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RedNoak wrote:

And in the 3rd millenium there is only trolling.

as the other pointed out orks are getting srewed left and right.

we had four staples of competitive play
SSAG
gretchin
orkboyz
Flashgitz

all of em got nerfed into oblivion. be it by the general rules, point increases or in case of the SSAG all that was mentioned plus it got canned on top xD
Not to mention, orks had at least 18 CP's per game to spend, more than most armies could manage... now thats gone too.

the only things that remain really good are buggies, mekgunz and the burnabomber

MANZ are fantastic. You also think Bonebreaks aren't going to thrive in a game where getting to the mid-board with something durable is key? Koptas only went up 6 - still perfect for running onto objectives. A lot of Ork units went up very little. TBs didn't change at all, but you can shoot Rokkit Pistols from a transport into combat.

You have 17 CP now (12+5). If you want to burn 3 and take no troops and do heavy buggies or MANZ? Go for it. You don't have to spend 2 to 6 CP (CP reroll strength, grot shields, more dakka, wreckers) each round for the SSAG anymore.


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tneva82 wrote:

 Aaranis wrote:
But every army is going to give secondary VPs, they're varied enough that there's an objective fit to use against your opponent every time. I don't see why Abhor the Witch is any easier to do than Assassinate, Thin their ranks or Bring it down. We still have to kill those Psykers, often being Characters and so harder to target in the first place. I mean I play AdMech, I expect my opponents to take Thin their ranks and Bring it down every game because I play lots of Skitarii and Vehicles. And I'll do the same if my opponent has the same kind of list. Of course I'll take Titan Hunter against Knights etc. Every army has to bring units to the table as far as I'm aware and these units can be destroyed during the game.

Each objective is limited to 15 pts too so yeah if you managed to destroy 5 of my 11+W vehicles you deserve points that's normal.

Tsons/gk every unit is psyker. Killing any unit gives vp.

This is only correct if you use only specific units.

The only psykers are characters, rubrics, scarabs, and shaman.


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Spoletta wrote:
Hmm, no? They look like quite different from each other.

I think he means left/right deployments.

The No Man's Land distance is what matters. All of them are 24" except 3 -- 28 on #23, 9 on #32, and 30 on #33.

The old Hammer and Anvil No Man's Land was 24". Hammer and Anvil was great for shooty armies getting a deep deployment, but it isn't so much of an advantage now.

The game is so different from the way it was played, that we can't really say much at this point.

Even "Playtesters said this" "Playtesters said that" that gets flung around, is crap. Playtesters won't know much about the game except what the general flow of it is going to be.

To assess a faction, you need to have quite a few games with it against many different lists. I would be seriously surprised if most of those playtesters had more than a couple dozen games of 9th, which isn't really telling you ANYTHING about the state of the factions. There were probably one or two in house play testing groups which had hundreds of games and which dictated most of the changes. They are the only ones that can share their wisdom about the single factions, everyone else was just kept in the loop. They weren't given a full time job to test it, they were just asked for feedback on a few matters, especially during a time where gaming was forbidden by law in most of GW's world.

Whatever playtesters tell you now, will be insignificant compared to what the community will learn in the first month of 9th after we are finally allowed to play.

 casvalremdeikun wrote:
So am I understanding this correctly, that the Rule of 2/3 is not a general matched play rule, but a rule unique to tournament play?

That’s always been this way.
Indeed, it moved from a “recommendation” for events in 8th to now being an actual rule for events in 9th, making it a bit more compulsory.

It never was a matched play rule (or even a rule) in 8th.

Sunny Side Up wrote:

 casvalremdeikun wrote:
So am I understanding this correctly, that the Rule of 2/3 is not a general matched play rule, but a rule unique to tournament play?

That’s always been this way.
Indeed, it moved from a “recommendation” for events in 8th to now being an actual rule for events in 9th, making it a bit more compulsory.

It never was a matched play rule (or even a rule) in 8th.

