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Show Notes
5-16-16
Intro
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News
- Discuss the Death from the Skies supplement.
- New rules.
- Flyer types.
- Dogfight Subphase.
- Flyer detachment.
- Forgeworld flyers to get updated?
- Discuss the pros and cons of some of the changes and how you think it will impact the meta.
Upcoming ITC Events
- Warhammer 40K State Championship/Sponsored by Tier 1 & MJs, Anchorage, AK, May 21-22nd, 2016
- DTC MAYhem, Hobbytown USA, Westminster, CO, May 21st, 2016
- Coliseum of Comics May 21st, Orlando, FL, May 21st, 2016
- Albany Exterminatus, Flipside Gaming, East Greenbush, NY, April 21st, 2016
- MAJOR EVENT: Alamo 40k GT, Red Star Gaming, San Antonia, TX, May 21-22nd, 2016
- Contest of Champions May, Great Escape Games, Sacramento, CA, May 21st, 2016
- Gunjah the Bead Forest May Rtt, Cedar City, UT, May 21st, 2016
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.
Rant Session
Tactics Corner
Scorched Earth Open
Rules Lawyer
Completed Commissions
List Review
I’m severely lacking in Ob sec units, and Psykers mainly because I love the assault phase and wanted a list made to have a fighting chance against Death Stars. I also have 3 total extra vp to lose in that one mission that counts fast attack and heavy. (Forgehost formation is not a heavy support choice)The way the VSG works might anger some opponents, but it works perfectly to allow my army to get into combat with more numbers.
Also, the extra protection for 3 soul grinders of Slaanesh for 1+ turns will really help get them into combat turn 2/3. New warlord traits are definitely interesting. I will get a 1:3 chance to get a single Str D attack I can reroll if I miss thanks to Locus of Wrath and CAD warlords being able to re roll their trait. Definitely going to struggle against psyker armies, battle company, and Knights.
The main strategy for my army is a little synergy based. The idea is to have my warlord into combat as fast as possible, hopefully charging so that with the fiends dropping targets initiative by 5, with plague drones with that 1 attack chance to cause instant death and harass weak units/ attack before the enemy does thanks to the fiends. The Khorne dogs all have 4 re rollable attacks on the charge and my warlord gets 6 thanks to the Crimson crown. The banner on Seekers is to deep strike in the soul grinders/ fiends on certain games where I know I will need initiative/ re roll hits and wounds from my soul grinders in combat once one grinder kills something to kill off T5 characters.
Daemon CAD
Heralds of Chaos
- Herald of Khorne: Lesser Reward; Greater Reward; Crimson crown; Juggernaut of Khorne; Greater Locus of Wrath (Warlord)
Troops
3 Nurgling Swarms
3 Nurgling Swarms
Elite
6 Fiends of Slaanesh
Fast Attack
19 Seekers of Slaanesh: Instrument of Chaos; Icon of Chaos; Heartseeker (lesser reward)
10 Flesh Hounds of Khorne
6 Plague Drones of Nurgle: venom sting; Plaguebringer (Lesser Reward)
Forgehost formation
Soul Grinder: Daemon of Slaanesh; phlegm bombardment
Soul Grinder: Daemon of Slaanesh; phlegm bombardment
Soul Grinder: Daemon of Slaanesh; warp gaze
Fortifications
Void Shield Generator: 2× additional projected void shield
1,850
So I’m curious- what will ITC’s official position on Death From the Skies be? Will it (and flyer wings, attack patterns, air superiority, and dogfights) be used as part of ITC events? Will only some of them be used? Will it be ignored entirely? Obviously individual TOs are free to accept or reject it if they so please, but I (as well as a lot of other people) am curious to hear what the “party line” is, so to speak, since the book heralds a lot of very significant changes to many flyers including alterations to who has Skyfire and other things.
Do formations like the Angel’s Fury Spearhead Force gain any benifits, are they even legal? Thats the BA one that requires 3 Stormravens and gives turn 1 charge. If it comes in on a 2+ with re-roll and obsec ravens when in hover it might become viable.
“All flyers in a flyer wing must be chosen from the same faction and be from the same formation or detachment.”
