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Yeah, time issues seem weird, the first round should have just flown by since you only had a portion of your army on the table.

Expertly played there jy2.

I do think the Taudar list is an example of why you need an ethereal and screening kroot rather than just raw fire power. But not to take anything away from your win, impressive play

Wow nicely played. And I agree with djin, I think the best tau lists utilize a commander, an ethereal, and screening kroot/FW.

With that said, I did not expect you to do THAT good against the tau list and you played it quite well. Reserving your anni barges with the reroll reserve warlord trait and second turn looks quite brilliant now ;p although It makes total sense now when I think about it haha. You come on gaining jink, and can come on anywhere on your board edge. Thus keeping them safer and allowing you to counter deploy to his movement. Although if you had failed to get a lot of it on i think it would have been a near auto loss at that point z

This was an awesomely played game. Fast melee centric armies that can absorb a lot of punishment are top tier.

tiber55 wrote:
Going 2nd really cost him big time.

The more I think about it the more it dawns on me that the ability to choose first or 2nd, i.e. going 2nd wins quite a few games, with late game scoreing normally surviving 2nd turn allows alot of game wins.

The other major issue is tournoments and game length.

I feel one of the biggest factors is the not so uncommon problem of games having a set amount of turns in tournoments because of time and the 2nd player has no risk they just win.

The random game length is an important aspect to having a fair game, put your 3 jetbikes or 5 warriors on the objective and if there is a turn 6 watch them be blasted off the face of the earth. Put them on when you know there wont be another turn and yay game won nothing can be done.

The random game length mechanic negates the inherent unfairness of getting to go last in an objective game.

Kind of wondering what your views on this are, it doesn't help that two major armies with eldar and necrons have the ability to hide scoring units anywhere on the board and capture the last turn.

 Tarrasq wrote:
I wonder, how much time did they give you? It seems strange to only be able to go to turn 4. Was the tournament set up originally for lower point games and they forgot to adjust the time when they decided to go to 2250?

Anyway, well done Jy2!

I believe we had 2:45 for each game, with lunch and 15-min breaks between the games.

The way I look at it is this. Playing in a tournament is a lot like being given a project from a customer with a firm deadline in a team environment. Now it might not be fair that your team is only given 2 days to complete a project that normally takes 3-days, but by accepting the project, you and your team are agreeing to the terms and the deadline for the project. Likewise with the tournament. By participating in the tournament, you and your opponent are agreeing to work within the framework of the tournament rules. There is no crying over spilled milk or not getting enough time to finish the game. You and your opponent need to manage your time in order to reach a conclusion, even if that conclusion isn't a natural one. Just like when working on the project for the client, you have to work with and sometimes motivate your teammate to finish his part. Likewise in the tournament. It is both player's responsibility to do what they can and to the best of their abilities in order to try to finish the game. Unfortunately, that sometimes include "reminding" your opponent of the time in the tournament.

With that said, I didn't feel that there was any slow-playing in our final game. I think both of us played to the best of our ability. It's just that Tau naturally takes a while to play. There are just so many extra steps when playing Tau that many other armies don't have. Casting psychic powers, checking for Nova-charge, proper positioning of your units, moving in the assault phase, Overwatch with multiple units (supporting fire), shooting in the opponent's turn a la Interceptor fire, etc. - these are all additional things you need to allocate time and resources for in a Tau army in addition to the normal Movement phase, an extremely long Shooting phase and any assaults in the Assault phase. With normal games - 1500-1750 pts at around 2:15 - it's already slow enough. Now add another 500-750 pts of Tau with a minimal time increasing and the game starts to get really tight.

Sure there are pitfalls to playing high points games with time limits. You are going to have to adjust your expectations in such a case, especially if you are playing against armies like Tau, Tyranids, Daemons and horde armies. Moreover, a lot of these types of games favor the army with the more mobile scoring units, especially if they are going 2nd. Yeah, it's somewhat of an unfair advantage for armies like necrons and eldar, but that is no one's fault but the designers.

Yeah sorry didn't go through wording very carefully didn't mean to say fair, meant competative.

I totally agree that if your enter a tournoment with timed rounds, you better be prepared for your games to end on a known turn.

But I believe that gives a huge boost to certain armies. I doubt you would deny that it would be more competative if random game length was allowed to happen as 5 man warrior and 3 man jetbike squads normally don't survive if targeted by a round of shooting in close games.

I would also argue that the game was designed around that philosophy of random game length and that while its a know factor in tournoments that you may or may not have a random game length in a close game (normally if there is a random game length the game was 1 sided to begin with), but that the tournament scene has done little if anything to address this.

BAO and other tournoment rulesets do alot to balance the book missions but I feel like with tau, eldar, taking longer to play you now have a situtation where tournoments may have to institute either longer game times, or find a way that compensates the person going 1st more due to the non random game length.

tiber55 wrote:
Yeah sorry didn't go through wording very carefully didn't mean to say fair, meant competative.

I totally agree that if your enter a tournoment with timed rounds, you better be prepared for your games to end on a known turn.

But I believe that gives a huge boost to certain armies. I doubt you would deny that it would be more competative if random game length was allowed to happen as 5 man warrior and 3 man jetbike squads normally don't survive if targeted by a round of shooting in close games.

I would also argue that the game was designed around that philosophy of random game length and that while its a know factor in tournoments that you may or may not have a random game length in a close game (normally if there is a random game length the game was 1 sided to begin with), but that the tournament scene has done little if anything to address this.

BAO and other tournoment rulesets do alot to balance the book missions but I feel like with tau, eldar, taking longer to play you now have a situtation where tournoments may have to institute either longer game times, or find a way that compensates the person going 1st more due to the non random game length.

Chess clock*

I understand Tau, Daemons, etc take longer to play. Learn how to play them faster or don't bring them to a tournament. I use Daemons in tournaments a lot, and I use flash cards to roll through my powers. I'm never the issue with games not finishing on time.

*people object to this because of your opponent's rolls on your turn. Simple solution, pause it for his part of your turn, TO adjusts the overall turn time limit with that in mind.

