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yermom wrote:
Hey internet let's take a step back and actually analyze these armies.

We can first look at the diversity of lists now: gun line tau/ovesa star, bike marines, jetseer, beast star are the common ones. Then we have 2 screamer stars an fmc daemon list 2 vastly different nid armies, 2 necrons with completely different lists, plague drones, bens alpha strike thing, tech marine blob thing, and some others variants.

Now let's look at the game a year ago at this time, right before adepticon. Does anyone remember the top 16? I do. Approximately 10 necron primaries, a couple hell drakes, 1 ork, 1 space marine, 1 nid, and 1 Eldar.

Ok even further back to 5th ed, grey knight razor spam, space wolf razor spam, blood angel razor spam, mech guard, am I missing anything?

Seems to me the game is growing in diversity of good builds, not shrinking.

You acting as the voice of reason frightens me more than anything I've read on the internet today.

How many of the builds are reliant on fortune Nick? Genuinely curious.

The only issue I take up with it is deathstaring leaves some codexes out. Very few books that can't build a deathstar can stand-up to deathstars in alternate builds. Which limits builds and codexes. That said it'll be fun but let's not pretend outside of maybe 1/4 of the field we're not fielding a known deathstar build.

And yeah, Nick as the voice of reason is hilarious.

Edit: Nick said everything I wanted to.

By my count there's 11 different armies being used, not counting for supplements. Pretty good IMO, even if there are recurring themes.

yermom wrote:
Hey internet let's take a step back and actually analyze these armies.

We can first look at the diversity of lists now: gun line tau/ovesa star, bike marines, jetseer, beast star are the common ones. Then we have 2 screamer stars an fmc daemon list 2 vastly different nid armies, 2 necrons with completely different lists, plague drones, bens alpha strike thing, tech marine blob thing, and some others variants.

Now let's look at the game a year ago at this time, right before adepticon. Does anyone remember the top 16? I do. Approximately 10 necron primaries, a couple hell drakes, 1 ork, 1 space marine, 1 nid, and 1 Eldar.

Ok even further back to 5th ed, grey knight razor spam, space wolf razor spam, blood angel razor spam, mech guard, am I missing anything?

Seems to me the game is growing in diversity of good builds, not shrinking.

2nd this, and agree with what andrew said about you being the voice of reason.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
By the way every person who votes for brown to win it all, IF he does... he will partake in a beverage for each player at the end of the event!!!!

I second this notion John

@Jgrand

Deathstars are the current monsters out there. The problem with two of the major ones (seer council & beaststar) is that they aren't deterred by Mindstrikes. Taking to the skies isn't totally the answer because most flyers don't have the damage output needed and most of the deathstar armies can put a solid ground element in play as well.

That said I do think we'll see a shift soon. The meta finally stabilized enough for people to adjust a little bit. The fist year of 6th was insane in it's release. With IG up next I can see a solid amount of time to adjust to the current meta and shift it.

Personally I dislike deathstars but once in a while they are silly and fun. Though I do hate seer council and I'm sure I'll hate the plague drone army if I play it even if I love Nick

When I say take to the skies, I mean more to avoid these units--not kill them. The real reason to stay up high is to be able to drop your own fast troops and kill theirs.

Which is why I have 1 Gk raven and 3 SM ravens for the event

This will be a real fun event and I hope we get a couple games streamed.

Where do you come up with these great builds?

Hey internet let's take a step back and actually analyze these armies.

We can first look at the diversity of lists now: gun line tau/ovesa star, bike marines, jetseer, beast star are the common ones. Then we have 2 screamer stars an fmc daemon list 2 vastly different nid armies, 2 necrons with completely different lists, plague drones, bens alpha strike thing, tech marine blob thing, and some others variants.

Now let's look at the game a year ago at this time, right before adepticon. Does anyone remember the top 16? I do. Approximately 10 necron primaries, a couple hell drakes, 1 ork, 1 space marine, 1 nid, and 1 Eldar.

Ok even further back to 5th ed, grey knight razor spam, space wolf razor spam, blood angel razor spam, mech guard, am I missing anything?

Seems to me the game is growing in diversity of good builds, not shrinking.

Yes, there is more variety in terms of "top dogs" than ever before. However, this is more symptomatic of the fast pace of updates than anything else.1/4 of the lists are deathstars that rely on a re-rollable 2+ save via psychic powers. O'vesa star is another deathstar oriented list, based primarily on being super durable. Otherwise, there are flyer based armies, bike based scout armies, and the occasional odd-ball.

