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 Da-Rock wrote:


2 - Isn't this the very same condition in every table top game out there.

Not really.

From about the 6 different games iv played 40k, and team yankee have major game setting first turn potential. and its pretty list dependent.

Dystopian wars (RIP) had its activation issues but straight first turn sinking of major ships was super rare (even though the potential to go infinite is always possible)

Bolt action and K47 mitigates the first turn rips by randomizing activation and allowing for major reactions so the second player is never not doing something.

IIRC even munda and kill teams with its alternating activation styles made for a better engaging two player game.

 Desubot wrote:

 Da-Rock wrote:


2 - Isn't this the very same condition in every table top game out there.

Not really.

From about the 6 different games iv played 40k, and team yankee have major game setting first turn potential. and its pretty list dependent.

Dystopian wars (RIP) had its activation issues but straight first turn sinking of major ships was super rare (even though the potential to go infinite is always possible)

Bolt action and K47 mitigates the first turn rips by randomizing activation and allowing for major reactions so the second player is never not doing something.

IIRC even munda and kill teams with its alternating activation styles made for a better engaging two player game.

Are you talking about 40k or Apoc? I was referring to Apoc which you can still get a round one heavy kill even with alternating turns and damage at end of round.....which I like. My point was there is no way getting away from the simple fact that in any game with dice and players you will have someone lose bad and someone win big. The people you see complain about game mechanics always complain about game mechanics because they certainly aren't going to say something simple like, "Yeah...good game" or just not say anything.

40k game system heyday ended after 5th edition, (for the most part). It has been living off of its models and a great background. 8th was a glimmer of light under the new management, but the people making the rules for 40k haven't changed the core much........but maybe Kill Teams and Apoc are gateway drugs to a new system for 40k.

 Da-Rock wrote:

 Desubot wrote:

 Da-Rock wrote:


2 - Isn't this the very same condition in every table top game out there.

Not really.

From about the 6 different games iv played 40k, and team yankee have major game setting first turn potential. and its pretty list dependent.

Dystopian wars (RIP) had its activation issues but straight first turn sinking of major ships was super rare (even though the potential to go infinite is always possible)

Bolt action and K47 mitigates the first turn rips by randomizing activation and allowing for major reactions so the second player is never not doing something.

IIRC even munda and kill teams with its alternating activation styles made for a better engaging two player game.

Are you talking about 40k or Apoc? I was referring to Apoc which you can still get a round one heavy kill even with alternating turns and damage at end of round.....which I like. My point was there is no way getting away from the simple fact that in any game with dice and players you will have someone lose bad and someone win big. The people you see complain about game mechanics always complain about game mechanics because they certainly aren't going to say something simple like, "Yeah...good game" or just not say anything.

40k game system heyday ended after 5th edition, (for the most part). It has been living off of its models and a great background. 8th was a glimmer of light under the new management, but the people making the rules for 40k haven't changed the core much........but maybe Kill Teams and Apoc are gateway drugs to a new system for 40k.

I read your line as though you meant all TTWGs end up being a first person to go wins. which i disagree. there are many games out there that mitigate first turn privilege.

Detachments have to stay within 12” of their commander or go out of command, which means they get instakilled at the end of the turn if they have a blast marker. This naturally limits the size of detachments, especially when you take into account terrain as well. Also, there are vect-style cards available. Furthermore, there is no charge phase and t1 deepstrike limitations. Getting into combat is trivial. As an example, a tyranid hive tyrant can deepstrike and sail 36” over enemies into combat with no overwatch. Finally, there are cards that let you seize initiative from your opponent and go first with your detachment

Deepstrike and detachments is rough because you need to have everything deepstrike unless you are doing a shallow deepstrike and try to run a Biker up during the action phase in order to not lose a squad.......(and then someone plays a card to change your order to Aimed Fire.....!!!) :-)

 Peregrine wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:
..hitting on 2s? You said this was 3 LRBTs, which hit on 4s, or 5s if damaged.

Tank commanders are BS 3+ and aimed fire gives +1 to hit.

Are you certain this can be used on tank commanders? Assume there will be faq out in short order to clarify

Da-Rock wrote:Deepstrike and detachments is rough because you need to have everything deepstrike unless you are doing a shallow deepstrike and try to run a Biker up during the action phase in order to not lose a squad.......(and then someone plays a card to change your order to Aimed Fire.....!!!) :-)

It's interesting to see the dynamic on the detachments now. You need to think of each one as a little strike team. Because they need to stay within 12" of the detachments commander and they all get issued a order together you need to consider each units movement speed and movement options. Whether or not they can deep strike together. Since characters are not immune from being targetted and sniper weapons actually work as sniper weapons you maybe need to bake in some back up commanders to certain detachments. I haven't quite mastered it yet. Still looking over my options.

