesn't need any help. Wraithstar multi-assaults both the hellions and guardians.
I send both of them running, though I do lose 1 wraith and suffer a couple of wounds in the process.
Both his guardians and hellions would run off the table next turn. 2 troops down. 3 more to go.
In the main event, Douglas' Fortuned saves are still red hot. I fail to kill anyone and he takes out 2 wraiths.
They then Hit-&-Run towards my other wraith unit....
....and I consolidate away with the Relic.
Deldar 2
Spoiler:
Wyches go after my AB on the left.
On the right, the unit of 2 wyches go after another of my AB's.
Beastpack goes after my Warlord once again.
The rest of his army moves.
Jetbikes go after my wraithstar.
They manage only to kill 1 wraith and put 1W on another. They then jump away.
His wave serpent takes off 1 HP from another barge with its serpent shield.
Fire dragon and wraithknight combine to take out 1 AB. His fire dragon fails to down the AB so the wraithknight has to finish the job.
The beastpack takes out another wraith with their shooting.
Wyches then assault and cause another 1 HP of damage.
The unit of 5 wyches downs an AB. My goodness....wyches are actually making their points back!
Finally, his beastpack assaults my Warlord's unit and kills another 1 wraith.
My opponent did bits and pieces of damage here and there and did manage to take out 2 AB's, but it isn't anything that I can't handle. I predict that I am going to cripple his army next turn.
Necrons 3
Spoiler:
I go after his scoring units. I'll be damned if any of his troops survive past this turn.
1 unit of warriors disembark to go after his unit of 2 wyches.
Another flyer drops off its warriors to deal with his unit of 5 wyches.
The rest of my flyers fly off the table and into Ongoing Reserves.
I annihilate both units of wyches.
All my AB's then focus on his jetbikes and wipe them off the face of the planet, leaving my wraithstar free to assault his wraithknight (I had planned to assault his jetbikes originally because I didn't expect to be able to wipe them out with shooting).
However, his fire dragon survives as I chose to ignore him. The wraithstar then assaults the wraithknight.
Mindshackles fail to go off. I put 1W on him and he kills 1 wraith in return.
In the main combat, the beastpack wipes out my Warlord and his unit. Fortunately for me (and unfortunately for my opponent), he gets back up, though I did have to drop the Relic in the process.
So things are looking really bad for my opponent. It is only Turn 3 and all he has left is his beastpack, 1 wave serpent, 1 fire dragon and the wraithknight. He's got no scoring units left.
Deldar 3
Spoiler:
Beastpack moves into a position to take out either my Warlord or my troops.
Fire dragon actually takes out another AB.
Wave serpent tries to take out my troops. He shoots down 3 but 1 gets back up again. In the immortal words of Chumbawamba, "I get knocked down, but I get up again, you're never going to keep me down...."
We then go back to assault.
You just can't keep a good Necron Lord down. Maybe I should call this my Chumbawamba-crons.
The WK fails MSS this turn and punches himself twice, though the rest of my guys fail to wound him.
Necrons 4
Spoiler:
Flyers go in for the kill.
I turn almost all my guns at his beaststar. 1 AB goes after his wave serpent.
My Warlord moves into a position to be able to assault his serpent, fire dragon or WK.
It turns out that I don't need to worry about assaulting his wave serpent as my AB takes it out.
Wow....did I mention how much I hate Fortune (probably as much as my opponent hates my unkillable D-lords)? I put a crapload of teslas into the unit and kill off most of his beastpack, but I just can't finish them off. If not for Fortune, the whole unit would probably be gone by now.
D-lord decides to assault the fire dragon.
Unbelievable! My Warlord whiffs his attacks the the lone fire dragon survives. The WK fails his MSS test again and puts another 1W on himself once again.
Deldar 4
Spoiler:
His beastpack is obsessed with killing my Warlord. My opponent has taken him down 3 times already and each time, my Warlord has gotten back up.
There is not shooting so we go directly into assault.
My Warlord kills off his fire dragon and then survives the onslaught from the beastpack. T6 FTW!!!
Finally, I kill off his WK, though I lose the rest of my wraiths in the process.
Necrons 5
Spoiler:
He's only got his beastpack left, but due to time (and Fortune), I am not so sure I can finish them off.
Night scythe drops off a unit of troops on my opponent's Emperor's Will objective. I've got 2 units of warriors on it currently.
My other unit of warriors run towards my own Emperor's Will objective.
Finally, I drop off my last unit of troops onto the Relic.
My other D-lord goes to help out my Warlord.
He assaults the unit.
I maybe kill 1 beast and they Hit-&-Run out of combat. I then consolidate my other D-lord to screen out my Warlord.
Deldar 5
Spoiler:
This will be the last turn due to time. The beastpack goes after my warriors with the Relic.
He actually pulls off a multi-assault between my warriors and my D-lord (though not my Warlord).
I do 2-3 wounds to his beastpack, he wipes out my warriors and my D-lord passes Morale. However, I drop the Relic.
I've got both Emperor's Will objectives and take the Secondary mission.
No one has the Relic, which was the Primary.
We both get Linebreaker. I also get First Blood (wave serpent).
I missed my Secret Objective, which was to kill his most expensive unit - his beastpack. Douglas actually fulfills his Secret Objective, which was to kill more of my heavy supports than I kill of his, for 3-pts.
Necrons take it 7-4 in a close and low-scoring game.
Wow, I didn't think I'd have this much problem with his beaststar. Most of my attacks will insta-kill them, but Fortune just made them so much tougher to kill. Re-rollable 4++ means that he will save 3 out of 4 wounds. But how I dealt with his beaststar was how I normally deal with any deathstar army....I ignore them, at least initially. Basically, my game plan all along was to kill off all the supporting units and just to tie up his beaststar. That's why I didn't assault them with my 2nd wraithstar unit, opting to go after his troops instead.
My firepower was just unbelievable in this game. I'm sure my opponent would agree with me that it is probably my shooting (and proper target priority) that won me the game. The mistake my opponent made of packing all his units into a small space just made my teslas much more effective due to arcing. Also of note is that my ResOrbs are just a game-changer. 3 times he killed my Warlord only to have him come back all 3 times. And because my Warlord was scoring and could pick up the Relic, Doug just couldn't ignore him. I tell you, the ResOrbs are worth their weight in gold. I always run them in my necron armies. At the very least I get them for my Warlord. Having him come back from the dead is potentially a game-breaker.
I think what you've got going for you in the third round is your Warlord Trait should allow you to utilize Maximum Threat Overload. He won't be able to wipe everything out before it hits the fan. The question will be if there is enough left standing to deal enough damage.
djones520 wrote: So you listed the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 5th place armies, but not the 4th.
I wonder where you ended up...
Actually, no I didn't. I just listed the 3rd (Lyzz) and 5th (Cody) best players overall. Although Mike's Mechdar list had the 2nd highest battle points, he wasn't even in the Top 5 overall. And Grant went 3-0 but I never mentioned his overall record, and least not yet.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
PrinceRaven wrote: Is that a Tyranid list with Raveners and no Flyrants? Wow...
Actually, neither tyranid armies pictured above ran any flyrants. Both ran the Swarmlord and although one of those armies brought a flyrant model, he actually ran it as a walkrant.
I think this match showed just how good both you and your opponent are. Both of you took heavy losses, you especially in the beginning, but at no time did either of you throw in the towel. Even when it got to a point that your opponent couldn't win he still fought you to only a minor victory and I think that is awesome. He could have just conceded the game after he knew he couldn't win but he played it out and gave you a run for your money.
That was a awesome 40k battle and is the kind I love to see.
Ecstasy in Service wrote: I think this match showed just how good both you and your opponent are. Both of you took heavy losses, you especially in the beginning, but at no time did either of you throw in the towel. Even when it got to a point that your opponent couldn't win he still fought you to only a minor victory and I think that is awesome. He could have just conceded the game after he knew he couldn't win but he played it out and gave you a run for your money.
That was a awesome 40k battle and is the kind I love to see.
Well actually his opponent had a chance to win just until he was only left with the beastpack. If he had killed a few more warriors which he did take some shots at(problem was there just wasn't enough shooting left for him once the warriors arrived) since if he could have prevented emperor's will he would have won due to his secret objective.
Overall that game was way closer than I thought it was going to be, who saw witches doing that much damage?!? Tesla seemed to be the big winner here(so much damage the turn the flyers came in and the barges unloaded). I think the decision to go first was the wrong choice here since once you moved and then he moved, everything was in range to unload on you, if you had gone second then your barges would have had first chance at optimal range to weaken his first salvo. But you pulled it out in the end anyway so guess it didn't matter that much.
As for the board, don't think it would have really mattered if there was more terrain, considering how little of the board you guys used, seems like you both had the same idea to simply rush towards the relic with everything.
Ecstasy in Service wrote: I think this match showed just how good both you and your opponent are. Both of you took heavy losses, you especially in the beginning, but at no time did either of you throw in the towel. Even when it got to a point that your opponent couldn't win he still fought you to only a minor victory and I think that is awesome. He could have just conceded the game after he knew he couldn't win but he played it out and gave you a run for your money.
That was a awesome 40k battle and is the kind I love to see.
I had a slight advantage in terms of resiliency and redundancy. He could take out 1 of my units and I would still be performing at a high output (in terms of offense). On the other hand, when I started taking out his units, his offense started to diminish drastically. That was my goal. I knew I could outlast his units and win the war of attrition as long as I get my target priority right, which was to go after his supporting units. But props to my opponent for fighting the good fight and not conceding. Since we were playing battle points, he had the incentive to keep on fighting and trying to get as many points as he can.
Punisher wrote: Well actually his opponent had a chance to win just until he was only left with the beastpack. If he had killed a few more warriors which he did take some shots at(problem was there just wasn't enough shooting left for him once the warriors arrived) since if he could have prevented emperor's will he would have won due to his secret objective.
Overall that game was way closer than I thought it was going to be, who saw witches doing that much damage?!? Tesla seemed to be the big winner here(so much damage the turn the flyers came in and the barges unloaded). I think the decision to go first was the wrong choice here since once you moved and then he moved, everything was in range to unload on you, if you had gone second then your barges would have had first chance at optimal range to weaken his first salvo. But you pulled it out in the end anyway so guess it didn't matter that much.
As for the board, don't think it would have really mattered if there was more terrain, considering how little of the board you guys used, seems like you both had the same idea to simply rush towards the relic with everything.
Douglas did have a slim chance to win, but it was very small. He'd have to break up his beaststar unit to try to contest both EW objectives as well as to wipe out my warriors with the Relic. And I did have 1 of the EW objectives bubble-wrapped by 2 units of warriors so I don't think that was possible. Also by splitting his forces, it's not a guarantee that he would be able to wipe out my warriors with the Relic. Definitely against the odds, but maybe a risk well worth taking at the end of the game.
Yeah, the game was closer than I thought also. If he wasn't saving the way he was (thanks to Fortune), I'd probably have tabled him by Turn 4 or 5. But despite only having 1 unit left, he made it very close. Tesla and my ResOrb Warlord were definitely the winners here.
I also wonder what would have happened had I let him go first. That would have been an interesting scenario indeed.
Terrain wasn't as big a factor in this game, but that was only because I shot the crap out of his army on T2. Actually, terrain might have benefitted my opponent more in this game. I was talking more about in general terms though when I was talking about terrain. This map is definitely shooty-friendly. Assault-based armies will get f*cked up by the likes of Tau on this map.
As always, I love the structure of your reports. Lots of pictures, enough details to make it clear what is going on but not so much that it takes me a while to read through it.
Good win on the first game, that fortune is a game changer.
I still cringe at the spam but it does make batreps easy to follow, especially in large games like these.
Nice to see the crons get some wins, my AV13 wall got taken apart by White Scars with many Grav weapons last night.
Really? I'm of the view grav weapons suck against tanks, the perk of them being it by-passes cover.
2 Grav guns + 1 combi grav in a bike squad averages 1 imobilised result. Thunderfires were using tremor shot to put the vehicles in terrain, so one failed terrain test + one grave gun 6 = dead barge. I foolishly flat-outed my CCB turn one so immobilise wrecked it and the 2+ 3++ lord went down to grav fire too, giving first blood and warlord. :(
I still cringe at the spam but it does make batreps easy to follow, especially in large games like these.
Nice to see the crons get some wins, my AV13 wall got taken apart by White Scars with many Grav weapons last night.
Really? I'm of the view grav weapons suck against tanks, the perk of them being it by-passes cover.
2 Grav guns + 1 combi grav in a bike squad averages 1 imobilised result. Thunderfires were using tremor shot to put the vehicles in terrain, so one failed terrain test + one grave gun 6 = dead barge. I foolishly flat-outed my CCB turn one so immobilise wrecked it and the 2+ 3++ lord went down to grav fire too, giving first blood and warlord. :(
The flat-out wrecking it is amusing (hadn't thought of that), I guess your playing it as the 2nd immobilization 'result' from the grav guns take 2 hull points then?
Statistically firing all 9 grav shots will net you 6 hits and then you should hopefully get 1 six from that, however in subsequent rounds you'll only be getting 6 shots so the odds of getting that 6 start going down rapidly. Also if you are running an AV13 wall (3 annhilation barges, catacomb barges, ghosts arks + stalkers?) You should have waay more av13 vehicles than your opponent does grav-guns/units with them. I just don't feel it's very reliable method of taking out tanks (unless your awesome at rolling 6's).
The table is actually split into 3 quarters - each player's deployment zones and No-Man's-Land. Whoever has the most troops in each table quarter wins that table quarter. There are a couple of requirements on being able to hold the table quarters, though I really don't need to go into that much detail.
Bonus: Slay the Warlord (2-pts), Linebreaker (2-pts), First Blood (1-pt)
Each Round also had a Secret Objective that each player can choose. If you achieve your Secret Objective, it is worth 3-pts.
My Secret Objective (3-pts): Kill more than half of my opponent's models.
Although I won last turn, my Battle Points were pretty low (max was 20). And in the CoC, it's all about the Battle Points. Thus, I got matched up against another player with about the same points. He took a look at my army and he probably thought, "what the heck? I got to go up against that?!?...." I was somewhat disappointed myself as I had wanted to play against Tau or Eldar. Then again, most of the Tau/Eldar players probably scored higher than me. In any case, I offered to switch up opponents with the vain hope that he'd say yes. But he's an ork player and I don't think orks back down to any army. He politely declined and said "what the heck, if I'm going to take a whooping, it might as well be from crons" (though I doubt that he actually believed that).
