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Martel732 wrote:

 Mr Morden wrote:
The new CA2019 Missions are really good.

Not really.

How would you know? They won't be released until towards the end of the year - Mr Morden is obviously helping playtest them.

edited by ingtaer.

The downside with guard is that all the top lists will give away secondaries like no tomorrow. Its easy enough to get 12 points in secondaries. And some of the ITC missions require the guard to move out most of the time, I dont think castling is an option unless its the ones with only three objectives. It feels like to me that ITC doesnt favour guard soup in any way.

If a list cant clear out 60-80 guardsmen, its more likely a list build issue.

Imperial Soup is just as like to draw a mirror match but a player like Brandon would be able to overcome that easily with his skill.

If you want to hear some interesting information on the relative strength of IG and the Castellan, check out the Chapter Tactics Podcast #97. The keep of the stats at 40KStats.com actually went through the list for the major tournaments and figured out that IG + Castellanhad a rediculous win ratio (70-80%) while IG without a Castellan was sub 50% once you took out mirror matches from the statistics (because a mirro match yields a 50% win ratio). Imperial Knights with Castellans didn't have a stellar win rate either.

So the morale of the story is that IG + Castellan have strong synergy that neither list can acheive without the other.

 alextroy wrote:
If you want to hear some interesting information on the relative strength of IG and the Castellan, check out the Chapter Tactics Podcast #97. The keep of the stats at 40KStats.com actually went through the list for the major tournaments and figured out that IG + Castellanhad a rediculous win ratio (70-80%) while IG without a Castellan was sub 50% once you took out mirror matches from the statistics (because a mirro match yields a 50% win ratio). Imperial Knights with Castellans didn't have a stellar win rate either.

So the morale of the story is that IG + Castellan have strong synergy that neither list can acheive without the other.

Interesting. I'm not quite sure LVO agrees with that analysis. These are lists I looked through from top 100 or so for AM/IK

Grant - 100%
Snider - 87%
Horras - 100% (no Castellan)
Geiger - 83% (no Castellan)
Darre - 83%
Fain - 83% (Castellan & Loyal 32)
Weiss - 83% (Knights, but no Castellan)
Wright - 83% (Knights, but no Castellan)
Beardsly - 83% (Knights, but no Castellan)
Stump - 83%
Harris - 83%
Fennel - 83% (Knights, but no Castellan)
Estrada - 83% (Knights, but no Castellan)
Pockat - 83% (Knights, but no Castellan)
Pockat - 66% (Knights, but no Castellan)
Richer - 66%
Sacco - 66%
Jones - 66% (Knights, but no Castellan)
Ing - 66% (Knights, but no Castellan)
Weiss - 66% (Knights, but no Castellan)
Jeff J - 50%
Corless - 66%
Blakeborough - 66% (no Castellan)
Baker - 66%
Christensson - 66% (Knight, but no Castellan)

 Daedalus81 wrote:

 Sherrypie wrote:
Daedalus81, on what world does that count as "lots of terrain"? Some blocking walls and crates does not equate to a meaningful amount except in the most minimal sense.

The amount should be at least doubled and have a healthy dose of scatter terrain on top of that. Then add Cities of Death on top and the game gets good.

I suppose you need to see it in person to get a feel for it, but there is enough to block LOS to a Castellan at times, so it's not just a bunch of crates. Keep in mind the area occupied by 3 large ruins.

I'm not sure how you could double that and have a functional (let alone afforable) table.

Nope, those pictures of yours tell enough about the lay of the land to say it's not enough. I get that large tournaments have to supply a lot of tables, but given how cheap it is to make good terrain from insulation foam, filler and bits, it really isn't an excuse if one wants to say terrain should matter with a straight face.

Those tables are nearly empty and mostly provide direct LoS blocking from some points of the table to others, instead of offering a mixture of big blocks, dense areas, open kill zones, scattered cover to dash into, proper roads or what not.

Doubling that MAKES the table functional and necessitates thinking about movement, if tanks actually cannot go through all alleys and not all movement can happen horizontally at full efficiency.

 Dysartes wrote:

Martel732 wrote:

 Mr Morden wrote:
The new CA2019 Missions are really good.

Not really.

