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Milquetoast Thug - Why not get Stelek to prove his points himself? Realize he never dared enter any GT or the Ard Boyz, and often criticize how bad the tournaments were? Trashing talking requires minimal effort - I can easily theorize why I should run faster than Usain Bolt :-).

Edited by moderator. Let's leave the primary school-level insults in the playground, shall we?

Blackmoor wrote:Some of those Space Wolf and Mech Guard armies that were at Adepticon were ork armies before. Now the ones that are left are the true ork army players. Those people who love the army and were the ones that played it before the new codex came out.

And us, Blackmoor.

All I gotta say is being a bandwagon ork player was no where near as expensive as IG or SW.. If people want to jump on the IG mech ship and spend 1000$ then Im sure GW is very happy

Ive been playing BA for ever and Its going to be a bit strange to see everyone jump to my army after years of scorn :p

Seriously, at least 3 guys in my club are looking at starting. Blood Angels are the new black!

If someone wants to think orks are underpowered, then let them! It'll be easier for me to sneak up on them and krump 'em!

There are plenty of aggrieved Eldar players over at 40k online who think orks are overpowered. There have even been mutterings at my LGS to that effect.

Just goes to show that army power is all in the eyes of your local metagame.

Redbeard wrote:

Milquetoast Thug wrote:
This is an example of the above - in general, the Stelek school of thought states that meleeing vehicles to kill them is abad idea, due to how 5th ed works... and then you inform us that that it does work. Either the theory is wrong or your opponents are "bad", but I think stelek fails to consider the first possibility seriously enough.

That said, I would like more context on how you won your games.

Well, a lot has to do with synergistic defense. The Kustom Forcefield is a great piece of equipment. In a kan list, it gives a 4+ save to your kans, who then give a 4+ save to boyz behind them. Lootas outrange a lot of things, and can pick off glass-hammer squadrons like land speeders or eldar walkers, valkyries, and good stuff.

I don't know that kans are the best example though - the championship games, I was running battlewagons. AV14 with a 4+ cover save, some are going to get close. Once I'm close, that's a lot of boyz on your side of the field, stopping you from playing your game. 20 boyz can charge a bunch of tanks, and even if I only get some glances and shakes, that means you're not hitting me back much. In a kill-point game, I'll happily trade my 20 boy unit for 2-3 tanks.

Deff-rollas let me kill a tank in the movement phase (huge tactical edge, as I can decide to disembark if you die and there are passengers to assault, or stay inside if I don't). I had one wagon that carried the warboss and some nobs. I could ram/rolla one enemy tank, disembark the boss to assault a second, and have the nobs inside the wagon use a boarding plank to hit a third, all in the same turn. The boarding plank is another excellent piece of equipment. Against skimmers (who can dodge the ram) or walkers (who could hurt the wagon), the plank means I get multiple S9 or S10 attacks just by pulling up alongside you.

Both the rolla and the plank give you a way around the usual problem of assaulting vehicles, which is that the occupants get to go after the assaulters. But the rolla gives me the option for that first charge, and the plank means I'm assaulting (with multiple high-strength hits on back armour) without leaving my tank...

If your defenses are lots of multilasers, which can't hurt the battlewagons, vendettas, which can be shaken or worse by loota fire, missile-troops, who miss often and can only glance, and meltaguns, which require you to be in ramming and assault range, and my forcefield saves any of those on a 4+ to-boot, with multiple wagons bearing down on you, I like my odds well enough.

But this does bring us to the question of theory vs. reality, which I'll get to this evening.

I'm interested in what you've got to say about this.

The ork/tau paradox

Ok, so I got an hour to write this up, so let’s get to it.

First, let me just talk a bit about the paradox in question. It’s a paradox from our dear frenemy Stelek.

In a nut shell, he claims that Orkz are one of the worst armies in the game, and Tau one of the best. You can go on his blog if you wish to see his view points on why this is – but I won’t link it unless specifically asked.

But basically, the main points were something like this:

-Tau have highly survivable vehicles, orkz have poorer surviving vehicles

-Tau can kill tanks easily, orkz have trouble doing so without klaws (lootas only get you so far)

-etc etc.

Now, we can just go ahead and say “he’s a gak” and leave it at that, but this would be a mistake, I think, since Stelek’s raising of the issue gives us, the rest of the 40k community, and opportunity to examine the claims he’s making – and possibly grow because of it. This is particularly important since many of the claims he’s making aren’t REALLY that unreasonable at first glance.

