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Martel732 wrote:
It's a very weak list. But he drew very favorable matchups. It happens. I'll change my position if it can unseat another top 8 list.

Lol, classic martel. 'I know it was strong enough to podium in the biggest tournament in the world but I refuse to acknowledge space marines are good because I can't win with them and it can't possibly be ME'.

If it were, I wouldn't be able to beat other marines fairly handily. Even Bobby g lists. Of course, there are starcraft players who are best at crushing mirror matches....

TwitchyReaper wrote:

 TwinPoleTheory wrote:

TwitchyReaper wrote:
The Death Guard list that made the top 8 was not the 10 Crawler list by the way. Just an FYI

Yeah, that confused me too, the Death Guard list was 30 Pink Horrors, some Pox Walkers in the Aquila Fortress, and some HQ and cultists/brimstones. He saved 553 points for reinforcements and basically made the Pink Horror squad unkillable and set them in front of the fortress, with the Pox Walkers manning the fortress guns.

He’d pop The Dead Walk Again, people would shoot up his Pink Horrors, and he’d replace them with 2 Blues and a Pox Walker in the fortress, it was honestly kind of brilliant. I thought it was a really good use of reinforcements and a very original list.

Yeah. I didn’t spawn the Poxwalkers from inside the fortress though. I would jump out and pop the Cloud of Flies strat and force my opponent to be able to target either the Horrors or the building. It worked out pretty well for me. Barely missed a shot at the title.

So quirky and original. What were your opponents reactions to your list and how you played it? I'd probably have laughed in frustration and awe of your creativity.

Marma, got the GK list? I want to see how much of it was GK.

I just find martel funny, because the necron players on this board were stoked to see someone with necrons finish in the top 100. We were literally like "man I'd love to hear her thoughts on her opponent's and why she brought the list she did", and here is Martel looking at a second place finish after editions of being awful saying it was a lucky lineup and he could take that list.

You guys also have to remember, that it is still just *one* event. It's difficult to draw conclusions based on one tournament, but a few things that we already knew are reflected here, excluding a couple outlying data points:

1. The path to victory for Imperium requires Astra Militarum
2. Dark Reapers are massively overperforming

In response to #2, you see lists that only function at the "high meta," where the odds of facing Reaper spam are off the chain. This tournament really shows that. Tau finished very well, but that's because Commander Spam is well suited to fight Reaper-spam. Same with BA + Guard. Tyranids got roflstomped, showing basically the same as Orks. Does this mean Tyranids are bad? No, they just don't hold up well to Guard and Reaper Spam. Which is about half of the lists in one way or another.

 Quickjager wrote:
Marma, got the GK list? I want to see how much of it was GK.

Heavy Mortar Team
Heavy Mortar Team
Heavy Mortar Team

Company Commander
Company Commander

Infantry Squad (mortar)
Infantry Squad (mortar)
Infantry Squad (mortar)

3x GMNDK
Storm Raven
3 Strike Squads

Pretty standard.

I just hope this might make martel not turn every thread into how bad SM/BA. I don’t have much hope though considering how someone aparently made it to the LVO championships with “such a terrible army” out of matchup luck according to Martel in this thread already

 Grimgold wrote:
I just find martel funny, because the necron players on this board were stoked to see someone with necrons finish in the top 100. We were literally like "man I'd love to hear her thoughts on her opponent's and why she brought the list she did", and here is Martel looking at a second place finish after editions of being awful saying it was a lucky lineup and he could take that list.

I mean he's not entirely wrong, that list functions solely because reapers are flat out dominating the meta and it has a solid counter built into it. It counters reapers. That's that. In a true "meta" environment, that's what you need to deal with. Because it's the strongest army bar none. You end up with lists that wouldn't function in a general sense. I believe he'd crush that list. Because it's designed specifically to address one list that is uber common at top tier events. A good player with a high rating can pretty much depend on facing reaper spam from game 1 on.


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Martel732 wrote:
I don't understand how Tyranids didn't do much better.

Tyranids lose to reaper spam. That's that.