While diversity is high, there are really limited paradigms for lists right now.

All that being said, 40k is still a super fun game and this event looks great. Good luck to all.

Anyways if people are tired of fortune stars / tau commander crazyness / etc they should vote for me!

 GoatboyBBMA wrote:
Ben Vs Someone - that is what I predict hahah.

Chip it was great meeting you at the LVO. I am so sad I an't make this due to family stuff. I wanted to hang out with everyone.

I am planning on making NOVA this year. Too bad I can't be one of the Daemon players.

And for shame putting Paul versus Ender there in round 1. Josh you better not let Paul win!

I'm also sad you won't make it. Nick as well. Need some non-East Coast blood in the event! Next year, with more notice, I hope you both can make it.

As far as pairings go, I did them completely randomly (double random, actually). I randomized the list of players, then randomized the list of fake seeds, then built the bracket that way. My options were to manually fix up the brackets, do it based on a seeding from past tournament experience, or do it randomly. To manually fix up the brackets, there was too much potential for bias; I'm not perfect. To base it on past tournament results, there wasn't enough information. I have ToF rankings for all the players, but ToF is still new and I don't think this would accurately seed players. Plus, the ability for two club mates to play is still very possible. Ultimately I settled on random pairings as I felt it was the most fair, provided the greatest transparency/accountability, and could offer some exciting matchups at all stages of the tournament. It does, however, allow the option for club mates to play in the first round, which is a side affect that I understand some don't like, although I don't know that I'm wholly against it.

chipstar1 wrote:

 GoatboyBBMA wrote:
Ben Vs Someone - that is what I predict hahah.

Chip it was great meeting you at the LVO. I am so sad I an't make this due to family stuff. I wanted to hang out with everyone.

I am planning on making NOVA this year. Too bad I can't be one of the Daemon players.

And for shame putting Paul versus Ender there in round 1. Josh you better not let Paul win!

I'm also sad you won't make it. Nick as well. Need some non-East Coast blood in the event! Next year, with more notice, I hope you both can make it.

As far as pairings go, I did them completely randomly (double random, actually). I randomized the list of players, then randomized the list of fake seeds, then built the bracket that way. My options were to manually fix up the brackets, do it based on a seeding from past tournament experience, or do it randomly. To manually fix up the brackets, there was too much potential for bias; I'm not perfect. To base it on past tournament results, there wasn't enough information. I have ToF rankings for all the players, but ToF is still new and I don't think this would accurately seed players. Plus, the ability for two club mates to play is still very possible. Ultimately I settled on random pairings as I felt it was the most fair, provided the greatest transparency/accountability, and could offer some exciting matchups at all stages of the tournament. It does, however, option the option for club mates to play in the first round, which is a side affect that I understand some don't like, although I don't know that I'm wholly against it.

I demand not to play my fellow team america member round 1! I'll gladly play him in round 2 though, when its not alternate scoring...

:-D

Random pairings sometimes stink, they'll never please everyone, but that's the way the cookie crumbles. Now death to our friends! I mean good luck Justin!

yermom wrote:
Hey internet let's take a step back and actually analyze these armies.

We can first look at the diversity of lists now: gun line tau/ovesa star, bike marines, jetseer, beast star are the common ones. Then we have 2 screamer stars an fmc daemon list 2 vastly different nid armies, 2 necrons with completely different lists, plague drones, bens alpha strike thing, tech marine blob thing, and some others variants.

Now let's look at the game a year ago at this time, right before adepticon. Does anyone remember the top 16? I do. Approximately 10 necron primaries, a couple hell drakes, 1 ork, 1 space marine, 1 nid, and 1 Eldar.

#1. It was not as bad as you remember since there was Goatboy's Demons, and there were 3 GK players.
#2. This field only seems diverse because there are 32 players, and not 16.
#3. There are also some players that I am not familiar with so I do not know their qualification for this event so they might have oddball lists. We will see if they can really compete against the top players with the top lists.

Wait until it gets down to the top 16 or top 8 and then let's talk about list diversity, because this is not the top 32, but the starting 32.

Ok even further back to 5th ed, grey knight razor spam, space wolf razor spam, blood angel razor spam, mech guard, am I missing anything?

Yes. You are talking about the final rounds not the overall tournament pool. This is 32 players with very few builds, and we will see how many of them can compete. Again when it gets to the final rounds we need to see how diverse the field is after the bad armies get culled from the head.

Well the culling could hit "good" armies to due to mission, match-up, or terrain.

