Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Aldarionn wrote:

augustus5 wrote:
What is with correlating non-painted armies to cheating? I know people who don't paint get on in this forum with great regularity (no pun intended), but I'm sure that there are just as many people with cheating tendencies who paint as those who do not.

In my experience there are far more people that don't paint than people that do paint, and even if there is no bigger percentage of people who cheat in either group, there are vastly more people who do not paint, and thus there are more cheaters in that group. That said, I've played against people with fully painted armies that had questionable practices when it comes to unit differentiation (An infantry Imperial Guard player that differentiated his units by a tiny spot of color on poorly painted models. From across the table they all looked the same and he bunched them together, then took extra time repeatedly asking which unit you were shooting at. That game didn't finish a 4th turn) but all in all I have had far fewer problems against people that paint their armies. I paint when I can, and I have a very busy schedule, so most of my models are painted with the odd unpainted unit or tank when I have to field high points. Perhaps if I finished painting I could reasonably attend tournaments where people all know the rules and don't cheat. Alas, because I don't have as much time as I would like, I usually have to settle for tournaments that don't score painting if I ever want to win anything.

next to nothing of my army was painted for ard boyz, but I made a point of painting stripes of unique colors on all the bases to designate squads. You played a douche...nothing more. Don't lump everyone together in the unpainted army category as a cheater. While you are are right that the number of cheaters in a larger group with the same % make up would be higher you can't just throw that around...generalizing like that doesn't get most people very far.

Here's my results:

Horrible.

I played a Razorspam Blood Angels list - Dante with 5x Sang Guard (2 infernus, powerfist, chapter banner) with a Sanguinary Priest, 5x razrs (Las/Plas) with 5x 5 man Assault Marines (powerfist, infernus) and a Sanguinary Priest, Vindicator, Stormraven filled with 1 Librarian with Termie armor and Stormshield and 5x Assault Marines with Thunder Hammers and Storm Shields.

I played at Showcase Comics in SE Pennsylvania and man is that a beautiful store. Really nice upgrade from their old place. Also, I wanted to note that all the people I played were very cool (didnt come against any jerk cheaters or anything). That was my biggest worry coming into the semis, that I would go up against hardcore, win at all costs jerks. But no the people were really nice.

1st game was against a Deathwing Terminator Army, I think it was like 40-50 Thunderhammer/Stormshield termies swarming accross the table. Not much I could do against 3+ invuls, even with Lascannons and Plasmas. I rolled average in this one and he made most of his saves. I got my messenger to the opposite side so that was a minor morale victory. My army list had very little to counter all those termies.
It was a Major Loss.

2nd game was against Orks. I've only played orks once before in a 3vs3 Armageddon recreation. I thought I was all smart, getting first turn and moving my Razorbacks flat out to the middle of the board to surround the center flag. I hadn't played against the Orks' Battlewagons with Def Rollas, obviously. He proceeded to ram and roll my razorbacks and Massacred me. My lack of experience seriously showed here. My rolling didnt help.
It was a Massacre Loss.

3rd game was against Space Wolves. He had Zero battle points and I had 3 from the first 2 games. Playing him I had to help him with some of the rules (ie. how psychic hood worked etc) so I'm pretty sure he had less experience than me. I also got first turn too. I thought to myself, awesome, maybe I can actually win a game. Nope. He seized initiative and deep struck two drop pods right in front of my razorback parking lot. Eventually he destroyed 1800pts of my army but on the 3rd turn the Terrain Objectives was the scoring scenerio. I did manage to kill some of his scoring units so he could only claim one terrain objective. But it was just horrible.
It was a Minor Loss (should have been a massacre)

With only 11 total points I'm pretty sure I was dead last place for the day. I left before results were announced, I was so embarrassed and in shock.

All in all this was the worst gaming experience I've ever had, ever (no fault to organizers or people I played). It was all me. Every aspect that could have gone wrong, did go wrong (Rolling, My army list, who I went against per scenerio, My lack of experience to all armies I played). I clearly did not belong there that day and should have never showed up. At least the 4th place person in my store's Prelims could have done more damage...

I guess God said I had a peice of humble pie coming heheh

At Crossroads games in Maine, the order was

1 Salamanders (mostly tac squads in rhinos)
2-3 - not sure to be honest - I think Grey Knights and Dark Eldar.

Out of 24 players, not much variety. 1 Blood Angel, 1 Dark Angel, 1 Necron, 1 Daemon, 1 Eldar, 1 Loganwing, 1 Dark Eldar. A few space wolves, about 12 Grey Knights, no tyranids, tau, or IG!

