I was listening to a few podcasts going over the top lists and heard the same names being repeated from previous episodes. Not just the armies, but also the players. Now I understand that these people have chosen these armies because they believe they are likely to win with them. But what if these tournament players had to play different, lower tier armies? How would the top tournaments look?

Would we see Ynari, Chaos Soup, Imperial Soup, and Tyranid Flyrant spam replaced with other broken builds for other armies? Would having so many high level players playing lower tier armies still make it as high in the brackets?

Give players like that a basic list and they would probably make it work better than you would. Skill matters.

DontEatRawHagis wrote:
I was listening to a few podcasts going over the top lists and heard the same names being repeated from previous episodes. Not just the armies, but also the players. Now I understand that these people have chosen these armies because they believe they are likely to win with them. But what if these tournament players had to play different, lower tier armies? How would the top tournaments look?

Would we see Ynari, Chaos Soup, Imperial Soup, and Tyranid Flyrant spam replaced with other broken builds for other armies? Would having so many high level players playing lower tier armies still make it as high in the brackets?

Most of them (not all) would still place well. Player skill (regardless of the inevitable howling that this will generate) is still tremendously important in 40k. Understanding where your opponent will screen, how he will do it, what objectives benefit him, all these things matter and a better more experienced player will come out on top most of the time.

How about a 40k tournament where you build the worst list possible, and then swap armies with your opponent?

 infinite_array wrote:
How about a 40k tournament where you build the worst list possible, and then swap armies with your opponent?

We run an event like this in my club. You write the worst possible 1,000 point list, swap with your opponent and go.

 infinite_array wrote:
How about a 40k tournament where you build the worst list possible, and then swap armies with your opponent?

Just like a normal tournament - it'd sound like a wonderful idea with players using the maximum strategy possible, but someone would find a stupid combo to create units that just couldn't fight at all, and everyone would bring pretty much the same list featuring some unarmed tau drone, or armless weaponless tyranid groobly or something.

the_scotsman wrote:

 infinite_array wrote:
How about a 40k tournament where you build the worst list possible, and then swap armies with your opponent?

Just like a normal tournament - it'd sound like a wonderful idea with players using the maximum strategy possible, but someone would find a stupid combo to create units that just couldn't fight at all, and everyone would bring pretty much the same list featuring some unarmed tau drone, or armless weaponless tyranid groobly or something.

Nah, you just have to restrict purchased terrain or else someone will just bring that. As long as you restrict fortifications and require players to field legal lists in legal detachments its actually pretty fun. It wouldn't work for like a 400 person event but for a club level thing? Its a blast.

Reminds me of an idea I had that gained no traction in our group.

I was thinking about an army draft. A bunch of equally priced units are placed on the table - you roll off to see who picks first. Then each side takes turns picking.

Kind of like a magic draft - which almost always produces a better game than pro deck vs pro deck. Skill and game knowledge matters more here.

 infinite_array wrote:
How about a 40k tournament where you build the worst list possible, and then swap armies with your opponent?

I’d rather see a tournament filled with mediocre armies than “worst possible”. I think that would be a HUGE shakeup to the meta.

Also, for as much moaning people have done about the game being about listbuilding, it’s somewhat amusing to see comments about skill having a whole lot of influnece (though I do believe its true - I do believe many of the top players could still place/win tournaments with “joe average” lists against a lot of other people’s optimized net list lists, it just would be an uphill battle).

There have been mirror match tournaments before (WargamesCon in Texas ran one once, at 1850 1500, I think in 6th or 7th? I remember it because the list was pretty pedestrian) where players were required to bring a pre-built list proscribed by the tournament organizer.

The usual suspects still trounced everyone iirc.

EDIT:
Here's a blog post of battle reports from said mirror match tournament in 2011. It's actually a good read, and there's plenty of "tactical positioning" and using units as bait and whatever whatever that shows up, so it kinda puts paid to the idea that 40k didn't have that:
http://rumorsofheresy.blogspot.com/2011/07/bolsgamescon-mirror-match-tournament.html

 Xenomancers wrote:
Reminds me of an idea I had that gained no traction in our group.

I was thinking about an army draft. A bunch of equally priced units are placed on the table - you roll off to see who picks first. Then each side takes turns picking.

Kind of like a magic draft - which almost always produces a better game than pro deck vs pro deck. Skill and game knowledge matters more here.

That sounds like it would be a lot of fun to try. Maybe shift it to an apocalypse/team game even?

 Stormonu wrote:

 infinite_array wrote:
How about a 40k tournament where you build the worst list possible, and then swap armies with your opponent?

I’d rather see a tournament filled with mediocre armies than “worst possible”. I think that would be a HUGE shakeup to the meta.

Also, for as much moaning people have done about the game being about listbuilding, it’s somewhat amusing to see comments about skill having a whole lot of influnece (though I do believe its true - I do believe many of the top players could still place/win tournaments with “joe average” lists against a lot of other people’s optimized net list lists, it just would be an uphill battle).

This very much depends. Skill can't overcome a gun line that you'd can't penetrate nor can it deal with deepstrike alpha damage that a lot of net lists put out. It's just can't. However - if your lists has a bunch of 2nd best options instead of first best options. Those kinds of lists have a chance and in certain circumstances - an advantage.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Farseer_V2 wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:
Reminds me of an idea I had that gained no traction in our group.

I was thinking about an army draft. A bunch of equally priced units are placed on the table - you roll off to see who picks first. Then each side takes turns picking.

Kind of like a magic draft - which almost always produces a better game than pro deck vs pro deck. Skill and game knowledge matters more here.

That sounds like it would be a lot of fun to try. Maybe shift it to an apocalypse/team game even?

It would work way better in teams I think. We play a lot of 2v2 in my area anyways. I just don't think people typically like people using their models.

The top tournament players aren't a special breed, they're just better at 40k. If you forced the best players to play bottom-tier armies, you'd see the players just below them in skill level winning with the top-tier armies. A really good player with a mediocre list may be able to outperform a mediocre player with a really good list, but there aren't just those two kinds of players.

Skill matters but its only part of the equation. The best player with the worst list isn't going to win a big tournament but he will do better then others would have done with the same list.

And the armies we see at top are unlikely to change if you remove the 'best' players. The lists are not 'great unknowns' that no one else has figured out (sometimes it happens but rarely).
You would still see Ynarri or Tyranids ect at the top.

 Ordana wrote:
Skill matters but its only part of the equation. The best player with the worst list isn't going to win a big tournament but he will do better then others would have done with the same list.

And the armies we see at top are unlikely to change if you remove the 'best' players. The lists are not 'great unknowns' that no one else has figured out (sometimes it happens but rarely).
You would still see Ynarri or Tyranids ect at the top.

Depends on the lists in question some of them are actually pretty easy to counter if you don't know how to make them function.

The gap between them and tier 2 players is not large enough to expect them to win at major events. That said they would still perform well. They would figure out the best list available to them and play it.

 Farseer_V2 wrote:

 Ordana wrote:
Skill matters but its only part of the equation. The best player with the worst list isn't going to win a big tournament but he will do better then others would have done with the same list.

And the armies we see at top are unlikely to change if you remove the 'best' players. The lists are not 'great unknowns' that no one else has figured out (sometimes it happens but rarely).
You would still see Ynarri or Tyranids ect at the top.

Depends on the lists in question some of them are actually pretty easy to counter if you don't know how to make them function.

I was thinking this as well. One of the lists I played at NOVA, for example, was played by Fennel, who is a fantastic player. I was running a superheavy tank company supported by deep-striking scions in the Index days, back before they were nerfed. His list was definitely at a crippling disadvantage against mine - trying to spam mortal wounds at short range doesn't really work when I have 78 wounds on the board and you have to get through 26 of them to really put the pressure on my list. But he was clever, used terrain to his advantage ("BUT TERRAIN DOESN'T BLOCK LOS IN 8TH" - yes thank you peanut gallery. Now back to the real world...), and was able to come out victorious. My army was not meaningfully harmed by his, but with very very careful positioning and prioritizing the objectives over doing damage, he used his numerical superiority to score objectives over my big scary tanks, without actually killing a single one.

 Xenomancers wrote:
I was thinking about an army draft. A bunch of equally priced units are placed on the table - you roll off to see who picks first. Then each side takes turns picking.

That's a nice idea !

I remember doing something similar with some friends, where we would bring 2500pts to a 2000pts game, and each player would "BAN" 500pts from the opponent's army. It was really fun and always ended up making balanced games.

If you really wanted to see skill then have the event organizer make up lists for each army type (codex and/or soup) and restrict players to those lists. The player still chooses which list he wants to play but that's all he chooses. Assuming you could even get people to attend it would probably be a showcase for skill vs list building but there's no way to discount luck.

Leo_the_Rat wrote:
If you really wanted to see skill then have the event organizer make up lists for each army type (codex and/or soup) and restrict players to those lists. The player still chooses which list he wants to play but that's all he chooses. Assuming you could even get people to attend it would probably be a showcase for skill vs list building but there's no way to discount luck.

I don't dislike that idea at all. I do think though most players wouldn't enjoy it as it discounts the whole 'my guys' concept of 40k.

DontEatRawHagis wrote:
I was listening to a few podcasts going over the top lists and heard the same names being repeated from previous episodes. Not just the armies, but also the players. Now I understand that these people have chosen these armies because they believe they are likely to win with them. But what if these tournament players had to play different, lower tier armies? How would the top tournaments look?

Would we see Ynari, Chaos Soup, Imperial Soup, and Tyranid Flyrant spam replaced with other broken builds for other armies? Would having so many high level players playing lower tier armies still make it as high in the brackets?

I suspect that few to none would make it anywhere near where they would have otherwise placed. Listbuilding is by far the single most important factor to victory. Good generals with bad lists can defeat bad generals with good lists, but a good general with a bad list is usually going lose to a mediocre player with a good list and will get demolished by a mediocre player with a great list.

Sometimes great players dont take the strongest list to a tournament, and they dont tend to place highly when they do, theres a reason the top lists tend to be what they are.

 Vaktathi wrote:

DontEatRawHagis wrote:
I was listening to a few podcasts going over the top lists and heard the same names being repeated from previous episodes. Not just the armies, but also the players. Now I understand that these people have chosen these armies because they believe they are likely to win with them. But what if these tournament players had to play different, lower tier armies? How would the top tournaments look?

Would we see Ynari, Chaos Soup, Imperial Soup, and Tyranid Flyrant spam replaced with other broken builds for other armies? Would having so many high level players playing lower tier armies still make it as high in the brackets?

I suspect that few to none would make it anywhere near where they would have otherwise placed. Listbuilding is by far the single most important factor to victory. Good generals with bad lists can defeat bad generals with good lists, but a good general with a bad list is usually going lose to a mediocre player with a good list and will get demolished by a mediocre player with a great list.

Sometimes great players dont take the strongest list to a tournament, and they dont tend to place highly when they do, theres a reason the top lists tend to be what they are.

No there's a reason the same players tend to show up time after time at the top of events regardless of which army they bring. List building matters in 40k but I'd put my money on Nick Nanivanti with an average list to still take a podium spot regardless of what other people are playing.

Back in 7th the german tournaments set a money price for the first top player who takes a low tier army to a big tournament and make it top 5
this was a direct reaction to a podcast were those players argued that low tier armies can change the meta if played right and unusual builds can take the top armies by surprise and of course that skill matters much more than having the perfect army list
none of them took the challenge and tried it


of course 40k needs skill
but there is also a huge amount of "know your enemy"
and skill alone does not compensate the gab between top and low tier armies
balance is better than in 6th or 7th, but were are still far away

 Farseer_V2 wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:

DontEatRawHagis wrote:
I was listening to a few podcasts going over the top lists and heard the same names being repeated from previous episodes. Not just the armies, but also the players. Now I understand that these people have chosen these armies because they believe they are likely to win with them. But what if these tournament players had to play different, lower tier armies? How would the top tournaments look?

Would we see Ynari, Chaos Soup, Imperial Soup, and Tyranid Flyrant spam replaced with other broken builds for other armies? Would having so many high level players playing lower tier armies still make it as high in the brackets?

I suspect that few to none would make it anywhere near where they would have otherwise placed. Listbuilding is by far the single most important factor to victory. Good generals with bad lists can defeat bad generals with good lists, but a good general with a bad list is usually going lose to a mediocre player with a good list and will get demolished by a mediocre player with a great list.

Sometimes great players dont take the strongest list to a tournament, and they dont tend to place highly when they do, theres a reason the top lists tend to be what they are.

No there's a reason the same players tend to show up time after time at the top of events regardless of which army they bring. List building matters in 40k but I'd put my money on Nick Nanivanti with an average list to still take a podium spot regardless of what other people are playing.

When such happens, especially more than once, let me know.

Otherwise what we see is such players tend to move from army to army or list to list over time, constantly optimizing armies and catering them to each event and major meta change, not running 2nd rate lists or armies and placing, especiay not anything near consistently.

Theres a reason we look at army and faction placement, not individual players, when judging army power. When you show up at a 200 person event, and none of the 20 players running army X make it into even the top 50, thats a mathematically strong argument that tactical command skill is a distinctly secondary factor next to faction power and list construction.

40k doesn't require skill at all, it requires you get first turn and have some common sense with target priority.

In a game so ruled by random dice skill is meaningless for the most part.

hobojebus wrote:
40k doesn't require skill at all, it requires you get first turn and have some common sense with target priority.

In a game so ruled by random dice skill is meaningless for the most part.

Again if that's the case then why do the same group of people consistently win events.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Vaktathi wrote:
When such happens, especially more than once, let me know.

Otherwise what we see is such players tend to move from army to army or list to list over time, constantly optimizing armies and catering them to each event and major meta change, not running 2nd rate lists or armies and placing, especiay not anything near consistently.

Theres a reason we look at army and faction placement, not individual players, when judging army power. When you show up at a 200 person event, and none of the 20 players running army X make it into even the top 50, thats a mathematically strong argument that tactical command skill is a distinctly secondary factor next to faction power and list construction.

There's also a reason that the same names consistently show up regardless of the army they're playing. That's a mathematically strong argument that tactical command skill is an important factor in overall placement.

 Nym wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:
I was thinking about an army draft. A bunch of equally priced units are placed on the table - you roll off to see who picks first. Then each side takes turns picking.

That's a nice idea !

I remember doing something similar with some friends, where we would bring 2500pts to a 2000pts game, and each player would "BAN" 500pts from the opponent's army. It was really fun and always ended up making balanced games.

Another cool idea.

 Farseer_V2 wrote:

DontEatRawHagis wrote:
I was listening to a few podcasts going over the top lists and heard the same names being repeated from previous episodes. Not just the armies, but also the players. Now I understand that these people have chosen these armies because they believe they are likely to win with them. But what if these tournament players had to play different, lower tier armies? How would the top tournaments look?

Would we see Ynari, Chaos Soup, Imperial Soup, and Tyranid Flyrant spam replaced with other broken builds for other armies? Would having so many high level players playing lower tier armies still make it as high in the brackets?

Most of them (not all) would still place well. Player skill (regardless of the inevitable howling that this will generate) is still tremendously important in 40k. Understanding where your opponent will screen, how he will do it, what objectives benefit him, all these things matter and a better more experienced player will come out on top most of the time.

It's not really howling, it's just wrong. Skill does matter, but army selection and list matter a lot more.

Give the Adepticon champ an Adepta Sororitas army and make him fight a midling player with Ynnari/Dark Reapers. He's gonna get wrecked.

it probably wouldn't end well, whilst I'm not belittling any of the players who consistently place in events I think part of that is making informed meta choices along with looking at a tournaments scoring system and tweaking an army to maximise 'scoring' potential, so some factions naturally struggle in 2-3 turn environment whilst being reasonably playable in full 5-6 turn games

Audustum wrote:

 Farseer_V2 wrote:

DontEatRawHagis wrote:
I was listening to a few podcasts going over the top lists and heard the same names being repeated from previous episodes. Not just the armies, but also the players. Now I understand that these people have chosen these armies because they believe they are likely to win with them. But what if these tournament players had to play different, lower tier armies? How would the top tournaments look?

Would we see Ynari, Chaos Soup, Imperial Soup, and Tyranid Flyrant spam replaced with other broken builds for other armies? Would having so many high level players playing lower tier armies still make it as high in the brackets?

Most of them (not all) would still place well. Player skill (regardless of the inevitable howling that this will generate) is still tremendously important in 40k. Understanding where your opponent will screen, how he will do it, what objectives benefit him, all these things matter and a better more experienced player will come out on top most of the time.

It's not really howling, it's just wrong. Skill does matter, but army selection and list matter a lot more.

Give the Adepticon champ an Adepta Sororitas army and make him fight a midling player with Ynnari/Dark Reapers. He's gonna get wrecked.

So let's disregard that a pure Sisters list is A) a fairly good list even by codex standards and that B) a pure sisters list hurts reaper spam due to access to strong indirect fire and move on to the core issue which is your overall lack of understanding of what is and isn't competitive. How can you judge the impact of player skill vs. list when you don't understand either? You've instead spouted a buzzword and then selected an army you presumably think is bad to illustrate a point. To talk to the point, Matt Root took a War Convocation to the 2017 LVO and made the top 8 with it despite at that point it being non viable against the top of the meta (and went on to win the overall ITC as a result).

I apologize for being rude but ultimately I don't see how your opinion is worthwhile given a lack of understanding of what is actually driving success in those environments. Part of the nature of these events and why they shift the meta is that the best players are making lists that take the most advantage of the tournaments individual rule sets. Its relatively provable (by looking at the final standings of Adepticon) that 'top tier netlists' don't raise poor players up to the top of the event.

 Farseer_V2 wrote:

hobojebus wrote:
40k doesn't require skill at all, it requires you get first turn and have some common sense with target priority.

In a game so ruled by random dice skill is meaningless for the most part.

Again if that's the case then why do the same group of people consistently win events.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Vaktathi wrote:
When such happens, especially more than once, let me know.

Otherwise what we see is such players tend to move from army to army or list to list over time, constantly optimizing armies and catering them to each event and major meta change, not running 2nd rate lists or armies and placing, especiay not anything near consistently.

Theres a reason we look at army and faction placement, not individual players, when judging army power. When you show up at a 200 person event, and none of the 20 players running army X make it into even the top 50, thats a mathematically strong argument that tactical command skill is a distinctly secondary factor next to faction power and list construction.

