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Augustus wrote:Darth, what place were you in at the Hard Boy?

EDIT: and what was your record?

I finished 5th this year and went 2-0-1 at the finals. My tie against you in the opening round sent us both to the middle of the pack. You finished 10th right?

Ahh, I figured you were the paper storm shield guy! I'm a little surprised to see you in a post talking this army up, so I had to jump in.

...if you think my list is bunk that is fine by me. I would actually prefer that people pay it no mind and think it's something they could role right over. If that's your opinion I'm ok with that.

I am glad I get to burst this bubble. I took a Mechdar list (similar to the one that got second) and I rolled over this list.

I'm surprised you're list got that far. I agree with Timmah, that list isn't very focused. It's also just another directionless vanilla marine list.

Lets be honest, I had more KP than you did in round one and without the Hardboy "day of" KP changes (2 for HS, E, and FA and 3 for HQs), you would have gone to the bottom of the pack, not the middle. Why? Because that unfocused list didn't out shoot or outfight Eldar with a massive KP handicap. By the core rules, you lost game one too, not tied, and with fewer KP in the list even by hardboy rules.

This is a judgement on the list, not the player here.

Augustus wrote:Ahh, I figured you were the paper storm shield guy! I'm a little surprised to see you in a post talking this army up, so I had to jump in.

...if you think my list is bunk that is fine by me. I would actually prefer that people pay it no mind and think it's something they could role right over. If that's your opinion I'm ok with that.

I am glad I get to burst this bubble. I took a Mechdar list (similar to the one that got second) and I rolled over this list.

I'm surprised you're list got that far. I agree with Timmah, that list isn't very focused. It's also just another directionless vanilla marine list.

Lets be honest, I had more KP than you did in round one and without the Hardboy "day of" KP changes (2 for HS, E, and FA and 3 for HQs), you would have gone to the bottom of the pack, not the middle. Why? Because that unfocused list didn't out shoot or outfight Eldar with a massive KP handicap. By the core rules, you lost game one too, not tied, and with fewer KP in the list even by hardboy rules.

This is a judgement on the list, not the player here.

Its also coming off as quite bitter.

Hey! I'm the only one allowed to be bitter in this thread!

Dammit did we just start over again??

OK, how about a redirect?

...DE not scaling well at 2500 points I run 1 less vehicle at 1850. I really wish we had some good fast attack options. But then again, its why I love running Dark Eldar, they are a real challange to run and you have to do alot of things right to win at a competitive level.

I was surprised to even see DE at the finals. I was certain they would be relegated to Necron like status along with Tyranids, and possibly Tau as well.

How anyone made it to the finals with armies with such obvious issues in their outdated codex amazes me.

I do have some signifcant respect for the darklance, and for DE assault ranges, but they are so morale vulnerable, and squishy, and honestly in trouble in strait up fights...

Were you the only DE player in Chicago?

Augustus, I already made fun of Darth's list. :p

We moved onto discussing Gardeth's list (the DE one)


Btw, DE are actually a very strong army in the hands of the right person. But they do scale horribly up to 2500.
I really am not that surprised to see one that high.

Think so?

I don't think DE are strong at all.

I actually think they are pretty similar to Mech Eldar. Essentially what you trade is the transports ability for the infantry close combat power, and it just plays out pretty poorly.

Here's why DE are not strong:

(1) No morale solution
(2) No tanks
(3) Paper thin infantry
(4) Paper thin vehicles

I also think their presence and performance at the finals is in line with this view.

EDIT:

(5) To many obvious stinkers in the codex

Augustus wrote: I took a Mechdar list (similar to the one that got second) and I rolled over this list.

I'm surprised you're list got that far.

The rolling you speak of was 11 battle points for me and only 10 battle points for you. If you think 'technically' losing to me by 1pt a rolling for you, then you rolled me.

If you read this thread I never wanted to get into it about my army. I stayed quiet for quite a long time. I told everyone if they don't like my list then pay it no mind. I hope you do wonder how it works and you shouldn't give it a second thought. In our game I managed to put 4 penetrating hits on the Seer Council Wave Serpent which resulted in 4 rolls of 1. The serpent got into my lines, what could I do. It's a dice game. In my 3rd game against Gardeth all those penetrating hits turned into 5's and 6's. By game 3 my rolls had turned, that's the nature of the beast.