True, but in 9th edition it's a function of the mission packs. The default Matched Play mission pack, Eternal War, has rule of 3 as a bona fide rule.

Alternating deployment before rolling to see who goes first increases first-turn advantage. Progressive scoring increases first turn advantage. Neither of these things are opinions; they're just fact based on the statistics we've collected over years and years of competitive play.

When you add in the stacking secondaries, these missions and rules basically represent throwing out everything ITC learned in the last 3-4 years about mission design.

It's a crying shame, because the 2020 ITC pack had finally, at long last, dealt with first-turn advantage. It seems like such a waste of all that time and energy for GW to put its fingers in its ears and insist on making all the same mistakes again.

Not everything about ITC was perfect and GW didn't need to keep everything, but to not keep the lessons it had learned about addressing first-turn advantage is a real disappointment.

Spoletta wrote:
The game is so different from the way it was played, that we can't really say much at this point.

Even "Playtesters said this" "Playtesters said that" that gets flung around, is crap. Playtesters won't know much about the game except what the general flow of it is going to be.

To assess a faction, you need to have quite a few games with it against many different lists. I would be seriously surprised if most of those playtesters had more than a couple dozen games of 9th, which isn't really telling you ANYTHING about the state of the factions. There were probably one or two in house play testing groups which had hundreds of games and which dictated most of the changes. They are the only ones that can share their wisdom about the single factions, everyone else was just kept in the loop. They weren't given a full time job to test it, they were just asked for feedback on a few matters, especially during a time where gaming was forbidden by law in most of GW's world.

Whatever playtesters tell you now, will be insignificant compared to what the community will learn in the first month of 9th after we are finally allowed to play.

Funnily enough a lot of the playtesters are actually Grand tournament organizers and players who had high rankings last edition... but sure they don’t know much about the game except the flow....

Also covid had nothing to do with playtesters no idea what makes you think global lockdown in Feb/March Had any impact on an edition that already went to print.


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yukishiro1 wrote:
Alternating deployment before rolling to see who goes first increases first-turn advantage. Progressive scoring increases first turn advantage. Neither of these things are opinions; they're just fact based on the statistics we've collected over years and years of competitive play.

When you add in the stacking secondaries, these missions and rules basically represent throwing out everything ITC learned in the last 3-4 years about mission design.

It's a crying shame, because the 2020 ITC pack had finally, at long last, dealt with first-turn advantage. It seems like such a waste of all that time and energy for GW to put its fingers in its ears and insist on making all the same mistakes again.

Not everything about ITC was perfect and GW didn't need to keep everything, but to not keep the lessons it had learned about addressing first-turn advantage is a real disappointment.

Just from the video battlereps I’ve seen I don’t see first turn advantage as big as it was before... at least the whole alpha strike issue has largely been irrelevant.. subjective as I haven’t calculated it up but most battlerep videos I’ve seen the player going second has won more often then not.

The vast majority of 9th bat-reps are not competitive games. In fact, I'm not aware of a single batrep of a real competitive game, certainly not with the new points. The closest I can think of is the one aow40k ran yesterday, but that was dominated by Siegler's choice to run the Taunar, the points for which are pretty clearly screwed up in some way.

I mean I'd love to be wrong. But every single change they have made vis a vis the ITC 2020 pack makes first-turn advantage greater in theory so it's hard to see how a package full of changes that make first-turn advantage greater could actually add up to making first-turn advantage smaller. And it's also hard to see how you could make first-turn advantage smaller than in 2020 ITC because there was no first turn advantage.

If you're used to playing GW's base 8th edition rules, sure, anything is better than those. But nobody played GW's base rules competitively because they didn't work, so it's an odd comparison point.

yukishiro1 wrote:
Alternating deployment before rolling to see who goes first increases first-turn advantage. Progressive scoring increases first turn advantage. Neither of these things are opinions; they're just fact based on the statistics we've collected over years and years of competitive play.

When you add in the stacking secondaries, these missions and rules basically represent throwing out everything ITC learned in the last 3-4 years about mission design.

