Chapter Tactics is a 40k podcast which focuses on promoting better tactical play and situational awareness across all variations of the game. Today the guys talk about the 40k meta leading up to the London GT and then go over the undefeated lists at the event. Val and Peteypab also address some of the controversy surrounding the event.
Show Notes:
- Love Rob the Honest Wargamer? Check out his website for more great gaming content!
- Don’t forget to check out our new sponsor! Broken Egg Games.
- Click here to find all of the lists for the London GT! As well as more information about the event.
- Click here for a link for information on downloading best coast pairings app where you can find lists for most of the events I mention.
- Check out the last episode of Chapter Tactics here. Or, click here for a link to a full archive of all of my episodes.
- Want more tactical information about the new edition? Check out our 8th Edition article archive to help get a leg up on the competition!
- Commercial music by Music by: www.bensound.com
- Intro by: Justin Mahar
Need help with a list idea? Got a rules question? Want to talk tactics? Then email me at…
frontlinegamingpeteypab@gmail.com
Please do not send an army list in a format such as Army Builder, send them in an easy to read, typed format. Thanks!
Going off what GW could do for the winners is make custom model of the winners faction. BOOM
It would be so awesome if the 40k champion could design their own faction specific unit into the game.
Counterpoint: most people are terrible at designing and balancing units, because it’s actually really hard to do.
I could see that being an issue. Make it work like when AGE ran the L5R CCG where winners get to make choices that show up later in the storyline or otherwise influence in game events without having an expectation that every winner gets to influence the game rules.
Counter-counterpoint: Mtg and FFG do this already with great success. This would actually be a process in which the World Champion works with the GW rules team to come up with a model/unit that they feel best fits into the game, and also represents the winner.
Also, I would trust someone who took the time and energy into winning a large 40k tournament to not break the game over an average joe online.
MtG had done server problems with it when they first started, producing done extremely powerful cards, and as noted Lo5R did it a bunch, but it caused problems in that game also. And while a tourney winner is probably better than an internet rando at designing, that isn’t to say they will be _good_ at it.
I feel like narrative choices or units are better than matched play ones for the idea; introducing new units to the game is a very, very tricky process.
MTG stopped doing this after something like 5 invitationals. The cards submitted were broken. They did do what, 2-3 you make the cards, were the community developed a card but that was a controlled experiment. I do not think this is a good idea.
You guys are wrong about MtG.
The magic invitational was around for 10 years. In that time the champions printed strong, but not broken, cards. A lot of them were unique staples that really added to the formats they were designed in. None of the cards have been banned, and with the exception of Snapcaster Mage (edit: and Bob), none are worth more than $20.
MtG stopped the invitationals after 10 years because they already had redundant world championships, and tje viewership for that particular event had been dropping for years. They still frequently draw from the ranks of top players for playtesting and designing cards.
No mention of X-wing? Who have still been successful. L5R is a fledgeling game, and a bad example. Give it some time to see if it pans out.
The developers changed the submitted cards significantly and worked with the players to come to more realistic rules. I might be wrong about how many invitationals there where, I was going from memory, Bob, Tiago (he got two augermage and snapaster if I remember although that might have been two separate winners), Pikula, Rade, Budde. They stop the invitational for multiple reason but it was never meant to be a world championship. They used very nontraditional formats (some of them great) that would not reflect the skill of the player in type 2 (standad), block, or extended. This was in the era before twitch streaming would hazard a guess that the first ones where only reported on The Sideboard so I would doubt that these tournaments had much of a viewership at all. They probably stopped it because of the expense of flying, feeding, and sheltering the players and staff in “exoctic” locations for a tournament that ultimately was not a good means of advertising for the formats they where pushing at the time.
Of course GW would work with the World Champion to design the unit/model. That’s a given.
The rest of what you wrote is a bit hard for me to decipher, but it sounds like you agree that the invitationals were stopped for reasons other than the custom cards, which were a real highlight.
What they can do is provide winners and judges with limited edition models. If done right this will provide extra/some compensation on the secondary market.
Great show as always!
Just to let you know there seems to be some really high pitched squeaking noise going on throughout the podcast.
Thank you for the heads up. I personally didn’t hear anything like that when I listened to part 1. Do you habe a timestamp?
Starts around 12:00.
I think it’s literally a cricket in the background.
Yeah its def a cricket… its whenever Geoff is talking
Yeah it’s a cricket in the background of geoff’s track. The keener listeners will also notice a snoozing bulldog.
I cut as much of it out as I could, but I thought it sort of painted a nice picture of him sitting out on his porch, polishing his shotgun and looking out into the night of his farmstead.
He is but a humble farmer, tending to his golden crops.
A tumble weed farmer.
What needs to happen is ONE set of rules of tournaments. There are too many different formats .. too many different rules (which aren’t in the Core rules) .. too many different players trying to make a living from this hobby.
Only 8000 in the ITC … 600 watching the London GT live on Warhammer Tv … millions playing every week. One rules system might get more interested in playing competitively.
This. We need a format. It NEEDS to be set in stone.
We’re all playing different games because everyone is running their own special snowflake rules packets.
