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Reecius wrote:Yeah, 1500 is definitely more restricting for some armies, and the balance of power shifts somewhat. Chaos and eldar shine at 1500, whereas guard lose a lot of steam and crone are even worse.

There are pros and cons to both points values.

You just outlined exactly why you shouldn't do 1500 points. At 1850 the game is more balanced across the codices where as at 2000 some codices run out of steam and at 1500 other codices, as mentioned, run roughshod over the competition. At 1500 I think the codex to beat is Orks, the Kan Wall is an amazing list to run at 1500 points. If you play most marine variants (CSM and SW excepted) 1500 points is far below an optimal level, I would argue C:SM, C:BA, and C:GK are not even worth taking at 1500 when you look at the potential armies that can be arrayed against you at 1500.

tastytaste wrote:1500 all the way.

The notion that you cannot get all the toys you want in 1500 is just silly to me. What you cannot do is get 3 of the same thing over and over. So when people say you cannot get everything in 1500, it makes me wonder if you played 2000 points what are you taking differently? The answer is you are just taking the same stuff at 1500 but spamming it.

Much too narrow of a viewpoint, I'd argue. My 1500 Tyranid lists look nothing like my 2k lists. The spam all occurs at 1500, when you take nothing but duplicated essentials (looking at you, Hive Guard); variety is possible when there's enough points to get the same synergy in other ways.

I agree with Janthkin. My issue with 1,500 has always been the lack of variety. It feels like essentials only which causes a lot of lists to look alike at that point value. That said running Nids at that level is hilarious since you can still fit 40ish T6 wounds

Reecius wrote: Chaos and eldar shine at 1500, whereas guard lose a lot of steam

Though it's funny that it seemed to work out the opposite at ToS.

What Janthkin said. At 1500 I take 6 vet squads and 2-3 vendettas. At 2k I have Al'Rahem and less vet squads and the same # of vendettas and more flash or fun stuff that I think can change up an opponent's plan without screwing with my functionality.

Also, re: the guard ... yeah. 6 vet squads alone in chimeras is always a powerful force for its points, b/c of its capacity to deal with most any threat while being relatively durable (av12 fronts, 6 models can die per squad w/out harming firepower all that much). They get stronger there, not weaker.

odmiller wrote:Funnily enough, most sports that allow ties actually count them as one third a win. They are better than a loss, but a win is a big deal. Playing for the tie is valid when you're staring at a loss, but there's really incentive to put it all out there and go for the win.

I know the conversation has mostly shifted to points values, but I wanted to throw in my 2c on this - I really think that this is the way to go. It seems somehow... wrong... that a player with fewer wins can end up higher in the standings than someone with more. Maybe it's just because I'm used to the 3-1-0 (win-draw-loss) weighting from soccer, Magic, etc.

I am not worried about lists, or how good certain armies are at certain point levels.

I worry about time. When you are trying to squeeze 7-8 rounds in a weekend, smaller, faster games are better.

Also people do not take the armies that they want to because of time limits. People do not bring horde armies just because they will not be able to finish their games in time. I want to see the full spectrum of armies, and I want to play an entire game against them.

And for ties I see both sides of the argument. If someone went 6-1 they have more wins than someone who went 5-0-2. On the other hand the person who tied went undefeted.

Blackmoor wrote: When you are trying to squeeze 7-8 rounds in a weekend, smaller, faster games are better.

8? Serious?

Nova is going to be 8 rounds over 2-days. It happens in about 3 weeks

7 is the upper limit of games I would play in one weekend over 1500 points.

My record is 8 in two days, 11 in three, and I'm interested in beating that.

Was that at Adepticon last year?

Every time I popped into the gaming room Mannahnin was there!

It's going to be 13 games in 3 days for me in a few weeks. 5 for the invitational and 8 for the GT. Gonna be a long weekend

Monster Rain wrote:Was that at Adepticon last year?

Every time I popped into the gaming room Mannahnin was there!

