Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

I just read the battlereport in the latest white dwarf. Competetive eldar soup vs competetive knight soup.

I must say I quite enjoyed it. Well written, and exiting drama om the table. I hope not all are competetive, but this one was nice.

Let me know if they start using legal armies.

One of the things that used to frustrate me was with battle reports about armies that you can't actually play against rules-lawyer friends.

 techsoldaten wrote:
Let me know if they start using legal armies.

One of the things that used to frustrate me was with battle reports about armies that you can't actually play against rules-lawyer friends.

I haven't read the battle report, what exactly was illegal in the armies?

These armies are quite legit. I wonder if the one vypoer squardon consistet of 2 vypers, because there where 4 vypers, and I think they adhere to the rule of 3?

Techsoldaten is just complaining like when they do not read the rules good enough.

Rule of Three is not a matched play rule, it's a suggestion for Organised Events.

Terrible "armies". Terrible batrep.

Just encourages more of this soup crap that is incoherent messes of minis and memefied SM captains. This is not the 40k I signed up for and is just awful GW even enables this.

while you might not like suoup I congratulate them on having a competetive army. I really enjoyed the titans duking it out. Obviusly I hope they have some cassual narative armies in the other end of the power scale next time.

But power games excist, your suggestion that they should be exluded from journalistic coveradge is so wrong on all levels.

 Grimtuff wrote:
Terrible "armies". Terrible batrep.

Just encourages more of this soup crap that is incoherent messes of minis and memefied SM captains. This is not the 40k I signed up for and is just awful GW even enables this.

I am afraid soup is the meta these days and has been since Ad Mech and Fleshtearers taxi service, if not before.

 Niiai wrote:

But power games excist, your suggestion that they should be exluded from journalistic coveradge is so wrong on all levels.

1: You can make decent armies without these godawful examples of random gak thrown together and Mephiston and his two drinking buddies.
2: A batrep is hardly "journalistic coverage".
3: 40k was never like this before. This is a new phenomenon. One of 40k's biggest strengths is the visuals. Throwing a mishmash of random minis on the table that the LoL/Fortnite types have deemed to be the most efficient choices and nothing else! is not healthy for the game. 40k is not designed to be played that way, GW knows that, they're the bloody creators yet here they are showing this off in their flagship magazine as an acceptable way to play their game.

Can someone give me a quick summary of what each army took, I didn't pick up this white dwarf.

 Grimtuff wrote:

 Niiai wrote:

But power games excist, your suggestion that they should be exluded from journalistic coveradge is so wrong on all levels.

1: You can make decent armies without these godawful examples of random gak thrown together and Mephiston and his two drinking buddies.
2: A batrep is hardly "journalistic coverage".
3: 40k was never like this before. This is a new phenomenon. One of 40k's biggest strengths is the visuals. Throwing a mishmash of random minis on the table that the LoL/Fortnite types have deemed to be the most efficient choices and nothing else! is not healthy for the game. 40k is not designed to be played that way, GW knows that, they're the bloody creators yet here they are showing this off in their flagship magazine as an acceptable way to play their game.

Allies existed in some form for every edition outside 5th. Get off your high horse.

 Grimtuff wrote:
40k was never like this before. This is a new phenomenon. One of 40k's biggest strengths is the visuals. Throwing a mishmash of random minis on the table that the LoL/Fortnite types have deemed to be the most efficient choices and nothing else! is not healthy for the game.

Soup doesn't mean you can't have good visuals. Random minis can occur even within the same codex, let alone the same faction. (I mean, take a single Scout Squad turning up in a Battle Company - that scout squad is just as random as a unit of Grey Knights or a Knight showing up).

40k is not designed to be played that way, GW knows that, they're the bloody creators yet here they are showing this off in their flagship magazine as an acceptable way to play their game.

Maybe because that's how they want to play it. Who are you to say they can't?

Didn't we establish the last time that this battle report was specifically them bringing two tournament players to the Studio to play a competitive game? There's nothing inherently wrong with that.

HoundsofDemos wrote:
Can someone give me a quick summary of what each army took, I didn't pick up this white dwarf.

It was cheeeeese all the way!

Imperial suoup:

IG: the usualm 32. (3 10 man squads for capturing objects. 2 leaders who both generate CP.) For a whole but of CP.

Blood angels:

Mephiston, 2 smash captains. For high prioraty targets.

Knights: 3 giant knights.

Pretty much the regular imperial soup list.