That's why tournament play is more about time management and rule lawyering and less about strategy. I mean no implication to those who like tournament play when I say this. People can be very skilled at both environments, but I personally think competitive 40k is a bit of a joke concept at tournaments when it's so easy to game the current system. Currently the game is revolved around twin linking, rerolling 2++ saves and last turn objective grabs when you know you have last word. I really do think it would have been better had you gained VP for time spent on an objective rather then who has last word ie. 1 vp per turn claimed. But thats another discussion :/

Good report - sometimes hot dice take over a game, but at the same time you positioned yourself to take advantage of the circumstance.

Did the riptide fail on its reroll for the armour penetration on the barge as well? That is some bad dice then.

Looks like I called it to a 'T'. I agree that Israels target priority was a bit off, but it also appears he had two turns of some terribly cold dice that weren't helping him at all. Either way, you played a great game, Jim. Congrats.

"Time managment," we'll call it, is a serious problem these days in tourney play, unfortunately. It's definitely something that needs to be addressed. I'll leave it at that. There are entire threads dedicated to discussing it elsewhere on Dakka.

 Red Corsair wrote:
That's why tournament play is more about time management and rule lawyering and less about strategy. I mean no implication to those who like tournament play when I say this. People can be very skilled at both environments, but I personally think competitive 40k is a bit of a joke concept at tournaments when it's so easy to game the current system. Currently the game is revolved around twin linking, rerolling 2++ saves and last turn objective grabs when you know you have last word. I really do think it would have been better had you gained VP for time spent on an objective rather then who has last word ie. 1 vp per turn claimed. But thats another discussion :/

That's why in the rules they have rules for objectives giving special bonuses so there is a point in holding them. Tournaments the way they are set up don't take advantage of these rules and thus there is no point in holding an objective till the end(the objectives tend to be in the open, exposed and rarely have tactical value to be there prematurely). Plus there is the random game length which really changes the way the game is played since a last turn objective grab isn't necessarily a last turn objective grab. I mean if the objective has a chance to give you skyfire or re-roll 1s to hit then there is some value to go and control that objective. The random game length also helps to mitigate the huge advantage 2nd turn gives you which has been stated, second turn lets you see your opponents deployment and gets the last jump on an objective with a minimum sized unit(which would get vaporized if the game were to go another turn since it doesn't have any staying power). So armies with very fast cheap scoring units do very well in a tournament setting since scoring units serve no other purpose but late game objective grabbers, and the codexes with durable more expensive or slower troops aren't competitive, now this could very well change if the huge advantage of a late game objective grab had some risk and if actually holding an objective mid game served some purpose(like giving skyfire or re-rolling 1s to hit or giving cover in the open) then some more armies/codexes might become viable in the tournament scene. But it is what it is, tournaments are slowly adopting to the way 6th is supposed to be played, there not there yet but as time goes on they seem to be slowly accepting more changes(now whether or not they'll completely accept 6th before 7th is out is another story).

But that's not really what this thread is about.

That was a very impressive victory over a tough opponent jy2, glad to see your gambit paid off. Thought you might have been in a little trouble with your wraiths/lords dying in droves to start, but even I(as a necron player) under estimated just how much damage that many tesla destructors could do in a short amount of time. Your opponent seemed to make a few mistakes in the heat of the moment(like assaulting your wraiths/lord with his riptide wtf) but I think you were heavily favoured by the time he made any errors due to you completely out maneuvering him. And I gotta say, I'm usually heavily in favour of more bodies over a Res.orb but your reports keep showing the orb doing work and I may have to edit some of my lists to include one or two. Great reports I enjoy reading them as always and always enjoy reading about necron victories.

Nicely done. Personally, I dig games vs. Tau, specifically the phase where their barely contained glee is replaced with extreme frustration at the fact that their shooting is about to stop. Forever. Because chainswords.

Punisher wrote:
That's why in the rules they have rules for objectives giving special bonuses so there is a point in holding them.

And a lot of them make sense for a melee oriented army? Objectives, like the flying rules ("whaddya mean your DP hides behind a tree, it is flying??"), their implementation is severely lacking.

 hippesthippo wrote:
Shadowsun's infiltrate works great in that list as it allows you to counter-deploy with a strong shooty element when going first (and Tau does like going first). In fact, Israel should have prolly done that here to counter your refused flank. That cover buff is also really useful for keeping pricey suits safe from low-ap weaponry.

As I said before, Wraiths die, resilient Barges wreck havoc on his lines, Lords proceed to Res Orb back to life and clear the path for your Warriors to claim victory.

You have a LOT of practice under your belt versus Riptide heavy lists, and I'm not sure how practiced Israel is against your army, so I expect you to win. You've started out strong with your Warlord trait allowing you to (correctly) reserve your Barges and deploy in a manner to avoid punishment. Even better, it's Vanguard Strike, so your Barges will have no problem moving on 6-12in, getting easily within range. Against shooty-heavy armies I always roll on Strategic as I like to hang back until my reserves come on so I can strike at once and overload my opponent. Particularly against Tau, it only takes one unit behind enemy lines for their gameplan to start going downhill quickly.

I'm not sure how much experience he has against necrons, but he definitely has never played against an army like mine. Some of the stuff I did kind of surprised in, and I'm not talking about just my tactics. For example, he was surprised to find out that my D-lord gave my entire unit of wraiths Prefered Enemy.

thanatos67 wrote:

Ah yeah I tend to jump my characters around mid to late game. The look on someones face when you deepstrike a single crisis suit next to ovesa and make a scoring riptide unit is...hilarious. I was more calling that out as one of his best shots to down barges early, which you totally denied him anyway so moot point.

Also holy crap his shooting is downing your wraiths fast. I know why you deployed like you did given the mission, but I feel like having the barges there could have let you do a little more threat overloading. Well thats a give and take, especially in big guns.

Yeah, sometimes I wonder how the game would have turned out had I deployed my barges. I'd definitely lose more of them, that I'm pretty sure of.

 Shandara wrote:
Seems you used up all your good ResOrb rolls the last game!

Nope....seems like I still have 1 or 2 more tricks up my sleeves.

 Zagman wrote:

Well done Jy2, I didn't expect his Interceptor to do so poorly against your ABs and you to pull ahead on VPs, guess your ResOrb really helped you there.

I was right about objectives, though it wasn't the Riptides that did it, and wrong about VPs.

Congrats jy2, well foughts. Night Scythes are really pretty ridiculous.

Thanks. Yeah, honestly, S8/9 vs AV13 with 5+....I wasn't expecting to lose too much. Maybe 1 dead barge at most. Then again, 1 dead barge could be a difference maker.