How would you know? They won't be released until towards the end of the year - Mr Morden is obviously helping playtest them.

edited by ingtaer.

No Iw as being stupid - I blame my cold - I meant 2018.

Is that all the results for those codexes at LVO? It is an overall analysis, not a prediction of how any specific player will do.

Nope, those pictures of yours tell enough about the lay of the land to say it's not enough. I get that large tournaments have to supply a lot of tables, but given how cheap it is to make good terrain from insulation foam, filler and bits, it really isn't an excuse if one wants to say terrain should matter with a straight face.

Cheap? insulation foam is only sold in palets and it costs over 10$ for one pack.

Karol wrote:

Nope, those pictures of yours tell enough about the lay of the land to say it's not enough. I get that large tournaments have to supply a lot of tables, but given how cheap it is to make good terrain from insulation foam, filler and bits, it really isn't an excuse if one wants to say terrain should matter with a straight face.

Cheap? insulation foam is only sold in palets and it costs over 10$ for one pack.

Something like 8 euros for two square meters from hardware stores where I live, or free if you just pick it up from some renovation project leftovers / ask a friend / whutever. Cereal boxes, bean can, empty bottles. Things. Creating terrain from literal trash takes nothing but time and some investments in lots of glue, sand and paints compared to plastic or resin sets. It also doesn't mystically disappear between years, so a large organization should be able to provide lots of terrain for their flag ship event, no excuses.

Except not wanting to, which is fine as a decision, but makes for lower quality games in my opinion.

 Sherrypie wrote:

Karol wrote:

Nope, those pictures of yours tell enough about the lay of the land to say it's not enough. I get that large tournaments have to supply a lot of tables, but given how cheap it is to make good terrain from insulation foam, filler and bits, it really isn't an excuse if one wants to say terrain should matter with a straight face.

Cheap? insulation foam is only sold in palets and it costs over 10$ for one pack.

Something like 8 euros for two square meters from hardware stores where I live, or free if you just pick it up from some renovation project leftovers / ask a friend / whutever. Cereal boxes, bean can, empty bottles. Things. Creating terrain from literal trash takes nothing but time and some investments in lots of glue, sand and paints compared to plastic or resin sets. It also doesn't mystically disappear between years, so a large organization should be able to provide lots of terrain for their flag ship event, no excuses.

Except not wanting to, which is fine as a decision, but makes for lower quality games in my opinion.

You realise that they replaced every terrain piece for this year's event.

You can argue if that was a good or bad idea, but it's still means building 300 plus tables of terrain for the 40k champs alone plus the narrative even of 100+ tables and kill team at x tables. If someone knows the actual numbers feel free to correct this.
Not to mention the stream table's having to be GW only terrain and model's.

Terrain doesnt fix miscosted units.

"Terrain doesnt fix miscosted units."
How overcosted are misssile-Reapers when the largest firing lane on the board is 12"?

That's an extreme example, but would you not say that they were fixed in that example?

Fixing cost is "better", but most people prefer to play with more terrain. And unit value certainly does change based on terrain used.

 alextroy wrote:

Is that all the results for those codexes at LVO? It is an overall analysis, not a prediction of how any specific player will do.

Just a section. All of them would take too long at the moment. There's enough Castellan lists in there that make me question things a bit, but we'd have to analyze those lists more deeply than I was able to.

Chapter Tactics 97 isn't about the LVO. It is a look at cumulative tournament data for the 2nd six months of 2018 from the data available to 40kstats.com. It was released on January 7th, a full month before LVO happened.

Still interesting data though

Ice_can wrote:

You realise that they replaced every terrain piece for this year's event.

You can argue if that was a good or bad idea, but it's still means building 300 plus tables of terrain for the 40k champs alone plus the narrative even of 100+ tables and kill team at x tables. If someone knows the actual numbers feel free to correct this.
Not to mention the stream table's having to be GW only terrain and model's.

I did not know they did so, but that doesn't really mean much. The onus is still on the organizer to get that job done properly beforehand, maybe they'll have more ready for next year. I doubt it, because they've chosen a level they are comfortable with and it does not suit my tastes, but hey ho. At that volume supplying a few tables with only GW stuff is a drop in the bucket.