Let us consider a tidbit from David Sirlin, another guy who’s viewpoints meshes with mine –

Imagine a majestic mountain nirvana of gaming. At its peak are fulfillment, "fun", and even transcendence. Most people could care less about this mountain peak, because they have other life issues that are more important to them, and other peaks to pursue. There are few, though, who are not at this peak, but who would be very happy there. These are the people I'm talking to. Some of them don't need any help; they're on the journey. Most, though, only believe they are on that journey but actually are not. They got stuck in a chasm at the mountain's base, a land of scrubdom. Here they are imprisoned in their own mental constructs of made up game rules. If they could only cross this chasm, they would discover either a very boring plateau (for a degenerate game) or the heavenly enchanted mountain peak (for a "deep" game). In the former case, crossing the chasm would teach them to find a different mountain with more fulfilling rewards. In the latter case, well, they'd just be happier. All "playing to win" was supposed to be is the process of shedding the mental constructs that trap players in the chasm who would be happier at the mountain peak.

The point, ostensibly, of stelek’s mission is to “improve competitive gaming in the 40k community”, and I think the above reason –that the game might be more fun if it were more “competitive” (whatever that means). If nothing else, it would be more fun if the people who lose all their games to cheesy lists… weren’t losing all their games, because they improved their own lists and tactics. As a person who once lost all my games, I can agree with this seemingly admirable mission.

I think, in many ways, I understand the mindset of stelek, and understanding this mindset is important to understanding why he says the things he does.

So, what’s the paradox, then?

Well, tau almost never win tournaments, not even getting close, whereas orkz win quite often.

So, the question is “why”? The answer might be theory vs. reality.

Basically, Stelek’s tacticas and army lists are build around a certain kind set of “rules”. Principles. For instance, in chess, winning principles might be to develop early, capture the center, etc. But in chess, I can tell you, these ideas I just listed are “classical” in nature. There is also a “modern” school of thought wherein one eschews going for the center to instead let the other guy capture it, and overextend himself. And they do work rather well, since I play them almost exclusively when I play chess.

So, there might be multiple schools of thought. So what?

Well, the thing with stelek is his school of though emphasizes mobility, redundancy, use of vehicles when possible, use of long range when possible, and a preference of shooting over assault. The idea is you take lots and lots of vehicles (which are durable, mobile, and usually move and shoot long ranged guns), which are hard to kill in assault, and you kill the other guy’s to reduce his mobility and capability to fight back. This is nothing game-changing, exactly, this is just how 5th ed works. Shooting is emphasized over assault since you can be shooting on turn one, assault, maybe not, and because you can fire 3 units of shooting at one unit in the shooting phase – where as assault tends to be more of a one on one affair.

Based on this view, it is obvious why stelek views orks with distain and tau as great – because tau adhere to the above principles almost to a tee, where as orkz blatantly ignore the above principles. But to bring back our classical vs modern school of thought…

Well, as far as I can tell, as a tau player, the above analysis holds true – in annihilation missions. In objective missions, tau has a hard time mainly because their troops are slow and fragile, they have to shoot units off objectives instead of assaulting them off , and they cannot really afford to wander into midfield until they have neutralized most of the enemy’s threats to their firepower. Shooting units off objectives like plaguebearers and such is a massive pain in the ass without markerlights (which everyone will kill first), and without crisis suits w/ plasma within 12’’ (which means you either deep struck which is bad for a lot of reasons, or you somehow walked a bunch of crisis suits into the other guy’s deployment zone, which is hard to do for the reasons above).

Orkz, yes, have a vehicle that is fragile as gak, and a Land raider equivalent with worse side armor, terrible fething rules on some units – but these qualities overlook how they may be able to rock the fething house in objective missions. Orkz have a deceptively large charge range, which may lead opponents to be inclined to keep their distance the first couple turns – in turn leading to it being harder for an opponent to take objectives. Additionally, while I do think ork boyz are an overrated unit (no retreat wounds HURT), they are a cheap unit and that means a ork player will likely have a lot of troops to throw around. Orkz can basically, as noted by Redbeard, “stop the opponent from playing his game” bye getting too much crap in his face. Taking opponents out of their comfort zone - that’s a big deal.

Inidentally, these qualities – large charge ranges (via lash), and excellent troops are also part of the CSM goodness, another army that sometimes places well, although I think they have more noticeable problems in 5th ed. (at this point, orkz might be better at killing tanks than CSM are, which is one part of it).