Yeah, night scythes need a slight nerf next edition. I'd say it'll be fair if they made embarking/disembarking limited to moving 18" only. But until then, we necron players are going to take advantage of it to the max.

 Lucarikx wrote:
Holy moly! Solid performance for the Necrons.

I don't understand why Shadowsun was in the list though. A unit of Sniper Kroot would have been better (and cheaper) for Linebreaker/Outflank imo.

Well done, jy2!

Lucarikx

I don't know. Personally, I'd dump her for an Ethereal and other stuff (like kroots and more pathfinders or maybe one of those fancy, smancy Tau flyers).

 Stoffer wrote:
While I think you would probably still have won due to your great move of reserving as much as possible, it looks like some pretty suspect target priorities on his side. He's shooting his skyray at your wraiths with a table full of flyers and skimmers for example.

Anyway, good win

Yeah, that's the old tactic of focus-until-they-die. Since all of his units fired their main guns with interceptor, he actually didn't have a whole lot of firepower left to dump into my wraithstar. At that point, his main concern/focus was to try to take out my most dangerous unit. If he hadn't fired his skyray into my wraithstar, I'd probably kill his last unit of broadsides + Warlord as well and then probably assaulted his unit of firewarriors on his objective.

I felt he made the right play.





Automatically Appended Next Post:

 djones520 wrote:
Yeah, time issues seem weird, the first round should have just flown by since you only had a portion of your army on the table.

My initial turn was very fast. Actually, most of my turns went by rather quickly. It was the Tau turns that took a while. All those guns shooting and then all the saves and Look-Out-Sirs I had to make, not to mention all the other Tau mechanics in the game....that's what took a while.

djn wrote:
Expertly played there jy2.

I do think the Taudar list is an example of why you need an ethereal and screening kroot rather than just raw fire power. But not to take anything away from your win, impressive play

Chancetragedy wrote:
Wow nicely played. And I agree with djin, I think the best tau lists utilize a commander, an ethereal, and screening kroot/FW.

With that said, I did not expect you to do THAT good against the tau list and you played it quite well. Reserving your anni barges with the reroll reserve warlord trait and second turn looks quite brilliant now ;p although It makes total sense now when I think about it haha. You come on gaining jink, and can come on anywhere on your board edge. Thus keeping them safer and allowing you to counter deploy to his movement. Although if you had failed to get a lot of it on i think it would have been a near auto loss at that point z

While I don't think an Ethereal is absolutely necessary if you are playing mobile Tau, personally, I am a big fan of hybrid Tau, with mobile elements and an Ethereal-based pulse-bomb build as its core. For this build, you will need Eldar and some jetbike troops for some mobile scoring.

I was banking on my beta-strike with my reserves. I'm glad it went the way I wanted it to, though honestly, if even 1 or 2 less came in, I still would have wiped out his broadsides, though his riptide would have been less wounded. It took about 5 AB's to wipe out his broadsides.

 Dozer Blades wrote:
This was an awesomely played game. Fast melee centric armies that can absorb a lot of punishment are top tier.

Agreed. Unfortunately, right now, I only see 2 armies like that - necrons and chaos daemons. Of the 2, necrons are the more reliable one, though daemons are the one that is more likely to overwhelm, especially if they are getting fast multi-wound assault units with 2++ saves. I actually feel that daemons are potentially the toughest matchup for Tau currently.

I think Nurgle CSM with Nurgle allied daemons is just as strong as Necrons and pure daemons. CSM brings stability and they have Nurgle based units that are really good - for instance Plague Marines are so underrated. You've also got the Spawn (I'm actually not a big fan but respect what they can do). Of course there is the Heldrake which is obvious. Necrons are the best, pure daemons can be unreliable... I'd put CSM with allied daemons between the two. I am also a big fan of Nurgle bikers with characters... They are so cheap for the points now. Just my 2c. : )

tiber55 wrote:
Yeah sorry didn't go through wording very carefully didn't mean to say fair, meant competative.

I totally agree that if your enter a tournoment with timed rounds, you better be prepared for your games to end on a known turn.

But I believe that gives a huge boost to certain armies. I doubt you would deny that it would be more competative if random game length was allowed to happen as 5 man warrior and 3 man jetbike squads normally don't survive if targeted by a round of shooting in close games.

I would also argue that the game was designed around that philosophy of random game length and that while its a know factor in tournoments that you may or may not have a random game length in a close game (normally if there is a random game length the game was 1 sided to begin with), but that the tournament scene has done little if anything to address this.

BAO and other tournoment rulesets do alot to balance the book missions but I feel like with tau, eldar, taking longer to play you now have a situtation where tournoments may have to institute either longer game times, or find a way that compensates the person going 1st more due to the non random game length.

Yeah, when time is a factor, armies with fast scoring units (whom I refer to as mobile scoring) definitely have an advantage. That's why necrons and eldar are top-tier in tournament play IMO. They do have the unfair advantage of super-fast troops and usually, time works in their favor, especially if they are going 2nd. As for fairness in a tournament, it is what it is - and that is a gaming system that is inherently unbalanced. And although we can strive for fairness, the truth is, we will always fall short....by a mile. Some armies are just innately better than others in certain facets of the game.

Adding time to a tournament will help, but sometimes, it is not entirely feasible, especially if the tournament is trying to cram 4 games into 1 day. But it's good that 5+ game GT's are now splitting their tournaments into 2-day events and that some are giving more time to their game. Of course that doesn't factor in the speed of your opponent or his army. Sometimes adding more time may still not be enough if your opponent is unnaturally slow or his army unnaturally large, but it is a good starting point. The rest will have to rely on time management by you and your opponent.

Also, compensating the person going 1st is not a solution either. There are advantages to going first, especially in VP missions or the Relic. Moreover, certain armies like Tau, IG, DE or shooty MSU have the ability to cripple the opponent with a 1st turn alpha-strike that gives them an unfair advantage and then on top of that, they get "compensated" for going 1st? That is the flip side of the coin and is just as bad as an army like necrons or eldar going 2nd in an objectives-based mission. I'm more for adding time over this option.

anonymou5 wrote:
Chess clock*

I understand Tau, Daemons, etc take longer to play. Learn how to play them faster or don't bring them to a tournament. I use Daemons in tournaments a lot, and I use flash cards to roll through my powers. I'm never the issue with games not finishing on time.