Nathan's got an interesting army. Orks with some shooting....can that really work? I know my friend SabrX used to run Torks back before the new Tau codex came out and he did very well with them at the Bay Area Open, but times have changed....and Tau have gotten better!?! The dynamic of his army is interesting to say the least. I'm used to running or going up against armies that are either ultra-aggressive and want to rush you (i.e. my MTO armies, daemons) or that focus on shooting and try to shoot you off the table (i.e. Tau, Eldar, IG). His army is maybe half shooting and half in-your-face type of army. I admit the meganobs are somewhat scary, but honestly, my assault elements are probably scarier and my shooting is definitely much nastier. If his army sticks together (especially his assault units, who I see more as counter-assault units), this may make for an interesting game. However, if his army splits up against mine (or if I force his army to split up by taking out his transports), then I will probably pick his army apart. In any case, I think this will be a tough game for my opponent. He really doesn't have a whole lot of shooting that I am concerned about and not enough power klaws in this assault units (especially the nob bikers) to really worry me either.
To my surprise, his unit of grot cannons take out my right annihilation barge for First Blood!
VP's - Necrons: 0, Torks: 1
That is all the damage that he is able to do with his shooting, including the riptide and missile-sides.
Necrons 1
Spoiler:
I move up cautiously as well. I don't want to move into his charge range.
I blow up the left trukk. 3 orks die in the explosion and they then fall back.
VP's - Necrons: 1, Torks: 1
I do 1 HP of damage to his left battlewagon (with the meganobs) with side shots from 1 of my AB's.
I then blow up his right battlewagon with side shots from another AB. 5 shoota boys die in the explosion.
VP's - Necrons: 2, Torks: 1
Finally, I blow up his right trukk as well.
VP's - Necrons: 3, Torks: 1
Another 3 boys die in the explosion and they fall back as well.
Wraiths run.
Now that they are out of their rides, time to start playing more aggressively (except on the side with the meganobs, who are still in their battlewagon).
Torks 2
Spoiler:
Overview of the top of Turn 2.
Both units of kroots come in.
We have a slight debate. He wants to use his Ethereal's ability to give his units the extra shot. I am of the opinion that he cannot use it on the turn he comes in from reserves because he is not on the table at the beginning of the turn. We call the TO over and the TO decides to rule for my opponent...probably due to the amount of cheese in my list.
Oh well....no matter. I shall kill them anyways.
Boys regroup. Orks advance still cautiously.
His other orks regroup as well.
Kannons insta-gib 1 wraith.
Missile-sides and shoota boys shoot really well, putting 1W on my Warlord and killing 2 wraiths.
Kroots combine to fire 120 shots!!! The end result? He only kills 3 wraiths and put 1W on a 4th. According to mathhammer, it should be 5 dead wraiths.
Riptide maybe does a wound (or not) and then jumps away, though he doesn't get very far.
While he could have done a lot more damage, my opponent still managed to take out 6 wraiths. Not too bad. 11 more to go.
Necrons 2
Spoiler:
Only 1 night scythe comes in this turn. I skirt it along my board edge to avoid interceptor fire from his quad-guns, though his riptide can still get to it with his ion accelerators (but not his SMS).
Necrons go on the offensive.
Someone is going to die this turn.
AB's shoot and blows up his battlewagon. They also put 1W on a nob biker.
VP's - Necrons: 4, Torks: 1
AB focus-fires on his orks out of cover and kill 6.
Night scythe shoots down 3 kroots only.
We then go to assault. I believe last turn, Nathan gives his riptide 3++.
Wraiths charge the shoota boys.
Finally, the depleted wraithstar unit charges his Ethereal's kroots. They shoot down 1 wraith with Overwatch. My D-lord then issues a challenge, which his Ethereal declines.
I then win combat and sweep the unit.
VP's - Necrons: 6, Torks: 1
I sweep the riptide as well.
VP's - Necrons: 7, Torks: 1
Finally, I wipe the shoota boys down to just 1 boy left. He then passes morale on Insane Courage!
Just as my opponent is all happy and about to do the (moral) victory dance, I gently remind him that now he can't shoot at my wraiths next turn. Do I know how to crash a party or what?
Torks 3
Spoiler:
Despite the fact that I am pummeling him on VP's, it ain't over til the warboss sings. Meganobs with Mega-boss head towards my wraiths. This may hurt....assuming he can successfully make a 7-8" charge through terrain.
Kroots go for a last hurrah.
Finally, his nob bikers and shoota boys go after my Warlord's unit.
Kannons and broadsides combine to take out another AB.
VP's - Necrons: 7, Torks: 2
Nob bikers and shoota boys shoot at my Warlord's unit. They can't make a save if their lives depended on it. I lose my Warlord as well as 3 wraiths. What the heck is going on?!? Ork shooting actually doing damage? Whoa.....
Haha....Warlord comes back. I'm telling you....ResOrb, ResOrb, ResOrb.....
Kroots shoot at my wraithstar but because of majority Toughness 6, they fail to inflict any unsaved wounds.
Nob bikers then make the charge....
....and then finish off the unit. My Warlord doesn't get back up this time.
VP's - Necrons: 7, Torks: 4
This is what I will refer to as the "Killing Blow". Meganobs make the charge through difficult terrain against my right wraithstar unit. He also charges his other unit of boys into the battle (big mistake!)
I then issue the challenge to his warboss, who promptly fail his MSS test. I kill off his warboss and 1 meganob. His meganobs, despite rolling poorly, still manage to crush 2 of my wraiths. Finally I kill off 2-3 of the boys from the unit that just charged in. Overall, I win by about 3-4. He proceeds to fail all 3 Morale tests and I sweep all 3 units, including his Mega-boss!
VP's - Necrons: 11, Torks: 4
That was the straw that broke the camel's back. I could see that after that combat, my opponent was just out of it.
Necrons 3
Spoiler:
The beginning of the end. You see those nob bikers there?....
Hey! Where'd they go?
Wraithstar assault the missile-sides....
....it's like taking candy away from a baby.
Last but not least, I go after his kroots.
Another insane courage!
But it doesn't matter. He's got only his kroots, 1 unit of 8-9 boys and his grots with their kannons left. He won't survive my onslaught next turn and so we just call it here.
The only thing I didn't get was First Blood. I get (or will get) everything else. My opponent gets First Blood and my Warlord but that is it. Necrons win 19-3.
Complete Domination by the Metallic Dead - Necrons!!!
This is generally what happens when you put a casual list run by a casual player up against a competitive list run by a competitive player. I felt bad that my opponent got matched up against me, but I can't take it easy against any opponent in a tournament. With that said, there was a scary moment when his meganobs assaulted my wraithstar. With the number of power klaw attacks he had on the charge, he could have easily wiped out my wraithstar. Alas, it just wasn't meant to be his game. After that combat, I could see that I had taken the fight out of him. There really wasn't any need to go further and so we just finished up my round. My army was just a bad matchup for his. I've got too much shooting for his army, my units are utlra-durable and Mindshackles will just f*ck up most assault units. However, ironically, his limited shooting actually did more damage than his assault elements.
Hmmmm....now if an army such as his, with the limited amount of shooting that he had, still managed to take down 2 AB's and a bunch of wraiths with their shooting, what can a full-fledge, shooty Tau army do to my army? Well, I'll find out next turn, but I wasn't about to let chance determine my fate. No, next turn, I am going to make my matchup happen.
This should be fun.
I think you have pretty decisive advantages over the Torks
I think your shooting will make very very short work of the small horde he has, and wraiths + dlord i think stack up decently to meganobs
I see this being a big win for you. But I can't wait to see how you deal with the nobz and meganobz because wraiths REALLY don't like them if the nobz get to swing, which is a big IF but either way.
I think the Tau/Orc mix is a little underwhelming. Especially since the Nob Biker Mob can't be shielded from all that S7 shooting and doesn't have the power fists to make use of its speed in the assault. Looking forward to seeing the Tau/Eldar match up.
I still cringe at the spam but it does make batreps easy to follow, especially in large games like these.
Nice to see the crons get some wins, my AV13 wall got taken apart by White Scars with many Grav weapons last night.
There's a White Scars player at our LGS. He just upsetted our triple-riptide Tau player (Triptide Adam) in their last game. I'm looking forwards to playing against his army one of these days.
I still cringe at the spam but it does make batreps easy to follow, especially in large games like these.
Nice to see the crons get some wins, my AV13 wall got taken apart by White Scars with many Grav weapons last night.
Really? I'm of the view grav weapons suck against tanks, the perk of them being it by-passes cover.
The guns definitely need a FAQ.
CaptainJay wrote: The flat-out wrecking it is amusing (hadn't thought of that), I guess your playing it as the 2nd immobilization 'result' from the grav guns take 2 hull points then?
Statistically firing all 9 grav shots will net you 6 hits and then you should hopefully get 1 six from that, however in subsequent rounds you'll only be getting 6 shots so the odds of getting that 6 start going down rapidly. Also if you are running an AV13 wall (3 annhilation barges, catacomb barges, ghosts arks + stalkers?) You should have waay more av13 vehicles than your opponent does grav-guns/units with them. I just don't feel it's very reliable method of taking out tanks (unless your awesome at rolling 6's).
There's probably more. Scouting meltas (on bikes) + 1st turn = lots of dead vehicles, especially before skimmers can move to get their jink saves.
Actually not really - grav guns don't roll to penetrate. Their effect is IDENTICAL to what happens when a vehicle fails a dangerous terrain test - in that instance no cover save is given either. Just something to chew on there.
Chancetragedy wrote: I see this being a big win for you. But I can't wait to see how you deal with the nobz and meganobz because wraiths REALLY don't like them if the nobz get to swing, which is a big IF but either way.
Yeah, meganobs can really mess up my wraiths. Going to have to play somewhat conservatively as long as they are around.
cirons wrote: Love your battlereports jy2, but i am pulling for the underdog in this one!!
Don't blame you. It's only natural to root for the underdog. If I wasn't playing my crons, I'd root for the orks as well.
PanzerLeader wrote: I think the Tau/Orc mix is a little underwhelming. Especially since the Nob Biker Mob can't be shielded from all that S7 shooting and doesn't have the power fists to make use of its speed in the assault. Looking forward to seeing the Tau/Eldar match up.
Yeah, I think if he had spiced up his nob biker unit somewhat - with the Waagh banner and some more power klaws, his list would have been more dangerous. As it is, the only unit I need to beware of is his meganobs.
Actually not really - grav guns don't roll to penetrate. Their effect is IDENTICAL to what happens when a vehicle fails a dangerous terrain test - in that instance no cover save is given either. Just something to chew on there.
As I recall, even that needed a FAQ (i.e. drop pods). But what really needs addressing is whether the vehicle loses 1 HP or 2 on an Immobilised result. That is where some clarification is needed IMO.
Great reports so far, Jy2. That army is an ultra lean, mean, killing machine. It also pretty much sums up why most tournament players dislike the idea of dual-foc. :(
I'm also surprised the TO let you "pick," your last opponent. Altering the matchup process like that can have a huge effect on the final results. I doubt anyone wanted to play against either of your armies anyways, but when prize support and honors are on the line, it just doesn't seem right. Admittedly, it is the matchup I'm looking forward to reading the most, but.. Shrugs.
We'll see how it plays out, but I expect a minor victory for Necrons in Round 3. Tesla wounds will add up quick with no great answer to Barges. Res Orbs will prolly break it open.
hippesthippo wrote: Great reports so far, Jy2. That army is an ultra lean, mean, killing machine. It also pretty much sums up why most tournament players dislike the idea of dual-foc. :(
I'm also surprised the TO let you "pick," your last opponent. Altering the matchup process like that can have a huge effect on the final results. I doubt anyone wanted to play against either of your armies anyways, but when prize support and honors are on the line, it just doesn't seem right. Admittedly, it is the matchup I'm looking forward to reading the most, but.. Shrugs.
We'll see how it plays out, but I expect a minor victory for Necrons in Round 3. Tesla wounds will add up quick with no great answer to Barges. Res Orbs will prolly break it open.
The TO was willing to take "requests" as long as they were reasonable (that you were playing against someone at about the same level/battle points as you and both players were in agreement). Both Israel and I both had similar records (2-0 each). I was at 26 BP's and he was at 30 BP's so we weren't too far off in Battle Points. I'm sure no one would complain about the 2 of us playing against each other - 2 of the tougher armies in the tournament duking it out against each other. We both had armies that other people probably would rather not play against anyways, so to me, it worked out well with the 2 of us playing against each other.
We both had units that was difficult for each other to fight. His army wasn't great against my AB's and flyers. I had problems against high toughness 2+ models. However, Israel had a slight advantage in that we were playing Big Guns. Thus, killing his riptides wouldn't give me anything special, whereas killing my AB's gave him bonus VP's. At least the table we played on had some LOS-blocking terrain, though it still wasn't a lot considering how big my wraith models were.
I'll help bump the posting to page 4 for the next batrep.
It makes me sad that you picked apart the orks so badly, but alas, it's pretty normal for orks in this edition. I did find his list intriguing though. In the end, you had solid counters for his main strengths and he didn't for yours.
Yeah, that was pretty much baby seal clubbing. But, thats how BPs and Swis pairings go. A tough game against a tough opponent with minor win usually sets you up on a mid/lower table and a big win.
It makes me sad that you picked apart the orks so badly, but alas, it's pretty normal for orks in this edition. I did find his list intriguing though. In the end, you had solid counters for his main strengths and he didn't for yours.
A solid victory for the crons.
Yeah, in a way, I'm sad also. Orks used to be a powerhouse in 5th. Now, they are truly a victim of codex creep in 6th. I just may have to bust out my orks again to show people how to "get it done da orky way". Haha....j.k.
Zagman wrote: Yeah, that was pretty much baby seal clubbing. But, thats how BPs and Swis pairings go. A tough game against a tough opponent with minor win usually sets you up on a mid/lower table and a big win.
Looking forward to reading the next Report.
My fault for not clubbing DE+Eldar last turn. j.k.!
Honestly, in this tournament, I really didn't care about my battle points or in winning the tournament. I just wanted to play against and beat the 2 newest armies. I knew that playing against the new Tau and Eldar probably meant that I wouldn't get a lot of BP's, but a minor win is still a win. The only problem was that I needed to win big against them in order to climb the ladder to play against a tougher Tau/Eldar opponent.
Red Corsair wrote: Honestly though, the ork player was making a run until he blundered his assault.
Yeah, he wasn't doing too bad up until that point (though he was taking a beating from my shooting). He actually had me playing defensively at first. But inexperience and the dice did him in.
No worries. The TO also goes to a lot of tournaments and knew most of the people there already so he kinda knew their armies/skill level. He probably wanted to see my Necrons duke it out with Israel's Taudar anyways.
