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 SHUPPET wrote:

Audustum wrote:

 SHUPPET wrote:

Audustum wrote:

 SHUPPET wrote:

No, the topic was literally "point to an army that did any good", to which Thousand Sons was given as an answer, to which you disagreed with them doing good. Nobody said they were OP yet.

The traditional pull is a representation of who got top 8 or top 16. This is not a representation of every single army that is doing good, and ones that placed multiple times in a top 30 of one of the largest competitive events of the year definitely fit that description by my measure even if they didn't break top 16. You have conflated the two, and for this topic, your limit of "the traditional pull" is entirely arbitrary.

And I'm AGAINST the change, I think it's bad, dumbs down the game, and I do not think that TSons needed a nerf. If that was what you had said I would have agreed. But what you are currently arguing is that they are not doing good, and top 30 multiple times isn't good because it's not top 16, and that's absurd, especially since they won the major just before that.

You're missing heft context. Re-reading the quote chains, it is as clear to me now as it was then that "any good" was referring to top meta performance. You need to be up there to be doing "any good" in this conversation, so no it's not crazy.

That's not at all clear, and if it was the case, I would have agreed with you. Reading back it seemed pretty clear that the people you were responding to were not putting forward an argument at all all about it being OP, just that it was seeing success in a way that was bad game design. Only you took this to mean that they were broken and dominating tournament's. This unwillingness to read what you're actually responding to and arguing about seems like a recurring theme for you.

Audustum wrote:
You want to add in "your measure"? Great. Make an argument for why it's trustworthy, but you weren't the original post I was responding to and your subjective measure isn't what was being discussed.

Argument for why we can include multiple top 30 placings as a factor to whether or not an army is doing good: because it's a high end finish for an army. No other reason and literally no other reason is necessary, the onus is now on you for a valid reason to discount factual information, and arguing "b-b-but it's not top 16!" is not one, as it being 16 is not a necessary condition of it being relevant.

Audustum wrote:
I will say it for a third time and then probably no more because if it doesn't get through after 3 it probably never will: my pull is not arbitrary. It's what is usually compiled and recorded after tournaments so that way we have a verifiela let record to consult that minimizes player error as a factor. It's the only solid data we really have.

And again, I'll explain this to you. Cutting off data at top 16 isn't arbitrary for doing analysis of the 16 strongest armies of that tourney, or a short summary of the lists that won and came closest to it. However, rigidly sticking to this pull for something that is deliberately not limited to this range and deliberately and stubbornly ignoring ALL other evidence, DOES make it a completely arbitrary limitation when it comes to just trying to measure what armies did well. Nowhere in "doing well" is it specified "HAS TO DO TOP 16 AND NOT A SINGLE PLACE BELOW". In fact, most people will say multiple places in a top 30 is doing quite well. To say not to include simply because it didn't hit the magic 16 is YOUR arbitrary limitation on this argument, and the fact that you still haven't gotten this and keep backpedalling and rewriting all your other posts to make things fit, makes me think you have no interest in listening, and more interest in wounded pride and winning some forum argument. If that's the case then fine, but you're still wrong.

I feel like I'm talking to a brick wall, just a little bit and I'm not trying to be too belligerent here but you're throwing out some massive belligerence for no discernable purpose. This is the crux and I will have pointed this out for the fourth time now: you use the top 16 because that's what we have long spanning records on. We use records to look for consistencies to rule out player error. Such records don't exist for top 30 so far as I know. That's why I said you'd have to make one or find someone who did. Top 30 is unreliable because we have no records to minimize player error. That's what you keep missing and is why your argument both fails and repeatedly mischaracterizes my own.

You started with the snark, so don't act surprised when the person you direct it towards also responds back a bit snarky in return, especially when you're being this bullheaded on a pretty straightforward matter.


What records do you need for top 30? You just look at high placing results lol. Nothing about what you are saying has much clarity to it, it seems like you are trying to latch on to whatever technicality you can reach for to excuse you being wrong about the FACT that Thousand Sons have been competing just fine, and they are an army capable of doing exactly what was described.

If you want to delve deeper into hard statistics we certainly can, and they still support that TSons are not struggling at all at a competitive level, but as it stands people put forth great examples of TSons competing just dandy at a competitive level and you tried to handwave it with "BUT ITS NOT TOP 16 THO". Ok, nobody said it was. You can talk about top 16's all you want, and compare them all you like, but the question wasn't asked how many times has TSon's got top 16. That being said, they were literally ranked #5 at the tournament in question, and then appeared 4-5 MORE times going down the top placings down to 30. That's a great showing at a 250 man tournament, and is definitely a fair example of them doing well. Nobody was asked to provide examples of top 16 only, and if that was a classification on the criteria there would have been a different answer, though it's an unnecessary restriction as again - you do not need to take multiple places in the top 16 of a 250 man tournament just to count as a good army. You've completely shifted the goalposts to something entirely different from what was asked because you didn't like that the answer to the question proved you wrong.

