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Show Notes
Date: 7-17-17
Intro
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News
- It’s almost that time! The LVO 2018 Registration will be opening on Thursday, July 20th at 9am PST! Be sure to get ready as many of these events will sell out very quickly!
- We’re gong to be offering a wide variety of events and formats for all tastes! From ultra competitive to ultra casual, there is something for you at the LVO 2018.
- Big congratz to all of the competitors at the ATC this past weekend and to Team Happy who once again won it all.
- Discussion on the current state of the 40k meta and potential reactions.
- This week we see three new Start Collecting! sets for Age of Sigmar.
- Fyreslayer and Beastclaw Raider players have been eagerly awaiting these starter boxes and we finally see their release! Slaanesh, the lost god of the realms, is also getting some love. These Start Collecting! box sets are a great way to get into the hobby and you won’t break the bank doing it. Don’t wait, grab yours at a sweet discount from our online store today!
Upcoming ITC Events
- Rockport Invitational 2017, Summer 2017, Rockport, Maine, July 22nd, 2017
- Warhammer 4,000 8th Edition Tournament, Game Kastle – Mountain View, Mountain View, CA, July 22nd, 2017
- ROGUE TRAINER, Other Realms Ltd, Honolulu, HI, July 22nd, 2017
- Konflict At Firebase Charlie 3, Game Kastle Santa Clara, Santa Clara CA,, July 22nd, 2017
- Summer Skirmish 40k, Element Games North West Gaming Centre, Stockport, United Kingdom, July 22nd, 2017
- Titan Games & Hobbies July 40k Rogue Trader Tournament, Timonium, MD, July 22nd, 2017
- Gem State 40K ITC Event, Boise, ID, July 22nd, 2017
- Red Rock Exterminatus II, Game Haven, St George, UT, July 22nd, 2017
- Winter Warfest 40k, Queensland Gamers Guild Inc, Queensland, Australia, July 22nd, 2017
- MYCL Tournament XXVII – ITC, Misty Mountain Games, Madison, WI, July 22nd, 2017
- 40K ITC Event, Tabletop & Gaming Expo, Mississauga, Ontario, Canada, July 22nd, 2017
- 8th Edition Sunday Smack Down – VoF, Paper Games, Bartlesville, OK, July 23rd, 2017
- 8th Edition Is Here, 25 Perth St, Brockville, ON, July 23rd, 2017
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.
I went to ATC this weekend and wow was it a terrible time. It seems like this edition has been nothing but Alpha Strike or bust and everyone near me was grumbling about the same thing. I think the game is ok if you and your opponent are on the same wave length, but trying to play this thing in a tourney with basically everyone brining unbound lists left me pulling my hair out Saturday and Sunday. I didn’t really need to drive 10 hours to have all my games determined by who goes first and then whether or not the second player seizes. (we even had reasonable terrain for our games too) If this edition is going to be played in tourneys it seems like the Comp hammer really needs to start swinging hard.
Just my thoughts on having spent a weekend getting curb stomped by storm ravens.
ITC change to go the go first mechanic should decrease the attractiveness of the alpha strike list. I too was at ATC this year and had a great time.
Jan 26 is Australia day! Do Aussies get a discount? 😀
Haha, maybe! lol
I usually hate the ‘comphammer’ but the force org needs to be reined in. I’m still amazed that GW has no clue on this stuff. Guess Jervis is still around.. When it comes to ITC I’m in favor of serious restrictions on force org. That seems to be the broken part of this, still thinking about what will fix it..not being able to duplicate might help but probably not enough. I know you younger gamers tend to hate comp or sports scores..or painting scores..but maybe time to face the music and realize that that will stop the whole build an army that exploits any rule and wins. Back to the RTT days..piss off 10% but they don’t pay more than 10% of your tourney and motel stuff..right?
Id rather see events split between WAAC and Casual with equal prize support for both.
Have the casual players police their pools. Eg the offending player is flagged as OP by the majority of their opponents they receive a strike. If someone receives 3 strikes for power gaming in the Casual pool then they can’t register for any more ITC Casual events for the rest of the season and lose their ranking.