Eldar soup:
2x archon
3 x 5 man kabalites
2 venoms
2 planes

1 farseer
4 vypers
15 dark reapers
1 plane

1 shadowseer
58 skyweavers

It was awsome with soup every where. All the flyers on the table really liked great. Some greta moments where smash captains jump up and knock them down.

It's refreshing that they're finally acknowledging that this is how most people play. Hopefully they'll write tighter rules in the future to reflect that fact. If you don't like it it doesn't effect your moms basementhammer games anyway.

I wouldn't enjoy either playing or playing against either list, but I guess it's ok if they feature a competative game but I've always enjoyed that White Dwarf battles played a little lose with the rules to tell a compelling story and essentially play out a novel.

That Imperium list in particular lacks any kind of cohesion or theme other than take the best bits of three codexes and smash them together. I really wish GW would have pulled super heavies out of normal 40k and gone back to the normal force org chart that actually required you to take troops to use a given factions.

To play Devils Advocate a moment (since I too dislike Titanics in normal 40k) you can always choose to not play with them.

I know most tournaments won't be available but pick up games you could just decide to say "No units with the TITANIC keyword" as a limitation.

 BaconCatBug wrote:
To play Devils Advocate a moment (since I too dislike Titanics in normal 40k) you can always choose to not play with them.

I know most tournaments won't be available but pick up games you could just decide to say "No units with the TITANIC keyword" as a limitation.

Outside of tournaments, my area doesn't have many people who would take that kind of list. I am also really lucky to have an amazing gaming group that likes to play the game the same as I do. I just feel that the game would be better if troops were core of the game for most armies to function and win games and not just a battery to power knights and the like.

Ideally I would really like CP to be pegged to points and not army composition. That would put an end to the nonsense of things like the loyal 32 being a massive buff to an army while in game not actually doing anything but taking up space.

Troops ars the core of the game though. Both sides use small units of troops to take objectives. The flyers and knights are not used for that. There where some back and both with stratagems. I think 10 CP was burned in the first turn (after deployment shenanigans) in order to take this cat and mouse rock paper scissor with stratagems.

oh no, people enjoy playing the game in a different manner to myself! better bitch and moan about the fact that GW didn't cater literally everything in every single issue of their magazine to my specific niche of the demographic!


Automatically Appended Next Post:
this is the game GW has created. If you want into change, fight the absurdly stupid soup rules, trying to pretend it's not a thing by raging at them for putting their game in the magazine and trying to sweep it under the rug just makes it less likely for it to be acknowledged as a problem.

People playing the ruleset competitively isn't the problem, that's the best thing a game can have. A ruleset that allows exactly this to happen is what the issue is.

 Grimtuff wrote:

 Niiai wrote:

But power games excist, your suggestion that they should be exluded from journalistic coveradge is so wrong on all levels.

1: You can make decent armies without these godawful examples of random gak thrown together and Mephiston and his two drinking buddies.
2: A batrep is hardly "journalistic coverage".
3: 40k was never like this before. This is a new phenomenon. One of 40k's biggest strengths is the visuals. Throwing a mishmash of random minis on the table that the LoL/Fortnite types have deemed to be the most efficient choices and nothing else! is not healthy for the game. 40k is not designed to be played that way, GW knows that, they're the bloody creators yet here they are showing this off in their flagship magazine as an acceptable way to play their game.

1) GW shows what sells
3) minmaxing and weirdo armies against fluff are hardly new fashion. Enter tournament, see those. Only thing changes is what's most broken combo. And unsurprisingly GW does rules that encourage more sales. ££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££

I think I have a White Dwarf from around 1995 that has Eldar and Imperial guard allied up to fight Tyranids. It's one of the best battle reports I've ever read. Allies were always seen as part of the game. In fact 2nd Edition, allowed 25% allies in your army with no keyword restrictions. Tourneys often disallowed the use of allies, though.

HoundsofDemos wrote:


Outside of tournaments, my area doesn't have many people who would take that kind of list. I am also really lucky to have an amazing gaming group that likes to play the game the same as I do. I just feel that the game would be better if troops were core of the game for most armies to function and win games and not just a battery to power knights and the like.

I think that depends on the country and the avarge income vs basic list cost. To me both lists seem to be optimised for tournaments, but the difference between a casual list and a normal list I see every day seems not that great. the eldar player who isn't in to tournaments would use fewer jetbikes and more serpents or use eldar flyers.
The only knight player uses only 2 captins and halverins. IG soup guys use castellans, captins or custodes, same 32 IG, non of those people play big tournaments, some even don't play in local or store events. The IG+castellan+cpt or custodes is more or less the army you expect to see if someone says he plays empire. Same with orcs, or DE the tournament and non tournament lists are almost the same. The difference being how good or if the models are painted, and if the most cash intensive stuff is used.

