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Whilst the moderation team heartily approve of rum/similar we aren't so keen when posters start making rather sweeping and rude comments about each other. Take a breath and be generous.. attribute any malice or EVIL you're reading down to the flaws in the medium of communication we're using. Relax, it's toy soldiers at the end of the day, even in the vital, cut throat world of tournament play. Always use sunscreen, the long term medical benefits have been proven. Be kind to your knees, you'll miss them when they're gone.

.... Or something.

Ta.

Anyone else reminded of that early ST:TNG episode where Data squares off against this alien strategist detailed to observe the Enterprise conduct wargames? I think the character's name was "Mr Kolrami" or something (anyone besides me want to check that?). Anyhow, in their first game Kolrami hands Data his ass on a platter, but quits the second game in disgust when Data stops trying to win and goes for the draw.

That episode was on TV yesterday and I thought about this topic too.

Nurglitch wrote:Anyone else reminded of that early ST:TNG episode where Data squares off against this alien strategist detailed to observe the Enterprise conduct wargames? I think the character's name was "Mr Kolrami" or something (anyone besides me want to check that?). Anyhow, in their first game Kolrami hands Data his ass on a platter, but quits the second game in disgust when Data stops trying to win and goes for the draw.

Holy crap, I remember that.

in an attempt to throw this derailed train back on the tracks, I'll share a story.

Third edition. Daemonhunters were new. So was I.
I'd dabbled with Nids & necrons, but settled on Daemonhunters because... I liked the models.

Shut up! I can hear you snickering! : )

My first ever tournament, I'd done well so far (1 win, 1 tie). The 3rd game was against Dark Eldar. It was a mission with an attacker & a defender.
So, he was the attacker & went first.

The whole thing was mine to lose. the attacker had to TABLE the defender, or the defender won. Of course, being a newbie, I made a lot of mistakes. I made it easy for him.
One thing that helped me, though, was my "horrible" reserves rolls. I just couldn't get my Grand Master out of reserves. next to last turn, he finally destroys my weaponless, immobilized Dreadnought. On my turn, I roll for reserves. I roll a 1. Nothing.

At this point we're one of the last games going, and have quite an audience.

On his last turn, he spreads out a bit to try to mess with my possible deepstrike, but has nothing to shoot at or assault, as I've got no models on the table. So, we go to my turn.

I roll for reserves and get a... two.

All I've got to do is land this bad boy on the table, and I'm golden.

Being a newb, I'm initially thinking about dropping in the middle of his sh**, so I can get some shots in & kill something. Then something clicks. I don't have to kill anything. I've just got to live.

So, I put it WAY back, about a foot from HIS table side & roll for DS. I scattered 11 inches STRAIGHT BACK at his edge. I landed about 3/4 of an inch from the table edge.

I won, but only because of some crappy reserve rolls and, even then, I still almost managed to die.

Eric

I went 1-2-0 at an RTT-style event with my Ogres and won Overall and Best Painted. I seriously didn't believe the TO when he said it, but it was because I had the only fully painted army and painting accounted for near 1/3rd of the total points. Wackiest $80 in store cred I ever won.

To the TOs credit he took over the event for the original TO who had to back out the day of and he had already set the guidelines before hand.

Primarch wrote:I think to be fair here, Dash was playing some guys who I at least, consider to be fairly strong players. From what I understand, the first game could easily have been a 30 point loss for Dash. The 2nd game I haven't heard many details on, but it was a mobile Marine army who tried to slide around the table to get flank shots, and Dash played a bit cautious trying to keep his 14 av facing the enemy. Not a bad decision, but could lead to a tie.

The third game has already been discussed. The Daemon player did what he could to get points. He was facing an uphill battle from the beginning when he got the wrong half of his army in. Dash made a mistake with both his deployment, and choice to go first in my opinion. The Daemon player took the points and ran, nothing at all wrong with that, but a tie waiting to happen.


Knowing all of that, I wouldn't say it was a crazy result for an army "built" to massacre. I'd say based on the strong play, and choices by the players involved, this was a pretty typical result.

I thought this was the best analysis of the original post!

I don't have an outlier tournament experience to share. So far, my results have been dismal! But with the tree-people looking a bit better in 8th edition, I'm hopeful for some ties myself

MagickalMemories wrote:
So, I put it WAY back, about a foot from HIS table side & roll for DS. I scattered 11 inches STRAIGHT BACK at his edge. I landed about 3/4 of an inch from the table edge.

I won, but only because of some crappy reserve rolls and, even then, I still almost managed to die.

Eric

Haha good stuff thou, hope your Bionic eye is getting better qwith age

Sounds like a statistical anomaly to me, or outlier if you prefer.

