No hordes, guardsmen or scions to be seen:

1st Place was an almost pure flyer list:

Tim Travers 1st Overall Boise Cup GT 2017

Flyer Wing Detachment
Stormraven = Twin Assault Cannon • Twin Multi-Melta • 2 Stormtrike Missle Launchers • Hurricane Bolters
Stormraven = Twin-Linked Assault Cannon • Twin-Linked Multi-Melta • 2 Stormtrike Missle Launchers • Hurricane Bolters
Stormraven = Twin-Linked Assault Cannon • Twin-Linked Multi-Melta • 2 Stormtrike Missle Launchers • Hurricane Bolters
Flyer Wing Detachment
Stormhawk Interceptor = 2 Assault Cannons • Skyhammer Millile Launcher • Icarus Storm Cannon
Stormhawk Interceptor = 2 Assault Cannons • Skyhammer Millile Launcher • Icarus Storm Cannon
Stormraven = Twin-Linked Lascannon • Twin-Linked Multi-Melta • 2 Stormtrike Missle Launchers • Hurricane Bolters

Patrol Detachment
Captain with Jump Pack
• Storm Shield • Relic Blade
Tactical Squad x 6 = 126 • Heavy Flamer • Powerfist • Combi-Flamer

2nd place was Ynnari-Harlequins:

Battalion Detachment
Yvraine = Gaze of Ynnead • Word of the Phoenix
Troupe Master = Harlequin's Caress • Fusion Pistol
Shadowseer = Shuriken Pistol • Hallucinogen Grenade Launcher • Mist Stave • Mirror Minds
Harlequin Troupe x 5 = 5 Harlequin's Caress • 2 Fusion Pistol
Harlequin Troupe x 5 = 5 Harlequin's Caress • 2 Fusion Pistol
Harlequin Troupe x 5 = 5 Harlequin's Caress • 2 Fusion Pistol
Harlequin Troupe x 5 = 5 Harlequin's Caress • 2 Fusion Pistol
Hemlock Wraithfighter = 2 Heavy D-Scyth
Hemlock Wraithfighter = 2 Heavy D-Scyth
Dedi Trans Starweaver = 99 • 2 Shuriken Cannons
Dedi Trans Starweaver = 2 Shuriken Cannons
Dedi Trans Starweaver = 2 Shuriken Cannons

Patrol Detachment
Shadowseer = Shuriken Pistol • Hallucinogen Grenade Launcher • Mist Stave • Fog of Dreams
Dedi Trans Starweaver = 2 Shuriken Cannons

3rd place Guilliman and a bunch of Tacticals/Razorbacks:

Battalion Detachment
Roboute Guilliman
Captain Sicarius
Culexus Assassin
Tarctical Space Marine Squad x 5 = Combi-Flamer • Power Axe • Multi-Melta
Tarctical Space Marine Squad x 5 = Combi-Flamer • Power Axe • Multi-Melta
Tarctical Space Marine Squad x 5 = Combi-Flamer • Power Axe • Grav-Cannon
Tactical Marine Squad x 5 = Combi-Flamer • Power Axe • Missile Launcher
Tactical Marine Squad x 5 = Power Axe • Missile Launcher
Razorback = Twin-Linked Assault Cannon • Hunter Killer Missile • Storm Bolter
Razorback = Twin-Linked Assault Cannon • Hunter Killer Missile • Storm Bolter
Razorback = Twin-Linked Assault Cannon • Hunter Killer Missile • Storm Bolter
Predator = Twin-Linked Lascannon • 2 Lascannon Sponsons
Predator = Twin-Linked Lascannon • 2 Lascannon Sponsons

http://bloodofkittens.com/blog/2017/06/26/results-8th-edition-gt/

Kind of interesting to look at. The Space Marine list in 3rd was definitely not something I was expecting. Harlequins might be as strong as some of the play testers were saying too. Really surprised a heavy flyer list did so well though.

That flyer list looks so interesting. I'd love to have seen some games.

Where are the threads complaining about things like that flyer wing? I see lots about my conscripts that didn't even place, but none about the lists that actually did. Huh.

Pain4Pleasure wrote:
Where are the threads complaining about things like that flyer wing? I see lots about my conscripts that didn't even place, but none about the lists that actually did. Huh.

Jesus man, results have been up for minutes. Given the results you may just see some people making lists like it and then you'll see the outcry when people have to try and face it. Unless this guy was just stinking good at playing it, and no one else manages. Then the outcry will not come.

It's so tiring how this whole forum is just one huge mess of people feeling personally assaulted on behalf of their army while trying to point fingers at everything else.

It definitely looks like an important consideration for a TAC list will be to have a decent number of models with either native 3+ to hit (so that they can still at least get 4+ against flyers) or the anti-air rule. One or two flyers can be dealt with with volume of fire, but a flying circus can be real trouble if you're not prepared.

There's literally not 1 unit from the Blood Angels section of the Index in that "Blood Angels" list.

 Gunzhard wrote:
There's literally not 1 unit from the Blood Angels section of the Index in that "Blood Angels" list.

I noticed that. I think he just wanted the 6+ FNP that comes with being a Blood Angel.

This is a garbage tournament.

 Gunzhard wrote:
There's literally not 1 unit from the Blood Angels section of the Index in that "Blood Angels" list.

Red wonz win GT's?

I wonder if there's anywhere we can get more detailed results though, since getting the full results and comparing them with the aggregated data from smaller tournaments might be more informative than just the top 3.

 Gunzhard wrote:
There's literally not 1 unit from the Blood Angels section of the Index in that "Blood Angels" list.

I mean yeah, he is clearly playing "Space Marines" but it's not like he gets nothing from picking them as Bloodies.

 Purifier wrote:
That flyer list looks so interesting. I'd love to have seen some games.

I'm trying to imagine how the flyer list plays in my head. I think I'm starting to get it...maybe.

Audustum wrote:

 Gunzhard wrote:
There's literally not 1 unit from the Blood Angels section of the Index in that "Blood Angels" list.

I noticed that. I think he just wanted the 6+ FNP that comes with being a Blood Angel.

That is only on Death Company. He wanted the lone Heavy Flamer in the Tactical Squad. That is the only thing from the Blood Angels section whatsoever.

 casvalremdeikun wrote:

Audustum wrote:

 Gunzhard wrote:
There's literally not 1 unit from the Blood Angels section of the Index in that "Blood Angels" list.

I noticed that. I think he just wanted the 6+ FNP that comes with being a Blood Angel.

That is only on Death Company. He wanted the lone Heavy Flamer in the Tactical Squad. That is the only thing from the Blood Angels section whatsoever.

Oh, I thought Black Rage was an army-wide special rule now with the way it was formatted in the index. Well, there goes that theory.

I assume that squad and captain get dropped off by one of the ravens? I don't see the point to those 7 guys. One backfield objective maybe?

 Brotherjanus wrote:
I assume that squad and captain get dropped off by one of the ravens? I don't see the point to those 7 guys. One backfield objective maybe?

He probably just needed an HQ for his warlord to make the army legal.

Audustum wrote:

Kind of interesting to look at. The Space Marine list in 3rd was definitely not something I was expecting. Harlequins might be as strong as some of the play testers were saying too. Really surprised a heavy flyer list did so well though.

The Razorback spam I was expecting, the other 2 lists are more of a surprise. Remember the meta is only just over a week old (officially) and it will take time for people to get used to the new system and work out viable strategies and counters.

 Karhedron wrote:

Audustum wrote:

Kind of interesting to look at. The Space Marine list in 3rd was definitely not something I was expecting. Harlequins might be as strong as some of the play testers were saying too. Really surprised a heavy flyer list did so well though.

The Razorback spam I was expecting, the other 2 lists are more of a surprise. Remember the meta is only just over a week old (officially) and it will take time for people to get used to the new system and work out viable strategies and counters.

Indeed. If anyone happened to bring two Onagers with an Icarus Array each for whatever reason, I honestly believe his list would have been toast. If Aerial dominance lists like this become standard, they'll be instantly countered with stuff like that.

I don't understand what's surprising about this.

I think everyone realized very quickly that Guilliman and Razorbacks were really good. People have been saying that Harlequins work really well. Flyers are generally very good and people have been pretty big on the Stormraven since we first saw the index.

And of course this is one tournament, with only 38 players who were just whoever decided to register and show up, and not very many repeated factions. It's just silly to try to take this as strong evidence that something or other is broken or not broken.

 Gunzhard wrote:
There's literally not 1 unit from the Blood Angels section of the Index in that "Blood Angels" list.

*stoner hippie voice* Blood Angels are like, mostly just like other chapters, man. . .

Dionysodorus wrote:
I don't understand what's surprising about this.

I think everyone realized very quickly that Guilliman and Razorbacks were really good. People have been saying that Harlequins work really well. Flyers are generally very good and people have been pretty big on the Stormraven since we first saw the index.

And of course this is one tournament, with only 38 players who were just whoever decided to register and show up, and not very many repeated factions. It's just silly to try to take this as strong evidence that something or other is broken or not broken.

It's because the majority of the vocal minority here generally has kneejerk reactions to their old lists not being viable anymore despite only playing a game once in a blue moon (although they would like you to think otherwise).

Most of the people not really surprised by this generally don't come on here crying the skies are falling.

Flamers are best AA weapons. Also, what were the missions? I fail to see how flyers can win anything maelstorm.

We saw a pure flyer spam list -
Just wait until you see a conscript spam list.

 Xenomancers wrote:
We saw a pure flyer spam list -
Just wait until you see a conscript spam list.

And when we see it, it won't be nearly as big a deal as that flyer spam! I mean, they honestly should cost MORE. At least 100 points more per model. Also, fliers should be sevearly limited to 2 total per army regardless of what type of battalions or what not are taken.

It's one tournament. We don't know what was there. I highly doubt a list full of fliers will be viable in the long run.

That Ynnari-Harlequins list is very close to one I posted a while back. Minus a hemlock and ynarri replacecd with a wraithknight. Interesting they went the ynarri route with soulburst instead of rising cresendo. I had thought cresendo was stronger.

I wouldn't read too much into this, he was one relic mission away from not being in the winners circle. Plus they weren't using the ITC guidelines for determining first turn, so his flyer spam lists was almost always going first, and that much firepower made for a helluva alpha strike. It basically shows exactly why ITC made the decision they did with both going first and kill points.

 Grimgold wrote:
I wouldn't read too much into this, he was one relic mission away from not being in the winners circle. Plus they weren't using the ITC guidelines for determining first turn, so his flyer spam lists was almost always going first, and that much firepower made for a helluva alpha strike. It basically shows exactly why ITC made the decision they did with both going first and kill points.

Odds of going first in ITC placement rules, assuming reroll on a tie result: ~68%. If ITC lets you attempt a single seize, that drops to roughly 57%.

Odds of going first in RAW placement rules, assuming opponent attempt to seize & uses CP reroll: ~69%



So effectively 6/10 vs 7/10 is the difference between ITC and RAW. ITC's rule is totally superfluous and overblown.

 koooaei wrote:
Flamers are best AA weapons. Also, what were the missions? I fail to see how flyers can win anything maelstorm.

This meme needs to die....you have to get like 5 inches from a flyer to hit it with a flamer. Anyone with a flyer letting people get that close deserved to lose it.

 Marmatag wrote:

 Grimgold wrote:
I wouldn't read too much into this, he was one relic mission away from not being in the winners circle. Plus they weren't using the ITC guidelines for determining first turn, so his flyer spam lists was almost always going first, and that much firepower made for a helluva alpha strike. It basically shows exactly why ITC made the decision they did with both going first and kill points.

Odds of going first in ITC placement rules, assuming reroll on a tie result: ~68%. If ITC lets you attempt a single seize, that drops to roughly 57%.

Odds of going first in RAW placement rules, assuming opponent attempt to seize & uses CP reroll: ~69%



So effectively 6/10 vs 7/10 is the difference between ITC and RAW. ITC's rule is totally superfluous and overblown.

So 57% vs. 70%, the chance of going first in all of 4 games is 10% vs 24%, so it's a much larger difference than you give it credit for. Also the CP for reroll seize is still debatable as RAW or RAI. If it is RAW they might as well have a rule that says "Person who placed the last unit down loses a command point and can attempt to seize twice" because it's effectively just a straight up CP tax.

That would be different, as 16% of the time you don't need to use that CP.

 Grimgold wrote:

 Marmatag wrote:

 Grimgold wrote:
I wouldn't read too much into this, he was one relic mission away from not being in the winners circle. Plus they weren't using the ITC guidelines for determining first turn, so his flyer spam lists was almost always going first, and that much firepower made for a helluva alpha strike. It basically shows exactly why ITC made the decision they did with both going first and kill points.

Odds of going first in ITC placement rules, assuming reroll on a tie result: ~68%. If ITC lets you attempt a single seize, that drops to roughly 57%.

Odds of going first in RAW placement rules, assuming opponent attempt to seize & uses CP reroll: ~69%



So effectively 6/10 vs 7/10 is the difference between ITC and RAW. ITC's rule is totally superfluous and overblown.

So 57% vs. 70%, the chance of going first in all of 4 games is 10% vs 24%, so it's a much larger difference than you give it credit for. Also the CP for reroll seize is still debatable as RAW or RAI. If it is RAW they might as well have a rule that says "Person who placed the last unit down loses a command point and can attempt to seize twice" because it's effectively just a straight up CP tax.

I count 21 out of 31 valid cases (5 are re rolled draws) winning for the person with +1, and 10 losing, multiplied by 5/6 and 1/6 respectively to reflect the chances of seizing and summed yields about 62% for me. Significantly closer to the core 69.5%.

Given a single seize attempt +1 to going first gives you a 61% chance of getting first turn (55.3% of winning roll and not getting seized, 5.6% chance of losing the roll and seizing).

If double seize is allowed that drops to 56%

If auto go first and only a single seize, you have an 83% chance of going first.

If you allow the re-roll you have a 69% chance of going first.

So since they are going no-reroll on seize, the difference between 61% chance to go first and 83% chance is pretty big.

That Harlequin list goes against a lot of the weapon choice discussion we've had on here. Cool.

Pain4Pleasure wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:
We saw a pure flyer spam list -
Just wait until you see a conscript spam list.

And when we see it, it won't be nearly as big a deal as that flyer spam! I mean, they honestly should cost MORE. At least 100 points more per model. Also, fliers should be sevearly limited to 2 total per army regardless of what type of battalions or what not are taken.

Yes yes, we all understood how hard you are defending that conscripts should remain the exact way they are.

 ZebioLizard2 wrote:

Pain4Pleasure wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:
We saw a pure flyer spam list -
Just wait until you see a conscript spam list.

And when we see it, it won't be nearly as big a deal as that flyer spam! I mean, they honestly should cost MORE. At least 100 points more per model. Also, fliers should be sevearly limited to 2 total per army regardless of what type of battalions or what not are taken.

Yes yes, we all understood how hard you are defending that conscripts should remain the exact way they are.

So, you're saying flyer spam is ok while conscripts aren't? That's considered salt? Complaining about a unit that hasn't even reached the top listing in the few tournaments yet can also just as equally be considered salty, my friend. So please, stay that way

I will be forever perplexed at how many people on dakka take the top 3 of a single event and treat it as gospel.

Matchup gods are a thing. I had a dual land-raider BA list (in 7th!!!???) win me a painted Knight at a 2 day GT when more than half the lists near me in the end rankings (that I never played against) would've walked right over me.

Dice are a thing. Recent RTT, Lost a full health knight to 4 combi-melta overwatch shots NOT in melta range straight through his 3++ for being in baronial court when charging the chaos sorcerer formation. Game loss pretty much on the spot.

Players are a thing. Another RTT I was really tired and reported a draw with another guy. Literally a day later, after some sleep, I realized I should have won because of objective secured on a contested objective.

All this taken into account, the strongest list at the event could've been all the way down in 10th, and you'll never hear about it.

Any way to view the other lists in the tournament? Really interested to see all the lists these guys were competing against.

So, you're saying flyer spam is ok while conscripts aren't? That's considered salt? Complaining about a unit that hasn't even reached the top listing in the few tournaments yet can also just as equally be considered salty, my friend. So please, stay that way

One tournament. And you are trying to put words in my mouth with that first statement. It's more along the lines that you've been constantly trying to defend the unit in the exact same way with as much hyperbole as you could against anything else to constant detriment. Now that is indeed salt

 ZebioLizard2 wrote:

So, you're saying flyer spam is ok while conscripts aren't? That's considered salt? Complaining about a unit that hasn't even reached the top listing in the few tournaments yet can also just as equally be considered salty, my friend. So please, stay that way

One tournament. And you are trying to put words in my mouth with that first statement. It's more along the lines that you've been constantly trying to defend the unit in the exact same way with as much hyperbole as you could against anything else to constant detriment. Now that is indeed salt

Let's not ignore the salt coming from you, and other, inc ountless threads as well assuming that a unit we haven't truly gotten to see in the competitive setting already needs merging simply due to mathhammwr, which often proves to be wrong. That is indeed, salt

I played in the Boise GT and against Tim's winning Blood Angel list. He is a good player and the list is difficult. I brought a Black Templar list

In the game against Tim's fliers, it was really close, and was leaning in my favor had the game gone on. His list struggled with the T8 land raider. I shot down 3 of the ravens, but naturally I pulled him in the kill point mission. Had the GT implemented the kill points based on power levels, I would have actually been ahead. Those ravens shoot a lot and I do not think conscript spam would handle it well.