Smirrors wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:
..hitting on 2s? You said this was 3 LRBTs, which hit on 4s, or 5s if damaged.

Tank commanders are BS 3+ and aimed fire gives +1 to hit.

Are you certain this can be used on tank commanders? Assume there will be faq out in short order to clarify

Aimed fire is an order that means the unit cannot move. It can only shoot or fight with shooting getting +1 to hit and fight getting -1 to hit.

If you reveal your detachments order to do this and the opponent plays a card to act first or just has initiative they can double move, get into melee with these units and strip them of their ability to shoot. It's good, but counter play exists now. Thats the thing I think a lot of people have a hard time seeing or taking into consideration. In the past there was no real counter play. Everyone acts fully doing whatever the hell they want and you just deal with the consequences. Apoc has a lot of counter play and well laid plans can be turned on their head before execution.

 Smirrors wrote:
Are you certain this can be used on tank commanders? Assume there will be faq out in short order to clarify

What is unclear? The card asks for the LEMAN RUSS keyword, tank commanders (and Pask) have the LEMAN RUSS keyword. It's just like how it works in normal 40k.


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 Lance845 wrote:
If you reveal your detachments order to do this and the opponent plays a card to act first or just has initiative they can double move, get into melee with these units and strip them of their ability to shoot.

Assuming there are no screens in the way. Cheap infantry squads that don't die until the end of the turn make getting within 1" easier said than done.


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 Da-Rock wrote:
My favorite part is that the real anger always comes from the Tourny players who want the game changed for them and they don't care about anyone else. We have a great time playing a game that functions like this one does and I don't require GW to change it to a casual gamers style and shaft the Tourny players....................to be honest, no game system could EVER appease the Tourny players.

Lolwut? How exactly are the tournament players hurting anyone else by asking for better balance? Better balance makes the game better for everyone, and I have no idea why some people seem to believe that the game is meant to be a masochistic slog through poorly designed rules and nonexistent balance.


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Spoletta wrote:
I can think of quite a few scenarios where that armageddon card is straight out bad.

For example, the one i find more likely is that we discover with experience that competitive IG plays with multiple small detachments to maximize the production of cards, because many cards are better than few cards used on big detachments. So all cards that require a big detachment become automatically bad.

{whynotboth.gif}

This is IG we're talking about, the faction where you can spend 25 points to draw +10 cards per turn and still have plenty of points to fill up large detachments to buff with those cards. I can not imagine a situation where drawing 15-20+ cards is not enough and you absolutely need to dump everything that benefits from a large detachment in favor of drawing your entire deck. Though TBH with IG in a typical large Apocalypse game it's not going to be that difficult to draw the entire 30-card deck every single turn and still have full-size LoW detachments to receive your best buffs.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Smirrors wrote:
Are you certain this can be used on tank commanders? Assume there will be faq out in short order to clarify

What is unclear? The card asks for the LEMAN RUSS keyword, tank commanders (and Pask) have the LEMAN RUSS keyword. It's just like how it works in normal 40k.


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 Lance845 wrote:
If you reveal your detachments order to do this and the opponent plays a card to act first or just has initiative they can double move, get into melee with these units and strip them of their ability to shoot.

Assuming there are no screens in the way. Cheap infantry squads that don't die until the end of the turn make getting within 1" easier said than done.

Well for 1, it's not getting within 1" it's getting into base contact. For 2, you don't have to get into contact with the tanks. Get into melee with anyone and you take their targets away. Yeah, those screens might protect the tanks (though screening is much harder when you have to be within 1/2" of at least 1 other model if you have 5 or less models in the unit or 2 other models if you have more than 5 models in the unit. No stretching out konga lines across the whole table to build walls of models). But if you get to go first and you know what bull crap they are about to try to pull you can do a lot to reduce their effectiveness.


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 Peregrine wrote:

This is IG we're talking about, the faction where you can spend 25 points to draw +10 cards per turn and still have plenty of points to fill up large detachments to buff with those cards. I can not imagine a situation where drawing 15-20+ cards is not enough and you absolutely need to dump everything that benefits from a large detachment in favor of drawing your entire deck. Though TBH with IG in a typical large Apocalypse game it's not going to be that difficult to draw the entire 30-card deck every single turn and still have full-size LoW detachments to receive your best buffs.

