Show Notes
5-15-15
Watch the live show, here, at 11am PST!
Intro
- Follow us on Twitter, Facebook, Twitch, and YouTube! Join our Forums, too! If you would like to be a guest on the show, email Reece at Contact@FrontlineGaming.org
- We sell tabletop games and supplies at 20% off! Hit us up for your next gaming order at Orders@FrontlineGaming.org or visit our webstore at FrontlineGaming.org.
News
- BAO 40k Champs is about to sell out! Only 19 tickets left as of the time the notes for the show were written.
- Wargames Con chugging right along! be sure to grab your tickets for an awesome time down in Austin. We’ve got a ton of great players coming for every system.
- Our 25% off pre-order special is still going for the AdMech Robots! They are some really awesome models.
- Big Nasty B’s raffle, check out Life After the Cover Save for more information.
- Found a cool Web Comic, Wolf and Sister, if you want to check out some fun and well done 40k fan fiction.
- Game Craft releases a bad ass 6mm terrain kit, the Brandenburg Gate.
- An intrepid gamer out there painted up the Calidus assassin as lady Deadpool! Well done sir, well done.
- Clockwork Goblin shows off some pics of one of their walkers painted and it looks really cool!
- FW releases a teaser video for the new HH book V, Tempest! Looks great. Also, Roboute! He looks really cool.
- DzC, in reaction to community feedback, is altering their ongoing campaign to make it more fun.
Upcoming ITC Events
- Imperial Knight ruling for the ITC!
- We changed ITC tertiary mission point: King of the Hill, to read that whichever player has the most units within 6″ of the middle point of the board gets the point, instead of using the old victory points system.
- And Books Too ITC Opener, Lafayette, LA, May 16th, 2015
- Scorched Earth Open, Peoria, AZ, May 16, 2015
- Bring the Pain, Gamer’s Paradise, Prairisville, LA, May 17, 2015
- Sector LV702 ITC, Power 9 Games, Las Vegas, NV, May 23, 2015
- KublaCon Golden Gargant, Hyatt Regency, SFO, CA, May 24th, 2015
- Battle for Mobile Bay, Mobile, AL, 2015
- Huzzah Hobbies Mat RTT, Ashburn, VA, May 23rd
- Clutch City Grand Tournament, Houston, TX, May 23-24, 2015
- Guardian Cup 8, Portland, OR, May 23-24, 2015
- Summer Kick Off Tournament, Paladins Game Castle, Bakersfield, CA, May 25, 2015
Rumors: The Rumor Section is gathered from the web and is not in any way information we receive from any manufacturer nor is it necessarily accurate. This section of the podcast is intended for entertainment purposes only.
- 1. Empire Remmanents: Mainly humans, with some dwarfs, ogres, and vampires. Humans units tend towards elite holy warriors (focus on priests, Knights, and witch hunters). The dwarves are mainly steampunk flavored, some of which bleeds into the rest of the faction. Vampires tend towards the human aesthetic, ogres have elements of both.
2. Chaos: all three chaos armies mixed together.
The warriors/humans have the same general design as now, except more obvious demonic gifts. Winged units of warriors was mentioned as an example.
Beastmen will come in more flavors, for example reptilian and avian variations. Also a variety of more animalistic units.
3. Orks/Goblins: More or less the same. They get ogres as per end times.
Also, possible mention of dwarf slaves either as units or as justifcation for some steampunk elements in the army. So possibly a bit more 40kification of the army overall, including more squigs.
4. Skaven: two major changes. First, more warptech, notably more apparent in modeling if not in rules.
Second, lizardmen slaves apparently bound using magic/warptech and mutated.
5. Undead: End times undead. More feral in feel. Beyond that, nothing.
6. Elves: End times elves, slightly more unified in appearence, takes cues from all 3 armies. Nothing much else known.
The last two are possibly due to ignorance rather than an actual lack of changes.