Granted i'm just making early excuses for my first round loss

TECH-MARINES! WOOOOO!

 Hulksmash wrote:
Well the culling could hit "good" armies to due to mission, match-up, or terrain.

Granted i'm just making early excuses for my first round loss

TECH-MARINES! WOOOOO!

You and I will be doing shots for each tech marine that dies!

 Hulksmash wrote:
Well the culling could hit "good" armies to due to mission, match-up, or terrain.

Granted i'm just making early excuses for my first round loss

TECH-MARINES! WOOOOO!

Yeah, like the Sean/Alan match-up are mirror match beastback deathstars.

As I was looking at the match-ups a lot of it came down to who gets first turn. Seer Council/Beast Packs could get hit without fortune up, and the Tyranids start with all of their flyers on the ground. That is why I like Ben as a dark horse. He should always get first turn and with war walker scouting 6"+moving 6"+battle focusing for around 4"-5" for about a 16" total move he can hit just about anywhere on the table..

 Blackmoor wrote:
#1. It was not as bad as you remember since there was Goatboy's Demons, and there were 3 GK players.

And 2 of those GK also used Necrons. So if you're saying different combinations of allies means diversity, then I don't know what bothers you about the list of armies being used at ToF as there is a range of combinations being used.

Overall I think it's pretty ridiculous how some are responding to this event with such criticism / negativity. I think Chip and the rest of ToF is doing something awesome and new. People talk about selected lists being disheartening, I think the negative sentiment being projected here by some is infinitely more disheartening. Is that the kind of community we've become? That as soon as new event comes out we ridicule the heck out of it? It's the first year that ToF has been around and this is the first invitational event they're putting together. I'm sure in future years the selection process will be refined and there will be more aggregate data. Keep in mind that until LVO it's been predominantly east coast tournaments that have used ToF software, so is it that surprising that there's a bit of an east coast weight put into the player selection for the first year? Plus like Target mentioned, there were a fair amount of non-easterners who were invited but could not make it due to travel/work/family obligations.

Instead of hating, why not look on the positive side - isn't it awesome that we now have a tournament software company that is hosting a new event? Isn't it exciting to see a throwdown between some of the most competitive names in the last year? Isn't it cool that this brand new event has made pre-event lists and pairings available so folks can predict match ups and winners?

It should be a great weekend with a high level of competition, plus it's also raising money for charity which is icing on the cake.

It's gonna be interesting. I'm excited to basically see some people I only normally see at Adepticon and Nova. Outside of that I get to play with toy soldiers for the weekend in a bar.

And i'll accept the shots for the ones that die Krootman, not my overheats...I need to be able to stand up and I roll a ton of ones

Hey now, no one told me this was all serious and public and whatnot. I woulda brought Repentia and Engines if I had known.

And its probably just me, but I find it hilarious that Tony's list is three points shy of the full 1850. Ain't gonna keep me from bitching about his bringing a witnessing spear, which google tells me is totally not a thing. I woulda won if his list hadn't been so confusing.

 Hulksmash wrote:
It's gonna be interesting. I'm excited to basically see some people I only normally see at Adepticon and Nova. Outside of that I get to play with toy soldiers for the weekend in a bar.

And i'll accept the shots for the ones that die Krootman, not my overheats...I need to be able to stand up and I roll a ton of ones

Hummm you are quite trisky sir.

I hope all reading this realize that the intent of this is not to have a "best of the best" elite tournament, but to have a fun event...it's at a bar!...where we can have some fun games and relax, and afterwards talk about how awesome we are or how much we suck!

Please don't take it too seriously, that's not the intent!

Vote for my mini-fiendstar! Nobody will see it coming!

All the Eldar/DE stuff is a bit of a bummer but this event should be pretty awesome. I can't judge anyone though, at the end of the day i'd want to bring the list that gave me the best chance to win and currently that is probably some variant of a Fortune'd deathstar.

I'm pulling for Tilly/Clauss, go Dukes (jk, school spirit sucks).




Automatically Appended Next Post:

Malagant wrote:
I hope all reading this realize that the intent of this is not to have a "best of the best" elite tournament, but to have a fun event...it's at a bar!...where we can have some fun games and relax, and afterwards talk about how awesome we are or how much we suck!

Please don't take it too seriously, that's not the intent!

Vote for my mini-fiendstar! Nobody will see it coming!

Except Kurt, right?

 morgendonner wrote:

 Blackmoor wrote:
#1. It was not as bad as you remember since there was Goatboy's Demons, and there were 3 GK players.