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 John Prins wrote:
If both players had been faster, the BA player would have been wiped by turn 5, probably with 4 flyrants remaining.

This is truth. Tyranids will struggle because we just don't score high enough because of how long it takes to play our army. I win my ITC games scoring like 14-18 points only, because i get 2 turns, maybe 3.

where do you guyz get the army lists?

The problem with Dark Reapers isn't points cost. It's the completely warping effect of being able to ignore all hit penalties.

something notable is that every single army in those top lists either deals with hit penalties by raw fire volume, Close combat, or ignoring the penalty, and every faction that I can find in those lists that has the option to them is invariably taking whatever trait gives them -1 to hit outside 12"

to me, that screams that armywide -1 hit mods were a mistake, and as much as dark reapers are slightly undercost, that slightly out of balance performance is greatly magnified by the prevalence of hit malus in tournament play.

 Marmatag wrote:

 Grimgold wrote:
I just find martel funny, because the necron players on this board were stoked to see someone with necrons finish in the top 100. We were literally like "man I'd love to hear her thoughts on her opponent's and why she brought the list she did", and here is Martel looking at a second place finish after editions of being awful saying it was a lucky lineup and he could take that list.

I mean he's not entirely wrong, that list functions solely because reapers are flat out dominating the meta and it has a solid counter built into it. It counters reapers. That's that. In a true "meta" environment, that's what you need to deal with. Because it's the strongest army bar none. You end up with lists that wouldn't function in a general sense. I believe he'd crush that list. Because it's designed specifically to address one list that is uber common at top tier events. A good player with a high rating can pretty much depend on facing reaper spam from game 1 on.

But he... didn't beat reaper spam? His first Eldar opponent was in the top 8, and he lost that battle. I don't remember what his earlier fights were, but his last one before the top 8 was against a Chaos Soup list toting a fire raptor.

Aliatoc
Spiiseer
Cat Lady

 WindstormSCR wrote:
The problem with Dark Reapers isn't points cost. It's the completely warping effect of being able to ignore all hit penalties.

something notable is that every single army in those top lists either deals with hit penalties by raw fire volume, Close combat, or ignoring the penalty, and every faction that I can find in those lists that has the option to them is invariably taking whatever trait gives them -1 to hit outside 12"

to me, that screams that armywide -1 hit mods were a mistake, and as much as dark reapers are slightly undercost, that slightly out of balance performance is greatly magnified by the prevalence of hit malus in tournament play.

True, but it's also that reapers have multiple modes of fire AND the tempest launcher doesn't require line of sight. Ignoring -1 is strong, but also is being able to spit out the appropriate dice for the scenario and not needing los.

 Marmatag wrote:
Faction / # Players / Top Finisher

Apparently there was a big controversy in the semis but i am not sure yet what it was.

I was watching this game on Twitch. The controversy was between Alex Fennel and Tony Grippando in the Semis.
Alex was playing a mix of BA SW and assasins while Tony was playing Eldar/Ynarri Alaitoc+Reaper spam
At the beginning of the game both players agreed to play intent over discrepancies.
Alex took first turn completed in 15 minutes
Tony spent a LONG time on his first turn I don't know exactly how long but it was over 40 minutes. It appeared to be slow playing but Tony may just be a slow player. Alex in top of Turn 2 appeared to be going as fast as possible to make up time and placed his assassins down quickly then went to move his other models in the movement phase. As soon as he started moving the models Tony said no! Deepstrikers come in at the end of your movement phase so your movement phase is over sorry. So Alex lost an entire movement phase losing him the game. To Alex's credit he didn't argue just cracked on with the game and actually still managed to get work done but not enough. The 'CONTROVERSY' is that both players had agreed to play intent and it was clearly Alex's intent to make up for all the lost time from apparent slow playing and should have been allowed to complete his movement phase but rules are rules. No one could really argue with Tony's call but it will go down as bad sportsmanship. Alex in the post game talk was a complete gentleman about it. Its difficult to argue with this call because someone like Alex Fennel (a previous LVO winner) shouldn't have made that mistake but sadly it really cheapens Tony's win.