There's also a reason that the same names consistently show up regardless of the army they're playing. That's a mathematically strong argument that tactical command skill is an important factor in overall placement.

I'm not saying it doesn't play a role, but that lists building trumps that.


If you're playing the best lists against each other, then player skill factors in more because the list consideration is equalized. Remove that equalization and the list dominates skill.

Those players spend a lot of time and effort making new lists, switching armies, and perfecting a force before it ever touches the table, and in doing so minimize their decisonmaking tree as well. The bulk of the skill is in the listbuilding. Nobody is winning a GT running an all Grot army or pure index Necrons on tactical tabletop command ability regardless of who is running it, especially not as anything more than a one off fluke. Nobody is going to win a GT running flamer equipped Stormtroopers backed up by Vanquishers and Deathstrikes.

The people who win these events arent just good players, they're bringing lists theyve put a great deal of effort into optimizing ahead of time.

Again, theres a reason factions with decent representation and ostensibly at least one capable general routinely fail to make it anywhere near the top tables.

hobojebus wrote:
40k doesn't require skill at all, it requires you get first turn and have some common sense with target priority.

In a game so ruled by random dice skill is meaningless for the most part.

Prove it. Go to a tournament and log all the games where you get first turn.

 Vaktathi wrote:


If you're playing the best lists against each other, then player skill factors in more because the list consideration is equalized. Remove that equalization and the list dominates skill.

Those players spend a lot of time and effort making new lists, switching armies, and perfecting a force before it ever touches the table, and in doing so minimize their decisonmaking tree as well. The bulk of the skill is in the listbuilding. Nobody is winning a GT running an all Grot army or pure index Necrons on tactical tabletop command ability regardless of who is running it, especially not as anything more than a one off fluke. Nobody is going to win a GT running flamer equipped Stormtroopers backed up by Vanquishers and Deathstrikes.

The people who win these events arent just good players, they're bringing lists theyve put a great deal of effort into optimizing ahead of time.

Again, theres a reason factions with decent representation and ostensibly at least one capable general routinely fail to make it anywhere near the top tables.

That's all well and fine but it is absolutely farcical to suggest that player skill does not matter in 40k. List building matters, that is certain but player skill is still a massive element of success (disregarding that list building is player skill in 40k). Ultimately I don't debate that playing a good list is part of being a good player, I do debate the idea that somehow it is list and list only that determines how well you'll do at an event.

I only know from my own experience that lists are a giant part of it.

Our old tournament team hit up the GTs regularly back in the GW GT days and always placed high, but take away our broken lists and a lot of us were average at best.

I don't think the concept of the game has changed much from those days that suddenly skill is more important and that we were living in a golden age of discrete math > skill and suddenly thats no longer the case.

The only time I've ever seen skill matter is when the lists at the table were evenly matched. At that point your player skill will be the determinant. I've watched many great tournament players get beaten down hard when they tried to use a less optimal list vs an optimal list, which is why youu'll never see non optimal lists suddenly winning the big tournament series.

 Farseer_V2 wrote:

Audustum wrote:

 Farseer_V2 wrote:

DontEatRawHagis wrote:
I was listening to a few podcasts going over the top lists and heard the same names being repeated from previous episodes. Not just the armies, but also the players. Now I understand that these people have chosen these armies because they believe they are likely to win with them. But what if these tournament players had to play different, lower tier armies? How would the top tournaments look?

Would we see Ynari, Chaos Soup, Imperial Soup, and Tyranid Flyrant spam replaced with other broken builds for other armies? Would having so many high level players playing lower tier armies still make it as high in the brackets?

Most of them (not all) would still place well. Player skill (regardless of the inevitable howling that this will generate) is still tremendously important in 40k. Understanding where your opponent will screen, how he will do it, what objectives benefit him, all these things matter and a better more experienced player will come out on top most of the time.

It's not really howling, it's just wrong. Skill does matter, but army selection and list matter a lot more.

Give the Adepticon champ an Adepta Sororitas army and make him fight a midling player with Ynnari/Dark Reapers. He's gonna get wrecked.

So let's disregard that a pure Sisters list is A) a fairly good list even by codex standards and that B) a pure sisters list hurts reaper spam due to access to strong indirect fire and move on to the core issue which is your overall lack of understanding of what is and isn't competitive. How can you judge the impact of player skill vs. list when you don't understand either? You've instead spouted a buzzword and then selected an army you presumably think is bad to illustrate a point. To talk to the point, Matt Root took a War Convocation to the 2017 LVO and made the top 8 with it despite at that point it being non viable against the top of the meta (and went on to win the overall ITC as a result).

I apologize for being rude but ultimately I don't see how your opinion is worthwhile given a lack of understanding of what is actually driving success in those environments. Part of the nature of these events and why they shift the meta is that the best players are making lists that take the most advantage of the tournaments individual rule sets. Its relatively provable (by looking at the final standings of Adepticon) that 'top tier netlists' don't raise poor players up to the top of the event.

No of course, I know nothing of what I speak. I only analyze every major tournament's top 10 and track their progress and pairings through BCP. I, of course, can't recognize or see patterns even though I've done this for all of 8th's existence.

A Sisters Army is absolutely terrible against Ynnari on a structural level. I have no idea where you're pulling that from. It'll be blown to bits before it gets halfway across the board and has little ways to deal with things like Crimson Hunters. I picked this example for a reason.

Success in these environments is determined first and foremost by faction selection and list optimization, which is usually determined by the internet gestalt hive mind long before the event itself. Skill comes in a fairly distant third. Now, if you have two players playing optimized factions and lists, skill becomes MUCH more important, but you still have to clear that first hurdle.

You're partially swinging at strawmen because you seem to interpret everyone in this thread as saying "ALL that matters is faction and list" but that's not what they're saying so these arguments can be discounted.

And the War Convocation was actually pretty good in 7th. I have no idea why you'd think it was some terrible or non-viable list. The top factions by that point were Renegades/Heretics, Chaos and Eldar. The War Convocation has plenty of tools to earn some points against them while crushing other factions and thus securing a nice total battle point score.

Audustum wrote:

No of course, I know nothing of what I speak. I only analyze every major tournament's top 10 and track their progress and pairings through BCP. I, of course, can't recognize or see patterns even though I've done this for all of 8th's existence.

So lets see the analysis. If that's something you're doing then of course you'd be willing to share?

Audustum wrote:

You're partially swinging at strawmen because you seem to interpret everyone in this thread as saying "ALL that matters is faction and list" but that's not what they're saying so these arguments can be discounted.

Or in this actual thread it was stated

40k doesn't require skill at all, it requires you get first turn and have some common sense with target priority. In a game so ruled by random dice skill is meaningless for the most part.

So I don't think that's unfair for me to address.

Audustum wrote:

And the War Convocation was actually pretty good in 7th. I have no idea why you'd think it was some terrible or non-viable list. The top factions by that point were Renegades/Heretics, Chaos and Eldar. The War Convocation has plenty of tools to earn some points against them while crushing other factions and thus securing a nice total battle point score.

WarCon was very solid in mid 7th but towards the tail end? It didn't have the ability to keep up with the power lists (which by the way includes Dark Angels/Space Wolves). Matt Root's play with his WarCon was (and you'll know this assuming you've analyzed the data) so good that you effectively had to discount his play because of how hard he skewed data when evaluating the mean play of Adeptus Mechanicus players.


Redacted my sisters argument, I incorrectly thought Exorcists had indirect fire.

 Farseer_V2 wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:


If you're playing the best lists against each other, then player skill factors in more because the list consideration is equalized. Remove that equalization and the list dominates skill.

Those players spend a lot of time and effort making new lists, switching armies, and perfecting a force before it ever touches the table, and in doing so minimize their decisonmaking tree as well. The bulk of the skill is in the listbuilding. Nobody is winning a GT running an all Grot army or pure index Necrons on tactical tabletop command ability regardless of who is running it, especially not as anything more than a one off fluke. Nobody is going to win a GT running flamer equipped Stormtroopers backed up by Vanquishers and Deathstrikes.

The people who win these events arent just good players, they're bringing lists theyve put a great deal of effort into optimizing ahead of time.

Again, theres a reason factions with decent representation and ostensibly at least one capable general routinely fail to make it anywhere near the top tables.

That's all well and fine but it is absolutely farcical to suggest that player skill does not matter in 40k. List building matters, that is certain but player skill is still a massive element of success (disregarding that list building is player skill in 40k). Ultimately I don't debate that playing a good list is part of being a good player, I do debate the idea that somehow it is list and list only that determines how well you'll do at an event.

I never claimed that the list alone will determine how you do, nor that player skill was irrelevant. Player skill at tactical tabletop command is not irrelevant, but rather secondary. Your list will put a ceiling on your performance, and that ceiling is strong. If you dont have the tools, you cant apply the skill, or if the math is so overwhelmingly one sided, skill becomes rapidly overmatched. A top tier list played ignorantly can still lose, but a bottom tier list will almost never win. There is a reason we track army performance, not generally player performance. Theres usually good commanders playing every army, but only a few armies placing in the top tiers, and the top players often are those that frequently switch between factions as the meta changes.

TL;DR tabletop command skill isnt unimportant, but it is very much secondary to list construction assuming a minimal level of player competence on both sides (like not forgetting to move and shoot with the critical unit).

So staying out of the debate for now, but it's worth mentioning that Exorcists don't have indirect fire; they're direct-fire only.

I could be misinterpreting the discussion but I thought I'd throw that out there.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
So staying out of the debate for now, but it's worth mentioning that Exorcists don't have indirect fire; they're direct-fire only.

I could be misinterpreting the discussion but I thought I'd throw that out there.

Well me running. I've had those things misplayed for ages, I guess just a hang up from previous editions.

 Farseer_V2 wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
So staying out of the debate for now, but it's worth mentioning that Exorcists don't have indirect fire; they're direct-fire only.

I could be misinterpreting the discussion but I thought I'd throw that out there.

Well me running. I've had those things misplayed for ages, I guess just a hang up from previous editions.

I'm not sure they ever had it. I've been playing Sororitas since 3rd, and I'm fairly certain the only place they had anything resembling indirect fire was the Dawn of War games.

I disagree that if you gave a top player sisters, that they lose to a middling player net listing an eldar army. I think a sisters list could be built to play to the missions and have a shot against someone that doesn't understand the intricacies of the top ynnari builds. There is a lot of careful movement involved in the wins by those players how else do you explain which players make it to the top using those lists and all those that don't.

I mean how do you explain sisters being 10th(and 35th 1 loss, 63rd 2 losses) at LVO with 1 loss middling ynnari players losing 2 and 3 times down in 150th place or lower? You are telling me that top players cannot do this? They won't beat other top players with stronger lists, but they will beat most people regardless of list.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 Farseer_V2 wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
So staying out of the debate for now, but it's worth mentioning that Exorcists don't have indirect fire; they're direct-fire only.

I could be misinterpreting the discussion but I thought I'd throw that out there.

Well me running. I've had those things misplayed for ages, I guess just a hang up from previous editions.

I'm not sure they ever had it. I've been playing Sororitas since 3rd, and I'm fairly certain the only place they had anything resembling indirect fire was the Dawn of War games.

At some point they had it. I couldn't tell you when as I don't play them but I feel close to 100% at some point the pipe organ could fire out of LoS (the thing is effectively a mortar anyway).

There is also the skill of understanding every opposing list as well. Sometimes, that's more important than your actual list.

Martel732 wrote:
There is also the skill of understanding every opposing list as well. Sometimes, that's more important than your actual list.

True - knowledge of what every unit in the game does is probably about 50% of what actual skill in this game relates to.

I don't want to put a percentage on it, but it heavily dictates my movement phases.

 Farseer_V2 wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 Farseer_V2 wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
So staying out of the debate for now, but it's worth mentioning that Exorcists don't have indirect fire; they're direct-fire only.

I could be misinterpreting the discussion but I thought I'd throw that out there.

Well me running. I've had those things misplayed for ages, I guess just a hang up from previous editions.

I'm not sure they ever had it. I've been playing Sororitas since 3rd, and I'm fairly certain the only place they had anything resembling indirect fire was the Dawn of War games.

At some point they had it. I couldn't tell you when as I don't play them but I feel close to 100% at some point the pipe organ could fire out of LoS (the thing is effectively a mortar anyway).

In 7th if the hull of the exorcist (rhino) was totally obscured but the pipes were sticking up and over the cover then the exorcist could draw line of sight from the pipes at the enemy but the enemy couldn't target the tank back. That's as close to indirect as I know.

hobojebus wrote:
40k doesn't require skill at all, it requires you get first turn and have some common sense with target priority.

In a game so ruled by random dice skill is meaningless for the most part.

I eagerly await your next tournament win, since it's so easy.

I mean the alternative would be that you're a know-nothing do-nothing and surely that can't be true?

They would just win their games vs. Mid tier tournament players.

No! I have it! Have every tournament winner play an avarage Ork list vs their winning list! And I'm not talking boyz hordes. I'm talking friendly game Ork list... so like 60-90 boyz with trukks and killa kanz and a Naut (or even a Stompa if we feel evil).

Also their list will be played by an amateur who hardly plays the game or something.

They'd not reach the final places, though it wouldn't be as bad as some previous editions.

And they'd probably beat the odds in some games. Top tournament lists are written to deal with other perceived top tournament lists - you can spend a lot of points on protecting against deepstrike, or psykers, and so on and then have them wasted against and army that brings none of it.

 Farseer_V2 wrote:
B) a pure sisters list hurts reaper spam due to access to strong indirect fire

Sisters don't have any indirect fire at all ...

Edit - ah, from seeing your comment I know what you mean.
They've never had indirect fire but LoS in past editions was from the ends of the barrels, so people would park them behind things for cover and poke the guns over the top.

They are fairly bad in 8th edition - the firepower of a razorback, albeit at strength 8 rather than 9. Sister heavy support is pretty much down to heavy bolters.

This is a totally hypothetical discussion. The players who win major events always use spam and design army lists to take advantage of any perceived loop holes regarding rules. If these said players ever tried to play a purely tactical army I think they would get their arses handed to them and of course publically speaking they deny spamming and breaking rules.

 Earth127 wrote:
Give players like that a basic list and they would probably make it work better than you would. Skill matters.

You're right to an extent, but there are some things player skill just can't compensate for.

The best example I can think of is Matt Root's AdMech in 7th. He took a faction with huge glaring holes in its toolset and placed really well with them at big events - people at the time said it was because War Convocation was cheesy, but he was the only player who managed to get any real results out of it so it can't have been all that OP. On the other hand, reading the post-action interviews he did, the man himself admitted there were games he just couldn't win no matter what he did because his army simply didn't have the tools he needed in order to pull it off.

tl;dr - Good players can squeeze results out of gakky armies when the tools are there, even in adverse match-ups, but there are some things even player skill can't work around.

 BBAP wrote:
...people at the time said it was because War Convocation was cheesy, but he was the only player who managed to get any real results out of it so it can't have been all that OP. On the other hand, reading the post-action interviews he did, the man himself admitted there were games he just couldn't win no matter what he did because his army simply didn't have the tools he needed in order to pull it off.

You got a truly staggering amount of freebies with the convocation (and he was running the double-cheese mix with allied pods). But it lacked the tools to deal with the extra-strong cheese like invisible deathstars.

Give him a regular 'low tier' non-conclave list and he'd have gotten nowhere. The gap was much bigger in 7th than 8th though.

I think they'll occupy the 20-40 places out of a 100 man tourney just above the regular players with ok lists and below regular players with killer lists.

With the new ITC rules and multiple ways to score, your ability to win games is way more skill based than in the past with eternal war, where you saw the obsec jetbike hop coming but could do nothing about it.

I have beat players scoring virtually 0 kill objectives outside of the "1 per turn" thing.

People arguing there's no skill involved in 40k have a narrow view of it.

To quote Bum Phillips, "he could take his'n and beat ur'n, and take ur'n and beat his'n."

ATC - Ravenspam
NOVA - Smitespam
LVO - Reaperspam
Adepticon - Flyrantspam

 Marmatag wrote:
With the new ITC rules and multiple ways to score, your ability to win games is way more skill based than in the past with eternal war, where you saw the obsec jetbike hop coming but could do nothing about it.

I have beat players scoring virtually 0 kill objectives outside of the "1 per turn" thing.

People arguing there's no skill involved in 40k have a narrow view of it.

To quote Bum Phillips, "he could take his'n and beat ur'n, and take ur'n and beat his'n."

Accusations soon to follow of 'you play bad opponents, where I'm from only the spam wins!'

 Corrode wrote:

hobojebus wrote:
40k doesn't require skill at all, it requires you get first turn and have some common sense with target priority.

In a game so ruled by random dice skill is meaningless for the most part.

I eagerly await your next tournament win, since it's so easy.

I mean the alternative would be that you're a know-nothing do-nothing and surely that can't be true?

You get that throwing ad homs around invalidates any point you think your making right?

hobojebus wrote:

 Corrode wrote:

hobojebus wrote:
40k doesn't require skill at all, it requires you get first turn and have some common sense with target priority.

In a game so ruled by random dice skill is meaningless for the most part.

I eagerly await your next tournament win, since it's so easy.

I mean the alternative would be that you're a know-nothing do-nothing and surely that can't be true?

You get that throwing ad homs around invalidates any point you think your making right?

You get that being flat out wrong invalidates any point you think your making right?

Let's keep it civil, folks.

 infinite_array wrote:
How about a 40k tournament where you build the worst list possible, and then swap armies with your opponent?

Now THIS is beer & pretzels!

A.T. wrote:

 BBAP wrote:
...people at the time said it was because War Convocation was cheesy, but he was the only player who managed to get any real results out of it so it can't have been all that OP. On the other hand, reading the post-action interviews he did, the man himself admitted there were games he just couldn't win no matter what he did because his army simply didn't have the tools he needed in order to pull it off.

You got a truly staggering amount of freebies with the convocation (and he was running the double-cheese mix with allied pods). But it lacked the tools to deal with the extra-strong cheese like invisible deathstars.

You got the AdMech wargear free, which expanded their toolbox a wee bit and made them a little better at stuff they could already do, like shooting and mobility. It made the faction slightly more useable but it wasn't a Gladius. It certainly wasn't powerful enough to boost shoddy players to a placing.

Give him a regular 'low tier' non-conclave list and he'd have gotten nowhere. The gap was much bigger in 7th than 8th though.