I don’t know if any of this is really new besides a couple orc and skaven bits, some of it I read in the round up already but I just put it all down. - Kataphron Battle Servitors rumors:
- – they can’t run
– can shoot up to 2 weapons
– count as stanionary when shooting heavy or salvo weapons even after moving
– may charge even after firing assault, heavy or salvo weapons - Cognis-Flamer
if this weapon is used as defensive Fire (it can be used for defensive Fire) it will automatic do 3 Wounds instant of W3
Torisionskannone
if the Torsion Weapons make a wound, you have to roll a d3 dice for the wound, on non vehicle models it makes d3 wounds and on Vehicles it make d3 hull damageHydraulic Claw – Iron hold
double you strange to max of 10 with punch of 2
You hit with your normal initiative of 3Heavy Combatservitor rule
you can fire up twice a weapon even if you move
But you can’t runYou can take up to 9 models, so you will have a troop of max 12 models
via Cedric Dupont in the Comment Section
Translation of the Equipment’s french rules :
Kataphron Assault Armor : save 3+
Kataphron Half-Armor : Save 4+
Arc Claw : Melee, S+1, AP5, Haywire
Hydraulic Claw : Melee, S+2, Unwielddy, At the end of the assault phase, you can do an additional attack with Strenght X2 (max S10)
Cognis Flamer : template S4 AP5 Assault, when used at overwatch, 3 hits instead of 1D3
Heavy Arc Rifle : 36″ S6 AP5 heavy 2 Haywire
Heavy Grav Cannon : 30″, F*, AP2, Salvo 4/6 Concussive Grav
Phosphor Blaster : 24″, S5, AP4, Rapid Fire, Luminagen : a unit wich take a damage or lost a wound by these munitions, take a -1 cover save penalty till the end of the phase. When a unit charge this target, they can reroll their Charge roll
Plasma Culverin : 24″, S7, AP2, Heavy 2, Blast, Gets hot.
Torsion Cannon : 24″, S8, AP1,” heavy 1, 1 Penetrating hit = 1D3 HP lost. 1 wound = 1D3 wound lost. (After Succesfull wound/hit and save failed) - the detachment for cult mechanicus gives you a reroll for warlord traits and to reuse a canticle of omnissiah once per game.
the detachment allows for a lot of the new kataphron units with up to 8 troop choices! thats going to be a crap load of shooting.
it looks something like this
compulsory 1 hq and 2 troops
optional 6 troops, 4 elites, 2 heavy support, and 1 fortification - Space Marines are getting command variants of the Rhino and Land Raider! The Land Raider has a Grav Cannon, it looks like.
- he said the most recent line of models in 40k sold above expectations so they’re going to do push forward a chaos faction for the start of next year based on the models in Dark Vengeance. I checked whether this meant the Lost and Damned army and was told yes, but with a different name.
Rant Session
Tactics Corner
- Reecius has been playing Necrons quite a bit and really enjoying them.
Rules Lawyer
Completed Commissions
List Review
The crazy 88 infiltration strike force (1850, 3x detachments)
Blood angels CAD:
Lv 1 librarian
5 scouts-camo cloaks and snipers
5 scouts-camo cloaks and snipers
5 scouts-CCW/bp, meltabomb sarge
5 scouts-CCW/bp, meltabomb sarge
5 assault marines in drop pod-2 meltaguns and combimelta sarge
5 assault marines in drop pod-2 meltaguns and combimelta sarge
Baal strike force:
Lv 2 librarian warlord- jump pack, veritas vitae
5 death company-jump packs, 1 fist
5 death company-jump packs, 1 fist
5 death company-jump packs, 1 fist
5 scouts-CCW/bp, meltabomb sarge
5 scouts-CCW/bp, meltabomb sarge
5 scouts-CCW/bp, meltabomb sarge
5 scouts-CCW/bp, meltabomb sarge
5 assault marines in pod-2 meltaguns and 2x inferno pistol sarge
5 assault marines in pod-2 flamers and 2x hand flamer/meltabomb sarge
5 assault marines in pod-2 flamers and 2x hand flamer/meltabomb sarge
Assassinorium:
Culexus assassin
Strategy:
The lv1 Libby rides with the inferno pistol squad for divination rerolls or possibly ignore cover, while the level 2 jumps in with some DC. With the veritas vitae, 2 strategic traits are gotten, so hoping for 3 units + warlord infiltrate or reroll reserves for one of them.
Some CCW scouts are in the cad just so I could sneak away with a point here and there via obsec in the middle of the close-range chaos.
If I get turn 1: infiltrate everything ever, including the 3 jump DC units if I get the infiltrate trait, as close as possible to anything but orks. Drop pods come in to shoot down some threats, army sucks up a round of shooting, and follows with turn 2 charges from up to 12 units.
If I get turn 2: reserve a lot of stuff to outflank and deep strike on later turns. The first pods are complete suicide units in this situation, but may help get a turn 1 maelstrom point or first blood.
If I think I’m going first and get seized: ow.
If I’m playing purge the alien primary: go for maelstrom and bonus points. 25 unit msu spam means I’m virtually never winning primary on purge.
Really disappointed that you’re making Knights worth 2 points in the secondary based off of an old rule that’s been FAQd out of the game. Making them 2 points for KP missions instead would mean they’re not automatically losing Maelstrom and more balanced in KP games. Also 2 points in modified Maelstrom is a whole turn of full points, while in unmodified Maelstrom 2 points is not nearly as big of a deal… Ugh…
Of course you are, Mr. Knight player =)
But, that is the trade off for being able to take multiple Knights. Would you prefer to have 1 Knight only, or multiple Knights that bleed points?
