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 techsoldaten wrote:
It sounds like you think the Drukhari player deserved a chance to win the game. What, specifically, makes you think that?

...What?

Just to wade in again. (I don't know why I do this). I felt that flyers and out of line of sight artillery might be becoming too strong and they remove a lot of the ways to mitigate against them because terrain doesn't work against them. Having said that, I would also like to point out that many 40k games in 9th edition and swung because of a single mistake or misplay. Or several mistakes that snowball. But somethings, its just that one misplay be it deploying a unit wrongly, or responding in the wrong way.

While the consequences may not be quite as drastic as losing 80% of your army in one turn, they are usually "that's the game right there".

There are some lists that also hard counter others. So maybe this was a case where that particular Ork list was a hard counter to the Drukhari list.

My worry is more that such lists incorporating lots of flyers and out of line of sight shooting are going to become more prevalent. We have Imperial Guard codex yet to drop, and Guard are the King of artillery and they can deploy their vehicles in squadrons too, and Guard have flyers too. What if they buffed Vendettas to Ork flyer levels of lethality?

Eldar codex has not dropped yet as well. Eldar flyers could similarly become a problem.

Of course, extreme lethality is still a problem as well. This is a problem with big flashy units like a superheavy or a daemon Primarch right now. It is because there are so much lethality in the game right now that these units and the entire Knight armies are relatively uncommon in the meta scene these days. If I invest 500 or more points into one single beefy unit, but have it blown up once the shooting start, I am basically playing down 500 over points. Its not a fun feeling and superheavies cannot hide.

Which is the same issue I have with flyers and out of line of sight shooting. You can't do much to stop them, short of putting stuff off the board into reserve.

I would hazard a guess that up till now, Ork lists have not been winning quite as much because Death Guard is still a very common army in the meta. And Ork shooting doesn't do much against DG. You could field 18 squid buggies and all of them would be wounding on 4s and doing only 1 damage to DG plague marines and terminators. Add the miasma of pestilence for the -1 to hit ... and even 18 buggies will bounce on shooting a block of DG terminators. Similarly, consider what Orc shooting does against three plague burst crawlers (not very much).

This doesn't necessarily mean that overly lethal flyers and artillery are not a problem. Because of course, not everyone is DG.

 catbarf wrote:

 techsoldaten wrote:
It sounds like you think the Drukhari player deserved a chance to win the game. What, specifically, makes you think that?

...What?

Welcome to a weird moment where 12 pages of arguing coalesces into the bizarre revelation that its completely unreasonable to expect that both players in a game have a chance to win (not even an equal chance. Just any chance at all, because filthy dark elves, I guess).

There are certain matchups where its an almost certain loss for one side. Welcome to 40k list building.

I could post another extreme example. (on the resilience side).

30 Deathwing stormshield terminators. Mission: Priority target. the Deathwing player places 10 deathwing terminators on three objectives, with most of his army on the middle one.

He also takes the secondaries: priority target, the deathwing specific secondary and stranglehold.

Now, I am not saying you cannot design an army list that would beat this. But I would wager that the "average" army would have little hope of cracking this nut.

It becomes "Can you kill off 10 deathwing terminators standing on an objective, with a chief apoc healing one back to full and rezzing another every turn" If the answer is no.. then basically, you have close to zero chance of winning.

And if those 3 objectives happen to be in cover so that you are facing 10 DW terminators with a 0+ save before modifiers... well good luck!

But why is that desirable?
Why is that acceptable?

Beats me. 9th edition has already progressed to this point. Not sure if its possible to dial back the clock at this stage. Too many units are already too lethal. And at the other extreme, a certain number of units are super resilient too.

It has become a bit of a rock paper scissors game now. There is probably a counter list to any list no matter how hard you make it. The problem is that the counter list may be so skewed it will likely not win any tournaments either.

 techsoldaten wrote:

Rihgu wrote:
Even if the Drukhari player made a tactical or strategic mistake, is it okay for ONE mistake to result in a instantaneous, complete, absolute blowout loss?

Would not reduce the game to a single mistake.

Would call it a very aggressive playstyle. Either the Ork assault was going to be disrupted or the Drukhari force would be left completely exposed.

The game was an either / or. Or won.