At what PL are you thinking this is happening? You draw 1 card by default. Each detachment get a warlord who, if they are a character, gets to draw another card. Certain characters generate an additional card IF they are your detachments warlord. To draw the entire deck you need a minimum 15 detachments. 14 of which need the types of characters that let you draw a second card. Oh yeah... and you have to discard back down to 10 cards.

Those characters are not protected from shooting. Any sniper weapon will ignore their "obscured" -1 to hit. You think those cheap characters are surviving a long time with their crap save and 1 wound?

 Lance845 wrote:
Get into melee with anyone and you take their targets away.

Remember, falling back is a thing still. If you move first the screening units haven't moved yet and can use their move action to disengage from combat and let the big guns fire. And because you've already moved you can't exploit the gap until the following turn at the earliest.

Also, while locking units in combat is effective against the double-tap LRBT squadron, it does nothing against the Armageddon Banesword/Macharius battery. All melee units can do there is hope to inflict damage, and none of that damage will stop the guns from firing until the following turn.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Lance845 wrote:
Get into melee with anyone and you take their targets away.

Remember, falling back is a thing still. If you move first the screening units haven't moved yet and can use their move action to disengage from combat and let the big guns fire. And because you've already moved you can't exploit the gap until the following turn at the earliest.

Also, while locking units in combat is effective against the double-tap LRBT squadron, it does nothing against the Armageddon Banesword/Macharius battery. All melee units can do there is hope to inflict damage, and none of that damage will stop the guns from firing until the following turn.

Remember, those screening units are part of a detachment. If their detachment is issued an order that has them moving then that detachment is not issued an order that gives them a +1 to shoot. The controlling player would need to have issued them an order that allowed them to move before all the orders were revealed or had a card that allowed them to change their order. If they were acting as a gunline with a aimed fire order then no. They cannot fall back. They can fight at a -1 to hit.

 Lance845 wrote:
At what PL are you thinking this is happening? You draw 1 card by default. Each detachment get a warlord who if they are a character gets to draw another card. Certain characters generate an additional card IF they are your detachments warlord. To draw the entire deck you need a minimum 15 detachments. 14 of which need the types of characters that let you draw a second card. Oh yeah... and you have to discard back down to 10 cards.

You can easily have massive card draws at 200 points. A detachment of a company commander and three astropaths and/or two-man crusader squads costs 5 points and draws two cards per turn (one for being a warlord, one for the officer rule). Each of these detachments unlocks the ability to buy three detachments of a company commander and an infantry squad for 5 points each, giving the same card draw while also supplementing your screens. And that's just pure card draw detachments. Want some guns? Three masters of ordnance and a company commander is 17 points, giving you +2 draws and three pseudo-Basilisk shots in a four-model detachment that can easily hide behind LOS blocking terrain. So yeah, for 75 points you can literally draw your entire deck every single turn. Pretty nice in team games where you can put everyone's most overpowered stratagem in the deck and ensure that everyone gets to use them every turn without any RNG...


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 Lance845 wrote:
Remember, those screening units are part of a detachment. If their detachment is issued an order that has them moving then that detachment is not issued an order that gives them a +1 to shoot. The controlling player would need to have issued them an order that allowed them to move before all the orders were revealed or had a card that allowed them to change their order. If they were acting as a gunline with a aimed fire order then no. They cannot fall back. They can fight at a -1 to hit.

Sure, but why do you care about them not getting +1 to hit? It's a detachment of a single infantry squad and a company commander (because we need to feed the CCG engine), just give them the generic move + shoot/fight order every turn and who cares if your random lasgun dice are at maximum effectiveness.

So they fall back once, then another detachment goes and gets into melee again. No more falling back. It's not the all or nothing that 40k is. It's not as simple as you make it out to be.

 Lance845 wrote:
So they fall back once, then another detachment goes and gets into melee again. No more falling back. It's not the all or nothing that 40k is. It's not as simple as you make it out to be.

You don't have to fall back immediately, you just have to do it before the shooting units need to fire. And because you're MSU IG where every infantry squad is a separate detachment you have plenty of detachments to stall and manipulate the activation sequence. Plus, as noted, the Banesword battery can't be locked in combat, so locking units in combat is purely a defensive move and any unit that activates and has its infantry squad fall back is exposed for the rest of the turn.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Also, remember that Apocalypse is rarely a 1v1 event. It's going to be an IG player bringing an Armageddon Banesword battery and the draw engine, the space marine player bringing elite infantry and the 2++ terminator squad, the harlequin player bringing the nastiest melee units in the game, etc. Everyone has their most overpowered units backed by their most overpowered assets (since, again, you draw the entire deck every turn). You aren't just charging infantry squads, you're getting into attack range for buffed harlequin detachments to roll a million dice at whatever was dumb enough to get up close.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Lance845 wrote:
At what PL are you thinking this is happening? You draw 1 card by default. Each detachment get a warlord who if they are a character gets to draw another card. Certain characters generate an additional card IF they are your detachments warlord. To draw the entire deck you need a minimum 15 detachments. 14 of which need the types of characters that let you draw a second card. Oh yeah... and you have to discard back down to 10 cards.

