Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

I seriously think people should not concider cheese and spam when deciding how competitive an army is... most people don't run cheese and spam lists! We should look at how an avarage ork army (not a boy spam army) fights against and avarage IG army (not spam army).

 lolman1c wrote:
I seriously think people should not concider cheese and spam when deciding how competitive an army is... most people don't run cheese and spam lists! We should look at how an avarage ork army (not a boy spam army) fights against and avarage IG army (not spam army).

This feels like saying 'we shouldn't consider competitive lists when we're deciding which armies are competitive'? People who are competitive are going to take the edge armies, before the counters are developed or the FAQs/errata/whatever tweak the rules they exploit.

 lolman1c wrote:
I seriously think people should not concider cheese and spam when deciding how competitive an army is... most people don't run cheese and spam lists! We should look at how an avarage ork army (not a boy spam army) fights against and avarage IG army (not spam army).

Unfortunately, you need to look at the absolute filth list when deciding competitive rating. Otherwise it's impossible to really balance. It's difficult enough because of the mixed lists people can take

The other issue though, is that people often consider only the national meta as mattering, when for 90% of people, they aren't going to the national meta and shouldn't take what it reveals as gospel. You see fringe lists in the nationals that you'd probably never see in your RTTs; they shouldn't influence nearly as much as they do because of the circumstances.

That said, i also despise soup and I despise the way 8th edition seems to be going. You are punished for playing a mono-faction, often unreasonably, and typically just get told to cave in to your own morals and mix and match a ton of stuff just because it's better, at the cost of removing any flavor the army has.

Wayniac wrote:
The other issue though, is that people often consider only the national meta as mattering, when for 90% of people, they aren't going to the national meta and shouldn't take what it reveals as gospel. You see fringe lists in the nationals that you'd probably never see in your RTTs; they shouldn't influence nearly as much as they do because of the circumstances.

That said, i also despise soup and I despise the way 8th edition seems to be going. You are punished for playing a mono-faction, often unreasonably, and typically just get told to cave in to your own morals and mix and match a ton of stuff just because it's better, at the cost of removing any flavor the army has.

I guess it's who you play. I would never run a mix, or compromise my flavor. But I play decent guys that think the same. Probably not the place to discuss it

Soup is going to be very common in any competitive environment as long as it's allowed. As a competitive player you take every edge you can, and if the benefit to you for the additional factions outweighs the auras and synergies you get for sticking to a single faction you'll do it. Consider a game like Magic: The Gathering, you see multicoloured lists a lot more frequently at the top of events than monocolour ones.

Pure competitive events are fundamentally different from 'regular' 40k, and your focus will be on attempting to predict the meta and taking a highly optimised list to deal with it. Of course this means a great list for one tournament in particular might not be a great overall or TAC list...

Based on what I've seen this is a pretty good representation. I'd nit-pick and put DG above Astartes but that's because I don't own any fire-raptors and I've played against death crawlers and morty but that's splitting hairs.

I'd also put sisters above astartes, but again that could be a local meta thing but those firing port transports they have are really good.

GSC could probably move up and tie/beat AdMech based on their showings at LVO.

I think Tsons falls towards the top of the mid bracket at the moment along with demons but I totally agree they are more potent soup ingredients than stand alone armies.

The thing that scares me about this list (and what I've been railing about on these forums for months) is that Astartes are a bottom tier codex and barely above the armies running index lists. I'm pretty confident that tau/sisters/orcs will receive significant codex buffs and the bottom tier will be SM/GK/Death watch and AdMech (unless fires of cryaxis is a real thing).

I think one of the index armies, tau/crons/orcs will get some really good buffs and vault into that top tier but I also think one of them will get mishandled (dark elves?) and end up down with GK+.

I think that the only way competitive space marines will work is to run soup from 3-4 different codexes (which I think GW does on purpose to inflate sales of codexes and models) which is what we are seeing now and it bothers me that it is such a transparent cash grab. That or the new primaris models and primarchs that are inevitably going to be released will become competitive mainstays in the SM codex.

