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Show Notes
Date: 6-27-18
Intro
- Follow us on Twitter, Facebook, Twitch, and YouTube! Join our Forums, too! If you would like to be a guest on the show, email Reece at Contact@FrontlineGaming.org
- We sell tabletop games and supplies at a discount! Hit us up for your next gaming order at Orders@FrontlineGaming.org or visit our webstore at store.FrontlineGaming.org.
News
- Big news for Knight players out there, GW released updated rules for Renegade Knights and Forge World Knights in the Imperial Knight FAQ!
- There’s an Age of Sigmar game coming out on mobile by the makers of the cool Freeblade game. It’s called Soul Wars.
- We’ve also got a preview of 2 new Stormcast Wizards with some awesome models. Asteria Soulbright and Aventis Firestrike.
- And of course, all of the cool new AoS goodies are up for pre-order this week and will start shipping starting the 30th of June! Only a few days to go. you can grab those form FLG at a discount with FREE shipping within the continental USA!
- We opened up more LVO 40k spots and wow, they went quick! The extra 100 40k champs tickets sold in 2.5 hours! Most of the extra Friendly and 40k Narrative spots filled up super fast too but in case you thought they were sold out and didn’t check, we actually do have a couple narrative and friendly tickets still available as of this recording! So jump in and grab them if you wanted to come!
- We’ve had some BAO tickets become available so keep your eye on your email as we’ll hit up the wait list on Monday the 2nd of July at 10:00am PST to grab those.
Upcoming ITC Events
Upcoming 40k ITC Events
- BB Invitational ATC Prep, Louisville, KY, June 30th, 2018
- Charity Warhammer 40,000 Tournament (ITC) 30 JUNE 2018, The Games Tavern, Chantilly VA, June 30th, 2018
- Waffle Warhammer 40K June 2018, The Red Barn, Greenville SC, June 30th, 2018
- Saturday Games Day – Warhammer 40k Competitive Tournament, London, United Kingdom, June 30th, 2018
- Titan June 40k RTT, Titan Games & Hobbies, Timonium, MD, June 30th, 2018
- June 2018 Buffalo Brawl – Warhammer 40k RTT, Alberta, Canada, June 30th, 2018
- Battle For Vendetta! Team Up!, Vendetta Games, Dahlonega, GA, June 30th, 2018
- Iron Dice 40k Series Event 1, Hattiesburg, MS, June 30th, 2018
- GT: Sidewinder GT 2018, Military Gamer Supply, El Paso, TX, June 30-1st, 2018
- Red Rock Exterminatus III, Game Haven, St George, UT, June 30th, 2018
- Warhammer 40k 8th Edition Tournament July, Critical Hit Games Cafe, Liverpool, United Kingdom, July 1st, 2018
Upcoming AoS ITC Events
- Hammerhal Hangover, Game Kastle Fremont, Fremont CA, June 30th, 2018
- Blooded Sands 8 Man 2k Sigmar Tournament, Imperial Outpost Games, Glendale, AZ, June 30th, 2018
40k ITC Top 10
| Rank | First Name | Last Name | Points | Events |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Matt | Root | 691.07 | 5 of 5 |
| 2 | Joshua | Death | 630.29 | 5 of 5 |
| 3 | Nick | Gower | 590.54 | 5 of 5 |
| 4 | Geoff | Robinson | 589.07 | 5 of 5 |
| 5 | Daniel | Olivas | 588.22 | 5 of 5 |
| 6 | tj | lanigan | 585.88 | 5 of 5 |
| 7 | John | Lennon | 579.88 | 5 of 5 |
| 8 | Ryan | Olson | 557.28 | 5 of 5 |
| 9 | Ryan | Verbeck | 556.4 | 5 of 5 |