In the meantime, guys, you know the drill. For some reason, this page is already slow enough with just 1 report here. I think some of the readers are going to hate the load times for 2 reports on the same page.
Thanks in advance.
Zagman wrote: Oh, an the TO had that call wrong. Pg125 and the Blessings FAQ make that pretty clear.
Yeah, I'm pretty sure I was right. But I was already creaming my opponent so I just let it go. Don't want to be known as TFG who brings a hardcore list and then has to argue for everything especially when he was destroying the opponent.
Would also like to see a page 4. As for grav guns I play them as causing an immobilized result and the hull point that comes with it, no additional hull point. Otherwise seems to make the utility of melta and plas pretty silly...
Thanks, guys. Next game is going to be a tough one. For my next matchup, I do something very unconventional to try to throw my opponent off. You guys are just going to have to check it out.
Great reports as usual jy2. Looking forward to the duke out with Tau.
What's your opinion on these larger points games, does 40k become even more alpha strike reliant and more of a dice rolling exercise with less tactics?
Bump bump bump! Huge fan of your batreps(read every one so far), but I have to tell you it'd feel nice to see you lose a game every once in a while! I shudder every time your res orb goes off again and again and again, every single game, haha!
jy2 wrote: . . . For my next matchup, I do something very unconventional to try to throw my opponent off. . .
Now that's just as bad as ending the season of a tv show with a to be continued.
Replace his dice with d3's?
Glue magnets under his mini's and use a strong magnet under the table to slide them back an inch when he's not looking?
Coat his tau with LSD when his attention lapses?
What could it . . . Oh fine I'm just shamelessly bumping you to page 4. Great rep's so far.
Tau Commander - 2x Missile Pods, 2x Shield Drones, Early Warning Override, Velocity Tracker, Command & Control Node, Puretide Engram Neurochip, Multi-Spectrum Sensort Suite, Iridium Armour, Yada, yada, yada....
Commander Shadowsun - 2x Shield Drones
Riptide - Ion Accelerator, TL-SMS, Early Warning Override
Riptide - Ion Accelerator, TL-SMS, Early Warning Override
Riptide - Ion Accelerator, TL-SMS, Early Warning Override
8x Fire Warriors
8x Fire Warriors
8x Fire Warriors
8x Fire Warriors
Who knew Tau could be so intimidating? Almost as intimidating as my army. Ok, guys (and gals), time for the Top 10's of the day.
Top 10 Reasons why Taudar will win.
1. Awesome firepower.
2. My army has problems against massed 2+ units.
3. He can potentially kill off all my flyers with the amount of Intercepting guns in his army.
4. Big Guns gives him some super-resilient scoring units - his broadsides and skyray.
5. Riptides need to be dealt with and yet, they are non-essential, sacrificial units.
6. Tau is going 1st for the alpha-strike. He'll actually get 2 turns to shoot down my army before any of my reserves (i.e. flyers) can come in.
7. He actually has 2 objectives on his side of the table to my 1.
8. Against my army, ion accelerators may actually be better than the Heavy Burst Cannons as they will double-out my wraiths. Against my flyers, however, he's just going to have to rely on volume-of-fire from his broadsides, who are at least twin-linked.
9. Jetbikes and farseer gives him the mobility he'll need to contest/grab my objectives.
10. With the amount of blast weapons he's got in his army, he is going to screw with my positioning, forcing me to spread out more than I'd like. That includes my annihilation barges and not just my wraithstars. Spreading out will also make deployment harder for me, as I plan to do a refuse-flank deployment to try to minimize his alpha-strike.
Top 10 Reasons why Necrons will win.
1. I've got super-durable units.
2. My army is very fast. Can he kill enough before my units break into his lines?
3. Necron flyers in an objectives-game. 'Nuff said.
4. My firepower is not to be trifled with. Under-estimate it at your own peril.
5. I'm going 2nd and will have the final say.
6. Though I have never played against Israel before, I have a lot of experience playing against the new Tau.
7. He can't take out my flyers reliably.
8. Other than by assault with riptides or with his Buff Commander + missile-sides, he can't take out my scoring annihilation barges reliably as well.
9. My wraiths, who are my "non-essential, sacrificial" units, cannot be ignored. He has to deal with them and at the same time, I want him to.
10. I've got a secret weapon. **Cough, cough....ResOrbs....cough. Ahem.**
His Commander is his Warlord. I forget his Warlord trait.
I get a very good Warlord Trait - the ability to re-roll reserves. That is going to come in very handy....or at least I hoped.
It is night-fight.
Tau deployment to the right (from my perspective).
And to the left.
Shadowsun + 1 unit of fire warriors will be outflanking.
As for my deployment, I try something very different and unconventional.
First off, I do a refuse-flank deployment with my wraiths. I deploy them all on the right flank.
By the ways, my Warlord is the Destroyer Lord furthest away from my opponent's army (along the right table-edge).
Overview of our deployment.
Notice anything missing?
That's right....I reserve ALL of my annihilation barges. This comes as a surprise to say the least to my opponent.
Will my gambit work? Or am I crazy for leaving all my firepower off the table? What do you think, guys?
Finally, Israel scouts his pathfinders towards my army.
I had hoped to avoid them, but with their scout move, they are now in range to illuminate my left-most wraithstar. Oh well, it couldn't be helped. Because of his riptides, I had to spread out and by doing so, I couldn't completely avoid most of his units (and in particular, his pathfinders). This is going to hurt, but there's really not much I can do about it.
Tau movement. Farseer puts Prescience on the pathfinders and Guide on a riptide. He puts Forewarning on a 3rd unit.
Broadsides who are out of range instead run.
Pathfinders put 4 markerlights on the closest wraithstar unit (the only one they had range to).
Everyone who can fire does.
His limited shooting takes out my left D-lord and 3 wraiths from that unit as well as put 1W from my middle D-lord and take out 2 wraiths from his unit.
Riptides then move in the Assault phase.
His Commander also moves in the Assault phase, though he only shifts his position within his unit.
Fortunately for me, my D-lord gets back up. So despite my best efforts to deny my opponent some of his shooting, he still manages to take out 5 wraiths and wound both of my D-lords. Ouch.
Necrons 1
Spoiler:
Wraiths advance. My goal is to make it to the LOS-blocking terrain. Middle D-lord joins my Warlord's unit.
I make it to terrain, but it is of little comfort. My opponent can still see most of my units and with the mobility of his riptides, he can probably position them to get even better LOS.
Turn 2 will be a crucial turn. That turn will probably make or break my army.
Taudar 2
Spoiler:
Shadowsun comes in on my board edge. He actually wanted to do that.
Fortunately for me, I leave him no annihilation barges for Shadowsun to take out.
Farseer casts his powers on the riptides and Forewarning on the missile-sides closest to me. He would continually cast his powers every turn.
Riptide jumps. I believe missile-sides remain stationary to shoot.
Tau movement. I believe 1 of the missile-sides move to get better LOS.
You can see why he isn't really concerned about my assault just yet. The right-most fire warriors form a screen in front of my wraiths to protect his entire army. That's right, folks. Don't forget the oldest Tau tactic in the book - the screen-and-shoot-you-some-more tactic.
Right-most riptide takes 1W and fails to nova-charge.
The rest of his movement.
Ok, now that that's out of the way, onto the carnage....
Fortunately for me, his middle riptide over-heats with his over-charge and takes 1W (yes, he rolled double 1's).
The rest of his army combines to take out the left D-lord as well as to finish off his unit of wraiths for First Blood.
Shadowsun's (+ fire warriors) shooting is disappointing as they only take out 1 wraith.
His other shooting puts another 1W on the middle D-lord and offs 1 wraith.
Wait...actually, he takes out my middle D-lord as well and put 1W on another wraith (after my Warlord Look-Out-Sirs).
To my chagrin (and to my opponent's delight), both of my D-lords fail to get back up.
The Tau do their jump moves in the assault phase. From hereon out, I will refer to this assault move as their JSJ move (that's jump-shoot-jump move).
Wow, I am taking a beating at this point. I've already lost 10 wraiths and 2 Destroyer Lords already. If I don't get favorable Reserve rolls next turn, my goose just may be cooked!
Necrons 2
Spoiler:
So with re-rolls on Reserves, on average, 8 out of 9 units should be coming in. I mention this because what I am taking is a calculated risk, with the odds actually in my favor. What is about to happen next isn't luck (though it is just slightly above average).
My entire army comes in! That's 9 out of 9 units, which is close to what I am expecting.
I spread out my annihilation barges to minimize the damage from his intercepting fire. You really don't want an ion blast hitting multiple AB's.
My last wraithstar, with my Warlord, goes after his fire warriors. Unfortunately, that is the only unit I can make it to. Good screening by my opponent.
Isreal fires all his Interceptor guns at my AB's, mainly because he will be hitting them on regular BS. He rolls poorly to penetrate and I make an above-average amount of jink cover saves. The end result is 2 Hull Points of damage on 2 separate barges.
His Commander, who is with his fire warriors, intercepts my night scythe instead (because he's got skyfire). He actually hits and glances/pens all 4 times. However, I then make all 4 of my jink saves!
In my Shooting phase, I focus on 2 units - his missile-sides closest to my board edge and his riptide with farseer. I reduce his riptide to just 1W remaining. More importantly, I completely wipe out his missile-sides to the man.
VP's - Necrons: 1, Tau: 3
In the Shadowsun combat, wraiths kill 1 shield drone.
Finally, my wraithstar assaults and wipes out his screening fire warriors.
VP's - Necrons: 2, Tau: 3
Wow, what a turn of events! All of a sudden, the tides have changed. My wraithstar is in his face. Most of his units have "blown their load" already via Interceptor (the guns you fire for Interceptor cannot be fired on again on your next Shooting phase), and to top it off, his intercepting firepower did squat.
I can see the frustration start to mount on my opponent's face. He is not a happy camper after this turn.
Taudar 3
Spoiler:
I am not "out of the woods" yet. His entire army goes after my wraithstar, including his skyray.
I am fortunate that he's fired his main guns already. When the dust is settled, I'm down 3 wraiths and my Warlord.
Well, not quite. He gets back up again.
He then charges both his riptide (with Prescience) and his broadsides (with Forewarning) into my wraiths. The riptide makes the charge through terrain but his broadsides fail the charge out in the open.
I am out of range to use Mindshackles this turn. I believe his riptide tries to smash my wraiths.
His other riptide goes after an AB. He tries to assault but fails to make the charge.
His last riptide charges my damaged AB. He opts to smash, hits once....and then roll a to merely glance my barge.
Things go poorly for his 1st riptide as he fails to kill a wraith, I cause a couple of wounds in return and then sweep his riptide.
VP's - Necrons: 3, Tau: 3
He kills a wraith here.
I can see his frustration level rising, and I don't blame him after 2 very poor turns for the Tau.
Necrons 3
Spoiler:
Night scythes go after his broadsides. BTW, the night scythes are only overlapping due to Wobbly Model Syndrome. My left night scythe is actually on top of the bush.
I take out his central riptide (the one attached to the farseer) with my AB's.
VP's - Necrons: 4, Tau: 3
Night scythes fire on missile-sides and kill 1. They then fail morale and run off the table.
VP's - Necrons: 5, Tau: 3
That makes my wraithstar's decision much easier.
Wraithstar charges his Commander's broadsides. 1 wraith dies to Overwatch. I issue a challenge to his Commander, who declines. Mindshackle goes off.
He kills off my wounded wraith and I kill off 1 broadside.
VP's - Necrons: 5, Tau: 4
They then fail Morale and break. Fortunately for my opponent, I fail to catch them and he rolls low for their fallback move.
Taudar 4
Spoiler:
This will be the last game turn due to time.
Jetbikes finally come in. My opponent forgets about them until the middle of Turn 3.
Farseer goes after my AB. He would immobilize it in assault.
The Commander's unit regroups. They then shoot down my Warlord.
My opponent also does an illegal move here. His Commander jumps in the Assault phase to capture his objective. However, when you regroup, you can't move any further. I tell my opponent this, he disagrees and I decide not to contest it too strongly. My opponent was already in an agitated state. I really don't want to win at the expense of making this an unenjoyable experience for my opponent.
No matter. ResOrb FTW!!! My ResOrb is on FIRE !
BTW, I've already achieved my Secret Objective as my Warlord is within 6" of my opponent's board edge (as long as I leave him there).
Windrider jetbikes turbo-boost to capture my objective.
Lastly, his riptide finally manages to wreck one of my AB's.
VP's - Necrons: 5, Tau: 5
Necrons 4
Spoiler:
Ok, here's the current situation. My opponent has got all 3 of the objectives currently. I have none. My night scythes can get to 2 of them, but I cannot get to my home objective (which his jetbikes are claiming) because it is behind my night scythes. I guess I'm just going to have to blow his jetbikes off of my objective.
We are also out of time (just a couple of minutes left) and so rush through this round.
Night scythes move and drop off their troops. I am currently contesting both of my opponent's objectives.
I get ready to take out his jetbikes.
They don't stand a chance as I vaporize them off of my objective.
Objective cleared.
VP's - Necrons: 6, Tau: 5
Here I kill off most of his fire warriors. I also immobilize and take off 2 HP's from his skyray but can't quite kill it off. Tesla arcing also kills 2 of my warriors.
Objective contested.
I kill off several fire warriors here but that's it.
Objective contested.
Finally, I opt not to assault his Warlord's unit. I don't want to risk losing my Warlord. Instead he runs towards my opponent's board edge to make sure I secure my Secret Objective.
So I barely beat him in VP's to win Purge. For Big Guns, neither of us have any objectives. However, I beat him in bonus points, killing 2 of his heavies (2 units of broadsides) while he has only killed 1 of mine (1 annihilation barge). Thus, I take Big Guns as well.
My opponent gets First Blood (wraiths) and Linebreaker (Shadowsun's unit). He failed to achieve his Secret Objective, which was to kill more of my heavies than I kill of his.
I get Linebreaker (warriors, my Warlord) as well as my Secret Objective (Warlord within 6" of his board edge).
Necrons take it 17-3.
Crushing Victory to the Metallic Dead - Necrons!!!