De could have played less aggressively. And auto lose by turn 2 anyway.

De player had 2 options. Get tabled t2 or try win, still almost certainly get tabled t2 and if fail like he did get tabled t1.

Is it good for game if 1 army can table in t2 at worst? Is such levev of rock paper scissor healthy for game? Do we want game be decided in list build or in game?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 techsoldaten wrote:

 the_scotsman wrote:
^also this. The reason I made this thread was frustration towards the amount of 'git gud/your opponent's just a dick dont play dicks' in the "new player, got destroyed in 1 turn" thread. I wanted to point out that, no, this newbie wasn't just an idiot because really really good competitive players get exploded in one turn on the reg, and also no, an opponent who took a list that was literally "10 space marines, a captain, and a dreadnought" and played by the rules as written was not being an especial dick to this newbie.

Newbies are the EXACT people who will not know things like 'oh, if I play by this rule as it as written, we will always have a gak time.'

it takes a TON of metaknowledge currently to set up a good, fun game of warhammer 40,000. You cant just throw down two armies on a table with some trash on it for terrain and have a good game, everything goes kaboom in like 2 turns and the players sit there asking "wait...was that it?"

Instead of all that: tell them overly aggressive play is a bad idea.

99% of their problems will go away.

Basically, don't be like the Drukhari player in the video. Bad role model.

Ah yes. Autotabied by t2 is sooooo much better role model


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 techsoldaten wrote:

macluvin wrote:
I mean you keep saying the drukhari should have put 200+ points in reserve. How would that have actually changed the outcome?

\

Answer the question before I respond.

Does that mean how would I have avoided losing 90% of my army first turn, or how would I have won the game?

Point of game is win.

Getting tabled t1 or t2, no difference.

If one side gets tabled by t3 short of freak dice roll game has issues. Majority of games should have useful army still by t5.

macluvin wrote:
What could the Drukhari player have done to prevent the game from entering an un-winnable state (for themselves) in the first shooting phase of their opponent's in the game?

He should have avoided an all or nothing melee list, simple. Drukhari are one of the best shooting armies and while they're incredibly powerful in melee as well they're not Khorne daemons.

It doesn't matter what he could have done once deployed his models, the problems here is that he brought an extreme list and got an hard counter. People should have this in mind, while instead they're arguing like it was a reasonable TAC list. It wasn't, so the whole "what could he have done to..." is entirely irrelevant and disingenuous. The moment he chose that kind of list he gambled hoping to find specific opponents and to avoid specific ones.

Typically when players bring one dimensional lists to tournaments and get stomped badly no one complains. Consider orks alpha strike melee lists: in every edition they could play ultra aggressive full melee lists, with strong melee units, but how many times did those lists pay off? Typically they got shot off the board in two turns at most if they fail one or two key rolls and/or get bad match ups. In fact best ork melee lists have always been those that could soak a lot of damage rahter than inflicting it, see greentides. The specific drukhari list that has been discussed in this thread is a pure glass cannon, with huge potential in causing a lot of damage but not very resilient. Autolosing turn 1-2 has always been a thing in ultra competitive play when one dimensional lists face their hard counters. So why is this different now?

A good solution is to put real OP armies in line so pure tailoring against them doesn't happen and people bring more TAC lists. The very same freebooters list can be stomped by mid tiers armies, as tyranids proved it.

I am not so sure it's because the list is to week defensively that it got wiped by the orks.

A space marine list that hides in both light and dense cover and as much out of Los as possible can lose any non 1+/2+ base save infantry or biker model that starts on the table against a speed wagh list turn 1. So even a base t4-5 3+ 2-3w army will if going second start at least 25% down. A dreadnought or ramshackle army that reserves everything squishy, DG or deathwing might lose less than 25% if deploying defensively in terrain. Anything else and its most likely game over if orks go first.

You might think it wouldn't be too bad if you only lose 25% but since it is mainly flyers, out of Los shooting and mobile models the Ork player can pick and choose to a degree what to kill. So eradicators or attack bikes will for sure be dead turn 1 if they start on the table and the Ork player goes first. But you can't also reserve them since you need them turn 1 to kill something to lessen their alpha strike if you go first and if going second they come in after 2 Ork turns have wiped most of your army off the table.