*people object to this because of your opponent's rolls on your turn. Simple solution, pause it for his part of your turn, TO adjusts the overall turn time limit with that in mind.

IMO, this is another bad idea. First, you have people complain about not finishing the game. Start to introduce "clocks" and now you are going to have people complain about not even finishing their turns! This is going to punish certain armies more and discourage variety in tournament play. You want the game to come to a natural conclusion? How is it natural when one player doesn't even get to finish his shooting or his assaults and the game is called? "Hey, all I needed to do was to shoot your 1 guy off of the objective and I win, but no...I don't get to finish my last unit shooting?!?" No, this is going to make the game worse off IMO.

 Red Corsair wrote:
That's why tournament play is more about time management and rule lawyering and less about strategy. I mean no implication to those who like tournament play when I say this. People can be very skilled at both environments, but I personally think competitive 40k is a bit of a joke concept at tournaments when it's so easy to game the current system. Currently the game is revolved around twin linking, rerolling 2++ saves and last turn objective grabs when you know you have last word. I really do think it would have been better had you gained VP for time spent on an objective rather then who has last word ie. 1 vp per turn claimed. But thats another discussion :/

That's an interesting idea, but unfortunately, accumulating objective points isn't an ideal solution either. That will mainly benefit the armies with the more resilient scoring units - armies like Draigowing, 30-ork boy mobs, blob squads, Typhus zombies and other unshiftable units.





Automatically Appended Next Post:

 calypso2ts wrote:
Good report - sometimes hot dice take over a game, but at the same time you positioned yourself to take advantage of the circumstance.

Did the riptide fail on its reroll for the armour penetration on the barge as well? That is some bad dice then.

Doh! I completely forgot about that rule until you just mentioned it on this thread. Obviously, so did my opponent.

 hippesthippo wrote:
Looks like I called it to a 'T'. I agree that Israels target priority was a bit off, but it also appears he had two turns of some terribly cold dice that weren't helping him at all. Either way, you played a great game, Jim. Congrats.

"Time managment," we'll call it, is a serious problem these days in tourney play, unfortunately. It's definitely something that needs to be addressed. I'll leave it at that. There are entire threads dedicated to discussing it elsewhere on Dakka.

Good call!

But there is one who called it even better.....

 Xaereth wrote:
As to predictions - I will be surprised if you lose to any of these lists. The first opponent has a bunch of S8 stuff that would mess with Wraiths, but almost nothing to help deal with 5 ABs and your fliers. In contrast, your ABs will butcher his Venoms and their contents, while the Wraiths chew through his WK . Beast squad w/ Fortune is the one difficulty I see - they'll be the reason Game 1 stays close.

Your game 2 will need to be a route - his deathstar loses vs. your 3 mini-stars, and ABs are made to kill Boyz, as are Wraiths and Scythes.

Game 3 also seems easy enough for you - his Broadsides don't quite have the ability to shoot your Wraiths down before they get to you, and the Riptides may or may not take chunks out of your Wraiths, but not fast enough. I really don't think his list will be a match for yours. Not enough balance, IMO - lots of shooting, but nothing to truly counter loads of fast resilient close combat threats.

I predict your biggest difficulty will be with Game 1, though you'll still get a minor win there, and major wins on the next two.

So say we all

Bingo! Give that man a cigar!

Xaereth, you, sir, are a true gentleman and a prophet.

Punisher wrote:

That's why in the rules they have rules for objectives giving special bonuses so there is a point in holding them. Tournaments the way they are set up don't take advantage of these rules and thus there is no point in holding an objective till the end(the objectives tend to be in the open, exposed and rarely have tactical value to be there prematurely). Plus there is the random game length which really changes the way the game is played since a last turn objective grab isn't necessarily a last turn objective grab. I mean if the objective has a chance to give you skyfire or re-roll 1s to hit then there is some value to go and control that objective. The random game length also helps to mitigate the huge advantage 2nd turn gives you which has been stated, second turn lets you see your opponents deployment and gets the last jump on an objective with a minimum sized unit(which would get vaporized if the game were to go another turn since it doesn't have any staying power). So armies with very fast cheap scoring units do very well in a tournament setting since scoring units serve no other purpose but late game objective grabbers, and the codexes with durable more expensive or slower troops aren't competitive, now this could very well change if the huge advantage of a late game objective grab had some risk and if actually holding an objective mid game served some purpose(like giving skyfire or re-rolling 1s to hit or giving cover in the open) then some more armies/codexes might become viable in the tournament scene. But it is what it is, tournaments are slowly adopting to the way 6th is supposed to be played, there not there yet but as time goes on they seem to be slowly accepting more changes(now whether or not they'll completely accept 6th before 7th is out is another story).

But that's not really what this thread is about.

That was a very impressive victory over a tough opponent jy2, glad to see your gambit paid off. Thought you might have been in a little trouble with your wraiths/lords dying in droves to start, but even I(as a necron player) under estimated just how much damage that many tesla destructors could do in a short amount of time. Your opponent seemed to make a few mistakes in the heat of the moment(like assaulting your wraiths/lord with his riptide wtf) but I think you were heavily favoured by the time he made any errors due to you completely out maneuvering him. And I gotta say, I'm usually heavily in favour of more bodies over a Res.orb but your reports keep showing the orb doing work and I may have to edit some of my lists to include one or two. Great reports I enjoy reading them as always and always enjoy reading about necron victories.

So far, that's happened in almost all my games against Tau....my wraiths would just die in droves. Then again, I've only played against Tau with my crons 2-3 times in 6E. I see them more as a delivery vehicle for my D-lords. Hopefully, 1 or 2 will survive and then my D-lord and wraiths split up just before they assault. Normally, wraiths would charge in first and eat supporting fire Overwatch and then my D-lord would charge in afterwards. In this case, the ResOrbs really come in useful to keep the pressure up against the Tau. If my D-lord gets back up, it's another "free" threat that I get and that my opponent has to deal with, thus keeping his guns away from my shooters and thus giving me more time to shoot. With enough guns, my shooting can do just as much if not even more damage than my wraiths in certain cases. And in double-FOC, I do have the firepower to whittle down 2+ models.