It's a crying shame, because the 2020 ITC pack had finally, at long last, dealt with first-turn advantage. It seems like such a waste of all that time and energy for GW to put its fingers in its ears and insist on making all the same mistakes again.

Not everything about ITC was perfect and GW didn't need to keep everything, but to not keep the lessons it had learned about addressing first-turn advantage is a real disappointment.

Lol, wut?

The missions are essentially a 100% carbon copy of all the ITC nonsense (not surprising, given the ITC/NOVA guys wrote them).

They represent basically throwing out everything the ETC learning in the last 15 years about mission design and stuffing it with dumbed down none-sense like the "everybody get's participation trophy" idiocy like choosing secondaries to fit your army, instead of forcing people to play an army that can deal with a variety to tactical challenges, dumping the in-game tests of tactical acumen and skill under stress with semi-random, unpredictable scoring through Maelstrom with the bland, pre-calculable and skill-deprived primary system, dropping the seize to just basically neuter any skill in deployment.

The missions are an atrocity because they are basically copy & paste ITC.

yukishiro1 wrote:
Alternating deployment before rolling to see who goes first increases first-turn advantage. Progressive scoring increases first turn advantage. Neither of these things are opinions; they're just fact based on the statistics we've collected over years and years of competitive play.

When you add in the stacking secondaries, these missions and rules basically represent throwing out everything ITC learned in the last 3-4 years about mission design.

It's a crying shame, because the 2020 ITC pack had finally, at long last, dealt with first-turn advantage. It seems like such a waste of all that time and energy for GW to put its fingers in its ears and insist on making all the same mistakes again.

Not everything about ITC was perfect and GW didn't need to keep everything, but to not keep the lessons it had learned about addressing first-turn advantage is a real disappointment.

Well, the ITC stuff was based around CA19. It was seemingly good save for how parts of scoring worked, but I only got 3 games in before the pandemic.

While your points are correct I don't think they quite add up. In ITC you had to be scoring every single turn. This is not necessarily the case here.

Your goal should be to deny them Hold More. They score at most 10. Your task will be to Hold Two (sometimes Hold Three), which also scores 10 points. This shouldn't be a heavy lift for lots of people. Even if they manage to slip in a 15 it will spread them out.

Going first against a hyper-mobile army gives them all the information and protection from terrain.


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Sunny Side Up wrote:

Lol, wut?

The missions are essentially a 100% carbon copy of all the ITC nonsense (not surprising, given the ITC/NOVA guys wrote them).

They represent basically throwing out everything the ETC learning in the last 15 years about mission design and stuffing it with dumbed down none-sense like the "everybody get's participation trophy" idiocy like choosing secondaries to fit your army, instead of forcing people to play an army that can deal with a variety to tactical challenges, dumping the in-game tests of tactical acumen and skill under stress with semi-random, unpredictable scoring through Maelstrom with the bland, pre-calculable and skill-deprived primary system, dropping the seize to just basically neuter any skill in deployment.

The missions are an atrocity because they are basically copy & paste ITC.

His drive was more about the full deploy for each side and the person who deployed first went first, but these are a long distance from ITC.

Maelstrom is just like choosing secondaries. You just do it turn by turn and you guys imposed your own set of rules to limit the randomness. CA19 modified that pretty well to match though.

yukishiro1 wrote:
The vast majority of 9th bat-reps are not competitive games. In fact, I'm not aware of a single batrep of a real competitive game, certainly not with the new points. The closest I can think of is the one aow40k ran yesterday, but that was dominated by Siegler's choice to run the Taunar, the points for which are pretty clearly screwed up in some way.

I mean I'd love to be wrong. But every single change they have made vis a vis the ITC 2020 pack makes first-turn advantage greater in theory so it's hard to see how a package full of changes that make first-turn advantage greater could actually add up to making first-turn advantage smaller. And it's also hard to see how you could make first-turn advantage smaller than in 2020 ITC because there was no first turn advantage.