You can easily have massive card draws at 200 points. A detachment of a company commander and three astropaths and/or two-man crusader squads costs 5 points and draws two cards per turn (one for being a warlord, one for the officer rule). Each of these detachments unlocks the ability to buy three detachments of a company commander and an infantry squad for 5 points each, giving the same card draw while also supplementing your screens. And that's just pure card draw detachments. Want some guns? Three masters of ordnance and a company commander is 17 points, giving you +2 draws and three pseudo-Basilisk shots in a four-model detachment that can easily hide behind LOS blocking terrain. So yeah, for 75 points you can literally draw your entire deck every single turn. Pretty nice in team games where you can put everyone's most overpowered stratagem in the deck and ensure that everyone gets to use them every turn without any RNG...

Every one of those units has a worse than 6+ save and a single wound. 2 successful wound rolls and, without intervention from defensive cards, they are guaranteed dead. Any one successful wound roll and you have a more than 50% chance that they are dead. This is a loosing strategy for drawing and then discarding most of your deck.


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 Peregrine wrote:

 Lance845 wrote:
So they fall back once, then another detachment goes and gets into melee again. No more falling back. It's not the all or nothing that 40k is. It's not as simple as you make it out to be.

You don't have to fall back immediately, you just have to do it before the shooting units need to fire. And because you're MSU IG where every infantry squad is a separate detachment you have plenty of detachments to stall and manipulate the activation sequence. Plus, as noted, the Banesword battery can't be locked in combat, so locking units in combat is purely a defensive move and any unit that activates and has its infantry squad fall back is exposed for the rest of the turn.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Also, remember that Apocalypse is rarely a 1v1 event. It's going to be an IG player bringing an Armageddon Banesword battery and the draw engine, the space marine player bringing elite infantry and the 2++ terminator squad, the harlequin player bringing the nastiest melee units in the game, etc. Everyone has their most overpowered units backed by their most overpowered assets (since, again, you draw the entire deck every turn). You aren't just charging infantry squads, you're getting into attack range for buffed harlequin detachments to roll a million dice at whatever was dumb enough to get up close.

Well rarely is relative. Everyone I have spoken to in person about apoc isn't looking to do big massive 8k multi person battles on huge interconnected tables. We are all looking to play 40k but better. So sure, in games I intend to never play IG sure can generate a lot of cards and then immediately discard them while having the units that do that be weak and easily destroyed. I look forward to hearing people report back on how well or poorly it works out, but it's not actually relevant to me.

 Lance845 wrote:
Every one of those units has a worse than 6+ save and a single wound. 2 successful wound rolls and, without intervention from defensive cards, they are guaranteed dead. Any one successful wound roll and you have a more than 50% chance that they are dead. This is a loosing strategy for drawing and then discarding most of your deck.

Being out of LOS is a 1+++ against anything but barrage weapons, and are you really wasting barrage weapons to kill single infantry models when all four models in the detachment are characters and can take over as warlord? Are you really going to let the Banesword battery keep firing while you try to snipe the draw engine? The draw engine takes a disproportionate amount of firepower to kill, and because it's so cheap it can easily pay for itself in a turn or two even if you do kill it. Remember, every Banesword battery double tap the draw engine gives you is 20+ free blast markers even if the models themselves just sit back behind LOS blocking terrain and generate assets. Every orbital bombardment the draw engine gives you is more blast markers. Etc.

Well 1) rarely is relative. Everyone I have spoken to in person about apoc isn't looking to do big massive 8k multi person battles on huge interconnected tables. We are all looking to play 40k but better.

I'm not even talking about massive battles here, all it takes is standard Apocalypse games on a 6x8 table taking the typical 3-4 hours of an 8th edition 40k game. Sure, if you're talking about playing 50 point games on your lunch break not much of this is going to be relevant, but in that case you're not really playing Apocalypse anymore.

So sure, in games I intend to never play IG sure can generate a lot of cards and then immediately discard them while having the units that do that be weak and easily destroyed.