I had the most points going into round 3, then choked. I'm reasonably proud of the fact that the only games I've ever lost in 'ardboyz semis have been to the overall winners.

kestral wrote:At Crossroads games in Maine, the order was

1 Salamanders (mostly tac squads in rhinos)
2-3 - not sure to be honest - I think Grey Knights and Dark Eldar.

Out of 24 players, not much variety. 1 Blood Angel, 1 Dark Angel, 1 Necron, 1 Daemon, 1 Eldar, 1 Loganwing, 1 Dark Eldar. A few space wolves, about 12 Grey Knights, no tyranids, tau, or IG!

I had the most points going into round 3, then choked. I'm reasonably proud of the fact that the only games I've ever lost in 'ardboyz semis have been to the overall winners.

lol holy crap 12 grey knights out of 24 players. That makes for a long day for that one daemon player. Wonder how many grey knights there will be at the finals. Anyone calling 50%?

i don't know...I think DE will be making a big showing at finals, but GK will have a lot

@Hulk
Purifier Spam can make the game damn near unplayable for some armies, like Hordes.

Phil Kelly should write EVERY book. Good fluff, good rules. He sometimes puts a unit in that is too good (long fangs, super falcons and dakka/sniper fexes from last edition) but he has gotten better. Dark Eldar is a fething masterpiece, IMO.

Cruddace struck out with Bugs and Sisters, but IG is great. Vendettas are too cheap, but other than that, it is an awesome book.

Ward is 1.5 for 5.

He's the weakest link!

Lol, I think the regular SM book is still good. I think BA's are pretty fun and sweet army to play with lots of options. I think that GK's are the same thing. What other 40k books has he been a part of? Honestly Phil Kelly should write all xenos and Ward should write all meq and everything would be fine but that's just my personal opinion. Though someone would need to write the fluff for Ward I think so far it's Cruddace that is the weakest link but I'm willing to give him one more shot since he doesn't seem to be to involved with most books in 5th.

I disagree that Purifier spam can make the game unplayable. I further disagree that because a single build type is hurt by a single build type that the codex breaks the game. Has the book changed the way I built my lists? Sure, but doesn't every book? Oh well, everyone has their opinion

Ward wrote:

7th ed orcs and gobos in fantasy, which still lost at tournaments with 500 more points than anyone else.

Daemons, which won tournaments with 500 less points than any other army. Meaning, even with a 1,000pt differential, O&G, a book HE wrote, still couldn't beat Daemons....

He wrote 8th Ed Fantasy. The sales figures tell that story.

He wrote 5th ed Marines which is the best codex written to date, IMO.

He wrote BA, which on it's own is a good book, but has so many buffs built in over regular marines with few to no draw backs it smacks of obvious power increase to sell models. I give half credit for this one!

He wrote Grey Knights, which has some stupidly overpowered units/abilities/powers/etc.

I guess that means he is 1.5 for 6, even worse!

Grey Knights have too many buffs that are potentially game winning on their own. It's like having multiple Lash of Submissions in the book.

Fortitude. AMAZING power.....for 5 points. 3 times as good as extra armor (ignore stunned, shaken and psyker defense) for 5 points. Stupid.

The grenades. All of them. Working even when they get charged....stupid.

Psybolt ammo costing 5 points.....stupid.

Cleansing flame, stupid.

Warp Quake. Game breaking.

Henchmen, so undercosted as to be ridiculous. Again, stupid.

And the list goes on.

The book has too much stuff that is too good against too many armies. I really feel it is sloppy design intended to sell models. Bad form. If they had toned down the power level of the army just a bit, the game would have been better for it.

Everyone is of course entitled to their opinions. I just feel that Mr. Ward is guilty of writing bad material, more so than the other creators.

Can we take the Ward hate to another thread and keep talking about Semis results?

pretre wrote:Can we take the Ward hate to another thread and keep talking about Semis results?

I agree

pretre wrote:Can we take the Ward hate to another thread and keep talking about Semis results?

This...I want to see how many people made it with "subpar" armies and how many played with lemming mentality and went with 1 of three different lists ...just kidding. I just wanna know

pretre wrote:Can we take the Ward hate to another thread and keep talking about Semis results?

Haha, fair enough!

In Norcal, mine was probably the most "net list" of the three qualifiers but it is still not a common build by any means.
second was a Leman Russ heavy IG army, which was cool.
3rd was Battlewagon Orks. The internet says Orks are bad, which baffles me considering they consistently do well in tournaments, so whether or not this is a "subpar" list depends on who looks at it.
4th was Janthkin and his bugs.

I played Footdar for all the marbles game 3, he had 30 wraithguard! He went through really tough Grey Knight armies played by very good players to get there, too.