I caught a little break in Game #3. With all my forces coming in on Turn 2 and my opponent's shooting suddenly becoming impotent, I managed to turn the game around. I admit my strategy to deny my opponent his shooting and to reserve the majority of my army was risky, but in the end, it actually worked out great. Whenever I feel that I have a tough matchup where I may perhaps be the underdog, I tend to take risks in order to try to even the odds or to even gain an advantage. Just like in poker when you have a weaker hand than your opponent. Sometimes, you've just got to take a risk and try to bluff if you want to win that pot. However, usually the risks I take are calculated risks where the odds are on my side (as opposed to a hail-mary gamble where you are just praying for a miracle....but sometimes, I do that also. )
I felt my opponent was playing great initially. He was very aggressive. He was advancing rather than just hiding in his corner. He nova-charged the right things at the right time (i.e. getting ready for my Turn 2 reserves). He was using proper screening tactics. He tried to split up my wraiths (by outflanking Shadowsun on my side). He was moving his Commander from unit to unit to whereever he was needed (for example, on his Turn 2, he moved his Commander with his broadsides and gave them Tank Hunter in anticipation of my incoming reserves). I could tell from the way he played that he was very experienced with his army.
But then after Turn 2, I think that his frustration was starting to cloud his judgement. He made some questionable targeting choices. He assaulted when I felt he should have scrambled and/or braced for my inevitable assault. He didn't take into account my flight paths and he didn't protect his objectives well enough (though I suspect this may also have something to do with his inexperience against a Necron Air Force).
Overall, it was a great game. Frustration aside, Israel is a very nice person and a very good Tau general. We never played before, but after our game, he complimented me on what a great player I was (thanks!) and that he wanted a rematch. He also told me that this was the very first time that he had lost a VP game in 6th with his Tau, and he also apologized for being so frustrated in our game. That was a really classy thing for him to do and say. I'd be honored to play him again if our paths should cross in the future.
So because we had 36 players and there were only 3 rounds, the tournament ended with several people with 3-0 records.
Grant Theft Auto took 1st Overall with his bad-a$$ seer council with 3 domininating wins. Too bad we didn't get to play. I would've made his seer council "sit down." Lol! (Actually, I did play against his army, just not in the tournament.) I feel that his army is potentially one of the most dominating tournament armies currently. It has the potential to destroy the very competitive Tau and mechdar builds.
2nd Overall was an IG player. I really don't know much about the player or his army.
3rd Overall was the BAO 2013 winner, Lyzz Foster with her daemons. Lyzz and I both actually tied in Battle Points. But her nicely converted daemons and her higher Sportsmanship scores was the tie-breaker between us.
I was 4th Overall. I am more than happy with how I did. My goal here wasn't to be #1. Rather, I just wanted to get some games in against some good Tau/Eldar players and that's what I did. My only regret was that I didn't get to play against the Mechdar player, who was #2 in battle points but only in the Top10 for Overall. But it was either him or Israel and I chose Israel. I actually also wanted to play against Lyzz (who was also 2-0 and had a similar record to me after 2 games), but decided that I wanted to play against Israel's Tau even more.
Great tournament overall. I just may make a trip back to the final Contest of Champions (next time it will be 2500-pts) come November.
I'm hoping he put the commander in with the HRR broadsides, they have a really good shot at taking a barge a turn with tl and tank hunter, and he doesnt really need the commanders buffs elsewhere since most of the rest of his shooting will probably be going after wraiths.
EDIT: Also I think you have a decent shot at winning, the combination of a good counter-deployment on your part and his lack of mobile scoring will probably give you a slight advantage.
I'm going with taudar. His list flat out counters the wraithlist. Itll come down to dice if hes good. Because frankly the bsides are going to put the fliers down while the ion tides are going to be one shotting wraiths. My 2 cents
Asmodai Asmodean wrote: Not sure what Shadowsun adds, I think Tau/Tau is still a stronger build now.
Idk if they were playing it here but the INDY GTFAQ just got updated to allow characters with infiltrate to join a squad pregame and infiltrate them. So if they were using that she could join theoretically any unit and infiltrate them, which on the face of it would seem counterintuitive in this matchup but could allow the tau to infiltrate something farther away from JY's army. A counter-counter deployment if you would.
I gotta say that Taudar should have this. There are just so many things in that list to instagib wraiths.
However, 5 annihilation barges should be hard for him to kill, but definitely far from impossible. He has a good amount of S8+.
herpguy wrote: I gotta say that Taudar should have this. There are just so many things in that list to instagib wraiths.
However, 5 annihilation barges should be hard for him to kill, but definitely far from impossible. He has a good amount of S8+.
You see I don't really get this. The Tau army doesn't really have all that much s8. 3 large blasts, 3 HRR, seeker missiles (that are going at fliers), and Shadowsun (who isn't likely to use it). Given that Jy2 spreads out his wraiths well enough the riptides combined are killing just under 2 wraiths for the first turn. Depending on terrain and deployment the missilesides may not be able to even shoot the wraiths first turn. Turn two will be wraith murder of course, maybe one unit will die.
Short story there's going to be a bunch of wraiths in charge distance on turn 2. Either two near full strength squads or 2 small squads and one relatively unscathed. Thats assuming the Tau don't even attempt to shoot the barges (Even the 3 HRR fully buffed with the commander only have about a 33% of destroying one AB. Missilesides would do better with a 54% with the commander).
I am confused as to where the deployment lines are here, maybe it's the camera angle but I just don't see the deployment zones and it looks really off to me.
As for reserving your A.barges, I like it, especially since your warlord trait allows you to re-roll reserves you can effectively gain most the advantages of going first(since your fire power isn't gonna get hit on his turn) along with all the late game advantages of going second.
Should be interesting, however I'm not sure where your barges would come on/ if they would be in range, since like I stated at the top I'm not exactly sure where your deployment zone is in this game.
Looking forward to the action/chaos that's gonna ensue. Think you may have chosen a risky secret objective with the deployment you chose(this might be the reason you lose if you lose, but you've been in tight situations before and won, so hopefully your unconventional deployment pays off).
Punisher wrote: I am confused as to where the deployment lines are here, maybe it's the camera angle but I just don't see the deployment zones and it looks really off to me.
As for reserving your A.barges, I like it, especially since your warlord trait allows you to re-roll reserves you can effectively gain most the advantages of going first(since your fire power isn't gonna get hit on his turn) along with all the late game advantages of going second.
Should be interesting, however I'm not sure where your barges would come on/ if they would be in range, since like I stated at the top I'm not exactly sure where your deployment zone is in this game.
Looking forward to the action/chaos that's gonna ensue. Think you may have chosen a risky secret objective with the deployment you chose(this might be the reason you lose if you lose, but you've been in tight situations before and won, so hopefully your unconventional deployment pays off).
We are playing table corner deployment. You see the dice on my side of the table (the overview of our deployment photo)? That's my deployment line. My D-lords are right up at it.
Yeah, with my Warlord Trait, 8 out of 9 units should come in from my Reserves on Turn 2. That way, I can get the beta-strike on my opponent. I just need to not get tabled or to not lose my Warlord before that happens.
Reserves will come in from the long board edge. Also, my secret objective applies to his long board edge as well. As you can see, my Warlord is already very close to it.
It is too early to call the game. The wraiths are doing their job, taking shots and applying pressure. The true test will be in the frantic objective game once 9 Necron scoring units hit the field.
djn wrote: Great reports as usual jy2. Looking forward to the duke out with Tau.
What's your opinion on these larger points games, does 40k become even more alpha strike reliant and more of a dice rolling exercise with less tactics?
It's almost a whole different game between higher and lower points games. Both are fun in their own way. At lower points, you have much more limited resources and so that forces you to play somewhat more tactically. At larger games, you can do 1 of 2 things - you can either experiment with more units that you don't normally use or you can fine-tune your list into a highly optimized army. The former plays more like a 1500 game. The latter is when it is more of a dice rolling exercise as that is when you are more likely to spam those highly efficient units.
Moreover, it kind of depends on your army as well. Different armies have different "sweet spots". Certain armies like necrons, space wolves, orks, battle sisters and dark eldar peak at the lower points so they become more of a dice-rolling exercise as you start to repeat units. Other armies, such as the grey knights, tyranids and daemons, don't come onto their own until you get to the higher points level. These armies are just starting to peak and thus, there really isn't much room for spamming with them.
Araenion wrote: Bump bump bump! Huge fan of your batreps(read every one so far), but I have to tell you it'd feel nice to see you lose a game every once in a while! I shudder every time your res orb goes off again and again and again, every single game, haha!
I lose every once in a while as I like to experiment with different armies. But with my competitive necrons, it's been a long time since I've lost with them.
Res Orbs are so good it's almost criminal to give them to an army that is already so dominating.
BTW, Celestine is the original necron. She is what all my Destroyer Lords/Overlords strive to be like.
jy2 wrote: . . . For my next matchup, I do something very unconventional to try to throw my opponent off. . .
Now that's just as bad as ending the season of a tv show with a to be continued.
Replace his dice with d3's?
Glue magnets under his mini's and use a strong magnet under the table to slide them back an inch when he's not looking?
Coat his tau with LSD when his attention lapses?
What could it . . . Oh fine I'm just shamelessly bumping you to page 4. Great rep's so far.
Lol! Thanks.
Maybe I should start writing novels. I think I'm getting the hang of cliffhangers and foreshadowing.
Nevermind wrote: Going with Tau here since they are going first and having such strong scoring in heavy support.
Goodness....broadsides are a pain to kill from range if you don't have the right guns. Assaulting them won't be easy either against a good Tau player and that is assuming your assault units survive. Yeah, having 2 objectives on his side is definitely a big advantage....to any army without necron flyers.
thanatos67 wrote: I'm hoping he put the commander in with the HRR broadsides, they have a really good shot at taking a barge a turn with tl and tank hunter, and he doesnt really need the commanders buffs elsewhere since most of the rest of his shooting will probably be going after wraiths.
EDIT: Also I think you have a decent shot at winning, the combination of a good counter-deployment on your part and his lack of mobile scoring will probably give you a slight advantage.
His commander actually jumps around from unit to unit. That is actually a sign of a very experienced Tau player. Don't just pigeonhole your commander into a certain role or unit. Move him to where he's needed. The name of the game is tactical flexibility.
Asmodai Asmodean wrote: Not sure what Shadowsun adds, I think Tau/Tau is still a stronger build now.
I'm kind of curious as to seeing how he plays Shadowsun also. To me, she's an enigma in his list. I guess she is there for disruption purposes mainly, though I can see her infiltrating against biker armies to push back their scout moves (though only if the Tau player was going 1st).
This is getting interesting. Using the the Wraiths to hold the table till your scoring units arrive is ballsy, costs him two turns of shooting but decimates your assault elements without reducing his firepower. We'll see if he can contest those objectives and if you are able to deal enough damage in 3-4 turns of shooting. I don't doubt you can take out his scoring and hopefully his Skyray on entry, but I don't see you dropping those Riptides without your Wraiths.
I see the objectives being contested, Taudar winning Purge, First Blood, Slay the Warlord, and you both having Linebreaker for a well fought Taudar victory.
Asmodai Asmodean wrote: Not sure what Shadowsun adds, I think Tau/Tau is still a stronger build now.
Idk if they were playing it here but the INDY GTFAQ just got updated to allow characters with infiltrate to join a squad pregame and infiltrate them. So if they were using that she could join theoretically any unit and infiltrate them, which on the face of it would seem counterintuitive in this matchup but could allow the tau to infiltrate something farther away from JY's army. A counter-counter deployment if you would.
Here we usually follow the BAOFAQ's. Fortunately, I didn't have to go through that mess as my opponent decided to outflank with Shadowsun instead.
Tomb King wrote: Massacre for the Crons. Especially if necrons are going 2nd.
I like your optimism. I felt going into the game that it would probably be a coin-flip at best - that's 50/50 for a massacre either ways. Either he decimates my army with his shooting or my wraiths survive largely intact and I gut his army with my assault + shooting.
ImotekhTheStormlord wrote: It is too early to call the game. The wraiths are doing their job, taking shots and applying pressure. The true test will be in the frantic objective game once 9 Necron scoring units hit the field.
He actually did more damage to me than I'd liked, but the important part is that my Warlord is still alive.
My Turn 2 will be crucial. IMO, I will either win the game or lose it depending on what happens on Turn 2.
BTW, Celestine is the original necron. She is what all my Destroyer Lords/Overlords strive to be like.
With the way you roll ever-living, I'm surprised Celestine doesn't strive to be like one of your D-lords.
She is my role model.
If I could ally in Sisters of Battle with my crons, I would. That would be sic indeed - the army that just won't die. LOL!!!
Zagman wrote: This is getting interesting. Using the the Wraiths to hold the table till your scoring units arrive is ballsy, costs him two turns of shooting but decimates your assault elements without reducing his firepower. We'll see if he can contest those objectives and if you are able to deal enough damage in 3-4 turns of shooting. I don't doubt you can take out his scoring and hopefully his Skyray on entry, but I don't see you dropping those Riptides without your Wraiths.
I see the objectives being contested, Taudar winning Purge, First Blood, Slay the Warlord, and you both having Linebreaker for a well fought Taudar victory.
Looking forward to the rest of the Batrep.
Yeah, you could say that at that point, I was sweating. I've lost a large portion of my army and haven't even put a dent in his.
But I am the fervent gambler. Sometimes in a difficult matchup, you've just got to take risks to even the odds (or to gain an advantage). At least gaming-wise, I believe that. No pain, no gain. It only gets worse before it gets better. You get the picture.
Riptides are a pain. I may just have to ignore them. Broadsides are my priority. Not only are they scoring, but they are a huge part of the Tau offense. I am going after his broadsides.
Shadowsun's infiltrate works great in that list as it allows you to counter-deploy with a strong shooty element when going first (and Tau does like going first). In fact, Israel should have prolly done that here to counter your refused flank. That cover buff is also really useful for keeping pricey suits safe from low-ap weaponry.
As I said before, Wraiths die, resilient Barges wreck havoc on his lines, Lords proceed to Res Orb back to life and clear the path for your Warriors to claim victory.
You have a LOT of practice under your belt versus Riptide heavy lists, and I'm not sure how practiced Israel is against your army, so I expect you to win. You've started out strong with your Warlord trait allowing you to (correctly) reserve your Barges and deploy in a manner to avoid punishment. Even better, it's Vanguard Strike, so your Barges will have no problem moving on 6-12in, getting easily within range. Against shooty-heavy armies I always roll on Strategic as I like to hang back until my reserves come on so I can strike at once and overload my opponent. Particularly against Tau, it only takes one unit behind enemy lines for their gameplan to start going downhill quickly.
thanatos67 wrote: I'm hoping he put the commander in with the HRR broadsides, they have a really good shot at taking a barge a turn with tl and tank hunter, and he doesnt really need the commanders buffs elsewhere since most of the rest of his shooting will probably be going after wraiths.
EDIT: Also I think you have a decent shot at winning, the combination of a good counter-deployment on your part and his lack of mobile scoring will probably give you a slight advantage.
