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I actually agree with him more about mutilators than on codices not mattering.

 jreilly89 wrote:

 Jancoran wrote:

jade_angel wrote:
I'm not actually surprised by your Big 4, not overly. I'm actually somewhat shocked that DA managed to rank that high - I would have thought Tau and Necrons had more options - but then, Lion's Blade is good for the same reason Gladius is, so DA are basically SM with fewer options.

Dark Angels won the Bay Area Open this year. Look folks. At some point...its about the player. Codex's dont win champiobships. Champions win championships.

Okay, show me that DA player's list. $5 it has the Librarius Conclave on bikes and all Ravenwing.

Champions don't win championships, good builds win championships.

This is a revealing statement. You discount skill to the point that you're willing to give no credit to the opponents...and...no credit to the generals involved which ended with the Dark Angels winning the Bay Area open?

We differ sharply on this point.


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Trasvi wrote:

 Jancoran wrote:

jade_angel wrote:
I'm not actually surprised by your Big 4, not overly. I'm actually somewhat shocked that DA managed to rank that high - I would have thought Tau and Necrons had more options - but then, Lion's Blade is good for the same reason Gladius is, so DA are basically SM with fewer options.

Dark Angels won the Bay Area Open this year. Look folks. At some point...its about the player. Codex's dont win champiobships. Champions win championships.

Its not as though the champions are showing up with half-hearted fluffy lists.
They might be using Dark Angels which are traditionally considered weaker than say Eldar... but they're taking 2+ rerollable biker squads and powerful formations.

So wehat. the statement was that the Dark Angels are in some way distressed...but they arent. The codex stands just fine on its own.

That some people attempt to keep using it in a way it is no longer designed for is the bigger issue. People who adapt (good generals) always make liers out fo the ones who claim its all the codex's fault. I am sooooo tired of hearing how the codex wins. It doesn't. I've managed to beat every power list known to man with not-CONSIDERED-power-lists and I can tell you its false. It's just false.

GOOD players win despite the adversity of a "gimped codex". they just do. Among my tournament winning armies for example, i have won more than any other using Sisters of Battle. Absolutely verifiable fact. Tau are a close second, and that was before they even got good!

So I am not going to sit here and give credence to the idea that someone cannot FIGURE OUT a way to win if they really want to. they just dont want to have to work that hard. Just my opinion.


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 Tamwulf wrote:
So the guy that won the Bay Area Championship was actually playing for third place in the final round, and was playing down. His list was the Lion's Blade Strike Force:

Lion’s Blade Strike Force

Company Master: (Warlord) Fist, Artificer Armor
Chaplain: Bike, Auspex
Tactical Squad: Rhino, Grav-Cannon,
Tactical Squad: Rhino, Multi-Melta
Tactical Squad: Razorback (HB), Heavy Bolter
Tactical Squad: Razorback (HB)
Tactical Squad: Razorback (HB)
Tactical Squad: Pod, Melta/Combi-Melta
Assault Squad: 2x Flamers, Pod
Assault Squad: 2x Flamers, Pod
Devastator Squad: Rhino, Grav-Cannon
Devastator Squad: Rhino, Grav-Cannon
Scouts
Ravenwing Strike Force
Techmarine: Bike, Auspex
Ravenwing Command Squad: 5 Black Knights, Apothecary, 5 Plasma Talons, Grenade Launcher
Ravenwing Black Knight Squad: 5 Black Knights, Huntmaster, 5 Plasma Talons, Grenade Launcher
Ravenwing Darkshroud

He brought 2,260 points to a 1,850 tournament. Right off the bat, he has a force almost 20% larger then his opponents. He never played a similar list to his own, and His opponents: Daemons, Eldar, Orks, Ad Mech, GuardDar, and Imperial Knights. He was 5-0 going into the last round, and was paired down playing a 4-1 player. His opponent wasn't even in the top 8 at the end of the tournament. The only reason he won the entire tournament was the top table, playing for first and second place, tied. And with the way ITC scores matches, the first and second place players went 5-0-1, while Brandon went 6-0 playing down. I think his win was a large combination of list building and luck. If you read the interview Brandon gave at Frontline Gaming, he even admits he got lucky. His most difficult game was in the fourth round against the GuardDar army that went to time, and he won with a final score of 6-5. If the game would have been played to conclusion, he would have lost.