Quite insane you can get 40+ str 6 ap2 shots from a 120pt flyer with 12 wounds, ramshackle and built in -1 to hit that can potentially also get a 5++. Or look at the buggies stat lines or at the Killrig. We are talking insane offensive potential on very durable bodies. I wouldn't even bother deploying my Blood Angels against such a list. Conceding and browsing social media would be much more productive.

Klickor wrote:


[...]

Quite insane you can get 40+ str 6 ap2 shots from a 120pt flyer with 12 wounds, ramshackle and built in -1 to hit that can potentially also get a 5++. Or look at the buggies stat lines or at the Killrig. We are talking insane offensive potential on very durable bodies. I wouldn't even bother deploying my Blood Angels against such a list. Conceding and browsing social media would be much more productive.

I'm not saying you're wrong, but people need to remember that the 40 shots are baseline BS 5+...so average of ~13 hits. That's the same as 20 shots with BS 3+

Klickor wrote:
I am not so sure it's because the list is to week defensively that it got wiped by the orks.

A space marine list that hides in both light and dense cover and as much out of Los as possible can lose any non 1+/2+ base save infantry or biker model that starts on the table against a speed wagh list turn 1. So even a base t4-5 3+ 2-3w army will if going second start at least 25% down. A dreadnought or ramshackle army that reserves everything squishy, DG or deathwing might lose less than 25% if deploying defensively in terrain. Anything else and its most likely game over if orks go first.

You might think it wouldn't be too bad if you only lose 25% but since it is mainly flyers, out of Los shooting and mobile models the Ork player can pick and choose to a degree what to kill. So eradicators or attack bikes will for sure be dead turn 1 if they start on the table and the Ork player goes first. But you can't also reserve them since you need them turn 1 to kill something to lessen their alpha strike if you go first and if going second they come in after 2 Ork turns have wiped most of your army off the table.

Quite insane you can get 40+ str 6 ap2 shots from a 120pt flyer with 12 wounds, ramshackle and built in -1 to hit that can potentially also get a 5++. Or look at the buggies stat lines or at the Killrig. We are talking insane offensive potential on very durable bodies. I wouldn't even bother deploying my Blood Angels against such a list. Conceding and browsing social media would be much more productive.

Killrigs have not yet been proven to be good "tournament units". And by "Buggies" you mean scrapjets and sguig B.
The ork codex is not much of an issue, three units just need to take a 10-15 point increase and that is it, job done.

I do think Killrigs are too cheap for what you get. They might just be slightly worse than the buggies and planes and thus don't see much play. Might turn out though that the game is so lethal that not even the rigs will be good units and then you can really see how bad GW is at balancing this game. Because that unit have so much stuff piled on top of it that if compared to a Land Raider or some of the Titanic units would have cost 400pts using the same "formula". But it is 190pts. Now the Land Raider is over costed and not a good standard for competitive units but it is the same company that have made up the rules and points for both.

If introducing new units and new rules they should have done it with some caution. Rather have the points be 5-20 too much in the worst case if they turn out to not be so good in competitive games and then lower it a bit in the next update/CA. But lately they haven't done that at all and just added rules and rules on to a base stat line and not adjusted the points to compensate. Not just Orks but Ad-mech, GK and Drukhari as well. They did it with the marine supplements as well. We don't even know all the over performing units in a book now until after a couple of balance patches since a lot of the too good units aren't even used since they still aren't the most broken units in a book.

Another flaw in Techsoldaten's argument is the idea that an all-in (mostly) low-T melee list with no saves deserves to lose because it's radical skew that GW didn't intend or whatever...

because the existence of the Daemons codex immediately and trivially dismisses that argument.

The Daemons book HAS NO OPTION other than to run a lot of low-T all-in melee units, and is clearly designed by GW to function in the game. So it isn't some radical new-fangled crazy idea to build a list like that, given that it is literally the foundation of an entire codex.

But drukhari have plenty of options to NOT go down that path.

If daemons are designed to be that way maybe it's why they work as a balanced army and those drukhari are extremely skew instead.

It's like arguing that a SM list with nothing but tanks and the HQs to make it legal should have a chance to win against competitive lists. Or an army with nothing but gretchins.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
Another flaw in Techsoldaten's argument is the idea that an all-in (mostly) low-T melee list with no saves deserves to lose because it's radical skew that GW didn't intend or whatever...

because the existence of the Daemons codex immediately and trivially dismisses that argument.