His commander actually jumps around from unit to unit. That is actually a sign of a very experienced Tau player. Don't just pigeonhole your commander into a certain role or unit. Move him to where he's needed. The name of the game is tactical flexibility.
Ah yeah I tend to jump my characters around mid to late game. The look on someones face when you deepstrike a single crisis suit next to ovesa and make a scoring riptide unit is...hilarious. I was more calling that out as one of his best shots to down barges early, which you totally denied him anyway so moot point.
Also holy crap his shooting is downing your wraiths fast. I know why you deployed like you did given the mission, but I feel like having the barges there could have let you do a little more threat overloading. Well thats a give and take, especially in big guns.
Zagman wrote: This is getting interesting. Using the the Wraiths to hold the table till your scoring units arrive is ballsy, costs him two turns of shooting but decimates your assault elements without reducing his firepower. We'll see if he can contest those objectives and if you are able to deal enough damage in 3-4 turns of shooting. I don't doubt you can take out his scoring and hopefully his Skyray on entry, but I don't see you dropping those Riptides without your Wraiths.
I see the objectives being contested, Taudar winning Purge, First Blood, Slay the Warlord, and you both having Linebreaker for a well fought Taudar victory.
Looking forward to the rest of the Batrep.
Well done Jy2, I didn't expect his Interceptor to do so poorly against your ABs and you to pull ahead on VPs, guess your ResOrb really helped you there.
I was right about objectives, though it wasn't the Riptides that did it, and wrong about VPs.
Congrats jy2, well foughts. Night Scythes are really pretty ridiculous.
The more I think about it the more it dawns on me that the ability to choose first or 2nd, i.e. going 2nd wins quite a few games, with late game scoreing normally surviving 2nd turn allows alot of game wins.
The other major issue is tournoments and game length.
I feel one of the biggest factors is the not so uncommon problem of games having a set amount of turns in tournoments because of time and the 2nd player has no risk they just win.
The random game length is an important aspect to having a fair game, put your 3 jetbikes or 5 warriors on the objective and if there is a turn 6 watch them be blasted off the face of the earth. Put them on when you know there wont be another turn and yay game won nothing can be done.
The random game length mechanic negates the inherent unfairness of getting to go last in an objective game.
Kind of wondering what your views on this are, it doesn't help that two major armies with eldar and necrons have the ability to hide scoring units anywhere on the board and capture the last turn.
While I think you would probably still have won due to your great move of reserving as much as possible, it looks like some pretty suspect target priorities on his side. He's shooting his skyray at your wraiths with a table full of flyers and skimmers for example.
I wonder, how much time did they give you? It seems strange to only be able to go to turn 4. Was the tournament set up originally for lower point games and they forgot to adjust the time when they decided to go to 2250?
I do think the Taudar list is an example of why you need an ethereal and screening kroot rather than just raw fire power. But not to take anything away from your win, impressive play
Wow nicely played. And I agree with djin, I think the best tau lists utilize a commander, an ethereal, and screening kroot/FW.
With that said, I did not expect you to do THAT good against the tau list and you played it quite well. Reserving your anni barges with the reroll reserve warlord trait and second turn looks quite brilliant now ;p although It makes total sense now when I think about it haha. You come on gaining jink, and can come on anywhere on your board edge. Thus keeping them safer and allowing you to counter deploy to his movement. Although if you had failed to get a lot of it on i think it would have been a near auto loss at that point z
The more I think about it the more it dawns on me that the ability to choose first or 2nd, i.e. going 2nd wins quite a few games, with late game scoreing normally surviving 2nd turn allows alot of game wins.
The other major issue is tournoments and game length.
I feel one of the biggest factors is the not so uncommon problem of games having a set amount of turns in tournoments because of time and the 2nd player has no risk they just win.
The random game length is an important aspect to having a fair game, put your 3 jetbikes or 5 warriors on the objective and if there is a turn 6 watch them be blasted off the face of the earth. Put them on when you know there wont be another turn and yay game won nothing can be done.
The random game length mechanic negates the inherent unfairness of getting to go last in an objective game.
Kind of wondering what your views on this are, it doesn't help that two major armies with eldar and necrons have the ability to hide scoring units anywhere on the board and capture the last turn.
Tarrasq wrote: I wonder, how much time did they give you? It seems strange to only be able to go to turn 4. Was the tournament set up originally for lower point games and they forgot to adjust the time when they decided to go to 2250?
Anyway, well done Jy2!
I believe we had 2:45 for each game, with lunch and 15-min breaks between the games.
The way I look at it is this. Playing in a tournament is a lot like being given a project from a customer with a firm deadline in a team environment. Now it might not be fair that your team is only given 2 days to complete a project that normally takes 3-days, but by accepting the project, you and your team are agreeing to the terms and the deadline for the project. Likewise with the tournament. By participating in the tournament, you and your opponent are agreeing to work within the framework of the tournament rules. There is no crying over spilled milk or not getting enough time to finish the game. You and your opponent need to manage your time in order to reach a conclusion, even if that conclusion isn't a natural one. Just like when working on the project for the client, you have to work with and sometimes motivate your teammate to finish his part. Likewise in the tournament. It is both player's responsibility to do what they can and to the best of their abilities in order to try to finish the game. Unfortunately, that sometimes include "reminding" your opponent of the time in the tournament.
With that said, I didn't feel that there was any slow-playing in our final game. I think both of us played to the best of our ability. It's just that Tau naturally takes a while to play. There are just so many extra steps when playing Tau that many other armies don't have. Casting psychic powers, checking for Nova-charge, proper positioning of your units, moving in the assault phase, Overwatch with multiple units (supporting fire), shooting in the opponent's turn a la Interceptor fire, etc. - these are all additional things you need to allocate time and resources for in a Tau army in addition to the normal Movement phase, an extremely long Shooting phase and any assaults in the Assault phase. With normal games - 1500-1750 pts at around 2:15 - it's already slow enough. Now add another 500-750 pts of Tau with a minimal time increasing and the game starts to get really tight.
Sure there are pitfalls to playing high points games with time limits. You are going to have to adjust your expectations in such a case, especially if you are playing against armies like Tau, Tyranids, Daemons and horde armies. Moreover, a lot of these types of games favor the army with the more mobile scoring units, especially if they are going 2nd. Yeah, it's somewhat of an unfair advantage for armies like necrons and eldar, but that is no one's fault but the designers.
Yeah sorry didn't go through wording very carefully didn't mean to say fair, meant competative.
I totally agree that if your enter a tournoment with timed rounds, you better be prepared for your games to end on a known turn.
But I believe that gives a huge boost to certain armies. I doubt you would deny that it would be more competative if random game length was allowed to happen as 5 man warrior and 3 man jetbike squads normally don't survive if targeted by a round of shooting in close games.
I would also argue that the game was designed around that philosophy of random game length and that while its a know factor in tournoments that you may or may not have a random game length in a close game (normally if there is a random game length the game was 1 sided to begin with), but that the tournament scene has done little if anything to address this.
BAO and other tournoment rulesets do alot to balance the book missions but I feel like with tau, eldar, taking longer to play you now have a situtation where tournoments may have to institute either longer game times, or find a way that compensates the person going 1st more due to the non random game length.
tiber55 wrote: Yeah sorry didn't go through wording very carefully didn't mean to say fair, meant competative.
I totally agree that if your enter a tournoment with timed rounds, you better be prepared for your games to end on a known turn.
But I believe that gives a huge boost to certain armies. I doubt you would deny that it would be more competative if random game length was allowed to happen as 5 man warrior and 3 man jetbike squads normally don't survive if targeted by a round of shooting in close games.
I would also argue that the game was designed around that philosophy of random game length and that while its a know factor in tournoments that you may or may not have a random game length in a close game (normally if there is a random game length the game was 1 sided to begin with), but that the tournament scene has done little if anything to address this.
BAO and other tournoment rulesets do alot to balance the book missions but I feel like with tau, eldar, taking longer to play you now have a situtation where tournoments may have to institute either longer game times, or find a way that compensates the person going 1st more due to the non random game length.
Chess clock*
I understand Tau, Daemons, etc take longer to play. Learn how to play them faster or don't bring them to a tournament. I use Daemons in tournaments a lot, and I use flash cards to roll through my powers. I'm never the issue with games not finishing on time.
*people object to this because of your opponent's rolls on your turn. Simple solution, pause it for his part of your turn, TO adjusts the overall turn time limit with that in mind.
That's why tournament play is more about time management and rule lawyering and less about strategy. I mean no implication to those who like tournament play when I say this. People can be very skilled at both environments, but I personally think competitive 40k is a bit of a joke concept at tournaments when it's so easy to game the current system. Currently the game is revolved around twin linking, rerolling 2++ saves and last turn objective grabs when you know you have last word. I really do think it would have been better had you gained VP for time spent on an objective rather then who has last word ie. 1 vp per turn claimed. But thats another discussion :/
Looks like I called it to a 'T'. I agree that Israels target priority was a bit off, but it also appears he had two turns of some terribly cold dice that weren't helping him at all. Either way, you played a great game, Jim. Congrats.
"Time managment," we'll call it, is a serious problem these days in tourney play, unfortunately. It's definitely something that needs to be addressed. I'll leave it at that. There are entire threads dedicated to discussing it elsewhere on Dakka.
Red Corsair wrote: That's why tournament play is more about time management and rule lawyering and less about strategy. I mean no implication to those who like tournament play when I say this. People can be very skilled at both environments, but I personally think competitive 40k is a bit of a joke concept at tournaments when it's so easy to game the current system. Currently the game is revolved around twin linking, rerolling 2++ saves and last turn objective grabs when you know you have last word. I really do think it would have been better had you gained VP for time spent on an objective rather then who has last word ie. 1 vp per turn claimed. But thats another discussion :/
That's why in the rules they have rules for objectives giving special bonuses so there is a point in holding them. Tournaments the way they are set up don't take advantage of these rules and thus there is no point in holding an objective till the end(the objectives tend to be in the open, exposed and rarely have tactical value to be there prematurely). Plus there is the random game length which really changes the way the game is played since a last turn objective grab isn't necessarily a last turn objective grab. I mean if the objective has a chance to give you skyfire or re-roll 1s to hit then there is some value to go and control that objective. The random game length also helps to mitigate the huge advantage 2nd turn gives you which has been stated, second turn lets you see your opponents deployment and gets the last jump on an objective with a minimum sized unit(which would get vaporized if the game were to go another turn since it doesn't have any staying power). So armies with very fast cheap scoring units do very well in a tournament setting since scoring units serve no other purpose but late game objective grabbers, and the codexes with durable more expensive or slower troops aren't competitive, now this could very well change if the huge advantage of a late game objective grab had some risk and if actually holding an objective mid game served some purpose(like giving skyfire or re-rolling 1s to hit or giving cover in the open) then some more armies/codexes might become viable in the tournament scene. But it is what it is, tournaments are slowly adopting to the way 6th is supposed to be played, there not there yet but as time goes on they seem to be slowly accepting more changes(now whether or not they'll completely accept 6th before 7th is out is another story).
But that's not really what this thread is about.
That was a very impressive victory over a tough opponent jy2, glad to see your gambit paid off. Thought you might have been in a little trouble with your wraiths/lords dying in droves to start, but even I(as a necron player) under estimated just how much damage that many tesla destructors could do in a short amount of time. Your opponent seemed to make a few mistakes in the heat of the moment(like assaulting your wraiths/lord with his riptide wtf) but I think you were heavily favoured by the time he made any errors due to you completely out maneuvering him. And I gotta say, I'm usually heavily in favour of more bodies over a Res.orb but your reports keep showing the orb doing work and I may have to edit some of my lists to include one or two. Great reports I enjoy reading them as always and always enjoy reading about necron victories.
Nicely done. Personally, I dig games vs. Tau, specifically the phase where their barely contained glee is replaced with extreme frustration at the fact that their shooting is about to stop. Forever. Because chainswords.
Punisher wrote: That's why in the rules they have rules for objectives giving special bonuses so there is a point in holding them.
And a lot of them make sense for a melee oriented army? Objectives, like the flying rules ("whaddya mean your DP hides behind a tree, it is flying??"), their implementation is severely lacking.
hippesthippo wrote: Shadowsun's infiltrate works great in that list as it allows you to counter-deploy with a strong shooty element when going first (and Tau does like going first). In fact, Israel should have prolly done that here to counter your refused flank. That cover buff is also really useful for keeping pricey suits safe from low-ap weaponry.
As I said before, Wraiths die, resilient Barges wreck havoc on his lines, Lords proceed to Res Orb back to life and clear the path for your Warriors to claim victory.
You have a LOT of practice under your belt versus Riptide heavy lists, and I'm not sure how practiced Israel is against your army, so I expect you to win. You've started out strong with your Warlord trait allowing you to (correctly) reserve your Barges and deploy in a manner to avoid punishment. Even better, it's Vanguard Strike, so your Barges will have no problem moving on 6-12in, getting easily within range. Against shooty-heavy armies I always roll on Strategic as I like to hang back until my reserves come on so I can strike at once and overload my opponent. Particularly against Tau, it only takes one unit behind enemy lines for their gameplan to start going downhill quickly.
I'm not sure how much experience he has against necrons, but he definitely has never played against an army like mine. Some of the stuff I did kind of surprised in, and I'm not talking about just my tactics. For example, he was surprised to find out that my D-lord gave my entire unit of wraiths Prefered Enemy.
Ah yeah I tend to jump my characters around mid to late game. The look on someones face when you deepstrike a single crisis suit next to ovesa and make a scoring riptide unit is...hilarious. I was more calling that out as one of his best shots to down barges early, which you totally denied him anyway so moot point.
Also holy crap his shooting is downing your wraiths fast. I know why you deployed like you did given the mission, but I feel like having the barges there could have let you do a little more threat overloading. Well thats a give and take, especially in big guns.
Yeah, sometimes I wonder how the game would have turned out had I deployed my barges. I'd definitely lose more of them, that I'm pretty sure of.
Shandara wrote: Seems you used up all your good ResOrb rolls the last game!
Nope....seems like I still have 1 or 2 more tricks up my sleeves.
Well done Jy2, I didn't expect his Interceptor to do so poorly against your ABs and you to pull ahead on VPs, guess your ResOrb really helped you there.
I was right about objectives, though it wasn't the Riptides that did it, and wrong about VPs.
Congrats jy2, well foughts. Night Scythes are really pretty ridiculous.
Thanks. Yeah, honestly, S8/9 vs AV13 with 5+....I wasn't expecting to lose too much. Maybe 1 dead barge at most. Then again, 1 dead barge could be a difference maker.
Yeah, night scythes need a slight nerf next edition. I'd say it'll be fair if they made embarking/disembarking limited to moving 18" only. But until then, we necron players are going to take advantage of it to the max.
