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Polonius wrote: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.

If only I had your optimism that such a large percentage of wins comes from actual player skill or competence. I would be a much happier gamer.

Polonius wrote: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.

That's sig-worthy.

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.

I agree with a lot of what you're saying. When it comes to blogs you need to just read through and see what their comment moderation is like. For example on C&C the only comments that are deleted are spam from "russian brides.com" etc, or comments that use offensive language. For a short while we had a guy who just went on and flamed everything I wrote about playing Vanilla Marines or Space Wolves. He also started to just flame every painting or modelling article I would write. I just endured it, we didn't want to overly moderate any comments on the site. Not all blogs are that way, but painting all blogs with the same brush of being bad to read because some blogs overly moderate the discussion is not fair.

Basically what some people are saying is that the list and tactics section is nearly useless due to the white noise of bad opinions (and I tend to agree, I stopped posting in the list forum too for the most part) but blogs are bad too because they are overly moderated or not moderated enough by the community. So where are people to turn for advice?

@Dugg I am continually impressed by your Ork lists and ability with the army. The best was watching you play Grimgob at the BAO this year.

OverwatchCNC wrote: So where are people to turn for advice?

Two answers:
- People or communities that you respect. When I post lists, it is generally to a forum where I know that 1 or 2 people I want the opinion of will post back. This also sometimes includes title baiting (using specific phrases to attract the person whose opinion you want) or I just PM'ing them and asking for their feedback directly.
- Know how to filter. Sometimes I will post a list or concept to an open forum like dakka and just see what comes back. Inevitably, some folks with 'alternative' ideas chime in, I thank them for their input and mentally evaluate whether it is worth holding onto or even debating with them. Occasionally, you can get some nuggets of good info this way.

@OverwatchCNC Thanks. But I didn't play Grimgob at BAO. I think you are thinking of Warboss Russ. Both Grimgob and Warboss Russ are really good Ork players and fun to watch.


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@greenbay924 The Trukk is used in reserve in most cases but not all. It's fast and can be used to suprise an opponent, jump on an objective so on. Lootas are hit and miss with me. I would rather have a big squad of scoring boys with a Nob and Bosspole. A big squad of boys can get multiple kill points in a turn and usually do for me, while Loota are a none scoring, none moving single targeting unit that can be ran off the board quite easily.

And Deffrollas are the best! I'm all about rollas. I'm not just talking about the Strength they give to my army, I'm talking about how ORKY they are. They are just so much fun to play. I'm pretty happy with my Grabbin Klaws and Wrecking Balls too. There are so many skimmers out there now that I can really put them to good use.

Dugg wrote:@OverwatchCNC Thanks. But I didn't play Grimgob at BAO. I think you are thinking of Warboss Russ. Both Grimgob and Warboss Russ are really good Ork players and fun to watch.


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@greenbay924 The Trukk is used in reserve in most cases but not all. It's fast and can be used to suprise an opponent, jump on an objective so on. Lootas are hit and miss with me. I would rather have a big squad of scoring boys with a Nob and Bosspole. A big squad of boys can get multiple kill points in a turn and usually do for me, while Loota are a none scoring, none moving single targeting unit that can be ran off the board quite easily.

And Deffrollas are the best! I'm all about rollas. I'm not just talking about the Strength they give to my army, I'm talking about how ORKY they are. They are just so much fun to play. I'm pretty happy with my Grabbin Klaws and Wrecking Balls too. There are so many skimmers out there now that I can really put them to good use.

Oops. All you Ork players, and I can't keep you straight! Sorry about that I knew it was Russ, don't know why I made that mistake.

OverwatchCNC wrote:Oops. All you Ork players, and I can't keep you straight! Sorry about that I knew it was Russ, don't know why I made that mistake.

You, sir, are a Species-ist! Disgusting.

pretre wrote:

OverwatchCNC wrote:Oops. All you Ork players, and I can't keep you straight! Sorry about that I knew it was Russ, don't know why I made that mistake.

You, sir, are a Species-ist! Disgusting.

Absolutely. I can't tell the Eldar players apart either...

To further the Dugg Love. Doug is my hero.

I think I am going to get Russ, Grimgob and Dugg to autograph the BW I use for Ghaz in my list!!!

