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Hey all, I am going to be (hopefully) playing in a player judged comp tourney in February. I am going to bring daemons and monogod at that as an early concession to the theme aspect of comp in this tourney. Beyond that I haven't decided for sure whether to do khorne or tzeentch. I am curious what you guys think about the lists and how you would "comp" them using these guidelines from their site (reprinted here for your ease) - http://www.broadsidebash.com/rules.php

Composition Scoring
The composition score is worth a possible total of 36 points.
The army Composition score will be a result of both player input only. Each of the player’s opponents through each round will give a composition score for your army using the guidelines below.

Here are the guidelines for scoring:

Themed (5–6 pts): This is a list that is highly themed and sticks to that theme, even to the detriment of the power of the list. This is an army that anyone should have fun playing or playing against.

Normal (2–4 pts): An average list with a balanced mixture of strengths and weaknesses. This is your typical army, most armies will fall into this category.

Hard (1 pt): A list obviously meant to be purely competitive with the strengths of the army maximized and the weaknesses avoided. A list with little or no theme readily appearant. Except to the most competitive of players, this is not likely to be a fun army to play against.

Over The Top (0 pts): A list which is unbalanced in such a way as to make playing against it painful and tedious. A “broken” list. It is our desire that we do not have give out any 0 comp scores.

So, without further ado, the lists I am considering.

- Khorne list -
HQ
Bloodthirster - Unholy Might, Blessing of the Blood God, Deathstrike
Skulltaker on Juggernaut
Herald on Juggernaut - Fury of Khorne, Unholy Might


Troops
16 Bloodletters - Icon
16 Bloodletters - Icon
8 Bloodletters

Elite
4 Bloodcrushers - Fury of Khorne, Icon, Instrument
4 Bloodcrushers - Fury of Khorne, Icon, Instrument

Fast
8 Fleshhounds - Karanak

Heavy
Daemon Prince of Khorne (using the old Scylla model) - Iron Hide, Might, Blessing of the Blood God

which gives me a total of 8 units (the jugger heralds with the juggers)

- Tzeentch -

HQ
Fateweaver
Nyarlathoth - Chariot, Bolt, Soul Devourer, Icon
Yellow Horror - Chariot, Bolt, Soul Devourer

Troops
10 Horrors - Bolt, Changeling
5 Horrors - Bolt
5 Horrors - Bolt
5 Horrors - Bolt

Elite
4 Flamers
4 Flamers

Heavy
The Eye - Bolt, Gaze, Boon, Iron Hide
The Brain - Bolt, Gaze, Boon, Iron Hide
Koko - Bolt, Gaze, Boon, Iron Hide

It might have 160 points of screamers and 2x3 flamers instead of iron hide on the princes and 2x4 if I can get them painted in time.

Khorne-5. Easy to see the theme, easy to deal with.
Tzeentch-3. Right in the middle of the road.

(Shep climbs onto his pulpit, clears his throat and addresses the congregation)

I generally try to avoid making blanket statements on message boards. It doesn't really help stimulate discourse. But in this case, I have to re-iterate for the umpteenth time that comp is biased, outdated, and too often becomes a tool for torpedoing or chipmunking rival players or players you just took a bad beat against.

3 years straight the broadside bash has insisted on a comp format, I was blasted by multiple opponents and the organizers on my comp score for a 4th edition necron list 3 years ago. It was miles away from 'hard'. The following year I chose not to attend mostly due to their choice of hosting it on valentine's day. Then i read Blackmoor and Hulksmash's after action reports, and found that they were unhappy with the comp pairing, the time limit versus size of game ratio, and their overall comp scores. This year, its comp again, its on valentines day again, and now the top two players get to go to Vegas...

In my eyes, composition is covered comprehensively by the codex of a chosen army. If the designers of a game intend for a unit to be a part of a typical army in the grim darkness of the far future, then its included. Second guessing the games designers creates bias. One persons fluff is another persons cheese. As a tourney organizer, if you want to change the format that your games are in, thats your prerogative, but make hard and fast rules. Player judged comp is subjective, easily tampered with, and actually creates more work for the TO.

So to answer the OP. Any list that you have created legally using a codex is demonstrative of a typical force as decided by the games designers of 40k. However, I can not predict what your comp scores will be game to game, because that is mostly going to be based on how many players you destroyed. Knowing your play skill level, and your previous showings at big tourneys, i expect you to run over a lot of people with either list, and therefore I expect you'll be unhappy with your comp score.

Just focus on sports and battle (the two highest pools of points) and throw yourselves on the mercy of the TOs and your opponents for comp. Have fun, use your social engineering skills, and tell me how it goes.

Shep, I say you copy and paste that email and send it to the organizers ;-)

That being said, I didn't make the rules and am just trying to get a list that will work well within the environment.

I agree completely, Shep.

If a tourney's doing player-scored comp, I think it should at least be scored before the game.

