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Last nights game I was tabled by an opponent that just had two death stars on the table for a 750 Maelstrom mission.

My generalship was mediocre, but highly affected by the presence of the death stars nearing my units. I have been gaming for a little bit, collecting my kits and painting them up with the believe to spend 10-15% on upgrades/wargear.

But now, whoooosh why bother with that? I can just list build smaller super tank/killy units and have reliable units that can kill anything. I'm excited about this, because I am finding that "tactics" really aren't the cornerstone of 40k it's more about super units.

What's the question exactly? This seems more like a statement.

That said yes, some armies in particular can put forth stupidly killy units in low points games and have a pretty large chance to just roll over the enemy. It is, however, kind of a douchy thing to do. Sort of like bringing a warhound titan to a 1k points game. Sure it's possible, but it's not going to make you any friends.

 morganfreeman wrote:
What's the question exactly? This seems more like a statement.

That said yes, some armies in particular can put forth stupidly killy units in low points games and have a pretty large chance to just roll over the enemy. It is, however, kind of a douchy thing to do. Sort of like bringing a warhound titan to a 1k points game. Sure it's possible, but it's not going to make you any friends.

This

what death stars where they using in a 750 point game, and what army where you and they playing? I ask because a death star at 750 points seems over kill. and it's possiable rather then a death star per say you simply ran into a "hard counter"?

Cenutrion start and scouts. jetseer star. lots of bikers with multiple librarians summoning demons. multiple heralds in screamer with nurglings as troops.

haha yah I'm "just saying".

I am going to put some agreements down prior to a pickup game like. No unit worth than X points.

So you got two good options here.

Option one: bring two Russes to your 750 point games.

Option two: make your 2x troops 2 infantry platoons with no equipment with conscripts, and a chimera mounted command squad with the Laurels of command. Then just get as many squads as you can, which should be about ~13 including conscripts.

Just sit on all the objectives and feed the Dstars 1 unit a turn. They can only kill a max of 8 or so if you don't let them get any disorganized charges off. Fluffy tactics!

Make it clear to those opponents that that's the only game they're getting until their lists are less douchey.

Option 3: bring an allied Knight.

Part of the problem is the 750 points. It's hard to make a proper TAC list at this point value, so games can have sort of a rock-paper-scissors quality to them. This is what the_scotsman is suggesting you exploit with Option One, by taking the "rock" against your opponent's "scissors."

the_scotsman's Option Two is a good strat in general, though; it's called MSU, for Multiple Small Units, and the idea is that you can lose a whole 13-person squad in one attack but it takes two separate attacks if you split it in two. Against death stars and wraithknights it's especially useful, since their heavy firepower is wasted.

Playing Maelstrom missions also helps balance things, as does taking a lot of terrain. They reward mobile lists and adaptive tactics more than static gun lines and set plans. In my last game as Tau I had a decisive advantage in firepower, but my Dark Angels opponent took an early VP lead and was then able to keep his units out of range and LOS long enough to win.

Of course, some units are just plain really powerful, like Knights. >_>;

 Jewelfox wrote:

Playing Maelstrom missions also helps balance things,

No, it just makes things more random.

 vipoid wrote:

 Jewelfox wrote:

Playing Maelstrom missions also helps balance things,

No, it just makes things more random.

Randomness favours the underdog. My friend who plays DA prefers Maelstrom missions because he feels he has more of a shot at winning them, with his overcosted units from the older codex.

It also places the emphasis less on making a perfect mathhammer list, and more on making a versatile, balanced TAC list that gives you the tools you need to respond to any situation.

 Jewelfox wrote:
Randomness favours the underdog.

No it doesn't. In theory if you're winning 100% of the time randomness can only hurt your win percentage (since it can't possibly increase), but increasing randomness can certainly increase the margin of those wins. A hard game as the underdog can quickly turn into an exercise in masochism if the player with a list/skill advantage gets random luck in their favor as well. The only time randomness favors the underdog is if you're already losing as badly as possible and the game can't get any less enjoyable, and if things are that bad why are you playing the game at all?