In a dice game -
Can you tie three times? Yes
Is it improbable given all the factors discussed above? Maybe

Apart from the usual post game evaluations, I would ignore it - or at least not over emphasise it - unless it started happening regularly. If you play another 150 games without tying three times in a row, it will show it for what it is - an outlier.

For now - its a bit too early to call.

If that isn't satisfactory - the alternative is because you stopped writing batreps! I like batreps - I think they provide much better lessons than Theoryhammer. And I liked yours.

RiTides wrote:

Primarch wrote:I think to be fair here, Dash was playing some guys who I at least, consider to be fairly strong players. From what I understand, the first game could easily have been a 30 point loss for Dash. The 2nd game I haven't heard many details on, but it was a mobile Marine army who tried to slide around the table to get flank shots, and Dash played a bit cautious trying to keep his 14 av facing the enemy. Not a bad decision, but could lead to a tie.

The third game has already been discussed. The Daemon player did what he could to get points. He was facing an uphill battle from the beginning when he got the wrong half of his army in. Dash made a mistake with both his deployment, and choice to go first in my opinion. The Daemon player took the points and ran, nothing at all wrong with that, but a tie waiting to happen.


Knowing all of that, I wouldn't say it was a crazy result for an army "built" to massacre. I'd say based on the strong play, and choices by the players involved, this was a pretty typical result.

I thought this was the best analysis of the original post!

I don't have an outlier tournament experience to share. So far, my results have been dismal! But with the tree-people looking a bit better in 8th edition, I'm hopeful for some ties myself

I think Primarch is being fair.....which takes me to what I've been trying to figure out all along: Is this an exploitation of how I normally play, meaning that I need to re-examine my gameplay and tactics, or did I play differently at the tournament - its important to me because my next 40k match with my Orks is a spectated, blogged, podcasted celebrity deathmatch against Stelek in defense of Orks, and I've got poor performance backing me up going into it.

So when's that happening?

Friday, August 13th; the night before the Nova Open starts during the celebrity deathmatch lineups.

Really? That's quite exciting

On topic, I can't say this with any real certainty but from what I saw, the draws resulted from 2 things.

One: your enemies played either very defensively (daemons, but it only really worked because you deployed cautiously), or simply played well. (I can't say anything about things you could have done differently as you don't have bat-reps)

Two: you seemed to be playing very cautiously compared to normal. (from what I garner) For example, and I can't say if this is a good idea, would it have helped against the (slippery) Marines to just charge at them? You would almost certainly risk losses (and thus risk the win) but it might have gotten you there in time to beat them. I am assuming you arrived later because of maneuvering to protect your side armor.

Off topic, please Dash, try to ignore it when people hate on you. I don't like seeing it when someone seems to take these sorts of things to heart. I'm sure you have thought about it, but just in case. Try to think about it from their perspective. They see someone you posts wins, cites wins, states they are good and rarely lose, and even if all of that is true and you are just reporting things as they really are people see that as bragging and not as an attempt to help players or simply to share an experience you had. It's fairly easy to see why someone would think it's bragging, most people simply aren't used to consistent winning like that, reasoning may come to them that you play weaker players since, if you play players around your level you should have a more even record. Not a very good argument against your skill level though, just the wins. Finally, your language may come across too strong for their liking. It may be normal language but other factors (such as a predisposition to see you as a braggart because of your win record or frequency of bat-reps, or even from already seeing you as one because of previous skewed observations) may influence how they interpret it. It may be that you don't come across as modest enough. For example, from my (comparatively to some) more limited exposure to your bat-reps and especially the e-drama surrounding you I don't usually see you using much modest language describing yourself. To be fair though, it hasn't grated on me yet as I don't think an air of modesty about your abilities is necessary if you are confident in them and have something to really back that up. The one problem with that is only some people think that way, others don't like it so unless you are only around the former, people may get irritated. I don't really see that type of language or most of these things changing and that isn't bad, but you will have to expect that some will not like it and when people don't like things online they can get very nasty.

Very good luck against Stelek, although as a Tau player myself...

Dashofpepper wrote:
I think Primarch is being fair.....which takes me to what I've been trying to figure out all along: Is this an exploitation of how I normally play, meaning that I need to re-examine my gameplay and tactics, or did I play differently at the tournament - its important to me because my next 40k match with my Orks is a spectated, blogged, podcasted celebrity deathmatch against Stelek in defense of Orks, and I've got poor performance backing me up going into it.

Uh oh!

Confidence is important - could be an issue.

Is there a 40K performance enhancer?

Take the blue pill!

No, not that one - the other one!

Best of luck against Stelek, Dash!

Thanks!