| 10 | Mitch | Pelham | 556.24 | 5 of 5 |
40k ITC Hobby Track Top 10
| Rank | First Name | Last Name | Points | Events |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Jeffrey | Merrick | 348.7 | 4 of 5 |
| 2 | Shawn | Prosser | 286.89 | 4 of 5 |
| 3 | Nick | Gower | 281.37 | 4 of 5 |
| 4 | William | Ivey | 279.72 | 4 of 5 |
| 5 | anthony | bellm | 265.27 | 4 of 5 |
| 6 | Antonio | Cedeno | 254.55 | 4 of 5 |
| 7 | Connor | Whitehead | 252.87 | 4 of 5 |
| 8 | Kristopher | Boss | 231.59 | 3 of 5 |
| 9 | James | Kelling | 217.72 | 2 of 5 |
| 10 | Nick | barden | 213.22 | 4 of 5 |
AoS ITC Top 10
| Rank | First Name | Last Name | Points | Events |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Joe | Krier | 446.68 | 4 of 5 |
| 2 | James | Thomas | 439.42 | 4 of 5 |
| 3 | Mathew | Jones | 430.43 | 4 of 5 |
| 4 | Joshua | Harvey | 427.39 | 4 of 5 |
| 5 | Ken | Eubanks | 410.34 | 4 of 5 |
| 6 | Alex | Gonzalez | 378.09 | 4 of 5 |
| 7 | Jarrett | Zazuetta | 373.62 | 4 of 5 |
| 8 | Cody | Middleton | 364.86 | 4 of 5 |
| 9 | Vlad | Nica | 347.53 | 4 of 5 |
| 10 | James | Tapia | 340.5 | 4 of 5 |
AoS ITC Hobby Track Top 10
| Rank | First Name | Last Name | Points | Events |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Frank | DeLoach | 158.62 | 2 of 5 |
| 2 | Scott | Reed | 155.07 | 2 of 5 |
| 3 | Joshua | Harvey | 150.5 | 2 of 5 |
| 4 | Josh | Greenfield | 124.35 | 2 of 5 |
| 5 | Chris | Stifter | 110.56 | 1 of 5 |
| 6 | Tyler | Hamil | 105.55 | 2 of 5 |
| 7 | laljit | sidhu | 102.88 | 1 of 5 |
| 8 | Daniel | Callaghan | 96.74 | 1 of 5 |
| 8 | Austin | Morgan | 96.74 | 1 of 5 |
| 10 | Pablo | Abarca | 89.36 | 1 of 5 |
Shadespire ITC Hobby Track Top 10
| Rank | First Name | Last Name | Points | Events |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Mike | Corse | 333.98 | 3 of 5 |
| 2 | Matt | Everhart | 306.03 | 3 of 5 |
| 3 | Josue | Ibarra | 297.42 | 3 of 5 |
| 4 | Andrew | Everhart | 287.83 | 3 of 5 |
| 5 | Tony | Field | 276.65 | 3 of 5 |
| 6 | David | Escobar | 263.04 | 3 of 5 |
| 7 | David | Cutts | 256.37 | 3 of 5 |
| 8 | Christopher | Avalos | 228.06 | 3 of 5 |
| 9 | Brandon | Ulick | 221.14 | 2 of 5 |
| 10 | Michael | Misulich | 194.18 | 2 of 5 |
Tactics Corner
- Knights and Drukhari, tearing up the meta!
- Flying Monkey GT already saw Knights staring in Imperial Soup lists taking top spots, as did the Boise Cup where three very different Knight lists placed in the top 5.
- Some of the combos rising up as most effective are a Castellan+Marines of some sort (typically Blood Angels)+Astra Militarum. The synergy there is incredibly strong.
- Drukhari are quickly rising as a dominant force, too. The power of Agents of Vect combined with the vast selection of excellent Aeldari units makes for an absolutely potent combination.
- Flying Monkey GT already saw Knights staring in Imperial Soup lists taking top spots, as did the Boise Cup where three very different Knight lists placed in the top 5.
Completed Commissions
- Check out some of the lovely commissions we’ve recently completed!
And remember, Frontline Gaming sells gaming products at a discount, every day in their webcart!
Wow the thing about Knights not screening other characters is ridiculous. Thanks for sharing.