Yeah, because non-Conclave AdMech were awful and not even a good player could've made them work in a for-keeps setting, which is what I was saying before.

 Primark G wrote:
This is a totally hypothetical discussion. The players who win major events always use spam and design army lists to take advantage of any perceived loop holes regarding rules. If these said players ever tried to play a purely tactical army I think they would get their arses handed to them and of course publically speaking they deny spamming and breaking rules.

I take from this you’be never actually played these top players. You couldn’t be more wrong having seen these players play other games and win. Or play non-spam lists and perform well.

Breng77 wrote:

 Primark G wrote:
This is a totally hypothetical discussion. The players who win major events always use spam and design army lists to take advantage of any perceived loop holes regarding rules. If these said players ever tried to play a purely tactical army I think they would get their arses handed to them and of course publically speaking they deny spamming and breaking rules.

I take from this you’be never actually played these top players. You couldn’t be more wrong having seen these players play other games and win. Or play non-spam lists and perform well.

I'm gonna go ahead and take it a step farther in response to Primark G and say that that is some hard core BS. Firstly, the idea of a 'purely tactical army' is hilarious because it has no definition. If someone presents a list that isn't spam or rules gimmicks that brandon grant or aaron aelong or Andrew Gonyo won with, he's left himself the perfect little way out because no matter what it is he can always claim it isn't a 'purely tactical' army. You've also left out the part where list construction is an incredibly important part of winning and people who don't understand WHY the list is built the way it is take """super op netlists""" and finish bottom of the barrel all the time because of it.

The second half of the comment is pure projection. 'Oh it's the rules fault that I don't win and place high in tournaments. If it wasn't for spam and cheese I'd place high in tournaments instead of these guys!' Which is extra ridiculous because half the field at these tournaments are using the exact same rules """loopholes""" and "spam" as the top players are.

The truth of the matter is that these players are consistently placing high at huge events, in heavily varied metas, across multiple additions, with multiple different armies, in multiple different formats(there's more difference between adepticon and itc formats than their is between most fantasy flight's games), against the best players in the world also playing the best armies they can possibly muster. They're average skill level is higher than mine and certainly higher than yours. Now you or I may get a couple of favorable draws, a couple good die rolls, a couple strong matchups and place higher than the big name guys. You might even beat them! I know several big name players that finished basically nowhere at adepticon. But if they play ten major tournaments in a year, in 8 they'll get top 32 rankings and that's not something you or I could hope to claim.

Why we all yelling about theoretical crap? Let's campaign for them to do this and see tge results then we can yell at each other over the results! Don't just sit at you desks! Do something!

 Farseer_V2 wrote:

Audustum wrote:

No of course, I know nothing of what I speak. I only analyze every major tournament's top 10 and track their progress and pairings through BCP. I, of course, can't recognize or see patterns even though I've done this for all of 8th's existence.

So lets see the analysis. If that's something you're doing then of course you'd be willing to share?

Sure, but you may not like what I actually keep around. All I keep track of is whether new lists are appearing (that is, ones not predicted by the internet gestalt hive mind) and how high they seem to be going. As a side effect of that, I've noticed the 'top' players are consistently the ones with the least amount of deviation from what the IGHM says are good.

Audustum wrote:

You're partially swinging at strawmen because you seem to interpret everyone in this thread as saying "ALL that matters is faction and list" but that's not what they're saying so these arguments can be discounted.

Or in this actual thread it was stated

40k doesn't require skill at all, it requires you get first turn and have some common sense with target priority. In a game so ruled by random dice skill is meaningless for the most part.

So I don't think that's unfair for me to address.

It's unfair to address it when you're targeting that address towards literally everyone else in the thread on the opposing side as you who did NOT say that (well until Primark G posted, now there's two along similar lines, but at the time of your post there was just one).

Audustum wrote:

And the War Convocation was actually pretty good in 7th. I have no idea why you'd think it was some terrible or non-viable list. The top factions by that point were Renegades/Heretics, Chaos and Eldar. The War Convocation has plenty of tools to earn some points against them while crushing other factions and thus securing a nice total battle point score.

WarCon was very solid in mid 7th but towards the tail end? It didn't have the ability to keep up with the power lists (which by the way includes Dark Angels/Space Wolves). Matt Root's play with his WarCon was (and you'll know this assuming you've analyzed the data) so good that you effectively had to discount his play because of how hard he skewed data when evaluating the mean play of Adeptus Mechanicus players.

It had enough to earn a placing, sure. The top lists, at the tail end, were Renegades, Eldar and Chaos. In objective based ITC stuff the WarCon could survive and score battlepoints. Yeah sure. Now find a major player who did that with 7th edition Dark Eldar and then we can talk.

hobojebus wrote:

 Corrode wrote:

hobojebus wrote:
40k doesn't require skill at all, it requires you get first turn and have some common sense with target priority.

In a game so ruled by random dice skill is meaningless for the most part.

I eagerly await your next tournament win, since it's so easy.

I mean the alternative would be that you're a know-nothing do-nothing and surely that can't be true?

You get that throwing ad homs around invalidates any point you think your making right?

It's not a school debate club. You're clueless about the subject and it's painfully obvious to everyone. Calling that out doesn't 'invalidate' anything.

hobojebus wrote:

 Corrode wrote:

hobojebus wrote:
40k doesn't require skill at all, it requires you get first turn and have some common sense with target priority.

In a game so ruled by random dice skill is meaningless for the most part.

I eagerly await your next tournament win, since it's so easy.

I mean the alternative would be that you're a know-nothing do-nothing and surely that can't be true?

You get that throwing ad homs around invalidates any point you think your making right?

You think you get to throw the fallacy card around when you've just presented a baseless supposition?

He asking you to offer evidence to support your point. Since winning a major tournament is just about luck you should be able to point out some people who won a GT the first time they attended a tournament, right?

 Scott-S6 wrote:

hobojebus wrote:

 Corrode wrote:

hobojebus wrote:
40k doesn't require skill at all, it requires you get first turn and have some common sense with target priority.

In a game so ruled by random dice skill is meaningless for the most part.

I eagerly await your next tournament win, since it's so easy.

I mean the alternative would be that you're a know-nothing do-nothing and surely that can't be true?

You get that throwing ad homs around invalidates any point you think your making right?

You think you get to throw the fallacy card around when you've just presented a baseless supposition?

He asking you to offer evidence to support your point. Since winning a major tournament is just about luck you should be able to point out some people who won a GT the first time they attended a tournament, right?

Good movement, good lists, etc etc increases your odds of winning. Yes luck can swing one way or another, but good players increase their odds every time they make a good choice. A unit of fire warriors can melee terminators to death with amazing rolls in their favor. Doesn't make it a good idea. If he wants evidence how being a good player can help, you can point out how good choices make you less reliant on sheer luck. Sometimes the choices are less obvious and that is where the great players separate from good players. Also as someone from the debate community who frequently placed well, it is the same there too. Pointing out fallacies is usually just childish and most people run strategies that more people are likely to understand and agree with. You reduce your odds of failure while maximizing your odds of success.

You understand that if it's about luck I could also prove my point by coming dead last because all I had was bad luck.

I could also prove it with a median result because I had average luck.

You guys are taking this very personal for no good reason, my comment wasn't aimed at anything but the poor quality of the game, random takes away from skill.

Ask yourselves is it really worth getting so het up over a game using toy soldiers?

Random takes a little away from skill but not so much so as to be relevant in this discussion. Otherwise why do the same people always finish near the top in these big events? Are they lucky all the time?

If luck were significant you wouldn’t see the same people rising to the top, you would see more variety.

There is luck involved in winning the whole thing (avoiding other top players in early rounds, avoiding bad matchup etc), but in consistently placing high no such luck exists.

hobojebus wrote:
You understand that if it's about luck I could also prove my point by coming dead last because all I had was bad luck.

I could also prove it with a median result because I had average luck.

You guys are taking this very personal for no good reason, my comment wasn't aimed at anything but the poor quality of the game, random takes away from skill.

Ask yourselves is it really worth getting so het up over a game using toy soldiers?

you mad bro???

Very good.

Breng77 wrote:
Random takes a little away from skill but not so much so as to be relevant in this discussion. Otherwise why do the same people always finish near the top in these big events? Are they lucky all the time?

If luck were significant you wouldn’t see the same people rising to the top, you would see more variety.

There is luck involved in winning the whole thing (avoiding other top players in early rounds, avoiding bad matchup etc), but in consistently placing high no such luck exists.

As has already been said list building is what makes the difference, some people see the matrix more clearly than others it happens in other games too.

Hell during 4th wave of x-wing I designed a two defender list everyone said would fail because they were heavily overpriced, my friend did a little tinkering with it and won tournaments, our brains are not all identical some see connections others do not.

If I take a worse list in 40k I've got next to no chance of winning no matter how masterfully I play, I do the same in x-wing my personal skill in flying could still see me come out victorious after a hard fight.

There's no skill in picking targets that's just common sense, the game does not support sweeping movements that let you outflank without warning, the removal of facings on vehicles means you have no reason to outmaneuver them etc.

You write a list with the best possible combination on complementary rules and units then hope the dice don't defy probability.

40k isn't go or chess, it's not even checkers.

Too much of the game revolves around rolling dice, it was the same in 6th and 7th random does not make for a deep tactical game.

Audustum wrote:
It had enough to earn a placing, sure. The top lists, at the tail end, were Renegades, Eldar and Chaos. In objective based ITC stuff the WarCon could survive and score battlepoints. Yeah sure. Now find a major player who did that with 7th edition Dark Eldar and then we can talk.

Lawrence Baker who won multiple No Retreats with Dark Eldar.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

hobojebus wrote:
Too much of the game revolves around rolling dice, it was the same in 6th and 7th random does not make for a deep tactical game.

This should be fairly easy to prove though right? If this were the case then you'd see effectively a lottery of people winning major tournaments, but you don't. Clearly skill plays some role in it. And the reason people are blasting you is you were literally wrong. You stated that skill plays no role, the only thing that matters is going first which is flat out incorrect.

I think that people winning tournaments repeatedly or placing high does show that they have a high degree of skill at whatever skill is required for winning that tournament.

In 40k, I strongly feel that that the skill is being good at discrete mathematics, being able to reinforce your odds by manipulating and maximizing probability through discrete mathematics (list building) and then understanding basic target priority.

This does not prove nor disprove these peoples' capabilities as a tactician at the game overall, and I think a lot of people bleed their desire for 40k to be a tactical actual semblance of a real battle and then bleed that over into postulating that the tournament winners wouldn't be good at that environment.

The fact is that we don't have enough data to know if those people are good at playing a game that resembles an actual battle instead of hedging their bets on discrete mathematics represented by how heavy the list building phase is, we just know that they are definitely good at hedging probability and target priority.

The only real way to gauge someone's actual ability at gameplay where listbuilding doesn't factor in is to hold a large scale tournament where everyone plays the same army.

Which will never happen.

There are some people today that would do just as well, and there are just as many people that place high in tournaments today that would fall apart (as I have witnessed many times) because it would be a different game altogether if listbuilding wasn't a factor.

 Farseer_V2 wrote:

Audustum wrote:
It had enough to earn a placing, sure. The top lists, at the tail end, were Renegades, Eldar and Chaos. In objective based ITC stuff the WarCon could survive and score battlepoints. Yeah sure. Now find a major player who did that with 7th edition Dark Eldar and then we can talk.

Lawrence Baker who won multiple No Retreats with Dark Eldar.

We're talking about major tournaments. No Retreat is more like an art tournament that also happens to use ITC. It also had kind of abnormal rules that don't make it good for analysis, such as requiring all armies to first field a CAD, being at 1,750, two detachment limit, no allied detachments, all units from a single Codex (no Taudar) and no more than 400 or so on LoW, which when combined limit the ability to fill out some of the more crazy formations that were important in 7th.

This is basically like pulling a FLGS tournament and saying it's results are conclusive.

Ah yes the "no true Scotsman tournament" fallacy argument.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
Ah yes the "no true Scotsman tournament" fallacy argument.

While that is a fallacy, it doesn't actually prevent criticism of any sort of a cited reference. Specifically, the no true Scotsman fallacy requires that you do NOT deny the counter-example but instead change the definition of your generalization.

I did the opposite. I maintained the definition of my generalization and denied the counter-example with reference to a specific objective rule (pointing out how heavily house ruled the tournament (with rules that limit meta builds) was and it's lack of emphasis on competition by focusing on art). Thus, this is not an appropriate application of the fallacy.

Let me give an example
Spot the difference:

No Scotsman drinks black coffee.
But Angus drinks black coffee.
Ah but no true Scotsman does.

Vs.

No Scotsman drinks black coffee.
But Angus drinks black coffee.
Angus only moved to Scotland yesterday.

 Farseer_V2 wrote:
So let's disregard that a pure Sisters list is A) a fairly good list even by codex standards and that B) a pure sisters list hurts reaper spam due to access to strong indirect fire

So now that the indirect fire issue has been cleared out, I want to know, do you still believe that a pure sisters list hurt reaper spam, and could face eldars with good chances of success?
Just checking.

Audustum wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
Ah yes the "no true Scotsman tournament" fallacy argument.

While that is a fallacy, it doesn't actually prevent criticism of any sort of a cited reference. Specifically, the no true Scotsman fallacy requires that you do NOT deny the counter-example but instead change the definition of your generalization.

I did the opposite. I maintained the definition of my generalization and denied the counter-example with reference to a specific objective rule (pointing out how heavily house ruled the tournament (with rules that limit meta builds) was and it's lack of emphasis on competition by focusing on art). Thus, this is not an appropriate application of the fallacy.

Let me give an example
Spot the difference:

No Scotsman drinks black coffee.
But Angus drinks black coffee.
Ah but no true Scotsman does.

Vs.

No Scotsman drinks black coffee.
But Angus drinks black coffee.
Angus only moved to Scotland yesterday.

You might have a point if not for the fact that every major tournament in 7th used different rules. NOVA was different than ITC, was different from adepticon.

Breng77 wrote:

You might have a point if not for the fact that every major tournament in 7th used different rules. NOVA was different than ITC, was different from adepticon.

Are you postulating that every tournament which has house rules (which is all of them since they have, at minimum, a time limit) is essentially identical? You can't acknowledge that some are significantly more divergent from both the core rules and the typical tournament house rules than others?

I’m postulating that each has their own meta and you can easily say that 7th ed ITC was as far from the book as anything else might be.

Audustum wrote:

 Farseer_V2 wrote:

Audustum wrote:
It had enough to earn a placing, sure. The top lists, at the tail end, were Renegades, Eldar and Chaos. In objective based ITC stuff the WarCon could survive and score battlepoints. Yeah sure. Now find a major player who did that with 7th edition Dark Eldar and then we can talk.

Lawrence Baker who won multiple No Retreats with Dark Eldar.

We're talking about major tournaments. No Retreat is more like an art tournament that also happens to use ITC. It also had kind of abnormal rules that don't make it good for analysis, such as requiring all armies to first field a CAD, being at 1,750, two detachment limit, no allied detachments, all units from a single Codex (no Taudar) and no more than 400 or so on LoW, which when combined limit the ability to fill out some of the more crazy formations that were important in 7th.

This is basically like pulling a FLGS tournament and saying it's results are conclusive.

Ahh so you've shifted the goal posts. Very well, argument over.

 Farseer_V2 wrote:

Audustum wrote:

 Farseer_V2 wrote:

Audustum wrote:
It had enough to earn a placing, sure. The top lists, at the tail end, were Renegades, Eldar and Chaos. In objective based ITC stuff the WarCon could survive and score battlepoints. Yeah sure. Now find a major player who did that with 7th edition Dark Eldar and then we can talk.

Lawrence Baker who won multiple No Retreats with Dark Eldar.

We're talking about major tournaments. No Retreat is more like an art tournament that also happens to use ITC. It also had kind of abnormal rules that don't make it good for analysis, such as requiring all armies to first field a CAD, being at 1,750, two detachment limit, no allied detachments, all units from a single Codex (no Taudar) and no more than 400 or so on LoW, which when combined limit the ability to fill out some of the more crazy formations that were important in 7th.

This is basically like pulling a FLGS tournament and saying it's results are conclusive.

Ahh so you've shifted the goal posts. Very well, argument over.

Perhaps you misunderstood, but major tournaments have been the focus since pg. 1. I'm not sure the rest of us can be responsible it you can't keep up.

Audustum wrote:

 Farseer_V2 wrote:

Audustum wrote:

 Farseer_V2 wrote:

Audustum wrote:
It had enough to earn a placing, sure. The top lists, at the tail end, were Renegades, Eldar and Chaos. In objective based ITC stuff the WarCon could survive and score battlepoints. Yeah sure. Now find a major player who did that with 7th edition Dark Eldar and then we can talk.

Lawrence Baker who won multiple No Retreats with Dark Eldar.

We're talking about major tournaments. No Retreat is more like an art tournament that also happens to use ITC. It also had kind of abnormal rules that don't make it good for analysis, such as requiring all armies to first field a CAD, being at 1,750, two detachment limit, no allied detachments, all units from a single Codex (no Taudar) and no more than 400 or so on LoW, which when combined limit the ability to fill out some of the more crazy formations that were important in 7th.

This is basically like pulling a FLGS tournament and saying it's results are conclusive.

Ahh so you've shifted the goal posts. Very well, argument over.

Perhaps you misunderstood, but major tournaments have been the focus since pg. 1. I'm not sure the rest of us can be responsible it you can't keep up.

Yeah what you asked for was a Dark Eldar player who did well in ITC events during 7th. I provided that, you then eliminated that result since it didn't fit your criteria. Perhaps you should have asked a better or more specific question? You'd think for someone as interested in the nuance of language as yourself (per your participating in the YMDC Blood Angels thread) you'd understand the value of specificity. It isn't my fault you lack clarity in your communication.

 Farseer_V2 wrote:

Audustum wrote:

 Farseer_V2 wrote:

Audustum wrote:

 Farseer_V2 wrote:

Audustum wrote:
It had enough to earn a placing, sure. The top lists, at the tail end, were Renegades, Eldar and Chaos. In objective based ITC stuff the WarCon could survive and score battlepoints. Yeah sure. Now find a major player who did that with 7th edition Dark Eldar and then we can talk.

Lawrence Baker who won multiple No Retreats with Dark Eldar.

