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MVBrandt wrote:

bananathug wrote:
I love the idea of treating the ruins like old school forests. One first story wall you can be seen (but have cover) two first story walls you can't.

Hell, combine this with "buildings with intact ceilings cannot be shot out of by indirect fire weapons" and I'm in. Honestly, if you start shooting mortars through the roof of the building you are in, eventually you will have a bad time.

I like the ITC missions but some of the scoring goals feel gamie and more easily exploited by certain armies than others further adding balance issues to a game that has enough of them. At least that's what I take away from the criticisms. The ability to take large 30 man squads to impact kill more or squads under PL 7, some armies reliance on 7w or greater models or armies have more fragile squads all seem to favor a few particular armies over others.

All that being said some sacrifices have to be made in order to create a framework that does work for tournaments of more that 16 people and GW missions just are not it. I do wish the missions were more dynamic but I understand that it is really hard to get dynamic and not completely random.

Maelstrom could be okay if it were more finely tuned and I think the army specific goals/missions are something that could be incorporated. With smart objective placement and numbering you could avoid the "take objective (in my opponents deployment zone)" vs "hold objective (in my deployment zone)" imbalance or the "kill a psycher" vs a DE list that makes maelstrom not really fit for competitive play.

Maybe even something along the lines of a build your own maelstrom deck to kind of mirror the existing secondaries could be a cool beta concept for you guys to test in house?

As for the play testing brags...I'm not sure I'd be thumping my chest about 28 point grav cannons vs 15 point dissie cannons, or centurions, or the 50% of models that don't see the table because they are pretty bad. Or the fact that GW seems surprised by the almost tourney worthy lists from the newest WD. We get it, you've seen more of the inner workings of GW than most but using that to shut down peoples criticism seems juvenile at best.

The last bit of this reaction seems in some ways juvenile (ironically) in and of itself. In re: the playtesting .... I'm not sure how else I'd define it. It's a lot of work, and it's not a brag, it's something we do. The point isn't "we playtest, hell yeah," especially given 28 point grav vs. 15 point dissie ... but rather "we aren't completely uninformed // operating in rebellion against GW." It wasn't used to shut down criticisms - it was used as actual evidence, when peoples' criticisms (the ones I'm personally responding to) are claiming they know what GW intends and saying we are going in opposition to GW intent.

If you're arguing that we shouldn't dare to use evidence to support our arguments, I really don't know what to tell you. But it's a funny thing of you to say. Do you also dislike it when scientists use science to discredit flat Earthers? Like, "stop bragging about your college degrees in 'science' just to shut down peoples' criticisms of your round earth 'hypothesis'."

Well, except you didn't provide evidence. Saying you play test things, but can't actually speak about it is an appeal to authority, not evidence. Using your analogy you would actually have the most in common with the flat Earthers since they also can't provide evidence to back their conclusions.


Only after the play tester card was pulled did people start connecting the dots of interesting plot points that are somewhat related.

Those points being;

A handle full of play testers can't possibly vet the sheer amount of data GW produces in any meaningful way. No one would should expect that either BTW it's just not possible.

Thus, GW uses large scale events to gather the most meaningful feedback and data prior to making actual changes. We know this. It's why they have delayed FAQ releases.

Therefore it's worth asking, if GW is patching the game using outside tournament data, and if said data is based on house ruled formats, that even very between said events, are the changes that are being implemented actually optimal for the core game? Because your essentially providing a muffler fix to economy cars that were designed off the performance of race cars. Race cars from several races with different mods.

I have reservations about the new enclosed building rules and I do think it will skew the game a bit too hard in favor of melee infantry and indirect weapons, which were hardly uncommon already. It creates a ridiculous threat bubble for the handful of units in the game able to take advantage of them to their fullest. Combine this rule with new gene cults and I would lean on genecults simply ending up the best faction for any itc table that has two or three of these pieces, and I do feel like that isn’t the intention itc ruleset. But these are also new rules and I haven’t seen what they’ll do on the table yet, so I could be wrong

Otherwise I have no driving issues with the ITC rules, but I am not hugely familiar with them being a nova resident, which means the nova open ruleset tends to be what I end up using on the occaision I play competitive. Usually in the months leading up to the nova open while people test out their lists. I will always treasure beating Brandt with my star striders in killteam though (this is bragging by the by for the people paying attention)

The biggest fallacy I seem to see in this GW versus ITC/Home-Brew mission debate is rather simple. Look at the variety of Match Play Scenerios GW has produced. We now have 18 Eternal War and 18 Maelstrom of War mission. They each set of six is significantly different from the next set of 6. How can anyone honestly believe that GW has balanced the game to work under these effectively 6 different scenario sets while believing the balance suddenly falls apart under ITC, Nova or any any other scenario set?