The army isn’t much different than before and it wasn’t OP, now I’m at a 6-point maelstrom disadvantage for showing up with a Knight army… So big nerf to an army that wasn’t even that good to begin with
I have to say I agree Reece. LOW are accepted now and with the restrictions placed by many, are not considered that bad. Can we get rid of the Escalation thing?
Literally NOTHING changed about the knight codex other that the symbol on the right top of the page.
I think this is a Terribad Ruling TBH.
here lies the problem in democracy for game design. You’ve argued before that people will vote unbiased, but when people who speak out against a rule, you assume they’re biased.
Biased or not, I’m also more experienced with Knight primary armies and understand how hard it was for them to win Maelsteom before, now that it’s worth as many points as the primary, it’s going to be hugely challenging for Knights, and making each knight worth 2 maelstrom points is just another nail in the coffin.
You mention trade offs? What other army gives up maelstrom almost automatically, regardless of what the table rolls even are? Is having an extremely low model count army that already suffers in maelstrom, as well as scoring regular objectives, and are easily overwhelmed by anti-tank weapons where you can lose 20% of your army to 2 melta guns not enough of a trade off?
I am sorry you are not happy with the decision we came to, but please understand that there are other players that are also not happy we allowed multiple Knights at all. We try to thread the needle.
Multiple Knights isn’t a new thing…
And Really Reece, Nothing changed for knights, No points increase or reduction, no change to their core rules, they got 3 new toys and some relics. All that changed is their picture.
But now they are weaker, you are effectively weakening an army for no reason.
“You mention trade offs? What other army gives up maelstrom almost automatically, regardless of what the table rolls even are?”
Dark Angels
>Would you prefer to have 1 Knight only, or multiple Knights that bleed points?
Well, you could make it so that it’s neither. Knights are no stronger than they were before, and they weren’t exactly top-tier even then (or at least full-Knight armies certainly weren’t.) So it seems strange to tack on a very significant penalty to them now that is, as Adam notes, based on a set of rules that are no longer applicable.
Especially since you’ve made the changes to ranged Str D, I don’t think there are any Lords of War strong enough to necessitate the keeping of the Escalation penalties. (Arguably Wraithknights are, but there’s already a penalty for taking Wraithknights- you don’t get to take more Scatter Bikes and other Str D.)
This, 100% this.
Soo, just take off the restriction on one LOW?
Have to agree the ruling on knight is garbage. You basically made knights unplayable and yet did nothing really note worthy to eldar. I think you need to find a new rules Council
I don’t understand the anger towards Reece, re: eldar. Didn’t the community vote regarding that?
I’m not angry at Reece. I’m just point g out what I feel is a terrible decision. And I dont play Knights
Fair enough. I just read it as angry. Sorry.
I see the other side though. There are lords of war out there weaker than knights that give out the bonuses and you can only take 1. I can understand them not wanting to have to go through all LoW options and try to decide which should and which should not give up bonus points.
But I understand the Knights players side as well. Especially since maelstrom is now worth the same as primary (4pts) it will be an uphill battle.
I may be wrong on this, but I thought the ruling council was only for the faq which adepticon and some other non itc tournaments use as well and that Reece and Frankie decided the Knight ruling on their own? That’s what I thought Reece said on the Web cast but I may have understood.
Weak LOW are a prime reason why the rule should be removed from ITC altogether, much how like GW themselves even recognized that it shouldn’t be used in regular 40k. By imposing the penalty it makes people who would be interested in taking a unit because it’s fun, have to think twice because how there is a double penalty for taking anything but the most OP lords of war.
So maybe get rid of the escalation bonus but still keep a banned list of certain units that are just too powerful?
I hear that vengeance weapon batteries count as scoring units. Just curious how? And do they actually have hull points? They give up first blood or kill points?
calmed buildings count as scoring. Buildings bought as part of your army count as calmed buildings.
I cant wait for the BAO, I just gotta find a ride.
Where you coming from?
Concord area.
The vp points for knights is very fair.
They should have been lords of war to begin with but the codex came out just before 7th so they did not have variations on detachment like they do now.
Imperial knights have a win percentage of 66% in tournaments compared to the next four army’s that range form a 56%-54% a very clear difference.
They weren’t wining GT’s but they literally stomp the mid and lower tables
Except those are in reality armies allied with knights and not armies who have have sole knights. I still say get rid of the escalation restrictions
Winning mid and lower level tables shouldn’t mean you should make it harder for them to get to the top tables.