You know something's wrong when you have the highest battle points at a tourney and end up in 6th because you took two LRs in 1750 and got comp and sports torpedoed.

And @Som:
Being as objective as I can, those scores are what I feel each of those armies should get. It's what I'd give you even if you rolled me. Of course, YMMV.

I do like your idea of prescoring comp - I might do that myself before hand just to prevent my own biases from coming into play.

Players should have to vote for comp prior to the game and turn in those scores to the TO before the first dice is rolled. I have to agree with Shep wholeheartedly... There are unfortunately those players who will use soft scores to punish their opponents when they lose or even if they think it might help a friend by chipmunking an opponent who is doing well. It's just the way it is so you have to roll with it.

Here are my thoughts on both lists:

Tzneetch
You know this army very well... Inside out in fact. It's highly mobile and can shoot the lights out. I am wondering how it will do comp wise... Hard for me to say. Maybe Warmaster can give you some good feedback.

Khorne
This is the army I voted for. I have a similar list and I have always done well with the soft scores. My advice is as follows if you run this list:

- Drop two of the total four Crushers, combine the remaining six and join them with the two Heralds. It's a deathstar unit. Mine has taken an entire round of shooting from a Necron army and not lost one model... It's amazing but most people don't understand. It's a whole lot easier to kill one squad of four with focused fire. You don't really need two units of four and your comp score will definitely go up if you just run one unit with the two heralds.

- I like the Khorne daemon prince for the theme. If you drop the two Crushers you'll be able to afford the wings. Wings are very expensive but they make a huge difference and the added speed coupled with the greater daemon and the Flesh Hounds will give you all the speed you need. A lot of people will say the hounds are not worth the points but think of it this way... They will also boost your comp score plus they are great for tank busting... They can work wonders against mech IG... I would definitely keep them.

- The Bloodletters are fine as is. Sometimes it's a good idea to join each herald with one of the big units. The Bloodletters are kind of ablative wounds. This type of combination can destroy IG blob units (commissar, 3x sergeant/power weapon, blahblahblah).

Personally I think you have better chances of rating a higher comp score with Khorne. Some people will look at the army and like it just because there is no shooty at all. I have two Grinders fully loaded in my 1850 point list and they make a big difference but I think you can get by without them... You will be counting on the MCs to pop or immobilize landraiders and they can do it. The army can also soak up a lot of shooting. Sure Kairos will do wonders for the survivability of the Tzneetch list but I can tell you right now a lot of people will ding your comp as soon as they see old birdbrain... He has a bad rep for some reason.

G

I am not sure how you plan to split this army into waves but make sure you have one icon in each wave.

GBF, thanks. Yeah, I noticed in your batreps that you have the herald occasionally slum with the bloodletters ;-) and it really opened my eyes tactically. I am still torn on the single deathstar unit - in particular, how do you deal with lash?

edit: oh yeah, my competitive khorne list has 2 soulgrinders, but I thought it would be interesting to try it without them. I guess you are right about "blood-lite" becoming pretty important for dealing with land raiders.

edit again: one more thing, how does the deathstar do against ork horde? I can't remember reading one of your batreps where you faced that.

I'd score both of them as a 5 in comp... they are both mono-god lists with a large variety of units chosen from their god's lists, including not so great units, like flesh hounds.

Its up to you imo.

Hi Somn!

If you follow the link in my sig to my blog I have written several detailed articles on tactics and basic strategies for KDA. Maybe I will write some more soon.

How my death star deals with lash:

- First most lash slam players have not seen a KDA list so I typically have the element of surprise. They will try to run up, shoot and then assault. It doesn't work well as they can't do enough wounds with one shooting phase to the deathstar. When they assault it's pretty much over as I have a huge advantage, all my attacks in close combat ignore armor saves.

- A smart lash player will try to move the deathstar back away from his gunline. To counter that you have to first consider the deathstar has a huge footprint. After they drop I run them and spread each model so that none are within 2" of another. So your typical lash roll is 7"... If they lash the unit twice that's an average of 14". If they use both lashes on the deathstar there are other units that can engage the lash princes, so typically they can only double lash the turn the deathstar drops. Remember that the CSM version of lash does not work against walkers so I am free to focus fire on one lash prince using both Grinders which typically draws their attention away from the Crushers.

Against orks it's typically a dream come true. Orks are not really that great in assault. Orks have some serious problems versus Grinders and they don't want to get their warbosses in close combat with them as the Grinders can ID them.

My worst nightmare is mech eldar but honestly that is a fringe list and I'm not going to waste time worrying about seldomly seen lists that I don't match up well against.

I also wanted to note that I am a fan of taking Death Strike on the greater daemon as it extends the range of his threat versus pesky units like pirhanas and landspeeder. It's expensive for a unit with BS4, you don't always need it but it can be a big help if you really need to reach out there... It basically gives the Bloodthirster an effective range of 24".

G

Checking your blog now - cracks me up that it is the first 40k blog I think I have seen that should probably have an nsfw tag ;-)