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I liked the missions a lot.

I made my army the way I wanted to, regardless of the missions and I took 3rd so I was pretty happy about it. It's my opinion that good players should be able to make the best list that they can and adapt to the missions as they arise.

Valhallan42nd wrote:
I think a lot of people failed to see the inherent balance in the mission structure. It also made people question their basic army structure, and it was simple. I liked the missions in retrospect.

The problem is that it made people question the basic army structure by changing the fundamental victory conditions of the game. It's kind of like changing the rules of baseball to make it so you can only score via homeruns a week before the World Series and then saying "Well, we gave you plenty of notice to rebuild your team." I wouldn't have minded it as much if it didn't create auto-loss scenarios, such as horde Orks versus mech IG or DE.

Scenario 1 was fine but the deployment was a bit wonky as people have mentioned.

Scenario 2 was fine but I will actually say that I like KP's more now that I've played a 4th ed scenario with 5th ed armies.

Scenario 3 I faced another partial mech army. The only thing I didn't like is that we basically just sniped each other's 3 KP units all game. Also, I was playing Doublewing and he was playing Plague Marines so really all we could kill easily were each others' vehicles.

Took third overall with 2 wins and a minor loss (second round vs. Blood Angels).

Kirasu wrote:Im curious to see what winning BA lists people brought.. This is one of the first national tournies with them

While I didn't take 1st, I was only one point behind. I had a libby, two crusaders full of FNP terminators, three units of scouts, two flamestorm Baals, and three vindis.

I'm very, very pleased with the list.

I got 2nd with my list

Grim

2 10man Assault squads with JP PW, 2 Inferious Pistols
10 man tac with Melta PW Rhino
10 man Tac PW Melta
3 Vindicators
2 Baals
3 Libby Dreads in Drop pods

As for the 3rd mission I had 35KP's versus my opponents 21. I earned 20 from him and he earned 6 from me.

3rd place in our store was 3 Baal Preds, 3 AC/Las Preds, max Las/Plas Razorbacks, max Libby Dreads. MaxOD is very much alive and well.

I hsd shooty counter assault nids. missions one and 3 were a breeze. Mission 2 I pulled a Tally daemon list. A damon prince came down and turned my tyranofex into spawn. 265 points down happened again, another 265 points. There was no way I could come back forn that with Nid shooting, and plague swords would just rip through my MCs. I went from first to barely getting third. I just don't like VP. I think KP are a lot fairer. It's the only think keeping mech from being godlike. Leave 4th edition in 4th please

Double posts suck don't they. I found peole I played were not as rulse savy as I thought they would be.

In the store I played at, the 3KP thing in scenario three had zero change on the outcome of the final placings. Out of 18 people there, over half were normal mechanized lists and the guard player with the most kill points actually massacred in round three to get third place. If anything was a throwback to 4th edition, it was the favoring of heavy drop pods. The SW guy who ran locanwing pods massacred everyone he played other than me in round one.

Did any of the BA players run into guys who tried to say that vindis weren't blast weapons? If so I hope you popped em in the mouth

sexiest_hero wrote:I hsd shooty counter assault nids. missions one and 3 were a breeze. Mission 2 I pulled a Tally daemon list. A damon prince came down and turned my tyranofex into spawn. 265 points down happened again, another 265 points. There was no way I could come back forn that with Nid shooting, and plague swords would just rip through my MCs. I went from first to barely getting third. I just don't like VP. I think KP are a lot fairer. It's the only think keeping mech from being godlike. Leave 4th edition in 4th please

So you think killing 5 scouts is worth killing 30 boyz? That is what kill points say, you take the min squad or max squad and they are worth the same. Vp's are alot more fair.

sexiest_hero wrote:I hsd shooty counter assault nids. missions one and 3 were a breeze. Mission 2 I pulled a Tally daemon list. A damon prince came down and turned my tyranofex into spawn. 265 points down happened again, another 265 points. There was no way I could come back forn that with Nid shooting, and plague swords would just rip through my MCs. I went from first to barely getting third. I just don't like VP. I think KP are a lot fairer. It's the only think keeping mech from being godlike. Leave 4th edition in 4th please