Ah, since some others were interested in other lists. I'll try and remember the general idea of some. There was a magnus, maulerfiend, brass scorpion list. A dark angel Mastadon and dark shroud list. 3 Knights 2 stormraven list. Two different Guilliman razorback lists, Thomas's and a sternguard based list. riptide and yvarna based list. One guard player who had some punisher leman russes and conscripts/HWT. A tyranid army using Swarmlord and genestealer combo with exocrines. Horde necrons as well as a necron player with tesseract vault and dooms day arcs. A khorne bezerker army. Just a rough idea. It was wild. Lists were all over the place.

 Bonachinonin wrote:
I played in the Boise GT and against Tim's winning Blood Angel list. He is a good player and the list is difficult. I brought a Black Templar list

In the game against Tim's fliers, it was really close, and was leaning in my favor had the game gone on. His list struggled with the T8 land raider. I shot down 3 of the ravens, but naturally I pulled him in the kill point mission. Had the GT implemented the kill points based on power levels, I would have actually been ahead. Those ravens shoot a lot and I do not think conscript spam would handle it well.

What kind of other lists did you play against? I'm curious what other people were bringing.

Did you play either of the Tau players? I noticed there were only two and they scored fairly low.

Both Tau got utterly trashed. Nothing surprising there. I wish I could see their list. I bet it was heavy on big suits.

Ah I updated my post with some types of armies. I remember two Tau players. One had 5 big suits, Yvarna and riptides I believe. The other did mass crisis suits and farsight. Sadly I didn't get to play them.

 Bonachinonin wrote:
Ah I updated my post with some types of armies. I remember two Tau players. One had 5 big suits, Yvarna and riptides I believe. The other did mass crisis suits and farsight.

Bingo. The big suit one was bound to fail. The mass crisis suit one is sad to hear since one player I know has high hopes for them. Do you have a list breakdown of the crisis suit list and their specific load outs?

 Bonachinonin wrote:
I played in the Boise GT and against Tim's winning Blood Angel list. He is a good player and the list is difficult. I brought a Black Templar list

In the game against Tim's fliers, it was really close, and was leaning in my favor had the game gone on. His list struggled with the T8 land raider. I shot down 3 of the ravens, but naturally I pulled him in the kill point mission. Had the GT implemented the kill points based on power levels, I would have actually been ahead. Those ravens shoot a lot and I do not think conscript spam would handle it well.

Ah, since some others were interested in other lists. I'll try and remember the general idea of some. There was a magnus, maulerfiend, brass scorpion list. A dark angel Mastadon and dark shroud list. 3 Knights 2 stormraven list. Two different Guilliman razorback lists, Thomas's and a sternguard based list. riptide and yvarna based list. One guard player who had some punisher leman russes and conscripts/HWT. A tyranid army using Swarmlord and genestealer combo with exocrines. Horde necrons as well as a necron player with tesseract vault and dooms day arcs. A khorne bezerker army. Just a rough idea. It was wild. Lists were all over the place.

I have no issue with his list, nor do I question his skill, my only issue is that he calls it "Blood Angels" with literally not 1 unit from the BA section of the Index.

Crisis suit list - Vanguard Detatchment
Commander - 2 missle pods, ATS shield Generator
Commander - identical as above

Four 5 man suit squads - 4x cyclic ion blaster, 1x missile pod, 5x ATS
Ghost keel - cyclic ion raker, twin burst cannons, ATS, target lock 2x stealth drones

What would you call it then, Gunzhard?
Semantics!

Also very interesting top 3, very interested in seeing the meta shifting around early on.

 Gunzhard wrote:


I have no issue with his list, nor do I question his skill, my only issue is that he calls it "Blood Angels" with literally not 1 unit from the BA section of the Index.

His captain and blood angel squad were Blood Angels, but I get what you are saying.

 Gunzhard wrote:

 Bonachinonin wrote:
I played in the Boise GT and against Tim's winning Blood Angel list. He is a good player and the list is difficult. I brought a Black Templar list

In the game against Tim's fliers, it was really close, and was leaning in my favor had the game gone on. His list struggled with the T8 land raider. I shot down 3 of the ravens, but naturally I pulled him in the kill point mission. Had the GT implemented the kill points based on power levels, I would have actually been ahead. Those ravens shoot a lot and I do not think conscript spam would handle it well.

Ah, since some others were interested in other lists. I'll try and remember the general idea of some. There was a magnus, maulerfiend, brass scorpion list. A dark angel Mastadon and dark shroud list. 3 Knights 2 stormraven list. Two different Guilliman razorback lists, Thomas's and a sternguard based list. riptide and yvarna based list. One guard player who had some punisher leman russes and conscripts/HWT. A tyranid army using Swarmlord and genestealer combo with exocrines. Horde necrons as well as a necron player with tesseract vault and dooms day arcs. A khorne bezerker army. Just a rough idea. It was wild. Lists were all over the place.

I have no issue with his list, nor do I question his skill, my only issue is that he calls it "Blood Angels" with literally not 1 unit from the BA section of the Index.

Welcome to 40k. Where one of the most notable "Ork" lists of last edition was Mogrok's Bossboyz granting Seize the Initiative rerolls to a Fateweaver Flying Circus. Did people seriously think hitting a few problem units with a nerfbat would actually balance the game?

These revelations are only confirming what I was afraid of about the Tau. I hope some of the other theorised Tau list types show up and do a lot better. Troop heavy and vehicle heavy are the next possible types proposed with any sort of viability to them. If these lists don't make a dent at all then the Tau are effectively dead until buffed since that is all that is left to try.

Of the two Tau players I assume the mass crisis spam was the higher one?

Negative, Big suit Tau went 2-3, crisis suit Tau went 1-4.

 Bonachinonin wrote:
Negative, Big suit Tau went 2-3, crisis suit Tau went 1-4.

Interesting we have a Tau player on ATT absolutely swearing he was crushing 3 victories and placing second best at a local with a heavy crisis list. Granted he had a different variation of the list and it is not a complete crisis suit list. It incorporated stealth suits, marker drones, ethereal, and one other thing I am forgetting. His list needs a lot of finesse because of its wide array of load outs in the crisis each one is designed to do a specific job.

Did any of them bring drones in their armies? Lot's of them?

 Bonachinonin wrote:

 Gunzhard wrote:


I have no issue with his list, nor do I question his skill, my only issue is that he calls it "Blood Angels" with literally not 1 unit from the BA section of the Index.

His captain and blood angel squad were Blood Angels, but I get what you are saying.

Well kinda, BA share captains and tacticals from the standard astartes list. He didn't take anything from the actual BA section of the Index. Yeah it is just semantics, doesn't mean I have to like it.

 Gamgee wrote:
Interesting we have a Tau player on ATT absolutely swearing he was crushing 3 victories and placing second best at a local with a heavy crisis list. Granted he had a different variation of the list and it is not a complete crisis suit list. It incorporated stealth suits, marker drones, ethereal, and one other thing I am forgetting. His list needs a lot of finesse because of its wide array of load outs in the crisis each one is designed to do a specific job.

Did any of them bring drones in their armies? Lot's of them?

Other than the Ghost Keel drones, nope. You might be able to look up the tournament on the Best Coast Pairings app.

 Bonachinonin wrote:

 Gamgee wrote:
Interesting we have a Tau player on ATT absolutely swearing he was crushing 3 victories and placing second best at a local with a heavy crisis list. Granted he had a different variation of the list and it is not a complete crisis suit list. It incorporated stealth suits, marker drones, ethereal, and one other thing I am forgetting. His list needs a lot of finesse because of its wide array of load outs in the crisis each one is designed to do a specific job.

Did any of them bring drones in their armies? Lot's of them?

Other than the Ghost Keel drones, nope. You might be able to look up the tournament on the Best Coast Pairings app.

I do but can never see anyone lists for some reason. Just the match info. Am I supposed to be doing something? Also no drones yeah no wonder they didn't do so great. Without drones on suits these lists are downright terrible. These lists are not great representations of Tau in 8th. Gun drones are the most point efficient way to get str 5 damage and in general they are a fantastic force multiplyer for suits and they act as ablative wounds. 2 gun drones put out twice the firepower of a burst cannon and cost 4 points less.

Looking at all the results it seems that most matches ended extremely one sided. There are huge amounts of 19-1 points victories. Many players have results like 19/1/19...
Just look at the second place harlequin player: 19/19/19/19/1

What it shows is that luck of the draw is much more important than anything else. Facing a bad matchup? 1 point. You counter your enemy? Gratz to a 19 point victory.
(I know it's not _that_ easy...)

Interesting that you say that, as I achieved 2 minor victories and 2 minor losses. Won and lost by a couple of points.

 Gunzhard wrote:

 Bonachinonin wrote:

 Gunzhard wrote:


I have no issue with his list, nor do I question his skill, my only issue is that he calls it "Blood Angels" with literally not 1 unit from the BA section of the Index.

His captain and blood angel squad were Blood Angels, but I get what you are saying.

Well kinda, BA share captains and tacticals from the standard astartes list. He didn't take anything from the actual BA section of the Index. Yeah it is just semantics, doesn't mean I have to like it.

Heavy Flamer in TAC squad.

And not all space marines have access to all of those fliers he used. For instance, Space Wolves & Grey Knights.

As it stands right now, you have basically 5 factions of Space Marines: Ultramarines, Blood Angels, Space Wolves, and Grey Knights, and Dark Angels. The other aedeptus astartes aren't worth playing, you have severely limited HQ choices. So, yeah, most of the list could have been Ultras, but not all of it. Curious what your point is anyway...

What about Dark Angels?!

 Galas wrote:
What about Dark Angels?!

From what little I've seen, Dark Angels aren't looking too hot right now : \

 Galas wrote:
What about Dark Angels?!

LOL.
Yep. Forgot about them XD XD XD Which is sad considering a DA player was in the store Sunday.

 Marmatag wrote:

 Gunzhard wrote:

 Bonachinonin wrote:

 Gunzhard wrote:


I have no issue with his list, nor do I question his skill, my only issue is that he calls it "Blood Angels" with literally not 1 unit from the BA section of the Index.

His captain and blood angel squad were Blood Angels, but I get what you are saying.

Well kinda, BA share captains and tacticals from the standard astartes list. He didn't take anything from the actual BA section of the Index. Yeah it is just semantics, doesn't mean I have to like it.

Heavy Flamer in TAC squad.

And not all space marines have access to all of those fliers he used. For instance, Space Wolves & Grey Knights.

As it stands right now, you have basically 5 factions of Space Marines: Ultramarines, Blood Angels, Space Wolves, and Grey Knights, and Dark Angels. The other aedeptus astartes aren't worth playing, you have severely limited HQ choices. So, yeah, most of the list could have been Ultras, but not all of it. Curious what your point is anyway...

Well I don't really require a point to dislike something. We all take our armies serious here to varying degrees. I've been playing BA since before they had a codex, it just always strikes me a little off when someone cherry picks a 'FT droppod' or a single Heavy Flamer and says they play "Blood Angels". That's all...

 Luciferian wrote:

 Galas wrote:
What about Dark Angels?!

From what little I've seen, Dark Angels aren't looking too hot right now : \

My full Deathwing terminator list has pass from "totally useless" to "At least is playable and can win some games"; so my situation has improve magnitudes

My special favourites are my Knuckles of death (Full Powerclaw Tartaros-patern terminators. They munch trought hordes like a hot knive in butter).
I call that because, I don't know why, they remind me of Knuckles from Sonic the Hedgeog. I painted them red with white hands, even if I use them as Deathwing :

Breng77 wrote:
Given a single seize attempt +1 to going first gives you a 61% chance of getting first turn (55.3% of winning roll and not getting seized, 5.6% chance of losing the roll and seizing).

If double seize is allowed that drops to 56%

If auto go first and only a single seize, you have an 83% chance of going first.

If you allow the re-roll you have a 69% chance of going first.

So since they are going no-reroll on seize, the difference between 61% chance to go first and 83% chance is pretty big.

No reroll for seize is also a departure from raw, so not applicable in a comparison of modified vs raw.

 Bonachinonin wrote:
It was wild. Lists were all over the place.

That's good.

Boise, Idaho? I don't suppose there was anyone there from Spokane, WA or Coeur d'Alene, ID there. I know a few of those guys, but moved to CA back in '12


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 Gamgee wrote:

 Bonachinonin wrote:
Ah I updated my post with some types of armies. I remember two Tau players. One had 5 big suits, Yvarna and riptides I believe. The other did mass crisis suits and farsight.

Bingo. The big suit one was bound to fail. The mass crisis suit one is sad to hear since one player I know has high hopes for them. Do you have a list breakdown of the crisis suit list and their specific load outs?

I have zero hopes for crisis-spam lists until the Tau get a new codex, and that's only if they get a codex that enables crisis spam. The index list, and the way the new edition works, simply does not support it.

Which works for me since I like firewarriors, and any Tau list that does not include them deserves to lose, IMO (I love you all anyway)


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 Bonachinonin wrote:
Crisis suit list - Vanguard Detatchment
Commander - 2 missle pods, ATS shield Generator
Commander - identical as above

Four 5 man suit squads - 4x cyclic ion blaster, 1x missile pod, 5x ATS
Ghost keel - cyclic ion raker, twin burst cannons, ATS, target lock 2x stealth drones

Oh yeah. That's a list with exactly zero staying power. It can't handle any kind of incoming fire, and doesn't have enough firepower of its own to table an opponent fast enough to prevent them from wrecking him in return. What was he thinking bring that to a GT?

The simple fact is that crisis suits rely on a 3+ save and 3W to survive, and there is now a diminishing return to that kind of strategy. Most serious heavy weapons deal d3 to d6 damage, and shoot multiple times. That puts crisis suits in some very, very dangerous positions where an enemy can fire a single tank gun, and deal enough armor-defeating hits to wipe the squad in one shot.

A list like that, if it wants to survive past turn 2, will need to take wall-to-wall shield generators just to survive, and unfortunately that means spending so many points on shield generators that there's no way to take enough guns to make it worth while.

The problem is that you need wounds in order to last past turn 2, and crisis suits are a horrible value due to the preponderance of multi-hit, high-damage guns in this edition, unless you're also fielding something to distract said big guns long enough for the crisis suits to get some work done. 22 suits and a ghost keel? That's 7 battlecannon shots. Potentially.

Drones guys. DRONES! Get with it. Don't just take them in squads. Take them with your crisis teams. Take gundrones and maybe some shield drones. Then far away markerlight drones.

A ghostkeel really doesn't synergize with that list at all.

I've seen some interesting combat reports on crisis heavy lists doing well, but they have to be supplemented with drones and stuff. I think we need to see combat reports of crisis heavy lists that incorporate more drones and supporting elements to see if we can declare it a dead strategy or not. A pure suit list with nothing else is going to suffer.

I've noticed none of the major tournament players have tried troop heavy lists either to give them a shot.

With the exception of the first list the latter two are exactly what I expected to see at the top tables, frankly.

For the former, I haven't paid enough attention to the rules of the SM flyers to make any judgments. That list looks fun as hell to play though.

 Gamgee wrote:


I've noticed none of the major tournament players have tried troop heavy lists either to give them a shot.

That's probably a barrier since lots of Tau never bought a single fire warrior kit.

 Gamgee wrote:
Drones guys. DRONES! Get with it. Don't just take them in squads. Take them with your crisis teams. Take gundrones and maybe some shield drones. Then far away markerlight drones.

If George R.R. Martin wrote Tau: A Game of Drones.

 Robin5t wrote:
That Harlequin list goes against a lot of the weapon choice discussion we've had on here. Cool.

Not really. The embrace remains better with Troupe Masters against most targets. My suspicion is the player decided to go for caresses because they were only bringing a single Troupe Master and the squads might need to operate independently. The caress with Troupe Master is also better against low save hordes than the embrace is, and the Hemlocks certainly have the big stuff on lockdown. I suspect lists that don't involve Hemlocks, and that have more than a single Troupe Master, will still prefer Embraces.

Daedalus81 wrote:

 Gamgee wrote:


I've noticed none of the major tournament players have tried troop heavy lists either to give them a shot.

That's probably a barrier since lots of Tau never bought a single fire warrior kit.