Who cares if you immediately discard them? The point is that you guarantee availability. You pick the 10 most broken cards in the deck (plus any that can be used immediately in the orders phase) and guarantee that your team has them. The Banesword battery gets to double tap, the harlequins get their game-breaking asset, the terminator objective campers get the 2++, you immediately play all three orbital bombardment effects, etc. And then next turn you probably get to use all of those cards again because you drew the entire deck and reshuffled.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Lance845 wrote:
Every one of those units has a worse than 6+ save and a single wound. 2 successful wound rolls and, without intervention from defensive cards, they are guaranteed dead. Any one successful wound roll and you have a more than 50% chance that they are dead. This is a loosing strategy for drawing and then discarding most of your deck.

Being out of LOS is a 1+++ against anything but barrage weapons, and are you really wasting barrage weapons to kill single infantry models when all four models in the detachment are characters and can take over as warlord? Are you really going to let the Banesword battery keep firing while you try to snipe the draw engine? The draw engine takes a disproportionate amount of firepower to kill, and because it's so cheap it can easily pay for itself in a turn or two even if you do kill it. Remember, every Banesword battery double tap the draw engine gives you is 20+ free blast markers even if the models themselves just sit back behind LOS blocking terrain and generate assets. Every orbital bombardment the draw engine gives you is more blast markers. Etc.

If they are screening they are not out of LOS. They are easy pickings that are cheap and easy kills being used to generate valuable assets.

Well 1) rarely is relative. Everyone I have spoken to in person about apoc isn't looking to do big massive 8k multi person battles on huge interconnected tables. We are all looking to play 40k but better.

I'm not even talking about massive battles here, all it takes is standard Apocalypse games on a 6x8 table taking the typical 3-4 hours of an 8th edition 40k game. Sure, if you're talking about playing 50 point games on your lunch break not much of this is going to be relevant, but in that case you're not really playing Apocalypse anymore.

Incorrect. 300 PL on a 6x8 is more than double a standard 40k game. 2k points is roughly equivalent to 125 PL in apoc. 100-150 PL games is what people are talking about playing on a 6x4 table in roughly 1-2 hours. 1v1 is super common. More than 1 v 1 is the rarity in my meta. So as I said, rarely is relative. I can't speak for what you see in your haunts. Only my own.

So sure, in games I intend to never play IG sure can generate a lot of cards and then immediately discard them while having the units that do that be weak and easily destroyed.

Who cares if you immediately discard them? The point is that you guarantee availability. You pick the 10 most broken cards in the deck (plus any that can be used immediately in the orders phase) and guarantee that your team has them. The Banesword battery gets to double tap, the harlequins get their game-breaking asset, the terminator objective campers get the 2++, you immediately play all three orbital bombardment effects, etc. And then next turn you probably get to use all of those cards again because you drew the entire deck and reshuffled.

If the things generating all those extra cards make it to the second turn, sure. Take pictures when you see this happen and let us know how the battle went?

 Lance845 wrote:
If they are screening they are not out of LOS. They are easy pickings that are cheap and easy kills being used to generate valuable assets.

Why does the entire detachment have to screen? You can put the crusader squads up front and hide the asset generators behind LOS blockers. Yeah, you might be out of command if you can't find a spot near the front for the HQ, but the crusaders are a 1W unit so getting a blast marker is probably a death sentence anyway. You can hide the masters of ordnance out of LOS and fire barrage shots because they aren't intended to screen at all. Hell, you can just take the astropath spam detachments and consider the draw engine a pure draw engine and ignore any screening questions and still come out ahead.

But mostly I think you aren't fully grasping just how cheap and spammable these detachments are and how much redundancy the IG player can bring. It honestly doesn't matter if you can target the asset generators when every single infantry squad on the table is attached to an asset generator. Bringing 10 infantry squads? That's 10 company commanders on the table generating 20 assets per turn for 20 points, even sitting out in the open that's a lot of single-model units that have to be attacked individually while you don't use that firepower on anything else.

Incorrect. 300 PL on a 6x8 is more than double a standard 40k game. 2k points is roughly equivalent to 125 PL in apoc. 100-150 PL games is what people are talking about playing on a 6x4 table in roughly 1-2 hours. 1v1 is super common. More than 1 v 1 is the rarity in my meta. So as I said, rarely is relative. I can't speak for what you see in your haunts. Only my own.