We're talking about major tournaments. No Retreat is more like an art tournament that also happens to use ITC. It also had kind of abnormal rules that don't make it good for analysis, such as requiring all armies to first field a CAD, being at 1,750, two detachment limit, no allied detachments, all units from a single Codex (no Taudar) and no more than 400 or so on LoW, which when combined limit the ability to fill out some of the more crazy formations that were important in 7th.

This is basically like pulling a FLGS tournament and saying it's results are conclusive.

Ahh so you've shifted the goal posts. Very well, argument over.

Perhaps you misunderstood, but major tournaments have been the focus since pg. 1. I'm not sure the rest of us can be responsible it you can't keep up.

Yeah what you asked for was a Dark Eldar player who did well in ITC events during 7th. I provided that, you then eliminated that result since it didn't fit your criteria. Perhaps you should have asked a better or more specific question? You'd think for someone as interested in the nuance of language as yourself (per your participating in the YMDC Blood Angels thread) you'd understand the value of specificity. It isn't my fault you lack clarity in your communication.

Really now, where did I ask for well placement in any ITC event in 7th? You might want to re-read my post before you climb up a soapbox.

The question specifically asked for a major player (of which this fellow also doesn't seem to qualify but that aside) who replicated a feat similar to the WarCon. No Retreat was far too household to specifically be anti-meta to qualify as a similar feat.

Audustum wrote:
[ Really now, where did I ask for well placement in any ITC event in 7th? You might want to re-read my post before you climb up a soapbox.

The question specifically asked for a major player (of which this fellow also doesn't seem to qualify but that aside) who replicated a feat similar to the WarCon. No Retreat was far too household to specifically be anti-meta to qualify as a similar feat.

You specifically said "Now find a major player who did that with 7th edition Dark Eldar and then we can talk" - I provided you with a Dark Eldar placed well in more than one ITC event. Lawrence is a fairly well known player - he also won the GW GT Heat 1 in 2017 and almost made top 8 at 2017's LVO. You discarded the point because No Retreat doesn't count because it doesn't meet the criteria you established. That's fine, however since you didn't lay out that criteria ahead of time I have no interest in having a conversation with you - there is nothing to be gained other than being talked down to which I don't really enjoy. You have your opinion - it is firmly held, I don't intend to attempt any further to challenge that because the outcome if I engage is the same if I don't.

Dark Eldar are quite functional for an index army. It helps that raiders are poor targets for lascannons and other low RoF weapons.

Martel732 wrote:
Dark Eldar are quite functional for an index army. It helps that raiders are poor targets for lascannons and other low RoF weapons.

Lawrence won Heat 1 with Guilliman + Backs (prior to the CA nerfs) so he wasn't running DE for that event. I just bring it up because he is a player with solid placings in several events.

 infinite_array wrote:
How about a 40k tournament where you build the worst list possible, and then swap armies with your opponent?

Dude i would love this.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Martel732 wrote:
Dark Eldar are quite functional for an index army. It helps that raiders are poor targets for lascannons and other low RoF weapons.

DE get duked on by Sisters, Orks, and pre-codex Tau. What other index armies are there that they could possibly be considered functional by relative comparison? Space Wolves? Necrons, for sure, but they're getting a codex..

Not sure I agree with all that, but you forgot codex armies. Like marines.

Martel732 wrote:
Not sure I agree with all that, but you forgot codex armies. Like marines.

Codex marines beat dark eldar because index marines beat dark eldar... after DE get a codex though that will probably change unless the marines player is using the usual gimmicks.

 Farseer_V2 wrote:

DontEatRawHagis wrote:
I was listening to a few podcasts going over the top lists and heard the same names being repeated from previous episodes. Not just the armies, but also the players. Now I understand that these people have chosen these armies because they believe they are likely to win with them. But what if these tournament players had to play different, lower tier armies? How would the top tournaments look?

Would we see Ynari, Chaos Soup, Imperial Soup, and Tyranid Flyrant spam replaced with other broken builds for other armies? Would having so many high level players playing lower tier armies still make it as high in the brackets?

Most of them (not all) would still place well. Player skill (regardless of the inevitable howling that this will generate) is still tremendously important in 40k. Understanding where your opponent will screen, how he will do it, what objectives benefit him, all these things matter and a better more experienced player will come out on top most of the time.

Excellent point. Player skill is a factor, even if some people do like to say otherwise.

However, it's not the only factor. The list you play is also a factor. So is the scenario you play. And the skill and the list your opponent is bringing to the table. And some other things affect the outcome as well. I've won two small 8e tournamets in a row and I'm not attributing these victories to any single factor.

 Farseer_V2 wrote:

Audustum wrote:
[ Really now, where did I ask for well placement in any ITC event in 7th? You might want to re-read my post before you climb up a soapbox.

The question specifically asked for a major player (of which this fellow also doesn't seem to qualify but that aside) who replicated a feat similar to the WarCon. No Retreat was far too household to specifically be anti-meta to qualify as a similar feat.

You specifically said "Now find a major player who did that with 7th edition Dark Eldar and then we can talk" - I provided you with a Dark Eldar placed well in more than one ITC event. Lawrence is a fairly well known player - he also won the GW GT Heat 1 in 2017 and almost made top 8 at 2017's LVO. You discarded the point because No Retreat doesn't count because it doesn't meet the criteria you established. That's fine, however since you didn't lay out that criteria ahead of time I have no interest in having a conversation with you - there is nothing to be gained other than being talked down to which I don't really enjoy. You have your opinion - it is firmly held, I don't intend to attempt any further to challenge that because the outcome if I engage is the same if I don't.

The criteria was laid out. Look at the whole paragraph. The sentence you quoted was "Now find a major player who did *that*". What's that? It's the prior sentences: what the WarCon list did. What did that list do? It placed well in the LVO. No Retreat isn't anything like LVO rule or competition-wise.

It seems like you walked into a corner and want a way out, which is fine. Don't be rude about it though.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Breng77 wrote:

Audustum wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
Ah yes the "no true Scotsman tournament" fallacy argument.

While that is a fallacy, it doesn't actually prevent criticism of any sort of a cited reference. Specifically, the no true Scotsman fallacy requires that you do NOT deny the counter-example but instead change the definition of your generalization.

I did the opposite. I maintained the definition of my generalization and denied the counter-example with reference to a specific objective rule (pointing out how heavily house ruled the tournament (with rules that limit meta builds) was and it's lack of emphasis on competition by focusing on art). Thus, this is not an appropriate application of the fallacy.

Let me give an example
Spot the difference:

No Scotsman drinks black coffee.
But Angus drinks black coffee.
Ah but no true Scotsman does.

Vs.

No Scotsman drinks black coffee.
But Angus drinks black coffee.
Angus only moved to Scotland yesterday.

You might have a point if not for the fact that every major tournament in 7th used different rules. NOVA was different than ITC, was different from adepticon.

There are small differences and huge differences. NOVA and ITC, for example, weren't all that far apart. No Retreat, there's significantly more difference.

Offering No Retreat for LVO is like saying: "All humans have different fingerprints so it doesn't matter if we compare a human print to a gorilla print". At least both prints offered should be human.

NOVA and ITC were actually very far apart as NOVA was not using the ITC rules changes for things like invisibility. Actual changes in the game rules. So certainly LVO isn’t valid because it is was skewed representation of the actual game rules.

At some point events need to be considered based on number of top players and just players at an event and not the list building structure. I’m certainly not saying all events are equal but if 7th ed DE were so bad how did someone win regardless of list building changes?

As to top players running only what the IGHM says is good I’d like to refer you to Sean Nayden and his lists over the last 3 editions. He has either not played the “net list” of the day, or he created said list long before it was the net list of the day.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Arguably, it it was using ITC rules/missions No retreat is closer to LVO than NOVA was.

Breng77 wrote:
NOVA and ITC were actually very far apart as NOVA was not using the ITC rules changes for things like invisibility. Actual changes in the game rules. So certainly LVO isn’t valid because it is was skewed representation of the actual game rules.

At some point events need to be considered based on number of top players and just players at an event and not the list building structure. I’m certainly not saying all events are equal but if 7th ed DE were so bad how did someone win regardless of list building changes?

As to top players running only what the IGHM says is good I’d like to refer you to Sean Nayden and his lists over the last 3 editions. He has either not played the “net list” of the day, or he created said list long before it was the net list of the day.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Arguably, it it was using ITC rules/missions No retreat is closer to LVO than NOVA was.

I'm sorry, but this is just wrong. ITC applied some attempts at balancing, which was different, but otherwise they weren't all that different. I listed the huge deviances No Retreat had previously in this thread which are quite substantial, you're welcome to do the same if you really want to discuss it. I'd note, however, that even today NOVA's primer (or a draft of it) referenced the long history of the two in influencing each other.

I suspect that if the top tier players used the bottom tier armies, those armies would be nerfed.

Top tier players using bottom tier armies, they would lose, 8th lacks the depth for skill to have much effect on the games these days, spamming flyers, reapers or whatever doesn’t take skill.

 Formosa wrote:
Top tier players using bottom tier armies, they would lose, 8th lacks the depth for skill to have much effect on the games these days, spamming flyers, reapers or whatever doesn’t take skill.

Ahh yes I'm quite sure you'll prove this by winning the next major event by winning it?

Audustum wrote:

Breng77 wrote:
NOVA and ITC were actually very far apart as NOVA was not using the ITC rules changes for things like invisibility. Actual changes in the game rules. So certainly LVO isn’t valid because it is was skewed representation of the actual game rules.

At some point events need to be considered based on number of top players and just players at an event and not the list building structure. I’m certainly not saying all events are equal but if 7th ed DE were so bad how did someone win regardless of list building changes?

As to top players running only what the IGHM says is good I’d like to refer you to Sean Nayden and his lists over the last 3 editions. He has either not played the “net list” of the day, or he created said list long before it was the net list of the day.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Arguably, it it was using ITC rules/missions No retreat is closer to LVO than NOVA was.

I'm sorry, but this is just wrong. ITC applied some attempts at balancing, which was different, but otherwise they weren't all that different. I listed the huge deviances No Retreat had previously in this thread which are quite substantial, you're welcome to do the same if you really want to discuss it. I'd note, however, that even today NOVA's primer (or a draft of it) referenced the long history of the two in influencing each other.

SO they were very different in that one used rules and missions that the other did not, but you know other than being different they were not different? Seriously? I mean there were plenty of years where ITC events allowed FW and NOVA did not. The events were not all that similar when you look at winning lists etc because the rules were so different. So how can you say, there was minimal difference?

Breng77 wrote:

Audustum wrote:

Breng77 wrote:
NOVA and ITC were actually very far apart as NOVA was not using the ITC rules changes for things like invisibility. Actual changes in the game rules. So certainly LVO isn’t valid because it is was skewed representation of the actual game rules.

At some point events need to be considered based on number of top players and just players at an event and not the list building structure. I’m certainly not saying all events are equal but if 7th ed DE were so bad how did someone win regardless of list building changes?

As to top players running only what the IGHM says is good I’d like to refer you to Sean Nayden and his lists over the last 3 editions. He has either not played the “net list” of the day, or he created said list long before it was the net list of the day.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Arguably, it it was using ITC rules/missions No retreat is closer to LVO than NOVA was.

I'm sorry, but this is just wrong. ITC applied some attempts at balancing, which was different, but otherwise they weren't all that different. I listed the huge deviances No Retreat had previously in this thread which are quite substantial, you're welcome to do the same if you really want to discuss it. I'd note, however, that even today NOVA's primer (or a draft of it) referenced the long history of the two in influencing each other.

SO they were very different in that one used rules and missions that the other did not, but you know other than being different they were not different? Seriously? I mean there were plenty of years where ITC events allowed FW and NOVA did not. The events were not all that similar when you look at winning lists etc because the rules were so different. So how can you say, there was minimal difference?

Way to wrongly paraphrase while also dodging the question. "Plenty of years" is off the mark because we were specifically discussing the tail end of 7th and the WarConvo. The topic was to find an off-meta list that did something similar to that feat. .

At thatt time, the differences between NOVA and ITC were fairly small when it came to what we were discussing: placing well with an off-meta list in a meta environment.

As I said in the previous post, if you want to outline the specific differences between the two at that time and why you think that makes No Retreat closer to something like LVO than NOVA, I'm all for it. I already outlined the No Retreat differences.

 Farseer_V2 wrote:

 Formosa wrote:
Top tier players using bottom tier armies, they would lose, 8th lacks the depth for skill to have much effect on the games these days, spamming flyers, reapers or whatever doesn’t take skill.

Ahh yes I'm quite sure you'll prove this by winning the next major event by winning it?

I’ve run and won plenty of events and been gaming for nearly 30 years, so yep, I know what I’m talking about, people can keep pattingb themselves on the back and think they are amazing while clubbing baby seals all day long, but it doesn’t make them skilled for spammin the most obvious power units.

 Formosa wrote:
Top tier players using bottom tier armies, they would lose, 8th lacks the depth for skill to have much effect on the games these days, spamming flyers, reapers or whatever doesn’t take skill.

One of the biggest tournaments of the year, Adepticon, just had two former Adepticon champions play each other in the finals. One of those guys had previously won LVO a little more than a month earlier.

 meleti wrote:

 Formosa wrote:
Top tier players using bottom tier armies, they would lose, 8th lacks the depth for skill to have much effect on the games these days, spamming flyers, reapers or whatever doesn’t take skill.

One of the biggest tournaments of the year, Adepticon, just had two former Adepticon champions play each other in the finals. One of those guys had previously won LVO a little more than a month earlier.

I'm sure Formosa could have won if he had tried. He just doesn't care enough to, or something.

/sarcasm

Audustum wrote:

Breng77 wrote:

Audustum wrote:

Breng77 wrote:
NOVA and ITC were actually very far apart as NOVA was not using the ITC rules changes for things like invisibility. Actual changes in the game rules. So certainly LVO isn’t valid because it is was skewed representation of the actual game rules.

At some point events need to be considered based on number of top players and just players at an event and not the list building structure. I’m certainly not saying all events are equal but if 7th ed DE were so bad how did someone win regardless of list building changes?

As to top players running only what the IGHM says is good I’d like to refer you to Sean Nayden and his lists over the last 3 editions. He has either not played the “net list” of the day, or he created said list long before it was the net list of the day.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Arguably, it it was using ITC rules/missions No retreat is closer to LVO than NOVA was.

I'm sorry, but this is just wrong. ITC applied some attempts at balancing, which was different, but otherwise they weren't all that different. I listed the huge deviances No Retreat had previously in this thread which are quite substantial, you're welcome to do the same if you really want to discuss it. I'd note, however, that even today NOVA's primer (or a draft of it) referenced the long history of the two in influencing each other.

SO they were very different in that one used rules and missions that the other did not, but you know other than being different they were not different? Seriously? I mean there were plenty of years where ITC events allowed FW and NOVA did not. The events were not all that similar when you look at winning lists etc because the rules were so different. So how can you say, there was minimal difference?

Way to wrongly paraphrase while also dodging the question. "Plenty of years" is off the mark because we were specifically discussing the tail end of 7th and the WarConvo. The topic was to find an off-meta list that did something similar to that feat. .

At thatt time, the differences between NOVA and ITC were fairly small when it came to what we were discussing: placing well with an off-meta list in a meta environment.

As I said in the previous post, if you want to outline the specific differences between the two at that time and why you think that makes No Retreat closer to something like LVO than NOVA, I'm all for it. I already outlined the No Retreat differences.

Not really wrongly paraphasing you when you say LVO, changed rules for balance, but other than changing those rules there was minimal difference. If right now I changed the rules because I think Hive Tyrants are too strong and say, hive tyrants are Now T7 with a 4+ save, but change nothing else, I'm sure that isn't a big difference to what is good right?

I Tried to find their packets to innumerate the differences but was unable to find packets from 2 years ago. Largely they would have been one using the ITC FAQ and the other not and that the missions (which are meta defining) were significantly different. Which meant one had 2++ re-rollable save, and invisiblity, and the other did not. That is a pretty large meta difference in what armies did well, Deathstars were much better at NOVA than LVO at that time. Further if we are talking about top players and "off meta lists" there have been plenty over the years you are the one that wants to zero in on a specific space of time.

I mean what exactly is your criteria for an off meta list. An Eldar/DE list placed second at the wet coast GT in 7th (more Dark Eldar). Harlequins won the March Madness GT in 2016. Khorne Daemonkin list with 6 Soul Grinders was 10th in NOVA in 2016. I'm not going to pretend that a ton of such lists exist, but if you went through all the 1 loss players at most major events in any year you will find any number of different lists that are not the "current internet wisdom".

It is easier to win with the best tools, which is why the best players use them. But if they were forced to use other tools (as long as they have some list building autonomy) I guarantee they would still do well.

 meleti wrote:

 Formosa wrote:
Top tier players using bottom tier armies, they would lose, 8th lacks the depth for skill to have much effect on the games these days, spamming flyers, reapers or whatever doesn’t take skill.

One of the biggest tournaments of the year, Adepticon, just had two former Adepticon champions play each other in the finals. One of those guys had previously won LVO a little more than a month earlier.

and what was his list? thats right... spam.

 meleti wrote:

 Formosa wrote:
Top tier players using bottom tier armies, they would lose, 8th lacks the depth for skill to have much effect on the games these days, spamming flyers, reapers or whatever doesn’t take skill.

One of the biggest tournaments of the year, Adepticon, just had two former Adepticon champions play each other in the finals. One of those guys had previously won LVO a little more than a month earlier.

It would almost be impressive if the game wasn't won during list construction which is what this thread is about.

I mostly play the same guy on a weekly basis. We bring power lists and play each other with them. A common phrase we say to each other is "you probably saw this coming" because the moves in this game are so glaringly obvious. You can't "outplay" anyone. It comes down to dice - who gets first turn - and quite often army matchup. Skill plays a small part in all of this.

The guy who won adepticon with 7 flyrants is better at the game than me though. I thought mawlocks were one of the worst units in the codex (and they really are) he thought outside the box though (or copied someone who did) and figured out that mawlocks while being a really crappy unit - have an uncanny ability to kill units in the movement phase - which allows for really dump deep strike shenanigans. Honestly - I don't suspect that, that interaction will be allowed to continue anyhow.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Formosa wrote:

 meleti wrote:

 Formosa wrote:
Top tier players using bottom tier armies, they would lose, 8th lacks the depth for skill to have much effect on the games these days, spamming flyers, reapers or whatever doesn’t take skill.