Your right lol. When I told my local Tau players to try troops and drones they looked at me like I was insane haha. I have lot's of firewarriors and when I needed more even if I brought both pathfinders and kroot I would bust out some star wars minis lol. This year I'm actually budgeting in some Kroot and Vespid no more proxies for me now that I can play at my flgs. Alas while I was ready for troops my poor Skyray's are gabrage. :( They were truly one of my best units and one of the most underrated Tau units of 7th. I've even got them in a cool desert camo makes them look like retro 90's desert storm tanks. I've got two squads of Strikers and Pathfinders already done from when I started a few years back. Great models. I want some Breachers since they look so cool.

So of the top ten armies, predictably, half of them were Marines and their variants. Of the top three, two of them were Marines.

I'm not surprised. As much as Marine players are often the most vocal whining about how other armies are OP, their army list has always been solid and competitive.

Matches everything else I've seen too.

Flyers are really strong this edition; I've been playing a couple Ork lists that are flyer only - they've been doing pretty well. Dakkajets are boss. However, they lose to most missions and can't deal with armor so... it's not a great list. That said, the flyers of real armies (SM/AM/etc) can be a massive threat - good BS, lots of guns, cheap.

Curious to see how it plays out.

Also, that third list is not legal - Gulliman is not an HQ; he's a Lord of War. There are no legal combinations of detachments for that many troops and a single HQ.

Also curious to see how a tournament would handle this - an illegal list and too many CPs.

The Sunshark Bomber is pretty good for the Tau but the fighter is still terrible and worse at killing air stuff than the bomber lol. The bomber might be a tad too pricey to justify it's place in a list since so much stuff in the Tau codex is expensive now. A good mid-tier unit if you want to tone down your list a little though.

No idea on the Barracuda. I hope they are good still because I want to pick up a few eventually. Models are fantastic.

Daedalus81 wrote:

 Gamgee wrote:


I've noticed none of the major tournament players have tried troop heavy lists either to give them a shot.

That's probably a barrier since lots of Tau never bought a single fire warrior kit.

I have only 9 magnetized crisis suits. 1 Riptide. 12 Stealth suits. 100 Firewarriors, 50 Breachers, 60 Kroots, 20 kroots hounds, 6 Hammerheads and 8 Devilfish. And a ton... a TON of drones.

I'm loving this new Tau meta

Space Marines being in the finals is exactly what I expected

 niv-mizzet wrote:
I will be forever perplexed at how many people on dakka take the top 3 of a single event and treat it as gospel.

stop ruining our ragefest

The top ten didn't exactly display anything less either. Space Marine players continue to do very well. News at 11.

 Talamare wrote:
Space Marines being in the finals is exactly what I expected

It had a total of six Marines in it. This is one thing that I hated about 7E that seems to have stuck. Lists composed of almost none of what should be the core units of the codex. CSM with only cultists. AM with only Conscripts. SM with no power armor. Etc.

How did the necrons go?

 Gamgee wrote:

Daedalus81 wrote:

 Gamgee wrote:


I've noticed none of the major tournament players have tried troop heavy lists either to give them a shot.

That's probably a barrier since lots of Tau never bought a single fire warrior kit.

Your right lol. When I told my local Tau players to try troops and drones they looked at me like I was insane haha. I have lot's of firewarriors and when I needed more even if I brought both pathfinders and kroot I would bust out some star wars minis lol. This year I'm actually budgeting in some Kroot and Vespid no more proxies for me now that I can play at my flgs. Alas while I was ready for troops my poor Skyray's are gabrage. :( They were truly one of my best units and one of the most underrated Tau units of 7th. I've even got them in a cool desert camo makes them look like retro 90's desert storm tanks. I've got two squads of Strikers and Pathfinders already done from when I started a few years back. Great models. I want some Breachers since they look so cool.

OMG, the Skyray. Who came up with that point cost?

It...it does nothing.

6 Seeker missiles aren't that useful in this edition. They're just not.

When Tau get a 8th edition codex, I'm going to guess that we won't be able to recognise the skyray. That's how much they're going to have to change it, to make it worth taking.

As it stands, it's worth about 40 points. But it somehow got a price tag somewhere around 5 times that.

I don't think the author relized how much he had dropped the cost of Seeker Missiles and Markerlights. IIRC, they've been around 10 points each since roughly 4th edition. Now they're half that at best.


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 Gamgee wrote:
The Sunshark Bomber is pretty good for the Tau but the fighter is still terrible and worse at killing air stuff than the bomber lol. The bomber might be a tad too pricey to justify it's place in a list since so much stuff in the Tau codex is expensive now. A good mid-tier unit if you want to tone down your list a little though.

No idea on the Barracuda. I hope they are good still because I want to pick up a few eventually. Models are fantastic.

IMO, the bomber is near god-tier. It's the only bomber in the game with unlimited bombs, and still deals mortal wounds (on a 4+ vs infantry).

Daemons, for example, are going to hate the Sunshark like few other units.

 casvalremdeikun wrote:

 Talamare wrote:
Space Marines being in the finals is exactly what I expected

It had a total of six Marines in it. This is one thing that I hated about 7E that seems to have stuck. Lists composed of almost none of what should be the core units of the codex. CSM with only cultists. AM with only Conscripts. SM with no power armor. Etc.

This is the issue with a detachment system that actively lets you skip taking Troops as your tax altogether. "Little guys" generally havw not been worth taking in 40k, simply due to "kill gap" rules that exist otherwise.

The current detachment rules mean that all armies can be a version of what would have been unbound in 7th. Now it is tough for a TO to de-legitimize crazy lists since they fit right into the detachment system with minimal hard structure.

Hell, you could freely take models from what would have been across faction lines now because the rules for what can be included in a detachment are so loose.

heckler wrote:
The current detachment rules mean that all armies can be a version of what would have been unbound in 7th. Now it is tough for a TO to de-legitimize crazy lists since they fit right into the detachment system with minimal hard structure.

Hell, you could freely take models from what would have been across faction lines now because the rules for what can be included in a detachment are so loose.

Yes, I'm a little worried about how broad "Imperium" is. Faction-specific buffs are supposed to weigh against this but almost everything like this is a short-range bubble and so it's very easy to get optimal use out of these rules while still having independent units. Possibly codices will introduce more rules like Canticles where a detachment has to be a narrow faction in order to get a benefit, although I suppose this would bring up power creep concerns as the codices trickle out.

I wonder if we will start to see tournaments placing extra restrictions on which detachments can be fielded or designing missions around objective holding to support players who take infantry rather than spamming units like flyers?

I know the tournament organisers at my local club have very strong views on what a "proper" army should look like so it would not surprise me to see this emerge to some extent.

Why not just limit it to 1 detachment per 1000pts (or part thereof). It isn't much of a restriction but puts a curb on some of the sillier things, like two Flyer detachments.

The problem with deciding in a local meta to change list construction is that you omit anyone else from attending your event and put yourselves at a disadvantage when playing in other events. It only really works if the organizers of nationwide events choose a system and it gets adopted by the community at large.

 heckler wrote:
The current detachment rules mean that all armies can be a version of what would have been unbound in 7th. Now it is tough for a TO to de-legitimize crazy lists since they fit right into the detachment system with minimal hard structure.

Hell, you could freely take models from what would have been across faction lines now because the rules for what can be included in a detachment are so loose.

Limit to one detachment?

 Bonachinonin wrote:
Negative, Big suit Tau went 2-3, crisis suit Tau went 1-4.

You are wrong about the tau - I'd say they are top 3. People are just spamming the wrong suits - they should be spamming broadsides. A lot of tau players only have 5 riptides and 2 stormsurge and a farsite bomb in their collections - just wait. I played my tau in a 2v2 with 3 broadsides with missle load out. that one unit did over 1200 points worth of damage and they even tried to kill it.

 heckler wrote:
The problem with deciding in a local meta to change list construction is that you omit anyone else from attending your event and put yourselves at a disadvantage when playing in other events. It only really works if the organizers of nationwide events choose a system and it gets adopted by the community at large.

Ultimately 40k will be balanced by fragmenting the playerbase so you have to ask if you're playing BRBhammer, Reecehammer, Traditiohammer or Swedish Comphammer. That Stormraven list flies against the idea 8th was extensively playtested over 2 years.

 Karhedron wrote:
I wonder if we will start to see tournaments placing extra restrictions on which detachments can be fielded or designing missions around objective holding to support players who take infantry rather than spamming units like flyers?

I know the tournament organisers at my local club have very strong views on what a "proper" army should look like so it would not surprise me to see this emerge to some extent.

IMO you should auto lose the game if you don't have a unit on the ground or in hover. It should be a requirement to have units on the board.


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 MagicJuggler wrote:

 heckler wrote:
The problem with deciding in a local meta to change list construction is that you omit anyone else from attending your event and put yourselves at a disadvantage when playing in other events. It only really works if the organizers of nationwide events choose a system and it gets adopted by the community at large.

Ultimately 40k will be balanced by fragmenting the playerbase so you have to ask if you're playing BRBhammer, Reecehammer, Traditiohammer or Swedish Comphammer. That Stormraven list flies against the idea 8th was extensively playtested over 2 years.

I wouldn't say there is anything wrong with the storm raven (it's good but it's fairly priced IMO) - their just shouldn't be detachments that field nothing but flyers.

Detachments are not a problem, they are fine as they are.
The problem is with the troop tax, it is a wrong concept. Troops should never be taken because they are a tax, but because they are the foundation of your army. Only extremely peculiar builds should be able to work without troops.

In this, i find that tyranids respect this concept fairly well. A nid list without troops is 90% of the time a worse list.

The all fliers list is pretty much the only silver bullet to what I play normally. I have started to use a Void Shield Generator just to keep myself a little safer from the alpha strike, but taking out that many high arm fliers is still a pain. It mostly becomes a game of of trying to kill as many as I can before rushing to objectives near the end.

Spoletta wrote:
Detachments are not a problem, they are fine as they are.
The problem is with the troop tax, it is a wrong concept. Troops should never be taken because they are a tax, but because they are the foundation of your army. Only extremely peculiar builds should be able to work without troops.

In this, i find that tyranids respect this concept fairly well. A nid list without troops is 90% of the time a worse list.

Well there is the part that troops aboslutely suck in this game. Except for some really stupid troops. Detachments that have core troops give you more command points...There is no problem here. Flyers are a special unit - they should be pretty limited in your ability to field them- I'm okay with someone taking a spearhead detachment and spamming Predators. I'm not cool with someone taking a flyer wing and spamming flyers.

I foresee an addendum to the matched play rules, specifically tailored for tournament play. As others have written, custom TO rules cause a lot of problems, so it should be something a little more official to ensure the same customization is replicated to all tournaments.

Where I am torn is what these rules should be. I totally love the random mission and objective concept. The fact that you have to design a list that can complete a number of different types of missions usually leads to less gimmicky lists.

Also, I sense some tweaking to alpha striking potential. The current rules encourage keeping your strategically important units in reserve (and to pick units that can be put in reserve) to make sure they at least get to go for a turn before getting destroyed. Combined with the value of going first this leads to an arms race on unit count and reserves. With people going for particularly beneficial "turtle units" to start on the board (flyer in a corner, artillery fully behind cover, transports in cover, etc.). All in an attempt to counter any potential disadvantage of not going first. Ironically, the importance of going first diminishes if players build lists that can counter it, and we might even see players opting to go 2nd because their turtle-deployment can take it. If they do, they effectively get a turn more than their opponent. This THEN leads to list building meant to optimize the "passive" value of going first without deploying your shock reserves.
Net result: list building will be based on deployment shenanigans and not ability to complete objectives. It could use a tweak back towards building tactically solid army lists.

 Klowny wrote:
How did the necrons go?

There were 3 or 4 necron players. One was playing for top 3 but lost to Thomas's marines. His list was a tesseract vault, night bringer (i think), 3 doomsday arks, minimum squad of troops. He was tabled, but was going to lose any ways as Thomas placed all his objectives in ruins and the necron army couldn't actually get close enough to the objectives to score them. But quantum shielding is very good.

The necron army I played was a horde necron. Two big squads of warriors and two 10 man immortals with two squads of deathmarks and supporting crypteks and overlords. Also some wraiths and scarabs. Turns out, he couldn't really damage a land raider and my squad bailed out and charged half his army. Reanimation is a good rule though. His army was just slow and short ranged. He went 3-2 I believe.

That Ultramarines Battalion is missing a second HQ, Guilliman is a LoW.

Spam will be a big thing early on. All these spam lists were already mentioned by the FLG guys as things they tried early on. They have a big head start on list design and play testing. Their "meta" has already moved past these lists. They already predicted a shift towards TAC lists because spam lists tend to be rock, paper, scissors which means very match-dependent.

Median Trace wrote:
Spam will be a big thing early on. All these spam lists were already mentioned by the FLG guys as things they tried early on. They have a big head start on list design and play testing. Their "meta" has already moved past these lists. They already predicted a shift towards TAC lists because spam lists tend to be rock, paper, scissors which means very match-dependent.

The problem with this reasoning is that this still allows any of the rocks, papers or scissors to act as spoilers to the rest of the game. I seriously doubt there was any serious playtesting in that regard. I seriously see this edition being the one where Steamroller "bring 2 armies" becomes a thing, and competitive 40k being dug even further down its grave.

Spam lists shouldn't be a problem if the units that are being spammed are balanced in points. Nobody is upset about one person doing a spam list of full grots. Or killa kanz. Or Piranhas. Because those spam lists are bad.

People don't dislike spam, they dislike OP spam.

The "Troop tax" is just a flawed form of doing a balanced game. Troops should be usable in their own merit, not a balancing factor, forcing you to spend points in useless crap to get access to the good units.

So be honest to yourselves and to what is good for the game. Spam is not the problem. OP and broken units are the problem. If everything is properly balanced, you could made spam lists or take a good chunck of troops and a TAC army and be good still..

 Galas wrote:
Spam lists shouldn't be a problem if the units that are being spammed are balanced in points. Nobody is upset about one person doing a spam list of full grots. Or killa kanz. Or Piranhas. Because those spam lists are bad.

People don't dislike spam, they dislike OP spam.

The "Troop tax" is just a flawed form of doing a balanced game. Troops should be usable in their own merit, not a balancing factor, forcing you to spend points in useless crap to get access to the good units.

So be honest to yourselves and to what is good for the game. Spam is not the problem. OP and broken units are the problem. If everything is properly balanced, you could made spam lists or take a good chunck of troops and a TAC army and be good still..

Here to invalidate your generalization with facts. I am indeed a person and dislike spam, of all kinds.


An army made up of grots units is just as bad an experience as an army made of of knights. One more nail in the coffin for immersion.

How the hell is an Orky spam list not immersive? Spam is quite literally what Orks do in the lore. Hell, Orks pushing huge waves of grots out in front of htem to absorb fire, detonate mines, and distract the enemy is an example of tactics that aren't just plausible for Orks to do, it's canon-- they've already done it!

 Melissia wrote:
How the hell is an Orky spam list not immersive? Spam is quite literally what Orks do in the lore. Hell, Orks pushing huge waves of grots out in front of htem to absorb fire, detonate mines, and distract the enemy is an example of tactics that aren't just plausible for Orks to do, it's canon-- they've already done it!

It's not immersive for the same reason a buffet with 37 steam trays of the same food isn't immersive. There is no deep interest in banality on my part, to each their own. And melissia, its not just fluff, its fluff + actual gaming immersion, something already lacking in this new edition IMO. To my subjective sensibilites, green tide is as un-inspired as an all knight army.

I'm crazy or perhaps combined arms detachments might involve a combination of more than one arm...

Inmersion isn't an argument. Is about personal taste so irrelevant to the general healt of the game.

A full flyer force is totally canon and inmersive if you justify it. Heck, you can have two armies that are only flyers and be totally inmersive.

The same goes for a full bikers army. Or a full tank IG army. Or a full Tempestus Scions army, etc...

So, again isn't about spam. You can not like it, thats totally fine, but that comes down to tastes. Some people don't like Taus, others hate Tyranids. That doesn't mean they are bad for the game. Spam if done right isn't bad for the game, even if you like it or not.

 Galas wrote:
Inmersion isn't an argument.

A full flyer force is totally canon and inmersive if you justify it. Heck, you can have two armies that are only flyers and be totally inmersive.

The same goes for a full bikers army. Or a full tank IG army. Or a full Tempestus Scions army, etc...

So, again isn't about spam. You can not like it, thats totally fine, but that comes down to tastes. Some people don't like Taus, others hate Tyranids. That doesn't mean they are bad for the game. Spam if done right isn't bad for the game, even if you like it or not.

No, it's a bout spam, any army, 30k or 40k comprised of one thing is awful as a concept and generally awful in game. Be that entirely tanks/bikes/jetbikes/knights. You can make up a story to fit any combination of plastic toys. It was never good for the game can continues to exist to its detriment.