And 2 of those GK also used Necrons. So if you're saying different combinations of allies means diversity, then I don't know what bothers you about the list of armies being used at ToF as there is a range of combinations being used.

Nick's Necrons had GK allies, and Adam's have GK with Necron armies. I had pure GKs, and I played another pure GK army in round #8. The reason that there were so many Necons was that this was early in 6th edition and the only answer for flyers was to take flyers of your own.

Overall I think it's pretty ridiculous how some are responding to this event with such criticism / negativity. I think Chip and the est of ToF is doing something awesome and new. People talk about selected lists being disheartening, I think the negative sentiment being projected here by some is infinitely more disheartening. Is that the kind of community we've become? That as soon as new event comes out we ridicule the heck out of it? It's the first year that ToF has been around and this is the first invitational event they're putting together. I'm sure in future years the selection process will be refined and there will be more aggregate data. Keep in mind that until LVO it's been predominantly east coast tournaments that have used ToF software, so is it that surprising that there's a bit of an east coast weight put into the player selection for the first year?

You are mingling the two complaints.
#1. People have have been aware that 6th edition 40k has devolved into Deathstar 40k and these rosters show that. People are lamenting that they need a deathstar to compete at the highest levels.
#2.Since there is no transparency, and these are not the top 32 players according to ToF, people are wondering at the selection process to make this an "Invitational", and the qualification of some of the players if these are the best.

Instead of hating, why not look on the positive side - isn't it awesome that we now have a tournament software company that is hosting a new event? Isn't it exciting to see a throwdown between some of the most competitive names in the last year? Isn't it cool that this brand new event has made pre-event lists and pairings available so folks can predict match ups and winners?

I like Chip and love Torrent of Fire. I guess because of that no one can ask questions or make statements on the lists?

It should be a great weekend with a high level of competition, plus it's also raising money for charity which is icing on the cake.

This event looks like fun. A shame I had to pass because of work.

My money is on Sean to upset Alan in round 1 and go all the way. Go go Cold Steel Mercs

Blackmoor thanks for including a positive spin in that post Sorry I didn't recall another pure GK being there with us on Day 2.

Of course, in two weeks time we'll have a better look after we see how all the lists do. With the kind of round one pairings it will be important to look at a lot of the overall data too not just who made it to round 3 etc. The deathstar list dominance I guess can vary depending on what you use as a definition for it. Some of the lists contain the super-powered battle brothers units which I think are the bigger issue people have, while other lists like Nick's drones have a self-contained codex unit which seems more reasonable to me (sort of in line with the days of paladins )

It's unfortunate Goatboy can't make it to rep the Wargamescon crew but there are still quite a few of the big GT TO's who will be at the event covering a decent amount of areas of the US so I do hope that they'll all get a good amount of mingling time in to get on the same page about some of the things happening with the game (expansions, data slates, etc). That would be a major positive takeaway from the weekend, and I think would address some of your concerns about the state of the game.

There are 3 beast stars I think. And 2? jet councils.

But both Tony and Matt's council lists are very different... almost no common units after the council, in fact 850ish points of different stuff in a 1850 list means 45% of their lists are different thats pretty significant.

Then the three beast star lists are again significantly different. Zachs list is very different then Alan and mine, and even alan and I have almost 900pts spent differently ... though you could argue Eldrad over a farseer is a net 140 points more identical... still pushes the lists to a similar 45% difference in points spent.

In fact Tony and Zachs lists are almost more similar then they are to their respective death star styles. Because of the heavy wave serpent support.

So while they all share elements and a theme idea of pushing a psychic death star towards the enemy they all also have differences in build and style.

With only one psyker albeit Eldrad, fortune isnt even my major concern, though it would be nice and in some matchups I would like it, I dont see me even rolling for it until round 3 if I have to play Gonyo's tau.

Also I did the math and my list is 66% identical to my adepticon list from last year, which was widely praised for its courage and inventiveness... and now what I cant play with it because other people think beasts are good now too? And the other beast players cant play with beasts because why, they didnt think of it first? I thought the only rules about army composition were in the codex?

Some data, because you all know (or should by now) how much I love data. Excuse me if this doesn't format well, I'll edit post with better formatting if needed.

