Signals from the Frontline #590: Settling in to the Post FAQ Meta

24 thoughts on “Signals from the Frontline #590: Settling in to the Post FAQ Meta”

1. Summary of post FAQ meta: Do you play guard or eldar? Yes? Cool, your lists don’t change and you get a bunch of free command points. Do you play a Codex that came out too recently for people to really have a grip on it yet? Fingers crossed! We won’t know for a while yet. Do you play anything else?…well…it’s all about the camaraderie right?

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   1. Lists don’t change? Did you not read the points increase bit of the faq?

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   2. Yeah if you think Guard and Eldar lists aren’t gonna change… I guess you have never actually seen either one of those armies on the table? Arguably the only army that doesn’t “need” to change is Tau, but even that is gonna shift a bit due to other armies altering what they bring.

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      1. Some people have this funny idea that static gunlines are good.

         I guess maybe if they’re playing on an open field… with no objectives?

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2. Where are the hobby stats recorded that we can see, like the ITC rankings

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   1. They’re in the ITC drop down menu above.

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3. With the boost to Battalions and Brigades I’m pretty sure that CP-farm detachments will explode. Just the two cheapest HQs you can find and three filler Troop picks. So unfun.

   To discourge that I think you should add a new Secondary mission to the ITC – call it Warhost Destroyer or something like that and if you destroy an entire enemy Detachment you gain X VP. That would make people think twice about farming CP.

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   1. The thing is, I’m not sure they will. Command Points, beyond a certain threshold, begin to lose a lot of their utility- five is obviously not enough for an army, but eight (as a minimum battalion will give you) is a lot better. At ten or thirteen (like you can pretty easily manage from a 2000pt army), you start to run into issues with not being able to effectively spend any more of your CP on many turns.

      Why bother taking an IG detachment to farm CP with when your detachments from your primary army are already netting you more than you will spend most games? The opportunity cost just isn’t worth it.

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      1. And you need viable units to *use* the stratagems on. If you just have a load of cheap troops and HQ for the sake of having CP, you won’t have many units worth using those CP to improve.

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         1. A cheap Astra Militarum Battalion (chaos can do cheap ones too) will set you back some 150-200 Points and will not only give you +5 CP but also plenty of chaff. You won’t sacrifice much punch to pull that off.

            Personally I find the rewards too great and the risks too low. It needs balance.

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            1. 180pts, specifically for 2 company commanders and 3×10 infantry squads. One commander has the laurels of command, the other (if you feel like using your warlord slot) can take master strategist.

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               1. Yeah, it is a good option if you want to take it. And with Catachan, those infantry squads and commanders are actually quite good with minimal to no kit.

                  It’s solid tool in the Imperial toolkit and some players will certainly take advantage of it but not all. Xenos players really benefit from this, particularly armies like Crons that struggled to get CP.

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4. hey fellas, the twitch replay doesn’t seem to be up on your channel or on itunes.

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   1. YouTube video is up.

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      1. Well, it’s all up now…

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5. So this comment system will randomly fill in your comment section with some other users info and let you comment… Sorry Thomas!

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   1. Yeah it has done that off an on for a while. Leads to some interesting comments.

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      1. It does, sorry. Still trying to nail down what causes it.

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6. I played in a 1500 pt. ITC event using Highlander rules earlier this year. The event strongly mirrored my experience playing at 2k in that:

   (a) Against newer/slower opponents it did not make a difference. That match still went up against time. Playing at a good pace and knowing the rules are important to finishing within time and some are just not there yet. Lower points help but only so much. The points drop benefit is also lowered in this case if the player who is slower is using a horde without doing anything to speed up their play of the horde.

   (b) Against a more experienced player whose army is a re-roll fest the time to roll dice is not diminished much. The points drop probably helped get an extra turn in but the time to distinguish success/fails to hit, do re-rolls, distinguish success/fails to wound, do re-rolls, etc., before I even do saves/remove casualties takes a minimum amount of time.