It's not that some units won't be better under some scenario sets then other. Some units will be better under some scenarios within a certain set than others. Knowing that, trying to grind the home-brew imbalances the game is just patently absurd.

Asking for feedback then rubbishing some of that feedback on the first page is... mmmkay. The first “thanks for the feedback” comment was a great response, the “lol” not so much!

Survey done. However: allow Forgeworld. That is the first and the most important step. Second, align the rule with the official GW ones, eventually selecting what to use and whatnot, but erasing any modifications and additional "fix" (it's baffling and unheard of, really, that is allowed to anyone to contribute to a development of something that you rule-drift and hack immediately).
We all understand why during 7° some fixes where needed. But not anymore.

 Cybtroll wrote:
However: allow Forgeworld.

Are we seriously having this argument again? I can't believe it's 2019 and people still think FW bans are a reasonable thing...

Also kind of having trouble believing that the enclosed terrain thing is a problem. Do people honestly build fully enclosed terrain and not declare the inside to be impassible? Or are people complaining that a ruin with 1-2 impassible sides is "unfair" because you have to move around to the back to attack from the unobstructed direction? One is a pretty significant failure to create reasonable terrain pieces, the other is inane whining about terrain doing its job and inconveniencing their perfect combo list. I'm just really having trouble understanding how this can both be a thing that exists and a problem.


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 Reecius wrote:
Saying a game that recreates battlefields shouldn't have buildings on them sucks because they look cool and the game is as much about aesthetics as anything else. Otherwise, we should be playing chess.

And real battlefields DO have buildings. It not only looks cool but it feels right, too. Soldiers do go into them not just walk around them, haha.

And there are perfectly reasonable rules to represent buildings: effectively an immobile transport vehicle. Using these rules entirely avoids the invulnerable model problem, if your target is inaccessible in a building you can just shoot the building just like if they were in a bunker purchased as part of your opponent's army.

The only way to avoid that would be to say some ruins are not actually ruins but impassible terrain (which is again, altering the game), which get confusing to the players and is non-intuitive.

It's not non-intuitive at all. An enclosed box with a roof is a solid block, of course it's impassible. The fact that the box has a hollow interior doesn't change the fact that it's still a block externally. And would people have trouble grasping the idea if the building was built around a solid block of foam? Do you think that people would have trouble understanding why they can't put their models inside the solid block of foam? Of course not. Impassible terrain is perfectly intuitive as long as it is clearly declared to be impassible terrain.

Also, isn't it kind of dishonest to claim that there's no difference between your rules and RAW when a major part of the problem is the fact that you've changed the terrain rules so that ruins block LOS even when the models inside are visible and removed the option to shoot a unit in a ruin?

 Reecius wrote:
@kdash

Well, considering you can score 30 points on primary and only 12 on secondaries if you built a list to ignore the primary you'd likely lose most of your games. Even assuming the bonus point is a touch out of reach every turn, it's still more than 2 to 1, primary to secondary.

Slightly late, but just wanted to pick up ont his as it seems to miss the point a little. The problem some people (myself included) have with the primary scoring isn't the total number of points available, but the difference between each player's score. It's so easy to hold one objective and kill one thing that you can ignore those points as far as the scoring is concerned because pretty much everyone will get them each round, barring some unusual situations. So the only real differentiator in the primary is the hold more and kill more parts, which is why a lot of people say it's the secondaries that are actually more important, because they're the missions that can show the biggest disparity between each player's score. The bonus primary points available in most missions seem like afterhtoughts a lot of the time as well, and not really something that can act as a differentiator.

I also agree with Peregrine about the enclosed ruins situation. I don't see why it's a problem to have an enclosed structure be impassable. I don't think that's counter-intuitive at all. To me the most intuitive approach to a terrain piece like that is either a building or impassable. Making it a ruin is probably the least intuitive approach. In fact, doesn't the rulebook itself define a ruin as specifically not being enclosed?

 alextroy wrote:
The biggest fallacy I seem to see in this GW versus ITC/Home-Brew mission debate is rather simple. Look at the variety of Match Play Scenerios GW has produced. We now have 18 Eternal War and 18 Maelstrom of War mission. They each set of six is significantly different from the next set of 6. How can anyone honestly believe that GW has balanced the game to work under these effectively 6 different scenario sets while believing the balance suddenly falls apart under ITC, Nova or any any other scenario set?

