Signals From the Frontline Episode 245

signals from the Frontline

 

Reece and Frankie discuss 7th Edition as well as the KublaCon tournament.

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Reece Robbins President
Co-founder of Frontline Gaming, and creator of the ITC, Reece Robbins has been a pillar of the tabletop community for over two decades. From developing Blood Throne to launching industry-leading hobby products and major events like the LVO, his career is defined by innovation and a lifelong passion for gaming since the 80s. Today, he remains a very active community organizer and business leader dedicated to the growth of the hobby.

51 thoughts on “Signals From the Frontline Episode 245”

  1. Fair assessment i think. Unbound will be so awesome if used responsibly (For casual play) but at a tournament scale there will have to be concessions, especially with regards to FOC and the Psychic phase.

  2. What does everyone think of the Gork/Morkanauts now that all of the stats, upgrades and points costs are out. I think it’s a waste of points for 230/245 stock. A real shame that GW can’t learn from their own mistakes: melee attacks on 6″ move walkers are not worth what you think they are.

  3. I still think you guys are far overstating the effectiveness of psyker spam.

    Yes the warlock can throw 10 dice at his power, then probably perils and you wont get that power again. I’d let a 2++ star have it’s save for 1 turn, then it’s dead.

    Also, if the Daemon Factory is so OP, why didn’t frankie beat that non-competive marine list in the battle report you posted? It looked like the terrain was in favor of the Daemons, and Frankie had a very hot first two turns with casting, and the best he could do is pull off a tie.

    1. You use the Warlocks for generating warp charge and they only throw two dice at any given power. Easy peasy.

      And Frankie lost because he drew a hand of cards which he couldn’t possibly score most of them, and Josh drew two cards that allowed him to score his own objective. It was totally random.

      1. 2 dice at a power that if you fail, nobody in that unit can attempt again? That’s not exactly reliable.

        In the video Frankie said that he felt pretty good about the objectives he scored though. But yeah, I do like the idea of discarding impossible to score objectives, for the most part.

        1. Fair, psychic powers have been toned down in that regard, which is cool it needed to be, but the Summoning Spam is bullshit, we’ve tried it out a few times and it is dumb. Plus it takes too long to play the game that way. It doesn’t work for tournaments.

  4. Sounds like a BAO-style d66 chart in the tourney-pack could be a good option to reign in the controls a bit. Some common sense wording changes would help I think if you were to use the maelstrom missions. For example “scout the skies” might also include ‘a unit entirely composed of models with the skimmer, jet bike, jump, or jet pack special rules’ . Just typing out loud here 🙂

    I think custom d66 charts will be a good way for a TO to put his/her print on the game. (or continue to utilize any of the popular 6e mission styles)

    1. Yeah, maybe I need to get in a few games with the mission cards, but scoring points throughout the game, where 1/2 of the cards are related to controlling objectives, just sounds far more interesting of a game than just waiting for turn 5 contests to lose a game to eldar again.

    2. Yeah, I was thinking something similar…maybe like there are lets say 36 mission cards for your tourney. (could be more or less based on the number of rounds…im just going with the standard pack for now).

      You get to choose which ones (unlimited?) you’re going to use each match during deployment or something…when you turn your results in after each game/round you mark witch ‘cards’ you used to score.

      The trick might be that you can only ever use any given card once throughout the tourney. Heck, maybe each player gets a “Sabotaged” mission card that they can use X number of times that cancels a mission card being tallied?

      1. I do like the idea of discarding cards that are impossible to score, I just don’t like the idea that you could build a list that makes certain objectives impossible to score for the sake of not having to worry about as many objectives (i.e. tyranid army with no characters so you don’t need to bother with the winning a challenge objectives).

    3. Chosen of Khorne

      You could alter it so that you can only “play” one mission card per turn, with the ability to discard one unused card per turn, and just layer these vp on top of the normal BAO missions similar to first blood, line breaker, etc. this dilutes the advantage of first blood and first turn by giving other avenues for vp, and makes it so that if you draw a bad hand, you aren’t outscored by too much before you can replace some of your cards. Also adds a strategic decision on whether to play a card like destroying units in assault immediately when you do it to draw another card, or try to hold it for a few turns to line up killing 3 units in assault in the same turn for a chance for additional vp.