One of the biggest tournaments of the year, Adepticon, just had two former Adepticon champions play each other in the finals. One of those guys had previously won LVO a little more than a month earlier.

and what was his list? thats right... spam.

7 flyrants and 4 mawlocks lol.

 Formosa wrote:

 meleti wrote:

 Formosa wrote:
Top tier players using bottom tier armies, they would lose, 8th lacks the depth for skill to have much effect on the games these days, spamming flyers, reapers or whatever doesn’t take skill.

One of the biggest tournaments of the year, Adepticon, just had two former Adepticon champions play each other in the finals. One of those guys had previously won LVO a little more than a month earlier.

and what was his list? thats right... spam.

So why didn't you show up with better spam and beat them (or why don't you show up to the next GW GT and do it?) Put your money where you mouth is if you will.

Yeah, if we assume all that's required to win is a spam list, then surely it should be easy to identify said list, purchase it for a pittance on Ebay, put some colours on it (if you didn't just buy it wholesale) and start winning entire tournaments?

Breng77 wrote:

Audustum wrote:

Breng77 wrote:

Audustum wrote:

Breng77 wrote:
NOVA and ITC were actually very far apart as NOVA was not using the ITC rules changes for things like invisibility. Actual changes in the game rules. So certainly LVO isn’t valid because it is was skewed representation of the actual game rules.

At some point events need to be considered based on number of top players and just players at an event and not the list building structure. I’m certainly not saying all events are equal but if 7th ed DE were so bad how did someone win regardless of list building changes?

As to top players running only what the IGHM says is good I’d like to refer you to Sean Nayden and his lists over the last 3 editions. He has either not played the “net list” of the day, or he created said list long before it was the net list of the day.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Arguably, it it was using ITC rules/missions No retreat is closer to LVO than NOVA was.

I'm sorry, but this is just wrong. ITC applied some attempts at balancing, which was different, but otherwise they weren't all that different. I listed the huge deviances No Retreat had previously in this thread which are quite substantial, you're welcome to do the same if you really want to discuss it. I'd note, however, that even today NOVA's primer (or a draft of it) referenced the long history of the two in influencing each other.

SO they were very different in that one used rules and missions that the other did not, but you know other than being different they were not different? Seriously? I mean there were plenty of years where ITC events allowed FW and NOVA did not. The events were not all that similar when you look at winning lists etc because the rules were so different. So how can you say, there was minimal difference?

Way to wrongly paraphrase while also dodging the question. "Plenty of years" is off the mark because we were specifically discussing the tail end of 7th and the WarConvo. The topic was to find an off-meta list that did something similar to that feat. .

At thatt time, the differences between NOVA and ITC were fairly small when it came to what we were discussing: placing well with an off-meta list in a meta environment.

As I said in the previous post, if you want to outline the specific differences between the two at that time and why you think that makes No Retreat closer to something like LVO than NOVA, I'm all for it. I already outlined the No Retreat differences.

Not really wrongly paraphasing you when you say LVO, changed rules for balance, but other than changing those rules there was minimal difference. If right now I changed the rules because I think Hive Tyrants are too strong and say, hive tyrants are Now T7 with a 4+ save, but change nothing else, I'm sure that isn't a big difference to what is good right?

I Tried to find their packets to innumerate the differences but was unable to find packets from 2 years ago. Largely they would have been one using the ITC FAQ and the other not and that the missions (which are meta defining) were significantly different. Which meant one had 2++ re-rollable save, and invisiblity, and the other did not. That is a pretty large meta difference in what armies did well, Deathstars were much better at NOVA than LVO at that time. Further if we are talking about top players and "off meta lists" there have been plenty over the years you are the one that wants to zero in on a specific space of time.

I mean what exactly is your criteria for an off meta list. An Eldar/DE list placed second at the wet coast GT in 7th (more Dark Eldar). Harlequins won the March Madness GT in 2016. Khorne Daemonkin list with 6 Soul Grinders was 10th in NOVA in 2016. I'm not going to pretend that a ton of such lists exist, but if you went through all the 1 loss players at most major events in any year you will find any number of different lists that are not the "current internet wisdom".

It is easier to win with the best tools, which is why the best players use them. But if they were forced to use other tools (as long as they have some list building autonomy) I guarantee they would still do well.

Another factor you have to consider is some of these list you are calling "off meta" aren't bad lists. They certainly aren't low teir armies. Deamonkin was very strong in it's time - it's just - why would you play it when you could just play tzeentch daemons with 2++ rerolls? A low teir army would be something like...space marines without gladius and no deathstar. (essentially automatic lose vs any serious army in 7th ed)

 Farseer_V2 wrote:

 Formosa wrote:

 meleti wrote:

 Formosa wrote:
Top tier players using bottom tier armies, they would lose, 8th lacks the depth for skill to have much effect on the games these days, spamming flyers, reapers or whatever doesn’t take skill.

One of the biggest tournaments of the year, Adepticon, just had two former Adepticon champions play each other in the finals. One of those guys had previously won LVO a little more than a month earlier.

and what was his list? thats right... spam.

So why didn't you show up with better spam and beat them (or why don't you show up to the next GW GT and do it?) Put your money where you mouth is if you will.

Spam vs spam isnt about who is better, its about who wins the spam rolls and whos spam is better, thats not skill, I cant think of a more dull way to play (these days)

 Formosa wrote:
Spam vs spam isnt about who is better, its about who wins the spam rolls and whos spam is better, thats not skill, I cant think of a more dull way to play (these days)

So we're back to "how come the same players keep consistently winning despite fighting other very similar spam lists?"

Do you just think they're lucky?

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
Yeah, if we assume all that's required to win is a spam list, then surely it should be easy to identify said list, purchase it for a pittance on Ebay, put some colours on it (if you didn't just buy it wholesale) and start winning entire tournaments?

What is the reward for doing all of this? Spend 1500 dollars and countless hours to build and paint your new army (that practically none of your friends will want to play against). Spend 1000 dollars traveling. For a chance to win 5k at LVO once a year? Why? That's not profitable. Nor will it be enjoyable. I dread the 3 game tournments I play in locally - it is back breaking playing 40k all day.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
Yeah, if we assume all that's required to win is a spam list, then surely it should be easy to identify said list, purchase it for a pittance on Ebay, put some colours on it (if you didn't just buy it wholesale) and start winning entire tournaments?

Actually yes, that is all it seems to take, look at all these Adepticon lists and you will see a main theme emerge, spam what works, rinse and repeat and hope you dont come across a more powerful spam list.

 Formosa wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
Yeah, if we assume all that's required to win is a spam list, then surely it should be easy to identify said list, purchase it for a pittance on Ebay, put some colours on it (if you didn't just buy it wholesale) and start winning entire tournaments?

Actually yes, that is all it seems to take, look at all these Adepticon lists and you will see a main theme emerge, spam what works, rinse and repeat and hope you dont come across a more powerful spam list.

Why do the same few people keep winning despite having to fight multiple iterations of the same spam list that they themselves are running, with only minor variations?

 Formosa wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
Yeah, if we assume all that's required to win is a spam list, then surely it should be easy to identify said list, purchase it for a pittance on Ebay, put some colours on it (if you didn't just buy it wholesale) and start winning entire tournaments?

Actually yes, that is all it seems to take, look at all these Adepticon lists and you will see a main theme emerge, spam what works, rinse and repeat and hope you dont come across a more powerful spam list.

Right, so you'd pretty easily beat someone like say Matt Root or Nick Nanivanti in a game then?

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 Formosa wrote:
Spam vs spam isnt about who is better, its about who wins the spam rolls and whos spam is better, thats not skill, I cant think of a more dull way to play (these days)

So we're back to "how come the same players keep consistently winning despite fighting other very similar spam lists?"

Do you just think they're lucky?

Yep, thats exactly what I think it is, lets see those same players take a normal list, and by normal i mean a run of the mill 40k list that normal people use, then win, its not gonna happen because its not about skill anymore, its about taking the most simple point and click units and spamming them.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Farseer_V2 wrote:

 Formosa wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
Yeah, if we assume all that's required to win is a spam list, then surely it should be easy to identify said list, purchase it for a pittance on Ebay, put some colours on it (if you didn't just buy it wholesale) and start winning entire tournaments?

Actually yes, that is all it seems to take, look at all these Adepticon lists and you will see a main theme emerge, spam what works, rinse and repeat and hope you dont come across a more powerful spam list.

Right, so you'd pretty easily beat someone like say Matt Root or Nick Nanivanti in a game then?

Could I beat them, yes, will i get the chance, more than likely not, take two of those Tyrant lists that are identical and it will come down to pure luck who wins.

 Formosa wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 Formosa wrote:
Spam vs spam isnt about who is better, its about who wins the spam rolls and whos spam is better, thats not skill, I cant think of a more dull way to play (these days)

So we're back to "how come the same players keep consistently winning despite fighting other very similar spam lists?"

Do you just think they're lucky?

Yep, thats exactly what I think it is, lets see those same players take a normal list, and by normal i mean a run of the mill 40k list that normal people use, then win, its not gonna happen because its not about skill anymore, its about taking the most simple point and click units and spamming them.

So you're essentially claiming that the consistent best winners of several major events across the world do it repeatedly because they're supernaturally lucky, rather than admitting there might be some element of skill.
Okay.

 Formosa wrote:


Could I beat them, yes, will i get the chance, more than likely not, take two of those Tyrant lists that are identical and it will come down to pure luck who wins.

This is so laughable it isn't even worth considering. If this was the case then anyone could take that list and win a major but we consistently see people netlisting those lists and doing poorly with them. But I guess those guys who win consistently are just consistently lucky.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 Formosa wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 Formosa wrote:
Spam vs spam isnt about who is better, its about who wins the spam rolls and whos spam is better, thats not skill, I cant think of a more dull way to play (these days)

So we're back to "how come the same players keep consistently winning despite fighting other very similar spam lists?"

Do you just think they're lucky?

Yep, thats exactly what I think it is, lets see those same players take a normal list, and by normal i mean a run of the mill 40k list that normal people use, then win, its not gonna happen because its not about skill anymore, its about taking the most simple point and click units and spamming them.

So you're essentially claiming that the consistent best winners of several major events across the world do it repeatedly because they're supernaturally lucky, rather than admitting there might be some element of skill.
Okay.

The delusion is yours if you think it takes any skill to play that tyrant list.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Farseer_V2 wrote:

 Formosa wrote:


Could I beat them, yes, will i get the chance, more than likely not, take two of those Tyrant lists that are identical and it will come down to pure luck who wins.

This is so laughable it isn't even worth considering. If this was the case then anyone could take that list and win a major but we consistently see people netlisting those lists and doing poorly with them. But I guess those guys who win consistently are just consistently lucky.

Yep, it comes down to a lot of factors but yes they are getting lucky, lets see a mirror match with that tyrant list eh.

 Formosa wrote:

Yep, it comes down to a lot of factors but yes they are getting lucky, lets see a mirror match with that tyrant list eh.

The 2nd place finisher had to go through one of the 4 HT lists and he beat it but lost to the other. There is clearly an element other than luck and list at play here. But why bother continuing to have discourse with someone who is only interested in maintaining their own point of view. Tell you what - you'll be credible the day you post a major win. Until then have fun being a guy who thinks they could even make the podium at a major.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 Formosa wrote:
Spam vs spam isnt about who is better, its about who wins the spam rolls and whos spam is better, thats not skill, I cant think of a more dull way to play (these days)

So we're back to "how come the same players keep consistently winning despite fighting other very similar spam lists?"

Do you just think they're lucky?

To not lose a game due to dice rolling like crap in a 5 game period is luck. You can't tell me you haven't played a game where you rolled 80% 1s and 2's - I get one of those about every 5 games. So anyone that goes undefeated is flat out lucky their dice didn't feth them - that is true.

 Xenomancers wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 Formosa wrote:
Spam vs spam isnt about who is better, its about who wins the spam rolls and whos spam is better, thats not skill, I cant think of a more dull way to play (these days)

So we're back to "how come the same players keep consistently winning despite fighting other very similar spam lists?"

Do you just think they're lucky?

To not lose a game due to dice rolling like crap in a 5 game period is luck. You can't tell me you haven't played a game where you rolled 80% 1s and 2's - I get one of those about every 5 games. So anyone that goes undefeated is flat out lucky their dice didn't feth them - that is true.

What about doing so repeatedly, over eighteen-to-twenty-four games in a year, consistently getting 1st place? Do you think that's still luck and no skill?

 Xenomancers wrote:

Breng77 wrote:

Audustum wrote:

Breng77 wrote:

Audustum wrote:

Breng77 wrote:
NOVA and ITC were actually very far apart as NOVA was not using the ITC rules changes for things like invisibility. Actual changes in the game rules. So certainly LVO isn’t valid because it is was skewed representation of the actual game rules.

At some point events need to be considered based on number of top players and just players at an event and not the list building structure. I’m certainly not saying all events are equal but if 7th ed DE were so bad how did someone win regardless of list building changes?

As to top players running only what the IGHM says is good I’d like to refer you to Sean Nayden and his lists over the last 3 editions. He has either not played the “net list” of the day, or he created said list long before it was the net list of the day.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Arguably, it it was using ITC rules/missions No retreat is closer to LVO than NOVA was.

I'm sorry, but this is just wrong. ITC applied some attempts at balancing, which was different, but otherwise they weren't all that different. I listed the huge deviances No Retreat had previously in this thread which are quite substantial, you're welcome to do the same if you really want to discuss it. I'd note, however, that even today NOVA's primer (or a draft of it) referenced the long history of the two in influencing each other.

SO they were very different in that one used rules and missions that the other did not, but you know other than being different they were not different? Seriously? I mean there were plenty of years where ITC events allowed FW and NOVA did not. The events were not all that similar when you look at winning lists etc because the rules were so different. So how can you say, there was minimal difference?

Way to wrongly paraphrase while also dodging the question. "Plenty of years" is off the mark because we were specifically discussing the tail end of 7th and the WarConvo. The topic was to find an off-meta list that did something similar to that feat. .

At thatt time, the differences between NOVA and ITC were fairly small when it came to what we were discussing: placing well with an off-meta list in a meta environment.

As I said in the previous post, if you want to outline the specific differences between the two at that time and why you think that makes No Retreat closer to something like LVO than NOVA, I'm all for it. I already outlined the No Retreat differences.

Not really wrongly paraphasing you when you say LVO, changed rules for balance, but other than changing those rules there was minimal difference. If right now I changed the rules because I think Hive Tyrants are too strong and say, hive tyrants are Now T7 with a 4+ save, but change nothing else, I'm sure that isn't a big difference to what is good right?

I Tried to find their packets to innumerate the differences but was unable to find packets from 2 years ago. Largely they would have been one using the ITC FAQ and the other not and that the missions (which are meta defining) were significantly different. Which meant one had 2++ re-rollable save, and invisiblity, and the other did not. That is a pretty large meta difference in what armies did well, Deathstars were much better at NOVA than LVO at that time. Further if we are talking about top players and "off meta lists" there have been plenty over the years you are the one that wants to zero in on a specific space of time.

I mean what exactly is your criteria for an off meta list. An Eldar/DE list placed second at the wet coast GT in 7th (more Dark Eldar). Harlequins won the March Madness GT in 2016. Khorne Daemonkin list with 6 Soul Grinders was 10th in NOVA in 2016. I'm not going to pretend that a ton of such lists exist, but if you went through all the 1 loss players at most major events in any year you will find any number of different lists that are not the "current internet wisdom".

It is easier to win with the best tools, which is why the best players use them. But if they were forced to use other tools (as long as they have some list building autonomy) I guarantee they would still do well.

Another factor you have to consider is some of these list you are calling "off meta" aren't bad lists. They certainly aren't low teir armies. Deamonkin was very strong in it's time - it's just - why would you play it when you could just play tzeentch daemons with 2++ rerolls? A low teir army would be something like...space marines without gladius and no deathstar. (essentially automatic lose vs any serious army in 7th ed)

No one wins games with bad army lists, so no matter what you need to assume that a player will be using good tools. So sure Daemonkin was decent, but I did not see a ton of soul grinders on top tables with any normality, so to me that is off meta. If people want off meta to mean, winning with garbage, then yeah that has and will never happen.

 Farseer_V2 wrote:

 Formosa wrote:

Yep, it comes down to a lot of factors but yes they are getting lucky, lets see a mirror match with that tyrant list eh.

The 2nd place finisher had to go through one of the 4 HT lists and he beat it but lost to the other. There is clearly an element other than luck and list at play here. But why bother continuing to have discourse with someone who is only interested in maintaining their own point of view. Tell you what - you'll be credible the day you post a major win. Until then have fun being a guy who thinks they could even make the podium at a major.

Typical response "you dont have an opinion that is valid if I havent seen you do something" well tough luck, I have placed top podium and got first place at some of the biggest events in the UK and did for a long time, then got bored with the whole thing around 5th, do I have anything to prove to you, nope, you seem to lack even a basic understanding of how 8th works now when it comes to tournies and seem to think skill matters with a lot of these lists, but to throw your own insult back at you, i will take you seriously when you place well in a UK tourney

 Xenomancers wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 Formosa wrote:
Spam vs spam isnt about who is better, its about who wins the spam rolls and whos spam is better, thats not skill, I cant think of a more dull way to play (these days)

So we're back to "how come the same players keep consistently winning despite fighting other very similar spam lists?"

Do you just think they're lucky?

To not lose a game due to dice rolling like crap in a 5 game period is luck. You can't tell me you haven't played a game where you rolled 80% 1s and 2's - I get one of those about every 5 games. So anyone that goes undefeated is flat out lucky their dice didn't feth them - that is true.

Or maybe (and I know this is a travesty) they engineer situations where they counter act dice rolls through risk management, good movement, and engineering in game scenarios where they don't need to roll even average to win?

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 Formosa wrote:
Spam vs spam isnt about who is better, its about who wins the spam rolls and whos spam is better, thats not skill, I cant think of a more dull way to play (these days)

So we're back to "how come the same players keep consistently winning despite fighting other very similar spam lists?"

Do you just think they're lucky?

To not lose a game due to dice rolling like crap in a 5 game period is luck. You can't tell me you haven't played a game where you rolled 80% 1s and 2's - I get one of those about every 5 games. So anyone that goes undefeated is flat out lucky their dice didn't feth them - that is true.

What about doing so repeatedly, over eighteen-to-twenty-four games in a year, consistently getting 1st place? Do you think that's still luck and no skill?

