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Monoliths deepstriking are tougher for me. My crazy Battlewagons with their Grabbin' Klaws, Wrecking Ball and Boarding Planks are my counter for all the fast skimmers out there. You better make that first Sweeping Attack count, you won't get a second chance with my list. ;-)

Well, Annihilation Barges aren't fast, but I get you. The AV14 on a skimmer can be ace against Orks, but there's so much melta out there that I find the Monolith to not often be worth its points.

My point isn't that the Monolith is bad, far from it! I'm just saying that personally I like the tesla destructors quite a bit, and since I generally bring two Annihilation Barges I fill that 3rd Heavy Support slot with some Canoptek Spyders so that I can beef up a scarab swarm and hopefully damage some of those pesky high AV vehicles that tend to give me problems.

Though, again, I'm just spitballing here. Anyone in the top 16 clearly knows what they are doing.

As a side note, why don't some of you San Diego guys roll up to TSG in Temecula for an event? I know it's a haul, but it's a great venue and the more great players we have the more fun the event are!

@Monster Rain - when is the next event up there? I'm always down to throw dice. ;-)

Dugg wrote:@Monster Rain - when is the next event up there? I'm always down to throw dice. ;-)

https://www.facebook.com/events/367797059932807/

Hope you can make it! Like them on Facebook so you can get the regular updates. There's all kinds of tourneys and leagues and whatnot going on all the time ,and the owners are super cool. They bought us all lunch because they forgot we had our league meeting this weekend and double booked us with a M:TG pre-release.

@Leth

I stopped posting in the lists and tactics section because there is just too much bad advice in there. So many people are so stuck on seeing things just one way. Or people who don't listen, as you said. It's annoying.

Now when I want advice on a list, I go to my friends that are really successful with a given army. I find that tends to give me more pointed advice that I can really use.

@CKO
You are right. It is easy to forget that most of us acted badly at some point. It is better to be patient and try to help, but some people just don't want to change! haha

@theHod
That's a good idea! If I go to NOVA I will go over to his blog and call him out, see if he picks up the gauntlet. That would be awesome, to beat him with one of my "terrible" lists, hahaha.

@HappyGrunt
And I was soooooo close to making the final 4! Agh, stupid dice! haha, oh well, I had a great time.



I have to agree that Hulk is a super cool guy in real life and a lot of fun to play. He and I have always had some really fun games.

Are there battle reports or videos or anything for top player? I am interested to see how that necron list works exactly.

Reecius wrote:@Leth

I stopped posting in the lists and tactics section because there is just too much bad advice in there. So many people are so stuck on seeing things just one way. Or people who don't listen, as you said. It's annoying.

Now when I want advice on a list, I go to my friends that are really successful with a given army. I find that tends to give me more pointed advice that I can really use.

@CKO
You are right. It is easy to forget that most of us acted badly at some point. It is better to be patient and try to help, but some people just don't want to change! haha

@theHod
That's a good idea! If I go to NOVA I will go over to his blog and call him out, see if he picks up the gauntlet. That would be awesome, to beat him with one of my "terrible" lists, hahaha.

@HappyGrunt
And I was soooooo close to making the final 4! Agh, stupid dice! haha, oh well, I had a great time.



I have to agree that Hulk is a super cool guy in real life and a lot of fun to play. He and I have always had some really fun games.

I second that. It's been a while since Hulk and I played since I go to very few national events and he doesn't live in our area anymore. But the games I played with Hulk are some of the best. I lost, I believe, all but 1 which we tied and they were all pleasant fun games.

haroon wrote:Are there battle reports or videos or anything for top player? I am interested to see how that necron list works exactly.

Well you can watch Alex playing his pink Necrons on the Independent Characters coverage of the Adepticon finals:

http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/22050373


Unfortunately this is, of course, the game he loses to Brad, so we don't get to see any of his glorious victories, but at least its something.

Reecius wrote:@Leth

I stopped posting in the lists and tactics section because there is just too much bad advice in there.

Sadly, this happens a lot. All too often I see people arguing nonsense against seasoned tournament players...

As elitist as it sounds, I'm wondering if some sort of designation on one's profile as someone who is worth listening to might be worth looking into. For example, if someone routinely places at national tournaments with a given army they could be a "Dakka Certified Tactician" or something. That way when Reece tries to give some solid Footdar advice he's going to be given (theoretically) more consideration than the guy who's clearly never played a competitive game in his life.

Monster Rain wrote:

Reecius wrote:@Leth

I stopped posting in the lists and tactics section because there is just too much bad advice in there.

Sadly, this happens a lot. All too often I see people arguing nonsense against seasoned tournament players...