...

DarthDiggler wrote:

BeefyG wrote:
I too would like to follow up a great question that hasn't been answered about the TFC in dawn of war missions. How does the army play out in dawn of war missions generally? Is this one of those times that the few key dice rolls really affect the armies performance?

I had sent the answer to the poster in a PM. This is Gardeths post and we've seemed to have taken it over for something else. I hope he doesn't mind, but that was why I sent it privately.

So I'm thread jacking to talk up my own list huh? Did you miss this? Did you miss the 16 posts about my army before I said anything and there were 40+ posts from other people about my list before I even got a chance to say the words I typed above. Once again I hope you feel the list is bunk. I hope, I wish, I plead on my knees please think this list is weak and I only lucked out to get as far as I did. In fact I agree with you Augustus. It's no good and I just had some strings of hit dice rolling over a few months. I don't really care what people think about it. I did find your rantings about having to have painted models in the Ard Boyz amusing though. You didn't start that in our game until after it appeared you weren't going to walk all over me.

Augustus wrote:Think so?

I don't think DE are strong at all.

I actually think they are pretty similar to Mech Eldar. Essentially what you trade is the transports ability for the infantry close combat power, and it just plays out pretty poorly.

Here's why DE are not strong:

(1) No morale solution
(2) No tanks
(3) Paper thin infantry
(4) Paper thin vehicles

I also think their presence and performance at the finals is in line with this view.

EDIT:

(5) To many obvious stinkers in the codex

Tell that to the DE guy who almost won ard boyz last year or to Stelek. Its a mechdar army that sacrifices survivability for killing power.

Augustus wrote:
Here's why DE are not strong:

(1) No morale solution
(2) No tanks
(3) Paper thin infantry
(4) Paper thin vehicles
...
(5) To many obvious stinkers in the codex

I disagree. While these are valid points, many armies have these problems, but they have ways around them.

Dark Eldar Raider squads stay in their raiders until they jump out, and most of the time this gives them the ability to jump on week enemies where they are likely to win combat and run them down. Its a decent answer to the leadership question (however it does still cause problems, like that critical rundown in the battle report itself )

Points 2,3, and 4 are related, and the solution for DE is to field LOTS of paper thin vehicles, and each vehicle comes with a lance weapon, and each squad inside carries a lance weapon (which they can shoot out). As one of my friends told me once "They are Glass Sledgehammers, if you can get them to live long enough they will massacre their enemy....but they break easy" But most armies have a huge problem trying to gun down that many raiders....not all though. (lots of hydras and (as was exemplified) lots of lascannons or a trio of Rifleman dreads could probably knock down a Dark Eldar list pretty well)

.....and which obvious stinkers do you mean?

I mean:

Skyboard Riders (?)
Warp Beasts and Handlers
Talos
Shadow Skin guys
Grotesques
Scourges


Automatically Appended Next Post:

thehod wrote:Its a mechdar army that sacrifices survivability for killing power.

Indeed, and that's a bad call when you need your troop choices to stay alive. I still think DE are in the bottom.

Also a raider is nigh un hideable in TLOS land (especially at the Hardboy where terrain was light) and it leads to od discussions of what fins are hulls...

thehod wrote:

Tell that to the DE guy who almost won ard boyz last year or to Stelek. Its a mechdar army that sacrifices survivability for killing power.

agreed...

but it is more about the player.

frgsinwntr wrote:

but it is more about the player.

It is always about the player. I cant agree with you more.

Sorry for the high-jacking, on to Gardeth's list. I like this list quite a bit.
Lots of redundancy, but for "paper" units that is important, as some of them will die. not much you can do about it, they are a dying race because they haven't figured out how to make good armor.

Ok so Gardeth has tons of lances, and extreme maneuverability, wyches are excellent combat troops, and that's part of the plan, gotta throw someone in there.

My only problem with the list is a lack of Drug dispensers, at least on the Dracon, the bonuses you can get are worth the risk, and sometimes you need it to get there. if you need 3 drugs to win that turn you just have to hope, but getting to choose the drug every turn is totally worth it weight in gold IMO.