Look, armies that win sometimes but not most of the time and never take top spots at tournaments need to be reigned in. It’s just not fair to have an army be this mediocre without having some kind of penalty to balance it out.
It’s comical that they think this rule balances out the knight codex
Not sure if you realise abuse was being funny. It does seriously nerf knight armies though. If maelstrom was still worth less it wouldn’t be so bad now, yikes. All knight lists are already worse than allied lists and this just makes you want to make more powerful. Lists there might be a vote after bao, who knows.
Oh I know Sean well, and I did know he was joking. I have to laugh a little when in the show they say they did this to balance the knights. They didn’t outright banners the codex but rendered it basically unplayable by anyone that wants to be competitive. Could imagine if they said every eldar unit you kill give you a extra point to maelstrom.
We didn’t do it to balance knights. We did it because in our format you would actually never be able to take more than one knight. And thought that since we were going to make an exception for knights that it wouldn’t be fair to other armies that can only take one lord of war to give up the same amount of extra points as someone who takes 5 lords of war. We will probably re visit the super heavy lord of war penalty in the future especially since they are becoming more prevalent but right now that is the decision we came up with. Pretty sure everyone will be happier playing with multiple knights than just one though :).
That’s like saying we should be glad that you allow Space Marines, because you could have arbitrarily limited them too. 😉
Thats actually completely different but at least now I know how you view it haha.
As a knight player, saying I should be glad that I’m allowed to play my army, is no different than telling any other player that they should be glad they’re allowed to play their army. You may see it as different, but when Knights are all you’ve got (I sold off my imperial forces down to just allies for my Knights last year), it looks identical.
Dude Reese, that shirt is sick. Time to go watch the Goku vs Vegeta fight now… Unedited!
Sounds like Frankie’s army is already painted! All grey :D, just apply a highlight with white primer…
Yup it is for sure grey with some lighter grey where the fine cast is.
BTW, there is no such limit on the availability of Blood Angels Relics for the Baal Strike Force Detachment (BA Codex pg. 51, 108, 110).
However, I believe you are correct that SW do have exclusive Relics due to the fact that they have a seperate Codex and Supplement. I own the SW book but not the CoF so I can’t check it.
You are making the wrong call on Imperial Knights. They are Super Heavy lords of war, and should be treated as such. Adding an exception for them is a bad move for the fun of the game. A knight army consisting of 3+ Super heavy Lords of War is the epitome of a Rock-paper-scissors army. The outcomes of games are decided in the matchup stage more than in gameplay.
As with most things it won’t really alter the play for the top tier, but it will ruin the day of many mid tier and lower tier players.
Them going to super heavy lord of wars didn’t make them any better in my opinion. They are just as strong as they were before.
“Torisionskannone
if the Torsion Weapons make a wound, you have to roll a d3 dice for the wound, on non vehicle models it makes d3 wounds and on Vehicles it make d3 hull damage”
Add in that they can get (come with?) Ignores Cover. That’s 12 models, shooting at BS4, a S8 AP1 shot that does D3 Hull Points or D3 Wounds.
Please discuss this vis a vis the nerf to D.
So…no takers for this topic, enh?
They are BS 3 according to the WD dataslate
And the ignores cover is only in a rumoured formation. Just on their own they move 6″, can’t run, weapons are 24″ and you would get cover, inv, and FNP against them. Powerful weapon for sure, but not as powerful as barrage D, template D etc.
So a unit of 12 will be 600 points and on average dice will hit 6 times – so against AV 13 will average 4 HP (with cover/invulnerable allowed if not in formation) and against infantry 6 hits at str 8 ap1 would normally do 5 wounds but with the d3 would average to 10 wounds – expect against 1 wound models this wouldn’t matter. So really would only be really good against multi wound infantry.
I think for a 600 pt unit, they are not breaking the game.
Also according to the rumours the unit that can take this gun is not available in the +1 BS ignores cover formation.
Ignores cover and twin-linking are so hard to get.
The argument against D was an argument against D, not its platform. The Torsion Cannon is superior to the nerfed version of D, is it not?
I don’t think so. 24″ D3 wounds which you can get saves and FNP against vs something that comes in a variety of ranges, templates, and delivery systems which on a 6 you get no saves of any kind.
And it is apples and oranges as D is used by a variety of armies and units and torsion is a single units option.
And against vehicles nerfed D is superior to torsion as even nerfed D does a Penetrating hit on anything but a 1 where torsion still has to pen the armour with a str 8. And the 6 on the D is the finisher.
My biggest issue with knights was that people were able to easily ally in 1-3 Knights. Those allied Knights never counted as LoW and never gave a bonus point. Then I’d play them with my Nid GC and my LoW gave bonus points. I always thought that was garbage, just get rid of the escalation bonus point. Keep the seize and warlord table.