In SoCal, it was hybrid foot/mech Eldar tied for the win with Templars. And Battlewagon Orks in 4th.

So yeah, in Cali, of all the top finishers, there is ONE army that the internet might consider good...and I use Bjorn and a bunch of dreads which the internet says are bad. Call it a wash then I guess.

Go figure!

It really is about the player. The same guys keep winning, with different armies. Skill is more important than list building, and then you have to consider match-ups, luck, missions, and terrain as well as the list. It is fun though to crunch the data afterwords, and since we can't really quantify skill, terrain or match-ups and missions without more data, we look at lists.

Reecius wrote:It really is about the player. The same guys keep winning, with different armies. Skill is more important than list building, and then you have to consider match-ups, luck, missions, and terrain as well as the list. It is fun though to crunch the data afterwords, and since we can't really quantify skill, terrain or match-ups and missions without more data, we look at lists.

Wait, so the internet might be wrong? My world is asploding!

I feel like I should have gone Bjorn instead of Njal with my list. Didn't play a single GK. Dammit.

Alright so I went through the entire thread and didnt' see a single Necron or Tau. I think all the other books had at least one in a top 3 somewhere

@Reece BW Orks took also took the third spot down here (I believe he had 5 wagons).

It sucked I took a full wagon of burnas and played IG alpha strike armys twice (huge waste of points).

Warmaster wrote:Alright so I went through the entire thread and didnt' see a single Necron or Tau. I think all the other books had at least one in a top 3 somewhere

I dont think any nids made it and did any daemons survive the grey knight horde's? lol


Last matt ward comment: Only matt ward could make the most elite army in the universe out number the most numerous armies. For some reason the entire chapter shows up for every battle.

I think a Daemon guy won a page or so back.

ToI wrote:next to nothing of my army was painted for ard boyz, but I made a point of painting stripes of unique colors on all the bases to designate squads. You played a douche...nothing more. Don't lump everyone together in the unpainted army category as a cheater. While you are are right that the number of cheaters in a larger group with the same % make up would be higher you can't just throw that around...generalizing like that doesn't get most people very far.

You are something of an exception to the rule when it comes to unit differentiation. Most people who do not paint their armies do almost nothing to differentiate units, and that has been a problem for me on occasion. Also, nowhere did I say that not painting = cheating. I merely said that events that lack painting scores generally cater to crowds that have a higher percentage of people who exhibit shady behavior. There is something of a correlation between people who play WAAC lists and tactics, and lazyness in other areas such as painting. From my own personal experience (which has no bearing on anything, but I figure I'll share it anyway), the biggest power gamers with the worst sportsmanship are almost always the ones with completely unpainted armies or bare minimum paintjobs. Additionally, some of my best games tend to be against people fielding lists that are fully painted, or are in the process of being painted. It's not that I haven't had good games against players who don't paint, or vice versa (in fact one of my best friends is an excellent players with great sportsmanship, but he is super lazy and doesn't like painting......I'm considering painting his army for him.......), but the numbers skew heavily the other direction, at least from my own personal experiences.

I did not mean to make sweeping generalizations. I simply meant to point out that it's a trend I see.

The tally.


Grey Knights 24
Imperial Guard 12
Space Wolves 9
Blood Angels 8
Space Marines 7
Orks 6
Dark Eldar 6
Eldar 3
Witch Hunters 2
Tyranids 2
Dark Angels 2
Black Templars 2
Chaos Space Marines 1
Chaos Demons 1

Dave_Fay wrote:The tally.

Played or top 3? And source?

Placed in the top 3.

Source this thread.