As best I can tell, an Angel’s Fury is a legal flyer wing even though it contains other, non-flyer models.
I thought a unit could not be part of multiple formations with the exception of decurion style detachments?
Or is it worded that they “usually” don’t belong to multiple detachments / formations
Would be handy if they could though
Hmm, possibly? The Flyer Wing detachment isn’t a formation, but the BRB’s prohibition against being part of more than one detachment may be applicable here.
I’m really not sure on that myself. Flyer Wings are closer to Units than Detachments in the way they’re purchased, but more like Detachments in the way they operate on the field.
Well, the tricky part isn’t standard Flyer Wings (like just buying two more Dakkajets to form one as part of the datasheet)- where it gets complicated is the flyer wings that are also formations, such as the Storm Wing or Oppressor Flight.
Exactly. Do Flyer Wings work as part of a Detachment (i.e. if you have two of the same Flyer in a Detachment like a Raptor Wing, are they a Flyer Wing), or are they more like Units, where you need to have 2+ in the Unit to get the benefits, and the Raptor Wing (to continue the same example) requires two Units of 1 Storm Talon?
It looks to me that Flyer wings are completely separate from your army selection methods.
You take say 3 Dakkajets in a CAD, and then combine them into a Flyer Wing. Or you could take the Wingnuts Air Armada (3 Dakkajets, 1 Burna bomber, 1 Blitza Bomber), and choose to combine the dakkajets into one Flyer Wing, and the bombers in another.
That being said, the fact that the 3 of us, 3 experienced gamers can’t read this clearly is one of the many reasons this supplement appears to be an unmitigated failure.
There is so much garbage in this book. The Dogfight phase, the Attack Patterns, the complete lack of support for Demons, Tyranids. The continued effort to amplify the most important rule of the game (If you play Eldar you win). Taking away skyfire from most fliers is stupid. The Extra turn during movement is good, but the stats give out are so unbalanced. The new Ork Flyer is hilariously overcosted, and appears to mainly be an effort to raise the price of the dakkajet kit. My vote if I get one is that we should ignore the existence of this book.
I like the new Death from the Skies supplement, minus the dog fighting phase which is altogether too much work. I hope it gets allowed in the ITC.
While i don’t know exactly how long an average dogfight phase will take, i doubt a dogfight phase will take more time then the other “optional unit” phase, the psychic phase. Banning dogfights on a time constraint platform is not realistic, as putting a bunch of points into flyers means you have fewer points in other units that would take potentially more time.
As an aside, if you wanted to speed up the dogfight, then instead of secretly picking 1-3, both players can simply roll a d3. The winner gets the advantage in each subphase, while ties get rolled off using the pursuit, agility, or fighter priority. If the attacker rolls a 3 and the defender rolls a 1, the attacker gets the bonus advangage. The rolling d3 matrix thus perfectly replicates the 3×3 matrix gw came up with but does away with the time taken picking your results secretly, revealing them, and then looking up the matrix.
The fact that the entire phase can be boiled down to ‘roll a d3’ does not bode particularly well for its design philosophy.
Agreed. Who thought this was a good idea? It seems like you could take any 2 gamers and ask them to design a dogfight phase, and it would have better mechanics than this.
Well both players roll off/play rock paper scissors is certianly better than the psychic phase where one player starts with 20 dice and the other has no psykers. The dogfight phase has several outs for a defender trying to keep his one transport alive, while it also incentivies bringing a fighter wing to support/dogfight with and protect your transports. In all, its a much more balanced phase than the psychic phase and also doesnt let 12 spammed flyers participate with more than one at a time in a dogfight.
Once a dogfight has started, a player essentially has no options to “protect” their unit, since none of the RPS games you play have any real element of choice to them- they are all essentially just a random thing to determine whether you get the bad, good, or medium result on the chart. They are influenced slightly by the stats on your airplane, but only slightly. The fact that you are explicitly prohibited from Jinking unless you are already “winning” only makes things worse for the player with the inferior combat vehicle. Dogfighting doesn’t really offer any meaningful choices to _either_ player- you play the RPS minigame a couple of times and then roll to hit and at no point do you actually have any kind of real decision to make.