You should do a “tip of the week” like that. It’d be great.
Really good episode in general. Tactics/Meta talk = best content for me.
” Ignore other enemy Characters with a Wounds characteristics of less than 10 when determining if the target is the closest enemy unit to the firing model.”
I retract my “thanks”!!!
Yeah, we need to make sure we get the fact correct before sharing it as a hot tip, lol!
Transcripts please!
often times I open the transcript up from the youtube channel, but it’s not something I can always do (and other people can’t as well)
https://www.hongkiat.com/blog/three-ways-transcribe-youtube-videos/
has a good explanation, basically youtube does auto transcripts for nearly everything with its text to speech stuff. Just copy it into a txt file for us plebians who want to read at places where we can’t use audio or access youtube due to firewalls/work whatever?
You mentioned on your last podcast feed back on the current ITC missions. Where can we send them?
I find them quite stale especially compared to Renegade or even standard ITC format.
The lack of randomness in objectives is boring and no restrictions on selecting the same objectives each game means you often select very similar missions each game.
The straight from rule book deployment is a bit of a pain to particularly the roll off to roll off for random map. Just set the deployment for each mission.
We don’t have the feedback form set up, yet. We were just asking people to start thinking about it.
Funny to see people’s thoughts. The random deployment is n my opinion one of the best aspects of our missions as it means you can’t build for each mission. Skilled players will start to optimize for each mission and it starts to become a set piece strategy for each mission, which becomes routine and a bit boring. Yeah, you have to roll it up but ultimately that is a very minor annoyance for giving you essentially 36 missions. Seems odd that you want more randomness in the missions but not in the deployment? The different deployments force you to play each mission in very different ways.
And what do you mean randomness in objectives? I am not tracking you on that one. Like, roll for your objectives or something? Maelstrom cards?
A roll off for a roll off on random deployment seems superfluous. I know that’s BRB but I also find it a 0 advantage to win that roll.
As for random missions yes. I like the rolling for them like in Standard ITC or maelstrom cards. That pushes you more to achieve them because you dont know what’s next. Yeh occasionally the dice gods will punish you but that’s why there is (was) primary, secondary and tertiary missions.
Renegade seems to be inbetween because although not random (ie you choose each turn) you can’t choose the same twice. Similarly you can’t keep choosing the same primary each round.
Anyways looking forward to the poll. Champ missions to me seem very bland and one dimensional.
The roll-off to determine who rolls for the deployment type is there because the player who rolls the deployment type also gets to choose which of the available deployment zones they want.
Precisely, which is really important if the terrain is asymmetrical…
Plus, you need some type of mechanism to determine who gets to roll for the deployment, otherwise players won’t have instruction on how to go about it.
You don’t find advantage in picking your deployment zone? That is usually the second most important roll after the first turn roll if you have asymmetrical terrain.
And huh, weird. I think you are honestly the first player I have heard say they like random objectives in a competitive setting. Most competitive players I speak with really, really, passionately dislike them, haha. However, you find the subtle difference of rolling for missions to be exciting but picking them to be boring? Interesting. I mean, I get that actually, rolling for anything is exciting as the outcome is unknown but from the perspective of trying to win the game it is bad as it removes skill and replaces it with chance.
Thank you for the feedback though, appreciate it. Interesting perspective.
Caveat although I enjoy tournaments I dont go to win I go to have fun and enjoy playing the middling tables.
I can understand the top 25% of players wanting to minimize the randomness as much as possible (eg maelstrom cards). However it seems like a one size fits all approach to a point of being sterile.
I wonder if in your questionnaire if you could add a question to see how “competitive” a player is and how that impacts their responses.
Ill be honest as much as I enjoy attending events the current Champs missions will start to significantly impact my attendance.
I’ve mentioned to a few people. Allowing tournaments to have a competitive and friendly track would be great. However almost the competitive side to use full attendance to calculate ITC score bonuses.
That way tournaments can continue to grow and people who only want 4 casual games can enjoy their time while still supporting the more competitive side.