I should clarify. Prize support should he proportional to number of entrants. My previous comment was assuming equal player pools.
I really don’t think that idea for a ‘casual’ tournament would work. You need actual written-in-stone restrictions. If you want to say you’re doing a ‘casual’ tournament which means no model over X points, no spamming units, no X, Y, and Z then that’s fine. But you can’t tell people to bring whatever they want and then when they get to the tournament they’re up to the mercy of whether someone else thinks their list is “too good.” That’s a terrible experience, imo. Why would anyone pay to go to an event where they think their list is fine but then someone else decides they don’t like it and now they get kicked out? That’s a terrible player experience.
If you want to add another tier to the ‘gladiator’ and champs formats with an even more restrictive ‘casual’ format that is fine. But you have to let people know what they’re getting into ahead of time.
Maybe this is too complicated, but what do you think instead of a “highlander” or “tri-lander” format to instead base it off points? I get the need to rein in the force org charts that allow you to just spam hyper-efficient units or units that present a matchup problem when taken in bulk (I.E. flyers that don’t interact with half of the game). But at the same time, in a tri-lander format 3 Stormravens is still fine. And 3 Imperial Knights is still fine. But, at the same time, 4 min-sized units of flesh hounds is kicked out. That doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. IMO it would be better restricted to “no more than X points of one unit.” That way bigger units like Knights and Stormravens are actually restricted in the same way that smaller units are restricted.
That actually sounds like it has some real potential. The one real issue I see with it is the same one with all “capping” systems, which is that it still favours underpriced Units, but there’s no real way around that without just digging in and re-writing the Army Lists.
Ive discussed the idea of “max 600 points of the same unit” with some people and we came to the conclusion it doesnt fix anything.
Cant spam 6 stormravens then? How about Guilliman, a stormraven, a fire raptor, a storm eagle, a couple of vendettas and a xiphon pattern interceptor or some stormtalons.
It wouldnt fix knights either as they all have seperate entries. Something along the lines of “no more than 80 of the same model” or “army size max 100 models” would perhaps curve the brimstone/razorwing/conscript spam quite a bit, and progressive missions + flyers no longer scoring would kill the flyer lists too.
Sure, it won’t fix absolutely everything but it is a start. For things like Stormravens you may need further restrictions (I.E. – no flyer wing detachment) because that will stop people from just spamming 5 different flyers rather than 5 of the same flyer. And Imperial Knights is an easy fix. Just say “No more than X points of the same unit. All Imperial Knight variants count as the same unit for the purposes of this restriction.”
But I think it’s still a bit more effective than a trilander-type restriction since that unnecessarily restricts low-cost units while letting the biggest offenders go scott free because taking 3 of them is still incredibly powerful.
To be perfectly honest, I have zero interest in attending a tournament until I’m confident this gets resolved.
I’m a seasoned tournament vet of about 3 years experience and the fact that I and others like me are considering a moratorium on competitive events should be a huge alarm bell for gw and matched play.
It’s fantastic that they are thinking of us for once, but they, or the ITC (ideally both), need to respond fast or they risk neutering the tournament scene.
Pretty disappointing given all the crazy hype about 8th being the most balanced editon yet – seems like it is just the opposite
I agree, GW stuffed this up GW style. The hype was that they learned from past editions and that spamming would be discouraged. Taking a thematic force would unlock command points that do awesome stuff that you would be a fool to pass up in order to make a silly looking hodge podge of models. Instead, command points don’t do nearly enough to offset taking all commanders or all flyers. The new codexes are not making me too hopeful either. We’re back to adding bloat to the game with more and more rules and auras being unlocked.
What they should have done if they wanted to balance the game is to make a strict FOC and to add army diversity is to go back to allowing certain armies to take a more units that are typically limited. White Scars can take some more bikes. Blood Angels more jump packs. This both keeps the craziness manageable and facing each army is a different experience.
I’ve been playing tournaments for 6 years and currently have no desire to play in anything but narrative events until this gets resolved.
Ive never minded playing against competetive lists, ive always enjoyed it. Ive ran and played against tons of war convocations, battle companies etc etc and always enjoyed it. Sure they may have been strong lists but they resemble an army at least. War convocation: one of each entry in the codex – how varied can you get!