It's not that some units won't be better under some scenario sets then other. Some units will be better under some scenarios within a certain set than others. Knowing that, trying to grind the home-brew imbalances the game is just patently absurd.

Answer is easy. They aren't. There's scenarios that are big giant middle fingers for certain armies. Other's favour other armies so badly it's not funny. At least ITC doesn't do something silly like "oh your invulnerable saves don't work" things.


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 Cybtroll wrote:

We all understand why during 7° some fixes where needed. But not anymore.

Balance? GW isn't balanced nor aiming so good that SOMEBODY is doing it.


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Slipspace wrote:
I also agree with Peregrine about the enclosed ruins situation. I don't see why it's a problem to have an enclosed structure be impassable. I don't think that's counter-intuitive at all. To me the most intuitive approach to a terrain piece like that is either a building or impassable. Making it a ruin is probably the least intuitive approach. In fact, doesn't the rulebook itself define a ruin as specifically not being enclosed?

I'm sitting in enclosed building right now. It's hardly impassable. So saying enclosed buildings are intuitive is bull. Intuitively impassable is something you...well logically enough can't enter.

tneva82 wrote:

Automatically Appended Next Post:

Slipspace wrote:
I also agree with Peregrine about the enclosed ruins situation. I don't see why it's a problem to have an enclosed structure be impassable. I don't think that's counter-intuitive at all. To me the most intuitive approach to a terrain piece like that is either a building or impassable. Making it a ruin is probably the least intuitive approach. In fact, doesn't the rulebook itself define a ruin as specifically not being enclosed?

I'm sitting in enclosed building right now. It's hardly impassable. So saying enclosed buildings are intuitive is bull. Intuitively impassable is something you...well logically enough can't enter.

I'm talking about terrain models on a battlefield, not real-life constructions. I'm not sure why I even have to explain that. An enclosed, box-like terrain piece on a board would most intuitively be either a building or impassable to, at a rough guess, about 90% of the people I regularly play games with. About 90% of those would probably count it as impassable. The ITC's weird hybrid ruin/not-a-ruin is not a solution I've ever seen anyone even think about implementing. It seems to be the solution to a problem that doesn't need to exist in the first place.

Slipspace wrote:

The ITC's weird hybrid ruin/not-a-ruin is not a solution I've ever seen anyone even think about implementing. It seems to be the solution to a problem that doesn't need to exist in the first place.

it exists solely to satisfy the fact that they make and sell MDF terrain the the roof comes off so that models can be placed inside.

All of my boxlike home terrain is impassable even though I have put doors / windows on .. take this for example ... are hollow nested boxes ... ITC rules would allow models be placed inside and thus unable to be shot at ... but would allow LOS ignoring units to shoot out of.


this whole table would be enterable

tneva82 wrote:

 alextroy wrote:
The biggest fallacy I seem to see in this GW versus ITC/Home-Brew mission debate is rather simple. Look at the variety of Match Play Scenerios GW has produced. We now have 18 Eternal War and 18 Maelstrom of War mission. They each set of six is significantly different from the next set of 6. How can anyone honestly believe that GW has balanced the game to work under these effectively 6 different scenario sets while believing the balance suddenly falls apart under ITC, Nova or any any other scenario set?

It's not that some units won't be better under some scenario sets then other. Some units will be better under some scenarios within a certain set than others. Knowing that, trying to grind the home-brew imbalances the game is just patently absurd.

Answer is easy. They aren't. There's scenarios that are big giant middle fingers for certain armies. Other's favour other armies so badly it's not funny. At least ITC doesn't do something silly like "oh your invulnerable saves don't work" things.

You are missing the point. As it has been repeatedly stated, these "scenarios that are giant middle fingers for certain armies" or "favour other armies so badly" are PART OF THE DESIGN SO YOU BRING MORE BALANCED LISTS. This continually gets glossed over or outright ignored. It's part of the intentional balance. Maybe you won't bring a list that relies on invulnerable saves if you get the mission that doesn't allow it. Maybe you'll bring some more units that can FLY in case you get the mission where units with FLY have super objective secured. Maybe you'll bring a mix of characters in case you get the mission that characters are required to score VP.

These are all deliberate to encourage varied lists not just blatant min/maxing and skewy soup lists like you see dominate ITC because they don't do that.