If the decision is to continue to allow the bonus points then I’m ok with each Knight giving away bonus points. It’s only fair to all the other armies who just bring one LoW that’s more expensive in points and has the same power level as Knights or even less.
How about this: If any unit in your other, non-Knight armies dies, the Knight player gains 1VP. Fair is fair, right?
Before this codex changed the Knights to LoWs.
Was it fair for people to bring cheap costing SHWs that didn’t give extra VP?
Was it fair that people were taking 1-3 Knights or AdLance against another non-Knight LoW and the army with the Knights got the advantage while playing gainst an enemy LoW?
I personally think we just need to remove the extra VPs for ALL LoWs, and just keep the +1 Seize and Escalation Warlord Table. If ITC chooses to not remove the Extra VP for LoWs then I will stand by them because that’s the only fair way to handle the major imbalance in the LoW department.
We have several factions that pay TOO many points for a LoW that barely compares to a Knight. CSM, Nids, Orks pay way to much for their LoWs, and are nowhere near point efficient as Knights. Until GW/FW figure out how to balance the LoWs against each other, then I think non-Knight LoWs need every advantage they can get.
>Was it fair for people to bring cheap costing SHWs that didn’t give extra VP?
Yes it was; if you look at the numbers, it’s surprisingly easy to kill a Knight a lot of the time and their damage output is actually rather middling. Knights just didn’t win that much against good players.
>Was it fair that people were taking 1-3 Knights or AdLance against another non-Knight LoW
Yep. Still gotta pay 1100 points for those Knights, so it’s not you were getting them for free. And while they’re really good against some enemy LoW (especially the melee ones), against others they were a positive liability (oh look, my Lynx killed two Knights this turn!)
>I personally think we just need to remove the extra VPs for ALL LoWs, and just keep the +1 Seize and Escalation Warlord Table.
That would probably be fine. Knights already give up tons of VPs because they are essentially unable to play the Maelstrom game. Penalizing them even MORE is unnecessary.
>We have several factions that pay TOO many points for a LoW that barely compares to a Knight.
Okay, but don’t compare Knights to crappy Lords of War and say that makes them too good- Tactical Marines are not “too good” because Wyches suck. Measure Knights by their own strengths and how they perform in tournaments rather than holding them to the wildly variable standard of how they compare to each other faction’s Lords of War.
It’s not about balancing all Lords of War against each other, it’s about balancing the GAME.
I really don’t see the complaining here. ITC always had the rule that LoW gave up +1VP per 3W/HP’s. Now that GW made the knights into LoW, ITC isn’t really making any new rules changes. To not count them as bonus VP’s would be to change the rules in favor of them. Either ALL LoW Super-heavies/gargants should count for the bonus VP’s or NONE of them should count towards it. Why must a knight army be an exception? And btw, I do own a knight army myself.
There have been a lot of changes that are making this small thing into something big. With the change of Maelstrom going to 4 points, and because ITC only has a max of 2 points per turn it means each knight dead is a full turn of bonus Maelstrom points, which are much more significant than before for winning the game in ITC missions. If you use the old, now FAQ’d out, rule with book Maelstrom then 2 points isn’t a huge deal As you can often get 3+ points in a turn. I’m strongly in support (as I have always been) of removing the rule entirely for all LOW, as GW has even now said through FAQ that the rule is not intended for regular play.
Change happens, sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse. When 6th came along, we lost the ability to charge after disembarking from our rhinos. Bad for my Grey Knight Purifiers. When the 6E Tyranids came out (and before until recently), we Tyranid players lost our drop pods and access to Biomancy powers. When the new GK codex came out, we lost our Inquisition counter-part and now we had to waste a precious “source” just to bring them in. Guess what? Bad changes happen. Could we have lobbied for a special exception for the Grey Knight purifiers to charge after disembarking? Or how about a special exception for Tyranids to take Biomancy or even Malefic powers (hey, everyone else can!)? Or that Inquisition does not take up a “source” when running them with GK? Yeah, I supposed we could have, but changes are inevitable. You can try to call for change, but eventually, you will have to adjust. Find a way to make it work despite the handicap or just run them in casual games if you can’t.
Are you trying to compare changing the rules of how different armies play to neutering an entire faction based on a rule that doesn’t exist anymore? Because they’re not the same thing.
How is it so different? Some of the changes take away from the army choice. The taking away of Biomancy and drop pods (before the pods were re-instated) for Tyranids takes away choices that they used to have. Until the rush of new Tyranid units/formations in the last half year, Tyranids have had to play with that crutch for a good 2 years.