If you're used to playing GW's base 8th edition rules, sure, anything is better than those. But nobody played GW's base rules competitively because they didn't work, so it's an odd comparison point.

You seem to completely ignore why going second is so strong this edition. As I said pay attention to the video batreps.
Nearly every game goes the same way.

Everyone deploys at lease semi defensively hiding behind the new improved terrain obscured or light cover is everywhere.
Player 1 moves and usually advances to secure objectives and score some points. And turn does very little damage as alpha strikes are largely nuetered in 9th.
Player 2 moves and shoots at player 1 units that are now in the open or advances and charges at units now in range.
Making sure to have more bodies on objectives to score his mission points.
Turn 2 player 1 now tries to beta strike with his reduced board presence probably wishing he out more units in reserve pregame.
Now I’m not saying going second is always preferred it’s largely army dependent, but there is a strong incentive to respond as player 2 instead of being a target as player 1

gungo wrote:

Spoletta wrote:
The game is so different from the way it was played, that we can't really say much at this point.

Even "Playtesters said this" "Playtesters said that" that gets flung around, is crap. Playtesters won't know much about the game except what the general flow of it is going to be.

To assess a faction, you need to have quite a few games with it against many different lists. I would be seriously surprised if most of those playtesters had more than a couple dozen games of 9th, which isn't really telling you ANYTHING about the state of the factions. There were probably one or two in house play testing groups which had hundreds of games and which dictated most of the changes. They are the only ones that can share their wisdom about the single factions, everyone else was just kept in the loop. They weren't given a full time job to test it, they were just asked for feedback on a few matters, especially during a time where gaming was forbidden by law in most of GW's world.

Whatever playtesters tell you now, will be insignificant compared to what the community will learn in the first month of 9th after we are finally allowed to play.

Funnily enough a lot of the playtesters are actually Grand tournament organizers and players who had high rankings last edition... but sure they don’t know much about the game except the flow....

Also covid had nothing to do with playtesters no idea what makes you think global lockdown in Feb/March Had any impact on an edition that already went to print.
.

You clearly didn't understood what I said.

I didn't say that those guys don't know the game.

I said that those guys were not full time playtesters of 9th, so they are only going to have a general idea of how it will develop.

Not to mention that most of them were ITC players, and these missions are only 50% ITC. They play REALLY different.

If one of them says, "I think that faction x is screwed", then I don't give much weight to it.

Also, they said that they had been playtesting it in the last 6 months (the external ones), so yes, covid matters a lot.

Going first is cool, but responding by going second is way more useful.

You can't score primary points on turn one. Your points for primary are also only counted in your command phase. So in order to score turn two you have to be on the objectives after turn one.

Being able to counter punch that initial push will make going second just as strong as going first. Especially with the game ending turn 5 guaranteed. You know by going second that you will have a single turn where your opponent will have no chance to retaliate. Jump way out and grab those secondaries, there will be no reprisals for doing so, and it may just give you enough points to win the thing.

Lythrandire Biehrellian wrote:
. You know by going second that you will have a single turn where your opponent will have no chance to retaliate. Jump way out and grab those secondaries, there will be no reprisals for doing so, and it may just give you enough points to win the thing.

How so?

If you push out turn 4, your opponent gets turn 5 to retaliate.

If you push out turn 5, there's no command phase in turn 6 to score.

Sunny Side Up wrote:

yukishiro1 wrote:
Alternating deployment before rolling to see who goes first increases first-turn advantage. Progressive scoring increases first turn advantage. Neither of these things are opinions; they're just fact based on the statistics we've collected over years and years of competitive play.

When you add in the stacking secondaries, these missions and rules basically represent throwing out everything ITC learned in the last 3-4 years about mission design.

It's a crying shame, because the 2020 ITC pack had finally, at long last, dealt with first-turn advantage. It seems like such a waste of all that time and energy for GW to put its fingers in its ears and insist on making all the same mistakes again.