Hmm, spawning (Gift of Chaos or Touch of Chaos or whatever) is a little counter-productive to a Tally list, I would think, since it doesn't rack up tallies (unless Tally says "removed from play" - I can't really remember). It seemed to work though - those VPs started to eat you up, sounded like >.<

jbunny wrote:

sexiest_hero wrote:I hsd shooty counter assault nids. missions one and 3 were a breeze. Mission 2 I pulled a Tally daemon list. A damon prince came down and turned my tyranofex into spawn. 265 points down happened again, another 265 points. There was no way I could come back forn that with Nid shooting, and plague swords would just rip through my MCs. I went from first to barely getting third. I just don't like VP. I think KP are a lot fairer. It's the only think keeping mech from being godlike. Leave 4th edition in 4th please

So you think killing 5 scouts is worth killing 30 boyz? That is what kill points say, you take the min squad or max squad and they are worth the same. Vp's are alot more fair.

In that context, yes, VP's are more fair.

But when you consider that 5 scouts and 30 boyz are equal from an objective holding standpoint (disregarding that 30 boyz can hold more than one objective) then KP's get a lot more fair.

I thought S1 and S2 were okay. There were more table quarters and objectives than most people had troops, but I'm fine with that. It keeps things interesting. I think that there should be more emphasis placed on contesting objectives rather than actually taking them. And the table quarters were only a single point a piece, so that's no big deal. I still feel robbed by S3. I know mech lists are "harder" than non-mech, but it's 'ard Boyz. The brochure says to bring the hardest lists you can with no comp score. There's no fine print saying that they'll add it in later. I was honestly surprised to read in the other threads that there were Mech IG that actually did so well. I'd be very interested to see some of those lists and find out who they went up against. Pretty much every Mech list we had at our store was destroyed that round, and I'm talking a top tier Sisters player, another IG player who I'd never seen play before, but had probably a better assembled list than I did, myself, and then there was a Rhino heavy SM (and assault marine heavy) list that I remember facing in round 1. My list weighed in at a modest 40 KP and would have been 17 KP if it was KP as normal, and Mech already gets hit by KPs hard due to each transport being an additional one. I probably wouldn't feel so burned about the whole deal were I not in first place by a longshot prior to that mission.

Oh well, other than that, it was fun. Everyone there played a good clean game and there was good spirits all around.
</whine>

Please explain how 5 guys on an objective are equal to 30 guys on an objective, and that the 30 guys can easier hold more than one objective?

Also normally KP's and objectives are not used in the same game, same with VP's and objectives.

Valhallan42nd wrote:I think a lot of people failed to see the inherent balance in the mission structure. It also made people question their basic army structure, and it was simple. I liked the missions in retrospect.

I saw that, which made this the most difficult ard boyz to prepare for.

The missions were meh at best, but I managed. Ultimately I played the list I brought last year sans the rhinos and drop pod and used those points to grab a MSU and some wargear on the Master of Sanctity.


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Valhallan42nd wrote:
I think a lot of people failed to see the inherent balance in the mission structure. It also made people question their basic army structure, and it was simple. I liked the missions in retrospect.

Agreed. While I didn't really change the concept of my army at all, it at least made me really think about what I wanted to run.

schadenfreude wrote:...It's a no comp tournament. I just feel crazy scenarios should not be used in the place of a comp system...

I think this summarizes the situation ideally from everything in the thread.

I was considering playing again this year, after going to finals last year. Once I heard about crazy S3 I decided not to attend. I think it was a good call.

There is a tremendous Irony in the hardboy. The tournament is suppose to be about the best players and the hardest lists, but the missions can be designed to break the metagame. Which is it. This is clearly not the event it is advertised as for the "best players" and "hardest lists".

It has been interesting to read the various posts about the missions and peoples experiences.

Unfortunately IMO with nonsense missions the entire point of this thing is nullified. For this kind of tourney it ought to be the missions as published in the basic rulebook. Use of custom missions to favor something else only skews the field and detracts from what is suppose to be an event about no holds barred armies and competency of the game.

Schadenfreude has it, I would have seen this as a frustrating waste of time, I for one am glad I didn't bother.

Augustus wrote:

schadenfreude wrote:...It's a no comp tournament. I just feel crazy scenarios should not be used in the place of a comp system...

