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Or a third option, Sid- work out the kind of 40k you / folks in general actually want to play.

I havent bought escalation yet because I am unsure it will be allowed in most events. So I am currently stuck at a stand still on purchasing more models or books as I wait for the dust to settle. This is having a reverse effect on GW sales.

Breng77 wrote:
That assumes everyone will have D weapons....they won't some guys will run things like horde orks or tervigon spam and will only get to turn 2 or 3 in regular tournament time.

Adepta Sororitas and Inquisiton have zero access to Superheavies

 Mr Morden wrote:

Breng77 wrote:
That assumes everyone will have D weapons....they won't some guys will run things like horde orks or tervigon spam and will only get to turn 2 or 3 in regular tournament time.

Adepta Sororitas and Inquisiton have zero access to Superheavies

Inquisition has zero access to super heavies. Sisters can now take titans.

Gotta apologise, as I posted on this thread earlier, citing the Warhammer World reservation about Escalation, and stating of course GW wouldn't be stupid enough to allow it in their own, Throne of Skulls tournaments.

Looking forward to fielding our Stompa in fun games, but it's plain silly allowing it in tournaments. But all that's required really is sensible behaviour in clubs other venues.

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:

 Mr Morden wrote:

Breng77 wrote:
That assumes everyone will have D weapons....they won't some guys will run things like horde orks or tervigon spam and will only get to turn 2 or 3 in regular tournament time.

Adepta Sororitas and Inquisiton have zero access to Superheavies

Inquisition has zero access to super heavies. Sisters can now take titans.

Not in basic Esculation - but yes if people let you use FW

 Mr Morden wrote:

Breng77 wrote:
That assumes everyone will have D weapons....they won't some guys will run things like horde orks or tervigon spam and will only get to turn 2 or 3 in regular tournament time.

Adepta Sororitas and Inquisiton have zero access to Superheavies

Inquisition also has no troops, heavy or fast attack choices so let's not consider them an actual faction that should be considered.

Escalation is no different than buying units just to play planet strike or city fight. Just because GW manipulated people by putting the word expansion on it doesn't mean it's anything more than a gimmick...If you buy super heavies thinking they'll always be allowed then I think that's horribly naive

You know, although I was initially horrified by this, I think I'd actually be fine with str D stuff running around in a tournament. I don't see it as much worse than screamerstar really, just the opposite end of the spectrum. It seems like it means the end of Deathstars, and I'm just fine with that. The only thing I feel sorry for are Tyranid Monstrous Creatures.

kestral wrote:
You know, although I was initially horrified by this, I think I'd actually be fine with str D stuff running around in a tournament. I don't see it as much worse than screamerstar really, just the opposite end of the spectrum. It seems like it means the end of Deathstars, and I'm just fine with that. The only thing I feel sorry for are Tyranid Monstrous Creatures.

It can fight screamerstar. Your assessment is based on screamerstar being acceptable. So the people affected worse are any players not tau, eldar, or daemons.

Screamerstars suck… so let’s break the game and shaft everyone else just to get rid of them? That seems reasonable to you? To me the solution does not fit the scale of the problem. This is more like someone trying to kill an ant with an orbital strike to me.

The difficult thing to deal with is JetSeer council, in terms of balance. Screamer star is easy. Alpha strike gun lines from across the board that ignore cover are easy. Tweaking the effectiveness of JetSeers is hard.

Screamer Council can be mitigated FAIRLY by one very simply caveat: Grimoire of True Names ONLY affects their Daemonic save of 5++. This means they can only ever get a 3++ re-rollable save but conversely it also means if you roll Forewarning you will still get a 4++ even if you fail which is a benefit on the previous situation. 'Balanced', if you will!

Tau and Eldar gunlines of doom as easy to deal with... MAKE SURE YOU ACTUALLY PUT LOS BLOCKING TERRAIN ON THE TABLE IN TOURNAMENTS! 4th Ed ruins and trees do NOT cut it in 6th edition anymore. I would urge every local and national community to pressure their relevant tournaments to increase the amount of true LoS blocking terrain on the board.