If a Spam list by his nature is balanced, should probably lose again'st basically every TAC list out there. Tus, discouraging the spam list.

But if someone wants to have a spam list theres no problem with that. The problem is that 100% spam list are just people using over and over againt the typical undercosted and overpowered unit.

But to be clear here: I never play spam of any kind. But I don't think is at a fundamental level, bad for the game if done right.

What I oppose is the "Troop tax" that people seems to need to balance the game. And thats just awful in itself. You are basically acepting that troops should be crap, and that they should force you to take units that are crap to balance for taking good units.

Spoletta wrote:
Detachments are not a problem, they are fine as they are.
The problem is with the troop tax, it is a wrong concept. Troops should never be taken because they are a tax, but because they are the foundation of your army. Only extremely peculiar builds should be able to work without troops.

In this, i find that tyranids respect this concept fairly well. A nid list without troops is 90% of the time a worse list.

There is some simple math that goes on when you start removing models from the board. At least, this is the math a few of us used back in Spokane. It seemed to work pretty well for most of us...

The basic question you need to ask is "how many wounds does my opponent need to inflict in order to table me?"

First, count up the number of wounds you have in your army.

Second, take all the guns in your army, and calculate how many wounds you will push out per turn.

Finally, assuming proper fire allocation and typical cover advantages (count it if you would spend most of a game using it), If you can table yourself in 1-2 turns without really taking range into account (is that tank in 36"? We don't care. Assume it is. That melta gun @ 12"? Assume you need to advance into position for a turn or two), you don't have enough wounds on the board.
Likewise, if you can't table yourself by the end of turn 4 or 5, you don't have enough firepower on the board.

The idea is that you need a balance between being able to absorb casualties, and dealing them. If you can only do one or the other, you're going to lose.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Crablezworth wrote:

 Galas wrote:
Inmersion isn't an argument.

A full flyer force is totally canon and inmersive if you justify it. Heck, you can have two armies that are only flyers and be totally inmersive.

The same goes for a full bikers army. Or a full tank IG army. Or a full Tempestus Scions army, etc...

So, again isn't about spam. You can not like it, thats totally fine, but that comes down to tastes. Some people don't like Taus, others hate Tyranids. That doesn't mean they are bad for the game. Spam if done right isn't bad for the game, even if you like it or not.

No, it's a bout spam, any army, 30k or 40k comprised of one thing is awful as a concept and generally awful in game. Be that entirely tanks/bikes/jetbikes/knights. You can make up a story to fit any combination of plastic toys. It was never good for the game can continues to exist to its detriment.

Honestly, the proper counter for cheesy spam lists like the all flyer list is sideboarding. If I see a full flyer list, and I've properly prepared for that by including a few anti-air units in my side-board, I should be fine unless flyer-spammer-boy has a sideboard with some ground units in it he can trade in.

What I do not agree with is tournament organizers pushing out harsh arbitrary limitations just because they don't like seeing something. I much prefer solutions that introduce enhancements to play, that can make games more interesting, rather than limitations that restrict the things we can see happen.

Basically, I see ideas like "1 detachment per 1000 points" or "must field troops" or "first detachment must be a batallion or a patrol" and I wince because it completely prevents some extremely interesting lists that would ride on tactics, surprise, and execution.

What I would rather see is tournaments going more like:

1750-2000/1750-4000

1750 to 2K worth of units on the board per game.
Up to 4K worth of units in your tournament list.
All units must be organized into detachments.

All army assembly must be done at the detachment level from your initially submitted tournament list, and detachment selection is done before the round begins but after you've had a chance to view your opponent's list (and vice-versa). You do NOT need to tell your opponent which detachments you plan on taking until you begin placing them on the board during the placement phase. You also need to tell your opponent which units are in reserve and what detachment they are a part of in the case of an entire detachment being deployed outside of the deployment phase (like a Tempestus drop troop detachment coming in via grav-chute, or a T'au spearhead of all crisis suits being deployed via manta drop). You must select a combination of detachments that exceed the minimum value allowed at a table, but that does not exceed the maximum (in the example it means your detachments must total more than 1750, but cannot exceed 2000 points. And your total force at the tournament must be enough to qualify for a table deployment of 1750, but cannot exceed 4000 in total on and off the table).

This would introduce a game of guess and second-guess before the actual game where you try to guess what your opponent will deploy based on what you could deploy, rather than saying something like "we hate flyer lists. We think they're all cheese. We're not going to allow them ever, at all, for any reason."
Instead, you would see that your opponent could bring a pair of air wings and nothing else, and then you could choose to bring an anti-air heavy detachment to counter, and hope you chose correctly.

I'm anti-sideboarding as it basically admits your own system isn't as balanced as you tout it to be, and encourages bringing both Scissors and Rock in case your opponent brings Paper and Scissors.

The game should grant diminishing returns on larger numbers of duplicated units, rather than letting them attain a critical mass. Be it increasing intra-unit synergies, adding more options so you don't get "Lascannons are useless versus Hordes", "mortars have minimal options versus armorspam", etc. Be it allowing Scout Bikers to lay cluster mines in-game, or Tau vehicles getting general-purpose "Drone Racks" that can be customised pre-game with mission-specific loadouts, etc. Rather than having to sideboard your army with a second one because the edition made it even harder to build a TAC list.

There are two main ways to keep a spam list from working. One is to make sure counters are very hard, the other is to make everything so even that it doesn't really matter what you bring (so you don't really have counterplay at all).

For an example of the first method, let's say you have Rock, Paper, and Scissors as unit types, with the cycle of counterplay you would expect. If you need to be 100% rock to have any hope of beating a 100% scissors list, spamming any one type will be very strong because you'll only lose to an opposing spam list while beating everything else. But if rock can smash 3x its value in scissors, and every other type is similarly effective against its counterpart, then a 33/33/33 list will beat any spam list of any type reliably, because the fraction of their army that can counter them can do so easily no matter how poorly the rest of the list fares.

Using the second method, if nothing really counters anything then while spam lists would still exist, they wouldn't really be any different from a non-spam list because it doesn't require anything special to counter it. It's just a single uniform plane of sameness.

Maybe, together, we can all admit that 1001-2000pts, 3 detachments, doesn't really control or prevent anything. Add to that flyers getting their own show so to speak. Freeing up fast attack and heavy slots if needed.



I think if events want some semblance of control on spamming, they'll have to limit detachments in some way.

 ross-128 wrote:
There are two main ways to keep a spam list from working. One is to make sure counters are very hard, the other is to make everything so even that it doesn't really matter what you bring (so you don't really have counterplay at all).

For an example of the first method, let's say you have Rock, Paper, and Scissors as unit types, with the cycle of counterplay you would expect. If you need to be 100% rock to have any hope of beating a 100% scissors list, spamming any one type will be very strong because you'll only lose to an opposing spam list while beating everything else. But if rock can smash 3x its value in scissors, and every other type is similarly effective against its counterpart, then a 33/33/33 list will beat any spam list of any type reliably, because the fraction of their army that can counter them can do so easily no matter how poorly the rest of the list fares.

Using the second method, if nothing really counters anything then while spam lists would still exist, they wouldn't really be any different from a non-spam list because it doesn't require anything special to counter it. It's just a single uniform plane of sameness.

Other thoughts:

- Igougo still makes it easy for alphastrike armies to be a thing, as opposed to alternating activations/interrupted turn-based play.
- Big models still have an advantage over small ones in that they have a "kill gap" before they suffer diminished effectiveness. Also, 8e shooting means a Big Thing that gets a wing-tip in range is in range of an entire enemy unit with all of its weapons, but that entire enemy unit isn't necessarily in range.
- There should be more "support" options for units, so they're not "pointless" when they don't have any viable targets. A hypothetical example could be Mortars firing smokeshells or flares to grant/mitigate cover. Another would be Scout Bikers being able to lay AT mines as they move (anti-infantry shooting + hemming in armored movement), which could be cleared by servitors, artillery fire, marching Cultists over them...

You can give units TAC roles without making them "kill anything".

 ross-128 wrote:
There are two main ways to keep a spam list from working. One is to make sure counters are very hard, the other is to make everything so even that it doesn't really matter what you bring (so you don't really have counterplay at all).

For an example of the first method, let's say you have Rock, Paper, and Scissors as unit types, with the cycle of counterplay you would expect. If you need to be 100% rock to have any hope of beating a 100% scissors list, spamming any one type will be very strong because you'll only lose to an opposing spam list while beating everything else. But if rock can smash 3x its value in scissors, and every other type is similarly effective against its counterpart, then a 33/33/33 list will beat any spam list of any type reliably, because the fraction of their army that can counter them can do so easily no matter how poorly the rest of the list fares.

Using the second method, if nothing really counters anything then while spam lists would still exist, they wouldn't really be any different from a non-spam list because it doesn't require anything special to counter it. It's just a single uniform plane of sameness.

This is exactly right.
Unfortunately what is becoming clearer is that 8th is tending towards skews. Its different to 7th but may not be dramatically more fun because of it.
It might be hoped that a meta develops that tells against a skew but I am not seeing it. There is a clear advantage to picking an army which will make most of an opponents army very bad. If you can then go first in most instances and shoot up their effective stuff you are likely to win.

There has to be aome sort of unity buff for having a mix. Currently there isnt. So armour skew or horde skew will be effective. Currently it will be armour because people prefer low model count armies. No one really wants to paint, deploy and move hundreds of conscripts.

Ironically, this is basically what plagued/still plagues (among other things) Warmachine Mk3; skew lists as far as the eye can see, find something that works/can be buffed and take as many of it as you're allowed to. Insanely boring playstyle, a big reason why I had to quit playing because I hated doing it, and refused to bring myself to play like that.

 MagicJuggler wrote:

 ross-128 wrote:
There are two main ways to keep a spam list from working. One is to make sure counters are very hard, the other is to make everything so even that it doesn't really matter what you bring (so you don't really have counterplay at all).

For an example of the first method, let's say you have Rock, Paper, and Scissors as unit types, with the cycle of counterplay you would expect. If you need to be 100% rock to have any hope of beating a 100% scissors list, spamming any one type will be very strong because you'll only lose to an opposing spam list while beating everything else. But if rock can smash 3x its value in scissors, and every other type is similarly effective against its counterpart, then a 33/33/33 list will beat any spam list of any type reliably, because the fraction of their army that can counter them can do so easily no matter how poorly the rest of the list fares.

Using the second method, if nothing really counters anything then while spam lists would still exist, they wouldn't really be any different from a non-spam list because it doesn't require anything special to counter it. It's just a single uniform plane of sameness.

Other thoughts:

- Igougo still makes it easy for alphastrike armies to be a thing, as opposed to alternating activations/interrupted turn-based play.
- Big models still have an advantage over small ones in that they have a "kill gap" before they suffer diminished effectiveness. Also, 8e shooting means a Big Thing that gets a wing-tip in range is in range of an entire enemy unit with all of its weapons, but that entire enemy unit isn't necessarily in range.
- There should be more "support" options for units, so they're not "pointless" when they don't have any viable targets. A hypothetical example could be Mortars firing smokeshells or flares to grant/mitigate cover. Another would be Scout Bikers being able to lay AT mines as they move (anti-infantry shooting + hemming in armored movement), which could be cleared by servitors, artillery fire, marching Cultists over them...

You can give units TAC roles without making them "kill anything".

I love for more support roles and actions for different units. Just put a bunch of "markers" in sale to that kind of thing and you can have much more interactive units and a very big array of options to give factions new units. Like hackers in Infinity, where they really don't kill anything but are counters to the robots and big robotic armours.

I'm not terribly worried about the potential rise of flyer spam as admech at least.......the more prevalent it becomes the more common icarus arrays will be on my dunecrawlers. Eventually the problem will dakka itself out.

Feldrance wrote:
I'm not terribly worried about the potential rise of flyer spam as admech at least.......the more prevalent it becomes the more common icarus arrays will be on my dunecrawlers. Eventually the problem will dakka itself out.

It does mean that some armies will need their anti-air buffed.

'crons, for example, have exactly one anti-air option. And it costs almost 500 points, and is all kinds of worthless for its points (friends don't let friends take obelisks).

Hoenstly - limititng armies to 1 detachment at 2000 points might actually produce a competitive game - it makes you have to make choices. Battalion for balanced approach - vanguard or spearhead if you want to dominate with the big guns.

 Xenomancers wrote:
Hoenstly - limititng armies to 1 detachment at 2000 points might actually produce a competitive game - it makes you have to make choices. Battalion for balanced approach - vanguard or spearhead if you want to dominate with the big guns.

1 Detachment at 2k points means that you might as well say "we're not using detachments. Go back to the org chart from previous editions".

It would also cause problems for AdMech. Taking multiple detachments is the only way they can bring other Imperium units without losing canticles.

 Xenomancers wrote:
Hoenstly - limititng armies to 1 detachment at 2000 points might actually produce a competitive game - it makes you have to make choices. Battalion for balanced approach - vanguard or spearhead if you want to dominate with the big guns.

This is the new knee jerk reaction I'm seeing this week on Dakka Dakka. Meanwhile FLG is saying spam lists will settle down as players realize they aren't going to win against TAC lists who rely on tactics over brainlessly spamming the flavor of the month. Plus, if that aggressive codex schedule is correct, we'll be seeing a ton more rules per army every month. There is currently no reason to restrict detachments beyond the 3 per 2K at this time. Any local house ruling like this will kiss their local meta goodbye.

8th is apparently like Dark Souls. It seems incredibly difficult and challenging but once you "get it" the game becomes a cakewalk.

I don't actually see a problem with spam lists in and of themselves. There's plenty of lore basis for Ork, Guard, Tyranid, Necron, or even Chaos spam. Hell, even Space Marines can sorta justify spamming infantry, as one massive deployment meant to crush the enemy under overwhelming firepower. They can be done in an anti-lore way but they don't have to be.

And 8th is no different than any other edition in regards to spam anyway.

If tournaments adopted more Maelstrom type missions those gimmick lists would balance out better.

Personally I think they should've made every non-Brigade or Battalion detachment worth 0 CP's as well. So you are free to still field whatever you want, but you're more encouraged to field troops or a balanced army.

Nah. I think it's fine as is. The current detachments allow things like 1st company deployments of only terminators without having to be dark angels, for example, which I find to be both very fluffy and fun.

Tourney of a brand new edition has a grab bag of winners with unforeseen and gimmicky lists no one expected? Not super surprising.

There is no meta to play for or against right now. No one has figured out what a good and bad list look like and no one has settled in to the real shape of their army yet.

A single tournament early on is an interesting footnote, but expect things to start shifting before they eventually solidify. This edition is a big change and these results don't really speak to any kind of overarching meta yet.

Take note for now and continue watching results to see what changes as folks get more comfortable with the changes. Still early days.

To be honest I could care less if nobody ever took Troops... what I dislike though, is "cherry picking" the best units. We saw this a lot in 7th edition and it kind of makes me sad to see it - right out of the gate in 8th.

But hopefully as everyone gets comfortable with the system we'll see that stuff level out.

 Gunzhard wrote:
If tournaments adopted more Maelstrom type missions those gimmick lists would balance out better.

Personally I think they should've made every non-Brigade or Battalion detachment worth 0 CP's as well. So you are free to still field whatever you want, but you're more encouraged to field troops or a balanced army.

I think it's fine simply because armies that are based around brigades and battalions will get a ton more CP than "tricky" lists for a lot less effort.

I figure the faction codices and expansion books will also introduce a ton of new faction-specific strategms (they had better) that will make those "tricky" 4 CP lists absolutely CP starved, and at a significant disadvantage vs any TAC list.

 Gunzhard wrote:
To be honest I could care less if nobody ever took Troops... what I dislike though, is "cherry picking" the best units. We saw this a lot in 7th edition and it kind of makes me sad to see it - right out of the gate in 8th.

But hopefully as everyone gets comfortable with the system we'll see that stuff level out.

This is what I dislike as well. For the immersion of a wargame there has to be units and characters that are really powerful, but that you will not see all the time. If it is balanced purely by point cost taking one of those "flavor" units would severely impact the rest of your list choices. If it came to the point where building an army process consisted of picking 2-3 win-condition-super-units and padding the rest of the list with the cheapest cannon fodder there is, I would consider it a broken wargame. Maybe it is the kind of game GW is aiming for though, as it sure feels like they have gone that direction since 2nd ed (where I did most of my playing).
For narrative play these spammy thematic lists are super neat. Gives players a chance to try some wacky stuff. However, it has no place in tournaments where balance is desired. If you look at any sort of competitive game (e-sports, card games, sports, etc.) it is very common for tournament/competitions to have a rules committee and special competition rules that are often different from hobby/leisure play.