Seems like an orky thing to do!!!

@ Blood Lord - Just name the Nobz that run your boy squads after us.

I love how people take lists apart based on own ideas.

The bad thing being, not 2 gamers play or think the same way.
While you may think crushers are the best choice, other players may find the extra attacks and movement to be better fitted to their style of play.

Again though it comes down to (as stated) a persons ability to play the game.
Throw a new gamer a leafblower list and watch him/her fail due to lack of experience and not knowing what he/she is up against.


While a strong list is vital, being a strong gamer far outweighs this in my opinion.


Obviously we have certain units here and there which are voted by everyone as sub-par (pyrovores anyone?)
However, certain units cant really be gauged against another for effective use as its down to the gamer on how they use said unit.

Like the daemons list, i would prefer seekers and fiends over crushers.
I think a big flaw of the daemons (deployment being another) is the lack of movement in the real heavy hitters.

No unit from the daemons book has the ability to keep pace with D/Eldar and hit as hard as pups in CC.
And by unit i mean non GD, before someone says thirster

Anyways, like ive said, its just a persons opinion of something, which makes mine no more or less valid than anothers.

Dugg wrote:@OverwatchCNC Thanks. But I didn't play Grimgob at BAO. I think you are thinking of Warboss Russ. Both Grimgob and Warboss Russ are really good Ork players and fun to watch.


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@greenbay924 The Trukk is used in reserve in most cases but not all. It's fast and can be used to suprise an opponent, jump on an objective so on. Lootas are hit and miss with me. I would rather have a big squad of scoring boys with a Nob and Bosspole. A big squad of boys can get multiple kill points in a turn and usually do for me, while Loota are a none scoring, none moving single targeting unit that can be ran off the board quite easily.

And Deffrollas are the best! I'm all about rollas. I'm not just talking about the Strength they give to my army, I'm talking about how ORKY they are. They are just so much fun to play. I'm pretty happy with my Grabbin Klaws and Wrecking Balls too. There are so many skimmers out there now that I can really put them to good use.

Holding the trukk in reserve was my exact thought AFTER my post, it's large threat range means it can still get across table (about 29" charge range iirc, thought about doing something similar with a MANZ unit).

I'm glad to see ork players well respected and doing well in large tournaments, after reading the new SW, Necrons, BA, GK, DE codexes, then rereading my ork codex, I can't help but well lack luster in comparison.

I'd really like to pick your brain at some point regarding certain army mach ups, but as it stands I don't have enough current play testing to have any really important questions.

@Jackal - I agree, everyone has a dif playing style and should push themselves to try new lists and weird combos until they find something that works for them. It sucks when a gamer drops major $ on an Army just to find out it doesn't fit their playing style.

Kind of funny how the topic devolved from lists to whose opinion is worth listening to or not. Does it really matter? It does not take a genius to see what list are the "in" list at the moment. But just because you can copy a list does not mean you can play it against all match ups. Thats what makes the difference and only gaming experience will give you that information.

Plus I agree with Mannahnin there are lot of good players that rarely post enough that people would even know who they are.

I am betting if you took a poll of people on Dakka to list the top 25 or 50 players it would consist of many people who post here on Dakka or who spend a great amount of time on the internet in general. I guess they could also think that RankingHQ would count........ Either way there are many really good players that you just never see on the forums.

Personally I find it far more interesting to watch and even see those players that are not taking the net lists but are still great players and watch how they are playing against the current power builds.

The problem is none of you are Brad Chester who wins on being Brad Chester. He was kind enought to inform me I chowdered our room after drinking with the Swedes. none of you won overall at adepticon like Brad or Tony since the new format was introduced. You need to get better at 40k. I could beat that army story is fail since you haven't. congrats Brad since you are what team america needs it is you.

For anyone who is interested I've put up a breakdown of my list in the tactics section with a description of how I used each unit. For the folks who asked me, I hope that helps

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/0/446972.page

Blood Lord Soldado wrote:To further the Dugg Love. Doug is my hero.

I think I am going to get Russ, Grimgob and Dugg to autograph the BW I use for Ghaz in my list!!!

Seems like an orky thing to do!!!

No, the orky thing to do would be to mount their lifeless 'eads on your wagon to prove that you're bigger and killier than them gits!