My opinion, Brandon is a great player, and it was a perfect storm of opponents and the final tie at the first table that allowed him to get 1st place.

He won. You can splice it a hundred ways. Just like my recent bad luck at the GT, the bottom line is, he won. He didnt control any of that and he wasnt playing a cupcake in the final round. If you want to minimize someone by saying their 6-0 isnt awesome, you do that. I will not engage in it.


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Martel732 wrote:
I actually agree with him more about mutilators than on codices not mattering.

Please stop misquoting me. i didn't say codex's didnt matter. I said Champions win championships. Codex's dont. you dont just get to wal kto the table and say "Eldar, i win!" The internet says so, but the internet is wrong. it got proven many times this year. Good players win more often and they win it all more often... Not because they leaned on a codex. They leaned on strong play.

" i didn't say codex's didnt matter."

You act like it. You don't have to say it.

"GOOD players win despite the adversity of a "gimped codex". they just do."

Actually, I guess you did say it.

Martel732 wrote:
" i didn't say codex's didnt matter."

You act like it. You don't have to say it.

On a forum...I need to say it. And no, I am veteran enough to know that some codex's are stronger. What you and I dont agree on is what that means. in MY vernacular, that just means you have to work harder to win. What it doesnt mean is that you can't. a good general WILL win more often and he will not need the "best" codex to do it.

And that is all the proof i need that codex's dont win. i never met a brochure that sold anyone anything and i never saw a codex make a tough decision.

Creative deployment is an answer within any codex that's "distressed". Creative unit construction, or going MSU or perhaps the diametric opposite can all be legitimate ways to overcome whatever inherent inequity there is.

the problem is inside of people who will not adapt. Who will not make any effort to do more than put a unit down and expect it do do its job, then despair when it doesn't. that mindset is why there are people in the 400+ range...and those who are not.

The ITC, which is the purpose of this thread, and how it affects on Faction strength. Thats what we are talking about. Notice though that the most populous codex among the competitive arena arent at the top. Matt Root has primarily done it with Cult Mechanicus. Brandon Grant primarily with Dark Angels. Joshua Death has done it with a MIRIAD of codex's, showing his skill level to be quite good and why I really thought he could take it all. He's like me: he can play any codex and didn't just focus on one. He played the field and still got there with Chaos Daemons, Eldar, Harlequins, Imperial Knights, and Tau Empire! That's really cool and that a lot of his points came from Harlequins for example is nifty too.

So are you going to tell Joshua Death that its the codex? Lol. Laughable. As laughable as telling me that. I did the same thing. I played Orks, Necrons, Tau Empire, Sisters of Battle and Militarum Tempestus to reach my score.

I would just encourage people to give themselves a little more credit, both for losses, and for wins.

In your FLGS skill will be the deciding factor in almost every match since there is such a large range of it. However for a tourney with 100+ people, the variance in skill levels among the 10 or 20 best players is going to be much smaller. The closer the skill of the players, the more the codex they are using is going to matter.

When We look at it in the data for the top rated armies, we see the ones we would expect to see based on the strength of the codices. Put another way, there are good players in all of the factions, when good players are matched up the codex is going to be one of the larger deciding factors.

I attended a BAO wherein the Dark Angels won and Cult Mechanicus took second. I don't agree. We saw Lictor shame win. I dont agree. We just saw Militarum Tempestus win. I dont agree.

You are absolutely free to posit that skill does not trump the codex. We will never agree. The evidence is overwhelmingly in favor of skill.

He's talking about when skill is equal.

skill is never equal.

I disagree. Who's better? Brees or Brady? Skill can be so close as to be impossible to discern a difference.

 Jancoran wrote:
I attended a BAO wherein the Dark Angels won and Cult Mechanicus took second. I don't agree. We saw Lictor shame win. I dont agree. We just saw Militarum Tempestus win. I dont agree.

You are absolutely free to posit that skill does not trump the codex. We will never agree. The evidence is overwhelmingly in favor of skill.

That Dark angels list was a white scars Gladius without the scouting and Doctrines. It is about free vehicles and everything having OS.

You can say skill matters all you want, but Gladius rules won. That made the list good, not the Dark angels themselves.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

 Jancoran wrote:
I attended a BAO wherein the Dark Angels won and Cult Mechanicus took second. I don't agree. We saw Lictor shame win. I dont agree. We just saw Militarum Tempestus win. I dont agree.