Lucarikx wrote: Holy moly! Solid performance for the Necrons.
I don't understand why Shadowsun was in the list though. A unit of Sniper Kroot would have been better (and cheaper) for Linebreaker/Outflank imo.
Well done, jy2!
Lucarikx
I don't know. Personally, I'd dump her for an Ethereal and other stuff (like kroots and more pathfinders or maybe one of those fancy, smancy Tau flyers).
Stoffer wrote: While I think you would probably still have won due to your great move of reserving as much as possible, it looks like some pretty suspect target priorities on his side. He's shooting his skyray at your wraiths with a table full of flyers and skimmers for example.
Anyway, good win
Yeah, that's the old tactic of focus-until-they-die. Since all of his units fired their main guns with interceptor, he actually didn't have a whole lot of firepower left to dump into my wraithstar. At that point, his main concern/focus was to try to take out my most dangerous unit. If he hadn't fired his skyray into my wraithstar, I'd probably kill his last unit of broadsides + Warlord as well and then probably assaulted his unit of firewarriors on his objective.
I felt he made the right play.
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djones520 wrote: Yeah, time issues seem weird, the first round should have just flown by since you only had a portion of your army on the table.
My initial turn was very fast. Actually, most of my turns went by rather quickly. It was the Tau turns that took a while. All those guns shooting and then all the saves and Look-Out-Sirs I had to make, not to mention all the other Tau mechanics in the game....that's what took a while.
I do think the Taudar list is an example of why you need an ethereal and screening kroot rather than just raw fire power. But not to take anything away from your win, impressive play
Chancetragedy wrote: Wow nicely played. And I agree with djin, I think the best tau lists utilize a commander, an ethereal, and screening kroot/FW.
With that said, I did not expect you to do THAT good against the tau list and you played it quite well. Reserving your anni barges with the reroll reserve warlord trait and second turn looks quite brilliant now ;p although It makes total sense now when I think about it haha. You come on gaining jink, and can come on anywhere on your board edge. Thus keeping them safer and allowing you to counter deploy to his movement. Although if you had failed to get a lot of it on i think it would have been a near auto loss at that point z
While I don't think an Ethereal is absolutely necessary if you are playing mobile Tau, personally, I am a big fan of hybrid Tau, with mobile elements and an Ethereal-based pulse-bomb build as its core. For this build, you will need Eldar and some jetbike troops for some mobile scoring.
I was banking on my beta-strike with my reserves. I'm glad it went the way I wanted it to, though honestly, if even 1 or 2 less came in, I still would have wiped out his broadsides, though his riptide would have been less wounded. It took about 5 AB's to wipe out his broadsides.
Dozer Blades wrote: This was an awesomely played game. Fast melee centric armies that can absorb a lot of punishment are top tier.
Agreed. Unfortunately, right now, I only see 2 armies like that - necrons and chaos daemons. Of the 2, necrons are the more reliable one, though daemons are the one that is more likely to overwhelm, especially if they are getting fast multi-wound assault units with 2++ saves. I actually feel that daemons are potentially the toughest matchup for Tau currently.
I think Nurgle CSM with Nurgle allied daemons is just as strong as Necrons and pure daemons. CSM brings stability and they have Nurgle based units that are really good - for instance Plague Marines are so underrated. You've also got the Spawn (I'm actually not a big fan but respect what they can do). Of course there is the Heldrake which is obvious. Necrons are the best, pure daemons can be unreliable... I'd put CSM with allied daemons between the two. I am also a big fan of Nurgle bikers with characters... They are so cheap for the points now. Just my 2c. : )
tiber55 wrote: Yeah sorry didn't go through wording very carefully didn't mean to say fair, meant competative.
I totally agree that if your enter a tournoment with timed rounds, you better be prepared for your games to end on a known turn.
But I believe that gives a huge boost to certain armies. I doubt you would deny that it would be more competative if random game length was allowed to happen as 5 man warrior and 3 man jetbike squads normally don't survive if targeted by a round of shooting in close games.
I would also argue that the game was designed around that philosophy of random game length and that while its a know factor in tournoments that you may or may not have a random game length in a close game (normally if there is a random game length the game was 1 sided to begin with), but that the tournament scene has done little if anything to address this.
BAO and other tournoment rulesets do alot to balance the book missions but I feel like with tau, eldar, taking longer to play you now have a situtation where tournoments may have to institute either longer game times, or find a way that compensates the person going 1st more due to the non random game length.
Yeah, when time is a factor, armies with fast scoring units (whom I refer to as mobile scoring) definitely have an advantage. That's why necrons and eldar are top-tier in tournament play IMO. They do have the unfair advantage of super-fast troops and usually, time works in their favor, especially if they are going 2nd. As for fairness in a tournament, it is what it is - and that is a gaming system that is inherently unbalanced. And although we can strive for fairness, the truth is, we will always fall short....by a mile. Some armies are just innately better than others in certain facets of the game.
Adding time to a tournament will help, but sometimes, it is not entirely feasible, especially if the tournament is trying to cram 4 games into 1 day. But it's good that 5+ game GT's are now splitting their tournaments into 2-day events and that some are giving more time to their game. Of course that doesn't factor in the speed of your opponent or his army. Sometimes adding more time may still not be enough if your opponent is unnaturally slow or his army unnaturally large, but it is a good starting point. The rest will have to rely on time management by you and your opponent.
Also, compensating the person going 1st is not a solution either. There are advantages to going first, especially in VP missions or the Relic. Moreover, certain armies like Tau, IG, DE or shooty MSU have the ability to cripple the opponent with a 1st turn alpha-strike that gives them an unfair advantage and then on top of that, they get "compensated" for going 1st? That is the flip side of the coin and is just as bad as an army like necrons or eldar going 2nd in an objectives-based mission. I'm more for adding time over this option.
I understand Tau, Daemons, etc take longer to play. Learn how to play them faster or don't bring them to a tournament. I use Daemons in tournaments a lot, and I use flash cards to roll through my powers. I'm never the issue with games not finishing on time.
*people object to this because of your opponent's rolls on your turn. Simple solution, pause it for his part of your turn, TO adjusts the overall turn time limit with that in mind.
IMO, this is another bad idea. First, you have people complain about not finishing the game. Start to introduce "clocks" and now you are going to have people complain about not even finishing their turns! This is going to punish certain armies more and discourage variety in tournament play. You want the game to come to a natural conclusion? How is it natural when one player doesn't even get to finish his shooting or his assaults and the game is called? "Hey, all I needed to do was to shoot your 1 guy off of the objective and I win, but no...I don't get to finish my last unit shooting?!?" No, this is going to make the game worse off IMO.
Red Corsair wrote: That's why tournament play is more about time management and rule lawyering and less about strategy. I mean no implication to those who like tournament play when I say this. People can be very skilled at both environments, but I personally think competitive 40k is a bit of a joke concept at tournaments when it's so easy to game the current system. Currently the game is revolved around twin linking, rerolling 2++ saves and last turn objective grabs when you know you have last word. I really do think it would have been better had you gained VP for time spent on an objective rather then who has last word ie. 1 vp per turn claimed. But thats another discussion :/
That's an interesting idea, but unfortunately, accumulating objective points isn't an ideal solution either. That will mainly benefit the armies with the more resilient scoring units - armies like Draigowing, 30-ork boy mobs, blob squads, Typhus zombies and other unshiftable units.
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calypso2ts wrote: Good report - sometimes hot dice take over a game, but at the same time you positioned yourself to take advantage of the circumstance.
Did the riptide fail on its reroll for the armour penetration on the barge as well? That is some bad dice then.
Doh! I completely forgot about that rule until you just mentioned it on this thread. Obviously, so did my opponent.
hippesthippo wrote: Looks like I called it to a 'T'. I agree that Israels target priority was a bit off, but it also appears he had two turns of some terribly cold dice that weren't helping him at all. Either way, you played a great game, Jim. Congrats.
"Time managment," we'll call it, is a serious problem these days in tourney play, unfortunately. It's definitely something that needs to be addressed. I'll leave it at that. There are entire threads dedicated to discussing it elsewhere on Dakka.
Good call!
But there is one who called it even better.....
Xaereth wrote: As to predictions - I will be surprised if you lose to any of these lists. The first opponent has a bunch of S8 stuff that would mess with Wraiths, but almost nothing to help deal with 5 ABs and your fliers. In contrast, your ABs will butcher his Venoms and their contents, while the Wraiths chew through his WK . Beast squad w/ Fortune is the one difficulty I see - they'll be the reason Game 1 stays close.
Your game 2 will need to be a route - his deathstar loses vs. your 3 mini-stars, and ABs are made to kill Boyz, as are Wraiths and Scythes.
Game 3 also seems easy enough for you - his Broadsides don't quite have the ability to shoot your Wraiths down before they get to you, and the Riptides may or may not take chunks out of your Wraiths, but not fast enough. I really don't think his list will be a match for yours. Not enough balance, IMO - lots of shooting, but nothing to truly counter loads of fast resilient close combat threats.
I predict your biggest difficulty will be with Game 1, though you'll still get a minor win there, and major wins on the next two.
So say we all
Bingo! Give that man a cigar!
Xaereth, you, sir, are a true gentleman and a prophet.
That's why in the rules they have rules for objectives giving special bonuses so there is a point in holding them. Tournaments the way they are set up don't take advantage of these rules and thus there is no point in holding an objective till the end(the objectives tend to be in the open, exposed and rarely have tactical value to be there prematurely). Plus there is the random game length which really changes the way the game is played since a last turn objective grab isn't necessarily a last turn objective grab. I mean if the objective has a chance to give you skyfire or re-roll 1s to hit then there is some value to go and control that objective. The random game length also helps to mitigate the huge advantage 2nd turn gives you which has been stated, second turn lets you see your opponents deployment and gets the last jump on an objective with a minimum sized unit(which would get vaporized if the game were to go another turn since it doesn't have any staying power). So armies with very fast cheap scoring units do very well in a tournament setting since scoring units serve no other purpose but late game objective grabbers, and the codexes with durable more expensive or slower troops aren't competitive, now this could very well change if the huge advantage of a late game objective grab had some risk and if actually holding an objective mid game served some purpose(like giving skyfire or re-rolling 1s to hit or giving cover in the open) then some more armies/codexes might become viable in the tournament scene. But it is what it is, tournaments are slowly adopting to the way 6th is supposed to be played, there not there yet but as time goes on they seem to be slowly accepting more changes(now whether or not they'll completely accept 6th before 7th is out is another story).
But that's not really what this thread is about.
That was a very impressive victory over a tough opponent jy2, glad to see your gambit paid off. Thought you might have been in a little trouble with your wraiths/lords dying in droves to start, but even I(as a necron player) under estimated just how much damage that many tesla destructors could do in a short amount of time. Your opponent seemed to make a few mistakes in the heat of the moment(like assaulting your wraiths/lord with his riptide wtf) but I think you were heavily favoured by the time he made any errors due to you completely out maneuvering him. And I gotta say, I'm usually heavily in favour of more bodies over a Res.orb but your reports keep showing the orb doing work and I may have to edit some of my lists to include one or two. Great reports I enjoy reading them as always and always enjoy reading about necron victories.
So far, that's happened in almost all my games against Tau....my wraiths would just die in droves. Then again, I've only played against Tau with my crons 2-3 times in 6E. I see them more as a delivery vehicle for my D-lords. Hopefully, 1 or 2 will survive and then my D-lord and wraiths split up just before they assault. Normally, wraiths would charge in first and eat supporting fire Overwatch and then my D-lord would charge in afterwards. In this case, the ResOrbs really come in useful to keep the pressure up against the Tau. If my D-lord gets back up, it's another "free" threat that I get and that my opponent has to deal with, thus keeping his guns away from my shooters and thus giving me more time to shoot. With enough guns, my shooting can do just as much if not even more damage than my wraiths in certain cases. And in double-FOC, I do have the firepower to whittle down 2+ models.
With regards to the assault, he was trying to pin down my wraithstar with both his riptide and broadsides. I believe he gave his riptide the 3++ and he did cast Forewarning on his broadsides for the 2+/4++. However, it just turned out that he made his more difficult assault (the riptide through area terrain) but failed his easier assault (broasides). With those buffs, those 2 units could have made for a decent tarpit.
Definitely get the ResOrb for your Warlord at the very least. It is definitely worth it when he comes back. In this game, it's like I got 380-pts of units for free (ok, -30pts for the ResOrb). I'm telling you, in many cases, you will find that your Warlord coming back to be a game-changer.
SBG wrote: Nicely done. Personally, I dig games vs. Tau, specifically the phase where their barely contained glee is replaced with extreme frustration at the fact that their shooting is about to stop. Forever. Because chainswords.
Lol. So true. My opponent was beaming with confidence before my Turn 2. After my Turn 2, it was like night and day how his demeanor changed.
Dozer Blades wrote: I think Nurgle CSM with Nurgle allied daemons is just as strong as Necrons and pure daemons. CSM brings stability and they have Nurgle based units that are really good - for instance Plague Marines are so underrated. You've also got the Spawn (I'm actually not a big fan but respect what they can do). Of course there is the Heldrake which is obvious. Necrons are the best, pure daemons can be unreliable... I'd put CSM with allied daemons between the two. I am also a big fan of Nurgle bikers with characters... They are so cheap for the points now. Just my 2c. : )
CSM, especially when combined with daemons. is very good, though IMO they are not quite as good as Necrons. I say that because I run CSM+Daemons as well and I think the matchup favors the crons. I've also played against Janthkin's CSM+Daemons. Although he's won 2 tournaments with them (including Animecon GT), he has had trouble against my armies. As a matter of fact, my wraithwing necrons crushed his army. Then again, he ran Slaanesh. Nurgle will probably fare better against necrons, though their lack of mobility is cause for concern.
Ironically, I've had trouble against CSM in the few tournaments that I've played against them.
I understand Tau, Daemons, etc take longer to play. Learn how to play them faster or don't bring them to a tournament. I use Daemons in tournaments a lot, and I use flash cards to roll through my powers. I'm never the issue with games not finishing on time.
*people object to this because of your opponent's rolls on your turn. Simple solution, pause it for his part of your turn, TO adjusts the overall turn time limit with that in mind.
IMO, this is another bad idea. First, you have people complain about not finishing the game. Start to introduce "clocks" and now you are going to have people complain about not even finishing their turns! This is going to punish certain armies more and discourage variety in tournament play. You want the game to come to a natural conclusion? How is it natural when one player doesn't even get to finish his shooting or his assaults and the game is called? "Hey, all I needed to do was to shoot your 1 guy off of the objective and I win, but no...I don't get to finish my last unit shooting?!?" No, this is going to make the game worse off IMO.