Which brings us to JetSeers.... There are so many combinations in this unit it is VERY difficult to re-jig any one thing without fundamentally changing game mechanics and core rules. What is it that makes them too good? 2+ re-rollable cover or armour saves? The Baron tanking with a 2++ re-rollable? The fact they are so mobile and can multi-assault, hit and run and generally decimate anything without getting tar-pitted by big nasty units? Out of all those things no ONE is broken. A cover save of ANY type is pretty pants in 6th edition. An armour save of 2+ re-rollable doesn't really mean much given the amount of access to Grav and Plasma people have now. On paper you SHOULD be able to deal with JetSeers but they have more special rules than the Tau Batman Commander they can usually deal with any and all situations. They are a Swiss Army Knife unit but every tool is a master-crafted artefact. They excel at everything. But they pay for it. And they are far more likely to not roll that vital 'Fortune' than Screamers are to not get Forewarning or even fail the Grimoire with Fateweaver.

I am really at a loss as to how to mitigate the power of JetSeers. Maybe just let them run and see how the meta deals with them in the future.

But everything else is easy to fix:

Escalation and Strongholds - Banned
TauDar - More LOS blocking terrain
ScreamerStar - Grimoire ONLY affects the Daemonic save of 5++

This would mean you win via good tactics and generalship. Unless JetSeers are on every top table and the sky comes falling down. And that is just something we will have to wait and see.

AlexRae, 0-3; 0-4; 0-5 Warlocks?

A possibility that I hadn't considered! Greatly reduces the chances of rolling up the Cover Save AND Armour Save powers.... Interesting.

I am not entirely convinced they are beyond the realms of meta-shift compensation though.

The only fix I take issue with is the terrain fix (not because it is bad) but because it is not easy.

As a TO I work to get more terrain...but it costs time and money I don't reallly have to do more than I am (so unless I start charging more for events...which still does not cover time.). Now if local players say take their time and money to improve terrain at say their local store for tournaments...that I can get behind. You could even work out free tournament entry etc for them doing so....or incentives for people to bring their home terrain etc.

If you changed USRs so they only affected models/units from their own codex, it might go a long way too. The Seer council would be tarpittable (is that even a word?), the Tau buff commander would only be able to buff Tau units, and one space marine guy in a squad of guardsmen doesn't suddenly make them all fearless.

You can't start changing the rules because where does it stop.

You either allow Allies or you don't.
You either allow Escalation/Stronghold or you don't.
You Allow Codex Supplements or you don't
You allow Forgeworld or you don't.
You allow Dataslates or you don't.

I don't really understand how we can't see this from a positive side, we can now custom the game to allow anything we wish! How cool is that. we have soo much choice now.

From a competitive standpoint we now need to decide what is unbroken and fair to continue to make the game competitive within a tournament setting.

The jetseer unit can be solved in one of two ways:

1) Limit the total amount of mastery levels allowed in an army-
This is my preferred choice because it also limits the screamstar and armies with tons of psychers to roll for slow the whole game to a crawl. If you make that Jetseer list actually play all five turns, its not nearly so nasty.

2) Ban the Baron (at least when allied with Eldar)-
The 2++ rerollable tanking and hit and run are what jumps the shark. You never see anyone take the Baron outside this list, but in this unit he is the lynch pin. Hit and run keeps you from tar pitting the unit (the traditional way to stop the seer bike units of old) and he grants the unit AP in CC that they would otherwise completely lack. And frankly, 2+/4++ rerollable is not nearly as big a deal as having him on point with that rerollable 2++ sponging up the damage on the way in. This is probably the most effective way to balance the build without making it completely unplayable, but its kind of drastic and does nothing to hamper screamstar.