If you want to talk statistics we can do that. You talk so much about them so I'm going to assume you're aware of TSons winrate in the competitive scene right now, right?

It's like you don't even read what I write or you miss attribute it. I'm sure it does seem like I'm grasping to you because you don't appear to be even comprehending what I'm saying. Anyway, for record, I am one of the people who said Thousand Sons did well. I also said it WASN'T because of the assault element of the Tzaangoer bomb. I said, specifically, that Tzaangoer bombs were not a major issue that needed to be hit with the nerf bat, not that all Thousand Sons were terrible or poor performing.

I didn't have any snark and if you read any in there you should remember it's the internet and tone can't always be assumed.

You need records of who the top 30 is for multiple tournaments, especially tournaments held while the meta you want to evaluate (in this case the current meta) was prevalent. We don't have that because nobody records it except BCP and, so far nobody who pays for that service has made such listings publicly available for scrutiny. Go try to find it yourself or pull it off BCP and post it for us. For every ITC tournament or NOVA-style tournament from Adepticon to NOVA, we don't even have the top 30. Conversely, you can head on over to SpikeyBits or BloodofKittens and pull the top 3/top 16 for just about any major event from their archives. Case in point:

https://spikeybits.com/2018/03/40k-adepticon-championship-top-16-lists-revealed.html

See how easy that was? Now get me all these top 30's you want to include.

As I have now said 5 times, you need data like this to at least try and control for player error or other factors. It's not a perfect system, but unless someone like you, who wants more lists included, actually goes and compiles it it's the only system we have. One-off performances and/or one-off players do not mean something is at the top of competitive, they do not mean it hits to be hit with the nerf bat (remember the context of the conversation you jumped into the middle of). When Nick Nanavati takes a list and stomps his way into the top echelons, we can be reasonably confident the list did not end up there because of player error (since he would be competing against other high level players after qualifiers/seeding), that he didn't just get a lucky bracket streak (since he regularly ends up there) and that the list is likely optimized (because his lists regularly perform well).

Conversely, if, in a single tournament, Bob Smith's All Spore Mine Bonanza takes 16th, we can conclude that is largely a fluke or the result of external factors. Bob Smith doesn't regularly show up so he may have had a lucky bracket, Spore Minds aren't really appearing at other tournaments so it's unlikely there's some hidden power to them the internet hive mind has missed and we have no idea the quality of Bob's play or list building acumen.

Since we don't have records of these big tournaments going down to the top 30's, we don't even know if the 17th-30th positions has a stable meta. It could be in the doldrums of unoptimized play it could be similar to 1st-16th; we don't really know. We know you think it's great, but unlike the top 10/top 16 we don't even have metrics to try and verify that.

So like I said before: make or find a compilation of what you want to include. Otherwise we can't really use it to tell us anything. We look to the top 10/top 16 because we at least have something there to do it.

Now seriously, if five times doesn't get that point across I just give up.

To check how a faction is doing, you take all the results from that faction for a certain number of events or one big event, then you sum together the rankings they got and divide by the total number of players using that faction and again divide by the number of players in the event. This gives you a value that goes from 1 to 0, were 1 means that the faction is bringing kids toys to a firefight and 0 means "OMG GW PLZ NERF!!!"

Taking only the top results of an event to get any meaninful information about how a faction is doing is like judging a football player performance by his squad results. It's an indication, but not the full scenario.

Camjo wrote:

 ClockworkZion wrote:

Camjo wrote:

When looking in on tournaments, we noticed that the way the Fly keyword interacts with charges was resulting in some cases where Assault Marines and other flying units could stand above (or below) their foes and make 0″ charges. Now, even if you can fly, you’ll have to measure vertically like everyone else when you’re getting stuck into close combat.

no where here does it say you can't still fly. You just have to measure distance like others. Hardly a total nerf.

You can't fly outside of the movement phase. No jumping over stuff or up and down buildings to charge or HI.

is that written elsewhere? You should still be able to ignore terrain and units

In future good idea to read actual FAQ rather than GW's low-down's which does not have exact detail but effect(as GW sees it) and not even always full effect(like here). It's good read to have rough idea what changed but only in terms of what to keep in mind. Actual change is in the actual errata.

Audustum wrote:

It's like you don't even read what I write or you miss attribute it. I'm sure it does seem like I'm grasping to you because you don't appear to be even comprehending what I'm saying. Anyway, for record, I am one of the people who said Thousand Sons did well. I also said it WASN'T because of the assault element of the Tzaangoer bomb. I said, specifically, that Tzaangoer bombs were not a major issue that needed to be hit with the nerf bat, not that all Thousand Sons were terrible or poor performing.