That said, I also agree that spammy lists will likely disappear over time. They tend to be one-trick-ponies that are rather easy to counter. So if too many play them in tournament play, more players will bring counters and they will not rank high.
However, a tournament list with a bunch of specific strategic choice units that soft-counter spammy lists can be very hard to play.
In most sort of competitive play the players are split in layers - and the meta is different in each layer. Typically at the very high level the meta focus on clever use of soft-counters to give you ways to win over a player that plays any of the possible win-conditions. As a compromise each player end up with very few win-conditions themselves and in the case of wargaming the armies become very hard to play. You need to know exactly how to use each unit to your advantage depending on what you are facing.
Contrary in the lower skill level layers armies tend to be dominated by powerful win-conditions. Less experienced players cannot wield the soft-counter armies effectively and end up losing with them. In response they pick one of the OP FOTM spam-lists to have a known win-condition when they play. They will rather win some and lose some and have fun playing than play a boring counter-army.
Which brings it full circle - consistent winning in tournaments does not always inspire the most fun lists to play. And as long as players play for fun you will see skewed trick-shot lists in tournaments and they will get lucky on matchups every now and then.

 Arandmoor wrote:


1 Detachment at 2k points means that you might as well say "we're not using detachments. Go back to the org chart from previous editions".

I don't see this as a problem.

 ross-128 wrote:
It would also cause problems for AdMech. Taking multiple detachments is the only way they can bring other Imperium units without losing canticles.

I don't see this as a problem either. Lots of armies are restricted to one list.

Limiting it to 1 detachment means you can never take a Fortification or Lord of War.

 docdoom77 wrote:

 Arandmoor wrote:


1 Detachment at 2k points means that you might as well say "we're not using detachments. Go back to the org chart from previous editions".

I don't see this as a problem.

 ross-128 wrote:
It would also cause problems for AdMech. Taking multiple detachments is the only way they can bring other Imperium units without losing canticles.

I don't see this as a problem either. Lots of armies are restricted to one list.

The cats already out of the bag, even if some people want what you're suggestion, I think most people are going to continue to move forward.

 Gunzhard wrote:


Personally I think they should've made every non-Brigade or Battalion detachment worth 0 CP's as well. So you are free to still field whatever you want, but you're more encouraged to field troops or a balanced army.

this is a terrible idea. Lets consider my 2 current armies that I'm finishing up. Iyanden ghost army. I get penalized for bringing a fluffy wraithguard based list unless you want me to spam Rangers or Guardians.....not good. Second is my Ravenwing army. Yeah, let's take 3-6 units of non ravenwing scouts, just so I can gain a reasonable number of command points. With me taking 2-3 Outrider detachments, I'm still getting only +3 command points, so it's not exactly unbalancing is it?

 bullyboy wrote:

 Gunzhard wrote:


Personally I think they should've made every non-Brigade or Battalion detachment worth 0 CP's as well. So you are free to still field whatever you want, but you're more encouraged to field troops or a balanced army.

this is a terrible idea. Lets consider my 2 current armies that I'm finishing up. Iyanden ghost army. I get penalized for bringing a fluffy wraithguard based list unless you want me to spam Rangers or Guardians.....not good. Second is my Ravenwing army. Yeah, let's take 3-6 units of non ravenwing scouts, just so I can gain a reasonable number of command points. With me taking 2-3 Outrider detachments, I'm still getting only +3 command points, so it's not exactly unbalancing is it?

Yeah the more I thought about it - I don't care at all of nobody ever takes Troops... in fact I'd like to run a 1st Company Blood Angels list at some point with a troop tax. My initial thought was that if Tournament players are demanding 'more Troops' etc... but heck, the tournament scene are always the biggest knee-jerk babies so it's best to wait to see how things play out.

2nd place was Ynnari-Harlequins:

Battalion Detachment
Yvraine = Gaze of Ynnead • Word of the Phoenix
Troupe Master = Harlequin's Caress • Fusion Pistol
Shadowseer = Shuriken Pistol • Hallucinogen Grenade Launcher • Mist Stave • Mirror Minds
Harlequin Troupe x 5 = 5 Harlequin's Caress • 2 Fusion Pistol
Harlequin Troupe x 5 = 5 Harlequin's Caress • 2 Fusion Pistol
Harlequin Troupe x 5 = 5 Harlequin's Caress • 2 Fusion Pistol
Harlequin Troupe x 5 = 5 Harlequin's Caress • 2 Fusion Pistol
Hemlock Wraithfighter = 2 Heavy D-Scyth
Hemlock Wraithfighter = 2 Heavy D-Scyth
Dedi Trans Starweaver = 99 • 2 Shuriken Cannons
Dedi Trans Starweaver = 2 Shuriken Cannons
Dedi Trans Starweaver = 2 Shuriken Cannons

Patrol Detachment
Shadowseer = Shuriken Pistol • Hallucinogen Grenade Launcher • Mist Stave • Fog of Dreams
Dedi Trans Starweaver = 2 Shuriken Cannons

how is the Patrol detachment working? Isnt it 1 HQ 1 Standard ?

Hi Guys I was that Harlequin Player.

First up the Battalion was Yvraine, Troupe Master, Shadowseer, 3 Troupes, 3 Starweaver, 2 Hemlocks. The Patrol was a Shadowseer, a Troupe and a Starweaver.

Second, I played a lot of different armies at the event and had a blast!. They used the ITC first turn rukes.
I played a Two Knight, 3 Taurox Primes, 2 Scion Plasma Command, 2 Scion Plasma, 1 Scion Flamer and 2 Scion HQ round 1. Tabled it on Turn 4

Round 2 was a Brass Scorpion, Magnus, maulerfiend, DPrince, Dread with Las and ML, 40 Poxwalkers, 10 Cultist and a Sorcerer. Tabled it on turn 5

Round 3 was the 4 Sternguard with two lascannon in AssCan Razors with Gullyman, 1 Rifleman Dread, 40 Conscript and 1 Lord Commissar. Tabled on turn 6. Third Place Army.

Round 4 faced 3 Doomsday Ark, Tesseract Vault, Triarch Stalker, D Lord, Nightbringer, 5 Praetorian, Tabled on turn 5.

And Because I am lazy, let me repost what the TO asked me to write as a summary of the last round.

It’s the final showdown for Top Dog at the Boise Cup! My Ynnari Yvraine led Mechanized Harlequins and 2 Hemlock Wraithfighters versus Tim’s Skies of Blood 4 Storm Raven, 2 Stormhawk Interceptor Army on the Retrieval Mission with a Dawn of War Deployment. Tim started strong by winning the dice roll for who deploys the first objective allowing to have the first drop during deployment as we had the exact same number of unit drops granting him the +1 to go first. That was further sealed when he rolled a 7 (6+1) for going first and me failing to seize. My deployment was basically defensive since he had the guaranteed +1 and knowing that he would focus down my Hemlock Wraithfighters right out of the gate. Which he did but he split 2 Ravens to go after my 4 Starweavers, It actually took him 3 of the Ravens and both Stormhawks to kill both Hemlocks which secured him First Blood but all he did was knock two wounds off 1 Starweaver with the rest of his shooting. My return fire saw Fusion Pistols from the Troupes inside the Starweaver blow two Ravens out of the air (later guaranteeing me Slay the Warlord) which I could tell completely took Tim by surprise. On his next turn, Tim decided that flying away from the Mechanized Troupes and peppering them with long range shots was safer and basically chose for his army to break away. He managed to knock 1 Weaver but did little else that turn. I maneuvered around the building out of LoS forcing him to have to dedicate his Stormhawks to get into range of my army. They managed to blow one of the 3 left over Starweaver and that was about it. During my turn, I was now poised with the possibility of shooting both of his Stormhawk point blank with Fusion Pistols and another of his Raven and managed to score only a single hit (also mention that all of the 3 Smites, Gaze of Ynnead and Mirror of Minds, I did 3 MW) that turn which basically meant that the Star Weavers were now looking at the full might of his remaining army. He demeched me on his 4th turn and my turn 4 saw me finally take down 1 Stormhawk and put 6 wounds on 1 Storm Raven but on his turn 5 he managed to kill my Warlord and whittle down most of the Troupes. To add insult to injury, he managed to kill my Troupemaster with his Overwatching Multi Melta as he was hovering and almost kill the Shadowseer as well next to him by hitting him also with an overwatch Multi Melta. If he hadn’t there was a very good chance I would have been able to either kill the Hawk during my turn as this was from Soulburst and have two models sit on the objective the last remaining Hawk was claiming and score another objective with my last remaining Troupe giving me a minor win but now I faced a minor loss but alas the game continued to turn 6 allowing him the ability to mop up the last few models on the table. It was a great game and it literally came down to rolling average on turn 3 with Fusion Pistols to basically turn the game on its head. I love the new edition and the Harlequins that came riding with it. Thank you for the Boise Cup staff and ABU Games for hosting the event. Congratulation for Team Chump Change for taking Best Overall, Best Sport, Best Eldar, Best Ynnari, Best Cult Mechanicus, 2nd Overall and 2nd General.

 andysonic1 wrote:
Meanwhile FLG is saying spam lists will settle down as players realize they aren't going to win against TAC lists who rely on tactics over brainlessly spamming the flavor of the month.

Pretty hilarious statement, I have yet to see any tactics in FLG battle reports.

 andysonic1 wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:
Hoenstly - limititng armies to 1 detachment at 2000 points might actually produce a competitive game - it makes you have to make choices. Battalion for balanced approach - vanguard or spearhead if you want to dominate with the big guns.

This is the new knee jerk reaction I'm seeing this week on Dakka Dakka. Meanwhile FLG is saying spam lists will settle down as players realize they aren't going to win against TAC lists who rely on tactics over brainlessly spamming the flavor of the month. Plus, if that aggressive codex schedule is correct, we'll be seeing a ton more rules per army every month. There is currently no reason to restrict detachments beyond the 3 per 2K at this time. Any local house ruling like this will kiss their local meta goodbye.

8th is apparently like Dark Souls. It seems incredibly difficult and challenging but once you "get it" the game becomes a cakewalk.

The flyer spam lists will settle down when Magnus pays them a visit.

I don't see how people can say limiting detatchments is a valid reason. It invalidates some peoples entire armies. Deathwing players wouldn't be able to field much since HQ's no longer allow termies as troops. For certain races/factions I just don't think it could work properly. Like genestealer cult, taking nids and Imperial Guard, they need separate detachments.

PUFNSTUF wrote:
I don't see how people can say limiting detatchments is a valid reason. It invalidates some peoples entire armies. Deathwing players wouldn't be able to field much since HQ's no longer allow termies as troops. For certain races/factions I just don't think it could work properly. Like genestealer cult, taking nids and Imperial Guard, they need separate detachments.

It's just a knee-jerk reaction.

"I didn't play in the tournament of 38 people, but I saw the top 3 lists and therefore the game needs a redesign." -The Community

 Marmatag wrote:

PUFNSTUF wrote:
I don't see how people can say limiting detatchments is a valid reason. It invalidates some peoples entire armies. Deathwing players wouldn't be able to field much since HQ's no longer allow termies as troops. For certain races/factions I just don't think it could work properly. Like genestealer cult, taking nids and Imperial Guard, they need separate detachments.

It's just a knee-jerk reaction.

"I didn't play in the tournament of 38 people, but I saw the top 3 lists and therefore the game needs a redesign." -The Community

Hah, well he's right... still doesn't make "cherry picking" best units/items/weapons any less nauseating.

 MikhailLenin wrote:
Hi Guys I was that Harlequin Player.

First up the Battalion was Yvraine, Troupe Master, Shadowseer, 3 Troupes, 3 Starweaver, 2 Hemlocks. The Patrol was a Shadowseer, a Troupe and a Starweaver.

Second, I played a lot of different armies at the event and had a blast!. They used the ITC first turn rukes.
I played a Two Knight, 3 Taurox Primes, 2 Scion Plasma Command, 2 Scion Plasma, 1 Scion Flamer and 2 Scion HQ round 1. Tabled it on Turn 4

Round 2 was a Brass Scorpion, Magnus, maulerfiend, DPrince, Dread with Las and ML, 40 Poxwalkers, 10 Cultist and a Sorcerer. Tabled it on turn 5

Round 3 was the 4 Sternguard with two lascannon in AssCan Razors with Gullyman, 1 Rifleman Dread, 40 Conscript and 1 Lord Commissar. Tabled on turn 6. Third Place Army.

Round 4 faced 3 Doomsday Ark, Tesseract Vault, Triarch Stalker, D Lord, Nightbringer, 5 Praetorian, Tabled on turn 5.

And Because I am lazy, let me repost what the TO asked me to write as a summary of the last round.

It’s the final showdown for Top Dog at the Boise Cup! My Ynnari Yvraine led Mechanized Harlequins and 2 Hemlock Wraithfighters versus Tim’s Skies of Blood 4 Storm Raven, 2 Stormhawk Interceptor Army on the Retrieval Mission with a Dawn of War Deployment. Tim started strong by winning the dice roll for who deploys the first objective allowing to have the first drop during deployment as we had the exact same number of unit drops granting him the +1 to go first. That was further sealed when he rolled a 7 (6+1) for going first and me failing to seize. My deployment was basically defensive since he had the guaranteed +1 and knowing that he would focus down my Hemlock Wraithfighters right out of the gate. Which he did but he split 2 Ravens to go after my 4 Starweavers, It actually took him 3 of the Ravens and both Stormhawks to kill both Hemlocks which secured him First Blood but all he did was knock two wounds off 1 Starweaver with the rest of his shooting. My return fire saw Fusion Pistols from the Troupes inside the Starweaver blow two Ravens out of the air (later guaranteeing me Slay the Warlord) which I could tell completely took Tim by surprise. On his next turn, Tim decided that flying away from the Mechanized Troupes and peppering them with long range shots was safer and basically chose for his army to break away. He managed to knock 1 Weaver but did little else that turn. I maneuvered around the building out of LoS forcing him to have to dedicate his Stormhawks to get into range of my army. They managed to blow one of the 3 left over Starweaver and that was about it. During my turn, I was now poised with the possibility of shooting both of his Stormhawk point blank with Fusion Pistols and another of his Raven and managed to score only a single hit (also mention that all of the 3 Smites, Gaze of Ynnead and Mirror of Minds, I did 3 MW) that turn which basically meant that the Star Weavers were now looking at the full might of his remaining army. He demeched me on his 4th turn and my turn 4 saw me finally take down 1 Stormhawk and put 6 wounds on 1 Storm Raven but on his turn 5 he managed to kill my Warlord and whittle down most of the Troupes. To add insult to injury, he managed to kill my Troupemaster with his Overwatching Multi Melta as he was hovering and almost kill the Shadowseer as well next to him by hitting him also with an overwatch Multi Melta. If he hadn’t there was a very good chance I would have been able to either kill the Hawk during my turn as this was from Soulburst and have two models sit on the objective the last remaining Hawk was claiming and score another objective with my last remaining Troupe giving me a minor win but now I faced a minor loss but alas the game continued to turn 6 allowing him the ability to mop up the last few models on the table. It was a great game and it literally came down to rolling average on turn 3 with Fusion Pistols to basically turn the game on its head. I love the new edition and the Harlequins that came riding with it. Thank you for the Boise Cup staff and ABU Games for hosting the event. Congratulation for Team Chump Change for taking Best Overall, Best Sport, Best Eldar, Best Ynnari, Best Cult Mechanicus, 2nd Overall and 2nd General.

Cool stuff.

Do you think you would have changed your list at all, in hindsight?

I dont think so. i am pretty happy with how it plays.

 Robin5t wrote:

 MikhailLenin wrote:
Hi Guys I was that Harlequin Player.

First up the Battalion was Yvraine, Troupe Master, Shadowseer, 3 Troupes, 3 Starweaver, 2 Hemlocks. The Patrol was a Shadowseer, a Troupe and a Starweaver.

Second, I played a lot of different armies at the event and had a blast!. They used the ITC first turn rukes.
I played a Two Knight, 3 Taurox Primes, 2 Scion Plasma Command, 2 Scion Plasma, 1 Scion Flamer and 2 Scion HQ round 1. Tabled it on Turn 4

Round 2 was a Brass Scorpion, Magnus, maulerfiend, DPrince, Dread with Las and ML, 40 Poxwalkers, 10 Cultist and a Sorcerer. Tabled it on turn 5

Round 3 was the 4 Sternguard with two lascannon in AssCan Razors with Gullyman, 1 Rifleman Dread, 40 Conscript and 1 Lord Commissar. Tabled on turn 6. Third Place Army.

Round 4 faced 3 Doomsday Ark, Tesseract Vault, Triarch Stalker, D Lord, Nightbringer, 5 Praetorian, Tabled on turn 5.

And Because I am lazy, let me repost what the TO asked me to write as a summary of the last round.