You see the baron in beaststars

 Phazael wrote:
The jetseer unit can be solved in one of two ways:

1) Limit the total amount of mastery levels allowed in an army-
This is my preferred choice because it also limits the screamstar and armies with tons of psychers to roll for slow the whole game to a crawl. If you make that Jetseer list actually play all five turns, its not nearly so nasty.

2) Ban the Baron (at least when allied with Eldar)-
The 2++ rerollable tanking and hit and run are what jumps the shark. You never see anyone take the Baron outside this list, but in this unit he is the lynch pin. Hit and run keeps you from tar pitting the unit (the traditional way to stop the seer bike units of old) and he grants the unit AP in CC that they would otherwise completely lack. And frankly, 2+/4++ rerollable is not nearly as big a deal as having him on point with that rerollable 2++ sponging up the damage on the way in. This is probably the most effective way to balance the build without making it completely unplayable, but its kind of drastic and does nothing to hamper screamstar.

Both of these have unintended consequences.

So you limit mastery levels now FMC lists do not function (which maybe you like) and you need to control for Grey knights and Horrors etc...

Ban the baron well now Jim bob who has a lovingly crafted Hellion army is out of luck....etc.

Jim Bob with his lovingly crafted Hellion army is a necessary casualty in this war lol

And Breng, I am all for the community coming together and helping out TOs. It is not like you guys are an elite illuminati group earning millions off the backs of players. TOing is a more expensive past time than 40k itself!

All you need to do is ban unique characters from allied detachments. Makes sense and actually gets rid of several stupid combos out there.

 Lobukia wrote:
All you need to do is ban unique characters from allied detachments. Makes sense and actually gets rid of several stupid combos out there.

Well geez. That's not a bad idea. I know MVBrandt and company hate wide restrictions like this, but that seems to do the trick pretty well imo, and as you said makes sense to boot. Also doesn't just target a single named character, and lets folk take all named characters- just not from an allied detachment.

The issues with that

Are you allowing inquisition..if so you just nerfed Cotaez (not that it matters really). Beyond that...it just means you'll see seer council with Buff commander for hit and run....(or rather anyone who was using special characters to buff will run buff commander.)

I've been following threads on multiple websites about how 40k is no longer balanced or no longer fun because of Escalation. Every thread about this subject has been trying to find out what to do about the new "cheese" in 40k. I actually find this amusing as I thought 40k was mostly a "cheesy" game. A lot of the armies that you find in GT's wouldn't be played in a friendly enviornment because they are not fun to play against. The wailing that has been going on over the addition of super heavies is amusing considering how broken the system was before. Eldar allying with Dark Eldar, Blood Angels with Necrons, Tau with Space Marines. Before 6th edition people would have thought this silly. Each codex is supposed to be designed with certain flaws. For example: the Tau don't do close combat well but they do shoot quite well. Now with allies, flaws in any codex can be covered up or eliminated entirely.

Now, to be honest I play WFB mostly but I have played in 40k GT's. As a WFB player I have accepted that comp scores are a part of any GT. Everytime the idea of adding comp scores to GT's came up people howled and said that the game didn't need it because 40k was balanced. Now, people are saying that Escalation has broken the game. Why? 40k GT's usually allow everything, with the occasional banning of FW, to be played. I don't see why that is a problem now. If Jetseers are broken, if Screamerstars are broken, why allow them at all? Because the mantra of 40k players and tournament organizers has been that 40k is balanced and that it will be alright after the smoke clears. I see the same reasoning when it comes to Escalation. One expansion doesn't break a game.

When it comes to FW, I don't see why it isn't allowed with the current state of affairs. The first arguement that usually came up was that not everyone had access to the FW books. Isn't that the same issue now due to the plethora of digitals books htting the street? If I don't want to buy the digital book I have to wait 2-3 months before a hard copy book is released. If I play in a GT in the meantime I could possibly run up against someone using a digital book. I will have to trust them to be honest with me about their army. And how about the new dataslats that are being released. They are official, right? There are so many digital books out there without a hardcopy duplicate that it can be hard to follow.