And what tourneys, who were the other players, was it casual tourney or full on, did they get lucky and place against crap lists that cant handle the spam, no it must be raw skill and nothing else

 Formosa wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 Formosa wrote:
Spam vs spam isnt about who is better, its about who wins the spam rolls and whos spam is better, thats not skill, I cant think of a more dull way to play (these days)

So we're back to "how come the same players keep consistently winning despite fighting other very similar spam lists?"

Do you just think they're lucky?

To not lose a game due to dice rolling like crap in a 5 game period is luck. You can't tell me you haven't played a game where you rolled 80% 1s and 2's - I get one of those about every 5 games. So anyone that goes undefeated is flat out lucky their dice didn't feth them - that is true.

What about doing so repeatedly, over eighteen-to-twenty-four games in a year, consistently getting 1st place? Do you think that's still luck and no skill?

And what tourneys, who were the other players, was it casual tourney or full on, did they get lucky and place against crap lists that cant handle the spam, no it must be raw skill and nothing else

The tournies are LVO, NOVA, and Adepticon. The other players were some of the best in the world, and it was in the GT at an event that held other, more casual events, so everyone was absolutely playing their best, and they had to play identical lists to their own, if what you say is true, since the spam lists will all float to the top. You can't actually win a tournament without playing good lists on the final tables.

EDIT:
I'm not claiming it was "raw skill" or that list building and dice are irrelevant. I'm claiming that there is "some skill" along with good lists.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 Formosa wrote:
Spam vs spam isnt about who is better, its about who wins the spam rolls and whos spam is better, thats not skill, I cant think of a more dull way to play (these days)

So we're back to "how come the same players keep consistently winning despite fighting other very similar spam lists?"

Do you just think they're lucky?

To not lose a game due to dice rolling like crap in a 5 game period is luck. You can't tell me you haven't played a game where you rolled 80% 1s and 2's - I get one of those about every 5 games. So anyone that goes undefeated is flat out lucky their dice didn't feth them - that is true.

What about doing so repeatedly, over eighteen-to-twenty-four games in a year, consistently getting 1st place? Do you think that's still luck and no skill?

First of all - I am not saying they are bad players - they are obviously good players.
Second - there is something fishy about someone going undefeated over the course of a 24 game period. I don't care how good your list is or how good of a player you are. If you are winning 24 games a row in a dice game - you are cheating - it's as simple as that.

Furthmore - what number of players at these tournaments are playing power lists? I feel like - it's less than half. I could be wrong.

 Xenomancers wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 Formosa wrote:
Spam vs spam isnt about who is better, its about who wins the spam rolls and whos spam is better, thats not skill, I cant think of a more dull way to play (these days)

So we're back to "how come the same players keep consistently winning despite fighting other very similar spam lists?"

Do you just think they're lucky?

To not lose a game due to dice rolling like crap in a 5 game period is luck. You can't tell me you haven't played a game where you rolled 80% 1s and 2's - I get one of those about every 5 games. So anyone that goes undefeated is flat out lucky their dice didn't feth them - that is true.

What about doing so repeatedly, over eighteen-to-twenty-four games in a year, consistently getting 1st place? Do you think that's still luck and no skill?

First of all - I am not saying they are bad players - they are obviously good players.
Second - there is something fishy about someone going undefeated over the course of a 24 game period. I don't care how good your list is or how good of a player you are. If you are winning 24 games a row in a dice game - you are cheating - it's as simple as that.

But good players mitigate the impact dice can have on their game.

 Xenomancers wrote:
Second - there is something fishy about someone going undefeated over the course of a 24 game period. I don't care how good your list is or how good of a player you are. If you are winning 24 games a row in a dice game - you are cheating - it's as simple as that.

I suppose such horrible cheating should come to the attention of the TO, then. I can tag a few of them about the forum, see what they have to say about your assertion that the best players of Warhammer 40k in the world are cheating at their tournaments.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:
Second - there is something fishy about someone going undefeated over the course of a 24 game period. I don't care how good your list is or how good of a player you are. If you are winning 24 games a row in a dice game - you are cheating - it's as simple as that.

I suppose such horrible cheating should come to the attention of the TO, then. I can tag a few of them about the forum, see what they have to say about your assertion that the best players of Warhammer 40k in the world are cheating at their tournaments.

Funnily enough it seems that it does go on, the other thread talking about the guy who got DQ'd they were saying that the TO dont check every list and cant check every game, cant expect them to though its just not viable.

 Xenomancers wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 Formosa wrote:
Spam vs spam isnt about who is better, its about who wins the spam rolls and whos spam is better, thats not skill, I cant think of a more dull way to play (these days)

So we're back to "how come the same players keep consistently winning despite fighting other very similar spam lists?"

Do you just think they're lucky?

To not lose a game due to dice rolling like crap in a 5 game period is luck. You can't tell me you haven't played a game where you rolled 80% 1s and 2's - I get one of those about every 5 games. So anyone that goes undefeated is flat out lucky their dice didn't feth them - that is true.

Nick Nanavati is 46-2 at adepticon with both losses coming to Matt Root. That is some serious luck on his part that he apparently never rolls poorly, ever except against one player. I mean seriously, I could see that belief if different people were on top of these events every year, but when it is the same people, every single year, at all the majors? Seriously? I admit luck plays some part but that is more in not drawing good players early, not drawing bad matchups, than dice luck. Why? Because one of the main things good players look for in their lists is the mitigation of dice luck. Just go look at Nick's adepticon list. That list performing well has very little to do with luck, most of its power has nothing to do with dice.

You guys are pretty ignorant if you think someone going 46-2 in warhammer 40k isnt cheating. They definately are cheating. The fact that they only lose to each other is another give away. A cheater can still lose to a cheater.

 Xenomancers wrote:
You guys are pretty ignorant if you think someone going 46-2 in warhammer 40k isnt cheating. They definately are cheating. The fact that they only lose to each other is another give away. A cheater can still lose to a cheater.

Lol this is rich. If I can't do it then the only way it could be done is by cheating!

 Xenomancers wrote:
You guys are pretty ignorant if you think someone going 46-2 in warhammer 40k isnt cheating. They definately are cheating. The fact that they only lose to each other is another give away. A cheater can still lose to a cheater.

Okay, Xenomancers. Just calm down and no one gets hurt.

Right so there is luck and cheating, no skill got it....sigh. IT is all a cabal of top level cheaters that is why the same players always rise to the top. That is totally more believable than that some people are better at this game than others....riiiight....

Breng77 wrote:
Right so there is luck and cheating, no skill got it....sigh. IT is all a cabal of top level cheaters that is why the same players always rise to the top. That is totally more believable than that some people are better at this game than others....riiiight....

Yeah I mean the only way you can be good at 40k is spam list, cheat, and be very lucky.

I am calm - my understanding of statistics gives me poise. It is more or less impossible to consistently win at this game. Guy is winning 96% of his games in a dice game? LOL.

 Xenomancers wrote:
I am calm - my understanding of statistics gives me poise. It is more or less impossible to consistently win at this game. Guy is winning 96% of his games in a dice game? LOL.

No no, let's be clear it is nearly impossible for you to consistently win at this game because you still think dice are a major factor.

 Xenomancers wrote:
I am calm - my understanding of statistics gives me poise. It is more or less impossible to consistently win at this game. Guy is winning 96% of his games in a dice game? LOL.

[scientist 1] There must be some other factor, something we didn't consider. [/scientist 1]

[scientist 2] It can't be! We've considered every possible angle - math, some more math, personal experience with no real data, and math! [/scientist 2]

[scientist 3] Unless...[ /scientist 3]

*Actors turn to look behind them at the vivisected Warhammer 40k lying bleeding on the table. It whispers a single word before expiring:*

"skill"

 Xenomancers wrote:

 meleti wrote:

 Formosa wrote:
Top tier players using bottom tier armies, they would lose, 8th lacks the depth for skill to have much effect on the games these days, spamming flyers, reapers or whatever doesn’t take skill.

One of the biggest tournaments of the year, Adepticon, just had two former Adepticon champions play each other in the finals. One of those guys had previously won LVO a little more than a month earlier.

It would almost be impressive if the game wasn't won during list construction which is what this thread is about.

 Formosa wrote:

and what was his list? thats right... spam.

 Farseer_V2 wrote:

Breng77 wrote:
Right so there is luck and cheating, no skill got it....sigh. IT is all a cabal of top level cheaters that is why the same players always rise to the top. That is totally more believable than that some people are better at this game than others....riiiight....

Yeah I mean the only way you can be good at 40k is spam list, cheat, and be very lucky.

Well - if you are cheating (loaded dice) you take luck out of the equation. So - spam list/loaded dice yeah - 96% win rate makes sense there. Or maybe he just pays people to lose to him - that is also a possibility. winning 96%? Not really probable there. Especially since this is a game I understand well and play about 2-3 times a week with power lists.

There are no words for the amount of human stupidity in this thread...

...there's laughter though...

 meleti wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:

 meleti wrote:

 Formosa wrote:
Top tier players using bottom tier armies, they would lose, 8th lacks the depth for skill to have much effect on the games these days, spamming flyers, reapers or whatever doesn’t take skill.

One of the biggest tournaments of the year, Adepticon, just had two former Adepticon champions play each other in the finals. One of those guys had previously won LVO a little more than a month earlier.

It would almost be impressive if the game wasn't won during list construction which is what this thread is about.

 Formosa wrote:

and what was his list? thats right... spam.

Facepalm all you like, spam does not equal skill, any mook could come up with that flyrant list and win games with it, doesnt take much if any skill at all.

 Xenomancers wrote:

 Farseer_V2 wrote:

Breng77 wrote:
Right so there is luck and cheating, no skill got it....sigh. IT is all a cabal of top level cheaters that is why the same players always rise to the top. That is totally more believable than that some people are better at this game than others....riiiight....

Yeah I mean the only way you can be good at 40k is spam list, cheat, and be very lucky.

Well - if you are cheating (loaded dice) you take luck out of the equation. So - spam list/loaded dice yeah - 96% win rate makes sense there. Or maybe he just pays people to lose to him - that is also a possibility. winning 96%? Not really probable there. Especially since this is a game I understand well and play about 2-3 times a week with power lists.

Yeah but you don't actually understand it well and you (by your own admission) play in a tiny pool so you have no clue how good or bad you actually are.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
There are no words for the amount of human stupidity in this thread...

...there's laughter though...

I'm not taking offense to that because my argument is grounded in statistical probability - which isn't actually stupid. I lose games all the time because my dice fail me - like roll unbelievably bad. This doesn't happen to these guys? It's pretty obvious they are cheating. I've also been practically tabled without having a go before (you can't win that game ether) these aren't really uncommon things. It's just the nature of probability.

 Formosa wrote:

Facepalm all you like, spam does not equal skill, any mook could come up with that flyrant list and win games with it, doesnt take much if any skill at all.

I cannot take you or Xenomancer seriously. I tried. All that came out was a .

This forum desperately, desperately, heartachingly needs an eye-roll emote.

 Xenomancers wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
There are no words for the amount of human stupidity in this thread...

...there's laughter though...

I'm not taking offense to that because my argument is grounded in statistical probability - which isn't actually stupid. I lose games all the time because my dice fail me - like roll unbelievably bad. This doesn't happen to these guys? It's pretty obvious they are cheating. I've also been practically tabled without having a go before (you can't win that game ether) these aren't really uncommon things. It's just the nature of probability.

No they don't lose games because they roll poorly. They're better than you and make sure to mitigate those concerns.

Those who say it is all down to luck are so silly. Look at poker. Why are the same faces around the final tables year after year. Luck? Same with 40k.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
This forum desperately, desperately, heartachingly needs an eye-roll emote.

 Hollow wrote:
Those who say it is all down to luck are so silly. Look at poker. Why are the same faces around the final tables year after year. Luck? Same with 40k.

Poker is actually a skill game though - reading peoples minds is not easy but they can do it. That and control of their own body language and experience makes them more likely to win hands. Then again - its really rare for a poker player to win consecutive events. Because in the end - it all comes down to luck and every single one of them will tell you that.

DELETED

 Xenomancers wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
There are no words for the amount of human stupidity in this thread...

...there's laughter though...

I'm not taking offense to that because my argument is grounded in statistical probability - which isn't actually stupid. I lose games all the time because my dice fail me - like roll unbelievably bad. This doesn't happen to these guys? It's pretty obvious they are cheating. I've also been practically tabled without having a go before (you can't win that game ether) these aren't really uncommon things. It's just the nature of probability.

Blaming the dice is a sign of a bad player. Sorry but it is true. It means you put yourself into a position where rolling bad lost you the game. You may not recognize that when it happens but 90% of the time that is the truth. I played a game recently where my opponent rolled hot and I lost, but I lost because I over extended my forces early game in a bad play, and then his dice didn't let me back into the game. Not because I played perfectly and he was just lucky.

Newsflash there is no statistical law that says 1/5 games you will have bad dice. Your math isn't even correct. Statistically over a large sample of games your dice should be statistically average, that could mean they are average all the time.

Breng77 wrote:

Audustum wrote:

Breng77 wrote:

Audustum wrote:

Breng77 wrote:
NOVA and ITC were actually very far apart as NOVA was not using the ITC rules changes for things like invisibility. Actual changes in the game rules. So certainly LVO isn’t valid because it is was skewed representation of the actual game rules.

What is this? You're jumping into a conversation I was specifically having with Farseer and it doesn't seem like you actually bothered to read any of it before jumping in. He and I were specifically discussing a WarConvo list that placed well in LVO. THAT'S why we're looking at LVO and things like it.

At some point events need to be considered based on number of top players and just players at an event and not the list building structure.

Which is nice as a general idea and all, but again, you jumped into a specific conversation discussing a specific thing. Please read it.

I’m certainly not saying all events are equal but if 7th ed DE were so bad how did someone win regardless of list building changes?

Probably due to the rules of the local tournament and how wildly divergent they were compared to our main tournaments, which is exactly what I attacked it for when Farseer used it as an example. Again, specific thing bring discussed here.

As to top players running only what the IGHM says is good I’d like to refer you to Sean Nayden and his lists over the last 3 editions. He has either not played the “net list” of the day, or he created said list long before it was the net list of the day.

Automatically Appended Next Post:
Arguably, it it was using ITC rules/missions No retreat is closer to LVO than NOVA was.

I'm sorry, but this is just wrong. ITC applied some attempts at balancing, which was different, but otherwise they weren't all that different. I listed the huge deviances No Retreat had previously in this thread which are quite substantial, you're welcome to do the same if you really want to discuss it. I'd note, however, that even today NOVA's primer (or a draft of it) referenced the long history of the two in influencing each other.

SO they were very different in that one used rules and missions that the other did not, but you know other than being different they were not different? Seriously? I mean there were plenty of years where ITC events allowed FW and NOVA did not. The events were not all that similar when you look at winning lists etc because the rules were so different. So how can you say, there was minimal difference?

Way to wrongly paraphrase while also dodging the question. "Plenty of years" is off the mark because we were specifically discussing the tail end of 7th and the WarConvo. The topic was to find an off-meta list that did something similar to that feat. .

At thatt time, the differences between NOVA and ITC were fairly small when it came to what we were discussing: placing well with an off-meta list in a meta environment.

As I said in the previous post, if you want to outline the specific differences between the two at that time and why you think that makes No Retreat closer to something like LVO than NOVA, I'm all for it. I already outlined the No Retreat differences.

Not really wrongly paraphasing you when you say LVO, changed rules for balance, but other than changing those rules there was minimal difference.

NOVA DID have some balance changes like 2+ re-rolling being adjusted, just far less than LVO. The ones LVO had we're not significant in my opinion. You want to outline the differences and why that's wrong; let's do it, but you can't speak in generalities forever.

One piece of evidence I'll add to what I've said already is that both tournaments also has the same type of lists placing high for the time period. Renegades, Chaos and Taudar.

If right now I changed the rules because I think Hive Tyrants are too strong and say, hive tyrants are Now T7 with a 4+ save, but change nothing else, I'm sure that isn't a big difference to what is good right?

Except that you'd be eliminating one type of list that is highly dominant and powerful from consideration. So we couldn't, for example, compare your results to Adepticon. It's very much a totality of the circumstances test.

I Tried to find their packets to innumerate the differences but was unable to find packets from 2 years ago. Largely they would have been one using the ITC FAQ and the other not and that the missions (which are meta defining) were significantly different.

Having reviewed and played tournaments in this peiod I wouldn't say their missions were different to any great extreme. They both also had FAQ's that bring them into close enough harmony that there is less daylight between them than No Retreat and either.

Which meant one had 2++ re-rollable save, and invisiblity, and the other did not. That is a pretty large meta difference in what armies did well, Deathstars were much better at NOVA than LVO at that time.

Negative. NOVA had FAQ's covering these at this time and invisible deathstars (at least as most people would imagine a deathstars, like the Space Marine version) were not super dominant. Now invisible Wraithknight still hurt but that was true everywhere.

Further if we are talking about top players and "off meta lists" there have been plenty over the years you are the one that wants to zero in on a specific space of time.

Because Farseer started a conversation about the tail end of 7th, specifically. This is what I meant by barrelling in but without seeming to have read the branch you're joining in on.

I mean what exactly is your criteria for an off meta list. An Eldar/DE list placed second at the wet coast GT in 7th (more Dark Eldar). Harlequins won the March Madness GT in 2016. Khorne Daemonkin list with 6 Soul Grinders was 10th in NOVA in 2016.

Well, actually, Farseer and I we're specifically discussing a Dark Eldar list doing as good as a specific WarConvo list did in a specific time and a specific way in 7th. See barrelling in.

See also below.

I'm not going to pretend that a ton of such lists exist, but if you went through all the 1 loss players at most major events in any year you will find any number of different lists that are not the "current internet wisdom".

And I would say if you pick any year and we compare it to the IHMG at that time, the lists that adhere to it do correspondingly better with few outliers. I like the outliers though. They're what I hunt for specifically.

It is easier to win with the best tools, which is why the best players use them. But if they were forced to use other tools (as long as they have some list building autonomy) I guarantee they would still do well.

To open it back up to a general discussion: define "well".

I can't prove any of this ofc - so you guys can keep on believing that these guys are super genius tacticians in a game where tactics hardly even present themselves outside of list construction.

 Xenomancers wrote:
I can't prove any of this ofc - so you guys can keep on believing that these guys are super genius tacticians in a game where tactics hardly even present themselves outside of list construction.

