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 Dozer Blades wrote:
It is not selecting - it is totally random. What you should be saying is let them pick the powers they want, right ? Or are you wanting to nerf the psychic phase ?

it is controllably random and if you follow anyone who goes to any tournament and posts any battle report on any site you will see that the main powers the psykers go for they get- Due to ML2-3 getting multiple rolls and psychic heavy armies having more than one psyker they player always gets the key powers. The players who do not get the key powers are people who take 1 ML2 psyker, in which case the chance they are relying on psychic powers in the first place is pretty low.

When was the last time you saw a battle report where a daemon factory army complained they didn't get their key powers and that cost them the game? When was the last time you saw a player post their weapons were useless because they were fighting against a knight army and they took a TAC and it cost them the game.

It is not a nerf.

It is balancing the armies against each other. Rolling psychic powers per game is similar to letting people have different army lists each game as far as the rulebook is concerned as each game is supposed to be in a vacuum. That players do not have different lists per game is a tournament convetion, just as players not rolling new powers could be a tournament convention.

blaktoof wrote:

 Dozer Blades wrote:

blaktoof wrote:


IMO having players roll psychic powers before the tournament and they keep powers for the duration of the tournament is a good time saver. I have seen demon armies waste 45min-1hr of game time each game of a tournament determining and noting psychic powers and setting up. If a game is 2h:30min more than 25% of the game was done before it started from one player.

This is a total nerf to the psychic phase. I doubt the majority of tourney players would buy into this one.

I completely disagree.

This is no more than a nerf than requiring people to select wargear/units/formations with the knowledge they cannot switch it out between battles.

The chance of rolling good powers with few dice is low, so rolling bad powers is the norm. The chance of rolling the powers you want with lots of mastery levels is high, so you are very unlikely to roll bad powers.

The basic rules for 40k are not built for taking a single army list through consecutive play, and just as you make one army list to play a game, you roll psychic powers for said army list. If the army list has to play multiple games, then so should the rolled psychic powers.

It's no more an issue than opting to take a lot of heavy bolters on razorbacks over assault cannons or lascannons because you are betting that most of the attendees wont run heavy armor. Then being stuck with your "tactical" decision.

Or rather, allowing players to roll new psychic powers (which is essentially part of army creation) not only wastes time but gives unfair advantages to some armies. Yes the powers are random, but being able to pick between different masteries to suit your needs for a specific opponent/table is an unfair advantage- and having multiple rolls often guarantees getting most of the powers you want.

I also advocate all pre-game army rolls done 1 time at the begining of the tournament. Warlord trait, chaos boons, whatever.

There is no practical way to enforce this. It's way too much work for the TOs to ever hope to directly check each list, and unless you felt like wasting time interviewing each opponent's previous opponents you'd be taking their word for it. Requiring them to write something down leaves it open to cheating by forging their powers, and what happens if a player loses their sheet, either accidentally or "accidentally"?

As dozer said, you could just let people pick powers and traits, but that's a pretty big can of worms in regard to game balance.

Saying there is no way to enforce is is very similar to saying there is no way to enforce a player having the same army list each game.


Yes what is to stop a player from saying they have different powers.

What is to stop a player from adding an extra model to their army for some game, or switching the weapons on their dev squad?

Alternatively having pre army rolls (warlord, psychic powers, boons, etc) count as play time for a player using chess clocks would be acceptable.

There are apps to roll powers, can be done at registration and linked to player name, and can even spit out rolls for each game all at once.

takes no time, no extra manpower (during the event, OFC, someone still sets it up on the ipad)


Counting it against player time on a time clock is basically putting demerits against players who bring hordes/psychic/close combat heavy armies and benefiting those who choose smaller model count armies that don't participate in most phases.

Yeah right I'm sure that's going to be happening.

I guess the real poll will be out soon... Can't wait to see the results.