The Daemons book HAS NO OPTION other than to run a lot of low-T all-in melee units, and is clearly designed by GW to function in the game. So it isn't some radical new-fangled crazy idea to build a list like that, given that it is literally the foundation of an entire codex.

Yeah, or to use a more extreme example, I do have Harlequins.

Yeah I'll just take my high-toughness options oh wait.

 the_scotsman wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
Another flaw in Techsoldaten's argument is the idea that an all-in (mostly) low-T melee list with no saves deserves to lose because it's radical skew that GW didn't intend or whatever...

because the existence of the Daemons codex immediately and trivially dismisses that argument.

The Daemons book HAS NO OPTION other than to run a lot of low-T all-in melee units, and is clearly designed by GW to function in the game. So it isn't some radical new-fangled crazy idea to build a list like that, given that it is literally the foundation of an entire codex.

Yeah, or to use a more extreme example, I do have Harlequins.

Yeah I'll just take my high-toughness options oh wait.

Another bad example as also harlequins are designed to function that way, considering that they only have 8 datasheets. Drukhari are much more different than that. What about a full army of scouts or gretchins? Should they have the chance of winning competitive games just because in a vacuum it might be legal to bring such extreme lists?

Spoletta wrote:
^ Very much this.

Also, a few changes to cover (not obscuring, I mean actual cover) would make the game a lot less lethal.

Imagine if it shifted from if the barrel sticks out you can shoot/be seen to if the whole model cannot see/be seen it can shoot/be shot!

 Blackie wrote:

 the_scotsman wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
Another flaw in Techsoldaten's argument is the idea that an all-in (mostly) low-T melee list with no saves deserves to lose because it's radical skew that GW didn't intend or whatever...

because the existence of the Daemons codex immediately and trivially dismisses that argument.

The Daemons book HAS NO OPTION other than to run a lot of low-T all-in melee units, and is clearly designed by GW to function in the game. So it isn't some radical new-fangled crazy idea to build a list like that, given that it is literally the foundation of an entire codex.

Yeah, or to use a more extreme example, I do have Harlequins.

Yeah I'll just take my high-toughness options oh wait.

Another bad example as also harlequins are designed to function that way, considering that they only have 8 datasheets. Drukhari are much more different than that. What about a full army of scouts or gretchins? Should they have the chance of winning competitive games just because in a vacuum it might be legal to bring such extreme lists?

Warhammer is a game that's designed to take place over 5 turns with TAC lists. The purpose (or at least, a purpose) of a skew list is skewing all your defenses into a single type of defensive profile, thus rendering all (for example) anti-tank weaponry useless.

So if I bring a list of all gretchins, the least tough unit in the game, then no, I don't expect to win, but I would hope that it would actually be more unusual to see the end result being tabling, much less tabling in fething one turn.

Otherwise, what's the point of that unit even having a points value? It's clear that if you skew all your defenses into one thing and it makes your list defensively WEAKER, that would be a failure of the points system more than anything else, and it's strange that you think that should be a good, intended result.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

The_Real_Chris wrote:

Spoletta wrote:
^ Very much this.

Also, a few changes to cover (not obscuring, I mean actual cover) would make the game a lot less lethal.

Imagine if it shifted from if the barrel sticks out you can shoot/be seen to if the whole model cannot see/be seen it can shoot/be shot!

hell, even if it was just 'if the barrel sticks out you can't shoot the OTHER models in the unit that you CANT see" it would be an improvement from right now. If one model has the barrel of their gun poking out from behind a building, you are perfectly free to shoot and kill the ENTIRE UNIT as long as you can (spoiler alert: you can) destroy them in just one single unit's shooting attack resolution.

 Blackie wrote:

Spoiler:

 the_scotsman wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
Another flaw in Techsoldaten's argument is the idea that an all-in (mostly) low-T melee list with no saves deserves to lose because it's radical skew that GW didn't intend or whatever...

because the existence of the Daemons codex immediately and trivially dismisses that argument.