Thanks to FLG.tv for an awesome twitch showing.

The beautiful karma/irony is that in the final with Tony against Nick Nanavati it was a pretty much mirror match. Tony advanced some models with the intention of using the stratagem to charge after advancing but he played it wrong and tried to use the strat in the wrong order. NIck said sorry you can't do that out of the order sequence for using the strat. This appeared to cost Tony the game but I am in the UK so I had to get to bed. Didn't see the end of the game but it looked like Nick had the upper hand.

Tony was absolutely in the right. Alex ended his movement phase by bringing in the deep strikers.

Might as well get annoyed if your opponent demands you roll to hit for shooting.

This is a competitive setting. The entire point is to win. To not capitalise on a mistake made by an opponent is illogical.

 BaconCatBug wrote:
Tony was absolutely in the right. Alex ended his movement phase by bringing in the deep strikers.

Might as well get annoyed if your opponent demands you roll to hit for shooting.

This is a competitive setting. The entire point is to win. To not capitalise on a mistake made by an opponent is illogical.

I'd agree, except Tony made a similar mistake in the finals and whined when he got burned by it.

That's the kicker for me, really. It's fine if you're going to play hard ball but expect it in return.

 Arachnofiend wrote:

 BaconCatBug wrote:
Tony was absolutely in the right. Alex ended his movement phase by bringing in the deep strikers.

Might as well get annoyed if your opponent demands you roll to hit for shooting.

This is a competitive setting. The entire point is to win. To not capitalise on a mistake made by an opponent is illogical.

I'd agree, except Tony made a similar mistake in the finals and whined when he got burned by it.

That's the kicker for me, really. It's fine if you're going to play hard ball but expect it in return.

Oh I agree, him whining about him making the same mistake is inexcusable. I understand the upset about that, but anyone getting upset about Tony capitalising on an error from an opponent is simply in the wrong.

 BaconCatBug wrote:
Tony was absolutely in the right. Alex ended his movement phase by bringing in the deep strikers.

Might as well get annoyed if your opponent demands you roll to hit for shooting.

This is a competitive setting. The entire point is to win. To not capitalise on a mistake made by an opponent is illogical.

I agree completely with you. However the actual controversy was the agreement to play by intent and the apparent slow playing. It was suggested in the twitch chat that Tony does this on purpose to frustrate opponents into making mistakes. But at the end of the day this is one of the top competitive environaments in the world for our hobby and the mistake wasn't Tony's it was Alex's and he paid for it.

 Irbis wrote:

Lanlaorn wrote:
I think the numbers show pretty clearly that Infantry Squads are in the same category as Dark Reapers.

Funny you mention that. Numbers? You realize dark reapers cost virtually same as infantry squads? Let the incompetence of Phil Kelly sink in - a model with 3+ save and unmodifiable 3+ to hit that works even on things like Culexus cost same as model with 5+ save and 4+ to hit. Yup, you read that right, 5 points, for stats (these that matter that is) better than 15 pts space marine. And on top of that colossal mountain of cheese, their missile launchers are better and cheaper than SM or IG ones.

If numbers say anything, it's how colossal hyperbole and blinkers on IG are around these parts

Am i missing something with your comparison attempt? At 81 points for 3 models, i'd hardly consider that to be "virtually the same cost" as an Infantry Squad.


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 Marmatag wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
I don't understand how Tyranids didn't do much better.

Tyranids lose to reaper spam. That's that.

 John Prins wrote:
If both players had been faster, the BA player would have been wiped by turn 5, probably with 4 flyrants remaining.

This is truth. Tyranids will struggle because we just don't score high enough because of how long it takes to play our army. I win my ITC games scoring like 14-18 points only, because i get 2 turns, maybe 3.

I disagree with this. Some Tyranid lists loss to Reaper spam, but others don’t. The ones that are currently getting hit hard are the ones spamming Flying Tyrants, however, there are a lot of Genestealer spam lists out there that are really putting a lot of pressure on Eldar lists and running over Reaper spam.