I use psykers a lot... and I've gotten pretty quick at rolling my powers.
Normally I take 4 daemon princes with 3 powers + 2 gifts each, and 2 heralds with 3 powers + 1 gift.
I have plastic cards with the powers and gifts listed on them that I mark with dry-erase markers. All my powers are rolled as soon as my opponent shows up to the table (most don't bother watching me do it and so they can set up/unpack their army) and done within 2 minutes.
Its just one of those things that you need to learn how to do fast in a tournament, just like moving models quickly, or rolling dice quickly, or knowing the rules. Its not something that needs to be singled out and changed.

Alan used a small white board to keep track of all his psychic powers. I think this is a good solution too.

As an Ork player, I often can't even consider running at 1850 or 2k without running out the clock. Moving 180 dudes every round is a total bitch.

t wrote:
Yes actually that is what makes chess clocks completely fair. You spend your time doing the actions that you choose. Rule 1 from http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/679969.page is the most important of all.

1.The player is responsible for their own time. It is the players right but not their obligation to make sure that their time is being handled properly. A player can always pass a phase, action or even a turn.

What this means in practice is that an opposing player cannot waste your time because you have the right but not the obligation to pass the clock to them.

But all this chess clock talk seems to resting on an assumption that doesn't work for 40k - that both players SHOULD take the same amount of time. In chess, that's fine because both players have the same amount of pieces and moves to make, with greater variation as the game goes on and pieces are removed. Even in Warmachine, this difference isn't huge.

40k is, quite deliberately and explicitly, a game where model and unit count is massively different across armies. One army might have 5 models, another might have 100. That is very much one of the selling points of 40k. In that situation, it's perfectly reasonable to expect one player to take less time per turn and one player to take more. As long as both players are attempting to play efficiently, it's totally fair for the player with the bigger army to take up more of the game.

Introducing chess clocks will certainly speed up play, but it will do so by encouraging people to take only small armies, and knock a ton of armies and builds out of the meta. Many people don't want this.

 Dozer Blades wrote:
Also I feel a drop in points is less competitive and more geared towards casual gamers. God bless them but this is supposed to be a top competitive event.

Apologies as this is from a few pages ago, but i'd love to see some evidence that large tournaments are mostly attended by 'competitive' players.

In my experience of playing large US tournaments, the VAST majority of the people there are people who have bought what they consider a 'reasonably good' army, but are mostly there to enjoy playing a load of new people over the weekend, have no serious expectation of winning the tournament, and are probably about to play more games in that one weekend than they've played in the last few months! The people on the top tables, with a perfectly optimised army for this year's meta, who have practised and practised to be the best at the game, are usually the minority.

The rules for the event should reflect the wishes of the majority of players. I don't agree that there is a difference in 'competitiveness' between 1500 and 1850. However, even if there was, if more people would rather drop the points level than get up early/rush through games/use a chess clock, then that's what the tournament should do.

 ArbitorIan wrote:

Apologies as this is from a few pages ago, but i'd love to see some evidence that large tournaments are mostly attended by 'competitive' players.

In my experience of playing large US tournaments, the VAST majority of the people there are people who have bought what they consider a 'reasonably good' army, but are mostly there to enjoy playing a load of new people over the weekend, have no serious expectation of winning the tournament, and are probably about to play more games in that one weekend than they've played in the last few months! The people on the top tables, with a perfectly optimised army for this year's meta, who have practised and practised to be the best at the game, are usually the minority.

The rules for the event should reflect the wishes of the majority of players. I don't agree that there is a difference in 'competitiveness' between 1500 and 1850. However, even if there was, if more people would rather drop the points level than get up early/rush through games/use a chess clock, then that's what the tournament should do.

Amen brother.

blaktoof wrote:
Saying there is no way to enforce is is very similar to saying there is no way to enforce a player having the same army list each game.


Yes what is to stop a player from saying they have different powers.

What is to stop a player from adding an extra model to their army for some game, or switching the weapons on their dev squad?