As elitist as it sounds, I'm wondering if some sort of designation on one's profile as someone who is worth listening to might be worth looking into. For example, if someone routinely places at national tournaments with a given army they could be a "Dakka Certified Tactician" or something. That way when Reece tries to give some solid Footdar advice he's going to be given (theoretically) more consideration than the guy who's clearly never played a competitive game in his life.

Unfortunately, I don't see this happening. Too many people would be upset that their dad's neighbor's uncle who beats everyone in the nowheresville basement tables isn't being given certs because they won't leave the basement.

Monster Rain wrote:

Reecius wrote:@Leth

I stopped posting in the lists and tactics section because there is just too much bad advice in there.

Sadly, this happens a lot. All too often I see people arguing nonsense against seasoned tournament players...

As elitist as it sounds, I'm wondering if some sort of designation on one's profile as someone who is worth listening to might be worth looking into. For example, if someone routinely places at national tournaments with a given army they could be a "Dakka Certified Tactician" or something. That way when Reece tries to give some solid Footdar advice he's going to be given (theoretically) more consideration than the guy who's clearly never played a competitive game in his life.

^Very solid idea. We really do need some way to confirm that the advice that we're getting is sound. I feel like on these forums a lot of the newer players tend to listen only to the advice of those that have massive post counts, when really many of those with 500+ posts are spamming 'thread-games' and the introductions forums.

The_Rogue_Engineer wrote:
The Foot-wolves list was mine. It basically contained:

1. one rune priest (LL and JotWW)
2. five units of grey hunters with standard and meltaguns, with one be "stubby" (i.e. it was 8 man no wolf standard)
3. three units of long fangs w/ missile launchers, one being "stubby" (4 missile launchers)
4. two units of scouts with melta
5. ten wolf guard, 5 termis(2 cyclones and all chain fists) and 5 power armor. One for each unit.

Because I don't play 40k much anymore, I chose an army based on a high level strategy to compensate for my tactical errors I knew I would make. The strategy: overwhelm with superior numbers. The army was very forgiving as it contains 86 or so models.

I lost first round to Nick. It was a good game with a good opponent. I had the game on turn 5, but alas, it continued to 6.

-Mike Mutscheller

Thanks for the info! I've been experimenting with power-armour heavy loganwing lists for a little while now, but without any (large) tournament experience I have little idea how foot-wolf lists perform on a larger scale. I noticed the armies that I have huge amounts of trouble with are Mechdar, Venom-spam, and Necron AV13 spam. They outmaneuver me to the point where I have an extremely difficult time getting into CC and CMLs are only so effective. Lately dropping logan down with a TDA priest and 5 MM longfangs has been relatively effective, but against other types of armies they get isolated and wrecked more quickly than I would like. How did you deal with these armies during the tournament (if you faced them)?

sharkticon wrote:

Monster Rain wrote:

Reecius wrote:@Leth

I stopped posting in the lists and tactics section because there is just too much bad advice in there.

Sadly, this happens a lot. All too often I see people arguing nonsense against seasoned tournament players...

As elitist as it sounds, I'm wondering if some sort of designation on one's profile as someone who is worth listening to might be worth looking into. For example, if someone routinely places at national tournaments with a given army they could be a "Dakka Certified Tactician" or something. That way when Reece tries to give some solid Footdar advice he's going to be given (theoretically) more consideration than the guy who's clearly never played a competitive game in his life.

Unfortunately, I don't see this happening. Too many people would be upset that their dad's neighbor's uncle who beats everyone in the nowheresville basement tables isn't being given certs because they won't leave the basement.

It's just too subjective. Just because someone goes to tournaments a lot doesn't necessarily means that they will give good advice. Besides, what may seem like good advice to someone may appear to be bad advice to someone else (at least from their perspective). And how do you determine the metric to see who should be certified? Play in 5 tournaments? 20 tournaments?

The trouble with top players contributing to the Army Lists forum in particular, and Tactics to a lesser extent, is that the sheer volume of posts drowns you out, and one inevitably gets burned out on posting the same advice repeatedly. Especially when people bullheadedly argue with you. Of course, some of the folks arguing are just coming from a different environment and metagame, and legitimately have different experiences to draw from. Others are plain ignorant. And most of the really great players are guys with real lives who are too busy with work and family to post on here 17,000 times over thirteen years.

I don't think we can really appoint certain people authorities on various armies or subjects. For one thing, the game environment and codexes change, and a person who was an expert with a given codex last year or five years ago may no longer be today. But more importantly, as a general rule people's arguments need to stand on their own merits, whether they've got tournament cred or not. One (admittedly pretty nerdy and gauche) way for experienced players to show credentials is to stick your GT placings in your signature and/or personal page. Big tournament results are independently-verifiable. It is letting your nerd flag fly rather proudly, however.