Not everything about ITC was perfect and GW didn't need to keep everything, but to not keep the lessons it had learned about addressing first-turn advantage is a real disappointment.

Lol, wut?

The missions are essentially a 100% carbon copy of all the ITC nonsense (not surprising, given the ITC/NOVA guys wrote them).

They represent basically throwing out everything the ETC learning in the last 15 years about mission design and stuffing it with dumbed down none-sense like the "everybody get's participation trophy" idiocy like choosing secondaries to fit your army, instead of forcing people to play an army that can deal with a variety to tactical challenges, dumping the in-game tests of tactical acumen and skill under stress with semi-random, unpredictable scoring through Maelstrom with the bland, pre-calculable and skill-deprived primary system, dropping the seize to just basically neuter any skill in deployment.

The missions are an atrocity because they are basically copy & paste ITC.

The only thing the ETC learned in 15 years was that playing too close to the book ended up with gak tournaments.

ETC events were garbage nonsense decided more often by random die rolls than actual player skill.

Also, lol at 'dumbed down'. Yeah, cause 'go get the objective in the back of your opponent's deployment zone 3 times' was SOOOOOO complex.

ERJAK wrote:


The only thing the ETC learned in 15 years was that playing too close to the book ended up with gak tournaments.

ETC events were garbage nonsense decided more often by random die rolls than actual player skill.

Also, lol at 'dumbed down'. Yeah, cause 'go get the objective in the back of your opponent's deployment zone 3 times' was SOOOOOO complex.

Lol. Quite the opposite.

If anything, ETC formats required you to think on the fly, make tactical decisions and react to a changing board state, while ITC is just running the same rote moves over and over and over again with your list, depending on what your list does.

Sure, inexperienced players often blame RNG like dice or cards for losing, but that's not an ETC thing. It also (incorrectly) happens in ITC. Most people just perceive variance with a skew towards bad results and don't anticipate it properly when executing game play (which is what ultimately separates good players from bad ones).

Sunny Side Up wrote:

ERJAK wrote:


The only thing the ETC learned in 15 years was that playing too close to the book ended up with gak tournaments.

ETC events were garbage nonsense decided more often by random die rolls than actual player skill.

Also, lol at 'dumbed down'. Yeah, cause 'go get the objective in the back of your opponent's deployment zone 3 times' was SOOOOOO complex.

Lol. Quite the opposite.

If anything, ETC formats required you to think on the fly, make tactical decisions and react to a changing board state, while ITC is just running the same rote moves over and over and over again with your list, depending on what your list does.

Sure, inexperienced players often blame RNG like dice or cards for losing, but that's not an ETC thing. It also (incorrectly) happens in ITC. Most people just perceive variance with a skew towards bad results and don't anticipate it properly when executing game play (which is what ultimately separates good players from bad ones).

When you actually get good at the game and are playing other good players, RNG is the deciding factor as often as not because neither player is really making exploitable mistakes. If both sides are playing within a certain % of the other's competence level, RNG can more than make up the difference in the (slightly) inferior player's favor. The more RNG there is the less likely it is that it'll be player skill that actually decides high level games. The ETC exacerbates this far more than ITC does by allowing huge swings that can take a barely top 32 player into the top 4 with a couple of lucky die rolls.

To illustrate with CCGS, ITC events are Magic the Gathering, ETC events are Hearthstone; yeah the average player doesn't really have a chance against the pros in either game, but in Hearthstone One cast of Yogg-Saron in the late game could put 3 pyroblasts in the opponet's face and win you the game on a coinflip.

Sunny Side Up wrote:

yukishiro1 wrote:
Alternating deployment before rolling to see who goes first increases first-turn advantage. Progressive scoring increases first turn advantage. Neither of these things are opinions; they're just fact based on the statistics we've collected over years and years of competitive play.

When you add in the stacking secondaries, these missions and rules basically represent throwing out everything ITC learned in the last 3-4 years about mission design.