Now, I don’t think Orkz are tops, nor tau horrible – I think they might rest somewhere in middle – but the above are qualities overlooked by a more myopic view of the game – not necessarily a bad view – but a view that doesn’t take everything into consideration.

I’m sure Stelek is partially right- part of why tau do poorly and orkz do well is also in part to tau being hard to play/lots of 4th ed armies in west coast and such/whatever but come on, there is no way that’s the only reason orkz do so well. That would be absurd. It can’t all be just due to massive foot armies stalling for wins, or else you’d see a lot of all foot guard armies kicking ass, which as far as I’m aware, they’re aren’t.

Anyways, that’s might take on the situations. Thoughts?

(I might repost this as a discussion topic later on, but only if others feel it is worth doing so).

Nice analysis. I guess it tends to point towards being flexible in your outlook. Stelek's principles and the way he hunts for them tends to make his lists wacky and sometimes one dimensional, but then again, sometimes it works. Of course, sometimes sticking too rigidly to these ideas leads to inflexibility of outlook which leads to statements like "orks suck".

You're also spot on that the real tournament scene is nothing like a pure optimised environment, and 40K as a game really doesn't want to be played that way.

I don't have much to add other than we played against a "Stelek" list in round 1 of the TT (when asked where online they go, the reply was YTTH). On my/Reecius' side we were against IG and on Whitedragon/Platuan4ths side they had SW razor spam. We went second which should have been a death knell to an IG list like they had but with tight play and some good tactics we kept them to a draw on all three objectives and scored more points overall. We almost won the secondary but Reecius had some bad rolls and we couldn't kill 5 dudes sitting in our deployment zone.

The list was good, better than ours in fact, but I see people reading YTTH, building Stelek approved lists, then losing/drawing against inferior lists cause they haven't developed the proper tactics to use yet. It goes back to theory vs. reality and number crunching vs. experience.

Milquetoast Thug wrote:Stuff

This is dead on, not only in respect to Orks/Tau but also to YTTH.

It can be really easy to get caught up in the groupthink on any forum-but what's really required at all points is a critical approach.

If Stelek starts preaching about how Orks suck, your first thought shouldn't be, "OK." or, "Nu-uh!", it should be, "Why does he think that? He's presented information and viewpoints that I both agree and disagree with in the past, so this one is worth examining."

Of course, certain people will spring to defend either OK or Nu-uh immediately and we get "ZombYes vs. Scrubs".

And Sirlin == Awesome

Sirlin is an interesting view. I don't necessarily share all his views, but it's worth reading.

Ok, so on to this paradox. I think Stelek's basic premise is wrong...

Well, the thing with stelek is his school of though emphasizes mobility, redundancy, use of vehicles when possible, use of long range when possible, and a preference of shooting over assault. The idea is you take lots and lots of vehicles (which are durable, mobile, and usually move and shoot long ranged guns), which are hard to kill in assault, and you kill the other guy’s to reduce his mobility and capability to fight back. This is nothing game-changing, exactly, this is just how 5th ed works. Shooting is emphasized over assault since you can be shooting on turn one, assault, maybe not, and because you can fire 3 units of shooting at one unit in the shooting phase – where as assault tends to be more of a one on one affair.

First, 40k is about assault, not shooting. It should be readily apparent to anyone looking at a game set in the far future, with weapons like artillery tanks and aircraft that carrying a sword into battle is a bad idea...




And yet, here we have this game where a third of the rules are dedicated to assault, all of the main characters are designed for assault, and the rules favour getting stuck in. Obviously, the designers want assault to matter.

Why is assault better?

Lots of people will tell you that assault is better cause you can kill opponent models on their turn as well as yours. That's a red herring, and has nothing to do with it. Afterall, if you can kill their models on their turn, they can kill your models on your turn... so let's abandon that line of reasoning.

Assault is better for the following reasons:

1) Assault can prevent units shooting, even if it doesn't kill models. If my battle plan is to assault you, and your battle plan is to shoot me, and I can stop your plan outright just by getting to you, that's in my favour.

2) Assault has an inherent mobility built in. Models move twice as far as normal when they have something to charge. They also get to move further when they win a fight.

3) Wounds inflicted in assault are worth more than wounds inflicted by shooting. What does that mean? Every wound I inflict in an assault also gives me a leadership modifier on your break test, or an extra set of wounds added for combat resolution. And I can sweep large numbers of models all in one move. Shooting wounds doesn't get me anything other than the one model I shot. In fact, shooting at troops in 5th ed is even weaker than it was in 4th ed. There is no more -1 penalty for being below half strength, and there is no more last-man-standing test each turn. You have to shoot, and kill, every man in a fearless squad, and may have to kill every man in a non-fearless squad to get them out of the game.