You are absolutely free to posit that skill does not trump the codex. We will never agree. The evidence is overwhelmingly in favor of skill.

That Dark angels list was a white scars Gladius without the scouting and Doctrines. It is about free vehicles and everything having OS.

You can say skill matters all you want, but Gladius rules won. That made the list good, not the Dark angels themselves.

You're right. i can say it. the Gladius didnt make user of terrain, he did. the Gladius didnt decide what to reserve nor whether to seek manipulation on it. it didnt tell him whether to scout or not, to attack or not, to hide or not, to shoot or not. None of it. Sorry.

Take Joshua Death, 3rd rated player overall, I think we can agree that someone that far up the rankings is a skilled player. He plays a lot of armies, and gets some very different results based on the army he is playing. If you look at his eldar score or chaos daemons score, he has almost perfect ratings for the matches he has played. If you look at his harlequins or IK ratings he is quantifiably struggling with those armies, especially compared to his performance with the two armies he has barely played.

Unless we want to split hairs and say his worst army is the army he plays the most (which is possible but not the most likely answer), the most logical explanation for his different levels of performance is the strength of the army he is playing.

It's almost like player skill is a factor AND codex is a factor. Sheesh. Welcome to Dakka where the world operates in terms of absolutes.

My two cents...

At the highest levels of player skill, a player can win more games than not against a variety of opponents using any codex. Codex choice is a factor, but is largely mitigated by top level player skill.

At all other levels of player skill, codex choice has a far greater impact. Average players will consistently win more often with a "top tier codex" compared to a "bottom tier codex".

It's sort of like arguing that weapon choice doesn't matter in a duel because a trained marksman can win more often than not with any old gun. While true, bringing a bazooka sure makes things easier.

Both sides are right, you're just arguing different situations.

Meanwhile, you'll all continue to underestimate my super clowns because we don't even make it onto the spreadsheet! Mua-ha-ha.

Yes but that is just essentially saying that the worse you are, the more you need a "safe" codex in order to play. Well that doesnt sound like a codex issue to me.

 Jancoran wrote:
Yes but that is just essentially saying that the worse you are, the more you need a "safe" codex in order to play. Well that doesnt sound like a codex issue to me.

No, it's not. It's saying with people of average skills, codex power provides a much wider swing in terms of win percentages than it does at the very peak of player skills.


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 Jancoran wrote:

 jreilly89 wrote:

 Jancoran wrote:

jade_angel wrote:
I'm not actually surprised by your Big 4, not overly. I'm actually somewhat shocked that DA managed to rank that high - I would have thought Tau and Necrons had more options - but then, Lion's Blade is good for the same reason Gladius is, so DA are basically SM with fewer options.

Dark Angels won the Bay Area Open this year. Look folks. At some point...its about the player. Codex's dont win champiobships. Champions win championships.

Okay, show me that DA player's list. $5 it has the Librarius Conclave on bikes and all Ravenwing.

Champions don't win championships, good builds win championships.

This is a revealing statement. You discount skill to the point that you're willing to give no credit to the opponents...and...no credit to the generals involved which ended with the Dark Angels winning the Bay Area open?

We differ sharply on this point.

I didn't say the opponent or the general had no skill, I'm highly disparaging the myth that DA are this great codex. They're not, they're in the same position as Nidz, where they have 2-3 viable lists, and most of those lists involve Gladius or Ravenwing spam. Show me a winning DA list that runs primarily Deathwing.

No one said it was this "great codex". We're saying its not this steaming pile nor great. its just a codex, like the other codex's and just like the other codex's, the general is the ingredient that makes it work.

and there are those here saying that a generals skill is secondary which is absurd i nthe extreme. By that logic, None of you has an opinion worth sharing because none of your opinions are a codex! Lol. I mean REALLY think about what's being said. if the General is less important than the codex then what are we all opining for? We will simply order the tournament results by the codex chosen, and save ourselves 9 hours of gaming.

Absurd.

Kriswall,
I think the players argue mainly over the degree. Obviously a better player is more likely to win, but codex choice also is obviously important.

Notice the top dexes. They are what you expect, with the exception of IK (who are good because the ITC nerfs Str: D, I think. I can't keep up anymore). It's not Orks, DE, or CSM.

Look at the lists. They are also what I mostly expect. Lictor shame was MC spam, the DA players use gladius heavily it seems, and it goes on and on.