It’s the final showdown for Top Dog at the Boise Cup! My Ynnari Yvraine led Mechanized Harlequins and 2 Hemlock Wraithfighters versus Tim’s Skies of Blood 4 Storm Raven, 2 Stormhawk Interceptor Army on the Retrieval Mission with a Dawn of War Deployment. Tim started strong by winning the dice roll for who deploys the first objective allowing to have the first drop during deployment as we had the exact same number of unit drops granting him the +1 to go first. That was further sealed when he rolled a 7 (6+1) for going first and me failing to seize. My deployment was basically defensive since he had the guaranteed +1 and knowing that he would focus down my Hemlock Wraithfighters right out of the gate. Which he did but he split 2 Ravens to go after my 4 Starweavers, It actually took him 3 of the Ravens and both Stormhawks to kill both Hemlocks which secured him First Blood but all he did was knock two wounds off 1 Starweaver with the rest of his shooting. My return fire saw Fusion Pistols from the Troupes inside the Starweaver blow two Ravens out of the air (later guaranteeing me Slay the Warlord) which I could tell completely took Tim by surprise. On his next turn, Tim decided that flying away from the Mechanized Troupes and peppering them with long range shots was safer and basically chose for his army to break away. He managed to knock 1 Weaver but did little else that turn. I maneuvered around the building out of LoS forcing him to have to dedicate his Stormhawks to get into range of my army. They managed to blow one of the 3 left over Starweaver and that was about it. During my turn, I was now poised with the possibility of shooting both of his Stormhawk point blank with Fusion Pistols and another of his Raven and managed to score only a single hit (also mention that all of the 3 Smites, Gaze of Ynnead and Mirror of Minds, I did 3 MW) that turn which basically meant that the Star Weavers were now looking at the full might of his remaining army. He demeched me on his 4th turn and my turn 4 saw me finally take down 1 Stormhawk and put 6 wounds on 1 Storm Raven but on his turn 5 he managed to kill my Warlord and whittle down most of the Troupes. To add insult to injury, he managed to kill my Troupemaster with his Overwatching Multi Melta as he was hovering and almost kill the Shadowseer as well next to him by hitting him also with an overwatch Multi Melta. If he hadn’t there was a very good chance I would have been able to either kill the Hawk during my turn as this was from Soulburst and have two models sit on the objective the last remaining Hawk was claiming and score another objective with my last remaining Troupe giving me a minor win but now I faced a minor loss but alas the game continued to turn 6 allowing him the ability to mop up the last few models on the table. It was a great game and it literally came down to rolling average on turn 3 with Fusion Pistols to basically turn the game on its head. I love the new edition and the Harlequins that came riding with it. Thank you for the Boise Cup staff and ABU Games for hosting the event. Congratulation for Team Chump Change for taking Best Overall, Best Sport, Best Eldar, Best Ynnari, Best Cult Mechanicus, 2nd Overall and 2nd General.

Cool stuff.

Do you think you would have changed your list at all, in hindsight?

so 8th edition became "game where i need to table the opponent"? sound so exciting.... in your experience what you think a list like demons shoud play to have a chance then? tysm

 MikhailLenin wrote:
I dont think so. i am pretty happy with how it plays.

How was using soulburst instead of crescendo on the troupes?

Anyone know what the 8th place Tyranid list looked like?

PUFNSTUF wrote:

 MikhailLenin wrote:
I dont think so. i am pretty happy with how it plays.

How was using soulburst instead of crescendo on the troupes?

Functionality wise, Soulburst is better imo, allows you to have a sort of Domino Effect in which proves vastly more flexible than having the ability to fall back and still charge (Which you can still do that with Soulburst)

 MikhailLenin wrote:

PUFNSTUF wrote:

 MikhailLenin wrote:
I dont think so. i am pretty happy with how it plays.

How was using soulburst instead of crescendo on the troupes?

Functionality wise, Soulburst is better imo, allows you to have a sort of Domino Effect in which proves vastly more flexible than having the ability to fall back and still charge (Which you can still do that with Soulburst)

Really? Huh. Crescendo seemed like the only rule that might be as good as soulburst, so I guess running eldar as ynarri is probably the right call always.

 Gunzhard wrote:
There's literally not 1 unit from the Blood Angels section of the Index in that "Blood Angels" list.

Not only that, but the stormhawk interceptor cannot even be taken by blood angels.

On second look, the Tac squad is very Blood Angels because of the heavy flamer.

 Mulletdude wrote:

 Gunzhard wrote:
There's literally not 1 unit from the Blood Angels section of the Index in that "Blood Angels" list.

Not only that, but the stormhawk interceptor cannot even be taken by blood angels.

On second look, the Tac squad is very Blood Angels because of the heavy flamer.

It's still not from the Blood Angel section of the Index; it's still just a Space Marine Tactical Squad, with the "Blood Angel Heavy Flamer" ...yeah just semantics but still lame cherry-picking.

It reminds me of whenever BA had a tournament presence in 7th, it was always a cherry-picked "Flesh Tearer Droppod taxi service" with no other BA units and some obnoxious super-friends combo, or that one gimmicky FW-droppod and Dread list that caught people off guard.

 Gunzhard wrote:

 Mulletdude wrote:

 Gunzhard wrote:
There's literally not 1 unit from the Blood Angels section of the Index in that "Blood Angels" list.

Not only that, but the stormhawk interceptor cannot even be taken by blood angels.

On second look, the Tac squad is very Blood Angels because of the heavy flamer.

It's still not from the Blood Angel section of the Index; it's still just a Space Marine Tactical Squad, with the "Blood Angel Heavy Flamer" ...yeah just semantics but still lame cherry-picking.

It reminds me of whenever BA had a tournament presence in 7th, it was always a cherry-picked "Flesh Tearer Droppod taxi service" with no other BA units and some obnoxious super-friends combo, or that one gimmicky FW-droppod and Dread list that caught people off guard.

Oh, I get it and understand. I play Blood Angels as my primary army. The taxi-service days really pissed me off because of a GT I was playing in I was easily the top BA player, but it went to someone who made a priest their warlord in the Taxi Service detachment of some other stuff.

In other words, it's a blood angels tactical squad. Because that's how the indices work right now. Stop your complaining about things like that at LEAST until we get new books.

 Melissia wrote:
In other words, it's a blood angels tactical squad. Because that's how the indices work right now. Stop your complaining about things like that at LEAST until we get new books.

Hah, thank you I will not. Index or Codex or nothing -- that's not the point, it's the lame cherry-picking of best units; that was a totally obnoxious problem with 7th, and here we see it happen right out of the gate in 8th. It also happens to bother me more being Blood Angels, if you don't like it just ignore my post and carry on with whatever it is you do.

So, seeing as tactical marines and space marine captains no longer count as blood angels in your eyes-- your words, not mine-- how exactly do you BUILD a "proper" blood angel force? Because this just stinks of No True Scotsmanist arguments.

 Melissia wrote:
So, seeing as tactical marines and space marine captains no longer count as blood angels in your eyes-- your words, not mine-- how exactly do you BUILD a "proper" blood angel force? Because this just stinks of No True Scotsmanist arguments.

I think the issue was less him taking those units so much as his army not including any elements particularly thematic of blood angels. It is a bit odd to see a blood angel army with no assault elements to speak of.

Right, so we should change the rules of the book so all Blood Angels armies should have a mandatory choice of at least one assault marine squad? Come on, let's find a fix for this that will satisfy this no-true-scotsman feeling going around.

 Melissia wrote:
So, seeing as tactical marines and space marine captains no longer count as blood angels in your eyes-- your words, not mine-- how exactly do you BUILD a "proper" blood angel force? Because this just stinks of No True Scotsmanist arguments.

If you're trying to argue that 6 flyers, several being stormtalons, 1 captain and 6 marines (insert keyword BA); and no units chosen from the Blood Angel section of the Index, is what you consider a "Blood Angels" army then this is a fruitless exercise.

 Melissia wrote:
Right, so we should change the rules of the book so all Blood Angels armies should have a mandatory choice of at least one assault marine squad? Come on, let's find a fix for this that will satisfy this no-true-scotsman feeling going around.

It's funny that you are literally arguing in bad faith as per your sig. It's the same idea as telling a Dark Eldar player to just "add Eldar" to make a competitive list in the last edition. Or CSM to just add Forgeworld Renegades... We take our toys seriously, to varying degrees. It's a major stretch to call this "no true-scotsman feeling" and you know it is.

The cherrypicking of the best unit is fixed balancing those units.
Nobody is gonna spam a unit that is properly balanced in points. Spam is bad because people spam the best unit.

The problem is the perception of "Good units" and "Bad units" as something that is acceptable. There should be only balanced units. As the game is made by humans is acceptable to have units better balanced that others, but we should always try to achieve balance, fixing things all the time.

SilverAlien wrote:

 MikhailLenin wrote:

PUFNSTUF wrote:

 MikhailLenin wrote:
I dont think so. i am pretty happy with how it plays.

How was using soulburst instead of crescendo on the troupes?

Functionality wise, Soulburst is better imo, allows you to have a sort of Domino Effect in which proves vastly more flexible than having the ability to fall back and still charge (Which you can still do that with Soulburst)

Really? Huh. Crescendo seemed like the only rule that might be as good as soulburst, so I guess running eldar as ynarri is probably the right call always.

Yea it's interesting to hear. Most of the people in the harlequin tactics thread thought crescendo was better.

 Melissia wrote:
Right, so we should change the rules of the book so all Blood Angels armies should have a mandatory choice of at least one assault marine squad? Come on, let's find a fix for this that will satisfy this no-true-scotsman feeling going around.

He could've saves a few points and just bought a regular Flamer, and there would literally be NO element of Blood Angels. That's it. It's literally the Heavy Flamer.

 Gunzhard wrote:
It's funny that you are literally arguing in bad faith as per your sig.

It's called taking your argument to its logical extreme.

Because honestly, you have no idea what the hell you're talking about. You're trying to say "There's nothing on the blood Angels index in that army!" But you're wrong. Here, I'll prove it. Here's a list of items that the Blood Angels portion of the index says is part of the Blood Angels army from page 89 of the index, with items on that player's list in bold:


This is in addition to the units listed as unique to Blood Angels in the book. An army that contains these can, if the player wishes, be tagged <Blood Angels>. If you do, librarians get access to the Sanguinary discipline, characters with access to the Pistols and Sergeant Equipment lists may replace one or both of their gear with inferno pistols and hand flamers, and units with access to the Heavy Weapons list may purchase heavy flamers.

Thus, every single item on that list is from the Blood Angels index. Not a one isn't.

Right now, with the index as it is, this is how the Blood Angels list works. Same with all the other Space Marine lists. Games Workshop will inevitably create a unique codex for Blood Angels that will differentiate them from more codex-adherant chapters, of that I have no doubt. But you're trying, with your no-true-scotsman fallacy, to claim that unless someone takes the unit list the way YOU want them to, it's not a REAL Blood Angels list. And I say bollocks to that!

Blood Angels have stormravens and captains and tacticals just like a lot of other chapters. There's nothing unfluffy about a list where a blood angels captain on patrol with some tacticals calls in air support when faced with an overwhelming enemy force. Honestly it's not even all that strong, it just caught people off guard. If people had been better prepared for airpower to be used, it'd have likely been crushed.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

 Melissia wrote:
Right, so we should change the rules of the book so all Blood Angels armies should have a mandatory choice of at least one assault marine squad? Come on, let's find a fix for this that will satisfy this no-true-scotsman feeling going around.

He could've saves a few points and just bought a regular Flamer, and there would literally be NO element of Blood Angels. That's it. It's literally the Heavy Flamer.

Not according to the actual blood angels section of the book. You know, in case you want to bother reading it.

 Melissia wrote:

 Gunzhard wrote:
It's funny that you are literally arguing in bad faith as per your sig.

It's called taking your argument to its logical extreme.

Because honestly, you have no idea what the hell you're talking about. You're trying to say "There's nothing on the blood Angels index in that army!" But you're wrong. Here, I'll prove it. Here's a list of items that the Blood Angels portion of the index says is part of the Blood Angels army from page 89 of the index, with items on that player's list in bold:

Spoiler:

Assault Squad
Attack Bike
Bike Squad
Captain
Captain in Gravis Armor
Captain in Terminator Armor
Captain on Bike
Chaplain
Chaplain in Terminator Armor
Chaplain on Bike
Company Ancient
Company Champions
Company Veterans
Devastator Squad
Dreadnought
Drop Pod
Hellblaster Squad
Imperial Space Marine
Inceptor Squad
Intercessor Squad
Land Raider
Land Raider Crusader
Land Raider Excelsior
Land Raider Redeemer
Land Speeders
Librarian
Librarian in Terminator Armor
Librarian on Bike
Predator
Primaris Ancient
Primaris Lieutenants
Razorback
Rhino
Rhino Primaris
Sanguinary Novitiate (notes to use the Apothecary datasheet from page 21); may uniquely take jump packs
Scout Bike Squad
Scout Squad
Servitors
Sternguard Veteran Squad
Stormraven Gunship
Tactical Squad
Techmarine; may uniquely take jump packs
Techmarine on Bike
Terminator Assault Squad
Terminator Squad
Vanguard Veteran Squad
Vindicator
Whirlwind

This is in addition to the units listed as unique to Blood Angels in the book. An army that contains these can, if the player wishes, be tagged <Blood Angels>. If you do, librarians get access to the Sanguinary discipline, characters with access to the Pistols and Sergeant Equipment lists may replace one or both of their gear with inferno pistols and hand flamers, and units with access to the Heavy Weapons list may purchase heavy flamers.

Right now, with the index as it is, this is how the Blood Angels list works. Same with all the other Space Marine lists. Games Workshop will inevitably create a unique codex for Blood Angels. But you're trying, with your no-true-scotsman fallacy, to claim that unless someone takes the unit list the way YOU want them to, it's not a REAL Blood Angels list. And I say bollocks to that!

Blood Angels have stormravens and captains and tacticals just like a lot of other chapters. There's nothing unfluffy about a list where a blood angels captain on patrol with some tacticals calls in air support when faced with an overwhelming enemy force. Honestly it's not even all that strong, it just caught people off guard. If people had been better prepared for airpower to be used, it'd have likely been crushed.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

 Melissia wrote:
Right, so we should change the rules of the book so all Blood Angels armies should have a mandatory choice of at least one assault marine squad? Come on, let's find a fix for this that will satisfy this no-true-scotsman feeling going around.

He could've saves a few points and just bought a regular Flamer, and there would literally be NO element of Blood Angels. That's it. It's literally the Heavy Flamer.

Not according to the actual blood angels section of the book. Not that anyone has apparently fething read it but me, apparently, because reading is too fething hard for you people or something.

You could skip all that BS ...and look at the dudes list... 6 Flyers, several which were StormTalons which are not even on the list of "generic Space Marine units" that you can apply the <Blood Angels> keyword to (apparently you can't fething read it), and a captain and ONE 6man tactical squad. You're just choosing to be obtuse and that's on you.

 Melissia wrote:
Thus, every single item on that list is from the Blood Angels index. Not a one isn't.

Oops except for several of his flyers which make up the bulk of his army you mean...

Heck even your fluff reason doesn't make sense... yeah a Captain and a 6man tactical squad on patrol... and priest and a Rabi walk into a bar.

Was the models painted to be BloodAngels?

If the dude took time to paint his army and that is what he wants to play. Then POOR sportsmanship on anyone that calls him out on it.

If there were 3 'red' painted Marine GW supported Chapters and they all had 3 chapters had different versions/rules and 1 sucked, 1 was average and 1 was great. Why would you give a player grief over taking the best rules/legal list chapter?

You're acting like I have a reason to care that there's six fliers, as if that's somehow especially egregious. That's no different to me than some jackass taking an all-Knight army, or someone taking a titan or baneblade in their list. Neither one should be in the average game of 40k IMO. But this list was in fact a legal Blood Angels list.

By the way, the list given in the original post includes no Stormtalons. It includes four Stormravens and two Stormhawks. I'm assuming that's what you meant rather than Stormtalon (giving you the benefit of the doubt here); Stormhawks aren't listed in the Blood Angels list (which feels like an oversight, to me). Thus, the second flyer detachment, with two hawks and one raven, would have to be something other than Blood Angels in its <Chapter> tag unless the TO said otherwise. The first flyer detachment was a <Blood Angels> flyer detachment, and the patrol detachment was a <Blood Angels> patrol detachment.

And there's really nothing strange about what I stated. Tacticals operate in depleted squads all the time, sometimes for long periods of time in fact, because reinforcements for Space Marines are kinda rare (have you even read the initiation process for a Space Marine? It takes decades to produce a fully fledged battle brother!). In fact, I'm pretty sure I've read about single squads out on patrol in plenty of Black Library books.