The Daemons book HAS NO OPTION other than to run a lot of low-T all-in melee units, and is clearly designed by GW to function in the game. So it isn't some radical new-fangled crazy idea to build a list like that, given that it is literally the foundation of an entire codex.

Yeah, or to use a more extreme example, I do have Harlequins.

Yeah I'll just take my high-toughness options oh wait.

Another bad example as also harlequins are designed to function that way, considering that they only have 8 datasheets. Drukhari are much more different than that. What about a full army of scouts or gretchins? Should they have the chance of winning competitive games just because in a vacuum it might be legal to bring such extreme lists?

The question isn't should skew lists be able to win competitive games, it's whether or not any army should be able to remove 90% of another army in a single turn. Should any army have a 90% killing efficiency. This isn't specifically about Orks, other armies are capable of similar stunts, and gw knows it. That's why they've been covering their own tournament tables with LOS blocking terrain, because they know if something can be seen, it'll die. And now with the uptick of efficient LOS ignoring firepower and flyers, even that doesn't help.

 Blackie wrote:

 the_scotsman wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
Another flaw in Techsoldaten's argument is the idea that an all-in (mostly) low-T melee list with no saves deserves to lose because it's radical skew that GW didn't intend or whatever...

because the existence of the Daemons codex immediately and trivially dismisses that argument.

The Daemons book HAS NO OPTION other than to run a lot of low-T all-in melee units, and is clearly designed by GW to function in the game. So it isn't some radical new-fangled crazy idea to build a list like that, given that it is literally the foundation of an entire codex.

Yeah, or to use a more extreme example, I do have Harlequins.

Yeah I'll just take my high-toughness options oh wait.

Another bad example as also harlequins are designed to function that way, considering that they only have 8 datasheets. Drukhari are much more different than that. What about a full army of scouts or gretchins? Should they have the chance of winning competitive games just because in a vacuum it might be legal to bring such extreme lists?

I feel like Scouts and Grots are a pretty poor example. Neither are building blocks of the faction, and neither are honestly part of the identity of how each faction plays. While pretty darn skewed, the Drukhari list had 8 (light) vehicles with Venoms, but with next to zero anti-tank with 2 Blasters and Blast Pistols I believe.

A better example would be:

-Should players have a chance of winning competitive games if they take Tactical Marines or Intercessors and some Rhinos or Razerbacks?

-Should players have a chance of winning competitive games if they take a bunch of Boys and some Trukks or Buggies?

And in both cases, we have seen examples of those in competitive play in past editions (give or take a few Elite choices and some HQ choice).

I do not believe that a player should be unable to play in a competitive event if using what is the core units of their factions identity (Wyches and Venoms melee list). However I will say that the list did have hard counters, MSU large based Buggies and flyers clearly was one. 1800 points in one turn though? Too much in one turn, far too much.

Wait, what?

People ITT:
"The Drukhari skewed into low toughness melee models and lost because of it"

Me/Scotsman: "There are literally armies that are ONLY low toughness melee models skew"

Others: "Well, they're designed that way so it works."

What about the Slaanesh Daemons army being "designed that way" would make this any less of a Turn 1 near-tabling / Turn 2 tabling than this Drukhari list was? 5++ saves alone ain't gonna cut it (woo I only lost 1500 instead of 1800 pts, nice)

This is just the equivalent of high level roleplaying games. At level 1, everybody have limited options and sparse ressources. At level 20, insta-death effects are so abundant that if a character does not have the exact right defenses to counter an attack their only chance is to rely upon luck. It is not fun in roleplaying and not fun in 40K, apart from the mental gymnastics required to put together a working list or a working high level character.

GW tried to cap damage potential by capping the maximum damage single models specific models could sustain per phase, but it makes no sense to apply such a system game-wide. It would probably help if GW actually declared what their intention with the game was as that would enable them to carry out the changes required to reach that intention. Instead, we have an open system, where new units can be patched in with no concern for their interaction with existing rules until an exploit is uncovered and either ignored or remedied.

The only poor game design is game design that fails to meet its goals in terms of player experience. GW have designed a more or less shallow simulation of 5-10 minutes of combat with no goals concerning player experience and thus we see good and bad codexes, units, rules etc. as they are not designed with the player experience in mind, but rather their ability to interact with the simulation. It does not matter if a faction performs poorly in terms of player experience and it seldom results in a change to the faction. GW's usual response is to patch the simulation in order to alleviate troubles in part, often leading to a new problem in other parts of the simulation - see penta-flyrant lists and airplane-units vs. rule-of-three and boots on the ground for examples.

