Here are the official results, and the ITC overall rankings after the BAO! And of course, here are the ITC army rankings after the BAO!
What a fun event, it ran incredibly smoothly, we had very few issues, handed out tons of prizes and in general, had a great time.
Super Heavy Lords of War
The big question going in was: how are LoW going to impact tournament play? I think the answer is that they fit in really well. I am sure some folks got caught off guard by them if they had not played them before, and a few folks were having a rough day due to some Stomp attacks, but in general terms, they were not overpowering. That said, we did limit some of the crazier LoW, but, we will run an exit poll to see how folks feel about opening it up some more. I think they went fine and in our test games we really enjoyed using them.
Blending in Maelstrom of War Missions
It seemed to be very well received. Most folks I talked to said they really enjoyed the dynamic nature of the missions with points scored every turn. Again, we will wait and see how the exit poll goes, but, it seems that folks really liked them.
Round Length
It seemed like most games were finishing in the 2 hour and 45 minute time length. Some didn’t, but in general terms games seemed to conclude naturally. 1850pts in that length of time is a good fit.
Good Times!
In general, it seemed like everyone had a blast which is the most important goal. Folks were going out, having dinner and beers together, the venue was very nice, and we had a LOT of first time tournament goers which is always music to my ears. I love that as it means someone gave a tournament a shot and had a good time, as that is the future of what we do and we love sharing something we love with other people.
In general, the event was a big win for us and we had fun running it. I am totally wiped out or I would write more, I just can’t really think straight right now, lol! More to come. For now, pictures!
And some general event pictures!
THAT IS MY SEXY FACE
lol!
Dude so sexy Geoffrey, so sexy. My panties are sopping wet.
The beer I gave, err, paid Brian, made it into yer pix.
😉
Love the flying ork Rhino, it looks just as aerodynamic as the Imperial flyers.
haha, I look like I have been caught drunkenly stealing 3rd Ren Man.
Great event guys; thanks to my opponents for some fun and challenging games!
You did. You robbed me with that Cryptek getting back up to take the relic 😉 Curse you, gadget!!!
Definitely some funny pics in there.
Geoff sportin’ the Murderous Chipmunk look; very fetching. Handsome devil.
What was the Deathstar count like? did seer councils wreck face all day again?
Yeah, deathstars are dead.
Adam Gati took 2nd best general with a very very hard to kill unit of wraithblades, but I say if he’s taking wraithblades, that’s not much at all like the Seer/screamer stars of old.
Those wraithblades were tough (even without invis).
Do you happen to have the particulars on that unit of Wraithblades?
I love how they look and I’m curious about how he made them work.
I have had units of 10 wraith-guard with 2 spirit-seers plus Eldrad. Combination include Invisible Re-roll 2+/4+ that run d6+3 also restoring wound to other characters and monstrous creatures.
If use this formation in combination with a couple of knights and a couple of wave-serpents you will lose friends fast in friendly games as you pummel every thing in there wake…….lacks mobility in tactical objective games but then again that is what the wraith-knights, wave-serpents and jet bikes are for
Thanks friend.
That’s definitely nasty.
I saw two non-standard deathstars, and I have to say they are very mission dependent.
I faced Ahrimann + Balestar sorc with a bunch of Chaos Termis in a relic mission and invis termis with force weapons made for a bloody battle with one 1000 son left holding the relic.
I also face a Tau-star thing with Shadowun and Farsight in a blob with a buff-suit, some crisis guys and drones and that didn’t feel as effective because it couldn’t advance (did fine against my bugs though 😉
All in all, I think that unless your deathstar has some good back-up or is HIGHLY mobile, it isn’t top tier in this format.
I felt LoW were similar, at least those which were allowed. Nice, but you better have the right supporting cast.
I hope you had a great time!
Only deathstar that made it to the top was invincible wraithblades.
Let’s see some winning army lists!
I posted a load of pictures from the BAO!
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.600571600062164.1073741843.150475265071802&type=1
Great having you, Carlos!
Did someone (Israel?) really take an Orca?
of coarse he did!
haha why! lols?
To do something different! I thought it was awesome!
I think the big reason you didn’t see a lot of deathstars is the nerf the BAO had to 2++ rerollable saves.
Lol, Reeee love the pic you used of me. You crack me up. Thanks again for running such an awesome event.
Haha, yeah, awesome picture! Had to use it =)
Wtf focus…
If I had not been a moron and reported my 6th round points wrong, I’d have had top CSM! Doh!
