Hello friends and enemies, and welcome to a very special Snowflake Day episode of In the Finest Hour- a podcast about competitive 40K that aims to bring you tips and strategies you can use, in about an hour.
Snowflake Jake has brought us all a wondrous gift on this Snowflake Day, an extra-special start to our new episode series on analyzing and understanding the many different mission formats out there. We’re starting with what is the most common format for west coast USA players, the ITC Champions set- seems appropriate for our first post to Frontline Gaming!
In the first half of the episode we talk mostly about the primary missions and how they should affect your list design; we also talk about objective placement and how different deployment types can affect each of the missions. And as promised in the podcast, here are the deployment maps and how they interact with the different missions. (Note: I did not include mission #2 or mission #4 here, as they have player-deployed objectives and thus will vary from game to game.)
In the second half of the episode, we go over the eleven secondary missions and why you might want to pick each of them- and why you might not. We discuss how truly, utterly awful Ground Control is, why a lot of people default to Old School when they shouldn’t, the relative merits of Recon versus Behind Enemy Lines, and much more.
Our sponsor this week is the Charityhammer 40K Charity Stream– a forty-eight hour marathon where some of the best players in the Pacific Northwest and the USA as a whole will be playing continuous games, doing interviews, and generally showcasing their skills to benefit the Child’s Play charity. The stream will be live January 4th, 5th, and 6th, and if you miss it (or want to rewatch) it will be available after the fact for a small fee. With two streams running, it’s a great way to see top players in action and prepare yourself for the LVO meta.
This episode also marks the beginning of our Patreon service as well as the attached Discord servers and Facebook group- for a small monthly donation, you can join our growing group of fans and chat personally with them as well as the hosts of the podcast about lists, meta, and more.
Our music is courtesy of Dankmus and our art thanks to Rylan Woodrow (Rylan Woodrow on Facebook). If you’ve enjoyed this episode, please subscribe and/or review us through your podcast app of choice, like our Facebook page, or share our content with your friends.
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Very informative episode! One quick tip I would lower the intro music at the end as AP starts the introduction. It was hard to hear him over the intro music (which I personally enjoy).
Also, the deployment map graphics above are something I never knew I wanted. But having those visuals for myself to reference really helps a lot.
Though I agree with you guys about ground control, in that it is a weaker mission it certainly has uses and I would only take it in ITC missions 1 and 6 (with 1 being the most relevant since some tournaments don’t even have 6 rounds). If I feel like I can’t/don’t kill my opponent’s units reliably I like ground control with Recon. As that gives me something to do other then pointlessly shoot at unkillable units. It works especially well if you know your opponent wants to go first, because of how much better it is if you go second.
Also, I like ground control over Recon or BEL if I am playing a game where I want to turtle up against an army with superior firepower.
I personally think the weakest mission is Old School. Like Josh was alluding to, it feels like the default mission that people pick and is over valued. I just feel like ground control can more reliably get me 4 points, whereas Old School almost always feels like just 2-3 points.
Will look into the music- we’re still doing a lot of tweaking in the editing department, so nothing is completely set in stone yet.
And yeah, the graphics are a pretty genius little tool. Big thanks to Shaylynn for those.
I have personally only seen anyone take Ground Control a small handful of times, and of those times I have never seen anyone score more than two points for it. With Recon and Behind Enemy Lines already options, I just don’t feel there are any matchups where killing enemy models is so hard that you’ll want _three_ positional objectives.
I generally find Old School to be quite easy to score points off of, but then I also play very kill-heavy lists such as Eldar or Tau where I am essentially guaranteed a bare minimum of two points off it and more typically will get 3-4.
Hey, just want to say I have tuned in a week or two ago and have found the podcasts good. Concise and to point.
Whilst I don’t always agree with Sean’s opinions, I do like how you and your co-casters break down topics in a quite logical manner.
Cool stuff going on in the podcast area between this, chapter tactics and best in faction. I also like TFG radio for their off topic rants in-between good 40k chat.
Keep up the good work all.
^ this guy knows which podcasts to listen to.
PS: my exact list
Glad you’re enjoying things- we’ve got a lot more content planned for the future, including hopefully some crossover episodes at some point.
If you have topics you’d like to hear about in particular we’re always open to ideas, so feel free to email us (inthefinesthour@gmail.com), message us on Facebook, or leave a comment here.
Flash cards are definitely one good solution for keeping track of secondaries. I personally made this chart which might be helpful for some as well:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1g66YSQWyBg_9EepHhJiz2Yg3ObR06xDIWsu81tEEwxw/edit?usp=sharing