Alternatively having pre army rolls (warlord, psychic powers, boons, etc) count as play time for a player using chess clocks would be acceptable.

You pick your armylist but you can't pick your powers. You're limited by planning to assemble, transport and paint models the models in your list, and if you add an extra model or change upgrades you'd better be real careful the points add up because people will occasionally check. Because you chose your list, it doesn't take much integrity to stick to it, and only someone who is actively and seriously trying to cheat will go to the effort necessary to fudge things.

Random powers, though, are so easy to cheat and have such a huge effect on the game that it takes much more integrity to not cheat. People get pissed off when they don't see their opponent's rolls for their powers, and that's even when they just look away for a second. There will be a few people who show up with a bunch of ML1 psykers who just got "lucky" and rolled up invisibility multiple times, and/or people who call bs on said players, and no one will have any idea who's right and wrong. It probably won't be common, but setting up the format like that is asking for trouble that the TOs don't have an easy means to resolve. All for saving, what, a couple minutes per game for most players? It's not worth the potential trouble.

I would prefer having the different tournaments for point values maybe 1250, 1500, 1850 and 2000

Most games in the UK are 1500, with the exception of ITC games/tournaments.

1850 is such an odd number too.

I would like 1500. It's what I build my lists towards.

1650 is about as low as I like simply because there are still so many codexs that can't use thier armies well at 1500pts. Many formations and decorians now have such a high buy in cost that it becomes impossible to fit those armies into 1500.

These are not strong codexs either. Armies like eldar and necron have extremely low cost and flexible decorians with many small formations that allow them to optimize for thier best units or msu spam.

However the Astra Militarum decorian, ork decorian, ad mech and battle company all fall apart or are completely unfieldable at 1500. Ad mech and skitari are honestly not a good army except for a single formation called war convocation. Battle company just becomes a large spam army with no bite once they lose the option of placing grav or other heavy weapons into thier list. The ork and Astra Militarum formations don't even fit in 1500. 1650 I think gives there armies a chance to field them but forces them to make choices on what they can bring. Ad mech loses its culexus, loses a lot of drop pods. Battle company loses its psyker conclave, and loses some heavy weapons. I just find 1650 a more ideal fit for everyone.

Introducing chess clocks will certainly speed up play, but it will do so by encouraging people to take only small armies, and knock a ton of armies and builds out of the meta. Many people don't want this.

Going to 1500 pts does the same thing. I'd argue 1650 and 1750 do the same.

Man up and play faster.

Get rid of random rolls for powers, WL traits and gift. Pick them and have them recorded on your army list. We've already got rid of random deployment and missions in a competitive environment, time to drop the rest of the pointless dice rolling.

I would not care to play in an event where you rolled once for psychic powers and we're stuck with the result for the entire event. Some armies absolutely rely on psychic abilities for basic army function, and one set of dice rolls cold ruin the event for them.

As for points costs, I prefer 1850 as it let's you bring more toys, but this is personal preference and I understand the problems that come with higher points.

I don't think anyone can predict what shifting to 1500-1650 would do to the meta. With little parity between armies in unit cost/power level, there are many units that are easy to exploit. Not everyone has easy access to the same tools.

What gungo said !!

gungo wrote:
1650 is about as low as I like simply because there are still so many codexs that can't use thier armies well at 1500pts. Many formations and decorians now have such a high buy in cost that it becomes impossible to fit those armies into 1500.

These are not strong codexs either. Armies like eldar and necron have extremely low cost and flexible decorians with many small formations that allow them to optimize for thier best units or msu spam.

However the Astra Militarum decorian, ork decorian, ad mech and battle company all fall apart or are completely unfieldable at 1500. Ad mech and skitari are honestly not a good army except for a single formation called war convocation. Battle company just becomes a large spam army with no bite once they lose the option of placing grav or other heavy weapons into thier list. The ork and Astra Militarum formations don't even fit in 1500. 1650 I think gives there armies a chance to field them but forces them to make choices on what they can bring. Ad mech loses its culexus, loses a lot of drop pods. Battle company loses its psyker conclave, and loses some heavy weapons. I just find 1650 a more ideal fit for everyone.