JY2, I respectively disagree.
First, I don't think it punishes certain armies (or at least not more than it already does), but it will punish certain players. I've met plenty of guys who can play Green Tide/Blob Guard/etc in tournament time limits. It just takes practice and creativity (pre counted dice blocks are a big one, as is easy visual markings to break squads). If you aren't willing to practice and or be creative with your Army, you shouldn't play it in a tournament.
But even if I accept the that the chess clock system would punish certain armies, the current system punishes the opponents of those armies, which is far worse. Let's say you have 150 minutes for a game and Player A takes up 100 minutes and Player B takes up 50. Then the game ends on turn 4 because they run out of time. Player B loses turns because of Player A; that's ridiculous. Player A should be punished for his own long play (not slow play, because I'm assuming it is not on purpose), Player B should not suffer because his opponent cannot play his army fast enough. If you go to a chess clock system, the only person who suffers for his own long play is Player A; Player B still gets to play his turns.
Obviously the real solution is longer game time, because 2.5 hours is not ideal for a game of 40k, but if logistics make 2.5 (or 3 or 2) hours the length of time, only the slow player should be punished for his long play. We should not have to accept 3 and 4 (or even rush ended 5) turn games, because 40k is not a 3 or 4 turn game, it's a variable length game. Anything that changes the fundamental nature of the game is bad, and a locked time limit that punishes both players is very bad indeed.
First, I don't think it punishes certain armies (or at least not more than it already does), but it will punish certain players. I've met plenty of guys who can play Green Tide/Blob Guard/etc in tournament time limits. It just takes practice and creativity (pre counted dice blocks are a big one, as is easy visual markings to break squads). If you aren't willing to practice and or be creative with your Army, you shouldn't play it in a tournament.
But even if I accept the that the chess clock system would punish certain armies, the current system punishes the opponents of those armies, which is far worse. Let's say you have 150 minutes for a game and Player A takes up 100 minutes and Player B takes up 50. Then the game ends on turn 4 because they run out of time. Player B loses turns because of Player A; that's ridiculous. Player A should be punished for his own long play (not slow play, because I'm assuming it is not on purpose), Player B should not suffer because his opponent cannot play his army fast enough. If you go to a chess clock system, the only person who suffers for his own long play is Player A; Player B still gets to play his turns.
Obviously the real solution is longer game time, because 2.5 hours is not ideal for a game of 40k, but if logistics make 2.5 (or 3 or 2) hours the length of time, only the slow player should be punished for his long play. We should not have to accept 3 and 4 (or even rush ended 5) turn games, because 40k is not a 3 or 4 turn game, it's a variable length game. Anything that changes the fundamental nature of the game is bad, and a locked time limit that punishes both players is very bad indeed.
Here is why I do not advocate the idea of time clocks.
I get the fact that people want to do it to "punish" slow-playing. However, by doing so, you are also "punishing" those who aren't slow-playing, but who's army are just slower to play. Certain armies like tyranids, tau, IG, some chaos, some eldar and MSU armies are just slower by nature due to the extra "mechanics" inherent to those armies. And I am not talking about extreme horde builds like 5-tervigon tyranids, 240-ork boys or multiple IG-blobs. I am talking about the standard tournament builds for these types of armies.
So you (I mean the generic "you" as in you people) say, "learn to play faster". IMO, that is not a realistic expectation. The majority of tournament goers aren't really competitive. Rather, they are casual players who just want to get more games in. They are also not really savvy players and take slightly longer to play. In reality, probably only 25% of the players at most at tournaments are the more competitive players. They are also the ones who know how to play faster (and who also knows how to better game the system). Implementing a clock system IMO more often than not will punish the more casual players, who are not intentionally slow-playing. Rather, they are just not as familiar with the rules, their armies or strategy in general. So in actuality, what you end up doing is in punishing the majority when the people who actually needs to be punished (intentional slow-playing or ridiculously huge armies) is just a small minority.
This has the side-effect of discouraging players from participating in tournaments. People most affected by the implementation of the clock will be the majority of casual players with the "slower" armies and newer players. Implementing a clock system also adds more pressure to some people, which definitely increases their chances of having a "bad" experience and then not going back to tournaments. What we DON'T need and what tournaments CAN'T afford to do is to alienate/discourage people from participating in tournaments. Tournaments cannot survive on low attendance. The more people we exclude from tournament play, the more we run the risk of the tournament dying.
Now I don't have a solution for slow-playing, other than to pay attention to the time. Adding more time to rounds definitely helps, but it is mainly up to the players to keep track of time. If you feel that your opponent is taking too long, politely "encourage" to pick up the pace. If he doesn't improve or even listen, then you've got no choice but to bring it to the attention of the TO. Personally, I even help out my opponent, especially if he has a larger army. If he is rolling a lot of dice, I offer to help and I help him pick out his misses (or hits depending on how he picks them). If he doesn't mind as well, I even help him to move his models if he has got a lot of models or if his models are on my side of the board and it is difficult for him to move them. Sometimes, when I am going 2nd, I even start deploying while he is deploying. I tell him this is not my final deployment and after he is done deploying, I am usually done as well. Then I look at his deployment and make any changes to my deployment that I want. There are many things you can do to help speed the game along but you have to learn to take the initiative and to be willing to "manage" your opponent's turn as well (to a degree) if he just isn't playing to your satisfaction time-wise.
First, I don't think it punishes certain armies (or at least not more than it already does), but it will punish certain players. I've met plenty of guys who can play Green Tide/Blob Guard/etc in tournament time limits. It just takes practice and creativity (pre counted dice blocks are a big one, as is easy visual markings to break squads). If you aren't willing to practice and or be creative with your Army, you shouldn't play it in a tournament.
But even if I accept the that the chess clock system would punish certain armies, the current system punishes the opponents of those armies, which is far worse. Let's say you have 150 minutes for a game and Player A takes up 100 minutes and Player B takes up 50. Then the game ends on turn 4 because they run out of time. Player B loses turns because of Player A; that's ridiculous. Player A should be punished for his own long play (not slow play, because I'm assuming it is not on purpose), Player B should not suffer because his opponent cannot play his army fast enough. If you go to a chess clock system, the only person who suffers for his own long play is Player A; Player B still gets to play his turns.
Obviously the real solution is longer game time, because 2.5 hours is not ideal for a game of 40k, but if logistics make 2.5 (or 3 or 2) hours the length of time, only the slow player should be punished for his long play. We should not have to accept 3 and 4 (or even rush ended 5) turn games, because 40k is not a 3 or 4 turn game, it's a variable length game. Anything that changes the fundamental nature of the game is bad, and a locked time limit that punishes both players is very bad indeed.
Here is why I do not advocate the idea of time clocks.
I get the fact that people want to do it to "punish" slow-playing. However, by doing so, you are also "punishing" those who aren't slow-playing, but who's army are just slower to play. Certain armies like tyranids, tau, IG, some chaos, some eldar and MSU armies are just slower by nature due to the extra "mechanics" inherent to those armies. And I am not talking about extreme horde builds like 5-tervigon tyranids, 240-ork boys or multiple IG-blobs. I am talking about the standard tournament builds for these types of armies.
So you (I mean the generic "you" as in you people) say, "learn to play faster". IMO, that is not a realistic expectation. The majority of tournament goers aren't really competitive. Rather, they are casual players who just want to get more games in. They are also not really savvy players and take slightly longer to play. In reality, probably only 25% of the players at most at tournaments are the more competitive players. They are also the ones who know how to play faster (and who also knows how to better game the system). Implementing a clock system IMO more often than not will punish the more casual players, who are not intentionally slow-playing. Rather, they are just not as familiar with the rules, their armies or strategy in general. So in actuality, what you end up doing is in punishing the majority when the people who actually needs to be punished (intentional slow-playing or ridiculously huge armies) is just a small minority.
This has the side-effect of discouraging players from participating in tournaments. People most affected by the implementation of the clock will be the majority of casual players with the "slower" armies and newer players. Implementing a clock system also adds more pressure to some people, which definitely increases their chances of having a "bad" experience and then not going back to tournaments. What we DON'T need and what tournaments CAN'T afford to do is to alienate/discourage people from participating in tournaments. Tournaments cannot survive on low attendance. The more people we exclude from tournament play, the more we run the risk of the tournament dying.
Now I don't have a solution for slow-playing, other than to pay attention to the time. Adding more time to rounds definitely helps, but it is mainly up to the players to keep track of time. If you feel that your opponent is taking too long, politely "encourage" to pick up the pace. If he doesn't improve or even listen, then you've got no choice but to bring it to the attention of the TO. Personally, I even help out my opponent, especially if he has a larger army. If he is rolling a lot of dice, I offer to help and I help him pick out his misses (or hits depending on how he picks them). If he doesn't mind as well, I even help him to move his models if he has got a lot of models or if his models are on my side of the board and it is difficult for him to move them. Sometimes, when I am going 2nd, I even start deploying while he is deploying. I tell him this is not my final deployment and after he is done deploying, I am usually done as well. Then I look at his deployment and make any changes to my deployment that I want. There are many things you can do to help speed the game along but you have to learn to take the initiative and to be willing to "manage" your opponent's turn as well (to a degree) if he just isn't playing to your satisfaction time-wise.
I more or less agree with all your individual points, but still disagree with your overall point. Funny how life works sometimes, ha.
I think games ending in 4 turns is also a big turn off to newer players. So that's kind of a wash.
I also think it's a shame that many tournament games turn into "who can take advantage of a forced five minute turn faster," rather than an actual game of 40k. I also do many of the "proactive" moves to speed up the game you described, as well as the common "we will agree you have hidden that model out of sight on that level rather than you take five minutes looking at every angle" situation.
I think timed tournaments are inherently broken, and take a lot of the game away (European tournaments go with 4 hour games as standard, I believe). I don't necessarily think chess clocks are a perfect system, but it's something to try. Anyway, I don't want to derail your thread; and take away from your awesome batreps. So, agree to disagree I suppose.
On the other stream of thought going here, I actually think Necrons are a much harder match up for Daemons that Tau, especially if terrain is solid. (Eldar are the worst though). I find that a lot of the strength of Daemons are negated by Necron tools. Hounds own Wraiths, but need a ton of support to kill a D-Lord (I generally need Terrify and Enfeeble together to get through a Wraithstar with Hounds). ABs and NSs are great at shooting down FMCs and Hordes. MSS is a great counter to pimped out Daemon Princes. It seems like every Daemon strength is almost directly countered by Necrons, and what are normally easy choices become difficult (example: Invisibility versus Iron Arm is usually an easy call, but DPs need Invisibility to handle Tesla madness, but Iron Arm to step to a DLord; splits focus on pregame rolling)
I more or less agree with all your individual points, but still disagree with your overall point. Funny how life works sometimes, ha.
I think games ending in 4 turns is also a big turn off to newer players. So that's kind of a wash.
I also think it's a shame that many tournament games turn into "who can take advantage of a forced five minute turn faster," rather than an actual game of 40k. I also do many of the "proactive" moves to speed up the game you described, as well as the common "we will agree you have hidden that model out of sight on that level rather than you take five minutes looking at every angle" situation.
I think timed tournaments are inherently broken, and take a lot of the game away (European tournaments go with 4 hour games as standard, I believe). I don't necessarily think chess clocks are a perfect system, but it's something to try. Anyway, I don't want to derail your thread; and take away from your awesome batreps. So, agree to disagree I suppose.
On the other stream of thought going here, I actually think Necrons are a much harder match up for Daemons that Tau, especially if terrain is solid. (Eldar are the worst though). I find that a lot of the strength of Daemons are negated by Necron tools. Hounds own Wraiths, but need a ton of support to kill a D-Lord (I generally need Terrify and Enfeeble together to get through a Wraithstar with Hounds). ABs and NSs are great at shooting down FMCs and Hordes. MSS is a great counter to pimped out Daemon Princes. It seems like every Daemon strength is almost directly countered by Necrons, and what are normally easy choices become difficult (example: Invisibility versus Iron Arm is usually an easy call, but DPs need Invisibility to handle Tesla madness, but Iron Arm to step to a DLord; splits focus on pregame rolling)
No worries. Not everyone sees things the same. Unfortunately in tournaments, that's just the nature of the beast. People can and often will take advantage of time. If you go, you're just going to have to accept it (though you can try to do something about it). Introducing a "chess clock" does not solve anything really. Rather, it just shifts the problem to something else entirely. You maybe fix one problem, but now you've got another set of problems that you've got to deal with and that is a direct result of this "shift". Just like taking a math test. Yeah, it isn't fair that you've only got 1 hour to finish the test, but hey, you've got to do your best. Now imagine if they start putting in a time limit per question also. Just when you are about to solve the math equation, time expires and you get the question wrong even though you already arrived at the answer. That's not fair either.
As for Necrons vs Tau vs Daemons, I agree. Daemons are arguably the best counter army to Tau (though it is by no means an easy win for them). Likewise, Necrons matchup well against Daemons and Tyranids matchup well against both Necrons and Daemons (but have trouble against Tau). Welcome to the rock-paper-scissors world of 40K!
I caught a little break in Game #3. With all my forces coming in on Turn 2 and my opponent's shooting suddenly becoming impotent, I managed to turn the game around. I admit my strategy to deny my opponent his shooting and to reserve the majority of my army was risky, but in the end, it actually worked out great. Whenever I feel that I have a tough matchup where I may perhaps be the underdog, I tend to take risks in order to try to even the odds or to even gain an advantage. Just like in poker when you have a weaker hand than your opponent. Sometimes, you've just got to take a risk and try to bluff if you want to win that pot. However, usually the risks I take are calculated risks where the odds are on my side (as opposed to a hail-mary gamble where you are just praying for a miracle....but sometimes, I do that also. )
I felt my opponent was playing great initially. He was very aggressive. He was advancing rather than just hiding in his corner. He nova-charged the right things at the right time (i.e. getting ready for my Turn 2 reserves). He was using proper screening tactics. He tried to split up my wraiths (by outflanking Shadowsun on my side). He was moving his Commander from unit to unit to whereever he was needed (for example, on his Turn 2, he moved his Commander with his broadsides and gave them Tank Hunter in anticipation of my incoming reserves). I could tell from the way he played that he was very experienced with his army.
But then after Turn 2, I think that his frustration was starting to cloud his judgement. He made some questionable targeting choices. He assaulted when I felt he should have scrambled and/or braced for my inevitable assault. He didn't take into account my flight paths and he didn't protect his objectives well enough (though I suspect this may also have something to do with his inexperience against a Necron Air Force).