 Melissia wrote:
You're acting like I have a reason to care that there's six fliers, as if that's somehow especially egregious. That's no different to me than some jackass taking an all-Knight army. Neither one should be in the average game of 40k IMO. But this list was in fact a legal Blood Angels list.

By the way, the list given in the original post includes no Stormtalons. It includes four Stormravens and two Stormhawks. I'm assuming that's what you meant rather than Stormtalon (giving you the benefit of the doubt here); Stormhawks aren't listed in the Blood Angels list. Thus, the second flyer detachment, with two hawks and one raven, would have to be something other than Blood Angels in its <Chapter> tag unless the TO said otherwise. The first flyer detachment was a <Blood Angels> flyer detachment, and the patrol detachment was a <Blood Angels> patrol detachment.

Nope, I could really care less what kind of WAAC monstrosity some tournament hero throws together, nor do I expect you to care... but you just made my point for me here, and yes I meant Stormhawks. It is 100% different than some jackass taking an all-Knight army, unless that all-Knight army was supposedly called "Blood Angels" and even ranking that way [as Blood Angels] on the ITC boards.

That said, do you truly believe he was going for a fluffy "Blood Angels patrol with airstrike" theme rather than a cherry-picked WAAC list?

Then IF he even did add the <Blood Angels> keyword to the first flyer detachment... where did you see that he did? There is literally no difference if he did or did not however, it's a generic unit - the majority of his army was generic space marine units, a good chunk without even the appended <Blood Angels> keyword. He took 2 flyer detachments for the extra Command Point make no mistake.

 Gunzhard wrote:
It is 100% different than some jackass taking an all-Knight army

No, it's really not. Knights don't belong on the tabletop in normal games of 40k to begin with any more than fliers do.

 Gunzhard wrote:
That said, do you truly believe he was going for a fluffy "Blood Angels patrol with airstrike" theme rather than a cherry-picked WAAC list?

I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. Also, I don't think this list was very WAAC to begin with. Stormravens and Stormhawks aren't really all that strong, and have some fairly hard counters. People weren't properly prepared because it's the rfirst tournament of the new edition. This is really no different than 5th edition's Leafblower gimmick (which, itself, was pretty fluffy, it was just an artillery unit), and much like that, once people adjust their lists a bit it'll fall by the wayside to more balanced lists.

Or to put it more bluntly, I find more offense in your no-true-scotsman crusade against the list than the list itself.

Does it even matter if he was going for a 'fluffy' list?

Cant he just play with what he likes.

Some chapters have maybe 1 unique unit and then are all generic lists. But players still like to play them.

Was he 'gaming' the system...probably...who knows.

Not sure why this is even a discussion as long as it is legal.

I mean 'fluffy' lists would require 50% tac squads in most marines and loads of Guardians/DireAvengers in elder....but how often do you see that.....maybe in 8th. (not Avengers though...uck)

 Gunzhard wrote:
Then IF he even did add the <Blood Angels> keyword to the first flyer detachment... where did you see that he did?

I don't care, and from what I can tell, neither do you. It's just another way for you to go on your "NO ONE IS PLAYING PROPERLY LIKE I WANT THEM TO!" rant. Blood Angels have Stormravens. They use stormravens. There's nothing wrong with a Blood Angels player using Stormravens. No, Stormravens that Blood Angels use aren't different than Stormravens that Ultramarines use. But the same could be said about boltguns that Blood Angels use vs boltguns that Ultramarines use. In the end, they're still just marines, and they use a very similar pool of equipment.

They are not some wholly different species with a wholly different tech base and wholly different tactics and wholly different everything. They're Space Marines. These ones are blood-flavored.

My son has a Marine army (not Blood Angels colors) but half of it is all sorts of Jump Pack units (30+ jump pack models).

He HAD to take a blood angels successor chapter to get his jump pack apothecary and jump pack techmarine to be legal to play.

He just wants to use his models....not necessarily WAAC.

Sounds cool honestly.

 Melissia wrote:
Right, so we should change the rules of the book so all Blood Angels armies should have a mandatory choice of at least one assault marine squad? Come on, let's find a fix for this that will satisfy this no-true-scotsman feeling going around.

The actual solution is army wide rules for blood angels which encourage them to enter melee and offer comparatively little to other lists (like we had slowly been adding to most armies until 8th edition reset everything). Which we will hopefully get in a codex at some point.

SilverAlien wrote:

 Melissia wrote:
Right, so we should change the rules of the book so all Blood Angels armies should have a mandatory choice of at least one assault marine squad? Come on, let's find a fix for this that will satisfy this no-true-scotsman feeling going around.

The actual solution is army wide rules for blood angels which encourage them to enter melee and offer comparatively little to other lists (like we had slowly been adding to most armies until 8th edition reset everything). Which we will hopefully get in a codex at some point.

Definitely. But there's nothing wrong IMO with a Blood Angels list that's heavy on fliers. They just won't be making best use of what is IMO the best assets of a Blood Angels list. But at that point, we've gone from calling people WAAC in to complaining people aren't WAAC enough, the idea of which made me start laughing so hard people actually came to my desk and checked to make sure I was okay.

 Melissia wrote:

 Gunzhard wrote:
It is 100% different than some jackass taking an all-Knight army

No, it's really not. Knights don't belong on the tabletop in normal games of 40k to begin with any more than fliers do.

 Gunzhard wrote:
That said, do you truly believe he was going for a fluffy "Blood Angels patrol with airstrike" theme rather than a cherry-picked WAAC list?

I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. Also, I don't think this list was very WAAC to begin with. Stormravens and Stormhawks aren't really all that strong, and have some fairly hard counters. People weren't properly prepared because it's the rfirst tournament of the new edition. This is really no different than 5th edition's Leafblower gimmick (which, itself, was pretty fluffy, it was just an artillery unit), and much like that, once people adjust their lists a bit it'll fall by the wayside to more balanced lists.

Or to put it more bluntly, I find more offense in your no-true-scotsman crusade against the list than the list itself.

BS he was going for fluffy, not that I think those flyers are super hard either but given those missions it was a strong list. Your whole 'no-true scotsman' thing is utter Bs as well... The Blood Angels have had a codex since 2nd edition and so there is at least some common ground on what makes a 'blood angels army'. Flyers are ok - BA were one of the first to get StormRavens... but this list is just taking advantage of a stop-gap Index.

Further the validity of Knights or flyers in 40k is an entirely different point than the one I am making.

 Melissia wrote:
I don't care, and from what I can tell, neither do you. It's just another way for you to go on your "NO ONE IS PLAYING PROPERLY LIKE I WANT THEM TO!" rant. Blood Angels have Stormravens. They use stormravens. There's nothing wrong with a Blood Angels player using Stormravens. No, Stormravens that Blood Angels use aren't different than Stormravens that Ultramarines use. But the same could be said about boltguns that Blood Angels use vs boltguns that Ultramarines use. In the end, they're still just marines, and they use a very similar pool of equipment.

This is best part of your argument... where your opinion that Knights and Flyers don't belong in regular 40k because "NO ONE IS PLAYING PROPERLY LIKE I WANT THEM TO!" is exactly the kind of total crap "no true scotsman' bs you're accusing me of.

 MikhailLenin wrote:
I dont think so. i am pretty happy with how it plays.

Congrats on your fun day out! And thanks for Sharing

wes

 Gunzhard wrote:
Your whole 'no-true scotsman' thing is utter Bs as well...

The entire basis of your argument is a no-true-scotsman fallacy, with you whining that they aren't using a REAL Blood Angels list because they aren't playing the list like you want them to. Do I need to start grabbing quotes, here?

 Gunzhard wrote:
This is best part of your argument... where your opinion that Knights and Flyers don't belong in regular 40k

The difference is? I'm not going on multi-page rants about how people who take knights and fliers aren't playing properly. For that matter, I don't blame the players who take knights and fliers. A lot of people find Knights to be really cool. A lot of people find fliers to be pretty cool. Hell, I like 40k's flier designs. I just wish they were harder to take outside of higher points games where people have more points to spend to prepare for something like fliers, which often rely on a hard counter. But at the same time, 8th has made it MUCH easier to take down a flier without using a hard counter. So it's actually less of a problem now than it was back then, even with the all-flier lists being a thing.

I can deal with fliers and knights being in games without, unlike you, going on a rant about how much I hate players who take them.

You should emulate me. I'm pretty awesome, I think you can agree

 Melissia wrote:

 Gunzhard wrote:
Your whole 'no-true scotsman' thing is utter Bs as well...

The entire basis of your argument is a no-true-scotsman fallacy, with you whining that they aren't using a REAL Blood Angels list because they aren't playing the list like you want them to. Do I need to start grabbing quotes, here?

 Gunzhard wrote:
This is best part of your argument... where your opinion that Knights and Flyers don't belong in regular 40k

The difference is? I'm not going on multi-page rants about how people who take knights and fliers aren't playing properly. For that matter, I don't blame the players who take knights and fliers. A lot of people find Knights to be really cool. A lot of people find fliers to be pretty cool. Hell, I like 40k's flier designs. I just wish they were harder to take outside of higher points games where people have more points to spend to prepare for something like fliers, which often rely on a hard counter. But at the same time, 8th has made it MUCH easier to take down a flier without using a hard counter. So it's actually less of a problem now than it was back then, even with the all-flier lists being a thing.

I can deal with fliers and knights being in games without, unlike you, going on a rant about how much I hate players who take them.

Grab as many quotes as you like, as I said... there's been a Blood Angel codex since 2nd edition, the idea of "what makes a Blood Angels" army is NOT my "no-true scotsman fallacy" personal choice of list as much as you're trying to force that concept on me. The idea of what makes a Blood Angels army has existed long before this dakka thread. His list was taking advantage of a new gimmick because he could and it was advantageous to do so.

And there is NO difference in your opinion on Knights and Flyers, and at this point I'm entirely certain that if some jagoff told you to just shutup about your opinion regarding Knights and Flyers you'd be going on multi-page rants (as you actually have already). It is literally exactly the same "no-true scotsman" argument you are trying to force on me though.

Nor did I ever say I hated the guy or flyers or knights or that I can't deal with them. You're just arguing in bad faith - even if you are awesome.

 Gunzhard wrote:
there's been a Blood Angel codex since 2nd edition

And according to the blood angels codex right now, blood angels can take stormravens, captains, and tacticals. In fact, I'm pretty sure they could take all those things in 7th, too, it was just probably harder to fit that many stormravens in a list without using some obscure Formation or other (I'm far too lazy to look it up).

 Gunzhard wrote:
The idea of what makes a Blood Angels army has existed long before this dakka thread

And it includes vehicles, tacticals, and captains.

 Gunzhard wrote:
And there is NO difference in your opinion on Knights and Flyers

Whatever it helps you sleep at night, you sad, judgmental little man. I don't really see much of a point of continuing this conversation at this point, though, if you can't tell the difference between "Eh, I don't like this, but I'll deal" and "I HATE THIS I HATE THIS THESE PLAYERS ARE DOING IT WRONG THEY NEED TO STOP AND CHANGE IT IMMEDIATELY!" as you have been arguing, viciously accusing players who don't play the lists like you want them to of being WAAC and playing the game wrong.

 Melissia wrote:
Definitely. But there's nothing wrong IMO with a Blood Angels list that's heavy on fliers. They just won't be making best use of what is IMO the best assets of a Blood Angels list. But at that point, we've gone from calling people WAAC in to complaining people aren't WAAC enough, the idea of which made me start laughing so hard people actually came to my desk and checked to make sure I was okay.

More trying to make the "best builds" for each army lore friendly. Which is a forelorn hope, but 8th has done a bit to turn back the clock truth be told.

 Melissia wrote:

 Gunzhard wrote:
there's been a Blood Angel codex since 2nd edition

And according to the blood angels codex right now, blood angels can take stormravens, captains, and tacticals. In fact, I'm pretty sure they could take all those things in 7th, too, it was just probably harder to fit that many stormravens in a list without using some obscure Formation or other (I'm far too lazy to look it up).

You could always do Unbound... point unchanged.

 Melissia wrote:

 Gunzhard wrote:
The idea of what makes a Blood Angels army has existed long before this dakka thread

And it includes vehicles, tacticals, and captains.

Eh not really, though sure, it may have included some of those things, I'm beginning to think you've never seen Blood Angels before.

 Melissia wrote:

 Gunzhard wrote:
And there is NO difference in your opinion on Knights and Flyers

Whatever it helps you sleep at night, you sad, judgmental little man. I don't really see much of a point of continuing this conversation at this point, though, if you can't tell the difference between "Eh, I don't like this, but I'll deal" and "I HATE THIS I HATE THIS THESE PLAYERS ARE DOING IT WRONG THEY NEED TO STOP AND CHANGE IT IMMEDIATELY!".

Oh ha ok... You can't continue because your point is 100% hypocritical and this is a childish response to mask that. That's ok, goodnight then.

I've played 40k for entirely too long, and I can tell you that if the cherry-picking bothers you, Tournaments are not for you. Tournies are all about picking the beast and most streamlined armies you can think of with the sole purpose of winning.
I quit playing tournies a long time ago for that very reason in a lot of mini games, they made them no fun for me anymore.

The current rules allow a ton of flexibility for people looking to build a cool list with a lot of themes and still do well against the majority of the field. Your allowed to play for fun if the min/maxing bothers you that much.

SilverAlien wrote:

 Melissia wrote:
Definitely. But there's nothing wrong IMO with a Blood Angels list that's heavy on fliers. They just won't be making best use of what is IMO the best assets of a Blood Angels list. But at that point, we've gone from calling people WAAC in to complaining people aren't WAAC enough, the idea of which made me start laughing so hard people actually came to my desk and checked to make sure I was okay.

More trying to make the "best builds" for each army lore friendly. Which is a forelorn hope, but 8th has done a bit to turn back the clock truth be told.

True - the thing is, GW has said, many times, that the concept of 8th edition is built around rewarding "lore friendly" lists/armies for the first time really.

 Gunzhard wrote:

SilverAlien wrote:

 Melissia wrote:
Definitely. But there's nothing wrong IMO with a Blood Angels list that's heavy on fliers. They just won't be making best use of what is IMO the best assets of a Blood Angels list. But at that point, we've gone from calling people WAAC in to complaining people aren't WAAC enough, the idea of which made me start laughing so hard people actually came to my desk and checked to make sure I was okay.

More trying to make the "best builds" for each army lore friendly. Which is a forelorn hope, but 8th has done a bit to turn back the clock truth be told.

True - the thing is, GW has said, many times, that the concept of 8th edition is built around rewarding "lore friendly" lists/armies for the first time really.

I mean.... that's gotta be the stuff in the codices we haven't seen, because it just isn't present in the indexes really. I am going to be unpopular and say the Decurion/formation system did a far better job encouraging that then 8th currently has.

 SideshowLucifer wrote:
I've played 40k for entirely too long, and I can tell you that if the cherry-picking bothers you, Tournaments are not for you. Tournies are all about picking the beast and most streamlined armies you can think of with the sole purpose of winning.
I quit playing tournies a long time ago for that very reason in a lot of mini games, they made them no fun for me anymore.

The current rules allow a ton of flexibility for people looking to build a cool list with a lot of themes and still do well against the majority of the field. Your allowed to play for fun if the min/maxing bothers you that much.

Of course - but this edition was supposed to be different. The super-friends monstrosities and the Flesh Tearer's Taxi service were mistakes that they have admitted to, and promised to fix. Frankly I could care less what some tournament hero jams together for a win... the only thing that I really didn't like was that he called it a "Blood Angels" list.

So, I understand not liking the spammy nature of the flyers list, but I think that it's more of a matter to do with issues of unbalanced unit design combined with how detachments work vs. the old ForceOrg chart. If anything I feel like it'd be more fluffy to not even need the squad and leader on the ground and have only flyers to actually represent an air force (without any other arms present) doing some sorties. But, while it's perfectly fluffy to have a bunch of aircraft pound the hell out of an enemy force, that's sort of problematic from the perspective of 40k as a game, what with all the unbalanced matches.

Also, I don't see why this can't be a spammy and fluffy BA list--granted, I think it was intended to game the system without a thought given to the fluff, but intention should have no bearing on whether or not it 'fits' the (almost meaninglessly subjective) definition of 'fluffy.' So many Space Marines have Close Combat / Jumpers as a specialty that it doesn't really set the Blood Angels apart from other chapters in a special way--Space Wolves, Black Templars, Raven Guard, those Shark guys, and (traditionally) the CSM as a general whole are all power-armoured supermen associated with in-your-face punchy aggression. Blood Angels field forces which have a greater emphasis on hand-to-hand and might have unique units to facilitate this sort of fighting, but that shouldn't mean that every fluffy Blood Angels army ought to contain Jumpers, Death Company, and/or Furiosos.

I think what I associate most with the Blood Angels is more their history as a Chapter rather than any particular unit type or army composition. The second biggest thing I associate with them? Their air force. They always struck me as the chapter which likes to fly the most.