If you don't want to do that, well, readers who are genuinely interested will pay attention to threads like this one, and tournament results, and learn who's who. I'm glad that guys like Reece, Alex, and Doug occasionally post stuff. Other vets, guys like Greg Sparks or Marc Parker, for example, rarely post on here, but when they do, some of us make a point of paying attention.

@monster rain
I am flattered by that, thanks!

But like others have said, it is a hard thing to judge.

What tends to happen is as sekminara pointed out, there are people who post a lot and are forceful in their opinions that tend to get a lot of air time. Some of the best players in the country have been on Dakka for a decade and their post count is tiny.

When Yakface and Legoburner took Dakka over, they made some changes to the site that really boosted the number of people who hung out here.

Dakka became a much bigger, and much nicer place. All for the better, in general.

One side effect though, was that the good advice got diluted by noise. Dakka used to be a downright mean place, too. If you said something silly, you got attacked. That was crappy, but it had the side effect of forcing people to fact check what they said, and to really know their stuff or get flamed to hell and back.

So, it was a smaller community of very, very good players and the advice here was rock solid. Literally, the cutting edge for tactics and data.

That just isn't the case anymore. I still love Dakka, but it has changed a lot. Most of the changes have been for the better for the majority of people who hang out here, but the quality of data in tactics and lists has gone way down as a result.

What tends to happen is as sekminara pointed out, there are people who post a lot and are forceful in their opinions that tend to get a lot of air time. Some of the best players in the country have been on Dakka for a decade and their post count is tiny.

Hey now! My forceful opinions get no air time!

One side effect though, was that the good advice got diluted by noise. Dakka used to be a downright mean place, too. If you said something silly, you got attacked. That was crappy, but it had the side effect of forcing people to fact check what they said, and to really know their stuff or get flamed to hell and back.

In my experience the tactics and list building sections of Dakka have always been kind of a crapshoot depending on who was on at the time. Admittedly I joined a year after your visible join date. I have definitly noticed that the noise has been turned up over the last few years though, it's happened on almost every section of the forum.

I generally avoid tactics and list building these days, most advice I want to give is the same advice I want to give in most threads and I tend to find that my opinion has been stated by someone already and that that specific person is being ignored. I'll jump into the debates about what constitutes good design decisions on GWs part, but even those are so full of white noise that it's hard to keep a conversation straight. In my opinion listbuilding advise is better given in a non public format, where the call and response can be measured with a smaller pool of participants.

Most of the really detailed and substantive advice I've given over the last few years is to people who specifically approached me via PM.

I used to give out lots of advice on the army lists and tactics forum. Then I kinda got burned out on the army list forum, for a lot of the reasons others have said. My posting has dropped off a lot in the last few years because of law school, but even now I don't necessarily see myself posting a lot in the tactics forum. Not as much free time as I used to.

any word on that ork list ? ^.^

Disarray wrote:any word on that ork list ? ^.^

Yep, read from page 3 on, there's several posts over a number of pages about Duggs army:

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/60/445500.page#4202876

It was 3 Battlewagons this year not 4.

All my wagons had everything on them but Ard Cases. 8-)

A Wagon of Shootas
A Wagon of Slugga Choppas
A Wagon of Burnas
A Trukk of Shootas
Snikrot & Kommandos + 2Burnas
1 Koppta squad of 2 with 1 buzzsaw
Ghaz
KFF Mek + Klaw

That's the nuts of this list

Dugg wrote:It was 3 Battlewagons this year not 4.

All my wagons had everything on them but Ard Cases. 8-)

A Wagon of Shootas
A Wagon of Slugga Choppas
A Wagon of Burnas
A Trukk of Shootas
Snikrot & Kommandos + 2Burnas
1 Koppta squad of 2 with 1 buzzsaw
Ghaz
KFF Mek + Klaw

That's the nuts of this list

That is pretty dang close to a list I was planning on running in a couple weeks at a tournament out here. Only really difference is I take much chearper BWs, and no trukk. How did that trukk do? I used to run 2-3 in lists, but never considered one since it would seem to be such an easy target for S7-8 shooting. Also surprised to see no lootas, is your anti-transport just smashing face with the wagons?

Mannahnin wrote:Most of the really detailed and substantive advice I've given over the last few years is to people who specifically approached me via PM.

This or most of the "better" players have their own blog/website that makes it easier to ask them questions while avoiding a lot of the white noise that comes along with the Army List section.

reps0l wrote:

Mannahnin wrote:Most of the really detailed and substantive advice I've given over the last few years is to people who specifically approached me via PM.

This or most of the "better" players have their own blog/website that makes it easier to ask them questions while avoiding a lot of the white noise that comes along with the Army List section.

