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I had a ton of fun at 'Ard Boyz. The place I played was competitive, but it felt more like a normal gaming night with people joking and being stupid and zero bad attitudes. Probably the best tournament I've ever been to since I'm used to people pulling rules out of their rules and snarling at you from across the table even when they're tabling you...

... and there was a lot of tabling. Every round had multiple massacres and every round had lots of people getting tabled. I tabled two people myself, and my list wasn't even that competitive (Four Vet squads in chimeras, two vet squads in vendettas, two HQ's with the works, two Basilisks, one executioner). The conclusion some people at the tournament came up with was that it was way too easy to get a massacre given the scenarios they came up with. Other people said it's because the game changes at 2500 points and because people brought lists that were as brutal as possible. I've never seen so many people get tabled in earlier editions of 40k, but I'm kind of new to 5e, so I'm wondering if the game has changed to make it easier to table someone. Mind you this isn't a criticism of 5e, just wondering if this part of the game has changed.

Either way, I'm wondering what experiences other people had at 'Ard Boyz. Were there lots of massacres? Is this normal for 5e? Is it easier to get tabled in 5e than previous editions?

I'm eager to hear what the Dakka community has to say.

The way I see it, because tabling people gives benefits, there is more subconscious incentive to do so

FWIW, massacres from the scenarios do not equal tabling. To your poll though, the scenario setups were easy to score massacres though.

12thRonin wrote:FWIW, massacres from the scenarios do not equal tabling.

Though this is true, it's fairly easy to get a massacre if you're tabling someone. In scenario two, it's almost automatic and it becomes a lot easier to grab objectives if you're destroying enough units per turn to table someone. Though there would be exceptions, if you're tabling someone, it's probably going to be a massacre.

My mindset going into 'Ard Boyz was that it would require at least two, and maybe 3 massacres to win. In a normal friendly game, you play to win, but don't concern yourself with killpoints; in 'Ard Boyz, knowing that you needed more objectives and equal or greater killpoints....or that killpoints are not all created equal....

Well, it encouraged players to approach their games tactically to maximize their effectiveness.

Massacres happened often enough and SHOULD if a good player with a decent army list, or a decent player with a good army list get set up on a table. If you like, think of it this way: A massacre is a clear defeat. Do you think your army would honestly be pleased with less than knowing that they clearly won the fight? Your space marines won, the battle is over, and now they can go home to their wives and make little genetically engineered space marine mutants.

If anything, the prevalence of cover saves and the changes to glancing hits in 5e prevent games from being total wipes as they may have been in past editions. The big deal is that without composition, paint, or sportsmanship scores, 'Ard Boyz is about two things: having fun, and winning. How this differs from a normal game or even a normal tournament is that it matters to what extent one wins.

If we're playing a friendly game that happens to be kill points based, and I'm leading by 2 kill points, and I have 4 small troop units left on the table to face your one remaining elite squad with two attached HQ's, I don't really want to continue to fight, although I might not outright run away (it is a fun game, after all). By the same token, in round two, with that same score, the 2 points differential isn't enough for more than a tie, which unless you had a really small turnout for your location is going to take away your chance at 1st place. You've got to go big or go home, and risk the 4 points you might give up for the potential 12 you could gain. Mutual destruction (killing last models off with powerfists or something) would then give you an 8 point lead for a massacre, keeping you in the hunt for first place.

To a much lesser extent, you're rewarded for kill points even in the objective games, as kill points marked the difference between minor and major victories, and 7/12 of the bonus points (which probably decided many a ranking this weekend) involved killing a particular portion of your opponent's army (enemies in your deployment, HQ, or troops). This meant that instead of just worrying about holding and contesting, now there was incentive to really kill stuff in those scenarios too.

So to answer your question... it's just a normal part of 'Ard Boyz!

Actually at the location I played at everyone in the running for first tied the second scenario except for me. Which was kinda nice knowing I just had to play for a minor victory to win the tourney. I still went for the big numbers but it let me play more conservatively.

The points system in 'Ard Boyz rewards massacres, so people play for massacres. Not doing so seriously hampers your chance to win the tournament. Other people will be, so if you want to win, you're going to either need to triple up majors, or get two massacres and a lesser win.

As such, people bring "win big or go home" lists.

The 1st and 3rd missions were rather easy to get massacres on.

The 2nd mission end up being 3 ties, 1 minor vitory, 1 major victory, and a massacre for the 6 games that went on.

I would have expected the second mission to be easy to score a massacre on, perhaps more than the first two. 8 KPs more than the opponent doesn't seem that tough with the modified scoring.

It certainly is a lot easier than the KP mission in the preliminaries last year, which required 8 more KPs than the opponent for a massacre and everything was still only worth 1 point each.

Danny Internets wrote:It certainly is a lot easier than the KP mission in the preliminaries last year, which required 8 more KPs than the opponent for a massacre and everything was still only worth 1 point each.

Let's take this to the extremes, and say I kill your two HQ's, and one of your troop squads. Nothing else.

Now you kill all of my Orks, minus my two HQ's.

Congratulations, you just scored 16 points. I scored 11. You just wiped out 2300 points of Orks while potentially losing as little as 110 points (2x wierdboy and min grots, 2xHQ + 1 troop can be that cheap) of your own, for a minor victory.

Still think that massacre comes easily?

Malecus wrote:

Danny Internets wrote:It certainly is a lot easier than the KP mission in the preliminaries last year, which required 8 more KPs than the opponent for a massacre and everything was still only worth 1 point each.

Let's take this to the extremes, and say I kill your two HQ's, and one of your troop squads. Nothing else.