It's a crying shame, because the 2020 ITC pack had finally, at long last, dealt with first-turn advantage. It seems like such a waste of all that time and energy for GW to put its fingers in its ears and insist on making all the same mistakes again.

Not everything about ITC was perfect and GW didn't need to keep everything, but to not keep the lessons it had learned about addressing first-turn advantage is a real disappointment.

Lol, wut?

The missions are essentially a 100% carbon copy of all the ITC nonsense (not surprising, given the ITC/NOVA guys wrote them).

If you think these missions with alternate deployment and progressive scoring are anything like ITC's 2020 pack, we're not going to be able to have a useful discussion. It's like trying to discuss physics with someone who insists the earth is flat.

yukishiro1 wrote:


If you think these missions with alternate deployment and progressive scoring are anything like ITC's 2020 pack, we're not going to be able to have a useful discussion. It's like trying to discuss physics with someone who insists the earth is flat.

Well, if you think these missions without seize, first strike, Maelstrom/Schemes of War are anything like GW missions from recent CAs, you're delusional. And it's not a secret that Mike Brandt in particular is overseen the tournament pack, GW organised competitive events and Reece/Frankie themselves also said on their recent Podcast that the tournament pack was the main focus of their playtesting involvement.

gungo wrote:

yukishiro1 wrote:
The vast majority of 9th bat-reps are not competitive games. In fact, I'm not aware of a single batrep of a real competitive game, certainly not with the new points. The closest I can think of is the one aow40k ran yesterday, but that was dominated by Siegler's choice to run the Taunar, the points for which are pretty clearly screwed up in some way.

I mean I'd love to be wrong. But every single change they have made vis a vis the ITC 2020 pack makes first-turn advantage greater in theory so it's hard to see how a package full of changes that make first-turn advantage greater could actually add up to making first-turn advantage smaller. And it's also hard to see how you could make first-turn advantage smaller than in 2020 ITC because there was no first turn advantage.

If you're used to playing GW's base 8th edition rules, sure, anything is better than those. But nobody played GW's base rules competitively because they didn't work, so it's an odd comparison point.

You seem to completely ignore why going second is so strong this edition. As I said pay attention to the video batreps.
Nearly every game goes the same way.

Everyone deploys at lease semi defensively hiding behind the new improved terrain obscured or light cover is everywhere.
Player 1 moves and usually advances to secure objectives and score some points. And turn does very little damage as alpha strikes are largely nuetered in 9th.
Player 2 moves and shoots at player 1 units that are now in the open or advances and charges at units now in range.
Making sure to have more bodies on objectives to score his mission points.
Turn 2 player 1 now tries to beta strike with his reduced board presence probably wishing he out more units in reserve pregame.
Now I’m not saying going second is always preferred it’s largely army dependent, but there is a strong incentive to respond as player 2 instead of being a target as player 1

Read the last sentence of what I wrote again. You seem to have been playing with GW's own atrocious rules. If you were, of course first-turn advantage is reduced, because you were playing on planet bowling ball.

But nobody played with GW's rules competitively because they weren't usable. 9th edition terrain rules allow EASIER line of sight drawing than the competitive rules everyone used in 8th. Terrain isn't improved, it doesn't obscure more. The board size is smaller, which also makes alpha strikes easier. The game board setup in 9th is more favorable to alpha strikes than the competitive 8th scene was, not less. Just like progressive scoring is more favorable to going first. Just like alternate deployments is more favorable to going first.

If you don't know how ITC (or ETC, or any other serious competitive format for 8th) worked I don't think you can really have an informed opinion about the 9th edition ruleset vs the prior competitive formats people played.


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Sunny Side Up wrote:

yukishiro1 wrote:


If you think these missions with alternate deployment and progressive scoring are anything like ITC's 2020 pack, we're not going to be able to have a useful discussion. It's like trying to discuss physics with someone who insists the earth is flat.