<3

You can prove it if you seriously go aggregate all winning and losing tournament lists since 8th started, but that requires an amount of effort that really might not be worth the reward.

 Farseer_V2 wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
There are no words for the amount of human stupidity in this thread...

...there's laughter though...

I'm not taking offense to that because my argument is grounded in statistical probability - which isn't actually stupid. I lose games all the time because my dice fail me - like roll unbelievably bad. This doesn't happen to these guys? It's pretty obvious they are cheating. I've also been practically tabled without having a go before (you can't win that game ether) these aren't really uncommon things. It's just the nature of probability.

No they don't lose games because they roll poorly. They're better than you and make sure to mitigate those concerns.

Right - because if you try really hard - you'll start rolling better? Right? The point is - IT IS OUT OF YOUR CONTROL. So stats like 96% win rate are HIGHLY suspect. You aren't suspicious? Are you by any chance a Lance Armstrong fan?

 Xenomancers wrote:

 Farseer_V2 wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
There are no words for the amount of human stupidity in this thread...

...there's laughter though...

I'm not taking offense to that because my argument is grounded in statistical probability - which isn't actually stupid. I lose games all the time because my dice fail me - like roll unbelievably bad. This doesn't happen to these guys? It's pretty obvious they are cheating. I've also been practically tabled without having a go before (you can't win that game ether) these aren't really uncommon things. It's just the nature of probability.

No they don't lose games because they roll poorly. They're better than you and make sure to mitigate those concerns.

Right - because if you try really hard - you'll start rolling better? Right? The point is - IT IS OUT OF YOUR CONTROL. So stats like 96% win rate are HIGHLY suspect. You aren't suspicious? Are you by any chance a Lance Armstrong fan?

If you are good at the game you will mitigate dice rolls. It is an essential skill in 40k is taking away opportunities for poor dice rolls to impact your performance.

Somebody doesn't know anything about professional bike racing...lol.

What do you mean? Like target priority? Yeah - I think we have covered that. I could teach my Siberian Husky how to prioritize targets in 40k - she still hasn't masterd lay down though - She does in fact understand lascannons are good for killing tanks. She also eats her own poop sometimes.


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 Elbows wrote:
Somebody doesn't know anything about professional bike racing...lol.

No - I think you missed the underlying point there. Lots of people "at the top" are probably cheating too. They might even feel justified about it because they know lots of people are doing it. People cheat in literally every sport until they get caught. Funny thing is in those sports people actually try to catch cheaters - in 40k the going consensus is..."cheating? Why would anyone do that?"

It's a game of toy soldiers.

 Elbows wrote:
It's a game of toy soldiers.

I've known people to cheat at monopoly.

 Xenomancers wrote:
What do you mean? Like target priority? Yeah - I think we have covered that. I could teach my Siberian Husky how to prioritize targets in 40k - she still hasn't masterd lay down though - She does in fact understand lascannons are good for killing tanks. She also eats her own poop sometimes.

More like putting yourself in situations where you only need to hit with 20% of your shots to accomplished a desired outcome, or putting yourself in a position where rolling a 4 or less on a charge is still successful, or managing the game so that when you make the charge sub par rolls will carry you through the combat. Its about understanding that you are playing a dice game and doing everything you can to remove the ability for dice to impact the game. If you know that you make an 8" charge 55% of the time - don't put yourself in position to need to make 8" charges. 40k rewards being good at linear math which is is effectively probability management. The fact that I'm having to explain this to you is fairly indicative of your actual skill. If you ever find yourself needing to roll consistently average to win a game you've done it wrong.

Audustum wrote:

Breng77 wrote:

Audustum wrote:

Breng77 wrote:

Audustum wrote:

Breng77 wrote:
NOVA and ITC were actually very far apart as NOVA was not using the ITC rules changes for things like invisibility. Actual changes in the game rules. So certainly LVO isn’t valid because it is was skewed representation of the actual game rules.

What is this? You're jumping into a conversation I was specifically having with Farseer and it doesn't seem like you actually bothered to read any of it before jumping in. He and I were specifically discussing a WarConvo list that placed well in LVO. THAT'S why we're looking at LVO and things like it.

At some point events need to be considered based on number of top players and just players at an event and not the list building structure.

Which is nice as a general idea and all, but again, you jumped into a specific conversation discussing a specific thing. Please read it.

I’m certainly not saying all events are equal but if 7th ed DE were so bad how did someone win regardless of list building changes?

Probably due to the rules of the local tournament and how wildly divergent they were compared to our main tournaments, which is exactly what I attacked it for when Farseer used it as an example. Again, specific thing bring discussed here.

As to top players running only what the IGHM says is good I’d like to refer you to Sean Nayden and his lists over the last 3 editions. He has either not played the “net list” of the day, or he created said list long before it was the net list of the day.

Automatically Appended Next Post:
Arguably, it it was using ITC rules/missions No retreat is closer to LVO than NOVA was.

I'm sorry, but this is just wrong. ITC applied some attempts at balancing, which was different, but otherwise they weren't all that different. I listed the huge deviances No Retreat had previously in this thread which are quite substantial, you're welcome to do the same if you really want to discuss it. I'd note, however, that even today NOVA's primer (or a draft of it) referenced the long history of the two in influencing each other.

SO they were very different in that one used rules and missions that the other did not, but you know other than being different they were not different? Seriously? I mean there were plenty of years where ITC events allowed FW and NOVA did not. The events were not all that similar when you look at winning lists etc because the rules were so different. So how can you say, there was minimal difference?

Way to wrongly paraphrase while also dodging the question. "Plenty of years" is off the mark because we were specifically discussing the tail end of 7th and the WarConvo. The topic was to find an off-meta list that did something similar to that feat. .

At thatt time, the differences between NOVA and ITC were fairly small when it came to what we were discussing: placing well with an off-meta list in a meta environment.

As I said in the previous post, if you want to outline the specific differences between the two at that time and why you think that makes No Retreat closer to something like LVO than NOVA, I'm all for it. I already outlined the No Retreat differences.

Not really wrongly paraphasing you when you say LVO, changed rules for balance, but other than changing those rules there was minimal difference.

NOVA DID have some balance changes like 2+ re-rolling being adjusted, just far less than LVO. The ones LVO had we're not significant in my opinion. You want to outline the differences and why that's wrong; let's do it, but you can't speak in generalities forever.

One piece of evidence I'll add to what I've said already is that both tournaments also has the same type of lists placing high for the time period. Renegades, Chaos and Taudar.

If right now I changed the rules because I think Hive Tyrants are too strong and say, hive tyrants are Now T7 with a 4+ save, but change nothing else, I'm sure that isn't a big difference to what is good right?

Except that you'd be eliminating one type of list that is highly dominant and powerful from consideration. So we couldn't, for example, compare your results to Adepticon. It's very much a totality of the circumstances test.

I Tried to find their packets to innumerate the differences but was unable to find packets from 2 years ago. Largely they would have been one using the ITC FAQ and the other not and that the missions (which are meta defining) were significantly different.

Having reviewed and played tournaments in this peiod I wouldn't say their missions were different to any great extreme. They both also had FAQ's that bring them into close enough harmony that there is less daylight between them than No Retreat and either.

Which meant one had 2++ re-rollable save, and invisiblity, and the other did not. That is a pretty large meta difference in what armies did well, Deathstars were much better at NOVA than LVO at that time.

Negative. NOVA had FAQ's covering these at this time and invisible deathstars (at least as most people would imagine a deathstars, like the Space Marine version) were not super dominant. Now invisible Wraithknight still hurt but that was true everywhere.

Further if we are talking about top players and "off meta lists" there have been plenty over the years you are the one that wants to zero in on a specific space of time.

Because Farseer started a conversation about the tail end of 7th, specifically. This is what I meant by barrelling in but without seeming to have read the branch you're joining in on.

I mean what exactly is your criteria for an off meta list. An Eldar/DE list placed second at the wet coast GT in 7th (more Dark Eldar). Harlequins won the March Madness GT in 2016. Khorne Daemonkin list with 6 Soul Grinders was 10th in NOVA in 2016.

Well, actually, Farseer and I we're specifically discussing a Dark Eldar list doing as good as a specific WarConvo list did in a specific time and a specific way in 7th. See barrelling in.

See also below.

I'm not going to pretend that a ton of such lists exist, but if you went through all the 1 loss players at most major events in any year you will find any number of different lists that are not the "current internet wisdom".

And I would say if you pick any year and we compare it to the IHMG at that time, the lists that adhere to it do correspondingly better with few outliers. I like the outliers though. They're what I hunt for specifically.

It is easier to win with the best tools, which is why the best players use them. But if they were forced to use other tools (as long as they have some list building autonomy) I guarantee they would still do well.

To open it back up to a general discussion: define "well".

My definition for well would be winning 75-80% of games, and finishing in the top 25% at an event. As for IHMG I would say that the Internet rarely has the exact top spotted, just a rough idea. The tweaks to the net list by top players are what push the general concept to the top. So flyrants are good is a given, exactly how many, what wargear supporting units etc. i’ve Rarely seen a winning list exactly posted all over the internet prior to an even, other than by a top player running that list at said event.




Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Xenomancers wrote:
What do you mean? Like target priority? Yeah - I think we have covered that. I could teach my Siberian Husky how to prioritize targets in 40k - she still hasn't masterd lay down though - She does in fact understand lascannons are good for killing tanks. She also eats her own poop sometimes.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Elbows wrote:
Somebody doesn't know anything about professional bike racing...lol.

No - I think you missed the underlying point there. Lots of people "at the top" are probably cheating too. They might even feel justified about it because they know lots of people are doing it. People cheat in literally every sport until they get caught. Funny thing is in those sports people actually try to catch cheaters - in 40k the going consensus is..."cheating? Why would anyone do that?"

Positioning, board control, weight of numbers/spamming re-rolls to the point that “bad dice” are a thing like 1/1000 games not 1/5, using rules to their advantages (character targeting nonsense), building to the missions.

I have three anecdotes which sum up my view on the matter:

1. I played Tony Kopach at a Nova in 7th edition. He played Eldar, mix of bikes, warpspiders, and hornets (and won handily). I asked him if he usually played Eldar since he was the first 40K celebrity I had interacted with, and his response was essentially "yeah, I've pretty much always played Eldar, except for in 5th when I played Space Wolves".

2. The following year my team at Nova was questioning an organizer about pairings...basically after round 1 several of our guys won their games 15-14 (or similar) and faced off against guys who went 19-0 and the swiss pairings didn't make sense. He told us that he tries to work the pairings because "I hate to see my GT winners end up in bracket 3 or 4".

3. I knew a mid-level player whose success was primarily due to cooked dice.

I'm not at all saying that GT winnners are cheaters, I've played against some of them and never had a bad experience. I think though that "player skillz are everything!!!!1111" is not exactly a true argument.

 Hollow wrote:
Those who say it is all down to luck are so silly. Look at poker. Why are the same faces around the final tables year after year. Luck? Same with 40k.

A big difference here is that in poker, even if you get dealt the occasional bad hand, everyone plays with the same deck. Moreover, playing poker well is all about knowing how to bluff and read your opponents. 40k doesn't really require you to read your opponent, as a lot of the decision making is pretty much spelled out for you. It's not a particularly good comparison.

 Xenomancers wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
There are no words for the amount of human stupidity in this thread...

...there's laughter though...

I'm not taking offense to that because my argument is grounded in statistical probability - which isn't actually stupid. I lose games all the time because my dice fail me - like roll unbelievably bad. This doesn't happen to these guys? It's pretty obvious they are cheating. I've also been practically tabled without having a go before (you can't win that game ether) these aren't really uncommon things. It's just the nature of probability.

What if your deployment made it too easy for them to point their click at you?

 greyknight12 wrote:
I have three anecdotes which sum up my view on the matter:

1. I played Tony Kopach at a Nova in 7th edition. He played Eldar, mix of bikes, warpspiders, and hornets (and won handily). I asked him if he usually played Eldar since he was the first 40K celebrity I had interacted with, and his response was essentially "yeah, I've pretty much always played Eldar, except for in 5th when I played Space Wolves".

2. The following year my team at Nova was questioning an organizer about pairings...basically after round 1 several of our guys won their games 15-14 (or similar) and faced off against guys who went 19-0 and the swiss pairings didn't make sense. He told us that he tries to work the pairings because "I hate to see my GT winners end up in bracket 3 or 4".

3. I knew a mid-level player whose success was primarily due to cooked dice.

I'm not at all saying that GT winnners are cheaters, I've played against some of them and never had a bad experience. I think though that "player skillz are everything!!!!1111" is not exactly a true argument.

In response to #2 that pairing style was a feature of NOVA (at one point not sure if it still is). Because it was straight win/loss and not a battle point even they didn’t Swiss pair but instead paired the high point winners against the low point winners. The idea was to reward those who won more convincingly and not people trying to submarine their way to the top.

As for working the pairings I have no idea but I do know plenty of events where two top players faced off round 1.

I think though that "player skillz are everything!!!!1111" is not exactly a true argument.

Another part of it is that player skillz are being confused as tactical battlefield skillz. I think player skill does account for a whole lot in 40k. But its not tactical battlefield skillz that I'm referring to.

Its the knowledge and skill at working in discrete mathematics and more specifically how well one is with probability calculations and knowing how to maximize those.

40k tournaments do not really measure a player's tactical battlefield skill as much as it does at how well they can manage probabilities and make sure that their bets are hedged more than their opponent. This is why listbuilding is so huge.

If you wanted to get a measure of how well a player actually plays the game where lists weren't a thing, you'd have to set up a tournament where everyone had the same army, but that will never happen and it would be measuring a completely different set of standards and abilities than 40k tournaments today do.

Good players playing with poor lists could probably make it to the middle of the tournament, beating poor players with poor, average, or good lists, but a poor list by iitself is a major handicap because the probabilities are stacked against that player should they face a good list run by a good player.

I think a large chunk of the conflict is that some people expect tournaments to be a test of skill, but the skill being tested seems to vary with the individual. 40k is not really a game about battlefield tactics and strategies... only very loosely so. It is a game about maximizing probabilities and number crunching.

Breng77 wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
There are no words for the amount of human stupidity in this thread...

...there's laughter though...

I'm not taking offense to that because my argument is grounded in statistical probability - which isn't actually stupid. I lose games all the time because my dice fail me - like roll unbelievably bad. This doesn't happen to these guys? It's pretty obvious they are cheating. I've also been practically tabled without having a go before (you can't win that game ether) these aren't really uncommon things. It's just the nature of probability.

Blaming the dice is a sign of a bad player. Sorry but it is true. It means you put yourself into a position where rolling bad lost you the game. You may not recognize that when it happens but 90% of the time that is the truth. I played a game recently where my opponent rolled hot and I lost, but I lost because I over extended my forces early game in a bad play, and then his dice didn't let me back into the game. Not because I played perfectly and he was just lucky.

Newsflash there is no statistical law that says 1/5 games you will have bad dice. Your math isn't even correct. Statistically over a large sample of games your dice should be statistically average, that could mean they are average all the time.

Not acknowledging the random chance in this game is the sign of a delusional mind. Your argument is dumbfounding to me. Makes me wonder if you actually play this game or just putting up a smoke screen. Dude...you don't put yourself in situations where a dice roll loses you the game - that is what this game is - every step. Fail to get a crucial spell off - you lose. Have a shooting phase where you kill nothing - you lose. Fail all your charges - you lose. END OF DISCUSSION. This is the game we play. Aint no one winning all their games with fair dice. Not 46-2 anyways (supposedly playing at the most competitive events - where the competition is supposed to be the best)


Automatically Appended Next Post:

nareik wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
There are no words for the amount of human stupidity in this thread...

...there's laughter though...

I'm not taking offense to that because my argument is grounded in statistical probability - which isn't actually stupid. I lose games all the time because my dice fail me - like roll unbelievably bad. This doesn't happen to these guys? It's pretty obvious they are cheating. I've also been practically tabled without having a go before (you can't win that game ether) these aren't really uncommon things. It's just the nature of probability.

What if your deployment made it too easy for them to point their click at you?

L2P - solid argument.

 Xenomancers wrote:

Not acknowledging the random chance in this game is the sign of a delusional mind. Your argument is dumbfounding to me. Makes me wonder if you actually play this game or just putting up a smoke screen. Dude...you don't put yourself in situations where a dice roll loses you the game - that is what this game is - every step. Fail to get a crucial spell off - you lose. Have a shooting phase where you kill nothing - you lose. Fail all your charges - you lose. END OF DISCUSSION. This is the game we play. Aint no one winning all their games with fair dice. Not 46-2 anyways (supposedly playing at the most competitive events - where the competition is supposed to be the best)

-Never put yourself in a position to require a single spell to go off to win the game (also stack your +s to cast and re-rolls for that spell).
-Never put yourself in a situation where you fail to do anything meaningful in the shooting phase. Acknowledge the goal for the phase, plan for over kill.
-Never put yourself in a position to fail all your charges. Set charge priority, save re-rolls, find bonuses to the charge roll, etc.

These are basic elements of being good at 40k.

 Farseer_V2 wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:

Not acknowledging the random chance in this game is the sign of a delusional mind. Your argument is dumbfounding to me. Makes me wonder if you actually play this game or just putting up a smoke screen. Dude...you don't put yourself in situations where a dice roll loses you the game - that is what this game is - every step. Fail to get a crucial spell off - you lose. Have a shooting phase where you kill nothing - you lose. Fail all your charges - you lose. END OF DISCUSSION. This is the game we play. Aint no one winning all their games with fair dice. Not 46-2 anyways (supposedly playing at the most competitive events - where the competition is supposed to be the best)

-Never put yourself in a position to require a single spell to go off to win the game (also stack your +s to cast and re-rolls for that spell).
-Never put yourself in a situation where you fail to do anything meaningful in the shooting phase. Acknowledge the goal for the phase, plan for over kill.
-Never put yourself in a position to fail all your charges. Set charge priority, save re-rolls, find bonuses to the charge roll, etc.

These are basic elements of being good at 40k.