There's going to be a good lineup of celebrity death matches before the tournament.

I'll be playing against Stelek to defend against his slander about how much Orks suck. He's got the advantage of being able to build a list specifically to fight mine (since I always run the same thing), but on the flip side, anyone who writes off the entire Ork codex as weak and uncompetitive probably isn't a master tactician, so I think it will even out.


Hulksmash is lined to up play against BBF, although since Black Blow Fly said some very bad things to Hulk and posted in his blog that he got banned from Dakka for a couple days as a result, I have a feeling that BBF is going to use it to dodge a game with Hulksmash, since Hulk would obliterate him entirely on the table.

If / when BBF dodges Hulk, I imagine Hulk will get lined up against Danny Internets - famous proponent of a more competitive tournament system. I can't wait to meet him in person and buy him a beer for championing tournament play as a competition.

I haven't followed any of the other matchups, so I'm not sure what'll happen.

My strangest tournament event was at a GT - my old CSM army versus gun line Tau. It's victory points for the win and I had to make a move toward the Tau gunline to engage them in close combat. I had lots of fast killy units but there was not much terrain in the middle so I have to move my units out into the open for a turn and take it on the chin. My opponent (awesome guy by the way) torrents my possessed squad with several units of Fire Warriors, most of which were in rapid fire range. When the smoke finally clears he has scored somewhere around 35-40 wounds. It's time like these when you normally would just remove the unit and save some time but I go ahead, pick up all the dice and roll for my saves... Not one 1 or 2 out of all the saves! Amazing luck. Next he torrents my possessed with his suits... Lots of plasma. Again I roll for my saves... Not anything below a 5++! Absolutely crazy !! Next turn the Possessed multi charge his gun line and rip through them, game over. It was the best run of luck with dice I have ever experienced. I went on to win all four games that day too.

G

"Celebrity?" Deathmatch...

Is you're being ironic, that's mildly amusing. If not...

It does lend credence to my idea that your "beef" with Stelek has been contrived from the outset in some sort of sad attempt to drive traffic to his site though.

Lol lol J/k!!!!!1!!one!

Monster Rain wrote:"Celebrity?" Deathmatch...

Is you're being ironic, that's mildly amusing. If not...

It does lend credence to my idea that your "beef" with Stelek has been contrived from the outset in some sort of sad attempt to drive traffic to his site though.

Lol lol J/k!!!!!1!!one!

Don't look at me; I didn't coin the phrase.

Dashofpepper wrote:

I'll be playing against Stelek to defend against his slander about how much Orks suck. He's got the advantage of being able to build a list specifically to fight mine (since I always run the same thing), but on the flip side, anyone who writes off the entire Ork codex as weak and uncompetitive probably isn't a master tactician, so I think it will even out.

By tailoring his list to beat orks, wouldnt that be unfair to you? Also, he rules that Deff Rolla don't work on skimmers if they dodge on a 3+. This is something that is unclear. So would you adhere to all his rulings/rules interpretation?

striderx wrote:

Dashofpepper wrote:

I'll be playing against Stelek to defend against his slander about how much Orks suck. He's got the advantage of being able to build a list specifically to fight mine (since I always run the same thing), but on the flip side, anyone who writes off the entire Ork codex as weak and uncompetitive probably isn't a master tactician, so I think it will even out.

By tailoring his list to beat orks, wouldnt that be unfair to you? Also, he rules that Deff Rolla don't work on skimmers if they dodge on a 3+. This is something that is unclear. So would you adhere to all his rulings/rules interpretation?

I'm sorry, but outside of the internet there seems to be a pretty clear consensus.

Most people will tell you that the 3+ skimmed dodge negate the Deff Rollas as well.

Celebrity Deathmatch is not what it's called now ... it's called the Whiskey Challenge, named after the tourney's interconnected blog. Well, and there might be a thematic prize or two floating around.

As far as "Celebrity," the day Stelek announced his attendance of the Open, our hits went from ~1200 - ~30,000. He's a celebrity in the 40k sense, so are several others we all know of (jawaballs, fritz, bolscrew, etc.) ... the ones that thousands of 40k gamers regularly read about and follow. Obviously there's humor in it too ... the notion of "real" celebrity in a toy soldier game is a little over the top to actually think someone's serious about it, right?



My strangest tourney experience was watching someone MOVE HIS DREAD'S ARM MID GAME to try and assault my valkyrie nosecone. Yeah, I let him. Then I went on to beat him. All's well end's well.

By tailoring his list to beat orks, wouldnt that be unfair to you?

Except that's not how Stelek plays, he's stated repeatedly that he makes balanced all-comers lists and doesn't tailor to beat anything specific, because that's not how you get good at the game.