But now ive been playing some games to help some ETC people prep and watched some of the Caledonian events in the UK and i can say if this is what 8th will be ill just go play casual/narrative. Facing a battle company of space marines was great. You have a horde of dudes in tanks supported by bikes and various light infantry like scouts, sure! But if i have to play one more game against 200 razorwing flocks or like the other day 600+ brimstones im done dude.
Ill just paint up some of the new death guard stuff and stick to narrative events till something changes drastically about 8th
I’m an active tournament player (and been playing for almost 20 years) and I started seriously pushing for a “trilander” format with the tournament regulars in the cities where I’ve played (SLC and Houston) the same day this podcast went up, but before I listened to it. I’m all for good lists, but spam is so boring and is such a binary and unfluffy play experience. Reviewing the ATC and ETC lists made me want to throw up in my mouth.
I’d love a format with the following:
-Max 3 of any non-troops choice, max 5 of any troops choice
-Flyers in “can’t assault me” mode don’t capture objectives
-Characters can be singled out for shooting when holding the Relic
-Units with 25+ wounds banned
-Swarms can move up / through terrain just like infantry
Good episode today. The question that is on my mind and surely on other as well is this: if we are seeing that straight out of the book Matched Play has serious balance issues due to the first turn mechanic, super spam, and certain completely unbalanced units, and the playtest group saw all of this beforehand, then how did it make it into the the final product? Does our vision of a balanced game differ from GWs?
So LVO…if I have the $$ and can snag a ticket, I am allowed to come from South Africa, right? Maybe not for 2018 but maybe 2019 😛
We would be stoked to have you, friend!
I feel like progressive missions would be the best fix for the flier spam list. It targets them most specifically. They don’t have a lot of control on where they get to go, and are only single models. Some can hover or do multiple pivots, but even then thier low model count would really screw them out of a lot point. This would potentially cut down on these units in a very natural and fair way; with out having to slap the flyer plays on the wrist or unintended nerfs.
Not sure that will solve the problem. The issue with those lists is they are tabling their opponents in 1 or 2 turns. They literally don’t care about the mission.
The times I’ve played against it experimenting with progressive missions my opponent didn’t even bother rolling because he knew he could just comfortably blow me off the table
The solution is very simple.
In competitive gaming every list should use the Batallion Detachment, with a single LoW allowed that has a power level lower than 31.
It puts structure in the armies, they resemble more traditional forces, and remove flyer and LoW spam.
Yes, this would be more restrictive but that’s the point! Structure and limitations to promote a balanced environment.
I have to admit as an occasional tournament player I really have no desire to use my precious free time playing against boring spam lists all weekend. Clearly ATC and ETC formats will tend to bring out the absolute most extreme dull lists because of the team format but we can already see lots of this in “normal” singles tournaments as well.
GW look to have done a good job of getting rid of many of the tedious un-fun things but spam really is tricky to eradicate and when that is the only filthy-list option left then you can be sure that all the filthy lists will be spam. This in not just about some units being poorly points costed (although some are) – the root problem is that spam is a strong competitive option even when units are well costed for just the reasons of threat overload and target overload described in the podcast.
The rules in the book would be just fine for me running a club night tournament, everybody knows everybody else and there is enough social contract in place to tone down the really extreme stuff. I do think that in a wider tournament environment without that social contract that most players would benefit from an additional set of restrictions so that what happens on the table is more important than the list-build; the luck of the draw in rock-paper-scissors or everyone bringing crazy alpha-strike and the player lucky enough to go first in all their games gets to win.
The rulebook is very clear that it is a gaming toolbox – just taking everything in it and throwing it onto the tournament tables is not what it says to do and with the selective use of Advanced Rules is not even what tournaments are doing already. Thoughtful TO’s need to carefully decide how to use the tools to create the best experience, be more selective with those Advanced Rules, add in new restrictions, really this is what the book tells us to do.
Then if those players who truly love the unrestricted spam game want to play an unrestricted tournament – let them have their fun. Not every TO needs to cater for every taste and smaller tournaments will usually have to choose which audience to appeal to but that is also OK.