I didn't have any snark and if you read any in there you should remember it's the internet and tone can't always be assumed.

You need records of who the top 30 is for multiple tournaments, especially tournaments held while the meta you want to evaluate (in this case the current meta) was prevalent. We don't have that because nobody records it except BCP and, so far nobody who pays for that service has made such listings publicly available for scrutiny. Go try to find it yourself or pull it off BCP and post it for us. For every ITC tournament or NOVA-style tournament from Adepticon to NOVA, we don't even have the top 30. Conversely, you can head on over to SpikeyBits or BloodofKittens and pull the top 3/top 16 for just about any major event from their archives. Case in point:

https://spikeybits.com/2018/03/40k-adepticon-championship-top-16-lists-revealed.html

See how easy that was? Now get me all these top 30's you want to include.

Lol @ thinking you're a competitive player but not having BCP. It's like $5 a month in a hobby where you spend 20x that on a single unit. It is THE way to keep your finger on the pulse of the meta, and for the exact reason as you said, seeing as without it you are incapable of checking and crossreferencing things like placings beyond the top 16. For the exact reason you said, when people source lists it's generally only the very top placings that get listed, often not even that. This IS where you find your top 30's and further. Like hell I'm hand typing out 30 lists crossreferenced from screenshots on a phone app, from every single tournament going back god knows how long, to prove a point against a person incapable of admitting their mistaken statements anyway, just because they won't do it for themselves. You do not need to check every top 30 ever to say that TSons did well in THIS tournament. It's absurdity, you're definitively trying to deflect the conversation with illogical requests. Just because you personally choose not to get the app to check the results of the top 30's, does not mean other people who do know the results can't reference them lol.

Audustum wrote:
As I have now said 5 times, you need data like this to at least try and control for player error or other factors. It's not a perfect system, but unless someone like you, who wants more lists included, actually goes and compiles it it's the only system we have. One-off performances and/or one-off players do not mean something is at the top of competitive, they do not mean it hits to be hit with the nerf bat (remember the context of the conversation you jumped into the middle of).

Oh, so you mean like how I already said this was a bad change, and also that TSon's didn't need a nerf, and weren't OP? You mean that?

Stop shifting the goalposts, nobody said they were OP. The request was for examples of them doing well, not for examples of top 16's, not for HARD STATISTICS COMPILED ACROSS MULTIPLE TOURNAMENTS, and such examples were given.

If you wanted such hard statistics, all you had to do was ask - and this isn't what was asked for initially - because great news for you, someone recorded statistics for EVERY placing going back a matter of months, and compiled it into a crapton of information extrapolation filters and categories. This data is from a few weeks ago.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1yMFHpvtKAgTbTT0MuUYUiPSRov9yZ88m/view

480 entries. TSons have the highest win rate of any army in the game in the competitive scene, over the period of what was defined as the recent meta. The STATISTICS you've been demanding make them look even better than they are imo, I don't think they are #1 on any tierlist, but it's beyond debatable that they are able to do good in tournaments. And that WAS the original post, lets go back to where this all started, with the original quote, framed here:



What will the excuse be this time? I'm very interested in seeing how you are going to spin this data to somehow not be the proof you have demanded of TSons performing just fine at competitive level.

Spoletta wrote:
To check how a faction is doing, you take all the results from that faction for a certain number of events or one big event, then you sum together the rankings they got and divide by the total number of players using that faction and again divide by the number of players in the event. This gives you a value that goes from 1 to 0, were 1 means that the faction is bringing kids toys to a firefight and 0 means "OMG GW PLZ NERF!!!"

Taking only the top results of an event to get any meaninful information about how a faction is doing is like judging a football player performance by his squad results. It's an indication, but not the full scenario.

That would be super skewed. Avarges are prone to get unstable data, if you get results on either ends of the win/lose spectrum. You could have 10 people playing GK, and 9 of them having a 50/50 win rate, but if the 10th would be something like 5/95 the avarge win ration would pop up as GK having way below 50% win ratio.

Same other way around, if you have a group of people playing one army and they end up winning or placing high in a single GT, the data would blow the power of the list sky high.

You would also have problems with armies that have a small pool of people playing them, without enough games and players playing the faction, you can't really check the avarge of something like GK, that are not played in tournament setting. The data would always be skewed.

Karol wrote:

Spoletta wrote:
To check how a faction is doing, you take all the results from that faction for a certain number of events or one big event, then you sum together the rankings they got and divide by the total number of players using that faction and again divide by the number of players in the event. This gives you a value that goes from 1 to 0, were 1 means that the faction is bringing kids toys to a firefight and 0 means "OMG GW PLZ NERF!!!"