Yeah, that's Adepticon pretty much every year. Before that my record was nine; my first GT was six games, and I played three pickup games as well.

Hulksmash wrote:It's going to be 13 games in 3 days for me in a few weeks. 5 for the invitational and 8 for the GT. Gonna be a long weekend

Awesome! I need to win an Invitational ticket for next year!

I must be old, I.was drained after 7 games in two days....
.....And my feet were killing me.

Magilla Gurilla wrote:I must be old, I.was drained after 7 games in two days....
.....And my feet were killing me.

Nah, it's not that, or not merely that.

I am old, and fat, but I'm used to standing, 12 or 13 hours strait, with almost no breaks, a few times a week. You just get used to it. Most of us don't. Stand more, sit less.

Like blackmoor and Mannahnin said, I think the really seasoned tournament gamers who have played in lots of events at multiple points levels will be less concerned with points values. I know that experience is what made me embrace 1,500 when I was a staunch 2,000pt man.

And yeah, every year tournaments get longer as the big events move towards the Swiss system. The Swiss system is just better, but it does require more rounds of play. That is the price you pay but it produces a clear, undisputed winner.

Here's one thing about having 'enough' time for tournament games that I've been thinking about in the last few days that I think is kind of interesting:

Many times, the discussion about round length tends to revolve around what most players are able to finish their games in, and that's certainly an understandable way to look at things.

However, thinking back to the throne of skulls tournament this year in Vegas, where the round time limits were (I hope by everyone's standard) ridiculously over-long, I noticed an interesting phenomenon: In not a single one of my games did either me or my opponents concede the game. Not only were there no concessions, but the topic never even came up.

This could be attributed to the fact that I was rocking the Tau, which don't tend to blow people out and I like to play to the bitter end even if I'm getting stomped, but I don't think that's entirely it.

My hypothesis is this:

When you actually have more than adequate time for people to finish their games, then people actually focus more on the process of enjoying the game (win or lose) and therefore are more likely to play all the way to the end and generally enjoy their games more.

At the Bay Area Open this year, I had one game actually finish when we rolled the end of the game on turn 5, but the rest of my games either ended at a called turn 4 or 5, or when me or my opponents conceded defeat. Concessions like this are certainly not rare. There are many people out there who just do not like to play the game anymore when it is obvious (to them) that they have no further chance of victory.

These types of people are obviously never going to enjoy playing the full game regardless of time limits. But I think most players tend to enjoy the actual game of 40K, but when you're in a tournament where time is of the essence and you only have X amount of time until the next round starts, etc, then it actually helps to force players to look solely at what the outcome of the game is going to be and if they don't think they can win, then its time to clean up and get ready for the next game.

The problem with this mindset IMHO, is that the main purpose of a tournament should be for players to have X amount of great games of 40K and determine a tournament winner. I believe the moment the overall tournament results become more important than players actually getting great games, you have a big, big issue.

However, when time is tight at a tournament, I really believe that players get so caught up in the move, move, move mentality of finishing their games in a short amount of time that they start to forget that they're actually supposed to be enjoying the actual games.

I really think that concept was highlighted by the throne of skulls where the attitudes I saw in my games was just really different than standard tournaments. There simply was no 'reason' to concede based on time at all. If you conceded your game early then you probably had at least an hour to kill until your next round, so I think a lot of players didn't even consider it and instead enjoyed playing their games all the way to the bitter end.

That is another good point by our fearless leader. At 1500, with ample time, you play games to finish because otherwise you don't have anything else to do! Haha.

Here are some pics of the winners receiving their prize vouchers. Instead of just giving them stuff they may not want or use, we gave them store credit so they could get anything they chose.

I was so happy that John won that door prize.

I played him in the first round, and his dice were absolutely atrocious. I mean, everything went wrong that could have gone wrong.

Blackmoor looks like he's about to go slap someone off camera when he's done shaking your hand, Reece!

He did... and it hurt!!!

Hey guys, I have been sick as a dog, so did not get the rest of the pics up last week, sorry about that; I will be getting them up this week.