Wayniac wrote:
You are missing the point. As it has been repeatedly stated, these "scenarios that are giant middle fingers for certain armies" or "favour other armies so badly" are PART OF THE DESIGN SO YOU BRING MORE BALANCED LISTS. This continually gets glossed over or outright ignored. It's part of the intentional balance. Maybe you won't bring a list that relies on invulnerable saves if you get the mission that doesn't allow it. Maybe you'll bring some more units that can FLY in case you get the mission where units with FLY have super objective secured. Maybe you'll bring a mix of characters in case you get the mission that characters are required to score VP.

These are all deliberate to encourage varied lists not just blatant min/maxing and skewy soup lists like you see dominate ITC because they don't do that.

+1 to this

@ Reece and Mike: Since this seems to be a perfect place to give such input directly to organizers, I wonder if you have ever consider a different approach to perfectly fair tournament format:

- instead of providing a detailed list of choosable and exploitable missions up front and allow "cracking" them at home in listbuilding stage or letting dice rolls decide which GW missions people play in Tournaments, why not prepare a set of slightly skewed missions (or directly use carefully selected stock GW ones) which each attendee will have to play in sequence (specific missions for specific rounds) and keep them secret up until the very game? That way there is no overall bias (if you design a versatile set of misions), people must be prepared to face everything and anything and build accordingly and the overall winner must play a well rounded army by definition? You could even design a publictly known large set of missions that only a small subset is played on the actual tournament, so "listbuilders" have something to have a go at, but they cannot "solve" a tournament or format before the actual event.

nou wrote:
@ Reece and Mike: Since this seems to be a perfect place to give such input directly to organizers, I wonder if you have ever consider a different approach to perfectly fair tournament format:

- instead of providing a detailed list of choosable and exploitable missions up front and allow "cracking" them at home in listbuilding stage or letting dice rolls decide which GW missions people play in Tournaments, why not prepare a set of slightly skewed missions (or directly use carefully selected stock GW ones) which each attendee will have to play in sequence (specific missions for specific rounds) and keep them secret up until the very game? That way there is no overall bias (if you design a versatile set of misions), people must be prepared to face everything and anything and build accordingly and the overall winner must play a well rounded army by definition? You could even design a publictly known large set of missions that only a small subset is played on the actual tournament, so "listbuilders" have something to have a go at, but they cannot "solve" a tournament or format before the actual event.

I think this is a very very interesting concept, however, I’d change it slightly to allow TOs to have more control and flexibility.

Essentially, my thoughts are each “mission” has a set of 2 or 3 secondaries attached to it, kinda like how Linebreaker, First Strike and Warlord are in the GW missions. However, these 3 secondaries would be pre-selected by the TO and revealed at the beginning of the event (or a couple of days after any list submission deadline). This allows variety between events, as, while 2 events might run mission 2, chances are they’ll pick at least 1 different secondary for that mission.

Some could be thematic, such as having Head Hunter as a fixed secondary for the Crucible of Champions mission, but, others can be any weird and wonderful concoction thought up by the TOs. It might mean a couple of the secondaries might need tweaking in order to fit, but it would mean the player has to set themselves up in a way that’d cover all bases, as opposed to being focused on just 2 or 3.

Regarding enclosed buildings, the only problem I have with them is the indirect fire from within issue. Preventing something like a Mortar from fighting through a solid roof is a simple and easy fix. I just don’t get the argument of “we don’t want to change the rules too much”, despite, changing the rules to incorporate something like enclosed buildings and LoS blocking ground floors. It honestly just doesn’t make sense. The other alternative is to class all enclosed buildings as Unaligned dedicated transports that are not “Open Topped” (minus the 3” “disembark” rule). The unit inside can’t shoot out, but, also, they cannot be targeted by enemy fire. The final adjustment would then come regarding the table setup guidelines, where no enclosed building is within 4” of an objective. (This bit is relatively simple, due to the objectives in most of missions being pre-set.)

Kdash wrote:

nou wrote:
@ Reece and Mike: Since this seems to be a perfect place to give such input directly to organizers, I wonder if you have ever consider a different approach to perfectly fair tournament format:

- instead of providing a detailed list of choosable and exploitable missions up front and allow "cracking" them at home in listbuilding stage or letting dice rolls decide which GW missions people play in Tournaments, why not prepare a set of slightly skewed missions (or directly use carefully selected stock GW ones) which each attendee will have to play in sequence (specific missions for specific rounds) and keep them secret up until the very game? That way there is no overall bias (if you design a versatile set of misions), people must be prepared to face everything and anything and build accordingly and the overall winner must play a well rounded army by definition? You could even design a publictly known large set of missions that only a small subset is played on the actual tournament, so "listbuilders" have something to have a go at, but they cannot "solve" a tournament or format before the actual event.