Solid strategies - not saying they aren't. They still fail sometimes though - especially if your opponent is using the same strategies. Sometimes you fail 5+ charges with rerolls (ask my greyknights). Also - sometimes your opponent makes all their invo saves. The game is a RNG man - anyone winning 95% of their games is cheating - straight up. There is no doubt in my mind. Because I know for a fact - this game does not have enough depth for the player to make that big of a difference. He might be at an advantage for always having the cheesiest list but at a big event - everyone should be playing these lists. This leaves only 2 options. Phenomenally amazing luck (unprobable) - or cooked dice (very probable). There is also more discrete ways of cheating. Like not removing models when they die - putting extra units on the table - fudging dice rolls - lying about army rules and pretending it was a mistake when they call the judge (your ynnari boy actually got caught doing this). It's a sham bro.

There are a few ways to cheat at dice games. Cooking dice is one but leaves one open to being caught easily as well.

Cooking dice and then miixing them in with normal dice to weigh the overall odds is another common one.

We ran yearly large leagues for many years and three indiviiduals over the course of ten years were caught with loaded dice (knowingly using them) so it would not surprise me at all to know that several tournament guys going to adepticons etc would be tossing cooked dice in the mix to give them an advantage.

An even more nefarious one that you cannot catch are the guys that know how to manipulate normal dice into rolling whatever they want.

At the Baltimore GT back in 2001 there was a fellow who was putting on a dice clinic that friday night (not in game). He would let you pick a number on 2d6 and he'd roll them and it would always come up that value. He also did the same on 1d6. He didid this for a solid half hour with a whole bunch of us crowding around applauding. But it definitely left me wondering how many of my opponents did this in games.

I've known guys that can do this with D8 and D10s as well, and I've suspected a couple blood bowl players of doing this with the D16 for MVP and sponsor rolls since they always get what they want on the dice but if you roll their dice it comes up random.

You can youtube the dice tricks as well. It takes a lot of practice, but I'd bet anything that most of us know someone that can do this, even if they themselves don't realize that the person is able to do it.

 Xenomancers wrote:

Solid strategies - not saying they aren't. They still fail sometimes though - especially if your opponent is using the same strategies. Sometimes you fail 5+ charges with rerolls (ask my greyknights). Also - sometimes your opponent makes all their invo saves. The game is a RNG man - anyone winning 95% of their games is cheating - straight up. There is no doubt in my mind. Because I know for a fact - this game does not have enough depth for the player to make that big of a difference. He might be at an advantage for always having the cheesiest list but at a big event - everyone should be playing these lists. This leaves only 2 options. Phenomenally amazing luck (unprobable) - or cooked dice (very probable). There is also more discrete ways of cheating. Like not removing models when they die - putting extra units on the table - fudging dice rolls - lying about army rules and pretending it was a mistake when they call the judge (your ynnari boy actually got caught doing this). It's a sham bro.

So you stated in another thread you actually like ignoring the missions objectives and just going for a tabling. So please forgive me if I don't take your tactical acumen or power lists very seriously. You simply don't know what you're talking about, you play in a small pool with 'power lists' so you have an incredibly skewed perspective. You've decided that you, Xenomancers, have reached the skill cap of 40k and cannot acknowledge that there are players out there who far outclass you. And in regards to my 'ynnari boy' - I have no clue what you're talking about? Nick Nanivati? Didn't play Ynnari at Adepticon (this year or last). I'd try getting your story straight before you accuse people of cheating. I guess the big thing here it is inconceivable that a player cheated through 46 games at a major tournament without getting caught. You're telling me in the era of Dakka detectives that he was never once caught on stream or by any opponent? The guys who do consistently well understand the tournament they're going to, they understand its missions, terrain, everything and they build lists to excel at that event. And no you don't know anything for a fact about competitive play as you've never actually engaged in it. You've engaged in some farcical production of it and have absorbed some knowledge about it via others but you yourself don't know what its like at the big top.

And yeah its easy to fail 5+ charges with an army when you need to make 5+ 8" charges, its easy for your opponent to make all their invulnerable saves when you only make them take 6. What you are missing (and these other guys aren't) is that isn't what a good player does.

Me and my friends just table each other in 3-4 turns - playing the actual game which doesn't end with a 2 1/2 hour time line. If at the end of turn 3 my opponent has 2 models left and the game is clearly over we just shake hands and call it a table - because that game is over turn 4. At a tournament at the end of turn 3 you can lose with 1800 points vs 30 points because you are out of time to have a turn 4 but have a worse objective score. Basically - Tournaments suck. Lets not confuse my play-style with the discussion here - it's completely unrelated and is an argument based in fallacy.

The topic has to do with army power and skill. My personal opinion is skill doesn't go much past list design and higher tier armies absolutely dominate the lower tier ones regardless of who plays them.

The Ynnari guy that won LVO - I watched his game live vs aliotic. He clearly tried to cheat his opponent with a redeploy stratagem being played out of turn. He got called on it - and in the process 30 minutes of the game was wasted waiting for a judgement. He then proceeded to destroy almost the entire enemy force with a single unit of shining spears.

This particular case is really interesting though because it reinforces all my points. In his redeploy attempt - he ether did it deliberately (affirming he is a cheater) or (did it unknowingly) proving he isn't very skilled. Then in the case with his spears destroying or tying up about half of his opponents army - even after going second - he was already set up for a turn 2 table. The best list won - it was ultimately inevitable (I knew it ahead of time when I saw both the lists). The Aliotoc army was hard countered by the ynnari one - even after going second he had no problem destroying all his flyers (with weapons that ignore -2 to hit) and his reapers were no match for spears. There was no tactic aliotic could have played that would have won him the game. He's paying for abilities his opponents army completely ignores and didn't have any answer for shining spears (then again NO ARMY has an answer for those - except maybe 7 flyrants)

You got to be pretty skilled to roll dice. For example, rabbits are not very good at rolling dice. Especially multiple at a time. Especially multiple rabbits.

 Xenomancers wrote:

Breng77 wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
There are no words for the amount of human stupidity in this thread...

...there's laughter though...

I'm not taking offense to that because my argument is grounded in statistical probability - which isn't actually stupid. I lose games all the time because my dice fail me - like roll unbelievably bad. This doesn't happen to these guys? It's pretty obvious they are cheating. I've also been practically tabled without having a go before (you can't win that game ether) these aren't really uncommon things. It's just the nature of probability.

Blaming the dice is a sign of a bad player. Sorry but it is true. It means you put yourself into a position where rolling bad lost you the game. You may not recognize that when it happens but 90% of the time that is the truth. I played a game recently where my opponent rolled hot and I lost, but I lost because I over extended my forces early game in a bad play, and then his dice didn't let me back into the game. Not because I played perfectly and he was just lucky.

Newsflash there is no statistical law that says 1/5 games you will have bad dice. Your math isn't even correct. Statistically over a large sample of games your dice should be statistically average, that could mean they are average all the time.

Not acknowledging the random chance in this game is the sign of a delusional mind. Your argument is dumbfounding to me. Makes me wonder if you actually play this game or just putting up a smoke screen. Dude...you don't put yourself in situations where a dice roll loses you the game - that is what this game is - every step. Fail to get a crucial spell off - you lose. Have a shooting phase where you kill nothing - you lose. Fail all your charges - you lose. END OF DISCUSSION. This is the game we play. Aint no one winning all their games with fair dice. Not 46-2 anyways (supposedly playing at the most competitive events - where the competition is supposed to be the best)

I acknowlege random, but there is no law that says random means you lose x % of the time, especially when you mitigate for it. And no fail to get crucial spell off does not equal lose for good players because they aren't relying on 1 thing to win them the game. Sorry that is not what the game is at all. Don't set yourself up to kill nothing in the shooting phase that is either a symptom of a bad army, or bad planning, not bad dice. If you have re-rolls on everything, or 200+ shots, you don't straight fail to do anything. You can have sub par turns, but when the game is about scoring points, and not tabling (news flash when terrain is good the game isn't just about tabling). I think if you looked deeper at the games you lose you wouldn't be straight blaming dice, but instead looking at "wow I exposed myself to a ton of return fire, thinking I would roll average didn't plan to overkill stuff and left myself open to getting stomped." I mean look at top armies and tell me how much "bad luck" would be involved in them having terrible turns. I think you would be surprised when you really look at the math how rare it is that they have truly useless turns.

As for your assertion that higher tier armies dominate lower tier ones regarless of player that is provably false if you look at results over the past 4 editions. Plenty of poor players brought strong armies on paper and got stomped, the same is true in 8th. I think you just want to believe that because it doesn't force you to admit there are players who are better than you, instead they are either lucky, or cheating, or playing power factions with power lists, and you aren't. But if you did you could go win adepticon. Sorry that simply isn't the case. I'm not a great player I could go pick up a 7 tyrant list, and I would dominate against my local meta which isn't very strong, but at a large tournament I would probably go something like 4-2 because I would make mistakes and lose to top players. Back in 6th when I was at my competitive top, 4-2 was about my cap at GTs even when I brought top lists (Flamer/screamer spam Daemons in early 6th, FMC spam daemons, Screamer Star) I would do pretty well until I faced top level players, who also had strong lists and I would get out played, I didn't lose because my dice went bad, I lost because they understood positioning better than me, practiced way more etc.


As for your play style being irrelevant, it isn't if that is how you understand the game to be played because that is how you and your buddies play, then it is absolutely relevant to your view that luck will cost you the game 1 out of 5 games, and if it doesn't you are either supernaturally lucky or you are cheating.

I've said before luck matters in tournaments because matchups matter, for instance Sean Nayden went 3-1 on day 1 of adepticon because he faced Matt Root the eventual winner round 2, and had a close loss (not by score, but by account of the game by Root), that is bad luck that he faced another top player early in the event, who had a list that was a difficult match-up. The same would have been true if Nick faced him earlier than the final game. As for your LVO game review, that is only true if the Spear Player plays everything well, if he positions wrong things can go differently, he needs to know exactly where to place them, how to manipulate the charge move and pile in moves etc.

Gotta say I disagree with Xenomancer's enthusiasm.

Sure, it's a dice based game, but the player is making the decisions which determine how many dice are rolled, and against what. I'd argue though with a game like Warhammer 40K, it's probably 60-70% list and 30-40% skill. If we take it to a more absurd level, imagine a player whose read the rulebook, comprehends the rules of the game and is playing his first game against someone who's played 40K for 10 years, and the current edition for 8-9 months. The outcome is extremely likely to be in the veteran player's favour if he's a good player. The experience and general "skill" level will be his advantage.

He could be let down by abysmal dice rolling, sure, but the decisions of how and where to employ those dice (for lack of a better term) still matter. A new player, unguided might end up shooting Krak missiles at a group of gretchin, etc. It's a somewhat absurd example, but skill does matter.

On the flip side, if both players are equally good at list making, and equally strong at playing the game, then the dice results will have a larger impact on the game result.

 Elbows wrote:
Gotta say I disagree with Xenomancer's enthusiasm.

Sure, it's a dice based game, but the player is making the decisions which determine how many dice are rolled, and against what. I'd argue though with a game like Warhammer 40K, it's probably 60-70% list and 30-40% skill. If we take it to a more absurd level, imagine a player whose read the rulebook, comprehends the rules of the game and is playing his first game against someone who's played 40K for 10 years, and the current edition for 8-9 months. The outcome is extremely likely to be in the veteran player's favour if he's a good player. The experience and general "skill" level will be his advantage.

He could be let down by abysmal dice rolling, sure, but the decisions of how and where to employ those dice (for lack of a better term) still matter. A new player, unguided might end up shooting Krak missiles at a group of gretchin, etc. It's a somewhat absurd example, but skill does matter.

On the flip side, if both players are equally good at list making, and equally strong at playing the game, then the dice results will have a larger impact on the game result.

Bingo. Target priority, mobilization, knowing when to attack and when to pull back, theres still a lot that goes into it. Yes, tourney armies are based on "Buckets o' dice" to win (see: Mark of Slanesh Cultists), and dice can swing a game. But good list building, and proper play should mitigate dice rolls so its not swinging the game dramatically one way or another.

 Elbows wrote:
Gotta say I disagree with Xenomancer's enthusiasm.

Sure, it's a dice based game, but the player is making the decisions which determine how many dice are rolled, and against what. I'd argue though with a game like Warhammer 40K, it's probably 60-70% list and 30-40% skill. If we take it to a more absurd level, imagine a player whose read the rulebook, comprehends the rules of the game and is playing his first game against someone who's played 40K for 10 years, and the current edition for 8-9 months. The outcome is extremely likely to be in the veteran player's favour if he's a good player. The experience and general "skill" level will be his advantage.

He could be let down by abysmal dice rolling, sure, but the decisions of how and where to employ those dice (for lack of a better term) still matter. A new player, unguided might end up shooting Krak missiles at a group of gretchin, etc. It's a somewhat absurd example, but skill does matter.

On the flip side, if both players are equally good at list making, and equally strong at playing the game, then the dice results will have a larger impact on the game result.

While true having equally good lists and equally strong players is very hard. It also assumes neither player makes a mistake in game, misreads a situation etc. I would argue that when lists are close the game comes down a bit to dice, and a lot to whomever makes the biggest mistake/whose opponent catches that mistake. Occasionally that mistake is a failed dice roll, but more often it is a target priority error, or an error of positioning.

DontEatRawHagis wrote:
I was listening to a few podcasts going over the top lists and heard the same names being repeated from previous episodes. Not just the armies, but also the players. Now I understand that these people have chosen these armies because they believe they are likely to win with them. But what if these tournament players had to play different, lower tier armies? How would the top tournaments look?
Would we see Ynari, Chaos Soup, Imperial Soup, and Tyranid Flyrant spam replaced with other broken builds for other armies? Would having so many high level players playing lower tier armies still make it as high in the brackets?

I hate to say this kind of thinking is "interesting" but a fallacy: People who play competitively tend to not choose a "handicap" unless the rules require something like that.
Part of the interesting mental exercise is to play to win.
It does not mean being a competitive overbearing jerk: you just pick what gives advantage where possible.
Part of that is decreasing variation in a "chance" mechanics game: get re-rolls where possible, 2+ on a D6 is ideal, army list focus is important since that has no randomization... etc.

I am sure those same people if forced could "make a silk purse out of a sow's ear": they would do far better than most people who would field these less than optimal lists.
I highly doubt the army list defines the skill of the player, they have given strong thought on methods that work and gear their armies to leverage their preferred strategies and tactics.

The problem is that with the meta of 40k and the huge reliance on variation, it will allow a relative newbie to defeat an experienced player which would be unheard of in something like chess.
I would figure that a "reasonable" player with a more optimal list could beat the "better" player handicapped with a lower tier list.
Not saying that the better player could not squeeze every last advantage they could out of those lists.

I have seen "masters" in a game set extra rules for themselves (handicap) when playing against less experienced players to improve their game and have mercy on the other player.
It is is a whole different matter for that to happen in a competitive setting: it just is not done.

Give a man two vanguard detachments of nine crisis suits armed with two missile pods and a multi tracker each and darkstrider and a commander with only the Ongar gauntlet as hq (about 2000 points) and if he wins against a good list...

Edited by RiTides

They'd lose horribly because tournaments are the least competitive games. They're generally a matter of rock paper scissor of cheesy netlist. For the most part tourney level play might as well just compare lists based on matchup and declare a winner without even rolling dice.

Danny slag wrote:
They'd lose horribly because tournaments are the least competitive games. They're generally a matter of rock paper scissor of cheesy netlist. For the most part tourney level play might as well just compare lists based on matchup and declare a winner without even rolling dice.

Is there more skill when using less powerful armies?

 Scott-S6 wrote:

Danny slag wrote:
They'd lose horribly because tournaments are the least competitive games. They're generally a matter of rock paper scissor of cheesy netlist. For the most part tourney level play might as well just compare lists based on matchup and declare a winner without even rolling dice.

Is there more skill when using less powerful armies?

I know his comment was written in a more derisive context, but he does have a point. The best way to win is to avoid competitive matchups when you can. If you can beat your opponent in the army selection or listbuilding phase, then you've already eliminated the hardest part of any competitive environment, the opposing player.

Now, when it comes to comparing degrees of skill and the use of weaker armies, that's a bit of a tough nut to crack. Large disparities in skill levels can allow a player to beat a stronger army, but 40k's skill ceiling is pretty low and the power gaps in many factions can get quite big, which can make all of this pretty hard to measure, especially as you reach more competent levels of play where the gaps get smaller and smaller. The biggest problem here as far as measurements of skill goes is that better armies often come loaded with a wider array of tools to work with. Armies with more options have more tools to play with and show off with, allowing the player to set up and work through a wider breadth of situations. On the other hand, a lot of weaker factions end up being one trick ponies. With few viable tools, their playbook ends up being very small, leading to and extremely low skill ceiling where few concepts are able to be explored.

It makes little sense to take-up a relatively "weaker" list to play.
Part of getting good is practice with your chosen list.
Why spend any time on a list you would not typically use even if it would be a "challenge"?

I would be interested why the OP would care if the higher tier players would play weaker armies, might as well propose a points reduction like the handicap calculation used in golf.

 Talizvar wrote:
It makes little sense to take-up a relatively "weaker" list to play.
Part of getting good is practice with your chosen list.
Why spend any time on a list you would not typically use even if it would be a "challenge"?

I would be interested why the OP would care if the higher tier players would play weaker armies, might as well propose a points reduction like the handicap calculation used in golf.

The OP is asking how much of "top tier" 40K comes down to list building, and how much of a factor the celebrity players' supposed skill during game plays into their success.

 greyknight12 wrote:

 Talizvar wrote:
It makes little sense to take-up a relatively "weaker" list to play.
Part of getting good is practice with your chosen list.
Why spend any time on a list you would not typically use even if it would be a "challenge"?

I would be interested why the OP would care if the higher tier players would play weaker armies, might as well propose a points reduction like the handicap calculation used in golf.

The OP is asking how much of "top tier" 40K comes down to list building, and how much of a factor the celebrity players' supposed skill during game plays into their success.

And let's face it, straight 40k gets boring after a while. Challenging yourself is worth it, I suspect all tournament players do so.

It does take a lot of practice to get good with a single army, but I don't think that means every other army is a blank. You are overcoming other factions by practicing, I can't imagine a top tournament player would not notice whatever strategies are being thrown against them.

I've played games where my opponent and I swapped armies. It's like playing a rough sketch of yourself, you feel a little surprised when you see what other people pick up on. While I'm certainly never going to be a good Eldar / Tyrannid / Tau player, I've faced them enough to know what to do with the units.

I suspect a top tournament player would be a little more sensitive than I am and be able to swing a better result. That's not going to translate into tournament wins with a weak Codex, but it would give them a chance to show off their competitive edge.