Signals from the Frontline #424

22 thoughts on “Signals from the Frontline #424”

1. We’ve played a couple games with shifting worldscape already. It’s really not worth the hype the Internet has given it. First we ruled that objectives are fixed points on the board, and any objective will fall to table surface if the terrain it was sitting on suddenly leaves. We also ruled that you could not set impassable terrain on an objective.

   After that we noticed:
   -you have to roll the power
   -it’s wc3, so pretty much conclave only if you want it to be reliable.
   -if the opponent takes 2 seconds to read he power, he is always going to leave a guy outside the terrain so you can’t force unleashed them around. He will also put units vulnerable to assault behind other terrain, so you have to move that piece first before you can launch your crater full of dudes into assault range.
   -there’s generally enough terrain that moving big pieces somewhere important is difficult or impossible.
   -the discipline isn’t very good otherwise. A couple decent powers and a terrible primaris. If you whiff rolling for worldscape, you will be sad.

   It’s seriously not as bad as invis (even ITC invis) or fortune/veil of time, which are all wc2. It’s also really not an issue for a TO to say “if you shift some worldscape, please return it to the original place after your game.”

   My big question is if I need to print out the rule page and convert a tac marine into the imperial marine. (I’m not paying 30 bucks for a single marine.) If the guy is being allowed in, I don’t want to be playing down a model from every other marine player, but I’d really he rather just not make it into the tourney scene at all.

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   1. Good points and thanks for sharing your experiences.

      And yeah, the Imperial Space Marine is stupid, lol.

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      1. Agree with that. ITC should probably assign a points value to him or simply say he isn’t usable (by voting on it of course, though I suspect it would be passed). Otherwise EVERY space marine army will have this guy in it since there is no reason not too. That is a lack of variety which is just silly. He’s prone to be a rule abuse against certain armies too. Imperial marine in any drop pod with ignores cover available is basically bye bye to any monstrous creature

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         1. Yeah, the Imperial Space Marine is silly.

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   2. To play a bit of devil’s advocate here:

      -If you’re Sevrin Loth, you don’t have to roll the power. If you’re Tigurius, your chances of rolling the power are extremely high. Even if neither of those things is true, games that boil down to “I rolled the good power so I win” aren’t fun.

      -This is true, though unlike some other WC3 powers you will typically only need to cast it once or twice per game. But the Conclave makes succeeding a pretty trivial affair.

      -The real danger is not that you will “steal” terrain and move their guys with it- the danger is that you slide an assault unit 24″ with it.

      -I think you’re overestimating how hard it is to slide a piece of terrain right up to within ~6″ of the enemy’s deployment zone or models.

      -“Not very good otherwise?” You mean aside from the power that grants Ignores Cover and ignore LOS to any unit (and is thus strictly better than Perfect Timing, arguably the best spell in Divination) or the power that heals a character with 2+/3++/FNP3+ for d3 wounds or more? Geomancy has some mediocre spells on it, true, but it has three extremely strong powers plus a usable primaris.

      Invisibility can be mitigated; Worldscape can’t, because players (other than players using that power) don’t get to set up the terrain on the board and thus don’t get to put any defenses in place against it. Unless you throw away 50pts on an Aegis Line, I guess.

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      1. -loth can’t select powers except from biomancy, telepathy, or telekinesis. Tiggy is good, but locks your conclave into Ultramarines, when you could incorporate iron hand durability or white scar hit and run into a unit. Also you might be using a decurion, and having to eat up a detachment for your separate conclave instead of using a command slot for one could stop you from taking an allied pod and culexus or other neat ally tech.

         -I think you’re underestimating how hard it is. Using terrain similar to local ITC events, we had trouble finding good moves in actual practice. Just knowing that the power was in the game made us play a bit different, and it was pretty easy to just…not put our dudes where a terrain piece could easily slide to them.

         -the “off everything nothin’ but net” power is good if you have a unit built for it, but the heal is mediocre and only shines somewhat if you’re running a superstar character that dealing a wound to in the first place was actually difficult to do. Basically you need Lysander, calgar, Dante, or the iron hands/clan raukaan chapter masters to make it worth it.
         And I highly disagree about the primaris even being considered usable. Every monstrous creature in the game is immune, scouts are immune, entire necron decurions are immune. And even if you do find a good unit to hit, you’re only wounding 1/6 guys, less if they have invulns or fnp. And at wc2? A power that doesn’t even knock one marine out of a set of 5 on average? Nah bro, toss that in the trash.

         -shift can totally be mitigated by play. We’ve tried it out and it was actually pretty simple. Leave a dude out of terrain. Don’t be out in the open where a terrain piece full of assault guys can be thrown at you. In practice we had to use the power one or two times shifting terrain out of the way just to set up a good play with the power on a later turn. Something that can easily be countered by…killing the librarian.

         In short, the power is silly, and is actually kind of fun, but anyone who thinks its out of line in a game that has wraithknights, invis, and godly formations is playing a far different game than I am.

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         1. >loth can’t select powers except from biomancy, telepathy, or telekinesis.

            The new supplement explicitly says that psykers can generate powers from those disciplines _in addition_ to ones listed on their datasheet. But I think Tiggy is more likely to be featured, anyways, since he can be part of the Conclave.

            >I think you’re underestimating how hard it is.