I agree with Bharring, self-evidently terrain changes units' value and goes to some lenghts in fixing the game. Transports might survive the first turn, some units might not even get to shoot, choke points are a thing tactically and so forth. A very different game from the current slaughterfest.

 Sherrypie wrote:

Ice_can wrote:

You realise that they replaced every terrain piece for this year's event.

You can argue if that was a good or bad idea, but it's still means building 300 plus tables of terrain for the 40k champs alone plus the narrative even of 100+ tables and kill team at x tables. If someone knows the actual numbers feel free to correct this.
Not to mention the stream table's having to be GW only terrain and model's.

I did not know they did so, but that doesn't really mean much. The onus is still on the organizer to get that job done properly beforehand, maybe they'll have more ready for next year. I doubt it, because they've chosen a level they are comfortable with and it does not suit my tastes, but hey ho. At that volume supplying a few tables with only GW stuff is a drop in the bucket.

I agree with Bharring, self-evidently terrain changes units' value and goes to some lenghts in fixing the game. Transports might survive the first turn, some units might not even get to shoot, choke points are a thing tactically and so forth. A very different game from the current slaughterfest.

I have also found that playing with the cityfight rules from the latest CA makes for a MUCH, MUCH more enjoyable game, deadliness-wise.

Units that are a bad target for your shooting units actually feel like bad targets and there is much more of an onus on positioning on gunlines, just like there is on melee armies.

It no longer feels like one player has to be constantly calculating their charge odds, perfectly measuring their moves and advances, perfectly spacing their units for maximum models getting to attack in melee, and the other player has to go "ME SHOOT DAT THING, CAN SEE MICROSCOPIC PIECE OF ANTENNA SHOOTING IS FULL EFFECTIVENESS YAY."

the_scotsman wrote:
"ME SHOOT DAT THING, CAN SEE MICROSCOPIC PIECE OF ANTENNA SHOOTING IS FULL EFFECTIVENESS YAY."

I can never bring myself to take that sort of advantage. I guess i'm too much of a bleeding heart.

 Daedalus81 wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:
"ME SHOOT DAT THING, CAN SEE MICROSCOPIC PIECE OF ANTENNA SHOOTING IS FULL EFFECTIVENESS YAY."

I can never bring myself to take that sort of advantage. I guess i'm too much of a bleeding heart.

Yah, me neither. Antennas, gun barrels, tail tips and whatnot don't really count in our group

Bharring wrote:
"Terrain doesnt fix miscosted units."
How overcosted are misssile-Reapers when the largest firing lane on the board is 12"?

That's an extreme example, but would you not say that they were fixed in that example?

Fixing cost is "better", but most people prefer to play with more terrain. And unit value certainly does change based on terrain used.

I find that heavy terrain just makes IG and Drukhari win harder. I guess it does shift the winners around, but the losers are still losers.

Martel732 wrote:

Bharring wrote:
"Terrain doesnt fix miscosted units."
How overcosted are misssile-Reapers when the largest firing lane on the board is 12"?

That's an extreme example, but would you not say that they were fixed in that example?

Fixing cost is "better", but most people prefer to play with more terrain. And unit value certainly does change based on terrain used.

I find that heavy terrain just makes IG and Drukhari win harder. I guess it does shift the winners around, but the losers are still losers.

I really can't figure how you think heavy terrain makes Drukhari win harder, given that they don't tend to benefit from cover on their vehicles (goes from -1AP to -2AP required to get them to their invulns, and most antitank weapons tend to have -2AP) and their basic poison weapons really dislike when their targets are getting save bonuses because they don't have ap.

Unless you're assuming that the Drukhari that do crazy well on planet bowling ball (skimmer spam) magically morph into the drukhari that like heavy terrain (haemie covens).

IG definitely are the gunline that craps all over the "you're just not using enough terrain lolz" argument. More terrain makes them infinitely stronger because it just increases the odds that you won't be able to hit them and they will be able to hit you with all their LOS ignoring nonsense.

Which is another reason I adore the new beta terrain rules. Having -1 to hit absolutely everything is an actual drawback to using massed arty and plopping it behind a building.

Drukhari are fast and typically suffer no movement penalties. This means they can clear LoS blockers and alpha strike slower armies that take penalties when they move like marines.