My experience is fairly limited with dark eldar, so beyond that I can't really say much. Your list has all the elements of a tournament quality list, nothing majorly lacking, frankly it's pretty much the one list style that works with DE, which is the primary problem with the army, people just know how to beat it nowadays. it's been the same army for 15 years...people know what to expect.

Sick 'im, Bri! lol

Riz wrote:
My only problem with the list is a lack of Drug dispensers, at least on the Dracon, the bonuses you can get are worth the risk, and sometimes you need it to get there. if you need 3 drugs to win that turn you just have to hope, but getting to choose the drug every turn is totally worth it weight in gold IMO.

Ug i honestly hate taking drug dispensers on any model without 3 wounds. Mainly because after you take 1 wound you can really only take a single drug going forward, and 25 points is alot to pay for 1 drug option a round.

#1. Augustus, you have made your thoughts known about Dark Eldar for a while. Do we need to set up another grudge match with Xtapl?

#2. Yes, most of the units in the Dark Eldar Codex are crap. That is why no one uses them and only uses the good stuff.

#3. The army that won in my regional’s (Phoenix) were Dark Eldar as well. There were other DE armies that qualified, but you are just seeing the people that made it to Chicago. I think that if you break down the entrants by the army, I think that you will find that the DE did the best on a percentage basis.

#4. I like Darth’s army because he uses my play style which is a shooting army that can counter almost any army. To put it into boxing terms, it is a counter-puncher. It does not go out there and dominate one phase of the game, but it is able to counter the top builds. When I played similar armies against Mechdar in the ‘Ard Boys finals it’s just a matter of luck of whether or not you can get the rolls to knock down wave serpents (I always roll bad against tanks…it is my curse).

but it's 2 drugs until you roll doubles, and that is worth it all the time. I'm not saying throw it on Succy's, but I like it on the Dracon...but you have a lot more experience with the army

I'm pretty sure the main issue with your list is that you were 500 points above where the army shines, and you ran out of raiders :-/.

I'm on the fence on web-way portals, I feel like you always want to have everything going asap, and you're fast enough to not need the portals, but many good players disagree with me and say that 1-2 portals is essential to the army.

To add fuel to the fire, DE came in 3rd in Florida's Semi-finals.

Riz wrote:but it's 2 drugs until you roll doubles, and that is worth it all the time. I'm not saying throw it on Succy's, but I like it on the Dracon...but you have a lot more experience with the army

I'm pretty sure the main issue with your list is that you were 500 points above where the army shines, and you ran out of raiders :-/.

I'm on the fence on web-way portals, I feel like you always want to have everything going asap, and you're fast enough to not need the portals, but many good players disagree with me and say that 1-2 portals is essential to the army.

Honestly, the more I think about it, the more I am inclined to try giving the dracite a drug dispenser, just need to be more conservative then I am with my archon.

As far as Webway Portals go, they are dead and gone. I used them with great success in 4th ed. The only time they really work anymore is if your opponent doesn't know what they are/do. Its just to hard to hid the portal carriers and not to mention the fact that you could potentially have 1 less round to get things done after the portal goes down.

Blackmoor wrote:#1. Augustus, you have made your thoughts known about Dark Eldar for a while. Do we need to set up another grudge match with Xtapl?

So I can win again?

Blackmoor wrote:#2. Yes, most of the units in the Dark Eldar Codex are crap. That is why no one uses them and only uses the good stuff.

Of course, it needs a redux, lets hope. Obviously no one rushed to defend those units.

Blackmoor wrote:#3. The army that won in my regional’s (Phoenix) were Dark Eldar as well. There were other DE armies that qualified, but you are just seeing the people that made it to Chicago. I think that if you break down the entrants by the army, I think that you will find that the DE did the best on a percentage basis.

Really? How many people were at your regional? That seems pretty impressive, but then, DE didn't do so well at finals did they?

Blackmoor wrote:#4. I like Darth’s army because he uses my play style which is a shooting army that can counter almost any army. To put it into boxing terms, it is a counter-puncher. It does not go out there and dominate one phase of the game, but it is able to counter the top builds. When I played similar armies against Mechdar in the ‘Ard Boys finals it’s just a matter of luck of whether or not you can get the rolls to knock down wave serpents (I always roll bad against tanks…it is my curse).