Well, if you think these missions without seize, first strike, Maelstrom/Schemes of War are anything like GW missions from recent CAs, you're delusional. And it's not a secret that Mike Brandt in particular is overseen the tournament pack, GW organised competitive events and Reece/Frankie themselves also said on their recent Podcast that the tournament pack was the main focus of their playtesting involvement.

I didn't say they were. You're the one who made the delusional statement that these missions were like ITC. I didn't say anything about them being classic GW missions. Please don't build straw men to knock down; it's tiresome. Address what people actually write, not what you wish they wrote because it'd be easier to refute.

yukishiro1 wrote:


Read the last sentence of what I wrote again. You seem to have been playing with GW's own atrocious rules. If you were, of course first-turn advantage is reduced, because you were playing on planet bowling ball.

But nobody played with GW's rules competitively because they weren't usable. 9th edition terrain rules allow EASIER line of sight drawing than the competitive rules everyone used in 8th. Terrain isn't improved, it doesn't obscure more. The board size is smaller, which also makes alpha strikes easier. The game board setup in 9th is more favorable to alpha strikes than the competitive 8th scene was, not less. Just like progressive scoring is more favorable to going first. Just like alternate deployments is more favorable to going first.

If you don't know how ITC worked I don't think you can really have an informed opinion about the 9th edition ruleset vs the prior competitive formats people played.

Nonsense. ETC formats worked perfectly fine for all of 8th. Infact, most of the problems ITC had through 8th (e.g. Ynnari Dark Reapers fire&fading into magic boxes, etc..) were nowhere near as problematic in the more balanced book missions.

Just because ITC has been selling the Trumpian propaganda about ETC / book missions being allegedly somehow bad to hype up their own product doesn't make that true.

If you haven't played ETC tournaments regularly and are just go of the snakeoil from FLG, you have absolutely no clue about actually competitive 40K.


And sure, the new missions are not identical to the 2020 ITC (or presumably the unpublished 2020 NOVA) pack. They are the next step the people responsible for those think what tournament missions should be.

*trumpian propaganda

*Snakeoil


*Non problematic Units


I Gotta ask if our peasants dumped Lead in the Rhein again...

In ETC you didn't play with GW's terrain rules either. You seem pretty confused about the topic you claim to be an expert in.

That said, I have no interest in getting into a fight over ETC vs. ITC. The problems with these missions have nothing to do with that. If you want to fight someone on ETC vs ITC go ahead, but you'll have to find someone else to do it with.

In one of the batreps done by Tabletop Titans Brian said he had played "hundreds" of 9th playtest games and off camera, not for an audience and being a tournament player I am pretty sure he was taking competitive lists.

I just don't see Alpha strike being a big thing. A super resilient army is going to shrug off your alpha strike, leaving those alpha units, who typically don't have staying power, out in the open with their figurative "junk" swaying in the wind.

Some armies will benefit from going first, some will benefit from going second. With a 50/50 chance to go first it's a gamble to deploy in such a way that allows an alpha strike. If your opponent goes first your strike is dead before it starts. If your opponent deploys defensively on the notion of going second your alpha is extremely limited in power.

AS is nerfed in 9th. Some people will have to change their lists, take new units and try new tactics. This revelation is nothing new. EVERY edition required a change in army composition, tactics, and specific loadouts.

The advantage of going first isn't alpha strike in the sense of killing your opponent's models. It's the ability to get out onto the objectives first with units that can block your opponent from being able to get onto the objectives.

That said, alpha strike is not nerfed in 9th. Alpha strike is stronger in 9th than it was in competitive 8th, not weaker, because 9th's terrain rules favor shooting more than the competitive terrain rules used in ITC or ETC did.

What testing people have done so far does show a pretty strong first-turn bias in the new missions. Which matches what you would expect, because pretty much every single aspect of them is friendlier to going first than ITC2020 was (or than ETC was, for the guy who wants to jump on that hobby horse). It would be truly bizarre if you combined a bunch of changes that favor going first and somehow ended up with not favoring going first.

Dial back on the vitriol Sunny.

