Chapter Tactics is a 40k podcast which focuses on promoting better tactical play and situational awareness across all variations of the game. Today Brandon, Sean, and Pablo get a hold of Reece and figure out what the best deployments and strategies you can do to take advantage of the terrain on the top 100 LVO tables. The gang also gives you a crash course on LVO ITC terrain and how to use it effectively on the tabletop.
Show Notes:
- Here is the link to the images discussed on the podcast! https://frontlinegaming.org/2020/01/11/lvo-40k-champs-announcement/
- 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 receive random stuff from us!
- 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 our episodes.
- Check out Skari on Skaredcast, for excellent 40k tactics videos and Monday Meta analysis.
- Commercial music by: www.bensound.com
- Intro by: Justin Mahar
Well, you cannot blame people for speculating that there is some terrain-beta testing, when terrain is played so differently simultaneously to GW rules writers observing “who people really play the game”.
Hills being (emphatically by Brandon) considered terrain is a good example and the exact opposite of the rulebook (p. 251) which literally states that hills are not considered terrain, thus it’s a terrain-specific LVO ruling that does change a lot of rules-interactions: Not just “cover”, but also many of the new terrain-tied rules released recently: e.g. GSC being able to “cloud of flies” if in/on terrain, new Raven Guard getting -1 to hit in/on terrain, new Tyranid stratagems providing bonuses to charge in/on terrain, etc.., etc.. , none of which would be applicable to models in/on terrain under normal rules (as they currently stand).
It’s more the rampant conspiracy theories that made me laugh. I am sure if there are some cool ideas and such that come up and are noticed they may find themselves into the official game (has hapenned many times before) but it’s not an intentional thing.
Finally finished the episode.
Interesting discussion on seize the initiative and deployment styles. I think it’s important to note that ITC keeping the 2018-style alternating deployment is a bit of the relic here. Chapter Approved missions from the CA 2018 did away with them, most ETC-style variant tournament formats adopted the deploy everything for older missions too, if they use them, and CA 2019, in updating some very old missions, also moved them to deploy everything.
A fairly common Europe houserule as European GTs adopt ITC appears to be to change all ITC missions to “deploy everything” (e.g. the Alliance GTs in the Netherlands), mostly because a lot of the (slightly) more casual European players (e.g. those not traveling internationally for tournaments) haven’t played a game with alternating deployment in often 2+ years.
Would be interesting to know if ITC plans to keep alternating deployment around for another season (which may or may not encourage non-USA/UK itc events to pick it up again)?
Also regarding lower points, I’ve been wondering that for a while. While Warhammer World will move their main GTs up to 2000 points again, they did a few tournaments with 1000 points on 4″ by 4″ tables and something like 90 minute rounds. If (If !) the aim is to move to a more streamable, e-sports-esque competitive scene, going somewhere along that route would strike me (at least in theory) as the way to go.
Not only could you do a 6-round GT on a single day and a 10 or 11 round super-Major on a 2-day weekend comfortably, you’d also have much shorter rounds, the camera being in closer to a smaller table, things resolving quicker for the audience watching streams, etc.. .
I much prefer the all or nothing deployment you all are using in Europe/the UK without seize. Feels far more skill based.
As I have related numerous times in the past, I did once go to a 1k tournament on 4×4′ tables and it was a blast. I really enjoyed it. Quite different than “normal” 40k but it was a lot of fun and we got through a 6 round event in a day.
I really hope we get a vote to remove the sieze roll from ITC missions this upcoming season. I hate the mechanic.
In alternating-deployment missions, it’s irrelevant because you roll to see who has first turn, and then you immediately roll a second time to see if you _meant it_.
It’s much more punishing in deploy-all missions and while I see the reason it’s in the game, it often creates a bad play experience.
I agree, Jim. I hate seize and enjoyed very much playing without it at LGT.
Are you going to allow us to do a vote/feedback on it like we did last year on missions/the Rulespack?
I’m pretty confused why monsters shouldn’t be able to hide just in terms of balance(throwing aside stuff like “if monsters can hide, so can knights, etc”).
Who are these monsters that ever win anything even semi-consistently? Mortarion did OK in PTT because the player wrote his list to play on the same terrain layout. TJ did OK with Magnus and now just switched to possesed “because they’re just better”. Then what do we have left: chaos daemon monsters all pretty much suck even after being dropped 100pts, tyranid monsters are about as bad. Heck, the only moster that ever really won anything semi-consistently is… the Riptide.
From what I’ve observed, the only way non shooty monsters become playable in top tier competitive play, is IF they can hide.
Trying to comp. the game with ever-escalating terrain and LoS-houserules and magic boxes isn’t sustainable in the long term, IMO.
Even more so if it skews the perception in army strength of units and armies. GSC is a good example. The army had a good-to-even-slightly-too-strong performance in ITC/Nova over the summer, but barely a 40% win-rate in ETC/GW-Missions & terrain, but got nerfed on the basis of the army’s performance with Nova-Ls, Magic Boxes and LoS-blocking. Now the army is “around-ok” with a 46ish% win-rate in ITC, but an abysmal 30% in ETC/book missions.
I think the more elegant way would be going back to more normal, “White Dwarf Bat Rap” / Garage Hammer terrain, but comp.overperforming (currently mostly shooty) stuff directly, instead of trying to do it all clumsily, indirectly through terrain-escalation.
I’m not really looking for a terrain based solution. I’m just confused as to why this thought exists to begin with. Monsters are one of the worst type of unit in the game, because the only consistent monster is the one that most people don’t know is a monster (Riptide).
Like Reece said: “If you can hide Motarion, he will dominate”. Really? Taking into account the evidence, I’d personaly go with “If you can hide Motarion, he can be competitive if a very good player plays him but he still probably won’t win a big tournament”.