Moving up to 11th place from 36th feels nice though! Thanks for fixing my dumb mistake guys!
Good thing you don’t run a store and need to count the books or anything! 😛
Good work though!
He has someone else to do that for him. 🙂
I never thought LoW would be an issue with your restrictions, probably with the list you gave and the negatives (+1 to sieze and victory points for wounds/HPs) I think in most cases they could have hurt armies taking them.
I still think at low point games they can make really dull games, as if you dont have the tools to deal with an elite LoW it is boring.
Its going to be tough for tournaments to maintain restrictions on which units can be taken and which cant and with the new LoW characters in codexes makes it even tougher.
I wish GW had copied FW with 30k rules on LoW – 25% of army points can be spent on them. It feels correctly thought out.
I thought they’d have done the 25% as well, but the problem is that people seem to play bigger games of 30k than they do of 40k (since everything is so many points) and they all have access to the same super heavies, so it’s super easy to write a rule like that. In 40k, saying 25% would limit the armies that could take a super heavy at certain point values to a very restricted set of armies, which kind of gives an advantage to armies that have access to the inexpensive super heavies. It’s all tricky to balance, so I think that the list Reece came up with was the best solution.
Had a great time at the event, but a couple after-action notes:
-The Maelstrom stuff was neat and I think added a very different dimension to things, but some of them feel like they could use some tweaking. The table for Big Guns, for example, is very easy to roll lopsided on (since the “hold your own” and “hold the enemy’s results are distinct) and thus it often just comes down to a matter of who rolled better on the table- not exactly something that you want to encourage. I much preferred the Scouring version where it was “hold either one of these objectives” instead, since it gave you more decisions and options in that regard. The “hold your own deployment zone/get in the enemy’s zone” were also consistently annoying to see crop up, but I think those are generally not as problematic. All in all, though, they were pretty interesting and I think I like having them as a part of the game.
-Round length was pretty generous, I thought; only one of my games had to end because of time (and even then we got to turn 6, so it wasn’t really that bad.) I think it was pretty fine in that respect.
-Never actually played any of the superheavies, but I didn’t really hear anyone complaining about them. There’s probably even one or two others you could add to the list safely.
-The FAQ changes were perhaps my biggest complaint with things. Most of the stuff in the FAQ was perfectly fine, even good- it clears up a lot of changes and solves some of the awkward rules issues. However, it also did something that I am not at all a fan of in a significant number of cases- it changed the rules for no obvious reason. Stuff like being able to fire two guns on Overwatch, blasts not hitting FMCs, Sweep Attack not hitting air targets, and lots and lots of other stuff are all outright changes or reversals of the rules and I don’t really feel that sort of thing is appropriate for a FAQ; it’s one thing to resolve an unclear rule, another entirely to alter the rules of the game simply to suit your preferences. Having to change stuff like multiple detachments, 2+ rerollables, etc, is understandable- if you don’t fix those, the game just isn’t really playable on a tournament level- but none of the other rules changes in the FAQ seem necessary for game balance; they strike me as very arbitrary.
If there’s a rationale behind this, I think it would be worthy of an article because making those sorts of changes isn’t a trivial matter, and if you’re trying to push the ITC as part of a package with the Frontline mission system and whatnot to get some consensus amongst tournaments (which I believe is a good thing, I’ll note) you really need to make a strong case for why you’re making those alterations. I found it especially vexing because essentially nothing was said about the matter, so it caught me rather off-guard.
Just Curious… Why wasn’t the lord of skulls allowed? It wasn’t on the list of allowed LoW.
One of their ban criteria was anything that can take cover ignoring AP3 or better. The lord of skulls has access to one.
Not sure that is entirely true. The Brass Scorpion (which was allowed) fires a str 10 ap 1 ignores cover large blast.
It had to be a weapon larger than a 5″ blast or flamer template.
I had a great time, but I would have liked to see some way to understand my opponent’s lists better-
I use Army builder, but I typically got a one page sheet of paper with the name of the unit, no upgrades specified, and a point cost. Some people didn’t even have their codex or the Forgeworld reference.
My opponents were very sporting, but especially on Forgeworld stuff, I felt I had to memorize quite a few things during set-up! Of course I also used Living Artillery and didn’t print out the formation rule, so I understand the difficulties. But something like the Initiative value, weapon skill, number of attacks of an model should be there clear in black and white. I know I constantly remember my bugs from last edition with regards to some of those minor changes.