The Everliving wrote:For anyone who is interested I've put up a breakdown of my list in the tactics section with a description of how I used each unit. For the folks who asked me, I hope that helps

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/0/446972.page

Thanks Alex! I greatly value your thoughts.

: )

Thanks for posting that, Everliving! Very cool seeing your thoughts/reasoning behind the list... it's shocking how different that is from what I would have thought of us as a typical Necron "power build". So diverse, but seemingly, very effective!

Polonius wrote:
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.)

I agree that you have to do all of those things to be competitive.

IMO the more skilled and experienced player almost always wins, probably 95%+ of the time. If the players are basically equivalent it may be more like a coin flip. I suspect one is usually more experienced or thoughtful and so I wouldn't think there would be too many 50/50 games. In multiple games where you select your materials and that include luck I've noticed that when the remaining players are all godlike whoever takes the meta into account usually has a huge advantage. There really should be very few terrible match ups and even those can easily be overcome by skillful play and capitalizing on the many mistakes that all but the best make in each game. These terrible match ups are probably from people taking highly specialized lists which is usually a sign of a general who is not one of the best.

In regards to luck I think of 40k as a gambling game since in the short term there is quite a bit of luck. Even in one entire game though I think the luck evens out pretty well in at least 9 out of 10 games. I recently ran off a unit of Paladins with 6 TH/SS Terminators which was lucky enough and then they only needed a 9 for morale. They failed and ran off the board immediately. My opponent wanted to quit. I refused. He ended up winning 25-5 LOL! It was a very interesting game.

IMO the more skilled and experienced player almost always wins, probably 95%+ of the time. If the players are basically equivalent it may be more like a coin flip. I suspect one is usually more experienced or thoughtful and so I wouldn't think there would be too many 50/50 games. In multiple games where you select your materials and that include luck I've noticed that when the remaining players are all godlike whoever takes the meta into account usually has a huge advantage. There really should be very few terrible match ups and even those can easily be overcome by skillful play and capitalizing on the many mistakes that all but the best make in each game.

This is a wholly unrealistic view of 40k as a competitive game in my opinion. I'm likely more of a pessimist than you, but this game is riven with terrible matchups that would see the best player on earth praying for a tie. 40k isn't even close to having unified balance across all factions and it has no mechanic what so ever to fix matchup imbalances (something that every other competitive game of this nature has). If 40k had rules for sideboarding and the codexes weren't written by stooges the core mechanics of the game could provide for some very balanced matches. We don't have those though, and as it is if tau roll up against horde orks, tyranids role up against mech IG, or BAs roll up against draigowing they might as well not bother deploying at all.

@Shuma

I disagree. If I build an all comer list I don't really have any bad match-ups. Same goes for most of the known GT winners that I know. It might be that you struggle at providing yourself the tools you need and so see bad match-ups more frequently.

As for your examples I laugh a little inside. Most of the Tau players I know could handle horde orks. Mech IG are one of my easier games with Nids, and it would depend on the BA but most shouldn't fear Draigowing since they can massively outmanuever it. Based on your examples I'd say it's more the player than the game that's an issue.

I disagree. If I build an all comer list I don't really have any bad match-ups. Same goes for most of the known GT winners that I know. It might be that you struggle at providing yourself the tools you need and so see bad match-ups more frequently.

Or it could be that you're playing one of the metas current top armies.

Hulksmash wrote:@Shuma

I disagree. If I build an all comer list I don't really have any bad match-ups. Same goes for most of the known GT winners that I know. It might be that you struggle at providing yourself the tools you need and so see bad match-ups more frequently.

As for your examples I laugh a little inside. Most of the Tau players I know could handle horde orks. Mech IG are one of my easier games with Nids, and it would depend on the BA but most shouldn't fear Draigowing since they can massively outmanuever it. Based on your examples I'd say it's more the player than the game that's an issue.

Ditto, I never show up to an event with an army, of any book I play, that I know can't win against something I might see. Even my 0 melta gk army ( also 0 psycannons) has the ability to handle tri- raider lists with tank- blocking and movement shenanigans. Most skilled players build lists that can win against anything they might possibly see, though it isn't always obvious and may be accomplished via play rather than obvious entries in their lists. Some matchups are harder than others, but it you build right you should never have a seriously skewed and/ or unwinnable match

Hulksmash wrote:
I disagree. If I build an all comer list I don't really have any bad match-ups.