            *shrug* It depends on how your tournaments set up terrain, obviously, but in my experience terrain on tournament boards tends to be comparatively light. Even on a heavier board, if you can’t find a 6″ x 6″ space to move some terrain to, you’re playing on a REALLY dense board. It is a re-placement, not a slide, so it’s not like you have to have an intervening “path.”

            >the “off everything nothin’ but net” power is good if you have a unit built for it, but the heal is mediocre and only shines somewhat if you’re running a superstar

            It’s not going to be hard for armies to include, say, a single unit of Centurions or Devastators or a heavy tank like the Scorpious or such to make use of it. I mean, it’s essentially a Hunter’s Eye in a box- you can’t tell me that isn’t good.

            I’m not sure how you see the heal as “mediocre.” Remember, we’re talking about a hard-hitting melee list here. Lists that typically run 4-8 multiwound characters, many of them with 2+/3++ and other defenses. You really think they won’t be happy to bring their Wolf Lord or Chapter Master back from the bring of death with a single power? You really think it that unlikely that a list centered around “teleporting” a deathstar next to the enemy army isn’t going to have any powerful combat characters to heal?

            >And I highly disagree about the primaris even being considered usable. Every monstrous creature in the game is immune, scouts are immune, entire necron decurions are immune

            Sure, and most of those are things you wouldn’t want to target with it even if they weren’t immune. 1/6 chance of doing a wound seems shoddy at a glance, but if you’re shooting, say, a 10man unit of standard MEQs, that functionally works out to the equivalent of forcing five armor saves- so something like two Scat Bikes worth of shooting. That’s not exciting, but it’s not unusable, either.

            >Leave a dude out of terrain

            Again, this isn’t really the problem. Moving the enemy’s units closer to you is the _least_ of its uses.

            >Don’t be out in the open where a terrain piece full of assault guys can be thrown at you

            Again, I don’t know what your boards look like, but “don’t be anywhere within 10 or twelve inches of anyplace that any piece of terrain on the board could be placed” just isn’t really feasible advice. This power isn’t going to be used in a vacuum- people are going to pair it up with the things they were already using to build deathstars. That means +3″ charge distance. That means massed 2+ save characters. That means extremely fast and hard-hitting units that only need one activation of the power to be in place to assault most of your army. Avoiding them isn’t as simple as not being in range, because their range is going to be most of the table.

            >Something that can easily be countered by…killing the librarian

            Sure, if the enemy army is dead you win. All you have to do is chew through the 2+ rerollable Jink save and all of those armor saves and invulns that their deathstar is toting around. Good play doesn’t just happen on your side of the table- the enemy gets to do it, too.

            >but anyone who thinks its out of line in a game that has wraithknights

            Hey, you know that this power can be used to move a Wraithknight, right? Or any other unit, no matter its level of alliance with the Imperium? And you just need one dinky little crater or whatever to do it?

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2. Did I miss something, or did you guys not list ITC events this weekend?

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   1. https://www.frontlinegaming.org/community/frontline-gamings-independent-tournament-circuit/

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      1. Just a note, I don’t see our Fresno event up there. Should I email contact@ directly next time? I sent a FB invite so the link would be there.

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3. Balance aside, the Imperial space marine should be banned in the ITC because it’s just going to be everywhere – especially coming out of drop pods and comboing with ignores cover. It’s *immensely* powerful for zero cost, zero drawbacks.

   The shift power is probably the most un-fun thing I’ve seen enter the game in a very long time. And you know what? The community hasn’t tapped into the real combos with it yet.

   How about a stack of scytheguard/wraithguard and just blanket the opponent in 30 ranged D shots at the top of turn one?

   It’s just not fun.

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4. Oh, and run the Wraith Host formation on the Wraithguard packed into the terrain piece so they can battle focus before shooting.

   How is this fun?

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5. Shouldn’t be hard to put five units of 5x Wraithguard into a list with a Wraithknight, an aspect host of Warp Spiders, and a Conclave into an 1850 list and drop 25 ranged D shots at the top of turn one. Slap Scythes on one of the units to delete whatever is using cover well.

   Use the Warp Spiders to go gun down the stragglers or whatever managed to stay out of range of the WG, and turn 2 assault with the D Sword WK whatever’s left.

   Also remember in that formation all the Wraithguard are BS4, re-roll 1s to hit so missing wont really be much of a thing.

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6. Lol 0 points?! Is Matt Ward still writing new rules?

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   1. lol

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   2. Matt Ward at least knew HOW to write rules. Most of the new stuff is just absurd “we don’t even care anymore! give this guy a free Instant Death gun!”

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7. Hrm, suddenly “OMG Aaron Aleong was over by one point from a bolt pistol!” seems just a little bit sillier.

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8. A note for Phase Shift – it allows you to shoot at a unit out of Line of Sight, however, it makes no additional provision for being able to allocate wounds out of Line of Sight. You can make the shooting attack, but only your Blast weapons (which has an exception to the ‘you need Line of Sight to allocate wounds’ in their entry) will actually be able to allocate any of the wounds caused by the attack.

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   1. None of the “shoot without LOS” weapons say anything about being able to allocate wounds; the implication (and practice) has always been that they are able to do so anyways.

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9. This reinforces my belief that Tau need further nerfs.

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10. Personally I think the imperial marine is fine. The main thing it threatens is monstrous creatures, and given how insanely effective the riptide wing is I’m sort of ok with that.

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11. Question ab the best coast pairings app, I try to download it in the app store and it says for Ipad… Is it not available for iphone yet or am I missing something?

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