Augustus wrote:Well Opinions vary. OK, IMO its a collection of misc. Marine stuff with no theme or plan. Essentially the idea behind that army is:

"Take lots of marine stuff because it is all good."

Well that's very useful, but I think everyone already knows that, as half the armies in the game are marines. Oh and the other idea:

"I don't care if people think this army isn't good because they'll never see it coming and don't understand the super secret reason it is actually good"

Doesn't really make any sense.

I'm not trying to be adversarial here. But I'd like to point out to you how you are being perceived by others...

A guy with a marine list that you don't particularly think is good, played you in a tournament and you tied. that took you out of contention for winning the tournament. You were angry and frustrated. When you got home you made it your mission to tell this person that his list wasn't good in a public forum. It was important to you that he knew how little you thought of his list.

Ok, well for a list that "wasn't any good" it sure halted your tournament progress. It wasn't like the space marine armies that danced around in your head, therefore you didn't know how to beat it, then guess what... you didn't beat it.

You had a severe case of trophy fever, and that is unfortunate. Well, I hope it clears up soon.

As to Darth's comment about his list. It makes perfect sense to me. Not many people play a list like that. This works out to his advantage. Because when he faces players who expect to be playing marines "the way they should be played", he has an advantage over them. They don't know what his list is about to do, and are taken out of their comfort zone. Like you. He doesn't want anyone to think its good, because he doesn't want it to become an internet sensation and have it copied and learned. Then he'll lose that advantage. the advantage that helped him get a tie against you, and a win against gardeth.

Shep, if ard boyz was really competitive and all the best players were there, shouldn't they know how to handle a non typical list?

I mean, we are supposedly talking about the best of the best. They should have beat crappy/unfocused/non "best of" lists like this all the time especially at the first round of ard boyz.

I still don't believe Darth's list is that good. However, since he never really claimed it to be amazing, i have shut up about it. However it speaks about the players there when a list can actually take them out of their comfort zone and force them into making play mistakes.

Shep wrote:I'm not trying to be adversarial here.

Really because you're doing a great job of it.

Shep wrote:But I'd like to point out to you how you are being perceived by others...

Well I'm glad you speak for everyone now Shep.

Shep wrote:A guy with a marine list that you don't particularly think is good, played you in a tournament...

and got online to defend his list when someone else said it lacked direction. I agreed, from 1st hand experience, in a list discussion, and you tried to shoot it all down as sour grapesing. ?

Shep wrote:You had a severe case of trophy fever, and that is unfortunate. Well, I hope it clears up soon.

Personal attacks are against forum rules Shep. I don't have trophy fever, I can't, because darth didn't win one either. I think its fair to say a directionless list didn't do well because I was there and I played it. Were you there?

Shep wrote:As to Darth's comment about his list. It makes perfect sense to me. Not many people play a list like that.

Really? So in my 3 games at the Hardboy, from first hand, personal experience, you know how many army lists I faced had:

A Null Zone librarian with a Stromshield?
An assault Terminator squad with Thunder Hammers?
A Landraider?
At least one unit of attack bikes?
2 10 man Tac squads
A predator
2 Dreadnoughts

All 3 Shep.

It's not a unique list, it's a collection of good marine units with no over arching theme or plan, it's really close to the horde of Vanilla Marine lists out there and it lacks direction just like previous posters said and I agreed with, after having played it at a KP disadvantage round one Hard Boy finals.

EDIT for formats

DarthDiggler wrote: ...I did find your rantings about having to have painted models in the Ard Boyz amusing though.

Hijack! Not much of a tournament player here but I do enjoy a good internet argument so I've been following along. Your minis don't need to be painted to enter 'Ard Boyz? I'm a hobby snob myself but I'm not judging anyone poorly. I'm just surprised that's all.

...or did I misunderstand?

@Shep: I don't think it was due to any suprise factor at what I faced that had me lose against darth's list, more that I just didn't have what it took to get the job done given the scenario while he was setup up to pick me apart like so much spikey armor 10 cotton candy.