With regards to the assault, he was trying to pin down my wraithstar with both his riptide and broadsides. I believe he gave his riptide the 3++ and he did cast Forewarning on his broadsides for the 2+/4++. However, it just turned out that he made his more difficult assault (the riptide through area terrain) but failed his easier assault (broasides). With those buffs, those 2 units could have made for a decent tarpit.

Definitely get the ResOrb for your Warlord at the very least. It is definitely worth it when he comes back. In this game, it's like I got 380-pts of units for free (ok, -30pts for the ResOrb). I'm telling you, in many cases, you will find that your Warlord coming back to be a game-changer.

SBG wrote:
Nicely done. Personally, I dig games vs. Tau, specifically the phase where their barely contained glee is replaced with extreme frustration at the fact that their shooting is about to stop. Forever. Because chainswords.

Lol. So true. My opponent was beaming with confidence before my Turn 2. After my Turn 2, it was like night and day how his demeanor changed.

 Dozer Blades wrote:
I think Nurgle CSM with Nurgle allied daemons is just as strong as Necrons and pure daemons. CSM brings stability and they have Nurgle based units that are really good - for instance Plague Marines are so underrated. You've also got the Spawn (I'm actually not a big fan but respect what they can do). Of course there is the Heldrake which is obvious. Necrons are the best, pure daemons can be unreliable... I'd put CSM with allied daemons between the two. I am also a big fan of Nurgle bikers with characters... They are so cheap for the points now. Just my 2c. : )

CSM, especially when combined with daemons. is very good, though IMO they are not quite as good as Necrons. I say that because I run CSM+Daemons as well and I think the matchup favors the crons. I've also played against Janthkin's CSM+Daemons. Although he's won 2 tournaments with them (including Animecon GT), he has had trouble against my armies. As a matter of fact, my wraithwing necrons crushed his army. Then again, he ran Slaanesh. Nurgle will probably fare better against necrons, though their lack of mobility is cause for concern.

Ironically, I've had trouble against CSM in the few tournaments that I've played against them.

 jy2 wrote:

anonymou5 wrote:
Chess clock*

I understand Tau, Daemons, etc take longer to play. Learn how to play them faster or don't bring them to a tournament. I use Daemons in tournaments a lot, and I use flash cards to roll through my powers. I'm never the issue with games not finishing on time.

*people object to this because of your opponent's rolls on your turn. Simple solution, pause it for his part of your turn, TO adjusts the overall turn time limit with that in mind.

IMO, this is another bad idea. First, you have people complain about not finishing the game. Start to introduce "clocks" and now you are going to have people complain about not even finishing their turns! This is going to punish certain armies more and discourage variety in tournament play. You want the game to come to a natural conclusion? How is it natural when one player doesn't even get to finish his shooting or his assaults and the game is called? "Hey, all I needed to do was to shoot your 1 guy off of the objective and I win, but no...I don't get to finish my last unit shooting?!?" No, this is going to make the game worse off IMO.

JY2, I respectively disagree.

First, I don't think it punishes certain armies (or at least not more than it already does), but it will punish certain players. I've met plenty of guys who can play Green Tide/Blob Guard/etc in tournament time limits. It just takes practice and creativity (pre counted dice blocks are a big one, as is easy visual markings to break squads). If you aren't willing to practice and or be creative with your Army, you shouldn't play it in a tournament.

But even if I accept the that the chess clock system would punish certain armies, the current system punishes the opponents of those armies, which is far worse. Let's say you have 150 minutes for a game and Player A takes up 100 minutes and Player B takes up 50. Then the game ends on turn 4 because they run out of time. Player B loses turns because of Player A; that's ridiculous. Player A should be punished for his own long play (not slow play, because I'm assuming it is not on purpose), Player B should not suffer because his opponent cannot play his army fast enough. If you go to a chess clock system, the only person who suffers for his own long play is Player A; Player B still gets to play his turns.

Obviously the real solution is longer game time, because 2.5 hours is not ideal for a game of 40k, but if logistics make 2.5 (or 3 or 2) hours the length of time, only the slow player should be punished for his long play. We should not have to accept 3 and 4 (or even rush ended 5) turn games, because 40k is not a 3 or 4 turn game, it's a variable length game. Anything that changes the fundamental nature of the game is bad, and a locked time limit that punishes both players is very bad indeed.

anonymou5 wrote:
JY2, I respectively disagree.

First, I don't think it punishes certain armies (or at least not more than it already does), but it will punish certain players. I've met plenty of guys who can play Green Tide/Blob Guard/etc in tournament time limits. It just takes practice and creativity (pre counted dice blocks are a big one, as is easy visual markings to break squads). If you aren't willing to practice and or be creative with your Army, you shouldn't play it in a tournament.

But even if I accept the that the chess clock system would punish certain armies, the current system punishes the opponents of those armies, which is far worse. Let's say you have 150 minutes for a game and Player A takes up 100 minutes and Player B takes up 50. Then the game ends on turn 4 because they run out of time. Player B loses turns because of Player A; that's ridiculous. Player A should be punished for his own long play (not slow play, because I'm assuming it is not on purpose), Player B should not suffer because his opponent cannot play his army fast enough. If you go to a chess clock system, the only person who suffers for his own long play is Player A; Player B still gets to play his turns.

Obviously the real solution is longer game time, because 2.5 hours is not ideal for a game of 40k, but if logistics make 2.5 (or 3 or 2) hours the length of time, only the slow player should be punished for his long play. We should not have to accept 3 and 4 (or even rush ended 5) turn games, because 40k is not a 3 or 4 turn game, it's a variable length game. Anything that changes the fundamental nature of the game is bad, and a locked time limit that punishes both players is very bad indeed.

Here is why I do not advocate the idea of time clocks.

I get the fact that people want to do it to "punish" slow-playing. However, by doing so, you are also "punishing" those who aren't slow-playing, but who's army are just slower to play. Certain armies like tyranids, tau, IG, some chaos, some eldar and MSU armies are just slower by nature due to the extra "mechanics" inherent to those armies. And I am not talking about extreme horde builds like 5-tervigon tyranids, 240-ork boys or multiple IG-blobs. I am talking about the standard tournament builds for these types of armies.