Look at Grimgold's breakdown about that one player. It argues pretty heavily in favor of codex having a large impact.


In WM, skill is top. Top players are top players regardless of faction with almost no exception, they don't do any worse because they switch to a different faction. That is not always so in 40k.

 Grimgold wrote:
Take Joshua Death, 3rd rated player overall, I think we can agree that someone that far up the rankings is a skilled player. He plays a lot of armies, and gets some very different results based on the army he is playing. If you look at his eldar score or chaos daemons score, he has almost perfect ratings for the matches he has played. If you look at his harlequins or IK ratings he is quantifiably struggling with those armies, especially compared to his performance with the two armies he has barely played.

Well, Joshua Death did get 133 points winning an event playing Harlequins... with an illegal list.

The biggest variable these metrics fail to reflect is army composition. There's a huge performance difference between 1850 points of Eldar versus 950 points of Eldar plus 900 points of Riptide wing. The same goes for 1850 of SM versus 1850 of SM Gladius, aka 2400 points.

 Robin5t wrote:
Meanwhile, you'll all continue to underestimate my super clowns because we don't even make it onto the spreadsheet! Mua-ha-ha.

Sorry you didn't have 50 players, but it wasn't good, not like Skitarii and BA bad, but bad.

 deviantduck wrote:

 Grimgold wrote:
Take Joshua Death, 3rd rated player overall, I think we can agree that someone that far up the rankings is a skilled player. He plays a lot of armies, and gets some very different results based on the army he is playing. If you look at his eldar score or chaos daemons score, he has almost perfect ratings for the matches he has played. If you look at his harlequins or IK ratings he is quantifiably struggling with those armies, especially compared to his performance with the two armies he has barely played.

Well, Joshua Death did get 133 points winning an event playing Harlequins... with an illegal list.

The biggest variable these metrics fail to reflect is army composition. There's a huge performance difference between 1850 points of Eldar versus 950 points of Eldar plus 900 points of Riptide wing. The same goes for 1850 of SM versus 1850 of SM Gladius, aka 2400 points.

Sure but that distinction is what it is. there's nothing that can be done to clarify that very easily this year. I think it wouldn't be difficult to surmise that Vincent Price for example owes much of his success tothe fact that he runs Knights alongside a Ruiptide wing as his whole list. I've played him before and tied him.

So yeah there's going to be some of that. But its still the bottom line result in the overall standings that we can look at. And from that standpoint, anyone at 400+ is a legit competitir to be reckoned with in my estimation. even below that are soem excellent players who are constantly 2nd and 3rd and may not necessarily tip overthe edge but are exceptional otherwise and so I would even say that as long as you're competing in the top 5% to 10%, you are legit in my book.

The stats for Factions themselves are good because they say "hey given the field, how good are you at this or that faction" and its another way to compete. I was thinking of playing my last few evbents of the year as Militarum Tempestus just to say i took one. Lol. Not a lot of us out there.

 Jancoran wrote:
No one said it was this "great codex". We're saying its not this steaming pile nor great. its just a codex, like the other codex's and just like the other codex's, the general is the ingredient that makes it work.

and there are those here saying that a generals skill is secondary which is absurd i nthe extreme. By that logic, None of you has an opinion worth sharing because none of your opinions are a codex! Lol. I mean REALLY think about what's being said. if the General is less important than the codex then what are we all opining for? We will simply order the tournament results by the codex chosen, and save ourselves 9 hours of gaming.

Absurd.

Jancoran, it's to a much lesser degree, but Magic the Gathering has similar problems to 40k: you have point and click armies/decks that play themselves. General skill IS important, but with certain armies/decks, it really doesn't matter.

I've been to tournaments with these point and click armies, and they literally didn't change their strategy no matter who their opponent was, the mission type, etc. That doesn't seem like a problem to you?

 jreilly89 wrote:

 Jancoran wrote:
No one said it was this "great codex". We're saying its not this steaming pile nor great. its just a codex, like the other codex's and just like the other codex's, the general is the ingredient that makes it work.

and there are those here saying that a generals skill is secondary which is absurd i nthe extreme. By that logic, None of you has an opinion worth sharing because none of your opinions are a codex! Lol. I mean REALLY think about what's being said. if the General is less important than the codex then what are we all opining for? We will simply order the tournament results by the codex chosen, and save ourselves 9 hours of gaming.

Absurd.