I've not given up as I'm curious how the next re-balancing is going to shake up the meta but if it comes across as another thinly veiled cash grab I'm not sure I can take it.

 Marmatag wrote:

 Grimgold wrote:

 DarknessEternal wrote:
Everything about who placed where in LVO is irrelevant when you factor in most games went 2 turns.

The average was actually four turns assuming scoring at 80% of the max rate, and assuming max scoring every turn the games would have lasted just over three turns. It's not ideal, but the perception is worse than reality, thanks to players like Tony. Games should probably average 5 turns for a two hour window, but that's another discussion.

There is no way to average 5 games. that means logically either:

(a) every single game goes to exactly turn 5
or
(b) about half the games go beyond turn 5.

It's more realistic to hope for an average of 3.5 games. Which is what we effectively have now. And most games are already very clearly decided by turn 3, and turn 4 just allows more scoring for the winner.

Remember, some of the ties you'll see are because people are playing their squad mates. You take a high point or max point tie, and you both aren't knocked out of the top x.

There are lots of combinations that end up with an average of 5 rounds, trying to reducing it to two scenarios is absurd. Please check out the concept of standard deviation to see how experts quantify the amount of variation in a data set, I'd explain it but I haven't been able to clearly communicate ideas to you so perhaps some self discovery would be more fruitful.

However, for amusements sake, what happens if we apply your same logic to your desired 3.5 turns? Half the games go beyond turn 3.5 and half of them don't. If we assume as you have, that there is an even distribution across the range of possibilities, a not insignificant number of games will only last 1 round. Which means you are arguing for 1 hour turn lengths as appropriate and desirable. Of course the idea of an even distribution of game lengths is absurd, which is the reason your argument fails.

Wayniac wrote:
You are punished for playing a mono-faction, often unreasonably, and typically just get told to cave in to your own morals and mix and match a ton of stuff just because it's better, at the cost of removing any flavor the army has.

I've been trying to find the right words for this hyperbole, but I'll just go with:

Games do end at turn 1, and that's totally fine. Players concede or leave all the time, I saw it happen this weekend at a 16 person tournament.

Also players agree to "hand shake" and end the game on turn 3 quite regularly, and that doesn't magically grant the opposing player a max point score.

From your methodology:

 Grimgold wrote:

Fortunately because they are outliers, we can exclude most concessions by ignoring results above 30.

This is so donkey it's funny.

If one player chooses to concede before the game has come to a natural conclusion, they automatically score 0 points (which is a big deal in this format as you keep all of your points earned, even if you lose), and their opponent would earn their current score and would be assumed to earn 4pts per turn for the remainder of the Battle Rounds left in the game on the Primary Mission and earn the maximum number of possible Secondary Mission points theoretically left to them.

You excluded scores above 30, when you should have ignored scores of 0. The whole methodology you use, and your whole argument, stems from a pretty weak understanding of how tournaments are actually played.

Further, the games are capped at length 6 in ITC. For the average game length to be 5, what do you think needs to happen?

In your casual games, play as long as you want. In our tournament games, matches logically end around turn 4. And this is a good thing. And i'm not pulling that number out of my rear end. Please, consider this: Secondaries are capped at 4. Meaning, if you're playing for board based or position based secondaries, you can achieve them in 4 turns. Assuming that (and also remembering that most people will achieve their secondaries before turn 4), turns 5 and 6 can only score points with the hold objectives, and kill units. That's going to work out to 8 points in a beatdown scenario. And in a close game it could easily be 4 points, for 2 turns.

When all the codices have dropped then you can decide which are the correct tiers but until then a lot of vital data is missing. For example who would have guessed that IG would show so poorly at LVO?

 Primark G wrote:
When all the codices have dropped then you can decide which are the correct tiers but until then a lot of vital data is missing. For example who would have guessed that IG would show so poorly at LVO?

Anyone paying attention, dark reapers invalidate guard (and many other armies).

And please, show so poorly? They were one of the top armies, even with a hard counter existing.

tneva82 wrote:
Assuming by game you mean turn 3.5 turns is ridiculously little for 40k. Default is 6 turn game. 5 turns means already shorter than what default is. 3.5 turns would be atrocious showing there's something seriously wrong with the game or tournament rules(if time limit is so low you can barely finish half the game...)