So you (I mean the generic "you" as in you people) say, "learn to play faster". IMO, that is not a realistic expectation. The majority of tournament goers aren't really competitive. Rather, they are casual players who just want to get more games in. They are also not really savvy players and take slightly longer to play. In reality, probably only 25% of the players at most at tournaments are the more competitive players. They are also the ones who know how to play faster (and who also knows how to better game the system). Implementing a clock system IMO more often than not will punish the more casual players, who are not intentionally slow-playing. Rather, they are just not as familiar with the rules, their armies or strategy in general. So in actuality, what you end up doing is in punishing the majority when the people who actually needs to be punished (intentional slow-playing or ridiculously huge armies) is just a small minority.

This has the side-effect of discouraging players from participating in tournaments. People most affected by the implementation of the clock will be the majority of casual players with the "slower" armies and newer players. Implementing a clock system also adds more pressure to some people, which definitely increases their chances of having a "bad" experience and then not going back to tournaments. What we DON'T need and what tournaments CAN'T afford to do is to alienate/discourage people from participating in tournaments. Tournaments cannot survive on low attendance. The more people we exclude from tournament play, the more we run the risk of the tournament dying.

Now I don't have a solution for slow-playing, other than to pay attention to the time. Adding more time to rounds definitely helps, but it is mainly up to the players to keep track of time. If you feel that your opponent is taking too long, politely "encourage" to pick up the pace. If he doesn't improve or even listen, then you've got no choice but to bring it to the attention of the TO. Personally, I even help out my opponent, especially if he has a larger army. If he is rolling a lot of dice, I offer to help and I help him pick out his misses (or hits depending on how he picks them). If he doesn't mind as well, I even help him to move his models if he has got a lot of models or if his models are on my side of the board and it is difficult for him to move them. Sometimes, when I am going 2nd, I even start deploying while he is deploying. I tell him this is not my final deployment and after he is done deploying, I am usually done as well. Then I look at his deployment and make any changes to my deployment that I want. There are many things you can do to help speed the game along but you have to learn to take the initiative and to be willing to "manage" your opponent's turn as well (to a degree) if he just isn't playing to your satisfaction time-wise.

 jy2 wrote:

anonymou5 wrote:
JY2, I respectively disagree.

First, I don't think it punishes certain armies (or at least not more than it already does), but it will punish certain players. I've met plenty of guys who can play Green Tide/Blob Guard/etc in tournament time limits. It just takes practice and creativity (pre counted dice blocks are a big one, as is easy visual markings to break squads). If you aren't willing to practice and or be creative with your Army, you shouldn't play it in a tournament.

But even if I accept the that the chess clock system would punish certain armies, the current system punishes the opponents of those armies, which is far worse. Let's say you have 150 minutes for a game and Player A takes up 100 minutes and Player B takes up 50. Then the game ends on turn 4 because they run out of time. Player B loses turns because of Player A; that's ridiculous. Player A should be punished for his own long play (not slow play, because I'm assuming it is not on purpose), Player B should not suffer because his opponent cannot play his army fast enough. If you go to a chess clock system, the only person who suffers for his own long play is Player A; Player B still gets to play his turns.

Obviously the real solution is longer game time, because 2.5 hours is not ideal for a game of 40k, but if logistics make 2.5 (or 3 or 2) hours the length of time, only the slow player should be punished for his long play. We should not have to accept 3 and 4 (or even rush ended 5) turn games, because 40k is not a 3 or 4 turn game, it's a variable length game. Anything that changes the fundamental nature of the game is bad, and a locked time limit that punishes both players is very bad indeed.

Here is why I do not advocate the idea of time clocks.

I get the fact that people want to do it to "punish" slow-playing. However, by doing so, you are also "punishing" those who aren't slow-playing, but who's army are just slower to play. Certain armies like tyranids, tau, IG, some chaos, some eldar and MSU armies are just slower by nature due to the extra "mechanics" inherent to those armies. And I am not talking about extreme horde builds like 5-tervigon tyranids, 240-ork boys or multiple IG-blobs. I am talking about the standard tournament builds for these types of armies.

So you (I mean the generic "you" as in you people) say, "learn to play faster". IMO, that is not a realistic expectation. The majority of tournament goers aren't really competitive. Rather, they are casual players who just want to get more games in. They are also not really savvy players and take slightly longer to play. In reality, probably only 25% of the players at most at tournaments are the more competitive players. They are also the ones who know how to play faster (and who also knows how to better game the system). Implementing a clock system IMO more often than not will punish the more casual players, who are not intentionally slow-playing. Rather, they are just not as familiar with the rules, their armies or strategy in general. So in actuality, what you end up doing is in punishing the majority when the people who actually needs to be punished (intentional slow-playing or ridiculously huge armies) is just a small minority.

This has the side-effect of discouraging players from participating in tournaments. People most affected by the implementation of the clock will be the majority of casual players with the "slower" armies and newer players. Implementing a clock system also adds more pressure to some people, which definitely increases their chances of having a "bad" experience and then not going back to tournaments. What we DON'T need and what tournaments CAN'T afford to do is to alienate/discourage people from participating in tournaments. Tournaments cannot survive on low attendance. The more people we exclude from tournament play, the more we run the risk of the tournament dying.

Now I don't have a solution for slow-playing, other than to pay attention to the time. Adding more time to rounds definitely helps, but it is mainly up to the players to keep track of time. If you feel that your opponent is taking too long, politely "encourage" to pick up the pace. If he doesn't improve or even listen, then you've got no choice but to bring it to the attention of the TO. Personally, I even help out my opponent, especially if he has a larger army. If he is rolling a lot of dice, I offer to help and I help him pick out his misses (or hits depending on how he picks them). If he doesn't mind as well, I even help him to move his models if he has got a lot of models or if his models are on my side of the board and it is difficult for him to move them. Sometimes, when I am going 2nd, I even start deploying while he is deploying. I tell him this is not my final deployment and after he is done deploying, I am usually done as well. Then I look at his deployment and make any changes to my deployment that I want. There are many things you can do to help speed the game along but you have to learn to take the initiative and to be willing to "manage" your opponent's turn as well (to a degree) if he just isn't playing to your satisfaction time-wise.

I more or less agree with all your individual points, but still disagree with your overall point. Funny how life works sometimes, ha.

I think games ending in 4 turns is also a big turn off to newer players. So that's kind of a wash.