Jancoran, it's to a much lesser degree, but Magic the Gathering has similar problems to 40k: you have point and click armies/decks that play themselves. General skill IS important, but with certain armies/decks, it really doesn't matter.

I've been to tournaments with these point and click armies, and they literally didn't change their strategy no matter who their opponent was, the mission type, etc. That doesn't seem like a problem to you?

Well that's a different question than the one we're answering.

If you ask me whether its a "problem" that someone FEELS they can point and click, i guess the answer is no, because i cannot concern myself with what my opponents army does or how it works. I just have to be able to diagnose it and act accordingly. There was an Eldar player at the last GT who basically wins most of his tournaments and he has such a list. he modifies it from time to time but its at its core your basic Scatbike and WraithKnight combo meal deal. he doesthe same thing which is stay at maximum range fire and jump back adn repeat, WraithKnight does its thing and whatever is left over goes to Warp Spiders or something else. The usual.

My job in our last matchup wasnt to get all tangled up worrying about whether his army was simple to run. of course it was. i just had to beat him. So i did. Tabled him. he even had the temerity to try and cut the game 14 minutes short to secure a tie and i was like "uh...no....theres three bikes for you to move in your whole army and its my turn"

So he moved his bikes, I killed them and 13 minutes to go, i won via tabling. So was it a problem? no. is it a problem if i let him auto pilot his way to victory? well yes. so that oneess is on me to stop it right? I mean he's just trying to be an effective player by choosing effective units and he's displaying somewhat of a lack of imagination by choosing an army that essentially only does one thing and should anyone have a tool (like Traitors hate provides) to handle it, he's kinda boned. So i dont think its a problem.

i think that really good generals with really good lists will wipe the floor with you. Who can dispute it. I thik poor generals can get away with one here and there just because the enemy doesnt do anything tostop them from their auto-pilot plan. I see people lose to really good lists on sheer bad luck. Nothing to do with codex's nor generalship. Sometimes thats what happens.

But the one thing i know is that any codex in the hands of a good player is good. therefore, skill is the deciding factor so much mor often than the codex.

Does it bother me when a noob cracks my skull with an auto pilot list? sure. How often does it REALLY happen? Not often enough for me to cry about it. But for some, it happening at all is seen as some kind of "proof" and I just dont agree.

 Grimgold wrote:
So there is definitely something special about the player. Which dove tails back to my point, it takes both a good list, good skills, and good luck to be a champ. If you have an abundance in one you can make up for a deficiency in another, but the people on the top are going to have them all.

Note that there is also an empathy factor. Some players just play certain armies really well, and don't mesh with other armies / playstyles.

One should never look at just a single event, but event trends. One will note that the top end lists at most events follow very similar trends. With 40k, player skill has an influence, but the list os a huge component as well, in some cases moreso, in fact often moreso. Take any top end tournament player, give em a fluffy IG infantry single CAD list or the like and pair them up against a scatterbike list or a Gladius or War Convocation or the like played by a mediocre player, and the vast majority of the time the mediocre player will win over the better general.


One also needs to realize that with the ITC, they have their own rules and restrictions and FAQ that means stuff plays out differently than "by the book" 40k, with stuff like nerfed Invisibility and detachment number restrictions and the like. So what the ITC reflects is not necessarily a perfect reflection of the game many people play, though its usually a good approximation.

I summarize your position as "codices don't matter", you say that's not correct, and then proceed to go on and on about how skill always wins out.

So when does codex actually matter? Since skill always wins out. I'm just trying to understand here.

You summarize incorrectly, as usual. Dont summarize me. it would help.

 Vaktathi wrote:
With 40k, player skill has an influence, but the list os a huge component as well, in some cases moreso, in fact often moreso. Take any top end tournament player, give em a fluffy IG infantry single CAD list or the like and pair them up against a scatterbike list or a Gladius or War Convocation or the like played by a mediocre player, and the vast majority of the time the mediocre player will win over the better general.

I'm pretty sure you could allow the IG player to use Formations, and it wouldn't greatly change the outcome, as long as all units are from the IG Codex. IOW, no Allies, no summoned Daemons...

 Jancoran wrote:
You summarize incorrectly, as usual. Dont summarize me. it would help.

Never mind.

 Jancoran wrote:
We just saw Militarum Tempestus win.

I'd be very interested in hearing more about this.

How exactly did Tempestus keep up with the powergaming factions that abuse free transports and silly formation bonuses?