Taking only the top results of an event to get any meaninful information about how a faction is doing is like judging a football player performance by his squad results. It's an indication, but not the full scenario.

That would be super skewed. Avarges are prone to get unstable data, if you get results on either ends of the win/lose spectrum. You could have 10 people playing GK, and 9 of them having a 50/50 win rate, but if the 10th would be something like 5/95 the avarge win ration would pop up as GK having way below 50% win ratio.

Same other way around, if you have a group of people playing one army and they end up winning or placing high in a single GT, the data would blow the power of the list sky high.

You would also have problems with armies that have a small pool of people playing them, without enough games and players playing the faction, you can't really check the avarge of something like GK, that are not played in tournament setting. The data would always be skewed.

That's what standard deviation is for.

It’s funny that GW has answered questions that have never been asked.

Could be, am not very good at math, but my teacher explained it to us that avarges are not so good to check stuff with big differences by making us check the avarge size of a country in europ, including Russia. And suddenly the avarge size of european country was larger, then any country save for Russia and Turky.

Karol wrote:
Could be, am not very good at math, but my teacher explained it to us that avarges are not so good to check stuff with big differences by making us check the avarge size of a country in europ, including Russia. And suddenly the avarge size of european country was larger, then any country save for Russia and Turky.

I'm sure that said professor also told you that you don't try to understand which continent has the biggest cities on average by looking at how big is the biggest city of every continent.

I like all the changes - especially the CP farm and Fly charges nerfs

The fly change sounds simple, but right now I am unsure how to apply it in a lot of cases.
Like what if you give an extra movement to unit with fly through warptime?
What about that psi power BA have, that gives the caster fly and a free movement? As that happens after the movement phase, is the 'fly' part of that power now meaningless until the next turn?
That part quoted in the rules comedy about one flyer charging another flyer...? I mean that one is clear but its so stupid surely that can't be intentional?


I also find it both hilarious and depressing how they mention that they realize GSC gets shafted hard with these changes, but thats ok, because 'just wait for the codex'.
I hope that codex comes really soon then...


Also this FAQ is another proof that soup is bad for the game:
Units that are ok within their own army keep getting nerfed because they are broken in soup until only soup remains viable.

Those powers allow you fo "fly" because they always say "Move as if it were the movement phase".

Spoletta wrote:

Karol wrote:
Could be, am not very good at math, but my teacher explained it to us that avarges are not so good to check stuff with big differences by making us check the avarge size of a country in europ, including Russia. And suddenly the avarge size of european country was larger, then any country save for Russia and Turky.

I'm sure that said professor also told you that you don't try to understand which continent has the biggest cities on average by looking at how big is the biggest city of every continent.

Removed by BrookM - Rule #1 please! That's totally uncalled for, especially since I've never even spoken to you before. And I never compared it thinking that was the way to d it, there are so many profile that instead of actually having to think and work out an average you can compare the total damage and then just compare the st ap and BS. Do you really calculate averages for every weapon you read or compare, yeah no one is sad enough to do that.

 ClockworkZion wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:

 ClockworkZion wrote:


And a single knight is a gunline? Why is it camping anywhere unless it's holding a deployment zone objective marker?

Sorry if it wasn't clear. I was commenting on the general absurdity of calling Andrew's list a gunline.

A gunline seeks to avoid combat and maximize the number and power of shots. Many of the Nova lists did not do this.

Ah. Yeah, that's been my main gripe with the claims of all these "gunlines" running around ruining those poor melee only build player's days.

I didn't use the word "gunline" once in any of my posts gentlemen. Don't put words in my mouth.

I want clarification on all these tournament lists that run a mix of melee and shooting, according to Zion, because THE list is clearly predominantly a shooting force.

A gunline is NOT just an army with guns. The term has a pretty well understood meaning, watering it down to anything that wants to shoot a lot is not a gunline

 SHUPPET wrote:
A gunline is NOT just an army with guns. The term has a pretty well understood meaning, watering it down to anything that wants to shoot a lot is not a gunline

Agreed. 40k is a game which involves a lot of shooting, inherently. To just say the game favours lists that feature a fair bit of shooting is like... Well duh, it's a core part of the game.

Why are we talking about gunlines at all?

My position is pretty simple and unrelated; I would suggest that the current edition favours primarily shooting units way more than primarily melee units. This has been the case for a few editions now but it has not changed. I feel like Zion is suggesting otherwise despite the de facto 'best list' having a relatively small (points and model-wise) melee contingent.