I think this is a very very interesting concept, however, I’d change it slightly to allow TOs to have more control and flexibility.

Essentially, my thoughts are each “mission” has a set of 2 or 3 secondaries attached to it, kinda like how Linebreaker, First Strike and Warlord are in the GW missions. However, these 3 secondaries would be pre-selected by the TO and revealed at the beginning of the event (or a couple of days after any list submission deadline). This allows variety between events, as, while 2 events might run mission 2, chances are they’ll pick at least 1 different secondary for that mission.

Some could be thematic, such as having Head Hunter as a fixed secondary for the Crucible of Champions mission, but, others can be any weird and wonderful concoction thought up by the TOs. It might mean a couple of the secondaries might need tweaking in order to fit, but it would mean the player has to set themselves up in a way that’d cover all bases, as opposed to being focused on just 2 or 3.

Regarding enclosed buildings, the only problem I have with them is the indirect fire from within issue. Preventing something like a Mortar from fighting through a solid roof is a simple and easy fix. I just don’t get the argument of “we don’t want to change the rules too much”, despite, changing the rules to incorporate something like enclosed buildings and LoS blocking ground floors. It honestly just doesn’t make sense. The other alternative is to class all enclosed buildings as Unaligned dedicated transports that are not “Open Topped” (minus the 3” “disembark” rule). The unit inside can’t shoot out, but, also, they cannot be targeted by enemy fire. The final adjustment would then come regarding the table setup guidelines, where no enclosed building is within 4” of an objective. (This bit is relatively simple, due to the objectives in most of missions being pre-set.)

That is of course a broad concept to be detailed by TOs themselves, but it can be done with either ITC missions+secondaries, ETC and their Maelstrom or stock GW, with "secondaries" being carefully chosen from a deck of GW Maelstrom cards. Anything works really, as the proposed format itself changes the paradigm enough and the rest is simply a choice of tools to use to accomplish that.

I think the key point here is that these secondaries should not be something you can tailor a list for. They should be secret as much as possible precisely so they can't influence listbuilding and thereby lessen the massive influence and focus around listbuilding that we currently see in competitive 40k.

Wayniac wrote:
I think the key point here is that these secondaries should not be something you can tailor a list for. They should be secret as much as possible precisely so they can't influence listbuilding and thereby lessen the massive influence and focus around listbuilding that we currently see in competitive 40k.

Exactly. I can imagine, that the ultimate effect of this (if done right) would be the end of "schisma" even if ITC, ETC and GT would all have different pools of secondaries, as uncertainty and resulting necessary TAC lists would largely unify the global meta, therefore making ITC scores more representative for European and "vanilla" balance, ending this whole "ITC feedback and playtesting involvement skews balance for not-ITC players" conundrum.

And my two cents on the terrain issue: any rule that makes any unit virtually invulnerable is fundamentally bad, no matter the rationale behind it. It is clearly an exploitable rule that favors certain builds and should not be a part of a healthy format. IMHO it casts a massive shadow on seriousness of ITC, and since it is so easily reperable gives birth to completely unnecessary "conspiracy theories" of pushing sales of terrain.

I really like Nou's thinking. This would be a good direction.

The building thing is bizarre. It is something couple of guys playing in their basement with their shoe box houses would come up, and then change it after a few games when it completely predictably causes problems. It is pretty mind-boggling that supposed experts would deliberately make such a ruling.

For peoples referrence since some folks appear to be lost on this update.

https://www.frontlinegaming.org/2018/12/16/lvo-40k-update/

Scroll down to the new enclosed ruins definitions.

It is so unbelievably easy to game, and I suspect many lists this year will use units that can exploit that terrain.

nou wrote:
@ Reece and Mike: Since this seems to be a perfect place to give such input directly to organizers, I wonder if you have ever consider a different approach to perfectly fair tournament format:

- instead of providing a detailed list of choosable and exploitable missions up front and allow "cracking" them at home in listbuilding stage or letting dice rolls decide which GW missions people play in Tournaments, why not prepare a set of slightly skewed missions (or directly use carefully selected stock GW ones) which each attendee will have to play in sequence (specific missions for specific rounds) and keep them secret up until the very game? That way there is no overall bias (if you design a versatile set of misions), people must be prepared to face everything and anything and build accordingly and the overall winner must play a well rounded army by definition? You could even design a publictly known large set of missions that only a small subset is played on the actual tournament, so "listbuilders" have something to have a go at, but they cannot "solve" a tournament or format before the actual event.