4) Shooting something out of cover is pretty darn hard in 5th edition. 40 points of grots (10 wounds) can rock a 3+ cover save on an objective by going to ground with a Ld re-roll and you can shoot quite a lot at them for two turns before they're gone. And that's only 40 points of models.

5) GW makes it so assault is better. Seriously. Look at all the models with hand-to-hand weapons. They need to sell those models. If those models sucked, people wouldn't buy them. Everything is skewed to make sure that assault armies can actually get into assault in some way. That's a primary requirement for the ruleset. If the assault models couldn't reliably get to assault in some way, the whole game concept breaks down.

In a way, the more potent shooting becomes, the more nerfed shooting will be in the next edition. This is a game that is about hand-to-hand fighting. Marneus holds a set of doors against 1000 orks, Horus and the Emperor fight hand-to-hand, and so on.



What else is flawed in Stelek's basic assumption? The concept that long-range is feasible. By the 40k rulebook, 1/3rd of all deployment options have the armies start as little as 18" apart. Most tournaments I attend have amended Dawn of War to have a 12" no-man's land down the center of the table, because pushback is harsh. But Dawn of War, with the inherent Nightfight, and close initial distances mean that your long-range guns just aren't that effective. Furthermore, in objective missions, long-range doesn't get you a lot, because your opponent knows where you need to be eventually. Armies, as a whole, are also faster in 5th ed than 4th, simply because of run moves. Dreadnoughts and MCs close on you roughly 50% faster than they did in 4th ed. And, as stated above, most assault armies have a way to close the distance faster, whether that is by movement options, deep striking, outflanking, or combinations of the above.

Is long-range shooting useful? Sure. Is only long-range shooting useful? Not at all. The basic principle of game design that allows assault armies to function at all dictates that regardless of what your range is, I have to be able to get Marneus into assault with you or people won't buy Marneus.


So, Stelek is wrong, because Stelek is approaching the analytical breakdown of the game with the wrong basic premise. If your initial premise is flawed, all the logic in the world building from that position won't help you.

Orks win because orks are designed to get stuck in, and the game is designed to reward armies that get stuck in. Their lack of range isn't an issue, because they don't seek to fight you at range. They have just enough long-range shooting (lootas), to reliably neutralize the biggest threats that you're presenting while the other boyz move up the field.

Tau don't do well because the weakness designed into the army (being weak in combat) is compounded with the shooting weakness built into the game. Tau can never be so good that they can reliably shoot other armies off the table, and so whatever enemy models make it to the Tau will probably win the game.

Orks won the team tournament. I saw a number of them, but yeah, IG and Wolves dominated the crowd.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
And yes, Ozzy and I beat "Stelek" lists with out 'what ever we had available to us' lists. We just threw what we brought on the table based on the models we had, went second and still won, although it was a minor victory.

Those guys we played though were great guys and the most fun opponents of the day.

Im constantly amused that people put any clout into steleks blog.. I wasnt even aware he plays 40k besides scrawlings online.. From what I heard he got kicked out of all his stores or no one wanted to play him anyhow

Theoryhammer is fairly pointless because every gaming area has totally different metagames and power players

Over saturation of a list tends to bring its demise.. Just like nob bikers were "kings" a while ago and everyone had to bring psyker battle squads to deal with them.. Well people dont bring battle squads and nob bikers arent kings. Perhaps people just got used to seeing them

I agree with you, the more we talk about the annoying man in Utah, the more attention he gets, which is playing into his game.

It just feels good to beat his "super duper" lists with basic, well rounded armies like Ozzy and I used. Tactics and skill beat lists.

And P.S., Nob Bikers won with Team Tournament, so they aren't dead and buried just yet!

Indeed, but the nob biker lists were a bit more balanced than the stereotypical "22 nob bikerz this is my whole army". Still, nice to see them hanging around.

Yeah, that is true, they only had a 5 man squad each (so 10 per 2 man team), with tons of lootas and some boyz.