While this is an admirable viewpoint, I wonder what your definition of bad is. If you mean that you have no unwinnable match-ups, I can agree with you. But, I seriously doubt that the same list has the same chance of winning games against deathwing, horde orks, and mech guard. Each of the three require different tools to defeat, and while an all-comers list will have some tools required to defeat them all, it won't have them all in the numbers that it might like.

If you win 50% of your games against horde armies, 60% against deathwing, and 75% against mech guard, then the horde matchup is a 'bad' one. It's worse than the others. It's not unwinnable, but it's a tighter fight than the others. And, that's OK. If you expect the field to be 75% mech armies, then maintaining the 75% win odds against those is probably worth having only a 50% against the hordes that you really don't expect to face. I'd even argue that, against a 75% mech field, it's the right decision to skew your victory chances towards those builds and away from hordes.

Target wrote:

Hulksmash wrote:@Shuma

I disagree. If I build an all comer list I don't really have any bad match-ups. Same goes for most of the known GT winners that I know. It might be that you struggle at providing yourself the tools you need and so see bad match-ups more frequently.

As for your examples I laugh a little inside. Most of the Tau players I know could handle horde orks. Mech IG are one of my easier games with Nids, and it would depend on the BA but most shouldn't fear Draigowing since they can massively outmanuever it. Based on your examples I'd say it's more the player than the game that's an issue.

Ditto, I never show up to an event with an army, of any book I play, that I know can't win against something I might see. Even my 0 melta gk army ( also 0 psycannons) has the ability to handle tri- raider lists with tank- blocking and movement shenanigans. Most skilled players build lists that can win against anything they might possibly see, though it isn't always obvious and may be accomplished via play rather than obvious entries in their lists. Some matchups are harder than others, but it you build right you should never have a seriously skewed and/ or unwinnable match

I don't think saying "I can make a good all comers list with grey knights" is the same as "I can make a good all comers list with tau, tyranids, dark angels, chaos demons, or orks". A thread a few above this one just got locked after 80 pages of people debating whether or not the grey knights were blatently overpowered. Not every army can do that, in fact the majority can't.


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Redbeard wrote:

Hulksmash wrote:
I disagree. If I build an all comer list I don't really have any bad match-ups.

While this is an admirable viewpoint, I wonder what your definition of bad is. If you mean that you have no unwinnable match-ups, I can agree with you. But, I seriously doubt that the same list has the same chance of winning games against deathwing, horde orks, and mech guard. Each of the three require different tools to defeat, and while an all-comers list will have some tools required to defeat them all, it won't have them all in the numbers that it might like.

If you win 50% of your games against horde armies, 60% against deathwing, and 75% against mech guard, then the horde matchup is a 'bad' one. It's worse than the others. It's not unwinnable, but it's a tighter fight than the others. And, that's OK. If you expect the field to be 75% mech armies, then maintaining the 75% win odds against those is probably worth having only a 50% against the hordes that you really don't expect to face. I'd even argue that, against a 75% mech field, it's the right decision to skew your victory chances towards those builds and away from hordes.

Now do the numbers for chaos marines, tyranids, generic space marines, or tau and see what those win percentages are. Chances are that more than one of them is going to be sub 50% against equally skilled opponants. This game has bad matchups and bad armies. They exist. Pretending they don't while admitting that a win rate is based off of the games current most powerful army is a bit disingenuous. There is no tau list that can beat both grey knights and descent of angels. There is no generic space marine list that can beat both horde orks and draigowing.

@Redbeard- I would just like to point out my BattleWagon Ork list beats all 3, Deathwing, Horde Orks& Mech Guard continuously at Tournaments.

I have to agree with Hulk

Dugg wrote:@Redbeard- I would just like to point out my BattleWagon Ork list beats all 3, Deathwing, Horde Orks& Mech Guard continuously at Tournaments.

I have to agree with Hulk

To reiterate, there are like 14 codexes. Everyone knows orks, GKs, SWs, and IG can make all comers lists with good odds against everything. Thats why they are the armies that consistently place high in tournaments.

