Chapter Tactics is a 40k podcast which focuses on promoting better tactical play and situational awareness across all variations of the game. Today Peteypab grabs Nick Nanavati, Val, and Sean to help cure his 40k funk. Also the gang covers hot topics like how to decide when you should drop your bad list, list building for competitive environments, getting over Tilt, and so much more!
Show Notes:
- Need to schedule a visit with the list doctor? Click here for Nick’s service.
- Head on over to 40kstats.com for more faction stats for all major ITC tournaments!
- Support us on Patreon, this month and get a chance to win a free Shadowspear Box Set!
- Click here for a link for information on downloading best coast pairings app where you can find lists for most of the events I mention.
- Check out the last episode of Chapter Tactics here. Or, click here for a link to a full archive of all of my episodes.
- Commercial music by Music by: www.bensound.com
- Intro by: Justin Mahar
I think end-of-mission scoring in some (not all ETC missions have it, it’s part of the mix) mission is key to have the result reflect the actual outcome of the battle.
Sure, there is playing cagey and to the mission.
But if one player has 1.800 points of the army left and the other person has a lone Warlock and a single Shining Spear on his last wound, but “wins” because of the progressive scoring-bureaucracy of the mission, that’s just literally the definition of a crap mission design.
What? Winning by having only 1 model left is an amazing feeling. Heck, even losing like that is great, IMO
Battles are about accomplishing objectives, not counting who’s alive at the end. If your 1,800 points couldn’t get the job done they don’t deserve to win.
Also, even GW is of this opinion – they removed tabling as a victory condition in CA…
Not at all, really. If one person plays to the mission and achieves that goal and wins despite getting drubbed that’s awesome! It’s more the definition of poor play on the person’s part that didn’t play to the mission.
And progressive scoring forces you to come out and play the game. End of game scoring often results in: go second, hide and wait till the last turn, jump on objectives. That’s not fun at all, IMO.
Sure the battle is about the objectives from a game design perspective.
But if the mission’s objectives you need to achieve to win are widely out of whack and “playing to the mission” is a bureaucratic exercise too far removed from a “battle” in the background, it’s a shit mission. Plain and simple.
Progressive objective scoring reflects what happens over the course of the battle, ensuring that all of the turns of the game are equally important.
End-game scoring means that only one turn of the game is important. It tends to heavily favor armies that want to table the opponent, or who delay and do nothing for 4-5 turns and then “steal” the objectives on the final turn.
I get that. Not saying there doesn’t need to be a solution for it.
But a gamey approach where an army that essentially refuses to engage the opponent in the game and just wins through the mission-admin is just sidestepping the entire point of playing.
It’s proverbially throwing out the baby with the bathwater. Just because people are scared of getting tabled (in a way that’s meaningful for the end-result), the win-condition shouldn’t so far decoupled from the actual game (which is 99% around hit rolls, wound rolls, positioning to get hit rolls and wound rolls, etc..).
You don’t change the win-conditions of chess to some progressive scoring of where the pawns stand at different points of the game because you think winning by losing the king is too harsh.
What makes your “real” measurement of the game better than ITC’s? You say the game revolves around hit rolls, wound rolls, and all that, but does it? I would argue that even in past editions, before ITC (or anything like it) existed, the game was largely won by positioning on the field, and has been for a long time now.
We’re not playing chess. If your complaint is that ITC changes the win conditions of the game… well, so do ETC and almost all other tournament formats. You still haven’t presented a cogent argument as to why ITC is worse. You say players are gaming the system? Gaming the system is what we _do_. That’s what competitive play is about- finding systems and exploiting them. If you want your games to be all about killing models and nothing else… hey, great, more power to you, you can go back to playing Victory Points like in 4E. But I don’t think that is what most players are looking for.
Here’s my pro tip how to never tilt: just don’t lose 🙂
Hey, it works for me, OK?
Every time I go to the 2nd hand store for Tau it’s only Ethereals. Womp womp
Can you link to Knights of the Game Table Pro that Nick was talking about?
I found the normal Knights of the Game Table that is 97 a year to sign up for, but did not see the exclusive account that Nick recommended where he gives weekly advice.
Hey DeeJay! All taken care of.
So, how many Patreons are required to get uncle Val down to Florida for the Battle for the Peak in May?
If we hit 200 by then we’ll talk.
Can we please stop pointing to a single army going 5/1 as proving competitiveness? Reece and Pablo keep banging this drum that if you keep at it and believe that you can make a unit/army work it’ll work. You just have to beliiieeeeve! Pros keep telling you over and over that it just doesn’t work like that… that is unless your goal is to not to go undefeated.
Not trying to be a negative Nancy, I love this podcast and all you guys are great to listen to but man it gets tiring to hear things like GK are viable, or Necrons are competitive because they went 5/1. That’s true only when they dodge a pro running an actually competitive list.
No one has said GK are viable- the opposite, in fact.
Necrons have actually had a lot more success than just the 5-1 at LVO as of late; I mean, I don’t believe they’ve won any GT-level tournaments, but they have actually seen a decent number of top8 finishes at various events, enough that I think completely dismissing them is a mistake. They certainly are not part of the upper tier of competitive play, but they are no longer so weak that you can simply laugh your way through a matchup with them.
(Also GK might actually be viable. Keep an eye out the next couple of months, I know some legit good players who have been testing out GK armies- admittedly with the usual other Imperial elements- for actual tournaments. And that;s even ignoring Vigilus 2 and anything that may be in there.)
Sure, and the game is well balanced now, no doubt about it. It’s just funny to try to convince people that if you really like it you can make it work (though admittedly Pablo found some fault in his snowflake unit attraction this episode)
Can’t wait for some hot GK action if someone can make it work, or new rules come out.