And it is totally cool to enjoy playing for fun, most people do. I mean, that is the point of the game, even for the most fiercely competitive players. They just have the most fun when they are playing tough games.
I was 100% planning on asking play style preference as you noted, it gives data on where the player is coming form from a game philosophy point of view.
You are literally the only person I have spoken to that has said they may not go to an event because of the missions, haha. I mean, if that is your perspective, than hey, it is what it is, but the feedback has been massively positive on them. I think the answer there, is to ask your local event organizers to mix things up a bit. If other people near you feel the same way you do then I am sure a reasonable organizer will go with the flow and mix up the missions for variety. As we’ve said a million times we do not care what format people are playing as long as they’re playing and having fun and participating in the overall community. That’s the entire point of the ITC: to get people excited to play, not to dictate format or missions or whatever.
Your idea for two formats is interesting from the perspective of providing variety but it pretty much entirely undermines the point of the scoring system. The reason you get more points for bigger events is because that reflects the increased difficulty of winning. If you’re not actually playing those people then the increased score is actually cheating the system. That’s not a tenable solution to the situation you see yourself in.
For bigger events like the LVO or SoCal, etc. we recognize the fact that there are indeed 3 ways to play the game: casual, narrative and competitive. And so we offer all three formats and all three are really popular! At the LVO I would suggest for someone in your shoes to play in the Friendly as it is super fun. 2 games a day, 4 hour rounds, Power Level, maelstrom missions. It’s really fun and laid back and you would probably love it. Maybe try to organize an event like that near you? That way you can get the missions you like and if others want to play them then that is a win/win.
The Champion’s missions themselves by nature have to be geared to the competitive crowd as that is what they require. Making less or non competitive missions would run contrary to the primary objective of them. That is why we offer lots of different mission sets: for those who want to do something different. It just comes down to what people in your local area want to play.
Would you consider an ITC variant where first 1 of 6 deployment maps is rolled up. Then both players roll off [with the +1 less drops modifier] and the winner gets to choose: (1) your deployment zone xor (2) player turn order?
Under the rules right now you can get a situation where a player randomly gets to pick deployment side and also gets to pick their turn. Perhaps a deployment side is more important than turn order, or for some players turn order matters more. This puts more choice on these questions and prevents a snowball of one player getting both their desired side and turn order.
Choosing deployment yes
Randomly rolling for deployment each round no in the name of expediency.
Also weird youre ok with allowing players to essentially design a list which could play the same selected missions each round but not prepare for deployment zone each round?
Former is certainly easier than the latter (not that its difficult to do for both if you really wanted to)
Not everyone plays for the top tables and optimizes to the Nth degree
I get what you are saying and agree. However, it seems odd even from a casual play perspective that rolling a die to determine deployment is a big inconvenience? It takes seconds to do. Taking that step away would save almost no time in reality. It sounds more like you perceive it to be a pointless step and so it annoys you (which is fine, that is your right to feel so) more than it actually slows the game down because it objectively does not.
The upside is that you have 6 versions of each mission giving you more variety. If you find the missions stale now, they’d be 6 times as stale with set deployment.
And it’s not making a list for the various deployments, it’s playing the same strategy for each mission/deployment combination. I find that when you get lots of reps in on the set-piece missions you fall into the optimal pattern of deployment choices/early game choices as you’ve done it a million times. That to me actually does become stale.
When the deployment changes each time it requires a different approach to achieving win conditions which forces creativity and keeps things fresh. YMMV of course, but that has been our experience. I honestly find that to be so fun and stimulating. Deployment is the most important phase of the game without question and the best players often win the game during deployment. Keeping that fresh and different gives each mission so much more depth.
That is why I was so curious to get your opinion as it is so very different than my own. Seriously, the random deployment is the last thing I would want to change from a personal point of view.