The Ork and IG combi detachments are pretty terrible, so I'm not sure why you would take them. Ork one would fit, I'm pretty sure, despite how taxing the core is. War Convocation fits in 1,500, barely, but loses flexibility. Considering it still gets several hundred in free points, I'm not terribly upset about that.

 FTGTEvan wrote:

gungo wrote:
1650 is about as low as I like simply because there are still so many codexs that can't use thier armies well at 1500pts. Many formations and decorians now have such a high buy in cost that it becomes impossible to fit those armies into 1500.

These are not strong codexs either. Armies like eldar and necron have extremely low cost and flexible decorians with many small formations that allow them to optimize for thier best units or msu spam.

However the Astra Militarum decorian, ork decorian, ad mech and battle company all fall apart or are completely unfieldable at 1500. Ad mech and skitari are honestly not a good army except for a single formation called war convocation. Battle company just becomes a large spam army with no bite once they lose the option of placing grav or other heavy weapons into thier list. The ork and Astra Militarum formations don't even fit in 1500. 1650 I think gives there armies a chance to field them but forces them to make choices on what they can bring. Ad mech loses its culexus, loses a lot of drop pods. Battle company loses its psyker conclave, and loses some heavy weapons. I just find 1650 a more ideal fit for everyone.

The Ork and IG combi detachments are pretty terrible, so I'm not sure why you would take them. Ork one would fit, I'm pretty sure, despite how taxing the core is. War Convocation fits in 1,500, barely, but loses flexibility. Considering it still gets several hundred in free points, I'm not terribly upset about that.

Great so your debate is screw Astra Militarum and Orks because you don't play them and don't see the value in thier army lists... Good job there
The ork one doesn't fit unless you don't take ghaz council which is the only good thing about it.
I'm sorry I rather have everyone enjoy the game and have a chance at fielding thier list instead of telling many army lists to shove it because your eldar/necron/tau army works fine at 1500. I'm glad you can still fly your scat bike spam list with your super heavy wraithknight. I'm Lukky to field 6x boy squads in trukks with a single pk nob each with the ork decorian for 1500.

If war conv losing some flexibility means all mobility and psychic defense and taking lesser and cheaper units then sure but that isn't less flexibility that's making two codexs into a non competitve option.

Again 1650 is more then fair and allows a lot more army lists the ability to play.

Keep it civil please - thanks all.

gungo wrote:

 FTGTEvan wrote:

gungo wrote:
1650 is about as low as I like simply because there are still so many codexs that can't use thier armies well at 1500pts. Many formations and decorians now have such a high buy in cost that it becomes impossible to fit those armies into 1500.

These are not strong codexs either. Armies like eldar and necron have extremely low cost and flexible decorians with many small formations that allow them to optimize for thier best units or msu spam.

However the Astra Militarum decorian, ork decorian, ad mech and battle company all fall apart or are completely unfieldable at 1500. Ad mech and skitari are honestly not a good army except for a single formation called war convocation. Battle company just becomes a large spam army with no bite once they lose the option of placing grav or other heavy weapons into thier list. The ork and Astra Militarum formations don't even fit in 1500. 1650 I think gives there armies a chance to field them but forces them to make choices on what they can bring. Ad mech loses its culexus, loses a lot of drop pods. Battle company loses its psyker conclave, and loses some heavy weapons. I just find 1650 a more ideal fit for everyone.

The Ork and IG combi detachments are pretty terrible, so I'm not sure why you would take them. Ork one would fit, I'm pretty sure, despite how taxing the core is. War Convocation fits in 1,500, barely, but loses flexibility. Considering it still gets several hundred in free points, I'm not terribly upset about that.