Most drukhari I face use the ignore cover coven as we have phased in more and more terrain. It's not helping as Dakka predicted. No, they are still using skimmers. Ignore cover splinter is really good.

the_scotsman wrote:


IG definitely are the gunline that craps all over the "you're just not using enough terrain lolz" argument. More terrain makes them infinitely stronger because it just increases the odds that you won't be able to hit them and they will be able to hit you with all their LOS ignoring nonsense.

This is assuming the bulk of IG firepower is invested in artillery units, which generally is not the case. If the IG player isnt running an artillery parking lot, they're gonna have to deal with it like everyone else, and artillery parking lot lists have weaknesses of their own. The undercosted Tank Commanders certainly care about LoS.

 Vaktathi wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:


IG definitely are the gunline that craps all over the "you're just not using enough terrain lolz" argument. More terrain makes them infinitely stronger because it just increases the odds that you won't be able to hit them and they will be able to hit you with all their LOS ignoring nonsense.

This is assuming the bulk of IG firepower is invested in artillery units, which generally is not the case. If the IG player isnt running an artillery parking lot, they're gonna have to deal with it like everyone else, and artillery parking lot lists have weaknesses of their own. The undercosted Tank Commanders certainly care about LoS.

Ah yes because Guard artillery is so bad right now right?

Vakthathi, you say that like IG isn't cheap enough to spam artillery, hellhounds and infantry meele hordes all of them in the same army.

When all your gak is basically free, your army can do everything at once.

Its interesting that people have brought up the LVO terrain. Most podcasts I listened to throughout the year talked about how much terrain is at the LVO but I have to agree with many posters that the terrain seemed very light. I had predicted to my buddies that we wouldn't be seeing a tau in the top 10 due to how dense the terrain would be. But after seeing pics of the set up I changed my mind. While I still think balance adjustments need to be made I do think that some of the issues with the castalin were even more dramatic due to the light terrain. Take this castalin and mix it with IG good indirect fire and its easy to see how the LVO terrain did play into that list. (once again this post isn't talking about relative strength of any units simply the terrain at the event)

ITC players are probably used to light terrain so the stuff at LVO seems good

That's kinda what I was thinking. The LVO tables in my opinion represent the bare minimum of terrain a table should have.

 Galas wrote:
Vakthathi, you say that like IG isn't cheap enough to spam artillery, hellhounds and infantry meele hordes all of them in the same army.

You can get all of those into one army sure, but most arent loaded to the gills with artillery. Looking at most such "grab bag" lists, what do we generally see? 2-3 arty tanks and some Mortars. Adding gobs more LoS blocking terrain isn't going to make them suddenly better, they can still only engage so many targets and can probably hidden/screened as well as is possible currently. Unless they shift lists to add significantly more artillery at the expense of that other stuff (which, yes, is possible), adding more terrain isn't going to make such lists any more powerful.

More LoS blocking terrain will definitely impact other strong IG units like Tank Commanders and Shadowswords and common allied units like Castellans, so should help reduce damage from those quarters.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:


IG definitely are the gunline that craps all over the "you're just not using enough terrain lolz" argument. More terrain makes them infinitely stronger because it just increases the odds that you won't be able to hit them and they will be able to hit you with all their LOS ignoring nonsense.

This is assuming the bulk of IG firepower is invested in artillery units, which generally is not the case. If the IG player isnt running an artillery parking lot, they're gonna have to deal with it like everyone else, and artillery parking lot lists have weaknesses of their own. The undercosted Tank Commanders certainly care about LoS.

Ah yes because Guard artillery is so bad right now right?

I'm wondering how my statement that "lots of LoS blocking terrain only helps IG if we're assuming specialized artillery spam builds" becomes interpreted as "Guard artillery is bad".

My point was that most guard lists arent loaded to the gills with LoS ignoring weapons, and that as such lots of LoS blocking terrain will have a notable impact on how they play. If they have a some Mortar units and a couple Basilisks, adding more LoS blocking terrain than is already there isn't going to help out the Guard, it's only if the bulk of the killing power is tied up in such artillery, which it usually is not.

https://player.fm/series/best-in-faction/winning-the-lvo-and-the-itc-with-brandon-grant

Good insight what it took to win LVO. Not a straight walkover as some people seem to suggest.