With 3.5 turns barely worth bringing out models as they would be little more than glorified wound markers. Turns 1 and often turn 2 you don't even really NEED models so basically one turn where actually having models on table would be useful.

...?

Which edition are you playing? Most of my games of 8th have models heavily engaged and killing/dying by turn 2 at the latest and one army's mostly wiped by turn four.

 AnomanderRake wrote:

tneva82 wrote:
Assuming by game you mean turn 3.5 turns is ridiculously little for 40k. Default is 6 turn game. 5 turns means already shorter than what default is. 3.5 turns would be atrocious showing there's something seriously wrong with the game or tournament rules(if time limit is so low you can barely finish half the game...)

With 3.5 turns barely worth bringing out models as they would be little more than glorified wound markers. Turns 1 and often turn 2 you don't even really NEED models so basically one turn where actually having models on table would be useful.

...?

Which edition are you playing? Most of my games of 8th have models heavily engaged and killing/dying by turn 2 at the latest and one army's mostly wiped by turn four.

God a million times this. Spot on accurate. Turn 4+ is about scoring more points to help you break ties. The game has already been decided.

I would almost go as far to say IG is crippled due to the current strength of Altioc when we are talking about overall meta.

They should really make it so soup is not a thing, but sadly that wont happen


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 LunarSol wrote:

Wayniac wrote:
You are punished for playing a mono-faction, often unreasonably, and typically just get told to cave in to your own morals and mix and match a ton of stuff just because it's better, at the cost of removing any flavor the army has.

I've been trying to find the right words for this hyperbole, but I'll just go with:

Yes because reaper spam, or malific lord spam are/were good things and had/have a flavor to the army...oh wait

 Marmatag wrote:

 AnomanderRake wrote:

tneva82 wrote:
Assuming by game you mean turn 3.5 turns is ridiculously little for 40k. Default is 6 turn game. 5 turns means already shorter than what default is. 3.5 turns would be atrocious showing there's something seriously wrong with the game or tournament rules(if time limit is so low you can barely finish half the game...)

With 3.5 turns barely worth bringing out models as they would be little more than glorified wound markers. Turns 1 and often turn 2 you don't even really NEED models so basically one turn where actually having models on table would be useful.

...?

Which edition are you playing? Most of my games of 8th have models heavily engaged and killing/dying by turn 2 at the latest and one army's mostly wiped by turn four.

God a million times this. Spot on accurate. Turn 4+ is about scoring more points to help you break ties. The game has already been decided.

All the more reason for ITC to reduce the game length from 6 rounds to 4. Most games aren't hitting the 6th round due to time constraints. Why base the scoring on such? Everyone is in love with the phrase 'natural conclusion' especially when saying this happens in turn 3. If that's the case with 8th, why bother with the extra rounds that aren't being played but still affecting score? I know a few people that theorized the last couple rounds in their LVO games just to increase their overall scores without changing who won/lost so they wouldn't suffer for not finishing on time. I'm willing to bet this happened a lot. That's why I wouldn't trust any poll that says "well, most games at LVO finished in 6 turns". I know there's bad data in there.

The obvious solution is to reduce the standard point level to 1750, or even 1500.

You have 2 effects:

1) Less models on the table, so shorter turns.
2) It's a bit complicated to explain fully, but the killiness to point ratio increases with points, while the durability per point decreases. So lists at 1500 are harder and less killy (per point) than 2000 points lists. This helps with the alpha strike problem and shifts the turns required to decide the outcome of a game toward turn 4-5.

As a con though, you have that big models like daemon primarchs can't really be balanced at those point levels.

You are punished for playing a mono-faction, often unreasonably, and typically just get told to cave in to your own morals and mix and match a ton of stuff just because it's better, at the cost of removing any flavor the army has.