That's not to say there aren't any "good" melee units, but they tend to be expendable (because enemies can now leave combat at will), characters (so they are protected as they trundle up the field or when units leave combat) or extremely mobile through deep strike, movement stratagems or simply strong base movement.

Spoletta wrote:

Karol wrote:
Could be, am not very good at math, but my teacher explained it to us that avarges are not so good to check stuff with big differences by making us check the avarge size of a country in europ, including Russia. And suddenly the avarge size of european country was larger, then any country save for Russia and Turky.

I'm sure that said professor also told you that you don't try to understand which continent has the biggest cities on average by looking at how big is the biggest city of every continent.

Only the part of the Russia that is euro was compared. The asian part was ignored. If that was added, god knows what avarge would we end up with.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 SHUPPET wrote:
A gunline is NOT just an army with guns. The term has a pretty well understood meaning, watering it down to anything that wants to shoot a lot is not a gunline

Maybe it is a different country things. If I try to translate gun line in to polish, the military terms dictionery gives me the results of line of artilery, line of tanks or battle ships or some sort of chopper wing thingy that is so complicated I don't even get what it really is.

Maybe people can agree that gunline means being shoty then being anything else?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Stux wrote:

 SHUPPET wrote:
A gunline is NOT just an army with guns. The term has a pretty well understood meaning, watering it down to anything that wants to shoot a lot is not a gunline

Agreed. 40k is a game which involves a lot of shooting, inherently. To just say the game favours lists that feature a fair bit of shooting is like... Well duh, it's a core part of the game.

And melee is not the core part of the game? Isnt the chainsword the iconic weapon in w40k alongside stuff like the bolter?

 An Actual Englishman wrote:
Why are we talking about gunlines at all?

My position is pretty simple and unrelated; I would suggest that the current edition favours primarily shooting units way more than primarily melee units. This has been the case for a few editions now but it has not changed. I feel like Zion is suggesting otherwise despite the de facto 'best list' having a relatively small (points and model-wise) melee contingent.

That's not to say there aren't any "good" melee units, but they tend to be expendable (because enemies can now leave combat at will), characters (so they are protected as they trundle up the field or when units leave combat) or extremely mobile through deep strike, movement stratagems or simply strong base movement.[/quote

The Best List (IK/BA/AM) seems to me more built around how best to leverage advantage from unlimited CP than anything. They do have an assault element and it varies from player to player, the version of the list with Knight Gallants is pretty assault-heavy. I am not sure it tells us that much, after all the previous Best Lists that stood out in my mind were infinite poxwalkers which was an assault/psychic list and flyrant spam with a 50/50 mix of shooting and assault upgrades and inherent psychic power. If we take too short a snapshot of the Best List we can see just the outcome of the previous FAQ rules tweak and think that is characteristic of 8th whereas really what is characteristic of 8th is the tall poppy syndrome where whatever is best will be cut down to size. More durable top lists like Ynnari are a mix of units that work in every phase - the last version of Nick Nanavati's Ynnari list I saw had 500 points of assault units to 650 points of shooting units in it with 450 points of psykers for support..

The top lists have almost always got a balance of shooting and assault, they need to operate in as many phases of the game as possible. If I had to hazard and estimate at the ideal balance I would guess at 60:40 shooting to assault but top players will keep tuning their lists and against a changing background of releases we should never see that question "solved". What is true is that one-dimensional pure assault armies are less functional than one-dimensional pure shooting armies. If you choose to cripple a Khorne list by not taking the shooting options available it will really struggle more than a comparable AM or Tau player who takes no assault - none of those are currently likely to win many tournaments but the mono-shooting lists would tend to win more games. Of course if you go out of your way to ignore the Khorne shooting options (see http://www.belloflostsouls.net/2018/08/khorne-army-goes-4-1-at-the-hammer-of-wrath-gt.html for example) then you have simply chosen to take a gimped one-dimensional army, wear your fluff bunny shirt with pride and take your losses with a smile.

Karol wrote:

 Stux wrote:

 SHUPPET wrote:
A gunline is NOT just an army with guns. The term has a pretty well understood meaning, watering it down to anything that wants to shoot a lot is not a gunline

Agreed. 40k is a game which involves a lot of shooting, inherently. To just say the game favours lists that feature a fair bit of shooting is like... Well duh, it's a core part of the game.

And melee is not the core part of the game? Isnt the chainsword the iconic weapon in w40k alongside stuff like the bolter?

It absolutely is an important part. That doesn't mean a 'melee army' (outside of Daemons) should be treated as anything other than a gimmick list. It's just one tool at your disposal.

happy_inquisitor wrote:

 An Actual Englishman wrote:
Why are we talking about gunlines at all?