I’m not going to try and defend the psychic phase here because it’s wholly irrelevant to the discussion. Whether or not it is a bad or a good thing for the game has nothing to do with whether the DFtS is, as a whole, a good inclusion.
I look at the dogfight phase differently than you obviously. The dogfight phase is there specifically as a function benefiting fighters, and the implimention is clearly geared as a specific tool for fighter wings to gain air superiority while being forced into reserve. As flyers are the only base unit forced into reserve with no way on to the table turn 1 by default, dogfighting allows points spent on flyers, especially fighters, to not be useless by coming on the table turn 4. Also, complaining a phase benefits one person over another has no competitive merit, as those planes cost points and are automatically losing 1/5 value by being in reserve.
Does it even matter? Is anyone even going to use fliers that don’t even have Skyfire anymore? Just looking at this from my Necron’s perspective. A Nightscythe was already a rather icky option buy now, but now it can’t even shoot down flying montrous creatues for me anymore. Same thing with say a Stormraven. I rarely even saw one flier, why would anyone use 3 or 4 now that they are even worse?
You could argue to defend against these super cool new flier formations that your enemy will bring but they can’t even fight those most of the time so even if this were true it wouldn’t work.
We definitely need to hear an official stance on this. People have been waiting for two weeks now on getting this book largely in part to what ITCs stance on it will be. I run local events and am fielding questions daily on “should I get this book or not?” And I don’t know what to tell them. We need to know the official position on how this supplement will be fielded in ITC if at all
If the new ruling vote is in June sometime why have you suggested the new Fulmination Discipline:
•Electrodisplacement: Be Nerfed the way you are suggesting it to be. You toke a D-weapon to it
I just went to a tournament that is using you suggestion and the New power is now worthless to even try for. In fact with out that power the rest of that Discipline is meh at best. Why would you want a poor mans gate that makes two units unable to charge and has a chance to mishap with all its dangers.
Wulfen lists can be made that give the same benefits. Wolfen list beat your Op list twice.
There are other ways to nerf .. increase it to warp charge 3. You could make the unit have -4 inches to charge or lower the WS of the unit switched to 1 or 2. Make it so you can’t have the terrain moving power and this one together.
Or do away with the big problem “the libby Conclave”. With out it, this power is not that easy or reliable in getting off at all.
As it stands no one will take the Fulmination Discipline at all. Their are better choices that do more.
Once again why the D-Weapon Nerf to the rule.???????
The power is too disruptive. Yes, that Wulfen list did beat it but I have seen zero lists with that kind of offensive output, that is absolutely not even close to the norm.
And, as the name suggests and the text explicitly states, they are suggestions, not rulings. People seem to miss that. These are not permanent, but ways to mitigate them and optional uses for TOs that don’t know what to do.
And for very 1 Wulfen list that can actually fight a Deathstar, there are 100 lists than have no chance at all. And that Wulfen list does not do well in tournaments, FYI, it bats about a .500, it’s a specific counter, not a well rounded list. That is not a good example to prove something is not too powerful in a general meta.
Thanks for the fast response.
Neither is making a power or discipline unplayable.
I not trying to argumentative. Just trying to understand your dislike for a power that could bring more diversity to the game.
Honestly.. Is it destroying the meta anywhere?? I have not seen it being complained about one any of the forums,, or on anyone’s tournament reports either.
I agree the power can be abused.
It’s no different then some of the other combos people are playing.
I just don’t see it being any different then some of the shooting list that can end the game by turn one or two as well. Honestly there is no fun getting shot up by any Eldar/Tau spam armies out there. Some are so fast that even with a twelve inch movement you have a hard time catching them.
Your ruling can be interpreted as both unit have to scatter and can possibly mishap.
You can us it if you are in combat. Which makes it wore then Gate.
As for too disruptive. Really.??
Their are a lot of list and units that are too disruptive.
I know of a 100’s of list that can’t beat Eldar Bike spam, Riptide spam, and Gladuis Formation with all of the free transport and 100% OS. All of the above list have one thing in common they all are shooting heavy. With a large mass of shooting that assault based armies can’t stand against.