5-10 minutes?

I typically peg a given Battle Round as about 6-20 seconds, given the fire rate on tank guns and the speed of troopers on the table (using Imperial Guard as a metric).

It's why Turn 1 "massive damage" games are so hilariously bad for narrative.

"Gavros-4 was a strategically critical Forge World in the Cadia sector, one of the last bastions standing alongside Agripinaa and Mordia against the boiling waves of the Cicatrix Maledictum.
Suddenly, alarms began blaring... the warp was encroaching again! Astropathic pleas went out, the Space Marines were mobilized... and the gates tore open.
Hundreds of daemons and their towering overlords spilled forth...

...and were annihilated in about nine seconds by the Forge World's skitarii defenders.
"WERE THAT I HAD GOTTEN FIRST TURN!" cried the arch-daemon, bumblebutt nurglegross, as the Galvanic Volley Fire stratagem evaporated him.

then the space marines showed up."

I think everyone should have "a chance" to win.
And logically they do - the Ork player could roll nothing but 1s.

The point is that the probabilities shouldn't be such that we get outcomes like this. If it was a genuine fluke then fine. Its a dice game, it happens. But it just isn't that unlikely - hence why we are seeing it happen so often.

I am torn.

On one hand, The drukhari player in this case did overcommit and did run a pure skew. Him failing to make the commitment paying off, by bad luck is not a problem as is the punishment recieved for it.

Or better, it wouldn't be a problem, if it weren't for the fact, as already pointed out, that specific type of list which also seems to be similar to admech lists, is heavily problematic by forcing such a commitment without really manouvering itself. Which is a problem of reach.

In general, i think it's fair to state that 40k HAS a lethality problem, the increased ammount of shots and effectiveness on all ranges even on the most basic troops is selfevident, without a lack of trade offs for mobility are but one exemple of a syndome that has ever taken ever faster rounds in a spiral of escalation of damage since bolter discipline.

The easy access to massed firepower isn't inherently the core issue though, neither is high lethality in general, insofar as there are possibilities to counter that firepower, especially by maneouvre, however for that type of manouvre the boards are too small and clogged. Also high lethality is less of an issue in systems that make the momentum more spread appart, aka AA f.e. . Now there's the issue on the other side of the spectrum for melee orientated armies, which honestly should exist but, with daemons being the most archetypal force for that playstyle. Further i don't think it is wrong to deny pure melee armies in such a fashion in order to facilitate more balanced forces.
However a lot of the meachnics to make melee units work, from delivery options not working to terrain being pretty much worthless now an increase in boardsize would needlessly penalise these either. It would also not turn back the clock on basically always in range flyers and LOS ignoring firepower which has become even more widespread. Once an obscurity now is pretty common for most factions to have atleast 1 option for it.

I would be curious to hear from Sean (he's probably ducked out of this thread by now, understandably) what his plan was for encountering such a list before the event, especially in his list building process (I need to dig up his list but someone mentioned it wasn't typical for Drukhari that usually has a lot of good AT options). Surely he knew that he might run into that list at some point (there were grumblings about it's strength prior to this and I have seen some locals practicing with variants).

Obviously going second vs this list is bad news (been on the receiving end myself) but obviously Sean's list lacked the necessary units to inflict reasonable casualties to a list of this type even when going first, so I'd be curious as to what drove his design in the list building stages. I really like how he often builds unusual aeldari lists and plays the living heck out of them, but it seems that he made a serious error in list design this time around.

 bullyboy wrote:
I would be curious to hear from Sean (he's probably ducked out of this thread by now, understandably) what his plan was for encountering such a list before the event, especially in his list building process (I need to dig up his list but someone mentioned it wasn't typical for Drukhari that usually has a lot of good AT options). Surely he knew that he might run into that list at some point (there were grumblings about it's strength prior to this and I have seen some locals practicing with variants).