   (c) Against a more experienced player whose army is not a re-roll fest it went very quickly. The reduced points sped up deployment and the first few turns and we breezed through the game.

   While I do not necessarily want a chess clock it seems to be the only fair way to address (a) and (b) with incentives to help speed up play.

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   1. You said it. Chess Clocks may not be perfect, but they work. And ultimately we need games to finish.

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      1. I keep wondering, if finishing the game is such and issue, why is the ITC Championship format a 6 turn game?

         The vast majority of GWs missions are either 5 Turns or Random 5-7 Turn games. Why not go with the bottom of the standard instead requiring players to get in one more turn to finish the game.

         Won’t remove the need for Chess Clocks if the average game length is still 4 turns, but it will certainly reduce the number of unfinished games.

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         1. We considered going to 5 turns but found that it really changes the flow of the game. Assault armies tend to win the game later and turn 6 typically only takes minutes and we find it can really swing the score of the game. It tends to be a very exciting turn.

            However, that isn’t really the point. The point is that without an incentive to finish the game, people won’t. The Chess Clock provides that reason to finish.

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7. Hey guys!
   I was at the 1500pt tournament you mentioned – the Western Australian Team Championship (WATC) held by Objective Secured events in Perth (shoutout: http://objectivesecured.com.au/)

   One thing to note with this event is that it was a teams event – 20 6-player teams. The 2.15 hour time limit included the teams matchup process which meant some of the players got closer to 2 hrs after matchups were chosen.

   My experience was that an extra 15 or 30 minutes play would definitely have seen closer to 6 or 7 turns be the average. Due to the super-front-loaded nature of 40k, by the time you get down to the tail end of turn 3 or 4 turns are only a few minutes each. However, we do 4 games per day here so adding an extra 1-2 hours to the day is not logistically possible. Some of our other events, running 3 games / 2000pts / 3hrs we’ve seen closer to a 95% game completion rate.

   Regarding why some games were quick and some slow… I don’t know if this holds true for everyone, but my slowest game was against my most experienced component, and my quickest games (finished with an hour left on the clock) were against my least experienced. Tabling opponents significantly skewed the ‘finished on time’. But as we got to the tail end of the event and fighting for podium places the more experienced players were facing off and taking a lot more time to think. I don’t think it’s necessarily inexperience or lack of practice that makes the game take longer.

   The TO is doing more in-depth analysis about the armies involved, number of models, style of army which will hopefully be on their website soon for more discussion material.

   The games which went slow were armies with lots of moving parts – particularly combat armies. My personal theory is that a ‘gunline’ vs ‘gunline’ army has essentially 2 phases per player turn – move & shoot. Whereas a ‘combat’ army adds in a ton more phases – move, shoot, charge, overwatch, fight. Plus a decently piloted combat army heavily (ab)uses the pile-in and consolidate, which means a combat army is doing the same time-consuming moving the same model 4 times per turn.

   Re chess clocks…. I understand why people are in to them, and I have used them a lot in Warmachine before to great success, but I feel like even with the very low player interaction in 40k there are still so many ways to ‘force’ your opponent to use their time – or force them to choose between running down their clock and making game losing decisions. So even if I know I can play my army perfectly within my clock vs something like a ranged Eldar player, if I come up against a Daemons drop army suddenly *my* time blows out due to things that *he* does.

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   1. Ah, thanks for the clarification. I didn’t know it was a team event.

      Regarding the chess clocks, the beauty of it is you can always hand the time over to your opponent, even in your turn, if they are performing an action. Say, your opponent needs to take a bunch of saves in your turn and they have FnP, etc. you simply hand them the clock and they can take as long as they want to finish the action, it’s their time.

      And how does a Daemon drop army force you to burn your clock? I don’t understand that statement. But if you have to think about ways to win in your time, then yeah, that is kind of the nature of the game. You shouldn’t expect to burn some of your opponent’s time to consider all of your tactical options.

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