  5. In terms of the Maelstrom of War missions what about the following change:

    Only one hand of cards is used with both players having access to it. If neither player is able to score any of the cards (no psyker/building/flyer etc) replace them immediately.

    Seems like it would be a fun game of trying to grab them before your opponent can.

    1. Yep biggest changes I’ve seen:

      Daemon factory is a go: Horrors/Heralds etc get access to summoning

      Heldrake weapon is Hull mounted measured from the Dragon’s mouth.

      Blood Angels Space Wolves and Orks lost their codex powers and the Runic Weapon is now just +1 to DTW.

      1. DankrobbeHowsr

        They lost Jaws but their runic weapon still works. The line that’s replaced by the DtW bonus is the 3rd sentence, which makes it a Force weapon. The 4th sentence is the nullify part.

      1. I even managed to win my last game without Fortune, after Grant stole away my Eldar juju by getting Fortune on his first roll in his last game! 😉

  6. Hugz4Genestealers

    I am so stoked for Guardian Cup this weekend! Can’t wait to meet the almighty Reece Robbins, and maybe get a little payback on the greatest 40k player in the world while I’m at it! Oh, and Geoff too I guess.

  7. For the maelstrom missions (cards) obvious a bad hand or a mega fast assaulting army (pushing opponents back) can make it unfun. I was thinking why didnt they have it so you start scoring from turn 3 onwards? that way you have time to discard poor cards and such.

  8. You are off base to limit warp charge at this stage.

    It hasn’t really caught on yet, but it’s not about death stars, or summoning spam or any of the headline grabbing stuff yet.

    Objective Secured renders them all less effective than they appear at first. This is fifth edition all over again.

    Here are the power builds you need to really worry about:

    Raven Guard Rhino Rush Tactical Spam

    Drop Pod Tacticals in Iron Hands, Ultramarines or Imperial Fists

    Grey Knights with Coteaz and Razorspam henchmen

    Necrons in Ghost Arks

    Wave Serpent Spam (Extra dangerous because they can beat the others on kill points.)

    You can’t kill all the scoring in those armies very easily, and you can’t contest objectives without speedy, durable, reliable scoring of your own.

      1. Building a solid army is about objective secured transports that are tough to remove either through quantity or quality since they are tougher to remove.

          1. Not as much since killing the synapse is easier than killing 18 combat squadded tacticals and their horse-less carriages, or six Wave Serpents jinking with holo fields.

        1. Massive Dynamic

          I think your right. Fire warriors in Devil Fish just got a whole lot more viable to add to my Enclave. Scoring Devil Fish that dont need line of sight with SMS and D-pods and small scoring fire warriors will compliment my Crisis army well. 2 units in transports is 4 extra objective secured units

    1. Oh, no worries, we have been talking about troops spam. We looked at the rules and immediately saw Drop Pod Marines as crazy good. We just haven’t had a chance to look at it yet in a video.

      As for psykers, we aren’t saying limiting warp charge is THE answer, but that something needs to be done.

  9. I think you guys should try to up the risk in the equation for psykers aiming to spam dice at a power. Make perils cause a failed power instead. And/Or make it easier to take serious damage when suffering a perils. Perhaps suffer a perils roll for every additional 6 past your first 6 (3 6’s leads to 2 rolls on the perils table, 4 6’s leads to 3 rolls, etc). Also…invisibility…yea…..maybe make that ML3 or 4 in addition to either or of my suggestions.

    I’d like to see some battle reports of the old missions straight up with the new rules though (none of the BAO or w/e stuff!). I have a feeling the new scoring options will really change up how that all plays out.

    I had fun when I played with the maelstrom cards with my friend but I see how it can get one sided. The idea of the cards is to make your army be very flexible so when you and your opponent have good cards (ie that can be achieved reasonably) it makes for a VERY tactical game (as ours ended up being). I love the idea but i see how it can be poor game play, maybe make some new cards and use a mulligan system for your starting hand.

  10. Perhaps conjuration powers should not be permitted at all in tournament play. I also think we need to look at how deny the witch became exponentially more difficult for warp charge 2 or 3 spells. The increased risk of perils is also largely offset by the fact that a third of the results on the chart are harmless or beneficial. I would like to see negative modifiers on the perils role for each spell level above 1. If you just ban conjuration you will fix 90 percent of the issues.

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