My position is pretty simple and unrelated; I would suggest that the current edition favours primarily shooting units way more than primarily melee units. This has been the case for a few editions now but it has not changed. I feel like Zion is suggesting otherwise despite the de facto 'best list' having a relatively small (points and model-wise) melee contingent.

That's not to say there aren't any "good" melee units, but they tend to be expendable (because enemies can now leave combat at will), characters (so they are protected as they trundle up the field or when units leave combat) or extremely mobile through deep strike, movement stratagems or simply strong base movement.[/quote

The Best List (IK/BA/AM) seems to me more built around how best to leverage advantage from unlimited CP than anything. They do have an assault element and it varies from player to player, the version of the list with Knight Gallants is pretty assault-heavy. I am not sure it tells us that much, after all the previous Best Lists that stood out in my mind were infinite poxwalkers which was an assault/psychic list and flyrant spam with a 50/50 mix of shooting and assault upgrades and inherent psychic power. If we take too short a snapshot of the Best List we can see just the outcome of the previous FAQ rules tweak and think that is characteristic of 8th whereas really what is characteristic of 8th is the tall poppy syndrome where whatever is best will be cut down to size. More durable top lists like Ynnari are a mix of units that work in every phase - the last version of Nick Nanavati's Ynnari list I saw had 500 points of assault units to 650 points of shooting units in it with 450 points of psykers for support..

The top lists have almost always got a balance of shooting and assault, they need to operate in as many phases of the game as possible. If I had to hazard and estimate at the ideal balance I would guess at 60:40 shooting to assault but top players will keep tuning their lists and against a changing background of releases we should never see that question "solved". What is true is that one-dimensional pure assault armies are less functional than one-dimensional pure shooting armies. If you choose to cripple a Khorne list by not taking the shooting options available it will really struggle more than a comparable AM or Tau player who takes no assault - none of those are currently likely to win many tournaments but the mono-shooting lists would tend to win more games. Of course if you go out of your way to ignore the Khorne shooting options (see http://www.belloflostsouls.net/2018/08/khorne-army-goes-4-1-at-the-hammer-of-wrath-gt.html for example) then you have simply chosen to take a gimped one-dimensional army, wear your fluff bunny shirt with pride and take your losses with a smile.

The entire IoM meta list can throw down in melee. Even the Guard detachment is Catachan and is almost definitely the best priced melee horde in the game, with Catachan Guardsmen having 2 attacks and S4 and 5+ save with Straken around, for just 4 points a model. The Castellan boots and obviously the BA or other dedicated assault element also do work. I gotta agree with pretty much everything you said, versatility is the best stat especially when you aren't making sacrifices for it elsewhere and still do something really well.

How does the Command Point farming-nerf affect farming during deployment (e.g. outside a battle round)? Not at all?

Sunny Side Up wrote:
How does the Command Point farming-nerf affect farming during deployment (e.g. outside a battle round)? Not at all?

Correct, not at all. The limit is within a battle round.

 SHUPPET wrote:

happy_inquisitor wrote:
The Best List (IK/BA/AM) seems to me more built around how best to leverage advantage from unlimited CP than anything. They do have an assault element and it varies from player to player, the version of the list with Knight Gallants is pretty assault-heavy. I am not sure it tells us that much, after all the previous Best Lists that stood out in my mind were infinite poxwalkers which was an assault/psychic list and flyrant spam with a 50/50 mix of shooting and assault upgrades and inherent psychic power. If we take too short a snapshot of the Best List we can see just the outcome of the previous FAQ rules tweak and think that is characteristic of 8th whereas really what is characteristic of 8th is the tall poppy syndrome where whatever is best will be cut down to size. More durable top lists like Ynnari are a mix of units that work in every phase - the last version of Nick Nanavati's Ynnari list I saw had 500 points of assault units to 650 points of shooting units in it with 450 points of psykers for support..

The top lists have almost always got a balance of shooting and assault, they need to operate in as many phases of the game as possible. If I had to hazard and estimate at the ideal balance I would guess at 60:40 shooting to assault but top players will keep tuning their lists and against a changing background of releases we should never see that question "solved". What is true is that one-dimensional pure assault armies are less functional than one-dimensional pure shooting armies. If you choose to cripple a Khorne list by not taking the shooting options available it will really struggle more than a comparable AM or Tau player who takes no assault - none of those are currently likely to win many tournaments but the mono-shooting lists would tend to win more games. Of course if you go out of your way to ignore the Khorne shooting options (see http://www.belloflostsouls.net/2018/08/khorne-army-goes-4-1-at-the-hammer-of-wrath-gt.html for example) then you have simply chosen to take a gimped one-dimensional army, wear your fluff bunny shirt with pride and take your losses with a smile.