I think I have a White Dwarf from around 1995 that has Eldar and Imperial guard allied up to fight Tyranids. It's one of the best battle reports I've ever read. Allies were always seen as part of the game. In fact 2nd Edition, allowed 25% allies in your army with no keyword restrictions. Tourneys often disallowed the use of allies, though.

Well I can't talk about the past, but the problem in 8th seems to be that ally are a problem, not because they exist, but because they invalidate mono armies and because problematic models get spread around much more. If a castellan was knight only, a ton of units and armies would be played more, because the chance of getting your butt kicked by one would be much smaller then it being in a lot of imperial armies.
The fact that a ton of faction can't work without ally, or are questionable as a choice mono or not only adds to the problem. If someone has the option to soup, and wants to take some SB marines, and DW vets and GK strikes cost the same, why would GK ever be taken? They are worse in all ways save for the baby smite, and that isn't even that good to begin with. Add the fact that GK as a mono list don't exist, and GK players have a problem, because they army doesn't work as mono and they are indentical better units for the same or less points in other armies. In such a situation the fact that soup exists kills them off as a valid faction to play with.

The less thing is probablly less important. Those factions that do soup up, because they don't have the ability to build an army that works alone, can be hurt by FAQ or errata much easily then other armies. If someone plays the knight IG smash captin army, and the smash captin gets nerfed it is not like you can replace him with another BA unit in the list you have, and if you happen to want to play BAs your in a problematic spot, because the only way to fix your now worse army is to not play the army you want to play.

I cant believe that some people still dont have realised that soup is intended, wanted and supported by GW.

The problem with soup is how it's used, not that it exists. Being able to take something like 2 HQs from Army A and power them up with CP generated by Army B is a huge chunk of the problem (not the entire problem, but the one that's most likely to get addressed at some point). Fix that, and you fix a huge issue with the current way soup armies are made. You should be mixing armies for a particular theme or concept, not to min/max on Command Points (which as an aside I think Command Points were one of the most interesting things 8th edition brought, and also one of the things GW immediately screwed up to an enormous degree)

However, I agree that the issue with it is that it almost completely invalidated mono-faction armies in any faction that can soup, which means a lot of ideas get left on the chopping block because doing it just subjectively worse (such as trying to do a complete army of a particular Chapter) than mixing and matching. And then you have armies that can't soup at an extreme disadvantage.

More importantly, though the issue with soup is that it's just bad game design. Factions have drawbacks for a reason; being able to just ignore those drawbacks by pulling in elements from a different faction in order to negate them is terrible design because it means factions that are able to do that have no real weaknesses since you just shore them up by taking something that they aren't designed around having.

Bring on Kill Team or AoS CP system and a lot of the soups will disappear completely. Not all, but quite a few of them, especially the CP batteries.

Wayniac wrote:
Didn't we establish the last time that this battle report was specifically them bringing two tournament players to the Studio to play a competitive game? There's nothing inherently wrong with that.

Yes they specifically said that unlike their usual reports they asked two competative players to build lists and go all out.

In that context there is nothing to complain about.

 Eldarsif wrote:
Bring on Kill Team or AoS CP system and a lot of the soups will disappear completely. Not all, but quite a few of them, especially the CP batteries.

Yeah, that's pretty much what I think the solution needs to be. Either use the rules from KT for them, or have them be a flat amount of CP based on the game's point limit for Matched Play. Something, anything to curb taking the "Loyal 32" in every Imperium list for a cheap 5 CP that end up being used on anything other than what generated them.

'The Problem' (as if we can narrow it down to a single 'mole' to 'whack!') is not that soup exists or if it is intended or otherwise ..

is that "Your guys get access to it and Mine don't!"

the end.

there is an imbalance that cannot be gotten around where one <Faction> is given cheap access to ALL the tools (super Heavy, Tough, high damage, mobile, and more CP)

and another <Faction> cannot get access to either (no spammable CP and no easy access to the FW of the past equivalents).

and rather than looking at the mono factions and bringing them UP to the party ... everyone seems happy to start waving the nerf hammer around ...

Unless of course they get access to all that stuff.

TL;DR - I like soup ... when Everyone gets soup.

TL;DR - I like soup ... when Everyone gets soup.

Which is why I kinda miss the old ally system in 7th. It allowed Necrons and Blood Angels to fight together as intended even though there were some limitations to it.