I have talked to all of the people in my area that play these types of list and they all say the same. There greatest fear is a ultra fast moving assault army. Entail the wolfen and this power they didn’t have to worry.
Your interim ruling it seam unlikely that they will have to worry for it at all.
It’s true I don’t run more then two Librarians normally. In fact I am playing the wolfen formation with the murderpack and getting turn 1 charges that are 30 inches regularly. Most armies can’t deal with that either.
I give you a challenge try this power without the Libby conclave and see if the power is still as crazy as you think.
Deathstars with the Libby Conclave with this power is too disruptive I agree whole heartedly, but then I feel that formation is bad for the game as they make Invisiblty and other powers to easy to get and misuse.
In the northwest we have not had one single tournament won by anyone using this power. At Storm of Silence it didn’t even make a impact. The guy using the list Franky used didn’t do better then 3-2.
Honestly.. Is it destroying the meta anywhere?? I have not seen it being complained about one any of the the forums,, or on anyone tournament reports either.
This power can unlock some interesting armies with blood angles, dark angles, and raven guard.
It would be nice to see Space Marines with something other then Gladius.
I know my Tyranids and my friends Ork’s would love a chance to fight something at lest. I know every Ork player would be happy not having to play vs 100% OS as it is almost a auto loss for them.
When compared with other things I don’t see how it can’t so much worse then the other stuff.
Then you guys feel free to play it the way you like in your local meta, no worries. And yes, you can do some fun stuff with Assault marines and “normal” units with it, I agree 100%. However in tournaments that is not what happens. What you get is a bunch of Mega Deathstars turn 1 assaulting people and destroying people, ruining someone’s fun in the process. You don’t get people using sub-optimal units with the power in tournaments, you get the maximum damage output units using them: deathstars. No one is going to use them without the Conclave, that is why it is not a good challenge (although I agree with you on that). A player building their list around this power will for sure have the Conclave. That will be the norm. I agree though, that the Conclave is too much. It is the root of a lot of the problems with most of these powers (apart form Phase Form, which is absurd at WC1, lol).
While you are right that some weaker armies get better, that is not what happens in practice. Players take the best armies and make them even better. Instead of encouraging diversity, you get less of it.
That said, if in your local meta you get the opposite result then by all means, rock it. However, at the LVO, Adepticon, NOVA, metas where players play powerful lists, etc. you will simply see flying Deathstars all over the place which is so unenjoyable.
I agree with what will happen if the power is not nerfed. As for the power, isn’t there a option that still keeps the spirt of the power intact.??
Like you can only swap the same number of wounds or models. That you are replacing.
-4 inches to charge That can’t be negated and WS 1 and BS1 on the turn you teleport. That would be -6 to charge range if the enemy is in cover.
Seams the Conclave should be address not the power so much.
Personally the Conclave should be Banned or a One time use power. Or something.
As for my meta I have played it is very competiave I play vs the Mugu guys a lot I have even played TZC vs Jerrmy, Ben ,Geoff, frankie, and Jim. A few times. I knocked Jim out of Tshit one time. He needs to come back for a rematch.
Jeremy V played me in the first round at Storm of Silence. My dice where so ice cold he apologized for them. Lol
I digress. I’m get to play good to great players often. That I get to watch you guys online like tonight.
You say in tournaments this is happening but where is this happening?? I have friends all over the Us and have heard nothing of this being a issue yet.
Plus wouldn’t said armies have to fight each other? Balancing it out.
Also a lot of shooing armies can cripple this type of deathstar if they go first.
People always find counter for the flavor of the month.
You could always give the Fulmination powers to Tyranids//GSC and Orks if you really wanted to shake things up? It would be completely amazing.
LOL
Sorry for the miss spelling. Doing this on a phone it is hard to review and auto correct is goofy at times.
Meant to say “You can’t use it while in combat.”
A friends suggested making it so the conclave bonus power doesn’t work on it and increasing the warp charge power by 1 to 3 or 4 along with the other nerfs I said..
It would be interesting.
I think Conclave should harness powers on a 3+ (like all other similar formations) rather than a 2+.
Also, I generally agree that increasing the number of warp charges for powers is a decent way to nerf it. Provided you fixed the Libby Conclave.