The entire IoM meta list can throw down in melee. Even the Guard detachment is Catachan and is almost definitely the best priced melee horde in the game, with Catachan Guardsmen having 2 attacks and S4 and 5+ save with Straken around, for just 4 points a model. The Castellan boots and obviously the BA or other dedicated assault element also do work. I gotta agree with pretty much everything you said, versatility is the best stat especially when you aren't making sacrifices for it elsewhere and still do something really well.

Yea I agree with the two of you and I'm not trying to suggest that the Castellan boots and Catachan Infantry aren't effective in melee. But I'd suggest the Castellan 'throws down' harder at range than in melee with most targets and the Catachan Infantry are broken for reasons that go beyond the scope of "melee vs shooting effectiveness".

I suppose the problem with the top lists, as you've both pointed out, is that they are able to take units that can leverage a massive advantage in one phase but still often compete extremely well in another (one that they may not be designed to operate as well in).

Good points both.

 mokoshkana wrote:

Also as someone with 2k sized BA force myself, I feel your pain. I have effectively decided to shelf that army indefinitely.

Honestly, with a 2k sized force, you might as well shelve the army all the time.

Unless you bought the force in the current edition, the likelihood that it would be competitive is close to zero anyway since you don't have any options when making a standard size list.

Which is fine, because many gamers have the exact same thing too.

 An Actual Englishman wrote:

 SHUPPET wrote:

happy_inquisitor wrote:
The Best List (IK/BA/AM) seems to me more built around how best to leverage advantage from unlimited CP than anything. They do have an assault element and it varies from player to player, the version of the list with Knight Gallants is pretty assault-heavy. I am not sure it tells us that much, after all the previous Best Lists that stood out in my mind were infinite poxwalkers which was an assault/psychic list and flyrant spam with a 50/50 mix of shooting and assault upgrades and inherent psychic power. If we take too short a snapshot of the Best List we can see just the outcome of the previous FAQ rules tweak and think that is characteristic of 8th whereas really what is characteristic of 8th is the tall poppy syndrome where whatever is best will be cut down to size. More durable top lists like Ynnari are a mix of units that work in every phase - the last version of Nick Nanavati's Ynnari list I saw had 500 points of assault units to 650 points of shooting units in it with 450 points of psykers for support..

The top lists have almost always got a balance of shooting and assault, they need to operate in as many phases of the game as possible. If I had to hazard and estimate at the ideal balance I would guess at 60:40 shooting to assault but top players will keep tuning their lists and against a changing background of releases we should never see that question "solved". What is true is that one-dimensional pure assault armies are less functional than one-dimensional pure shooting armies. If you choose to cripple a Khorne list by not taking the shooting options available it will really struggle more than a comparable AM or Tau player who takes no assault - none of those are currently likely to win many tournaments but the mono-shooting lists would tend to win more games. Of course if you go out of your way to ignore the Khorne shooting options (see http://www.belloflostsouls.net/2018/08/khorne-army-goes-4-1-at-the-hammer-of-wrath-gt.html for example) then you have simply chosen to take a gimped one-dimensional army, wear your fluff bunny shirt with pride and take your losses with a smile.

The entire IoM meta list can throw down in melee. Even the Guard detachment is Catachan and is almost definitely the best priced melee horde in the game, with Catachan Guardsmen having 2 attacks and S4 and 5+ save with Straken around, for just 4 points a model. The Castellan boots and obviously the BA or other dedicated assault element also do work. I gotta agree with pretty much everything you said, versatility is the best stat especially when you aren't making sacrifices for it elsewhere and still do something really well.

Yea I agree with the two of you and I'm not trying to suggest that the Castellan boots and Catachan Infantry aren't effective in melee. But I'd suggest the Castellan 'throws down' harder at range than in melee with most targets and the Catachan Infantry are broken for reasons that go beyond the scope of "melee vs shooting effectiveness".

I suppose the problem with the top lists, as you've both pointed out, is that they are able to take units that can leverage a massive advantage in one phase but still often compete extremely well in another (one that they may not be designed to operate as well in).

Good points both.

That's why I love my DKK, nothing better than killing your enemy with a shovel.

 An Actual Englishman wrote:

 SHUPPET wrote:

happy_inquisitor wrote:
The Best List (IK/BA/AM) seems to me more built around how best to leverage advantage from unlimited CP than anything. They do have an assault element and it varies from player to player, the version of the list with Knight Gallants is pretty assault-heavy. I am not sure it tells us that much, after all the previous Best Lists that stood out in my mind were infinite poxwalkers which was an assault/psychic list and flyrant spam with a 50/50 mix of shooting and assault upgrades and inherent psychic power. If we take too short a snapshot of the Best List we can see just the outcome of the previous FAQ rules tweak and think that is characteristic of 8th whereas really what is characteristic of 8th is the tall poppy syndrome where whatever is best will be cut down to size. More durable top lists like Ynnari are a mix of units that work in every phase - the last version of Nick Nanavati's Ynnari list I saw had 500 points of assault units to 650 points of shooting units in it with 450 points of psykers for support..