@Augustus: I think your view on Dark Eldar is abit harsh. While I do lament the crappitude of over half our units :.( , what we do have works well in the right hands. In the finals I got a full point massacre in my first round and was on my way to at least a solid win when my dice ground to a halt and refused to roll above a 2 for anything but morale checks...It happens. And that unfortunately lead me into the waiting jaws of a list+scenario that was at best an upcliff battle...

Of course if I had beaten my 2nd round opponent and had to fight that damn IG list not sure how I would have done, but against orks or vulcan marines, that would have been great..provided I had ok dice, which I probably wouldn't. (I think my dice hate chicago....)

Timmah wrote:Shep, if ard boyz was really competitive and all the best players were there, shouldn't they know how to handle a non typical list?

I mean, we are supposedly talking about the best of the best. They should have beat crappy/unfocused/non "best of" lists like this all the time especially at the first round of ard boyz.

I still don't believe Darth's list is that good. However, since he never really claimed it to be amazing, i have shut up about it. However it speaks about the players there when a list can actually take them out of their comfort zone and force them into making play mistakes.

Yeah, that discussion is really robust. I'm on YTTH too, and I can totally see points on both sides. On the one hand, there is the "scoreboard" crowd. The guys saying that the best 40k player always wins the tournament by merit of him being the one who competed, and the one who was victorious. They back up their argument with data. Its a powerful position to argue from. You have a built in argument killer with "ok then, take your list to the toruney and do better then." I don't think that is an argument winner, I say its an argument killer, because it really suffocates the discourse.

On the other side of the argument, you have people arguing for more focused list design. they usually present lists that focus on a particular power unit, maxing it out, and then taking units that serve to support the main power unit. Making it as easy as possible for that unit to do its job. I can easily see the draw and the logic to this side of the argument. I do a lot of list designing on a day to day basis, and my lists tend to be much more theoretically inspired than inspired by in game events. However, players who consistently win tournaments, for some reason, aren't wired like you and I. They don't build lists based around concept. I think the guys who win tournaments do so primarily because they are constantly traveling to tournaments and get in more competitive games with a much broader meta-game, then the theorists. They tend to build lists based off of enemy units rather than units in their own codex. I have watched a lot of grizzled tourney vets do this. And it is at times confusing. Blackmoor is a good example of this. To him, a unit isn't defined by the statline of its raw output, but rather by what popular units it counters well.

These types of players win often, and they often use units or combinations of units that are unfocused. The real question is... Could these players win 'more' with a list constructed by a theorist and not a tourney vet? Honestly, I don't know. Naturally, i tend to think that my lists are more powerful than others, because I'd clearly rework them if I found an idea i wanted to incorporate that I hadn't thought of. And my lists tend toward focus, synergy, mission, and concept. So I believe that good tourney players can make better lists than they use currently, and win more games as a result. Unfortunately, my position here can not be verified, and is a pretty hopeless argument. The best we can hope for would be for the list theorists to get their act together enough to travel to these tournaments and participate. The more they (we) participate, the mosre torunament experience we receive, then either our lists prove themselves superior, or we change our lists away from focus and one-dimensionality, either out of boredom or some other natural force played on us by attending countless tournaments.

I win lots of tourney games with my lists, but I am relatively new to the tourney scene. The games i don't win are against the guys you see at every tournament. Experience and treachery trump list design every time it seems.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

gardeth wrote:@Shep: I don't think it was due to any suprise factor at what I faced that had me lose against darth's list, more that I just didn't have what it took to get the job done given the scenario while he was setup up to pick me apart like so much spikey armor 10 cotton candy.

By including your name in that earlier post, I implied that your lack of experience with the list was what lost you the game. That wasn't my intention.

Which mission it is, who's going first, and terrain density can have a major impact on dark eldar. Your list made a whole lot of sense to me, you had the tools to win that particular game, but the problem with some of those dark eldar tools is that sometimes someone comes into your garage and breaks all of your tools before you get to use them

I have been running some serious paper tigers recently with IG. And we are talking about armor 12 paper, haha. So I more than sympathize with the matchup/go-first needs of your list. Well done making it to the finals, thanks for the tourney report and here's to hoping you face off against a max range 24" land raider vulkan army next time you pull space marines.