Army Placing Location
Grey Knights 1 AL
Eldar 2 AL
Grey Knights 3 AL
Blood Angels 1 TX
Grey Knights 2 TX
Blood Angels 3 TX
Black Templars 1 TX
Grey Knights 2 TX
Grey Knights 3 TX
Imperial Guard 1 NE
Grey Knights 2 NE
Blood Angels 3 NE
Eldar 1 CA
Black Templars 2 CA
Orks 3 CA
Grey Knights 1 IL
Space Wolves 2 IL
Grey Knights 3 IL
Dark Eldar 1 MN
Grey Knights 2 MN
Grey Knights 3 MN
Space Wolves 1 CA
Imperial Guard 2 CA
Orks 3 CA
Imperial Guard 1 OR
Witch Hunters 2 OR
Dark Angels 3 OR
Space Wolves 1 AZ
Dark Eldar 2 AZ
Grey Knights 3 AZ
Grey Knights 1 TX
Blood Angels 2 TX
Space Wolves 3 TX
Dark Angels 1 AR
Imperial Guard 2 AR
Space Wolves 3 AR
Grey Knights 1 ?
Grey Knights 2 ?
Chaos Space Marines 3 ?
Imperial Guard 1 PA
Space Wolves 2 PA
Imperial Guard 3 PA
Tyranids 1 NJ
Dark Eldar 2 NJ
Blood Angels 3 NJ
Chaos Demons 1 MI
Grey Knights 2 MI
Grey Knights 3 MI
Space Marines 1 MA
Imperial Guard 2 MA
Imperial Guard 3 MA
Orks 1 PA
Space Wolves 2 PA
Space Marines 3 PA
Blood Angels 1 VA
Grey Knights 2 VA
Imperial Guard 3 VA
Eldar 1 NY
Space Marines 2 NY
Imperial Guard 3 NY
Space Marines 1 ME
Grey Knights 2 ME
Grey Knights 3 ME
Dark Eldar 1 TN
Orks 2 TN
Space Marines 3 TN
Grey Knights 1 FL
Blood Angels 1 WI
Grey Knights 2 WI
Imperial Guard 3 WI
Grey Knights 1 OH
Grey Knights 2 OH
Witch Hunters 3 OH
Orks 1 FL
Space Wolves 2 FL
Tyranids 3 FL
Orks 1 IN
Space Wolves 2 IN
Imperial Guard 3 IN
Dark Eldar 1 IL
Dark Eldar 2 IL
Grey Knights 3 IL
Space Marines 1 ?
Blood Angels 2 ?
Space Marines 3 ?

@Dave_Fay: Thanks for doing the grunt work then.

C: WH gave one last shot at glory and did pretty well!

I know it is practically impossible, but I'd like to see winning armies vs fielded armies to see what % of X army won. Oh well. Still good data!

Gamer's Haven, ID

1st Dark Eldar
2nd IG
3rd IG

Jacksonville, AR had no grey knights armys at all and there was atleast 20 players there.

Reecius wrote:

That is true. And I am one of them! The reason being is that this book can break the game. Litterally it can make the game unplayable. That is bad game design and whag appears to be, to me, blatantly putting sales ahead of the good of the game. That is something that deserves to be pointed out and made a fuss about as hopefully, gamesworkshop sees we won't stand for it and writes better, more balanced rules.

As for people who play the army, they're free to do what they want. as long as a player's list is legal, I will never make a negative remark about the content of tbeir list.

Emphasis mine

Dave_Fay wrote:The tally.


Grey Knights 50
Imperial Guard 27
Space Wolves 18
Blood Angels 16
Space Marines 14
Orks 11
Dark Eldar 9
Witch Hunters 5
Tyranids 4
Dark Angels 4
Eldar 4
Chaos Space Marines 3
Black Templars 3
Chaos Demons 1

Again, emphasis mine.

Looks like GW will be laughing all the way to the bank...

Dave_Fay wrote:The tally.


Grey Knights 50
Imperial Guard 27
Space Wolves 18
Blood Angels 16
Space Marines 14
Orks 11
Dark Eldar 9
Witch Hunters 5
Tyranids 4
Dark Angels 4
Eldar 4
Chaos Space Marines 3
Black Templars 3
Chaos Demons 1

Sorry, it must be said.

FU Mat Ward!!

50 Grey Knights!?!?!

I hope that is relative to the amount of armies brought to the tournament and more indicative of their popularity than power, but my gut says no.

Maybe it all started with Cruddace making IG so good.

I don't know.

But something stinks!

Literally upon my first look through the GK codex I was like, no F'ing way. This is over the top.

So, finals. Make an Army to cruch the Knights and you have good odds! Haha. Assuming of course we don't have completely crazy missions.

Codex Release Date
Sisters of Battle - Sept-11 (Not legal for 'AB)
Grey Knights - April-11
Dark Eldar - Nov-10
Blood Angels - Apr-10
Tyranids - Jan-10
Space Wolves - Oct-09
Imperial Guard - May-09
Space Marines - Oct-08

Weird, the newest book had a lot of players at 'AB? No way, that has never happened before.

@Ozzy
I agree, they are cashing in big on Grey Knights.

But, every time they pull this gak, they lose long term customers and open the door to their competition to come in and color themselves as the "good guys" of gaming and taking market share.

I won in pittsburgh with Battlewagon orks (four wagons, full nob squad, ghaz, mek, two trukk boys, 20 lootas and three deffkoptas), but a lot of that had to do with my opponents not quite knowing what I can do on turn two...

I wish I could say it was skill, but I got lucky in my games: eldrad got pinned after his serpent exploded, I won the first turn roll against both leafblower and DE (with baron!), and had a great first shooting turn against DE (four downed vehicles).