Now you kill all of my Orks, minus my two HQ's.

Congratulations, you just scored 16 points. I scored 11. You just wiped out 2300 points of Orks while potentially losing as little as 110 points (2x wierdboy and min grots, 2xHQ + 1 troop can be that cheap) of your own, for a minor victory.

Still think that massacre comes easily?

Agreed. If one plays stupidly, it will be difficult for them to score a massacre.

You don't ignore the HQs and expect to win big on that mission.

At the prelims, massacres occur more frequently because: 1) You have people who did not pre-read the scenarios, 2) You have people who got cajoled into playing by a buddy and 3) You have more casual players.

Mix into this the requirements of massacres in the scenarios. They are not THAT hard to acchieve although weird result can occur:
In my 3rd game, I lost WAAAAY more army than my opponent, but he could not hold the two objectives. I dominated those two points on the board and threw everything else I had (and I mean everything) into keeping him away from those. Soooo... Major victory for me, not a Massacre.

You will see fewer at semis and finals, but mostly because from here on out ALL of the players will really be pre-studying missions, etc., where possible.

You get more massacres at an ‘Ard Boyz tournament than a normal one.

The reason why is that it is a free tournament where you do not have to have painted minis.

So you have a mixture of hard core players that are there to “punch in” and other that are newbies and people who play for fun and are just glad to be there.

Next round when they separate the wheat from the chaff, you will not be getting any easy massacres.

For the first and third mission, it's be hard to have a major victory. If one person has each objectives, chances are one persons going to have more Kill points, but if someone has the majority of the objectives, they're probibly beating out their opponent on killing units as well, leading to massacures. Although over 1/2 of the games at my FLGS ended up ties for round 2, the winner was still a triple massacre.

I agree with what Blackmoor said. The semi finals won't be as easy to win by a massacre since the playing field will be more even. You probably won't be playing any of your buddies so no one is going to give away anything. This is when the top tiered lists will prevail; there will be lots of good players with tweaked lists and only those that can win all three games and get two massacres will advance to the finals.

Where I played there were a lot of massacres the first round, a lot of draws the second round, and only one massacre the final round. I think some people got more points than normal since they were playing against their friends. The semi finals will be much more brutal.

I didn't play last year but I did hear some Ard Boyz veterans say that this year the missions were easier to score a massacre. Some of it just comes down to the matchups and who knows how to play their armies better.

Actually the problem with round 2 is that you never know what happened at the other stores in the region. So the store that only had 3 people show up will throw off the games again. At least for the first game. You also run into the problem of the people that win not being able to travel so you don't always get the best of the best.

It's not really until you get to the final tournament that you are more than likely going to get to play against 3 tough opponents.

At least that's what my experience has been in the past.

The scenarios seemed stupidly tooled towards massacres to me. I've been disappointed by most of the results I've seen, because it allows sub-par lists to do disproportionally well when they suck, because they player people who suck even more. Having been on the receiving end of failure to come first in a similar situation, it's unpleasant to say the least.

In my practice sessions for mission 2, I massacred every time, and tabled 2/3 of the time.

At our store there was one major victory and one minor victory, and every single other game was a massacre. In fact, my minor victory should have been a massacre, and the fact that it swung all the way from ekeing it to crushing shows that the scenario in question (#3) is probably geared towards minimums and maximums.

And, btw, I'm pretty sure there's a rule that says that if you table the other person, you win automatically. And while I didn't table anyone, I got dang close twice.

I think the whole US system of massacres/major/minor wins needs to be retooled to have better indications of skill.. but shrug that takes work

Also 'ard boyz is severly hampered by the time limit.. On average to finish no player turn can take over 12 minutes..A game is not a game if you get 3 turns in

Ie the "winner" of last years 'ard boyz was party due to a 1.5 hour game

As for massacres.. shrug same thing as last year and the year before.. nothing new here to see

In 3 years ive gotten 12 massacres i think.. These missions didnt change much and semis doesnt really up the level of competition because some stores have like 9 people.. one even had 3!

The winner is the person with the best matchups.. Cant predict by just a list

At our store there was only 1 massacre on scenario 2. Out of 18 players.

I was actually the only player going into round 3 w/2 massacres. Which was good since I played probably one of the best tournament players in our area for the 1st place slot and squeeked out a major victory after a ridiculous game of hideous dice rolling on both our parts. That being said all i needed was a minor victory to lock the tourney so I played a little more conservatively than normal.

At our store, every single game was a massacre. 'Ard Boyz or no, that is just darned odd.

The first and second missions aside, our consensus was that it was too easy to get the massacre on the third mission. I would have assumed you'd need to control both objectives to get the big points, but go figure...

I'd say that scenario 1 and 3 were fairly easy to get massacres (especially 3). Anecdottally, our store had 12 games running and the first round ended with 11 massacres (I believe). Round 2 had 1 massacre. Round 3 went back up again to something like 8-9. I think the reduced number in round 3 was mostly due to the fact that half the field was clearly out of the running and relaxed a little...

I made a stupid error and lost one of my hqs early in my second game. It did seriously swing the pendulum because I was chewing through his elite, heavy support and fast attack like no one's business. He hid kantor behind LOS blocking terrain surrounded by tac squads and tanks... I simply couldn't get to him.

Had I not forgotten to jump back behind cover with my shas'el, I believe I would have scored a major victory and been in contention for 1st place.. Of course, I ended up tabling my third round opponent while the eventual winner went on and scored his third massacre. Had I been forced to play those Orks, I might not have qualfied at all.