I don’t care who owns it, whether it’s GW or a 3rd Party, but I want someone to step up and state this is X format, it’s X points, and Y missions. No variance.
Great in theory, but hard to pull off and get everyone to agree.
I think the only way we’ll ever get to this is if it comes from an official source, i.e. GW writes a mission pack.
Traditionally, the GW missions haven’t been up to scratch in a highly competitive environment, because that’s not how they design the game. Not saying that it won’t happen – now that we have the “three ways to play” and a responsive GW, they may eventually create more balanced missions that can be used competitively.
If you want this, write to GW and let them know. The more of us that do it, the more they’ll pay attention.
It looks like GW are working on this, and have already rejected time clocks in favour of 1750 next year
Keep in mind that is a guy that works in Warhammer World that comes up with the format. It is not Pete and the rules guys dictating things.
There’s a reason ITC doesn’t require a format, mainly because doing so would have been the death knell of it being adopted outside of California.
Many TOs do what they do because they enjoy crafting a format. Many people attend certain events because it is or isn’t XYZ format, or because it offers something no one else offers in their area.
Personally I think the circuit and competitive 40k would be a very boring state if something like that occurred but if it happens it happens.
I personally enjoy that different tournaments have different formats. Keeps things new, exciting and prevents a stagnant meta.
This very relevant strip explains why that doesn’t work.
https://xkcd.com/927/
Hey guys, great stuff as usual. Thanks for the shout out on the 5-0, I echo the sentiment around giving the TOS a break the big test will be how they move forward for lgt19. If you need any info for your dedicated LGT cast happy to help. Keep up the good work!
They had the same issue last year with the terrain. So how many chances does one get putting on a bad performance? The organizers seem to want to jump the steps of hard work that FLG put into LVO with terrain and logistics and straight to being recognized as an important tournament.
The simple truth is that IF you don’t want to play … then don’t buy a ticket.eg – I won’t enter a FLG tournament using chess clocks. They aren’t part of the core rules and are answering a referee’s problem with a mechanism from a totally different game.
Many of those commenting on this thread have never even been to the UK, yet alone played competitively. That’s the internet at it’s worst.
Be interested to know about any mad out of the box lists. There was a nurgle list with just pure nurglings somone said. And an Ork list that won ‘best list’ that was all Mek Gunz that won all its games too. Does anyone have a copy of the list doc?
The game is on the Warhammer Twitch channel.
80 nurgling bases, Daemon Prince, Epidemis, and a few other characters.
Easy win for the AC jetbikes and AM battalion.
All lists are on Best Coast Pairings App.
What about the Ork list with the gunz. Can’t find it on the steam videos. Anyone know what it was, or who was playing it and I’ll ask them.
Biggest Disappointment was no mention of Neil Powell’s stupid ass abusive Mek Gunz/Big Gunz list. Surely at least deserved a head scratch about what the fuck it did to go 4-1!
Probably the reason is that he and I got paired up round one in an eventual 18-2 win for me. This meant he was effectively knocked out on round 1 and playing “down” with other knockouts for several rounds thereafter.
It’s a quirky list, and Neil is an excellent player, but it’s not really abusive, and probably never would have had a shot at 5-0 because it would have eventually hit a buzzsaw in the wrong mission so long as it was near the top of the standings.
Fair point Mike, but he actually bounced straight into an Italian ETC player in round 2 lol. It’s an annoying list to be sure and I’ve chatted with him about it a fair bit. I’d say it’s abusive in use of game mechanics, not necessarily in terms of play quality
To be honest I do not mind having different formats. I regularly go in and out of ITC Land. I would not enjoy the ITC champs missions, if that was all I played, but doing variations on Book missions also gets tiring.
Thank you for the shout out guys and for trying to pronounce my name! You did very well and were correct about the “W”.
I had a decent, grinding five games some harder than another with generally nice opponents.
I only had a first turn in the first game and was really happy with how I could take a punch and retaliate in my following turn(Especially up against Reapers and 3x Hemlocks list and 3x Stormsurge and Riptide one). It was quite fun to play as well.
I think overall everything performed quite well with Dark Talons screening Shield captains & Sammael in the middle/long range while tanks in the deployment part. Super chuffed by the result.
Hey Wlodek thanks for listening! Also I loved your list, it was one of the more unique ones that we saw.
Very slightly off-topic: I really hope Geoff Robinson comes back with a sequel to his excellent Teachable Moment article on the events at the London GT.
That seemed to escalate pretty fast. I think the presence of video is going to change the way that top players need to approach games in the future.
Not being a competitive player I mostly listened to hear your thoughts about the event. I appreciate your comments about ‘not piling on’ and how they’ve ‘got the feedback’ but certainly part of the reason the local (London) community is pissed off with them is that the same feedback has been given all three years’ they’ve run this.
Every year they try to expand the size without bothering to address or solve the same issues. I can appreciate that, given that this was the first year they ran an invitational, purposefully tried to get US coverage, etc, some people might not be aware of all that.
Locally, I think a lot of people like the idea of a big London event, but I know there’s a lot of people who won’t be attending next year (and possibly some events that won’t happen). Thoroughly supportive of a big London event. Not supportive of this one any more.