Why do a lot of 40k competitive players sound like spoilt 5 year old brats? I seriously saw one once say he only plays the game to win and would never accept a loss! If you feel like that then you can't be having a good time... You're just using the game to fell good rather than feeling good playing the game...

Also I feel if the games work on time then it should be like chess. The two players should have a set amount of time each and should then press a button when their turn is over. That way you afe responsible for your own actions and can't frustrate other players by slow turns.

 lolman1c wrote:
Why do a lot of 40k competitive players sound like spoilt 5 year old brats? I seriously saw one once say he only plays the game to win and would never accept a loss! If you feel like that then you can't be having a good time... You're just using the game to fell good rather than feeling good playing the game...

Also I feel if the games work on time then it should be like chess. The two players should have a set amount of time each and should then press a button when their turn is over. That way you afe responsible for your own actions and can't frustrate other players by slow turns.

Yea this is the fix.

Give players a set amount of time for their turns and penalise them for every minute/10 minutes or whatever they go over. Dock points.

So, I think I know why Tyranids, Orks and pure Guard armies didn’t show well in the top 100, and this is based off what I saw at the Last Chance Open, the weekend before the LVO.

It all comes down to the scoring of the ITC Champions Missions, in that, once the time runs out the game ends and no more points are scored. Whilst a lot of armies might have won the vast majority of their games, if they only make it to turn 2 or 3, they suffer heavily on the scoreboard as a result of their primary and secondary scores. Generally, any game that gets called for time on turn 5 or 6 is going to score more points than a turn 2 or 3 game. When there is only a max of 42 points in primaries and secondaries per game, not getting the turns has a big impact on the final score.

For example, the Tyranid list that won the LCO only managed to do so due to him winning all 6 games, the only person to do so. However, over the first 3 rounds, he was also one of the lowest scoring players out of all the players on 3 wins due to games going to time and only picking up 15-20 points a game. Alternatively, my first 2 games ended in a tabling so I picked up 38 and 37 points. It really does change the dynamic a lot for armies that struggle with time restrictions, making it a lot harder for them to build the points and make up the difference over 6-9 games.

The biggest strugglers with this, is, Tyranids, Orks and Guard. Whether or not, this then leads to the “best” codices being on top, is debatable, but instead points to the “best built armies for the missions” to be there instead. It could also be another reason why the pure BA player did so well.

 DarkStarSabre wrote:
It;s nice to see Chaos actually strong for an edition.

And from what I knew - Eldar was like, mostly Dark Reaper spam. Can you spot the next incoming nerf? I can

What players have noted on many many occassions claiming they KNOW what is getting nerfed because there's openly broken unit only for GW to boost it.

Anybody telling them GW is doing anything for sake of balance is naively kidding himself. Their errata's are money driven changes. Not balance.


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Wayniac wrote:

 DarkStarSabre wrote:
It;s nice to see Chaos actually strong for an edition.

And from what I knew - Eldar was like, mostly Dark Reaper spam. Can you spot the next incoming nerf? I can

Is soup and mixing and matching various things really "Chaos" though? In the sense that most people talk about when they talk about a faction being strong? I wouldn't think so. The majority of people when they talk about X faction being strong, they really mean that faction without taking various bits and pieces, they usually mean Chaos as in "I want a pure iron warriors list" or "I want a pure noise marine army" not "I'm going to take slaanesh obliterators and brimstone horrors and magnus and blah blah blah" together into some frankenstein army.

In 8th ed yes. Single faction armies are days looong past and not coming back in a hurry(requires new leadership and developers from GW with radically different principles)


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Daedalus81 wrote:
This is precisely why it is GOOD to see, because we can highlight it and hand it over to GW to fix and we can KNOW that we'll get a response.

Don't neccessarily hold your breath. It's been how many months since the assault weapon loop hole has been brought to their attention? Fix still not nowhere near...

They're going to get nerfed. No worries.