It also places the emphasis less on making a perfect mathhammer list, and more on making a versatile, balanced TAC list that gives you the tools you need to respond to any situation.

It does no such thing. It changes the goal of list optimization, but there are still better and worse lists. Changing "take a perfectly-optimized gunline" to "spam MSU jetbikes" isn't really much of an improvement.

 Peregrine wrote:
It does no such thing. It changes the goal of list optimization, but there are still better and worse lists. Changing "take a perfectly-optimized gunline" to "spam MSU jetbikes" isn't really much of an improvement.

MSU jetbike spam has the advantage in Maelstrom, yes. >_< They aren't the only thing that's winning tournaments though, from the reports that I've read.

I wasn't saying there aren't better and worse lists, it's just been my observation that Maelstrom supports greater diversity in list-building than straight-up kill points missions do. As far as randomness goes, besides that DA player's subjective experience I've read advice that says RPG gamemasters should be careful about introducing more randomness to their games, since the players are generally meant to win or survive combat encounters and rules like exploding dice on a crit are a lot more lethal to a level 20 Paladin than a level 1 kobold.

That doesn't prevent the kobolds from getting curbstomped pretty often, but it does make it harder to take easy wins for granted.

 Jewelfox wrote:
I wasn't saying there aren't better and worse lists, it's just been my observation that Maelstrom supports greater diversity in list-building than straight-up kill points missions do.

Correlation =/= causation. For example, it could be the case that competitive players have mostly rejected maelstrom missions (and completely rejected unmodified maelstrom missions), so the only people playing them are the ones who don't care too much about list optimization. Or maybe people in your area just haven't figured out the right list for dominating maelstrom missions, or can't afford it. If you want to make a credible argument that maelstrom missions support greater list diversity then you have to explain how they do it. And I have yet to see a convincing explanation of that.

As far as randomness goes, besides that DA player's subjective experience I've read advice that says RPG gamemasters should be careful about introducing more randomness to their games, since the players are generally meant to win or survive combat encounters and rules like exploding dice on a crit are a lot more lethal to a level 20 Paladin than a level 1 kobold.

But that's only because the kobold example is already in the "it can't possibly get any worse" situation. The paladin is almost guaranteed to obliterate the kobold with one swing of his weapon, and then spend the rest of the turn slaughtering the adjacent kobolds just as spectacularly. So of course randomness hurts the paladin far more than the kobold, since the paladin actually has something to lose. But that situation only works because the kobold is an NPC that nobody cares about, and the kobold's enjoyment of the experience is irrelevant. If your 40k games are this one-sided then why are you playing the game at all? In a more realistic situation, where the 40k game is close enough that everyone is willing to keep playing, the underdog does have something to lose and increasing randomness has the potential to ruin their experience.

 vipoid wrote:

 Jewelfox wrote:

Playing Maelstrom missions also helps balance things,

No, it just makes things more random.

No, it actively adds power to mobility, small units, and Obsec units while taking power away from Death Stars.

It is also slightly more random than EW.

A balanced TAC list might stand 0% chance of winning against a Death Star list, and have a 65%W 35%L chance against a Death Star.

What happens when the Deathstar list keeps drawing the objectives it's about to sweep opponents off of, or issue a challenge, or the destroy enemy units in whichever phase it's chosen to dominate? Don't forget there are objectives that reward you for destroying multiple units and some deathstars are able to split fire or multicharge and still get the job done with the loss of focus. It's much easier to score, say, No Prisoners when you have a ton of tiny units to mulch.

 GreyHamster wrote:
What happens when the Deathstar list keeps drawing the objectives it's about to sweep opponents off of, or issue a challenge, or the destroy enemy units in whichever phase it's chosen to dominate? Don't forget there are objectives that reward you for destroying multiple units and some deathstars are able to split fire or multicharge and still get the job done with the loss of focus. It's much easier to score, say, No Prisoners when you have a ton of tiny units to mulch.

Fast/deepstriking msu lists have an advantage over death stars in around 24 tac objectives. The opposite is true of only around 12