Great so your debate is screw Astra Militarum and Orks because you don't play them and don't see the value in thier army lists... Good job there
The ork one doesn't fit unless you don't take ghaz council which is the only good thing about it.
I'm sorry I rather have everyone enjoy the game and have a chance at fielding thier list instead of telling many army lists to shove it because your eldar/necron/tau army works fine at 1500. I'm glad you can still fly your scat bike spam list with your super heavy wraithknight. I'm Lukky to field 6x boy squads in trukks with a single pk nob each with the ork decorian for 1500.

If war conv losing some flexibility means all mobility and psychic defense and taking lesser and cheaper units then sure but that isn't less flexibility that's making two codexs into a non competitve option.

Again 1650 is more then fair and allows a lot more army lists the ability to play.

As someone who plays gladius, 1500 is fine. Yeah, I lose some upgrades, but I can still take plenty of them as the base cost for the Gladius is cheap.. including Khan and Suppression force (which I use at 1850) it comes to: 1090. For that you get 22 total ob sec units (24 total units) consisting of 50 marines, 10 transports, 2 ICs, 2 artillery pieces and a fast skimmer. So with nearly 1/3 of your points remaining you can buy upgrades and weapons and probably add a command squad, or 2 for another 1-2 free ob sec transports.

War Convocation works fine at 1500, they dont require pods or anti-psyker. No army requires the Culexus assassin, its just a nice addition..

I can't speak to the other two decurions.. but I have to imagine that the minimum buy-in would still make them logistically fit into 1500 (whether its optimal or not is a different discussion).

I'd rather move to 1500 than 1650, it takes an additional 300 points out of the game. Anything to speed up tournament games is nice, because at this current point level games either do not come to natural conclusions, or players are trying to rush games to get there (in the process increasing likelihood of mistakes and generally looser play).

To cry that Orks and Guard are unplayable at 1500 is disengenious ar best and a flat out lie at worst. CAD are available for both along with several formations.

Complaining that 1500 is unfair to oversized and unplayable decurions is like saying we need to up the game to 2700pts cause Blood Angels can't fit an Archangels formation into the game.

There are plenty of winning guard and Ork army lists out there without their special snowflake decurions.

Something I see with a lot of lists....basically it's already a 1500 pt list, with maybe 1 or 2 100 or so point characters. Take away those characters and chop a few models off to make way for a cheap HQ, you're not really changing anything.

It's not the game, it's the players.

It has been quite a while since I played competitively; however, I have enjoyed 1500 as a game size better than 1850+. A smaller game is a quicker game, and that's good when time pressure exists.

DarthDiggler wrote:
To cry that Orks and Guard are unplayable at 1500 is disengenious ar best and a flat out lie at worst. CAD are available for both along with several formations.

Complaining that 1500 is unfair to oversized and unplayable decurions is like saying we need to up the game to 2700pts cause Blood Angels can't fit an Archangels formation into the game.

There are plenty of winning guard and Ork army lists out there without their special snowflake decurions.

An army that can't play its decorian style detachment is not the same as the inability to play a single oversized and poor quality formation.
It's like claiming that your armies shouldn't be able to use a CAD because you already have other formations that fit.

If you don't know about other armies lists you probably shouldn't be posting about stuff you have no clue about. Again 1650 allows everyone to play whereas 1500 subjectively limits entire codexs main army detachements. There is a huge problem with that if you don't see that problem then you don't play those armies and only care about your own self interests. How about this if you ban every other armies decorian. Style detachment than 1500 pts is fine by me because that's fair and balanced right!

I do find it funny those that are for 1500 pts are the same players who claim to have no clue about the army decorians I am talking about. This only further reinforces the fact your opinion is subjective to your own self interest.

gungo wrote:
An army that can't play its decorian style detachment is not the same as the inability to play a single oversized and poor quality formation.
It's like claiming that your armies shouldn't be able to use a CAD because you already have other formations that fit.