And FWIW, I am not attacking you or trying to undermine your perspective or anything, I was just genuinely curious. I totally get that not everyone is playing for maximum optimization (I don’t play that way, either) and that the majority of people coming to an event want to play for fun. However, it is pretty rare to hear the preference for random objectives over picking them as I have found when people get to try both the vast majority prefer to pick in a tournament setting. Just as the vast majority of people prefer to pick their Warlord Trait and Psychic Powers, etc. instead of rolling for them.
It does annoy me and its some what amusing / ironic that I’m arguing the game should be more random except for that one part 😉
However in my experience pre-game and deployment is the one of the most time consuming steps next to first turn. (Now with beta occasionally 2nd turn). So now you have to wait for the roll, check what the result is (because even when I’m organised I can grab the wrong codex for an event or forget my nicely printed lists and FAQ’s).
You then have to shuffle around the table after fumbling through the book.
Now there’s 6 deployments in the core book why not just play through all 6?
I’m not discounting the importance of deployment sides or model deployment.
I guess I cut my teeth on ETC style missions and like Maelstrom when playing casually. To me it forces you more to be more dynamic in your list building for a true take all comers, or go for the rock paper scissor line up.
Champs you can build your list around a default mission set and then potential tailor 1 of those selections to suit, if you get an unfavourable match up or want to try and really crush an opponent.
However most the time you pick the 3 same missions every game, because there is no limit stopping you from doing that (again as opposed to renegade only allowing you to choose the same mission 1 once every 3 games). Maybe reducing it to 2 might help?
I am not a fan of Renegades currently ruling of if you table an opponent you get max primary and secondary as that also is a perverse incentive.
To me the game is based predominately on randomness, we roll dice to determine results regularly. That’s why I play it and not deck building games. Sure we select units and determine efficiency by statistical averages. In an ideal world all units would work out equal depending on their role 😉
As much as I hated rolling missions I can’t achieve it means if you want to win or comeback you can’t be too conservative and ensure you kill 1 unit a turn, cap 1 objective a turn. Maybe do slightly better on one or both.
Rolling for powers last edition was terrible, because you had a really good chance of getting a bad one! This edition its nice to be able to choose, thematically makes more sense, it also makes the game quicker as its one less roll(s) you need to do pre-deployment 😉
Honestly who enjoyed waiting for a Chaos or Eldar player to figure out their powers pre-game? At least then if you won the deployment roll of you did that why they were still rolling dice and scribbling stuff down.
See, after playing ETC missions I seriously would consider not going to an event that used them as I REALLY didn’t enjoy playing Maelstrom in a competitive setting at all. Now, I am not saying they are bad missions (tons of people love them) just that I did not enjoy that format, personally. I don’t feel like I am playing the game but watching it happen. I don’t like that at all. I understand that some people do, which is fine. However, I must say, the lists in that format were FAR less balanced. Like, dramatically less balanced than we see over here. 82 Nurglings, 12 Daemon Princes, as many Custodes jetbikes as you can fit, 3 Tesseract Vaults, etc. Most lists I saw that weren’t casual players were designed to go all in on a single thing, to win completely or get crushed. So your experience with them is very, very different than mine.
And that is interesting you take the same missions in our format? Like, how does that work? Do you just take board control missions every time? They’re designed to allow you to choose what to do vs. any opponent. So do you not take missions that give you an advantage vs. your opponent? That seems strange. I take different missions every time, the only one I find myself taking most of the time I play is Recon. And different groups report different things in regards to which missions they think are too easy or too hard and it varies wildly which is very interesting.
Didnt catch the last part of your previous post
Fortunately out local store tries vary missions which is nice and renegade seems popular in the midwest.
As for the dual track yes I understand your point. That also discounts its possible for someone who goes 6-0 gets the 2 first rounds against people who actually just want to play middle to bottom tables. Even round 3 that’s a possibility (I know from experience being on both sides of the fence).
Separating them out reduces this likelihood of a player going 6-0 because of easy first 1-2 rounds vs the player who went 5-1 because they played Matt Root round 1. Now both top players are likely to play a stronger player round 1. If anything the competitive side is even strong because the people who are less concerned about that have already dropped out so to say. Even if you limit it to only 1/3 of total players can be in the friendly event you start creating an environment for people who just want to come roll dice and not take away the competition or bonuses for the stronger players.