People would leak it and certain players would get a huge advantage. Put too much strain on keeping gak secret in what is ultimately a pretty small and intimate community there at the top




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Reanimation_Protocol wrote:

Slipspace wrote:

The ITC's weird hybrid ruin/not-a-ruin is not a solution I've ever seen anyone even think about implementing. It seems to be the solution to a problem that doesn't need to exist in the first place.

it exists solely to satisfy the fact that they make and sell MDF terrain the the roof comes off so that models can be placed inside.

All of my boxlike home terrain is impassable even though I have put doors / windows on .. take this for example ... are hollow nested boxes ... ITC rules would allow models be placed inside and thus unable to be shot at ... but would allow LOS ignoring units to shoot out of.

Spoiler:

this whole table would be enterable

Spoiler:

They’ve sold this terrain for ages man. The reason these rules happened is because some tournament players used loopholes in the wording of previous terrain rules to do gak like park flyers out of line of sight inside buildings and dumb stuff like that. I think Reece over corrected with these rules and I suspect next year we’ll have a more conservative, but also probably more wordy version that prevents an airplane from flying inside a house, but doesn’t also make infantry inside that house immortal terrors to all but those dastardly mortars

 JohnnyHell wrote:
Asking for feedback then rubbishing some of that feedback on the first page is... mmmkay. The first “thanks for the feedback” comment was a great response, the “lol” not so much!

~_~ wow, chill out man.


Your idea of feedback is nothing other than complaints and whining. Hardly constructive.

stratigo wrote:

nou wrote:
@ Reece and Mike: Since this seems to be a perfect place to give such input directly to organizers, I wonder if you have ever consider a different approach to perfectly fair tournament format:

- instead of providing a detailed list of choosable and exploitable missions up front and allow "cracking" them at home in listbuilding stage or letting dice rolls decide which GW missions people play in Tournaments, why not prepare a set of slightly skewed missions (or directly use carefully selected stock GW ones) which each attendee will have to play in sequence (specific missions for specific rounds) and keep them secret up until the very game? That way there is no overall bias (if you design a versatile set of misions), people must be prepared to face everything and anything and build accordingly and the overall winner must play a well rounded army by definition? You could even design a publictly known large set of missions that only a small subset is played on the actual tournament, so "listbuilders" have something to have a go at, but they cannot "solve" a tournament or format before the actual event.

People would leak it and certain players would get a huge advantage. Put too much strain on keeping gak secret in what is ultimately a pretty small and intimate community there at the top

You missed the point of "designing versatile set of challenges that forces players to build TAC lists" so it is impossible to tailor a winning list to an extent that is possible nowadays. But even then, you know you can do this in number of secure/buletproof ways, yes? Few examples:

- if you premade large number of possible scenarios, then make a public (twitch based) lottery, put drawn scenarios into an envelope and put a purity seal on it to be opened at the begining of tournament and burn the rest of lots right after, so no one knows what has been drawn.
- same as above but in web based form, with a time vault service...
- make so that every scenario is prepared by a single person and no one knows all of them, so eventual leak is limited...
- exclude friends and families from participation as with any lottery or competition "in the big world"...

The list can go on, you cannot realy think, that there is no way to do such thing properly. Bridge tournaments are conducted this way for decades...

 Eihnlazer wrote:

 JohnnyHell wrote:
Asking for feedback then rubbishing some of that feedback on the first page is... mmmkay. The first “thanks for the feedback” comment was a great response, the “lol” not so much!

~_~ wow, chill out man.


Your idea of feedback is nothing other than complaints and whining. Hardly constructive.

Hey pot, have been introduced to kettle yet?

This analogy would be correct if it was correct..... cept its not.


I have seen some valid concerns and critisicms on here, but i've also seen quite a few non-constructive complaints. Either way, this is my last post here. Reece and MVBrant dont need me sticking up for them and it seems to have just agitated some of you more.

nou wrote:
And my two cents on the terrain issue: any rule that makes any unit virtually invulnerable is fundamentally bad, no matter the rationale behind it. It is clearly an exploitable rule that favors certain builds and should not be a part of a healthy format. IMHO it casts a massive shadow on seriousness of ITC, and since it is so easily reperable gives birth to completely unnecessary "conspiracy theories" of pushing sales of terrain.