Yes FLG's magic boxes were the hight of stupidity but that was I gor the destinct impression more a Recce thing than a everyone agreed with it thing.

Also playong ETC sounds fine on paper but having card draws for objectives ended up with so many work arounds to stop it being able to end the game with a single bad draw and still having the ability to swing the game hard the cards were a problem.

The truth is both farmats had their issues in 8th edition.

ITC got the missions right and the terrain wrong (magic boxes)
ETC or atleast what I was told the rules were got the terrain better but the random FU card draws were still a problem.

ITC secondarys you had to plan around at list building and yes they did favour certain armies over others but they were being rebalanced as people learned the edition the issue was secondarys and points attscking the same units effectively at the same time did leed to some feels bad as stuff went from OP to game loosong liability.

I also seen ETC games were the card drae was an utter joke it also led to the prevalence of fast movement based lists in ETC events.

yukishiro1 wrote:

9th edition terrain rules allow EASIER line of sight drawing than the competitive rules everyone used in 8th. Terrain isn't improved, it doesn't obscure more.

This isn't true. People are taking the idea that touching obscured makes terrain magically disappear for your whole army. All it does is turn on normal LOS for that unit or units. Everything else in the army not touching that obscuring terrain has no vision through it. ITC allowed vision through the second floor barring the silly magic boxes, so, yes there is more sight blocking.

yukishiro1 wrote:
In ETC you didn't play with GW's terrain rules either. You seem pretty confused about the topic you claim to be an expert in.

That said, I have no interest in getting into a fight over ETC vs. ITC. The problems with these missions have nothing to do with that. If you want to fight someone on ETC vs ITC go ahead, but you'll have to find someone else to do it with.

I don't want a fight. But you said GW didn't learn the ITC "lessons". #

The missions were literally written by ITC (and NOVA) people incorporating all their NOVA and ITC "lessons" into the next iteration of what they think is good mission design (and thus moving very forcefully away from GW mission design, which, yes, ETC was also a step removed from, though (IMO) stuck to somewhat closer than ITC).

I don't care who wrote the missions. Whoever did didn't learn the lessons ITC had learned, because the new missions go in a completely different direction than ITC2020 went.

If it's the same people - which is not true BTW, the main designer is Brandt and he's always been a fan of progressive scoring, which is the fundamental difference between ITC and NOVA, and it's very clear Brandt won out with these missions - they clearly decided to disregard their own experience over the last couple years.

 Daedalus81 wrote:

yukishiro1 wrote:

9th edition terrain rules allow EASIER line of sight drawing than the competitive rules everyone used in 8th. Terrain isn't improved, it doesn't obscure more.

This isn't true. People are taking the idea that touching obscured makes terrain magically disappear for your whole army. All it does is turn on normal LOS for that unit or units. Everything else in the army not touching that obscuring terrain has no vision through it. ITC allowed vision through the second floor barring the silly magic boxes, so, yes there is more sight blocking.

That really all depends on the armies in play and the terrain your playing with a lot of events were running large solid terrian that hide even knights at the end if 8th.

Also a lot of people are going back to trying to use GW terrain which tends to have poor TLOS blocking properties.

However 9th is better for limiting the advanatge of NLOS shooting spam lists like guard and later marines with TFC and WW spam.

yukishiro1 wrote:
I don't care who wrote the missions. Whoever did didn't learn the lessons ITC had learned, because the new missions go in a completely different direction than ITC2020 went.

If it's the same people - which is not true BTW, the main designer is Brandt and he's always been a fan of progressive scoring, which is the fundamental difference between ITC and NOVA, and it's very clear Brandt won out with these missions - they clearly decided to disregard their own experience over the last couple years.

ITC (2020) is all progressive scoring, aside from 4 measly points (out 42) for ground control, if you chose to (below 10% of the max result at best). NOVA (at least 2019, we've not seen 2020 mission) at least had the option to forgo progressive hold, hold-more stuff for end-game scoring that was a much higher % of your total points.

If anything, ITC had a much larger progressive fetish than NOVA.