Moreover, the changes to Synapse for Tyranids and Mob Rule for orks meant that those armies had to play with an inherent weakness. They actually got worse because of those rules changes and yet, they were able to manage.
Like I said, ALL or NONE of the LoW SH/GMC should give out bonus VP’s. I have no qualms about repealing the bonus VP’s given out by Knights as long as it’s done for all of the LoW’s.
Well it’s also different in that it’s adding an outdated rule that makes it nearly impossible to win Maelstrom, which was already difficult for Knights as it was. With Maelstrom being put up to 4 points it’s no longer about adapting to win, it’s adapting to hope for at least a tie.
And none of the changes you mentioned directly affect the victory points scored in a game. Not charging out of rhinos didn’t make it so your opponent could auto-win maelstrom. 😛
The changes to the ITC missions will affect certain armies, especially deathstar armies and ones who look to win by winning the Primary. My own flyrant-spam Tyranids have gotten worse due to this change, as I now can’t ignore Maelstrom in the hopes of winning the Primary. There are many others. You have to learn to adapt. Yes, it sucks to have to play with such a handicap (it sucked when Tyranids had to play with the new Synapse or Orks with the new Mob Rules) and although you can push for changes, you can’t really rely on that happening. So until changes are made – if they get made – you’re going to have to adapt to those changes and learn to play through them. It’s not fair, but welcome to the world of Eldar 40k, I mean, Warhammer 40K.
At least they’ve made Knights ObSec (at the expense of formations) which helps them out to an extent.
I think the campaign here shouldn’t be to change the rules for Knights again. Rather, lobby to change the rules for all super-heavies instead. Just lobby to drop the “outdated” Escalation rules. That is a fair change for all who wants to run Super-heavies (though not necessarily fair for those who have to play against them).
I whole heartedly agree the rules should be scrapped. I was hoping IK would be LOW when the rumors started because I hoped it would force ITC to abandon this outdated rule.
The only way to adapt to make my knight army not get totally annihilated in Maelstrom games (when using this old rule) is to quit playing Knights, which if I do means I’m quitting ITC (Knights are my only army fully painted to the standard I bring to competition). As you must know, since you also play Knights, Maelstrom was a very challenging part of the game for IK primary knight armies, with this added handicap and the change in the ITC missions, it’s had a profound impact on the Knights ability to win games.
And BTW, ironically, knights dominating the mid-to-lower tables is where it hurts them the most. If they made it consistently to the top tables, the good players really don’t care. But the fact that they dominate the mid to lower tables means that they are exposed to most of the casual players. It is the casual players who complain the most because they are the ones who can’t deal with all of those super-heavies.
Also, at an event like LVO, 150-200 players don’t make it to the top tables, but for a TO the success of their tournament in the future rides on the 60-70 % being happy and wanting to come back. I think you are correct in assuming that the top players would be more willing to play in any kind of environment as they have the skills and tools and desire to adapt.
Sure, and that’s a reasonable concern, but “we decided this entire faction is not allowed to play the game so fuck off” is also a reasonable concern, and that’s what the ruling amounts to.
I played against a knight today and we didn’t play with any of the escalation bonus points but still played ITC missions because personally I don’t think a knight needs the nerfing and it is a big deterrent to fielding knights in ITC format.
But I understand Frontline not wanting to adjust the format every release as TOs are drawing their attendees based on the format for ITC.
Personally I don’t think the knights deserve the nerf but I watched a guy not play his final game at LVO when he saw he was playing knights for the 3rd time. On him that he didn’t come prepared for knights, but the look on his face when his opponent said it all.
So I understand frontline trying to find the format that pisses the least amount of people off. I agree the most fair way seems to drop the bonuses against all Lords of War but who knows, maybe Reece Gets a ton of feedback against LOWs and that is guiding his ruling? But I admit that I can understand the frustration from the Knights side.
*shrug* I played Flyrants three times at TSHFT, twice(?) at LVO, and three times at Storm of Silence. That’s just how it is sometimes- the luck of the draw means you end up with really weird matchups. I can understand that is frustrating and maybe not real enjoyable to get stuck with, but on the other hand that can happen with ANY army; that’s how randomness works.
I know a lot of people don’t like Knights, but I don’t think it’s their call to make about whether they are useable in the game or not. I think Space Marines and their variants are a pretty boring army, but I don’t begrudge other people the ability to play them (and to stand a chance in tournaments) just because I don’t like the faction- everyone has their preferences. And yes, as I said above, I can also understand that ruining tournament attendance is a factor to consider for TOs making decisions- but if the problem is that Knights are too strong, making Knights unplayable shouldn’t be the solution.