I'm not sure how you can say anything is "super common" when the game has been out for less than a week and nobody has had time to establish any trends of what will be popular. And the rulebook explicitly states that Apocalypse isn't meant to be played below 300 points.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Anyway, this is just going around in circles about every possible "counter" and coming up with potential counter-plays does not change the fact that there is a balance issue. You don't have to automatically win 100% of your games for something to be a problem. And it is very clear that:

1) Some assets are blatantly overpowered. The Armageddon Banesword battery is obviously way out of line compared to most other assets, and it isn't the only example of the CCG mechanic creating something broken. An army built with an optimized CCG deck and the units to exploit it is going to trash a "normal" army of a bunch of random units with some thematic assets.

2) RNG is an insufficient balancing factor when it's so easy to draw the entire deck every turn. The various IG draw engine options can effortlessly give you 10+ draws in even a small Apocalypse game, and in a typical 500+ point game an optimized Apocalypse army is going to be drawing all 30 cards (and then discarding down to the 10 best ones). You can not make the argument that an asset is ok because you won't see it all the time. If an asset breaks the game it will be played on turn 1 and probably multiple times after that. Just like the loyal 32 in an 8th edition game every competitive Apocalypse army is going to include some form of draw engine to remove the RNG factor and exploit the CCG mechanic as much as possible.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Lance845 wrote:
If they are screening they are not out of LOS. They are easy pickings that are cheap and easy kills being used to generate valuable assets.

Why does the entire detachment have to screen? You can put the crusader squads up front and hide the asset generators behind LOS blockers. Yeah, you might be out of command if you can't find a spot near the front for the HQ, but the crusaders are a 1W unit so getting a blast marker is probably a death sentence anyway. You can hide the masters of ordnance out of LOS and fire barrage shots because they aren't intended to screen at all. Hell, you can just take the astropath spam detachments and consider the draw engine a pure draw engine and ignore any screening questions and still come out ahead.

Because the entire detachment has to stay within 12" of it's commander.

Lets correct a misconception. You don't need a blast marker on a unit to route it. It only needs to have a Out of Command Marker. If a unit becomes more than 12" away during a turn it will receive the OOC maker at the beginning of the next. It has THAT turn to get back within 12" or it's gone in the damage phase. If you intend for your screens to last 1 turn then good luck. I would love for my opponents to kill off their own units for me.

But mostly I think you aren't fully grasping just how cheap and spammable these detachments are and how much redundancy the IG player can bring. It honestly doesn't matter if you can target the asset generators when every single infantry squad on the table is attached to an asset generator. Bringing 10 infantry squads? That's 10 company commanders on the table generating 20 assets per turn for 20 points, even sitting out in the open that's a lot of single-model units that have to be attacked individually while you don't use that firepower on anything else.

It's more that I just don't think it matters. Lots of little dirt cheap detachments will get lots of activations and generate a lot of cards and then get killed quickly. These are not ongoing issues throughout a match. They are issues on turn 1. 2 tops. Masters of Ordinance do not generate a second card. Only the one. The units that actually generate a second card are: Tempestor Prime, Platoon Commander, Company Commander, Straken, Creed.

So again, to get all 30 cards on 1 turn you need 15 detachments lead by one of those guys. For every detachment that is not lead by one of those guys you need 2 detachments lead by some other character. Each detachment needs 3 of some other units. So lets just assume troops since they're the cheapest. 3 PL per infantry so 9 +2 for your cheapest dude. 11 PL x 15 = 165 PL. Roughly equivalent to 2600 points in card generator detachments with las guns. Not only do you need to fit 450 IG infantry models around the table to do this, somehow you need to do it while keeping them within 12" of their commanders and keep those commanders out of LOS. AND THEN you need to start bringing your big tanks so that doing any of this crap would be worth anything.

The chance that any of us will see this on a table is miniscule. Or do you regularly play with 400+ infantry?

Incorrect. 300 PL on a 6x8 is more than double a standard 40k game. 2k points is roughly equivalent to 125 PL in apoc. 100-150 PL games is what people are talking about playing on a 6x4 table in roughly 1-2 hours. 1v1 is super common. More than 1 v 1 is the rarity in my meta. So as I said, rarely is relative. I can't speak for what you see in your haunts. Only my own.

I'm not sure how you can say anything is "super common" when the game has been out for less than a week and nobody has had time to establish any trends of what will be popular. And the rulebook explicitly states that Apocalypse isn't meant to be played below 300 points.

I give exactly no feths what PL the book tells me to play at. And again, I have spoken with the people I play with in my local area. I know the PL we have been talking about playing at.

Peregrine you are making the mistake of assuming that IG will be OP in your arguments, which we have possibly no data to determine. We can only get a gut feeling by reading the stats, and honestly my gut feeling is that they screwed IG pretty badly this time.
The new save and morale system turned them from being the most durable army in the empire to being the biggest glass cannons...without improving on the cannon part though.