I have a friend who runs a couple of wagons and a 5-man Nob Biker squad at 1750. Works very well for him. Until he runs into a PBS

Overall I think Redbeard is on target. However, ranged shooting can also save armies by extending the time they have to shoot. Basically, IMHO the success of a shooting army is based on the time it is allowed to shoot. If you can successfully keep your guns firing consistently for 5 turns, a shooting army can pick apart an army designed for assault. It really comes down to Skill and Tactics like Ozy said. My army was so close to going 3-0 on sunday it wasn't even funny. Sometimes the impossible becomes possible and you just have to eat what the dice gods feed you. When the dice turn south on you at critical moments of the game all the planning and tactics in the world can't save you sometimes.

Reecius wrote:I agree with you, the more we talk about the annoying man in Utah, the more attention he gets, which is playing into his game.

It just feels good to beat his "super duper" lists with basic, well rounded armies like Ozzy and I used. Tactics and skill beat lists.

And P.S., Nob Bikers won with Team Tournament, so they aren't dead and buried just yet!

I saw that army, I wondered, how did they make it pass all the JOTWW players? Did they even meet any?

A fine read, gentlemen.

I don't normally wade in on 40k discussions, but I have to say that the statement that the game is designed with an eye towards CC which inherently puts the Tau at a disadvantage is bang-on correct. Armies with a propensity to assault will tend to win over armies that tend to shoot.

One other factor that wasn't really mentioned above is that the amount of damage that you can do in assault is higher than what you can do with shooting. Yes, you can squeeze off a lot of shots at a marine force with rapid-firing whatevers, but it still amounts to only two shots per model, and unless you are using Plas, they are still saving on a 3+. On the other hand, if you charge in with melee oriented troops, you can easily get 3 attacks per model, and as such have the potential to do more damage.

I saw that army, I wondered, how did they make it pass all the JOTWW players? Did they even meet any?

I talked to them and they said that they had a tough match up with mech IG, but that the mission favored them and they pulled off the win. I would assume they played wolves as they were so prevalent, but with 110 teams, it is quite possible they got lucky and missed JoWW or a PBS.

Reecius wrote:

I saw that army, I wondered, how did they make it pass all the JOTWW players? Did they even meet any?

I talked to them and they said that they had a tough match up with mech IG, but that the mission favored them and they pulled off the win. I would assume they played wolves as they were so prevalent, but with 110 teams, it is quite possible they got lucky and missed JoWW or a PBS.

JoWW isn't too hard for Nob bikers to mitigate - lootas will frag the important rhino(s), and the Nobs can spread out horizontally to limit the number of models hit to 1. At that point, it's probably not worth the Wolf player's time to use Jaws; Living Lightning would do more damage amongst the Lootas.

That is true, although a canny opponent could tank shock them into a pack then hit them with JoWW, but at that point may as well must tank shock the Nobs off the board, which I find works better anyway.

This is a really good thread. I never went to Adepticon but I've talked to people who have gone and obviously I can read stuff on the internet. The problem and thing I always bring up when so called internet experts speak up is well it varies a bit.

1) If you have enough time to post as much as Stelek and Corpse over at B&C do, you have enough time to paint an army and show up at one of these tournaments. Surely then your superior skill and army list will see your face in White Dwarf imminently.

2) The thing about these optimal lists, especially in the US of A and the UK is they always seem to be played on tables with too little terrain in my opinion. It still says in the rule book as I looked last night, that "the more terrain the better the game". This along with emphasizing the kill, kill, kill mission above all else would obviously favour shooting armies.

3) Point size and table size. I played in a local tournament it was 1250 points in a store and we had to use 4*4 tables. I think 500 points per every two square feet is about right. So 1850 points on a 6*4 table let alone 2000 or 2250 is way over crowded. Combined with little terrain shooting particularly barrage shots say form Hammerheads become much more effective.

I think Tau should be a pretty good army, of course I think the same about Dark Eldar and most armies, yet I always play Nurgle or lately mixed CSM. I have played orks. But if you put tau on a big battlefield with little terrain, the orks should be beaten crossing the wide open expanse. Flip that and put the tau and orks on a smaller table with tonnes of terrain and the orks should have better odds.

I'm tired of Stelek this and that, I'm tired of BoLS this and that, to me the true winners are the guy like GMM studio who produced a cool looking army that everyone looked at online. He's a mercenary painter, but it was probably profitable for him to do well appearance wise at a major tournament too.

I'm working on a good all comers list that isn't cookie cutter and I seem to paint well enough, maybe I'll have to come on down to Adepticon and finish 48th or something.

;-)

Muskie wrote:

I'm working on a good all comers list that isn't cookie cutter and I seem to paint well enough, maybe I'll have to come on down to Adepticon and finish 48th or something.