Now, I gone on for a while about the current state of affairs. My final observation is that 40k GT's and players can go one of two ways.
1. They allow everything and stand by the "40k is balanced" rule and come what may or
2. They start a form of comp scoring in GT's.

If you say we aren't going to do comp, guess what happens? The minute things are banned is when you have started putting a composition system into play.

 RiTides wrote:

 Lobukia wrote:
All you need to do is ban unique characters from allied detachments. Makes sense and actually gets rid of several stupid combos out there.

Well geez. That's not a bad idea. I know MVBrandt and company hate wide restrictions like this, but that seems to do the trick pretty well imo, and as you said makes sense to boot. Also doesn't just target a single named character, and lets folk take all named characters- just not from an allied detachment.

Still does not solve the problem. People will just ally the jetseers (and vital parts of the Eldar list) to the Dark Eldar and essentially have the same thing, though it would make access to fortune more dicey. Its not a bad idea in general principle, though, as it does shut down a lot of ludicrous combos and tempers others.

The reason I favored the Mastery level cap is because it would also speed up gameplay. The amount of extra time that bowling powers and tests consumes in a game is really out of hand. Yeah it would somewhat hurt the Nid flying circus army, but it would still be playable (cap the levels at 8ish was my thought) as would most GK armies. And I say that as someone with large collections of Eldar, Nids, and GK.

At 8 you kill daemon FMC lists as you at best get 3 FMC and then only if a few are level 2, and that player does not take any horrors. It is just not a great solution these days psykers are too big a part of the game for many armies.

 Phazael wrote:

 RiTides wrote:

 Lobukia wrote:
All you need to do is ban unique characters from allied detachments. Makes sense and actually gets rid of several stupid combos out there.

Well geez. That's not a bad idea. I know MVBrandt and company hate wide restrictions like this, but that seems to do the trick pretty well imo, and as you said makes sense to boot. Also doesn't just target a single named character, and lets folk take all named characters- just not from an allied detachment.

Still does not solve the problem. People will just ally the jetseers (and vital parts of the Eldar list) to the Dark Eldar and essentially have the same thing, though it would make access to fortune more dicey. Its not a bad idea in general principle, though, as it does shut down a lot of ludicrous combos and tempers others.

The reason I favored the Mastery level cap is because it would also speed up gameplay. The amount of extra time that bowling powers and tests consumes in a game is really out of hand. Yeah it would somewhat hurt the Nid flying circus army, but it would still be playable (cap the levels at 8ish was my thought) as would most GK armies. And I say that as someone with large collections of Eldar, Nids, and GK.

Honestly, it does solve the problem. Nothing is removed from the game, yet things that can get broken are less reliable and more difficult to pull off. Solving does mean removing it, to me, solving means making the game more competitive without banning or nerfing (if avoidable), and with as few new rules as possible.

I think literally just making Warlocks 0-6 would solve the issue and be far less of a headache than trying to juggle an acceptable psychic mastery limit that works for Daemons and Tyranids just to fix JetSeers.

Cos people will still take Beastpacks instead which are almost as nasty and a fraction of the cost. They can also fit in a couple Wraithknights then.

Another massive "nerf" / change (in addition to disallowing allying of parent codex with the supplement) is just that IC Battle Brothers can't join each other units and/or cast blessings.

Suggestion:

If you are a casual gamer and an adult, make an agreement with your friends/gaming group. Gamesworkshop does not decide what you do at your home or gaming club. If you don't want to use broken rulesets or if you do want to use them for say a storyline campaign its your free choice.

If you have people in your group that insist on fielding 3 riptides in every game sit them down and tell them that you have less fun playing against them. If they cannot understand that, stop playing against them. Its very simple.

Im happing GW is releasing moneygrabbing products. The hobby is alive, new updated product is being released and if I want to field that baneblade or Scabaeathrax sitting in my shelf I can ask my friends: "you guys wanna try a game of escalation this sunday?" and we will have fun. The next week we will have a normal game of eternal war and we won't spam flyers, riptides or knights.