Unlike the glorious versions past where you were punished for playing the army that had a gakky codex, often unreasonably, and typically just get told to cave in to your own morals and collect another army because it's better, at the cost of removing what you wanted to play in the first place.

 deviantduck wrote:

 Marmatag wrote:

 AnomanderRake wrote:

tneva82 wrote:
Assuming by game you mean turn 3.5 turns is ridiculously little for 40k. Default is 6 turn game. 5 turns means already shorter than what default is. 3.5 turns would be atrocious showing there's something seriously wrong with the game or tournament rules(if time limit is so low you can barely finish half the game...)

With 3.5 turns barely worth bringing out models as they would be little more than glorified wound markers. Turns 1 and often turn 2 you don't even really NEED models so basically one turn where actually having models on table would be useful.

...?

Which edition are you playing? Most of my games of 8th have models heavily engaged and killing/dying by turn 2 at the latest and one army's mostly wiped by turn four.

God a million times this. Spot on accurate. Turn 4+ is about scoring more points to help you break ties. The game has already been decided.

All the more reason for ITC to reduce the game length from 6 rounds to 4.

100% accurate.

Casual games end at turn 4 anyway at the latest. Once the winner is clearly decided, is there a reason to keep playing if there aren't points to consider for the next round, or overall placing? No.

mechanicum?

With Tau and Crons teased if not fully released yet anyone want to debate a new ranking of factions with codexes?

Tiers

God:
Eldar
Chaos soup

Competitive:
Imperial soup
Guard
Nids
CSM
DG
Tau
Crons
BA

Almost there:
DA
Demons?
Thousand Suns?
Vanilla SM
Custies?
AdMech

GK tier:
GK

Forgetting anyone? [edit: added TS]

knights?

At least I get a tier to myself (GK)!!

OP, correct me if I missed it, but I don't see pure Codex: Chaos Daemons on your list anywhere. Chaos Soup is there, but where do Daemons by themselves rank?

 ZergSmasher wrote:
OP, correct me if I missed it, but I don't see pure Codex: Chaos Daemons on your list anywhere. Chaos Soup is there, but where do Daemons by themselves rank?

At the time of posting this rank, Codex: Chaos Daemon was just out, so I didn't had data to put them somewhere. And to be honest, I don't know at this point either. I have literally seen 0 pure Chaos Daemon armies, they are always used in Chaos Soup.

Thebiggesthat wrote:

 lolman1c wrote:
I seriously think people should not concider cheese and spam when deciding how competitive an army is... most people don't run cheese and spam lists! We should look at how an avarage ork army (not a boy spam army) fights against and avarage IG army (not spam army).

Unfortunately, you need to look at the absolute filth list when deciding competitive rating. Otherwise it's impossible to really balance. It's difficult enough because of the mixed lists people can take

Currently, the question I ask when putting together a competitive list is "can this deal with Dark Reaper spam"

It's the way of evolving meta. Tailor your list to be able to take on the current filth and then you'll then be able to handle the tiered lists under that.

 Galas wrote:


High Tier:

-Codex: Heretic Astartes

What an edition we have here.

bananathug wrote:


GK tier:
GK

A tier all our own! Awesome!

I haven't played in a long while so I was thinking of dusting off the Tyrannids and maybe putting together a SM army since 8th ed. came out. Trying to decide on a chapter or whether to turn to Chaos or just skip giving my money to GW once again.

Two of the more interesting threads on this forum are the one about what annoys 40K players and this thread. After a considerable amount of reading, it seems that GW took steps to streamline 8th ed. (but also did some weird stuff with terrain, tank shock, etc.) and now has gotten up to their old tricks with the codexes, etc.

I was hoping to build an Ultramarines army, about as far from 'Nid hordes as possible (except for Tau), but it is kind of interesting what folks in this thread are saying about how vanilla marines are ranked now in competitive play.

I guess what I am asking is if GW is still up to its old tricks, and you wanted to start a new army....

Which army would you build if you were just wanting to have fun with friends? (competitive but fair)

Which army would you build if you wanted to be tournament competitive but not a complete cheeseball?

I think the tier comments and the comments by people in the other thread saying players are the most annoying thing about the game made me want to put the Tyrannids away again and look for another game.

Still, some of my friends have taken up 40k again and they mostly say the rules are better. Any suggestions would be appreciated.