Overall, it was a great game. Frustration aside, Israel is a very nice person and a very good Tau general. We never played before, but after our game, he complimented me on what a great player I was (thanks!) and that he wanted a rematch. He also told me that this was the very first time that he had lost a VP game in 6th with his Tau, and he also apologized for being so frustrated in our game. That was a really classy thing for him to do and say. I'd be honored to play him again if our paths should cross in the future.
So because we had 36 players and there were only 3 rounds, the tournament ended with several people with 3-0 records.
Grant Theft Auto took 1st Overall with his bad-a$$ seer council with 3 domininating wins. Too bad we didn't get to play. I would've made his seer council "sit down." Lol! (Actually, I did play against his army, just not in the tournament.) I feel that his army is potentially one of the most dominating tournament armies currently. It has the potential to destroy the very competitive Tau and mechdar builds.
2nd Overall was an IG player. I really don't know much about the player or his army.
3rd Overall was the BAO 2013 winner, Lyzz Foster with her daemons. Lyzz and I both actually tied in Battle Points. But her nicely converted daemons and her higher Sportsmanship scores was the tie-breaker between us.
I was 4th Overall. I am more than happy with how I did. My goal here wasn't to be #1. Rather, I just wanted to get some games in against some good Tau/Eldar players and that's what I did. My only regret was that I didn't get to play against the Mechdar player, who was #2 in battle points but only in the Top10 for Overall. But it was either him or Israel and I chose Israel. I actually also wanted to play against Lyzz (who was also 2-0 and had a similar record to me after 2 games), but decided that I wanted to play against Israel's Tau even more.
Great tournament overall. I just may make a trip back to the final Contest of Champions (next time it will be 2500-pts) come November.
migsula wrote: Extremely well put together reports sir! Thanks for sharing.
Good to see the Necrons still got it!
Well done, well done, I never would have thought to go so heavy on reserves that way.
That was quite the gamble, but then again, the sweetest wins are when those gambles pay off!
As to predictions - I will be surprised if you lose to any of these lists. The first opponent has a bunch of S8 stuff that would mess with Wraiths, but almost nothing to help deal with 5 ABs and your fliers. In contrast, your ABs will butcher his Venoms and their contents, while the Wraiths chew through his WK . Beast squad w/ Fortune is the one difficulty I see - they'll be the reason Game 1 stays close.
Your game 2 will need to be a route - his deathstar loses vs. your 3 mini-stars, and ABs are made to kill Boyz, as are Wraiths and Scythes.
Game 3 also seems easy enough for you - his Broadsides don't quite have the ability to shoot your Wraiths down before they get to you, and the Riptides may or may not take chunks out of your Wraiths, but not fast enough. I really don't think his list will be a match for yours. Not enough balance, IMO - lots of shooting, but nothing to truly counter loads of fast resilient close combat threats.
I predict your biggest difficulty will be with Game 1, though you'll still get a minor win there, and major wins on the next two.
Good reports as well! I'm not sure what I think of you reserving your ABs in your final game - he didn't have much to deal with them at long range anyways, and the shots going into them would have left your Wraiths more alive. It worked out though, which is I suppose what truly matters in the end. It would be interesting to see what would have happened in that game had you actually deployed the ABs rather than reserve them .
iGuy91 wrote: Good to see the Necrons still got it!
Well done, well done, I never would have thought to go so heavy on reserves that way.
That was quite the gamble, but then again, the sweetest wins are when those gambles pay off!
I'm glad it worked out. Otherwise, all the pundits on the net would be going, "jy2, why the heck did you do that?!?...." Lol!
Xaereth wrote: First, wanted to point out that I predicted exactly what would happen. Let my well-earned pats on the head commence
As to predictions - I will be surprised if you lose to any of these lists. The first opponent has a bunch of S8 stuff that would mess with Wraiths, but almost nothing to help deal with 5 ABs and your fliers. In contrast, your ABs will butcher his Venoms and their contents, while the Wraiths chew through his WK . Beast squad w/ Fortune is the one difficulty I see - they'll be the reason Game 1 stays close.
Your game 2 will need to be a route - his deathstar loses vs. your 3 mini-stars, and ABs are made to kill Boyz, as are Wraiths and Scythes.
Game 3 also seems easy enough for you - his Broadsides don't quite have the ability to shoot your Wraiths down before they get to you, and the Riptides may or may not take chunks out of your Wraiths, but not fast enough. I really don't think his list will be a match for yours. Not enough balance, IMO - lots of shooting, but nothing to truly counter loads of fast resilient close combat threats.
I predict your biggest difficulty will be with Game 1, though you'll still get a minor win there, and major wins on the next two.
Good reports as well! I'm not sure what I think of you reserving your ABs in your final game - he didn't have much to deal with them at long range anyways, and the shots going into them would have left your Wraiths more alive. It worked out though, which is I suppose what truly matters in the end. It would be interesting to see what would have happened in that game had you actually deployed the ABs rather than reserve them .
Great predictions. You called it....
Yeah, sometimes I wonder what would have happened if I had deployed my barges. 2 main reasons why I didn't. First, I was trying to deny his left flank any targets. If I had deployed my barges, I would have given them targets to shoot at. Secondly, with all those barges, there will bound to be a couple that are clumped up for his ions to hit. Now how much actual damage he can do, probably not really that much, but keep in mind that this was Big Guns and every barge he kills not only diminishes my firepower, but also gives him bonus points. Thus, I thought it better to reserve my barges in a game of Denial.
Grant Theft Auto wrote: Nice job jy2 and excellent bat rep, next time you'll get your shot to take me down
Eh...maybe it's next time, YOU'LL get your shot to take me down. Haha....j.k. I think I'll save our necron-deldar matchup for the next and final Contest of Champions of the year.
In the meantime, I've still got our Draigowing-Seer Council deathstar-vs-deathstar batrep to work on.
BTW, for those who are interested in the trials and tribulations of Grant's ultra-tough and super-nasty deer council, you can check out his experiences with them on his blog - The Road to the Las Vegas Open:
Zaroff85 wrote: Did you see any tyranid players there and if so how well did they do? Just curious I am a huge nid player and I want to know how the bugs are doing?
Zaroff85
Tyranids
Slightly below average in this tourney. There were 3 tyranid players out of 36 participants. They average about 21st with the highest ranking tyranid player at 15th. Surprisingly, 2 of the tyranid armies I saw weren't running any flyrants at all.
The flyrants are extremely weak right now with all the mass small arms fire and skyfire weapons. they almost always die before I get to even use them and on top of that they are expensive. My friend was the gold bug player there and he was in a position to place 3rd or 4th if he won his last battle. But 6 wave serpants and 2 wraith knights are ridiculous right now
Zaroff85 wrote: The flyrants are extremely weak right now with all the mass small arms fire and skyfire weapons. they almost always die before I get to even use them and on top of that they are expensive. My friend was the gold bug player there and he was in a position to place 3rd or 4th if he won his last battle. But 6 wave serpants and 2 wraith knights are ridiculous right now
Zaroff85
Tyranids
With all the shooting nowadays, the flyrant has really become a finesse unit. You really have to play it with care in order to get the most out of him.
BTW, I did wanted to play against Mike (the mechdar player). I felt that not only could I take his list, but I could actually destroy it. However, I had wanted to play against Israel's Tau even more.
I often see posts that go something like "My Flyrant keeps dying, Flyrants suck and everyone who uses them are noobs", it seems people are under the impression that a Flyrant is supposed to be some sort of unstoppable monster of destruction that is perfectly capable of being out in the open in range of your opponent's entire army and surviving. Tyranid players really need to get out of the "rush forward, smash face" mentality, this isn't 5th edition any more.
PrinceRaven wrote: I often see posts that go something like "My Flyrant keeps dying, Flyrants suck and everyone who uses them are noobs", it seems people are under the impression that a Flyrant is supposed to be some sort of unstoppable monster of destruction that is perfectly capable of being out in the open in range of your opponent's entire army and surviving. Tyranid players really need to get out of the "rush forward, smash face" mentality, this isn't 5th edition any more.
Yeah, with flyrants, you really can't just throw them headlong into the enemy and then expect them to survive. Even with Iron Arm, it is somewhat risky tactic. For them, sometimes, you have to be patient. Nowadays, I usually flank mine to try to minimize the amount of enemy firepower it would have to absorb, taking advantage of any and all LOS-blocking terrain as possible. I also find that much of the times, I am holding them back a turn for a beta-strike when my reserves start coming in.
Naw wrote: You mean that Flyrants are _not_ like Riptides and Wraithknights?
No, they most certainly aren't.
But I will salivate at the idea of a T8 2+ flying MC....
jy2 wrote: Yeah, with flyrants, you really can't just throw them headlong into the enemy and then expect them to survive. Even with Iron Arm, it is somewhat risky tactic. For them, sometimes, you have to be patient. Nowadays, I usually flank mine to try to minimize the amount of enemy firepower it would have to absorb, taking advantage of any and all LOS-blocking terrain as possible. I also find that much of the times, I am holding them back a turn for a beta-strike when my reserves start coming in.
It can also pay to run them 2d6 when swooping for those times early in the game where the extra distance will get you out of line of sight. You don't always need to be shooting.
jy2 wrote: Yeah, with flyrants, you really can't just throw them headlong into the enemy and then expect them to survive. Even with Iron Arm, it is somewhat risky tactic. For them, sometimes, you have to be patient. Nowadays, I usually flank mine to try to minimize the amount of enemy firepower it would have to absorb, taking advantage of any and all LOS-blocking terrain as possible. I also find that much of the times, I am holding them back a turn for a beta-strike when my reserves start coming in.
It can also pay to run them 2d6 when swooping for those times early in the game where the extra distance will get you out of line of sight. You don't always need to be shooting.
Yeah, my rule-of-thumb is this: if you can shoot, shoot. If you can't, run (unless you're already out of LOS).
tameyeti wrote: Great thread. You really make some great battle reports.
Thanks!
My reports tend to be more on the competitive side, but sometimes, I do make reports of my more casual games as well. For more of my reports, just click on my battle report thread below.
My thanks to you, Grant, Israel, and the rest of the 'out of towners' that came to the tournament, Gary [the shop owner] and I [just a lowly TO] appreciate the support.
I try to be as impartial as possible, especially to people who I play against regularly and consider friends on non-tournament days, and therefore I do not manipulate pairings. The only time I would intentionally manipulate 2 players going head to head is if its the first round and they're part of the same group and/or play against each other a lot, or if they request a pairing like you did with Israel. Since you both had similar scores and doing so would not skew the results horribly one way or the other, I was happy to make the switch - it looked like a great game from what little I saw of it! The downside is that in your second game you played someone with a similar battle score who turned out to be a weaker overall opponent. We get all levels of players, so it does tend to happen from time to time. We can only do so much with 3 rounds!
Now then, speaking as a tournament player and not as the TO, I personally love seeing new blood at the CoC. It really helps counter the effect of 'big fish in a little pond' where you get local players who dominate the local scene and opens things up. A lot of the local players had their mind blown when they heard some guys from Dakka were showing up and bringing some hard lists - 3 Riptides? 8 helldrakes?!? OMG everybody freak out!! In the weeks leading up to the 2250 CoC I heard plenty of *ahem* discussion about how we need to put rules in place to stop spamming and how those types of lists aren't fun, and as much as I hate to admit it our local tournament gets a decent amount of press but still struggles with players who want comp, in-depth sportsmanship, and thinks evil WAAC gamers are out to get them. After the dust settled I did get to hear from some players who played against those types of harder lists and actually managed to have fun and found out the sky wasn't actually falling, so again I'm glad you guys managed to come out and support us. I just recently got back from Brawl in the Fall (awesome tourney, btw) and I'll be going to the Guardian Cup in a few weeks so maybe we'll bump into each other; if so first round's on me!
Congratulations on your finish and thanks for the battle reports also, for as much time as I spend at the tournaments I rarely get to watch games to conclusion.
My thanks to you, Grant, Israel, and the rest of the 'out of towners' that came to the tournament, Gary [the shop owner] and I [just a lowly TO] appreciate the support.
I try to be as impartial as possible, especially to people who I play against regularly and consider friends on non-tournament days, and therefore I do not manipulate pairings. The only time I would intentionally manipulate 2 players going head to head is if its the first round and they're part of the same group and/or play against each other a lot, or if they request a pairing like you did with Israel. Since you both had similar scores and doing so would not skew the results horribly one way or the other, I was happy to make the switch - it looked like a great game from what little I saw of it! The downside is that in your second game you played someone with a similar battle score who turned out to be a weaker overall opponent. We get all levels of players, so it does tend to happen from time to time. We can only do so much with 3 rounds!
Now then, speaking as a tournament player and not as the TO, I personally love seeing new blood at the CoC. It really helps counter the effect of 'big fish in a little pond' where you get local players who dominate the local scene and opens things up. A lot of the local players had their mind blown when they heard some guys from Dakka were showing up and bringing some hard lists - 3 Riptides? 8 helldrakes?!? OMG everybody freak out!! In the weeks leading up to the 2250 CoC I heard plenty of *ahem* discussion about how we need to put rules in place to stop spamming and how those types of lists aren't fun, and as much as I hate to admit it our local tournament gets a decent amount of press but still struggles with players who want comp, in-depth sportsmanship, and thinks evil WAAC gamers are out to get them. After the dust settled I did get to hear from some players who played against those types of harder lists and actually managed to have fun and found out the sky wasn't actually falling, so again I'm glad you guys managed to come out and support us. I just recently got back from Brawl in the Fall (awesome tourney, btw) and I'll be going to the Guardian Cup in a few weeks so maybe we'll bump into each other; if so first round's on me!
Congratulations on your finish and thanks for the battle reports also, for as much time as I spend at the tournaments I rarely get to watch games to conclusion.
Sirus @ GEG
Thanks for hosting the tournament, Sirus. Also, thanks for accommodating my request. I've never played against Israel before and really wanted to match up against him.
I had a great time there. I really didn't know too much about the tournament, just the rumours that it was usually pretty tough and with a lot of players participating normally. Both of my friends, including the alleged 8-heldrake list (which turned out only to be 6) and Grant's deldar, were very, very strong lists. Thus, I decided to bring a tough list as well and honestly, with the exception of my R2 opponent, I needed it. Eldar/Tau/Eldau/Taudar are just sooooo good. To beat the best, I had to bring my "best" and even that wasn't enough to win it all.
I look forwards to the last CoC. I think I will be making another request there (there are still 2 players that I want to play against) and I looking forwards to a possible showdown against Grant's Deer Council who has been a thorn in my sides ever since their new codex came out.
Great rep's so far.
to merely glance my barge.
FIRE 