I think this summarizes the situation ideally from everything in the thread.

I was considering playing again this year, after going to finals last year. Once I heard about crazy S3 I decided not to attend. I think it was a good call.

Actually, I think it's a better test of a player's skill to mess with the Status Quo of list building. It separates the tacticians from the people that get their "win button" armies off of the internet.

I had about 10 minutes worth of panic when I first read the missions after they went up because I run a very heavily mechanized list. 36 killpoints worth of orks.

I did some quick math about switching in Deff Dreads, or Killa-kans....taking out lone units of deffkoptas and my mostly useless warbuggies and ultimately decided that it was more valuable to play the list I know well than to switch out for something I'm not as comfortable with that would do better in one mission.

I played against a 20 lance, 17 blaster DE list in round 1, Vulkan Salamanders round 2 (2x land raiders, 2x rhinos, 2x vindicators, 2x land speeders, 3x drop pods with 2x dreadnoughts), and a space wolf player round three who's 3 point contributions were two rhinos and a 4 man unit of thunderwolf cavalry.

Did very well (Battle Reports) and despite being heavy on battle points compared to my opponent (36 vs 20) I'm glad I played what I knew.

Monster Rain wrote:
Actually, I think it's a better test of a player's skill to mess with the Status Quo of list building. It separates the tacticians from the people that get their "win button" armies off of the internet.

I've never played against it before, but I'd bet money that I could beat leafblower with my 'Ard Boyz list. It's too heavily dependent on first turn, and besides, "Win button" lists only work if you're a good enough player to understand them well enough to adapt to situations outside of: "Space Marines are advancing on me from their half of the board." There are already plenty of rules in game for generating these situations with things such as outflank, deep strike, etc. Deep strike doesn't help much with the stranglehold that Inquisitor/Mystics have on the game, but that will change by the next 'Oft Boyz. There doesn't need to be an artificial arbitrary "fairness mechanic" imposed in any of the missions. I'm already anticipating next year: "Horde armies are down, so anything that attacks using a blast marker or template weapons is now worth 10 KP."

Danny Internets wrote:The problem is that it made people question the basic army structure by changing the fundamental victory conditions of the game. It's kind of like changing the rules of baseball to make it so you can only score via homeruns a week before the World Series and then saying "Well, we gave you plenty of notice to rebuild your team." I wouldn't have minded it as much if it didn't create auto-loss scenarios, such as horde Orks versus mech IG or DE.

Dannhy Internets hit on a similar point in his thread as well. While this might be a good concept and I see where you are going...

Monster Rain wrote:Actually, I think it's a better test of a player's skill to mess with the Status Quo of list building. It separates the tacticians from the people that get their "win button" armies off of the internet.

What skill is there really in playing a 3:1 handicap S3 KP game?

In the standard mix of KP and Objective missions there are already competing concerns for high scoring unit counts versus KP minimization. This is already a test of play and list building, changing the base mechanics only skews the system.

It wasn't the best players taking that, it was a random win engine or designed for people who could take advantage of the new meta in S3, look at all the accounts. It created S3 games that were complete blowouts (that I can't imagine were very fun or tactically challenging) as everyone knew it would.

daedalus wrote:

Monster Rain wrote:
Actually, I think it's a better test of a player's skill to mess with the Status Quo of list building. It separates the tacticians from the people that get their "win button" armies off of the internet.

I've never played against it before, but I'd bet money that I could beat leafblower with my 'Ard Boyz list. It's too heavily dependent on first turn, and besides, "Win button" lists only work if you're a good enough player to understand them well enough to adapt to situations outside of: "Space Marines are advancing on me from their half of the board." There are already plenty of rules in game for generating these situations with things such as outflank, deep strike, etc. Deep strike doesn't help much with the stranglehold that Inquisitor/Mystics have on the game, but that will change by the next 'Oft Boyz. There doesn't need to be an artificial arbitrary "fairness mechanic" imposed in any of the missions. I'm already anticipating next year: "Horde armies are down, so anything that attacks using a blast marker or template weapons is now worth 10 KP."