TL;DR: I think it'd be a lot better if the rules/game balance encouraged less-spammy lists, but I think a 'bomb them back to the stone age' airforce is 100% fluffy for the Blood Angels--even though it could potentially hint at something not working quite right with the current game rules (though it's far too early to see).

And who knows, he could have actually been playing Blood Angels since the past few editions (even if he may or may not be a fluff BA player). I've bought stuff for my Space Wolves and Death Watch which they can't actually get access to, but which I wanted to have in my colours. Maybe he's painted his interceptors in Blood Angel colours--maybe he's had them like that in his collection for awhile. I just don't think we really know enough to pass judgment on it.

--As a thing I just realised: His army needs a warlord to be legal, right? I'm not 100% sure on the fine details of organisation rules yet, but since the patrol of 1 leader and the Blood Angel tactical marines was where he got his warlord from, would that make that patrol group his 'primary' detachment or something? Is there anything to how things are classified in the rules which would mean that putting a Heavy Flamer on that tactical squad might've made it so that (for entirely bureaucratic reasons) he /had/ to call the entire army a 'Blood Angels' army, since his warlord was in that detachment?

 Arandmoor wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:
Hoenstly - limititng armies to 1 detachment at 2000 points might actually produce a competitive game - it makes you have to make choices. Battalion for balanced approach - vanguard or spearhead if you want to dominate with the big guns.

1 Detachment at 2k points means that you might as well say "we're not using detachments. Go back to the org chart from previous editions".

Except - you are choosing your force order chart...you can literally take exactly the units you want - except - you will get less command points for it.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 andysonic1 wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:
Hoenstly - limititng armies to 1 detachment at 2000 points might actually produce a competitive game - it makes you have to make choices. Battalion for balanced approach - vanguard or spearhead if you want to dominate with the big guns.

This is the new knee jerk reaction I'm seeing this week on Dakka Dakka. Meanwhile FLG is saying spam lists will settle down as players realize they aren't going to win against TAC lists who rely on tactics over brainlessly spamming the flavor of the month. Plus, if that aggressive codex schedule is correct, we'll be seeing a ton more rules per army every month. There is currently no reason to restrict detachments beyond the 3 per 2K at this time. Any local house ruling like this will kiss their local meta goodbye.

8th is apparently like Dark Souls. It seems incredibly difficult and challenging but once you "get it" the game becomes a cakewalk.

1 detachment isn't restrictive in the least - but it does reduce spam. 80% of the armies I make are a single battalion at 2k - could easly make 3k batallions.

 Xenomancers wrote:

 Arandmoor wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:
Hoenstly - limititng armies to 1 detachment at 2000 points might actually produce a competitive game - it makes you have to make choices. Battalion for balanced approach - vanguard or spearhead if you want to dominate with the big guns.

1 Detachment at 2k points means that you might as well say "we're not using detachments. Go back to the org chart from previous editions".

Except - you are choosing your force order chart...you can literally take exactly the units you want - except - you will get less command points for it.

To be fair, some armies really don't need that many CP. If you're running mostly "big models", you don't care as much about battleshock. If you're relying on weight of fire dakka, you don't care as much about rerolls, and if you're mostly airborne, you don't care about interrupting the opponent's attack sequence in melee.

"I have more CP" is like saying "I have less KP" in 5th, an artificial gamey mechanic that gives the illusion of an advantage but ironically sets you up for losing.

 Likan Wolfsheim wrote:
So, I understand not liking the spammy nature of the flyers list, but I think that it's more of a matter to do with issues of unbalanced unit design combined with how detachments work vs. the old ForceOrg chart. If anything I feel like it'd be more fluffy to not even need the squad and leader on the ground and have only flyers to actually represent an air force (without any other arms present) doing some sorties. But, while it's perfectly fluffy to have a bunch of aircraft pound the hell out of an enemy force, that's sort of problematic from the perspective of 40k as a game, what with all the unbalanced matches.

Also, I don't see why this can't be a spammy and fluffy BA list--granted, I think it was intended to game the system without a thought given to the fluff, but intention should have no bearing on whether or not it 'fits' the (almost meaninglessly subjective) definition of 'fluffy.' So many Space Marines have Close Combat / Jumpers as a specialty that it doesn't really set the Blood Angels apart from other chapters in a special way--Space Wolves, Black Templars, Raven Guard, those Shark guys, and (traditionally) the CSM as a general whole are all power-armoured supermen associated with in-your-face punchy aggression. Blood Angels field forces which have a greater emphasis on hand-to-hand and might have unique units to facilitate this sort of fighting, but that shouldn't mean that every fluffy Blood Angels army ought to contain Jumpers, Death Company, and/or Furiosos.

I think what I associate most with the Blood Angels is more their history as a Chapter rather than any particular unit type or army composition. The second biggest thing I associate with them? Their air force. They always struck me as the chapter which likes to fly the most.



TL;DR: I think it'd be a lot better if the rules/game balance encouraged less-spammy lists, but I think a 'bomb them back to the stone age' airforce is 100% fluffy for the Blood Angels--even though it could potentially hint at something not working quite right with the current game rules (though it's far too early to see).

And who knows, he could have actually been playing Blood Angels since the past few editions (even if he may or may not be a fluff BA player). I've bought stuff for my Space Wolves and Death Watch which they can't actually get access to, but which I wanted to have in my colours. Maybe he's painted his interceptors in Blood Angel colours--maybe he's had them like that in his collection for awhile. I just don't think we really know enough to pass judgment on it.

--As a thing I just realised: His army needs a warlord to be legal, right? I'm not 100% sure on the fine details of organisation rules yet, but since the patrol of 1 leader and the Blood Angel tactical marines was where he got his warlord from, would that make that patrol group his 'primary' detachment or something? Is there anything to how things are classified in the rules which would mean that putting a Heavy Flamer on that tactical squad might've made it so that (for entirely bureaucratic reasons) he /had/ to call the entire army a 'Blood Angels' army, since his warlord was in that detachment?

PFFF no - it's totally about the spam. GW made it so you have to start with half your units deployed. Know why they did it? So armies can't just atuomatically alpha strike you everytime with no risk. That is what this flyer list does - it starts in the corner (you can't do reasonable damage to it - then it flys in and destroys your 3 best units) It's not tactics or strategy - it's an unfair advantage.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 MagicJuggler wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:

 Arandmoor wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:
Hoenstly - limititng armies to 1 detachment at 2000 points might actually produce a competitive game - it makes you have to make choices. Battalion for balanced approach - vanguard or spearhead if you want to dominate with the big guns.

1 Detachment at 2k points means that you might as well say "we're not using detachments. Go back to the org chart from previous editions".

Except - you are choosing your force order chart...you can literally take exactly the units you want - except - you will get less command points for it.

To be fair, some armies really don't need that many CP. If you're running mostly "big models", you don't care as much about battleshock. If you're relying on weight of fire dakka, you don't care as much about rerolls, and if you're mostly airborne, you don't care about interrupting the opponent's attack sequence in melee.

"I have more CP" is like saying "I have less KP" in 5th, an artificial gamey mechanic that gives the illusion of an advantage but ironically sets you up for losing.

I agree - the command points aren't an issue for an army of storm-ravens. However - if you were limited to 1 detachment - you really couldn't have an army of stormravens.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Gunzhard wrote:

 SideshowLucifer wrote:
I've played 40k for entirely too long, and I can tell you that if the cherry-picking bothers you, Tournaments are not for you. Tournies are all about picking the beast and most streamlined armies you can think of with the sole purpose of winning.
I quit playing tournies a long time ago for that very reason in a lot of mini games, they made them no fun for me anymore.

The current rules allow a ton of flexibility for people looking to build a cool list with a lot of themes and still do well against the majority of the field. Your allowed to play for fun if the min/maxing bothers you that much.

Of course - but this edition was supposed to be different. The super-friends monstrosities and the Flesh Tearer's Taxi service were mistakes that they have admitted to, and promised to fix. Frankly I could care less what some tournament hero jams together for a win... the only thing that I really didn't like was that he called it a "Blood Angels" list.

You are caring about the wrong things. Abuse of death-stars is equal to abuse of flyers in this edition. Who cares what he calls his flyer list? We don't even have chapter tactics yet!

Who knows if we'll ever get 'chapter tactics' really... it wasn't always a part of the SM codex; they seem to be looking back at the old 'character buff' chapter definition style, which I wouldn't mind if doesn't mean we see 50 Vulkans and 40 Calgars at one event etc...

It's also way too early to say the 'abuse of flyers in this edition' is equal to anything from 7th let alone death-star spam. He was absolutely taking advantage of a gimmick because it would (and did) work at that event but I'd say it's not likely to continue being totally dominant.

But seriously I don't care about that... the rules change, gimmicks and net-lists / WAAC-lists come and go and the tiers change from release to release - the Lore doesn't change much though and the narrative background behind a certain army that keeps people playing the same faction for 20 sometimes 30 years doesn't change much... that's what I care about mostly.

I feel the wider a banhammer, the more the core system needs rebalancing. That and indiscriminate nerfs ultimately lead to the whole exercise being pointless. I remember awhile ago, reading about a wargame exercise the US Navy condicted called the MC02.

Team Blue had a carrier task force, and Team Red was "an undisclosed Middle Eastern Nation." The Red Team player (Admiral Paul van Riper) spammed torpedo boats, suicide ships and cruise missiles and used motorcycles to relay orders rather than radio or conventional communications, and the result was half the US force was sunk. So, do the TOs decide to go back, contemplate drawbacks to such a system (preliminary airstrikes/bombardments to damage roads, etc)? No. The Blue player complained that the exercise would be pointless if he didn't get his ships back, so the TOs declared that the US Carriers were "re-floated", then gave the Red Team a script that he had to follow. (Imagine winning with Tau, then being told you weren't allowed to shoot for the first 2 turns or so). Naturally the red player ragequit.

American tax dollars at work: Players whining about OP spam and nerfhammer. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Challenge_2002

Well, if its entire strategy is clustering in a corner to get a quasi null-deploy, I can think of a few counters.

1: Bring some 48" weapons and deploy them across from the corner he's clustering in, but leaning toward the center so he has to go further to get out of their range. Make sure they're the last thing you put on the table, so by the time you drop them he's already committed.

2: Bring some 72" or greater weapons, deploy them near the center of the table and laugh with your 100% table coverage. Especially if you brought units that ignore LoS, or the only LoS blockers are too short to hide aircraft.

3: Bring some deep-strikers so that wherever he is, there you are.

It's not a 100% solution of course. Flyer spam does basically auto-win against an assault list, because outside of jetpack units, you can't assault flyers. Of course, I'm of the opinion that hitting your opponent with sticks in the 41st millennium is a silly idea anyway, but GW allegedly wants it to be a valid playstyle so I suppose they should take some steps to accommodate it.

 ross-128 wrote:
Well, if its entire strategy is clustering in a corner to get a quasi null-deploy, I can think of a few counters.

1: Bring some 48" weapons and deploy them across from the corner he's clustering in, but leaning toward the center so he has to go further to get out of their range. Make sure they're the last thing you put on the table, so by the time you drop them he's already committed.

2: Bring some 72" or greater weapons, deploy them near the center of the table and laugh with your 100% table coverage. Especially if you brought units that ignore LoS, or the only LoS blockers are too short to hide aircraft.

3: Bring some deep-strikers so that wherever he is, there you are.

It's not a 100% solution of course. Flyer spam does basically auto-win against an assault list, because outside of jetpack units, you can't assault flyers. Of course, I'm of the opinion that hitting your opponent with sticks in the 41st millennium is a silly idea anyway, but GW allegedly wants it to be a valid playstyle so I suppose they should take some steps to accommodate it.

There are definitely counters... though it seems nobody was built to counter flyer-spam at that event and that makes sense really.

Your last point - doesn't anything with FLY have the ability to punch flyers? ...so anyone with a jump pack?

 MagicJuggler wrote:
I feel the wider a banhammer, the more the core system needs rebalancing. That and indiscriminate nerfs ultimately lead to the whole exercise being pointless. I remember awhile ago, reading about a wargame exercise the US Navy condicted called the MC02.

Team Blue had a carrier task force, and Team Red was "an undisclosed Middle Eastern Nation." The Red Team player (Admiral Paul van Riper) spammed torpedo boats, suicide ships and cruise missiles and used motorcycles to relay orders rather than radio or conventional communications, and the result was half the US force was sunk. So, do the TOs decide to go back, contemplate drawbacks to such a system (preliminary airstrikes/bombardments to damage roads, etc)? No. The Blue player complained that the exercise would be pointless if he didn't get his ships back, so the TOs declared that the US Carriers were "re-floated", then gave the Red Team a script that he had to follow. (Imagine winning with Tau, then being told you weren't allowed to shoot for the first 2 turns or so). Naturally the red player ragequit.

American tax dollars at work: Players whining about OP spam and nerfhammer. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Challenge_2002

My point is this - there isn't enough restriction in GW's detachment system. There needs to be more - an army that is completely immune to assault should not be possible in a bound setting.

 Gunzhard wrote:

 ross-128 wrote:
Well, if its entire strategy is clustering in a corner to get a quasi null-deploy, I can think of a few counters.

1: Bring some 48" weapons and deploy them across from the corner he's clustering in, but leaning toward the center so he has to go further to get out of their range. Make sure they're the last thing you put on the table, so by the time you drop them he's already committed.

2: Bring some 72" or greater weapons, deploy them near the center of the table and laugh with your 100% table coverage. Especially if you brought units that ignore LoS, or the only LoS blockers are too short to hide aircraft.

3: Bring some deep-strikers so that wherever he is, there you are.

It's not a 100% solution of course. Flyer spam does basically auto-win against an assault list, because outside of jetpack units, you can't assault flyers. Of course, I'm of the opinion that hitting your opponent with sticks in the 41st millennium is a silly idea anyway, but GW allegedly wants it to be a valid playstyle so I suppose they should take some steps to accommodate it.

There are definitely counters... though it seems nobody was built to counter flyer-spam at that event and that makes sense really.

Your last point - doesn't anything with FLY have the ability to punch flyers? ...so anyone with a jump pack?

That is why I pointed out jetpack units as an exception, yes.

 Xenomancers wrote:

 MagicJuggler wrote:
I feel the wider a banhammer, the more the core system needs rebalancing. That and indiscriminate nerfs ultimately lead to the whole exercise being pointless. I remember awhile ago, reading about a wargame exercise the US Navy condicted called the MC02.

Team Blue had a carrier task force, and Team Red was "an undisclosed Middle Eastern Nation." The Red Team player (Admiral Paul van Riper) spammed torpedo boats, suicide ships and cruise missiles and used motorcycles to relay orders rather than radio or conventional communications, and the result was half the US force was sunk. So, do the TOs decide to go back, contemplate drawbacks to such a system (preliminary airstrikes/bombardments to damage roads, etc)? No. The Blue player complained that the exercise would be pointless if he didn't get his ships back, so the TOs declared that the US Carriers were "re-floated", then gave the Red Team a script that he had to follow. (Imagine winning with Tau, then being told you weren't allowed to shoot for the first 2 turns or so). Naturally the red player ragequit.

American tax dollars at work: Players whining about OP spam and nerfhammer. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Challenge_2002

My point is this - there isn't enough restriction in GW's detachment system. There needs to be more - an army that is completely immune to assault should not be possible in a bound setting.

Or maybe the system shouldn't let flyers hide in a corner, get the drop on anti-air elements, unload with everything before the defender gets to retaliate, and subsequently be both immune to assault while blocking off the enemy from moving past them? ("Quit mukkin' about with dose Stormbirdies and git to da Objective" "But Boss, dey might try ta squish us!") Or maybe Stormravens shouldn't be able to fire all their weapons from the edge of their wingtip? But sure, let's keep the banhammer going as a bandaid to underlying core rule issues.

I don't know how good/viable it actually is but ...a swarm of Tyranid Gargoyles harassing a StormRaven sounds soo awesome.

 Gunzhard wrote:
I don't know how good/viable it actually is but ...a swarm of Tyranid Gargoyles harassing a StormRaven sounds soo awesome.

As cool as it sounds it's hugely disappointing. They hit on 4s and wound on 6's. So a unit of 30 averages less than a wound to a storm raven. Their fleshbores also average less than a wound to it.

A unit of shreiks might give the raven a problem though. They still wont kill it.

This is the first published 8th Ed tournament results.

Should wait for 5+ major tournaments to post results and see what the top 4 or so lists are.

Is the list bad, certainly not.

Is it the best list ever, undcertain.

A lot goes into making it to the top tables in terms of dice rolls, opponent army etc. In 7th there were one or two major tournaments that saw Orks place first, but you would be hard pressed to find someone say those Ork lists were unbeatae, or the meta.