Spoletta wrote:
Peregrine you are making the mistake of assuming that IG will be OP in your arguments, which we have possibly no data to determine. We can only get a gut feeling by reading the stats, and honestly my gut feeling is that they screwed IG pretty badly this time.
The new save and morale system turned them from being the most durable army in the empire to being the biggest glass cannons...without improving on the cannon part though.

If he is right though this is another prime example of why you shouldn't let faction fanboys write the rules for that faction without oversight.
Though I have to say the fact that they even considered giving IG commanders that ability to draw extra cards was a concern from the previews as it sounded exactlly like IG CP farming. Poorly thought out fanboyism.

Ice_can wrote:

Spoletta wrote:
Peregrine you are making the mistake of assuming that IG will be OP in your arguments, which we have possibly no data to determine. We can only get a gut feeling by reading the stats, and honestly my gut feeling is that they screwed IG pretty badly this time.
The new save and morale system turned them from being the most durable army in the empire to being the biggest glass cannons...without improving on the cannon part though.

If he is right though this is another prime example of why you shouldn't let faction fanboys write the rules for that faction without oversight.
Though I have to say the fact that they even considered giving IG commanders that ability to draw extra cards was a concern from the previews as it sounded exactlly like IG CP farming. Poorly thought out fanboyism.

Almost everybody has a unit or more that has the same ability by another name. Hivetyrants and the Swarmlord do the same thing for Nids. Immotek does it for Crons.

Ice_can wrote:

Spoletta wrote:
Peregrine you are making the mistake of assuming that IG will be OP in your arguments, which we have possibly no data to determine. We can only get a gut feeling by reading the stats, and honestly my gut feeling is that they screwed IG pretty badly this time.
The new save and morale system turned them from being the most durable army in the empire to being the biggest glass cannons...without improving on the cannon part though.

If he is right though this is another prime example of why you shouldn't let faction fanboys write the rules for that faction without oversight.
Though I have to say the fact that they even considered giving IG commanders that ability to draw extra cards was a concern from the previews as it sounded exactlly like IG CP farming. Poorly thought out fanboyism.

What i see is actually a faction with no deepstrike in a game where assault from deepstrike is king.
I see no dedicated melee elements in a game where the first battle reports show a melee focus.
I see a faction based on 7-14 PL tanks as the main part of the army, which go down with a single small blast.

I can obviously be wrong so early in the game, but i really don't see full IG being a competitive faction. They will maybe be useful for card farming.

 Lance845 wrote:

Ice_can wrote:

Spoletta wrote:
Peregrine you are making the mistake of assuming that IG will be OP in your arguments, which we have possibly no data to determine. We can only get a gut feeling by reading the stats, and honestly my gut feeling is that they screwed IG pretty badly this time.
The new save and morale system turned them from being the most durable army in the empire to being the biggest glass cannons...without improving on the cannon part though.

If he is right though this is another prime example of why you shouldn't let faction fanboys write the rules for that faction without oversight.
Though I have to say the fact that they even considered giving IG commanders that ability to draw extra cards was a concern from the previews as it sounded exactlly like IG CP farming. Poorly thought out fanboyism.

Almost everybody has a unit or more that has the same ability by another name. Hivetyrants and the Swarmlord do the same thing for Nids. Immotek does it for Crons.

Single HQ's arn't the same, if it had been kept to actual comanders not handed out to everyone with the officer titles or required a set detachment requirement to be met that wpuld be better IMHO.
But getting 6 cards for 5 infanty squads and 3 commanders (if peri is correct) is dumb.

Ice_can wrote:

If he is right though this is another prime example of why you shouldn't let faction fanboys write the rules for that faction without oversight.
Though I have to say the fact that they even considered giving IG commanders that ability to draw extra cards was a concern from the previews as it sounded exactlly like IG CP farming. Poorly thought out fanboyism.

Card farming is an option for pretty much any faction, Tau have no extra-card characters but can put a useful detachment that does stuff on the table for 5PL - so for half of a 300PL force they could be drawing all 30 cards from the deck every turn and also have 180 autocannon shots. It would make the Manta look cheap in real money but it would be rules legal.

Spamming MSU detachments kinda breaks the flow of the game and I think that if you were going to have any form of competitive apoc you would have a limit on detachments per power level just as we do in 40K.

happy_inquisitor wrote:

Ice_can wrote:

If he is right though this is another prime example of why you shouldn't let faction fanboys write the rules for that faction without oversight.
Though I have to say the fact that they even considered giving IG commanders that ability to draw extra cards was a concern from the previews as it sounded exactlly like IG CP farming. Poorly thought out fanboyism.