Space Marines aren’t boring, they’re the best! 😉
Kidding aside, I hear what you’re saying. Some times you do just get bad draws, bad match ups. I like giant robots and big monsters and I like playing against them, and I always take a special pride in trying to drop my opponent’s big scary thing right away.
I don’t have enough of a big picture grasp to know the best way to solve this issue. I don’t think “no preservatives 40k” is the answer but beyond that don’t have any great solutions.
You guys say you will make exceptions for Knights and you dont want anyone not to be able to play with the models they have painted and invested in but do not allow experimental rules readily available from the Forgeworld site and are always up to date?
The Tau Forgeworld Riptides have been bout for years . (Rvarna is almost 3 years now) and have had rules revisions to make them somewhat balanced. Hell, they have had less rules changes than the Wraithknight or Knights now but are still considered experimental.
The odds of there being a IA book with them in to make them “legal” any time soon is slim, especially with all the other things GW and Forgeworld have to concentrate on. I’m just wondering why they aren’t allowed in the ITC when rules can obviously be changes/bent to suit other armies like Knights?
I understand where you’re coming form with that, but the comparison doesn’t really hold water. Knights were legal and then would have not been, experimental rules were never legal.
I would recommend reaching out to FW, asking them to just make official rules for the models you want to use. They are actually very responsive.
When the chaos knight comes out and its got experimental rules will it be allowed? I think the outcry of chaos players will somehow make it so.
I doubt it, chaos players cry a lot without results. 😉
Reese and company have chosen a compromise. One that I think is a decent medium. One thing that is not being mentioned by any of the IK advocates. people who oppose the ruling is that IK’s are stronger than before because of their new access to FREE RULES via formations. They are strictly better if for no other reason than that there are more options available with the formations and weapon variety.
IK’s were only not LoW in the first book to ease the community into the idea of having multiples of them on the table. It was a sales ploy pure and simple. GW always knew they should have been LoW but they also knew they could use IK’s to slowly push the game toward Apoc lite by not calling them LoW. Now that we the community are more conditioned to accept the LoW change in light of the new hilariously irresponsible Eldar codex, they are coming back and changing the unit designation to again ease us into the realm of multiple LoW in an army. You can boil a willing frog so long as you raise the temperature slowly enough… Apoc is bing forced upon us with actions like this and points drops, hope that Apoc was the product you know you were buying when you chose to get into the game…
IK’s share all rules with other LoW Super-Heavy Walkers (which DO bleed points when damaged) If they share the same rules they should interact in the same way when scoring the mission. The way a unit choice interacts in certain missions is a concern every MSU player has had to deal with when KP’s are in play. Welcome to the club, unit choices matter, sorry. If you don’t want to be so vulnerable to this ruling do what everyone else does and diversify your army… IK players want a double exception made for them. No. You are already a jerk for removing much of the tactical depth from the game by spamming 5 apoc level toys that grossly over simplify the game and only add to the rock/paper/scissors nature of the game.
Stop acting entitled to a double rules exemption and be happy that you are getting the one you are. We would hate for you to actually have to … field an army instead of a mech lance in order to play. You want all big robots… Battletech.
>They are strictly better if for no other reason than that there are more options available with the formations and weapon variety.
They do gain the Icarus and Avenger weapon options, but the formation bonuses are largely irrelevant in light of the fact that the Adamantine Lance still exists. And if you handwave the Lance away, Knights are actually an intensely mediocre army- being WS/BS5 sounds fantastic until you realize you’re giving up 6+ VP every game and STILL are bad at holding objectives and scoring Maelstrom.
>You can boil a willing frog so long as you raise the temperature slowly enough
It’s amusing that you cite this as part of your analogy, because neither this nor your comments about GW are true.
>which DO bleed points when damaged
Only by ITC fiat. Check your Escalation FAQ.
>Stop acting entitled to a double rules exemption
It’s not an “exemption” for an army to be treated the same as everyone else. No other faction has to deal with being limited to 0-1 models total in the army. No other faction has an arbitrary points bleed imposed on them because some other unit somewhere in a different edition was too strong. No other army has to deal with arbitrary restrictions from previous editions of the game being imposed on them.
The giving up of VP’s was originally created with the intent of helping to balance Super Heavies in kill point games since they are tough to kill and represent a huge portion of an army. Traditional KP scoring is not well suited to a game that includes such large units because that scoring system sees killing a Rhino and killing a Baneblade as the same thing. The 3 HP = 1 VP rule was there to balance out the extreme KP denial nature of a super heavy. Escalation was changed not for balance but to encourage IK sales. Don’t hang your game balance hat on a sales ploy.