You realize GW has made such rule themselves as well? Blame ITC for doing what GW did first. Yep yep. Have you ever played game where you almost literally are unable to hurt enemy army? One unit per turn is 100% immune and rest...well good luck taking down vehicles with pistols when you are hitting on 6's.

I have. Not fun. And that was because GW's FAQ and GW's rule.

Wayniac wrote:
You are missing the point. As it has been repeatedly stated, these "scenarios that are giant middle fingers for certain armies" or "favour other armies so badly" are PART OF THE DESIGN SO YOU BRING MORE BALANCED LISTS. This continually gets glossed over or outright ignored. It's part of the intentional balance. Maybe you won't bring a list that relies on invulnerable saves if you get the mission that doesn't allow it. Maybe you'll bring some more units that can FLY in case you get the mission where units with FLY have super objective secured. Maybe you'll bring a mix of characters in case you get the mission that characters are required to score VP.

That may be true (I don't think it is, I think it's GW continuing to be in love with stupid scenario rules) but it's a terrible way of handling things. Why do invulnerable saves need to randomly stop working but not other saves? Why should armies that rely on invulnerable saves randomly get screwed over every few games? For example, an IK list gets much weaker without its invulnerable saves but doesn't have any "just take something else" option. The only way to not get randomly screwed over by that mission is to pretend that an entire faction doesn't exist and not play IK. Or consider IG in the "FLY is obsec" mission. What exactly do we have with that keyword? Aircraft, which can't score objectives at all. Nothing else. So planning for that mission comes down to "don't play IG". Etc. It's design and it has no place in competitive events.


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Wayniac wrote:
I think the key point here is that these secondaries should not be something you can tailor a list for. They should be secret as much as possible precisely so they can't influence listbuilding and thereby lessen the massive influence and focus around listbuilding that we currently see in competitive 40k.

Why shouldn't list building be a factor? Why should you randomly have an advantage or disadvantage based on "surprise, your list is very good/very bad for this set of objectives"? A competitive event is one where everyone knows the rules in advance and starts from an equal position.


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tneva82 wrote:
I'm sitting in enclosed building right now. It's hardly impassable. So saying enclosed buildings are intuitive is bull. Intuitively impassable is something you...well logically enough can't enter.

Realistic =/= intuitive. Having buildings you can't enter isn't realistic, but neither is having buildings you can enter that are just hollow boxes without any rooms/obstructions/etc inside. And it's perfectly intuitive from a rules point of view. You say "this is a solid block, models can't move into or through it" and everyone with the mental capacity to play 40k in the first place knows exactly how it works. I mean, it's not like people are struggling to understand the concept of solid blocks when it comes to things like hills carved out of a block of foam that have no hollow space inside.

 Red Corsair wrote:

 Eihnlazer wrote:

 JohnnyHell wrote:
Asking for feedback then rubbishing some of that feedback on the first page is... mmmkay. The first “thanks for the feedback” comment was a great response, the “lol” not so much!

~_~ wow, chill out man.


Your idea of feedback is nothing other than complaints and whining. Hardly constructive.

Hey pot, have been introduced to kettle yet?

Seconded. Fragile reaponse.

This thread actually has been constructive IMO. Reece said himself he hasn't had real talk in some time.

Knuckle up buttercup.

tneva82 wrote:

nou wrote:
And my two cents on the terrain issue: any rule that makes any unit virtually invulnerable is fundamentally bad, no matter the rationale behind it. It is clearly an exploitable rule that favors certain builds and should not be a part of a healthy format. IMHO it casts a massive shadow on seriousness of ITC, and since it is so easily reperable gives birth to completely unnecessary "conspiracy theories" of pushing sales of terrain.

You realize GW has made such rule themselves as well? Blame ITC for doing what GW did first. Yep yep. Have you ever played game where you almost literally are unable to hurt enemy army? One unit per turn is 100% immune and rest...well good luck taking down vehicles with pistols when you are hitting on 6's.

I have. Not fun. And that was because GW's FAQ and GW's rule.