I think you wrote "better" when you meant "more vocal and prone to blogging".

reps0l wrote:This or most of the "better" players have their own blog/website that makes it easier to ask them questions while avoiding a lot of the white noise that comes along with the Army List section.

So, now all I have to do is figure out which bloggers are worth listening to instead of which posters. A task made much harder by the fact that on a blog, they can effectively shut down any contrary opinions. If you read all the blogs, you'll get more bad information than good, and it won't have been subjected to the sort of community review that it would get if posted in an open forum.

Redbeard wrote:

reps0l wrote:This or most of the "better" players have their own blog/website that makes it easier to ask them questions while avoiding a lot of the white noise that comes along with the Army List section.

So, now all I have to do is figure out which bloggers are worth listening to instead of which posters. A task made much harder by the fact that on a blog, they can effectively shut down any contrary opinions. If you read all the blogs, you'll get more bad information than good, and it won't have been subjected to the sort of community review that it would get if posted in an open forum.

That's never been more true, they have BlackBowFly doing articles on tactics for BOLS. Worse advice, lacking spelling or logic has never been given to the masses.

I love how someone is considering self-maintained/censored blogs to be genuine representations of advice and tactics as opposed to ones that go up on public forums. Because clearly such things that survive, counteract and improve because of general criticisms are inferior to such things that just mass delete negative opinions and stick their heads in the sand with words to the effect of 'it's my party, I'll cry if I want to'.

Almost sounds like spin pushing for a blog of their own.

DarkStarSabre wrote:I love how someone is considering self-maintained/censored blogs to be genuine representations of advice and tactics as opposed to ones that go up on public forums. Because clearly such things that survive, counteract and improve because of general criticisms are inferior to such things that just mass delete negative opinions and stick their heads in the sand with words to the effect of 'it's my party, I'll cry if I want to'.

Almost sounds like spin pushing for a blog of their own.

Neither source is particularly great, though I'd opt for listening to someone I believe to be speaking from experience rather than crowdsourcing.

DarkStarSabre wrote:I love how someone is considering self-maintained/censored blogs to be genuine representations of advice and tactics as opposed to ones that go up on public forums. Because clearly such things that survive, counteract and improve because of general criticisms are inferior to such things that just mass delete negative opinions and stick their heads in the sand with words to the effect of 'it's my party, I'll cry if I want to'.

Almost sounds like spin pushing for a blog of their own.

I think this may be going to the other extreme. Blogs are just like forum posts. Some are good, some are bad, some are potentially harmful. The difference is that there is no moderation staff or they are self-moderated/edited on their site. I don't know that I would attribute that level of censorship or control, etc to most blog others.

pretre wrote:

DarkStarSabre wrote:I love how someone is considering self-maintained/censored blogs to be genuine representations of advice and tactics as opposed to ones that go up on public forums. Because clearly such things that survive, counteract and improve because of general criticisms are inferior to such things that just mass delete negative opinions and stick their heads in the sand with words to the effect of 'it's my party, I'll cry if I want to'.

Almost sounds like spin pushing for a blog of their own.

I think this may be going to the other extreme. Blogs are just like forum posts. Some are good, some are bad, some are potentially harmful. The difference is that there is no moderation staff or they are self-moderated/edited on their site. I don't know that I would attribute that level of censorship or control, etc to most blog others.

Thank you pretre. The point of the post, which was prompted by Mannahnin, is that you get more personal advice when you PM (here) or contribute to someone's blog vice posting in the Army List section. I've read tons of priceless advice Mannahnin has given out, majority of which are found in YMDC or Tactics. I'm pretty sure I haven't seen Reecius give us newb's advice on an Army List, but from what I've read on this thread, he knows his stuff.

I'm not going to put up an open post in Army List in hopes that either of the aforementioned gentlemen will provide me with meaningful, personal army advice.

Yes blogs are biased and that's why you only follow the ones that you, in your opinion, agree with. You filter just as you do posts in a thread but there is usually far less minutiae.

Apologies to Mannahnin and Reecius for using you as examples. Nothin' but love <3

@DarkStarSabre Please follow my blog. Link is in my signature...

This topic comes up from time to time. I think that, at a certain point, it becomes a player's responsibility to pick what advice he takes.

90% of winning games of warhammer comes from knowing the rules, knowing the codices, knowing the army that you're playing, and making sure your army includes the basic tools to deal with most threats (at least some anti-tank, etc.)

The rest is the fiddly details of list construction and tactics.

the best "tactical" advice is to read the rules, read the codices, and play at least 10 games with your list before going to a tournament. Build your list understanding what units you expect to face, and have an answer for all of them.

Do those things, and you will win more than you lose.

Until you do those things, agonizing over specific upgrades, or switching armies, or reading endless critiques of army lists won't help you that much.