How do you turn that KP disparity problem up to 11? By running whole armies of super heavies that are not actually counted as super heavies. Old IK armies almost auto won a KP mission at deployment, Either the enemy tabled the IK’s or they won on KP’s due to extreme low model count. I think the switch to LoW status both makes sense and serves to balance this absurd game mechanic when KP’s is in play.
If we take a look at the Maelstrom mission options present in the ITC missions you will notice that 11 of the 36 possible options are “Kill an enemy unit” missions. There are at least 2 of these maelstrom options present in all but 1 mission , meaning that 5 out of 6 mission an IK player has at least a 1/3 chance of getting a KP objective every roll of the dice. I would say that KP’s are a big portion of the Maelstrom mission as a result of this fact. See above if you are not following why KP and super heavies don’t mix well.
Think about the IK player’s opponent. How much harder are those “score a KP” missions for them to achieve because he is playing a IK list? By awarding point for every 3 HP’s remove, when the non-IK player actually does bring down a Knight, there is a reward that matched the difficulty of the task.
Also, the non-IK player is being forced to fight a list that a significant portion of his list cannot interact with where the IK player can interact with all his models. The strategic impact of not getting to use huge portions of your army based on a GW marketing decision cannot be over stated.
In the same way that killing a rhino should not be equal to killing a Super-Heavy in a normal KP game, there should be a difference in points awarded for killing bigger stuff. There are many armies that “auto-lose” a specific primary or secondary when they face IK’s due to the nature of the mission. IK players are not happy that there is a mission that they, (according to them, not me), auto-lose as well… Double standard?
Actually, the ITC has done nothing to address the issue of facing 5 IK’s in KP based games… The bonus points only apply to Maelstrom. I had suggested multiple times that they remove the rule from Maelstrom games and if they have an issue with IK in KP games (which is totally understandable), they should apply it there. Instead, they’ve made IK worse at every scenario in the game and made no change at all to how they performed in KP, where they were most problematic!
The rule itself has even been FAQ’d out of normal play by GW, and when the rule itself was written the Knights themselves weren’t affected as they were “knight” slots. GW has never intended that rule to affect knights, so by ITC writing it in to affect them, is taking an old rule out of context to unnecessarily nerf a mediocre army, and does nothing to balance them in KP games, but instead punishes them in every game. That’s what IK players are pissed off about.
The other issue is how the bonus points are implemented, in normal maelstrom games, out of the book, it isn’t unusual for players to score 20+ points through the coarse of a game, as many of the cards give more than 1 point, with ITC rules, it’s impossible to score more than 14 in a 7 turn game, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen that done personally, 7-9 seems about the average. When Knights are worth 2 points each, suddenly each knight is worth a full turn advantage, which is significantly more than the advantage that GW even wrote the super heavy killing bonus to be, by comparison.
They have made a change that affects the Maelstrom portion of the mission precisely because KP’s are involved in all but one maelstrom mission. If you notice, the only mission where maelstrom does not offer “kill a unit,” as an option is in mission 2, which has a KP primary. Scoring KP’s is an integral part of the maelstrom mission success since they comprise about 1/3 of the possible maelstrom options. If IK’s were not dealt with in this manor they would now have an advantage since their KP’s are much harder to get than a normal armies.
The mission with the most objectives (mission 4) has a maelstrom table that is 1/2 “kill a unit” results to help non-MSU armies in that mission. The individual charts are set up the way they are for a reason the secondary opposes the primary mission, which is the way all good missions should work.
The downside of having your IK’s bleed points is countered by the opponent’s difficulty taking KP’s off of the IK’s. Why should an IK get a point for removing all 3 HP’s from a Rhino but the guy with the Rhino gets nothing for removing 3 HP’s off of an IK (a much harder thing to do btw) That makes no sense. No one thinks that these 1 tasks are of equal difficulty.
Didn’t the nerfing of the D and their ability to get ob sec make them a little better at the missions? And now they have access to legitimate AA. So to say Knights are not better is not accurate. Is it too punishing to dock them so many points on a maelstrom mission? Possibly. Is it to punishing on other players to have to shoehorn their lists to possibly face 5 Knights. Possibly. With the limitations of wraithknights to one and the nerf to the D, I expect Knights will be harder to kill.
Prior to the new wraithknight, I think they were the most points efficient super heavy, that’s why the tourney scene sees so many of them. Why people dislike playing the one, they dislike playing the other. And the biggest problem lies with being able to get 3 as allies still, 5 in primary detachment, where non imperials are still restricted to one LoW/ super heavy. Why the dichotomy?
As it was, IK were awful at Maelstrom, and that was before Maelstrom was worth as many points as the primary mission, and before they gave up 2 points per knight. Now that Maelstrom is worth 4 points, and knights are worth 2 points each, it’s a double whammy.