I also think it's a shame that many tournament games turn into "who can take advantage of a forced five minute turn faster," rather than an actual game of 40k. I also do many of the "proactive" moves to speed up the game you described, as well as the common "we will agree you have hidden that model out of sight on that level rather than you take five minutes looking at every angle" situation.

I think timed tournaments are inherently broken, and take a lot of the game away (European tournaments go with 4 hour games as standard, I believe). I don't necessarily think chess clocks are a perfect system, but it's something to try. Anyway, I don't want to derail your thread; and take away from your awesome batreps. So, agree to disagree I suppose.

On the other stream of thought going here, I actually think Necrons are a much harder match up for Daemons that Tau, especially if terrain is solid. (Eldar are the worst though). I find that a lot of the strength of Daemons are negated by Necron tools. Hounds own Wraiths, but need a ton of support to kill a D-Lord (I generally need Terrify and Enfeeble together to get through a Wraithstar with Hounds). ABs and NSs are great at shooting down FMCs and Hordes. MSS is a great counter to pimped out Daemon Princes. It seems like every Daemon strength is almost directly countered by Necrons, and what are normally easy choices become difficult (example: Invisibility versus Iron Arm is usually an easy call, but DPs need Invisibility to handle Tesla madness, but Iron Arm to step to a DLord; splits focus on pregame rolling)

anonymou5 wrote:

I more or less agree with all your individual points, but still disagree with your overall point. Funny how life works sometimes, ha.

I think games ending in 4 turns is also a big turn off to newer players. So that's kind of a wash.

I also think it's a shame that many tournament games turn into "who can take advantage of a forced five minute turn faster," rather than an actual game of 40k. I also do many of the "proactive" moves to speed up the game you described, as well as the common "we will agree you have hidden that model out of sight on that level rather than you take five minutes looking at every angle" situation.

I think timed tournaments are inherently broken, and take a lot of the game away (European tournaments go with 4 hour games as standard, I believe). I don't necessarily think chess clocks are a perfect system, but it's something to try. Anyway, I don't want to derail your thread; and take away from your awesome batreps. So, agree to disagree I suppose.

On the other stream of thought going here, I actually think Necrons are a much harder match up for Daemons that Tau, especially if terrain is solid. (Eldar are the worst though). I find that a lot of the strength of Daemons are negated by Necron tools. Hounds own Wraiths, but need a ton of support to kill a D-Lord (I generally need Terrify and Enfeeble together to get through a Wraithstar with Hounds). ABs and NSs are great at shooting down FMCs and Hordes. MSS is a great counter to pimped out Daemon Princes. It seems like every Daemon strength is almost directly countered by Necrons, and what are normally easy choices become difficult (example: Invisibility versus Iron Arm is usually an easy call, but DPs need Invisibility to handle Tesla madness, but Iron Arm to step to a DLord; splits focus on pregame rolling)

No worries. Not everyone sees things the same. Unfortunately in tournaments, that's just the nature of the beast. People can and often will take advantage of time. If you go, you're just going to have to accept it (though you can try to do something about it). Introducing a "chess clock" does not solve anything really. Rather, it just shifts the problem to something else entirely. You maybe fix one problem, but now you've got another set of problems that you've got to deal with and that is a direct result of this "shift". Just like taking a math test. Yeah, it isn't fair that you've only got 1 hour to finish the test, but hey, you've got to do your best. Now imagine if they start putting in a time limit per question also. Just when you are about to solve the math equation, time expires and you get the question wrong even though you already arrived at the answer. That's not fair either.

As for Necrons vs Tau vs Daemons, I agree. Daemons are arguably the best counter army to Tau (though it is by no means an easy win for them). Likewise, Necrons matchup well against Daemons and Tyranids matchup well against both Necrons and Daemons (but have trouble against Tau). Welcome to the rock-paper-scissors world of 40K!

Extremely well put together reports sir! Thanks for sharing.

POST-GAME THOUGHTS/TOURNAMENT RESULTS:

I caught a little break in Game #3. With all my forces coming in on Turn 2 and my opponent's shooting suddenly becoming impotent, I managed to turn the game around. I admit my strategy to deny my opponent his shooting and to reserve the majority of my army was risky, but in the end, it actually worked out great. Whenever I feel that I have a tough matchup where I may perhaps be the underdog, I tend to take risks in order to try to even the odds or to even gain an advantage. Just like in poker when you have a weaker hand than your opponent. Sometimes, you've just got to take a risk and try to bluff if you want to win that pot. However, usually the risks I take are calculated risks where the odds are on my side (as opposed to a hail-mary gamble where you are just praying for a miracle....but sometimes, I do that also. )

I felt my opponent was playing great initially. He was very aggressive. He was advancing rather than just hiding in his corner. He nova-charged the right things at the right time (i.e. getting ready for my Turn 2 reserves). He was using proper screening tactics. He tried to split up my wraiths (by outflanking Shadowsun on my side). He was moving his Commander from unit to unit to whereever he was needed (for example, on his Turn 2, he moved his Commander with his broadsides and gave them Tank Hunter in anticipation of my incoming reserves). I could tell from the way he played that he was very experienced with his army.

But then after Turn 2, I think that his frustration was starting to cloud his judgement. He made some questionable targeting choices. He assaulted when I felt he should have scrambled and/or braced for my inevitable assault. He didn't take into account my flight paths and he didn't protect his objectives well enough (though I suspect this may also have something to do with his inexperience against a Necron Air Force).

Overall, it was a great game. Frustration aside, Israel is a very nice person and a very good Tau general. We never played before, but after our game, he complimented me on what a great player I was (thanks!) and that he wanted a rematch. He also told me that this was the very first time that he had lost a VP game in 6th with his Tau, and he also apologized for being so frustrated in our game. That was a really classy thing for him to do and say. I'd be honored to play him again if our paths should cross in the future.


-------------------------------------------------------------------


So because we had 36 players and there were only 3 rounds, the tournament ended with several people with 3-0 records.

Grant Theft Auto took 1st Overall with his bad-a$$ seer council with 3 domininating wins. Too bad we didn't get to play. I would've made his seer council "sit down." Lol! (Actually, I did play against his army, just not in the tournament.) I feel that his army is potentially one of the most dominating tournament armies currently. It has the potential to destroy the very competitive Tau and mechdar builds.

2nd Overall was an IG player. I really don't know much about the player or his army.