My coverage of the event is at the end of episode 19 of Deepstrike Radio, check it out if you'd like to hear my views.

Thanks for the positive C&C, BDJV! I didn't know you did paint commissions. Magilla Gurilla's army looked great, I am sure you will be getting more requests for business.

Here is some more coverage of the event on the Independent Characters Podcast http://theindependentcharacters.com/blog/?p=1196&cpage=1#comment-176
The in-game interview begins around 1:51:00

Haha, Blackmoor does look like he's about to lay the pimp hand down in that picture!


Automatically Appended Next Post:
@Monster Rain

Yeah, I was glad John won, too. After that terrible luck round one he could have been a debby downer, but he kept his chin up and still had a fun tournament. He definitely deserved it.

The door prize was donated by Heroes on Paper of Stockton, California.

Feel free to swing by if you're in the area; we're about 40 minutes from Antioch and are hosting the 'Ard Boyz prelims this weekend.

http://www.heroesonpaper.com

Janthkin wrote:

tastytaste wrote:1500 all the way.

The notion that you cannot get all the toys you want in 1500 is just silly to me. What you cannot do is get 3 of the same thing over and over. So when people say you cannot get everything in 1500, it makes me wonder if you played 2000 points what are you taking differently? The answer is you are just taking the same stuff at 1500 but spamming it.

Much too narrow of a viewpoint, I'd argue. My 1500 Tyranid lists look nothing like my 2k lists. The spam all occurs at 1500, when you take nothing but duplicated essentials (looking at you, Hive Guard); variety is possible when there's enough points to get the same synergy in other ways.

What exactly are essentials? Are they just you taking your 2000 point list and trimming it down? I play 1500 with the only essentials being the required FoC and maybe an additional troop selection. I have gone over this in a series of articles I wrote about 1500. This is just one link about 1 1/2 years old.
[url]
http://bloodofkittens.com/blog/2010/04/29/in-defense-of-1500-you-can-eat-the-cake-and-have-it-too/[/url]

You have to see army books beyond what you consider "essential" because at 1500 you can still get what you want you just have to cut off the right fat.

tastytaste wrote:What exactly are essentials? Are they just you taking your 2000 point list and trimming it down? I play 1500 with the only essentials being the required FoC and maybe an additional troop selection. I have gone over this in a series of articles I wrote about 1500. This is just one link about 1 1/2 years old.
[url]
http://bloodofkittens.com/blog/2010/04/29/in-defense-of-1500-you-can-eat-the-cake-and-have-it-too/[/url]

You have to see army books beyond what you consider "essential" because at 1500 you can still get what you want you just have to cut off the right fat.

Tasty, I've been playing a lot with Tyranids over the past 18 months. I happen to like 1500 pt games (for many of the reasons Yakface provides above), but this isn't the place to hash out what "essential" means to me.

My comment was directed at your statement of "you are just taking the same stuff at 1500 but spamming it" - that is not the case with my lists, at least. Similarly, it's not "just [me] taking [my] 2000 point list and trimming it down." If we can avoid the sweeping generalizations in a post about the BAO, that'd be great - we can have this discussion elsewhere.

After the event I got a chanced to play against Christian's GK, man that list is filthy.

Congrats to all the winners and kudos to Reece and crew for putting on what looks like a great tournament. I'll be there next year with *another* Deathwing army...

I have to give kudos to Christians list building skills as they usually are all filthy. I'm sorry I didnt meet you Ozy as I was there also and I always like to meet dakkites.

Oh, I wasn't there this year. I got back from a week long vacation right before the tournament and I work weekends and couldn't take any more time off.

Next year though, I'll do my best to be there!

@robpace
Thanks for donating that door prize, we appreciated it! I am putting a link to your store up on the BAO web page.

Congrats also on doing so well in the event with your DE.

@Grimgob
Yeah, ChristianA brings nasty armies, they are definitely all optimized.

@Ozzy
No excuses! You better be there next year, buddy! haha