If you don't know about other armies lists you probably shouldn't be posting about stuff you have no clue about. Again 1650 allows everyone to play whereas 1500 subjectively limits entire codexs main army detachements. There is a huge problem with that if you don't see that problem then you don't play those armies and only care about your own self interests. How about this if you ban every other armies decorian. Style detachment than 1500 pts is fine by me because that's fair and balanced right!

I do find it funny those that are for 1500 pts are the same players who claim to have no clue about the army decorians I am talking about. This only further reinforces the fact your opinion is subjective to your own self interest.

Ok. So, not sure what a 'decorian' is, but let's say 'Mixed Detachments'.

I assume you are saying that it is IMPOSSIBLE to build an Ork list using their specific Mixed Detachment at 1500 points. Like, it cannot be done. If that is the case, then that's a good argument - there are always gonna be certain formations that can't fit in 'x' point limit but completely disallowing one codex's primary method of army building would be a bad thing.

Or are you saying that it IS possible to build their Mixed Detachment, but it's not as powerful or flexible as you'd like? Because that is the case with lots of things, at any points level.

Sounds like a challenge to me. Any Ork players wanna attempt this?

gungo wrote:

Great so your debate is screw Astra Militarum and Orks because you don't play them and don't see the value in thier army lists... Good job there
The ork one doesn't fit unless you don't take ghaz council which is the only good thing about it.
I'm sorry I rather have everyone enjoy the game and have a chance at fielding thier list instead of telling many army lists to shove it because your eldar/necron/tau army works fine at 1500. I'm glad you can still fly your scat bike spam list with your super heavy wraithknight. I'm Lukky to field 6x boy squads in trukks with a single pk nob each with the ork decorian for 1500.

If war conv losing some flexibility means all mobility and psychic defense and taking lesser and cheaper units then sure but that isn't less flexibility that's making two codexs into a non competitve option.

Again 1650 is more then fair and allows a lot more army lists the ability to play.

Haha, no. My point was that their mixed detachments don't fix the problems they have. They add little value while carrying exorbitant taxes. Orks and Guard are better off taking a CAD and cherry picking the best formations.

They are actually perfect examples of GW taking a decently executed idea and over doing/monetizing it. The first few combi detachments were of manageable size, but a lot of the more recent ones are hilariously bloated. Even the Space Marine one is arguably bloated, but it also won the dart board lottery and got amazing bonus special rules. IG and Orks did not, therefore their bloated combi detachments don't seem worth it.

 Blackmoor wrote:
I am not sure that 1500 points will solve the problem.

I am in favor of chess clocks. If you are worried about your opponent monopolizing time bring your own and have it approved by the TO. Everyone use to say that chess clocks break down in the assault phase, but I have not seen one of those in a while, and even then I do not think it will be too much of an issue.

This. Reducing points only handicaps those armies that can't spam free stuff even more. 1500 points of DE would be a joke.

 Fishboy wrote:

 Blackmoor wrote:
I am not sure that 1500 points will solve the problem.

I am in favor of chess clocks. If you are worried about your opponent monopolizing time bring your own and have it approved by the TO. Everyone use to say that chess clocks break down in the assault phase, but I have not seen one of those in a while, and even then I do not think it will be too much of an issue.

This. Reducing points only handicaps those armies that can't spam free stuff even more. 1500 points of DE would be a joke.

Not sure I agree. First, pure DE already struggle at 1,850. One thing going for DE is that they're relatively points efficient (IMO). If anything I think they benefit at 1,500, as do some other underperforming armies. I would love to be able to get data and see whether or not my assumption or yours would bear out. Unfortunately, I don't know of any large data set we can pull from and do some comparative analysis on.

 ArbitorIan wrote:
Ok. So, not sure what a 'decorian' is, but let's say 'Mixed Detachments'.

Thank you, that was getting me, too

Is "Decurion" the official term for these types of detachments? In the end the slight distinctions between formations, detachments and now possibly another demarcation of the structure has always felt like needless distinctions when they're all performing a similar function (providing army structure).