Here's the number / percentage of common "trouble" units in the ToF Invitational:

Total Units: 446

Jetbikes 18 / 4.04
Thunderfires 11 / 2.47
Jetseers 9 / 2.02
Wave Serpents 8 / 1.79
Bike Chapter Master 8 / 1.79
Khan 7 / 1.57
Inquisitors 7 / 1.57
Buff Commander 5 / 1.12
Broadsides 5 / 1.12
Riptides 5 / 1.12
Rune Priest 5 / 1.12
Annihilation Barges 5 / 1.12
Swooping Hawks 4 / 0.90
Wraithknights 4 / 0.90
Fateweaver 4 / 0.90
Beast Pack 3 / 0.67
Baron 3 / 0.67
Helldrakes 3 / 0.67
Flyrants 3 / 0.67
Screamers 2 / 0.45
O'vesa 2 / 0.45

OrdoSean wrote:
There are 3 beast stars I think. And 2? jet councils.

But both Tony and Matt's council lists are very different... almost no common units after the council, in fact 850ish points of different stuff in a 1850 list means 45% of their lists are different thats pretty significant.

Then the three beast star lists are again significantly different. Zachs list is very different then Alan and mine, and even alan and I have almost 900pts spent differently ... though you could argue Eldrad over a farseer is a net 140 points more identical... still pushes the lists to a similar 45% difference in points spent.

In fact Tony and Zachs lists are almost more similar then they are to their respective death star styles. Because of the heavy wave serpent support.

So while they all share elements and a theme idea of pushing a psychic death star towards the enemy they all also have differences in build and style.

With only one psyker albeit Eldrad, fortune isnt even my major concern, though it would be nice and in some matchups I would like it, I dont see me even rolling for it until round 3 if I have to play Gonyo's tau.

Also I did the math and my list is 66% identical to my adepticon list from last year, which was widely praised for its courage and inventiveness... and now what I cant play with it because other people think beasts are good now too? And the other beast players cant play with beasts because why, they didnt think of it first? I thought the only rules about army composition were in the codex?

What a difference a year with the new eldar codex will do eh? Good luck dude, we all know who started the beastpack craze so show em who's boss haha.

morgendonner wrote:

 Blackmoor wrote:
#1. It was not as bad as you remember since there was Goatboy's Demons, and there were 3 GK players.

And 2 of those GK also used Necrons. So if you're saying different combinations of allies means diversity, then I don't know what bothers you about the list of armies being used at ToF as there is a range of combinations being used.

Overall I think it's pretty ridiculous how some are responding to this event with such criticism / negativity. I think Chip and the rest of ToF is doing something awesome and new. People talk about selected lists being disheartening, I think the negative sentiment being projected here by some is infinitely more disheartening. Is that the kind of community we've become? That as soon as new event comes out we ridicule the heck out of it? It's the first year that ToF has been around and this is the first invitational event they're putting together. I'm sure in future years the selection process will be refined and there will be more aggregate data. Keep in mind that until LVO it's been predominantly east coast tournaments that have used ToF software, so is it that surprising that there's a bit of an east coast weight put into the player selection for the first year? Plus like Target mentioned, there were a fair amount of non-easterners who were invited but could not make it due to travel/work/family obligations.

Instead of hating, why not look on the positive side - isn't it awesome that we now have a tournament software company that is hosting a new event? Isn't it exciting to see a throwdown between some of the most competitive names in the last year? Isn't it cool that this brand new event has made pre-event lists and pairings available so folks can predict match ups and winners?

It should be a great weekend with a high level of competition, plus it's also raising money for charity which is icing on the cake.

Agreed - this event is awesome for all the reasons you listed! When has there been an event like this before now? Exciting times for the 40k tournament scene, regardless of how we all perceive 6th edition

Wish I could have have made it this year - going to LVO then Adepticon made this event a little tough to justify to my wallet (and wife + newborn, heh). Hopefully next year

Apparently I missed a Baron. 4 Barons, .90%

Malagant wrote:
Vote for my mini-fiendstar! Nobody will see it coming!

Don't knock the fiendstar folks, I've been running one since the book came out. It is pretty legit. Hilarity ensues when it is invisible. Silly invisible herald challenges the fortune caster out of a seer council, who accepts the invisible summons because Slaanesh says so!

Chip, it would also be helpful to know the percentage of armies that contain those units. # per total # of units is useful for some units (Riptides), but # per total armies would be more useful for others (any IC/unique units).

Banosby wrote:
Hey now, no one told me this was all serious and public and whatnot. I woulda brought Repentia and Engines if I had known.

And its probably just me, but I find it hilarious that Tony's list is three points shy of the full 1850. Ain't gonna keep me from bitching about his bringing a witnessing spear, which google tells me is totally not a thing. I woulda won if his list hadn't been so confusing.

So... he is C3PU this year? Instead of C3PO?