But wasn't the whole point of ITC format not to repeat GWs mistakes and produce the ultimate fair tournament format? Honestly, I'm a bit lost on why exactly people defend terrrain ruling and why to introduce such a ruling in the first place. The most idiotic outcome of this rule comes from the part, where you are not bound to actually place models inside those buildings, you can simply place them on the roof, because... some roofs on LVO have been glued shut and the terrain pieces have floors built in. But what if you want to place some models on the ground level of such terrain and some on the roof at the same time? Do you abandon real models and positions altogether and just place a stack of coins on the roof? Some tables on the LVO will be asymmetrical because of such ruling and some people will be denied options that are possible on other tables. This is terrible rule in the first place and should never be introduced, and rationale behind introducing it because some people have put aircraft inside of buildings is just dumb - declaring them impassable in the first place would solve all the issues at once and not introduce all those conundrums. Especially since only terrain blocks with identifiable doors are treated as such, Necron style terrain pieces are solid blocks (except for some reason containers, which do have doors but are obviously hills...).

I'll throw in my two pence.

As far as the missions go I certainly like the new CA2018 missions, they are good fun and nicely varied but I'm not sure this means they are suitable for a high end tournament that many people pay lots of money to attend.

People here have stated that it's silly to have missions you can prepare your army for and that a greater variety of mission goals will encourage a more take all comers approach to list building.
Whilst this may be partly true I don't think the CA2018 missions are the answer. Having missions that skew so hard against or for certain armies are not suitable for a competitive event. I know its been brought up alot but the mission the removes invulnerable saves is not winable by a Pure daemons or Harlequins army - period.
This mission is the worst offender but some of the others also skew quite hard as well, I don't think this is GW intentionally creating imbalance for tournament gamers, I think it is them creating interesting and varied missions.
For large, expensive to attend tournaments, designed to be highly competitive a more stable and balance set of missions is needed.

I don't think the ITC missions are ideal either. I find them just a little to similar with the same main primary goal (kill and hold) in each mission. I think that it and lots of the secondaries are too heavily weighted on killing considering how little kill points is used in any of the GW mission and also given that killing the enemy has other advantages already built in, such as there being less enemies.

Changing up the primary so that some of the missions don't award the points for killing but do award points for holding additional objectives would be a nice change. Adding a little more variety would help with the secondaries as well, perhaps have certain ones fixed for certain missions or not allowed in others. Give players a framework but allow more variety within in.

I prefer the new (old) deployment from CA2018 as it saves time and puts less weight on winning the roll to go first.

No auto victory for tabling is always welcome in an objective based mission but I believe ITC missions had this covered anyway.

First blood changed for first strike - again, more or less already covered in ITC.


Other things to note are the terrain rules - firstly I know that the base terrain rules are a mess and just don't cover anything in enough detail, my main wish would be for GW to rework them all into a more usable form taking gameplay situation into account more, as often terrain played pure RAW just leads to non-interactive gameplay and feel bad situations.

That said I don't think some of the changes and rules in the ITC terrain pack help the situation, the enclosed ruins are where the most problems exist and I know this is often due to the fact that the ITC have alot of physical terrain that is hard to treat any other way.
Calling it all impassable is one answer but a little unrealistic - they look like you could get in them and also being impassable would remove alot of table space from being used.
Having units (infantry) being able to hide in them and be immune to enemy fire whilst being able to return fire (LOS ignoring weapons) or other special rules (move after shooting, etc..) is a real feel bad experience.

If my enemy deploys inside a bunker I can't shot him but I can shot the (hard to kill) bunker to get him out of it but having enclosed ruins be invincible just makes them not work.

I don't have the perfect answer for using these terrain pieces especially without rewriting large swaths of the rulebook but I think treating them as building and giving them a profile that can be attacked would be a better approach.
Either that or allow some LOS through bottom levels of the ruins and say that certain parts of models that may look blocked can actually be fired through. LOS blocking terrain is certainly needed in games but when it becomes all encompassing it takes away alot of play options.

I do like the changes to charging up ruins but feel if you are changing the rules you could just revert them back to the old rule of being counted as being within 1" of models directly above or below you in a ruin.

Thanks for asking for the feedback, I appreciate how hard a task it must be trying to please an player base with such varied opinions.

To respond to Reece's request for feedback:

I second the suggestions made by Red Corsair regarding terrain rules. It's really frustrating taking what was a beer and pretzels game with TLOS and adding extra terrain rules like "can't see through first floor windows," "infantry can dive into enclosed structures," etc. 8th edition was supposed to be about simplification, and the increasing complexity of terrain rules - particularly tournament-specific and format-specific terrain rules - is making it more and more difficult to enjoy playing the game.

I would like to see terrain rules simply be those of the BRB as expanded by Chapter Approved.

Also, I would very much like to see a return to 1750 as the standard tournament point level. I played 1750 back in 5th, when you could play a game of 40k in 2 hours. 3 hours for a single game of 40k is simply too much to make tournaments manageable.