3rd Overall was the BAO 2013 winner, Lyzz Foster with her daemons. Lyzz and I both actually tied in Battle Points. But her nicely converted daemons and her higher Sportsmanship scores was the tie-breaker between us.

I was 4th Overall. I am more than happy with how I did. My goal here wasn't to be #1. Rather, I just wanted to get some games in against some good Tau/Eldar players and that's what I did. My only regret was that I didn't get to play against the Mechdar player, who was #2 in battle points but only in the Top10 for Overall. But it was either him or Israel and I chose Israel. I actually also wanted to play against Lyzz (who was also 2-0 and had a similar record to me after 2 games), but decided that I wanted to play against Israel's Tau even more.

Great tournament overall. I just may make a trip back to the final Contest of Champions (next time it will be 2500-pts) come November.

 migsula wrote:
Extremely well put together reports sir! Thanks for sharing.

Thanks, and it was my pleasure.

Good to see the Necrons still got it!
Well done, well done, I never would have thought to go so heavy on reserves that way.
That was quite the gamble, but then again, the sweetest wins are when those gambles pay off!

First, wanted to point out that I predicted exactly what would happen. Let my well-earned pats on the head commence

 Xaereth wrote:


As to predictions - I will be surprised if you lose to any of these lists. The first opponent has a bunch of S8 stuff that would mess with Wraiths, but almost nothing to help deal with 5 ABs and your fliers. In contrast, your ABs will butcher his Venoms and their contents, while the Wraiths chew through his WK . Beast squad w/ Fortune is the one difficulty I see - they'll be the reason Game 1 stays close.

Your game 2 will need to be a route - his deathstar loses vs. your 3 mini-stars, and ABs are made to kill Boyz, as are Wraiths and Scythes.

Game 3 also seems easy enough for you - his Broadsides don't quite have the ability to shoot your Wraiths down before they get to you, and the Riptides may or may not take chunks out of your Wraiths, but not fast enough. I really don't think his list will be a match for yours. Not enough balance, IMO - lots of shooting, but nothing to truly counter loads of fast resilient close combat threats.

I predict your biggest difficulty will be with Game 1, though you'll still get a minor win there, and major wins on the next two.

Good reports as well! I'm not sure what I think of you reserving your ABs in your final game - he didn't have much to deal with them at long range anyways, and the shots going into them would have left your Wraiths more alive. It worked out though, which is I suppose what truly matters in the end. It would be interesting to see what would have happened in that game had you actually deployed the ABs rather than reserve them .

 iGuy91 wrote:
Good to see the Necrons still got it!
Well done, well done, I never would have thought to go so heavy on reserves that way.
That was quite the gamble, but then again, the sweetest wins are when those gambles pay off!

I'm glad it worked out. Otherwise, all the pundits on the net would be going, "jy2, why the heck did you do that?!?...." Lol!

 Xaereth wrote:
First, wanted to point out that I predicted exactly what would happen. Let my well-earned pats on the head commence

 Xaereth wrote:


As to predictions - I will be surprised if you lose to any of these lists. The first opponent has a bunch of S8 stuff that would mess with Wraiths, but almost nothing to help deal with 5 ABs and your fliers. In contrast, your ABs will butcher his Venoms and their contents, while the Wraiths chew through his WK . Beast squad w/ Fortune is the one difficulty I see - they'll be the reason Game 1 stays close.

Your game 2 will need to be a route - his deathstar loses vs. your 3 mini-stars, and ABs are made to kill Boyz, as are Wraiths and Scythes.

Game 3 also seems easy enough for you - his Broadsides don't quite have the ability to shoot your Wraiths down before they get to you, and the Riptides may or may not take chunks out of your Wraiths, but not fast enough. I really don't think his list will be a match for yours. Not enough balance, IMO - lots of shooting, but nothing to truly counter loads of fast resilient close combat threats.

I predict your biggest difficulty will be with Game 1, though you'll still get a minor win there, and major wins on the next two.

Good reports as well! I'm not sure what I think of you reserving your ABs in your final game - he didn't have much to deal with them at long range anyways, and the shots going into them would have left your Wraiths more alive. It worked out though, which is I suppose what truly matters in the end. It would be interesting to see what would have happened in that game had you actually deployed the ABs rather than reserve them .

Great predictions. You called it....

Yeah, sometimes I wonder what would have happened if I had deployed my barges. 2 main reasons why I didn't. First, I was trying to deny his left flank any targets. If I had deployed my barges, I would have given them targets to shoot at. Secondly, with all those barges, there will bound to be a couple that are clumped up for his ions to hit. Now how much actual damage he can do, probably not really that much, but keep in mind that this was Big Guns and every barge he kills not only diminishes my firepower, but also gives him bonus points. Thus, I thought it better to reserve my barges in a game of Denial.

Nice job jy2 and excellent bat rep, next time you'll get your shot to take me down

Did you see any tyranid players there and if so how well did they do? Just curious I am a huge nid player and I want to know how the bugs are doing?

Zaroff85
Tyranids

Grant Theft Auto wrote:
Nice job jy2 and excellent bat rep, next time you'll get your shot to take me down

Eh...maybe it's next time, YOU'LL get your shot to take me down. Haha....j.k. I think I'll save our necron-deldar matchup for the next and final Contest of Champions of the year.

In the meantime, I've still got our Draigowing-Seer Council deathstar-vs-deathstar batrep to work on.


BTW, for those who are interested in the trials and tribulations of Grant's ultra-tough and super-nasty deer council, you can check out his experiences with them on his blog - The Road to the Las Vegas Open:


http://westcoastdeercouncil.blogspot.com/

Zaroff85 wrote:
Did you see any tyranid players there and if so how well did they do? Just curious I am a huge nid player and I want to know how the bugs are doing?

Zaroff85
Tyranids

Slightly below average in this tourney. There were 3 tyranid players out of 36 participants. They average about 21st with the highest ranking tyranid player at 15th. Surprisingly, 2 of the tyranid armies I saw weren't running any flyrants at all.

The flyrants are extremely weak right now with all the mass small arms fire and skyfire weapons. they almost always die before I get to even use them and on top of that they are expensive. My friend was the gold bug player there and he was in a position to place 3rd or 4th if he won his last battle. But 6 wave serpants and 2 wraith knights are ridiculous right now

Zaroff85
Tyranids