Obviously going second vs this list is bad news (been on the receiving end myself) but obviously Sean's list lacked the necessary units to inflict reasonable casualties to a list of this type even when going first, so I'd be curious as to what drove his design in the list building stages. I really like how he often builds unusual aeldari lists and plays the living heck out of them, but it seems that he made a serious error in list design this time around.

Managed to find this which details the top 3 lists at the SoCal Open (this event) https://nightsatthegametable.com/socal-open-warhammer-40k-top-winners-and-lists/

To be fair, Sean's list wasn't a meme list filled with gretchen. His list was undefeated going into the finals and it had curb stomped through everything matched against it before that match.

It wasn't a meme list, but it was also one of the most glassy lists you can build in this game.

85/90 point venoms. Those things may have a -1 to be hit but are T5 6W. Even a basic intercessor has a 75% return against them! And they even kill additional models exploding.

Incubi are 16 points per T3 wound 3+ wound. (Intercessor return 52%)

The wyches while not in combat are t3 6++ for 12/14 points. (Intercessor return 70%)

Trueborn are 15 points for T3 4+. (Intercessor return 65%)

Mandrakes are 15 points per T3 5++ -1 to hit. (Intercessor return 49%) .

Even wracks which normally are tanky models, the way they are in this list are 13 ppm on average, for T4 6+ 5++. (Intercessor return 35%).

So again, I don't see an issue with this list taking 1800 points of damage when left fully exposed. ANY list would have been able to inflict AT THE VERY LEAST 1200 points of damage to it. Even a list simply spamming basic intercessors could have done that! And I'm counting only the shooting phase!
In this case on the other side there was an alpha strike list, so the damage was higher than normal, No issue with that.


This list is probably the squishiest list you can build in the game, and takes one of the best players around to use it effectively.
Obviously as soon as the game does not go in the direction this list wants, it turns into a train wreck. It is the very definition of high risk high reward list. This time it has run into its counter. It happens.

The game has lethality issues, but this game was not an example of those.

 Gadzilla666 wrote:

The question isn't should skew lists be able to win competitive games, it's whether or not any army should be able to remove 90% of another army in a single turn. Should any army have a 90% killing efficiency. This isn't specifically about Orks, other armies are capable of similar stunts, and gw knows it. That's why they've been covering their own tournament tables with LOS blocking terrain, because they know if something can be seen, it'll die. And now with the uptick of efficient LOS ignoring firepower and flyers, even that doesn't help.

It entirely depends on how often something like this happen. In 5th I had all 3 of my battlewagons killed by single lascannon shots, from 3 razorbacks. Then the bulk of the army (boyz and lootas) was deleted by anti infantry weapons, mostly blasts from the missile launchers of the 3x5 units of long fangs. 60+% of an army gone in turn 1 in terms of points, more than 80% in terms of models gone (only ghaz, big mek, biker nobz and like 10 boyz remaining) and I was bringing one of the most competitive lists for that period. Now single anti tank shots that instant kill a vehicle don't exist anymore, but even then losing all three heavy vehicles in one turn wasn't something that happened frequently, I was typically losing a battlewagon per turn in 5th.

If such ork Freeboota army can delete 900-1800 points of any army on regular basis then of course we have a problem. If it deletes the same amount of points vs an army it tailored and not even that often, than no, it's the usual overreaction. Proof is that it doesn't dominate the competitive scene. It's also important to note the nature of the ork list, is it something that the average player could expect to see frequently? Becuase if it does than yes, it needs to be addressed as soon as possible. But 4 planes are an extreme list, not many players are willing to invest that much (75$ per flyer) on a unit that will inevitably be nerfed at some point.


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 NH Gunsmith wrote:

A better example would be:

-Should players have a chance of winning competitive games if they take Tactical Marines or Intercessors and some Rhinos or Razerbacks?

-Should players have a chance of winning competitive games if they take a bunch of Boys and some Trukks or Buggies?

Maybe my examples weren't the best ones, but that drukhari list was a full melee one. Tacs with tanks or boyz with buggies would have decent shooting. Maybe imagine a list with only assault marines and rhinos. Say a SW list with close to no notable shooting but lots of wulfen, wolf guard terminators, blood claws and rhinos for example, which is also a very fluffy list. How would it play against anyone, not necessarily those orks?

A drukhari list with decent shooting would have had a fair chance against those Freeboota.