Thanks to everyone that joined us for the game last night! It was good fun, and big congratz to the winner of the Mont’Ka supplement that we gave away to a viewer! Check out the pre-game, here.
Mike’s Post-Game thoughts:
Well, that went about as I expected. I didn’t think Reece would be able to do enough damage, Necrons are incredibly resilient. I expect I will be seeing Reece in the playoffs of the San Diego Master’s League and he will be better prepared to take me on then.
I think Reece probably should have targeted the Tomb Blades earlier, in my opinion, they were the biggest threat to his army. The Wraiths look scary, and people are accustomed to them being the unit to kill, but I think the Tomb Blades ended up doing more damage than the Wraiths would have. While the game was lopsided, I had a great time. Reece and Frankie have done a good job with the Frontline Gaming studio, the atmosphere was fun, and I’d love to get a chance to play there again.
Reecius’ Post-Game thoughts:
Defeat is a bitter dish!
I knew going in this would be a tough fight but I actually felt VERY confident that I would win. My list had all the right tools to make it work. However, a few critical things went south on me.
We rolled Big Guns Never Tire, a poor mission for me as I have 6 Heavies that are squishy to Mike’s 2, which are very resilient.
My plan going in was to use the Skyhammer to neutralize the Tomb Blades, which were very scary due to their Ignores Cover weapons. However, Mike intelligently bubble wrapped them and stuck an Overlord with a Res Orb in the big unit to make them unassaultable, and largely unshootable, either (yes, them’s are werds!! =P). That unit effectively became untouchable. However, that in and of itself was no big deal as one unit can only do so much. But, not being able to get to them on the turn I dropped, was a problem.
Secondly, I planned on eliminating a Spyder right away, and then taking out a unit of Wraiths with massed strength 5 shots. Issodon hits a unit pre-game with D6+3 wounds. That averages 6.5, on a Spyder with a 3+, should take 2. That means a single squad of Elysians dropping in, should take it out, leaving my other units to focus on other key targets. Well, that didn’t happen as Mike made 6/6 saves on the Spyder, then my unit designated to kill it fell short of taking it out, requiring another unit to shoot, thus setting off a cascade of similar events, dramatically reducing my overall ability to take out key Necorn units. As I had to commit more resources to doing the jobs I had mentally assigned them, I did less damage than stats say I should have, and Mike was able to hit me back with more units than I had planned on him having available to work with, thus leaving me with less to react with and so on and so forth.
Pinning and locking units in combat was also a critical part of my game plan. Skyhammer forces units to take pin checks just by looking at them on a 3d6, which averages 10.5 on the roll, meaning even ld10 Crons on average, should be pinned. This allows me to take his ability to counter-punch me after my drop away, increasing my ability to hit him hard on the next turn with my units. Mike passed every pin check and I failed some critical charges, or humorously, lost combat to Necron Warriors and similar non-combat oriented units to my units quipped with Power Fists, Weapons, etc. lol.
Failed morale checks. Several critical morale checks cost me big time, forcing me to run off of objectives, off the table, etc. at bad times.
Mike’s dice were HOT! Holy crap, lol, routinely he was throwing 10/10, 6/6. 12/14 saves, etc. It is a dice game, and these things happen, but when a good player with a good list has good dice, it doesn’t leave much wiggle room. I was throwing buckets of dice at small units and doing nothing, while he’d casually fire a few Guass weapons at a flyer and roll four 6’s to glance them to death out of 10 Warriors shooting, lol. I had a few fun things go my way against the odds too, but they were largely inconsequential.
So I know I could win that match-up most assuredly, that was not my night to do it. Congratz to Mike, and on to the next Master’s League game!
This is why my motto for 40k is always luck>skill>list. No matter what, at the end of the day, you are at the mercy of dice.
I think it is important to put yourself in positions where luck won’t hurt your game plan too much. My deployment in this game gave me a huge advantage when Reece couldn’t access the squishier parts of my army, so when I had the good fortune of passing 6/6 saves on my Spyder, it made a big difference. When luck went against me: two tomb blades dying to three guardsmen charging them, or a wraith dying to over watch from a guard command squad, I was in a position such that it didn’t cost me the game. Reece did not have that luxury, so when luck went against him with my saves early, he wasn’t able to recover. I think luck and skill have equal parts in determining the winner, with lists coming last, as you suggest.
When you have good players facing off with good lists, it almost always comes down to luck as the odds of making a tactical mistake or pulling some kind of trick dwindle because of experience.
Yeah, when all other variables are close to equal, dice to become the largest determinant. Ironically, that is often when you have top level play as the other variables have minimal differentials.
When their is a large skill differential between players, the better player almost always wins, though.
This is very true, also, I should be clear, I often find that bad generals tend to blame bad luck more than good generals, but I think good generals de-value luck (I should call it variance actually) sometimes too much.
Like, it’s such a knee jerk reaction of good players to say, “Well, build your list and play the game to limit dice variance”, which is accurate, but looking at battle reports of top tables for big events, or even watching the games, I find that there is usually some point at which the game comes down to a few die rolls. Like, had he passed a Ld test he would’ve won, or if he’d made 3/3 saves he’d win. So on and so forth.
The more I think about 40k and play it, the more I see similarities between it and Poker. Like, the best poker players usually win out over time, but even they get bad beats or the like that they can’t account for. Over the course of time, the best players still rise to the top, but there are always blips.
I totally agree with that analogy. 40k is like Poker in that way. You rarely see someone win all the time, but you always see the same group of names at the top. Like we always say, at any given GT, any of the top 10 guys could have won it with a few key die rolls their way, or a favorable match-up where they got a poor match-up.
Skill, list, and luck are all very important. You can control your list completely; you can improve your skill to whatever degree you’re willing to put effort in; luck is the only factor you can’t control directly.
Bad dice can always screw you, but if your skill and list are up to par, that’s a lot less likely to happen.