I have a couple of anti-Leafblower tricks up my sleeve as well. In fact, they won me a game against a rather nasty IG list in round 3 on Saturday.

I'll post them in August.

Augustus wrote:

Monster Rain wrote:Actually, I think it's a better test of a player's skill to mess with the Status Quo of list building. It separates the tacticians from the people that get their "win button" armies off of the internet.

What skill is there really in playing a 3:1 handicap S3 KP game?

In the standard mix of KP and Objective missions there are already competing concerns for high scoring unit counts versus KP minimization. This is already a test of play and list building, changing the base mechanics only skews the system.

It wasn't the best players taking that, it was a random win engine or designed for people who could take advantage of the new meta in S3, look at all the accounts. It created S3 games that were complete blowouts (that I can't imagine were very fun or tactically challenging) as everyone knew it would.

I had somewhere around 3 times the KPs of my Round 3 opponent. I got a Major Victory with the Vulkan/Mech list that I made long before the Scenarios were posted. I'll just let that stand for itself.

jbunny wrote:Please explain how 5 guys on an objective are equal to 30 guys on an objective, and that the 30 guys can easier hold more than one objective?

Also normally KP's and objectives are not used in the same game, same with VP's and objectives.

If at the end of the game I have a 5 man troops squad on one objective and you have a 30 man troops squad on one objective, they are equal. Obviously a 30 man squad can capture more than one objective and has better staying power but I'll bet that my 5 man squad is a lot cheaper so I can have more of them to claim more objectives.

The point is that KP's are there to balance out the advantage that MSU has in the two objective based scenarios in the core rulebook. VP's don't balance out the objective based games. With VP's, there's no downside to running MSU.

This far into 5th ed I'm surprised I'm still explaining this.

Ozymandias wrote:This far into 5th ed I'm surprised I'm still explaining this.

Indeed, I agree, especially in the hardboy thread...?


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Monster Rain wrote:...I had somewhere around 3 times the KPs of my Round 3 opponent. I got a Major Victory with the Vulkan/Mech list that I made long before the Scenarios were posted. I'll just let that stand for itself.

Well done. That S3 game must have been quite the match.

Just know I'm trying to build a point about the irony of the missions and the hardboy, not criticize you.

I think the worst part about S3 was that it was the last one. I played the best guy there for the third mission. He didn't need help for that one. It would have been much better if it was early on so that people were not necessarily matched by any criteria yet.

daedalus wrote:I think the worst part about S3 was that it was the last one. I played the best guy there for the third mission. He didn't need help for that one. It would have been much better if it was early on so that people were not necessarily matched by any criteria yet.

I would almost argue the opposite. It would be lame to be a good player with a high KP list and get massacred by a new player because he had 1 guy left on the table in the first game. At least getting spanked by a good player isn't as bad.

I can't use the mission to excuse my S3 performance. He had 42, I had 49.

Modest of you sir.

I am not sure I agree about that 42 to 49, that's a diff of 7 right? Wasn't that a massacre condition for S3? A diff of 7 kp?

Assuming equal performance doesn't that mean you were handicapped by enough KP to make a massacre with comparable performances and luck?

I'd say that's a pretty big diff.

If GW US is changing the scenarios around this much, in particular the victory conditions, isn't that basically their way of saying the game developers don't know what they're doing? If Mech IG is the best army build evah, then doesn't that mean the dev team really messed up?

Having some variety is good. On the flip side, the main rulebook is based on three scenarios and deployments, and has (hopefully) balanced the game, including future codexes, according to them.

Yes, nine missions is kinda boring. OTOH, you're playing three of them. And they could combine scenarios to some degree. Primary objective, control more objectives. Secondary, get more KPs. Tertiary, control 3 more objectives than opponent. etc.

Augustus wrote:

Monster Rain wrote:...I had somewhere around 3 times the KPs of my Round 3 opponent. I got a Major Victory with the Vulkan/Mech list that I made long before the Scenarios were posted. I'll just let that stand for itself.

Well done. That S3 game must have been quite the match.

Just know I'm trying to build a point about the irony of the missions and the hardboy, not criticize you.

Oh sure, man. Am I coming off angry? I do hope not...

I'm just respectfully disagreeing and offering my counterpoints. No trouble!