The top lists have almost always got a balance of shooting and assault, they need to operate in as many phases of the game as possible. If I had to hazard and estimate at the ideal balance I would guess at 60:40 shooting to assault but top players will keep tuning their lists and against a changing background of releases we should never see that question "solved". What is true is that one-dimensional pure assault armies are less functional than one-dimensional pure shooting armies. If you choose to cripple a Khorne list by not taking the shooting options available it will really struggle more than a comparable AM or Tau player who takes no assault - none of those are currently likely to win many tournaments but the mono-shooting lists would tend to win more games. Of course if you go out of your way to ignore the Khorne shooting options (see http://www.belloflostsouls.net/2018/08/khorne-army-goes-4-1-at-the-hammer-of-wrath-gt.html for example) then you have simply chosen to take a gimped one-dimensional army, wear your fluff bunny shirt with pride and take your losses with a smile.

The entire IoM meta list can throw down in melee. Even the Guard detachment is Catachan and is almost definitely the best priced melee horde in the game, with Catachan Guardsmen having 2 attacks and S4 and 5+ save with Straken around, for just 4 points a model. The Castellan boots and obviously the BA or other dedicated assault element also do work. I gotta agree with pretty much everything you said, versatility is the best stat especially when you aren't making sacrifices for it elsewhere and still do something really well.

Yea I agree with the two of you and I'm not trying to suggest that the Castellan boots and Catachan Infantry aren't effective in melee. But I'd suggest the Castellan 'throws down' harder at range than in melee with most targets and the Catachan Infantry are broken for reasons that go beyond the scope of "melee vs shooting effectiveness".

I suppose the problem with the top lists, as you've both pointed out, is that they are able to take units that can leverage a massive advantage in one phase but still often compete extremely well in another (one that they may not be designed to operate as well in).

Good points both.

You're right, I'm afraid I wasn't really paying attention to the context of this one, but I just wanted to be clear that I think the top list right now is much more than a static gunline if anyone is trying to describe it as such

Static gunlines basically died in 8th because most units can move without penalty and the few that really suffer for it are usually bad choices.

9 basilisks is still incredibly obnoxious to bring to a friendly game and will render some less optimised lists unplayable - but it probably won't win you a tournament.

Imperial Soup doesn't just leverage CPs, it leverages the fact all the units in the list are good for their points (even scouts imo but ymmv). The combination may be less good in a world of fewer CPs and more expensive stratagems, but we shall have to see.

 Stux wrote:

Sunny Side Up wrote:
How does the Command Point farming-nerf affect farming during deployment (e.g. outside a battle round)? Not at all?

Correct, not at all. The limit is within a battle round.

Which means that if you really, really, really, really, really, really, really wanna be TFG, you could still do the CP charge-up before the 1st battle round in deployment using Grand Strategist and Veritas Vitae.

Use a random 1-2 CP garbage strat during deployment and roll 2 dice for GS/VV, re-rolling all results lower than 5 with the re-roll strat, netting you an average 1.11 CP for each CP spend.

Roll 2 dice again for every use of the re-roll stratagem you just did, again re-rolling all non-5s/6s with the re-roll stratagem.

Keep up the chain rolling 2 dice for all the re-roll strats, again re-rolling all non 5s/6s again netting you 1.11 CP average for every CP spend.

Rinse & repeat until you’re at 40-50 CP or so.

Start the game.

Sunny Side Up wrote:

 Stux wrote:

Sunny Side Up wrote:
How does the Command Point farming-nerf affect farming during deployment (e.g. outside a battle round)? Not at all?

Correct, not at all. The limit is within a battle round.

Which means that if you really, really, really, really, really, really, really wanna be TFG, you could still do the CP charge-up before the 1st battle round in deployment using Grand Strategist and Veritas Vitae.

Use a random 1-2 CP garbage strat during deployment and roll 2 dice for GS/VV, re-rolling all results lower than 5 with the re-roll strat, netting you an average 1.11 CP for each CP spend.

Roll 2 dice again for every use of the re-roll stratagem you just did, again re-rolling all non-5s/6s with the re-roll stratagem.

Keep up the chain rolling 2 dice for all the re-roll strats, again re-rolling all non 5s/6s again netting you 1.11 CP average for every CP spend.

Rinse & repeat until you’re at 40-50 CP or so.

Start the game.

needs to be done