Card farming is an option for pretty much any faction, Tau have no extra-card characters but can put a useful detachment that does stuff on the table for 5PL - so for half of a 300PL force they could be drawing all 30 cards from the deck every turn and also have 180 autocannon shots. It would make the Manta look cheap in real money but it would be rules legal.

Spamming MSU detachments kinda breaks the flow of the game and I think that if you were going to have any form of competitive apoc you would have a limit on detachments per power level just as we do in 40K.

Yeah, probably any apoc tournament ruleset would put a limit on the detachments, if anything just to limit the duration of the game. I mean, i can probably field a legal and competitive nid army with 50 detachments at 150 PL, but it wouldn't really be fun.

Ice_can wrote:

 Lance845 wrote:

Ice_can wrote:

Spoletta wrote:
Peregrine you are making the mistake of assuming that IG will be OP in your arguments, which we have possibly no data to determine. We can only get a gut feeling by reading the stats, and honestly my gut feeling is that they screwed IG pretty badly this time.
The new save and morale system turned them from being the most durable army in the empire to being the biggest glass cannons...without improving on the cannon part though.

If he is right though this is another prime example of why you shouldn't let faction fanboys write the rules for that faction without oversight.
Though I have to say the fact that they even considered giving IG commanders that ability to draw extra cards was a concern from the previews as it sounded exactlly like IG CP farming. Poorly thought out fanboyism.

Almost everybody has a unit or more that has the same ability by another name. Hivetyrants and the Swarmlord do the same thing for Nids. Immotek does it for Crons.

Single HQ's arn't the same, if it had been kept to actual comanders not handed out to everyone with the officer titles or required a set detachment requirement to be met that wpuld be better IMHO.
But getting 6 cards for 5 infanty squads and 3 commanders (if peri is correct) is dumb.

These data sheets are available for free from GW. there's no need to speculate, just read the rule. Here's the Company Commander one. In a Patrol Detachment you can take one of these, one Infantry Squad and one... whatever and get a fully functional detachment which generates 2 cards for ~6 PL.

Drager wrote:

Ice_can wrote:

 Lance845 wrote:

Ice_can wrote:

Spoletta wrote:
Peregrine you are making the mistake of assuming that IG will be OP in your arguments, which we have possibly no data to determine. We can only get a gut feeling by reading the stats, and honestly my gut feeling is that they screwed IG pretty badly this time.
The new save and morale system turned them from being the most durable army in the empire to being the biggest glass cannons...without improving on the cannon part though.

If he is right though this is another prime example of why you shouldn't let faction fanboys write the rules for that faction without oversight.
Though I have to say the fact that they even considered giving IG commanders that ability to draw extra cards was a concern from the previews as it sounded exactlly like IG CP farming. Poorly thought out fanboyism.

Almost everybody has a unit or more that has the same ability by another name. Hivetyrants and the Swarmlord do the same thing for Nids. Immotek does it for Crons.

Single HQ's arn't the same, if it had been kept to actual comanders not handed out to everyone with the officer titles or required a set detachment requirement to be met that wpuld be better IMHO.
But getting 6 cards for 5 infanty squads and 3 commanders (if peri is correct) is dumb.

These data sheets are available for free from GW. there's no need to speculate, just read the rule. Here's the Company Commander one. In a Patrol Detachment you can take one of these, one Infantry Squad and one... whatever and get a fully functional detachment which generates 2 cards for ~6 PL.

Spoiler:

You can actually do it for 5 PL as it's 2+3, I was hoping their might have been some limit on numbrr of warlords or suchlike somewhere else in the rules that had maybe been missed, but it sadly looks like some house rules will be needed to keep the card farming in check already.

Patrol detachments are specialist detachments. You can take up to 3 specialist detachments for every 1 main detachment.

Il have to double check tonight unless someone else can read the rules, but i think specialist detachments don't generate cards.could easily be wrong about that but i kind of remember it.

 Da-Rock wrote:
I am trying to read and understand the angst over the Phantom, "Balance" issue that everyone complains about.

Games are not balanced if the end result of the game is one player wins and the other loses. A truly balanced game would result in a tie.

I do agree that if some of the cards become an issue then MTG provides a very easy reference on how to deal with that.

My favorite part is that the real anger always comes from the Tourny players who want the game changed for them and they don't care about anyone else. We have a great time playing a game that functions like this one does and I don't require GW to change it to a casual gamers style and shaft the Tourny players....................to be honest, no game system could EVER appease the Tourny players.

Chess does quite a good job, methinks.