;-)

You can prove your tactical abilities by placing next to last like I did a few years ago

You should come to Adepticon just for fun if nothing else. It is a great time, I truly enjoyed the entire event.

And hey Shoogoth, at least you beat out one guy!

My hope is to fly over for it next year, if I can. Depends when the schools go on holidays, but I'd love to come to the event, it sounds brilliant.

Reecius wrote:

I saw that army, I wondered, how did they make it pass all the JOTWW players? Did they even meet any?

I talked to them and they said that they had a tough match up with mech IG, but that the mission favored them and they pulled off the win. I would assume they played wolves as they were so prevalent, but with 110 teams, it is quite possible they got lucky and missed JoWW or a PBS.

Hi,

I was one of the Sons of Shatner players.

Our lists:
Warboss w/Claw, Cybork Body, Bike
5 Nobs w/2 Claws, Doc, Waagh Banner, Bosspole
30 Shoota Boyz w/3 Big Shootas, Claw, Bosspole
10 Grots
12 Lootas
3 Kannons
68 Models, 3 Troop Choices each.

Our opponents were as follows:

Round 1: Olmecs - Guard, Black Templar, Nids, Tau (Totally not optimized list)
Round 2: A Team - Guard, Nids, Demons, Orks (very themey with good generals, but not terribly optimized)
Round 3: 3 Foot 2 - Quad Leafblower Guard - Only difference was one player had a OH Inquisitor with Divine Pronoucement
- Primary was 2 objectives on their side of the table worth 8pts to us, 2pts to them, and vice versa for 2 objectives on our side.
- Secondary was Kill Points
- Cannot remember Tertiary

(At this point we had 4 games with complete battle points, so we decided very quickly a massacre was very unlikely) My team chose to hunker down on our objectives, and send the Nobs forward to hopefully force them to stay back long enough they couldn't tank shock us off our objectives (They were unable to kill any nobs turn 1, turn 2 they killed 1 of six, so it wasn't till turn 3 they forced a morale check on 1 squad...breaking it with the PSB). The tactic worked we ended with Primary Draw, Secondary Win, Tertiary Draw.

Our other team managed to kill the Divine Pronouncement inquisitor Turn 3 after he got pinned when his Chimera died, so he only did it to one Nob Bike Squad (Dawn of War, we went second) that didn't get escorted off the table. And then managed to get most of the battle around some very lucky rolling by Carlosthecraven's Warboss (he absorbed 10+ lascannon wounds without taking one).
Round 4: Chuck Noris (Defending Champs) - Quad Iyanden Eldar

Overall we couldn't really have asked for a better draw. But we also play well enough to know Nob Bikes are no longer indestructible, so they aren't always thrown forward Turn 1 in hopes of crushing everything turn 2.

Honestly we were far more worried about Lash than we were JotWW. Getting pushed away from being a threat and clumped together for pie plates, plus pinning check is a much bigger danger in our minds than us allowing a tank shock (when we are way more mobile) and JotWW a big group.

Orks have something other lists lack in our opinion that still keep them top tier. Handfulls of dice to throw at any problem, with a difficulty for opponents to prioritize targets. Thus reducing the highs and lows of rolling a little. In a game where everything gets a save now...you goal is to force opponents to roll them.

Later,
WR

Ozymandias wrote:The list was good, better than ours in fact, but I see people reading YTTH, building Stelek approved lists, then losing/drawing against inferior lists cause they haven't developed the proper tactics to use yet. It goes back to theory vs. reality and number crunching vs. experience.

This. A thousand times, THIS.

The SW Razor Spam WD and I faced should have beaten us. They didn't know the tactics required to actually beat us(bring their mounted WG and GH units into our faces and assault our units), instead relying on the LC/Twin PG Razors to sit back and shoot at us from range(which killed 2 Vendettas and a Valk the whole game, as well as some immobilized Chimeras). We knew they didn't really know what they were doing when they used their last MM/HF Speeder to Melta the Demolisher they were terrified of the whole game(rolling a 1 to hit, too), instead of flaming our infantry off of the objective last turn.

Things like that typified the whole game and the only reason we drew was that they finally assaulted last turn with a Rune Priest and his squad.

It all came down to Stelek's "Shooting over Assaulting" theory vs our reality experience.

Reecius wrote:You should come to Adepticon just for fun if nothing else. It is a great time, I truly enjoyed the entire event.

And hey Shoogoth, at least you beat out one guy!

No I didnt