Now make one with one of the other TEN codexes. After that magic do it nine more times. Then this game is balanced. Until you can pull off that magic, or at least do a halfy and get seven codexes with nice even all comers lists than this game isn't even close to balanced.

ShumaGorath wrote:

Target wrote:

Hulksmash wrote:@Shuma

I disagree. If I build an all comer list I don't really have any bad match-ups. Same goes for most of the known GT winners that I know. It might be that you struggle at providing yourself the tools you need and so see bad match-ups more frequently.

As for your examples I laugh a little inside. Most of the Tau players I know could handle horde orks. Mech IG are one of my easier games with Nids, and it would depend on the BA but most shouldn't fear Draigowing since they can massively outmanuever it. Based on your examples I'd say it's more the player than the game that's an issue.

Ditto, I never show up to an event with an army, of any book I play, that I know can't win against something I might see. Even my 0 melta gk army ( also 0 psycannons) has the ability to handle tri- raider lists with tank- blocking and movement shenanigans. Most skilled players build lists that can win against anything they might possibly see, though it isn't always obvious and may be accomplished via play rather than obvious entries in their lists. Some matchups are harder than others, but it you build right you should never have a seriously skewed and/ or unwinnable match

I don't think saying "I can make a good all comers list with grey knights" is the same as "I can make a good all comers list with tau, tyranids, dark angels, chaos demons, or orks". A thread a few above this one just got locked after 80 pages of people debating whether or not the grey knights were blatently overpowered. Not every army can do that, in fact the majority can't.


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Redbeard wrote:

Hulksmash wrote:
I disagree. If I build an all comer list I don't really have any bad match-ups.

While this is an admirable viewpoint, I wonder what your definition of bad is. If you mean that you have no unwinnable match-ups, I can agree with you. But, I seriously doubt that the same list has the same chance of winning games against deathwing, horde orks, and mech guard. Each of the three require different tools to defeat, and while an all-comers list will have some tools required to defeat them all, it won't have them all in the numbers that it might like.

If you win 50% of your games against horde armies, 60% against deathwing, and 75% against mech guard, then the horde matchup is a 'bad' one. It's worse than the others. It's not unwinnable, but it's a tighter fight than the others. And, that's OK. If you expect the field to be 75% mech armies, then maintaining the 75% win odds against those is probably worth having only a 50% against the hordes that you really don't expect to face. I'd even argue that, against a 75% mech field, it's the right decision to skew your victory chances towards those builds and away from hordes.

Now do the numbers for chaos marines, tyranids, generic space marines, or tau and see what those win percentages are. Chances are that more than one of them is going to be sub 50% against equally skilled opponants. This game has bad matchups and bad armies. They exist. Pretending they don't while admitting that a win rate is based off of the games current most powerful army is a bit disingenuous. There is no tau list that can beat both grey knights and descent of angels. There is no generic space marine list that can beat both horde orks and draigowing.

We're not just talking gk. Hulk specifically spoke of his nids and other armies. I play gk, ig, eldar and the same philosophy applies. Also, as to vanilla sm: khan. A buddy of mIne, dameon, plays a khan list with thunderfires, it routinely beats both of those lists without much to do ( he's also a gt winner, with khan bikers). It's mainly the player once you start talking gt play and not just shop level fun games.

We're not just talking gk. Hulk specifically spoke of his nids and other armies. I play gk, ig, eldar and the same philosophy applies

So two of the three armies that have good all comers lists and one with a good standard list set that can easily defang GKs and win GTs as long as it doesn't have to face mech spam. I'm sure you're a brilliant general, we're not talking about bad players here and I'm not trying to imply skill doesn't exist, but until I actually start seeing a varied field of winners in GTs and other major tournaments than I'm not going to be convinced that "the only difference is the player". Were that the case you wouldn't all have GK and IG armies and someone would of taken nids to adepticon. It's inane that you can stand there and pretend that every army can make a tournament winning all comers list with such red herrings as tau and DAs who both have armies that they can't beat being both popular and easily run.

When was the last GT he won with the bikes and what did he face?Was it during the reign of mech guard? Did he ever roll up against an ork army with 220+ orks? Draigowing?