With GW don't be so sure. They have history of buffing broken units rather than nerfing. Seeing they change values just for sake of £££ no surprise. They might nerf them if they have sold enough and don't expect to keep selling so time to shuffle things around something else(what is irrelevant for GW) sells in return but that's it.

Kdash wrote:

Am i missing something with your comparison attempt? At 81 points for 3 models, i'd hardly consider that to be "virtually the same cost" as an Infantry Squad.

A Dark Reaper technically costs 5 pts, but you can't take them without the 22 pt Reaper Launcher. Irbis is trolling.

 Cream Tea wrote:

Kdash wrote:

Am i missing something with your comparison attempt? At 81 points for 3 models, i'd hardly consider that to be "virtually the same cost" as an Infantry Squad.

A Dark Reaper technically costs 5 pts, but you can't take them without the 22 pt Reaper Launcher. Irbis is trolling.

Which is silly. 1 point for better save, always hitting on 3+ plus whatever else he gets...

tneva82 wrote:

 Cream Tea wrote:

Kdash wrote:

Am i missing something with your comparison attempt? At 81 points for 3 models, i'd hardly consider that to be "virtually the same cost" as an Infantry Squad.

A Dark Reaper technically costs 5 pts, but you can't take them without the 22 pt Reaper Launcher. Irbis is trolling.

Which is silly. 1 point for better save, always hitting on 3+ plus whatever else he gets...

Would it be any better if the Reaper Launcher was free and the Reaper was 27 points base?

No one could really argue with Tony's call but it will go down as bad sportsmanship.

That's how life is in a competitive setting. You're fully responsible for what you are doing.
Made similar experiences. One has to live with it.

Kdash wrote:

tneva82 wrote:

 Cream Tea wrote:

Kdash wrote:

Am i missing something with your comparison attempt? At 81 points for 3 models, i'd hardly consider that to be "virtually the same cost" as an Infantry Squad.

A Dark Reaper technically costs 5 pts, but you can't take them without the 22 pt Reaper Launcher. Irbis is trolling.

Which is silly. 1 point for better save, always hitting on 3+ plus whatever else he gets...

Would it be any better if the Reaper Launcher was free and the Reaper was 27 points base?

No since that would still mean they pay just 1 point for their abilities.

As a sidenote, Chaos didn't finish 6th, as he was DQed.

I think why Nids performed so poorly is due to historic reasons. Nids have hardly ever been the competitive choice, thus few competitive players had Nids to dust off for the LVO.

What I'm most curious about is the diversity of units within these lists. Top lists in 7th only had a few viable lists (Warp Spiders/Scatbikes, Riptides, SM drop pod-lists in some variant, and WarCon), and while the ITC missions punish spam at the top level through the secondary missions, though that didn't seem to affect them last year. The Eldar lists were somewhat different and I wouldn't call any of them as spammy as the Warp Spider and Scatbike-lists of yore. I really need to get the BCP app.

Looking at four of the Top 8 Eldar Lists, there were 11 different units in Nick Nanavati's list,11 in Tony Grippando's list, 14 in Sean Nayden's (and no Dark Reapers), and 9 in Jeff Poole's list. That's 11.25 different units per list on average. These included the following 19 (!) different units:

Rangers
Spiritseer
Farseer
Warlock
Wave Serpent
Dark Reapers
Yvraine
Autarch Skyrunner
Dark Eldar Warriors
Shining Spears
Yncarne
Guardians
Maugan Ra
Eldrad Ulthran
Swooping Hawks
Autarch
Storm Guardians
Ilic Nightspear
Crimson Hunter

To me, that is a pretty healthy meta.

Rangers
Spiritseer
Farseer
Warlock
Wave Serpent
Dark Reapers
Yvraine
Autarch Skyrunner
Dark Eldar Warriors
Shining Spears
Yncarne
Guardians
Maugan Ra
Eldrad Ulthran
Swooping Hawks
Autarch
Storm Guardians
Ilic Nightspear
Crimson Hunter

The variety is huge if you ask me.
My favorite model, Yncarne, has also been played. Nice.