Like you keep saying and LVO proves there are many more people attending events know. However current format puts the emphasis on it being geared towards full blown competitive at larger GTs Majors that either don’t have the draw or space to maintain a GT / Major event alongside a friendly event without cannibalising
Yeah, that is the challenge for events that don’t draw 1,000+ unique 40k players like the LVO does. Often you are limited by space or player attendance. In that instance you just sort of have to go with the flow as an attendee or start your own event. Not much else you can do, really.
To your idea of having two events in one event the only thing I could think to do would be to seed players based on their ITC scores to avoid the best players playing the new players in rounds 1 and 2. That is still not something we could ever do in a truly competitive event as it is inherently unfair.
Like any mission format there are ones that favour your list more by default, more so than the influence of your opponents list, while some are just easier to achieve than others. Renegade is the same, except again your LIMITED (not yelling, I don’t know how to bold?) by the number of times you can take the same mission.
Which also means if your list is easy for KP oriented missions although your more likely to go up against an opponent who selects it against you, there is also a chance they’ve used in that in a prior game so have to take a less optimal one.
I’m not saying ITC should adopt ETC mission sets, and if you keep taking my points out of context and to the extreme it seems disingenuous. I am saying (presumably by the existence of other mission sets including ETC) that there are players out there who do want a bit of randomness in mission design.
Clearly GW also thinks that too, otherwise Maelstrom wouldn’t be a thing? Right now ITC Champs is nearly void of any randomness other than the result of the players dice in turn and mission deployment 😉
There are extreme lists on in all formats, look at the LVO results from last year, or what happened at Adepticon. Was it ITC format which resulted in the Tau commander nerf? None of those are lists I want to play against, which again is why I don’t chase the higher tiers of competition. Mission design can help, but won’t ever stop these lists from existing.
You acknowledge not all TO’s can cater for all crowds and yet the instance to not allow them to potentially split pools limits their ability to try something different. Your current stance allows them to potentially go from a 64 – 100 player competitive ITC event to either a smaller size competitive event (which then reduces competitive players will to travel / attend because of the player multiplier) or try and go full blown friendly narrative. Why would any TO risk going from a 64+ player event to 1/2 or 1/3? My proposal offers a compromise, without negatively impacting the Competitive side and if anything increasing the difficulty of the pairings. I am not sure how you come to the conclusion that its cheating or fudging the number? Are you telling me you’ve never come across or heard of a player who said they just showed up because a friend was there or they want best painted and they don’t care if they win and concede early on and / or give you full points at the end of the game because they’re just not interested? To me that seems more like fudging the numbers than not.
LVO is the best way to gauge how popular the friendly / narrative demand is as you can comfortably fill up all within hours / days. You also have enough presence to advertise 8 months in advance and have the event sell out. Then the events that don’t sell out you have 100’s of players on the waiting list so you can rearrange your floor plan to accommodate where necessary.
Your proposal of seeding players is the exact opposite of my proposal. Mine would limit lower ranked players facing off top players. More likely casual who would probably not like to face a top 10 or even 100 ranked ITC player in the first or second rounds. Seeding only guarantees the top players progress further towards the top without knocking each other out in the early rounds. Great for tennis, I’m not sure thats where 40k wants to be.
I’m also confused by this as you regularly acknowledge its all the other tables that keep events alive.
I think you misunderstand me, I don’t want to see players I was just offering it up as a possible solution to what you see as a problem. It just isn’t something we would actually ever do.
I also didn’t think you were saying we should adopt ETC missions, don’t know where you got that from.
Yes, GW has one set of very random missions, the maelstrom missions. They also have a set of very non-random missions, the eternal war missions.
And having two different events but counting them as one for the player multiplier is actually score falsification and cheating, lol. You don’t actually have a 100 person event when there is no chance of them playing one another. You had two 50 person events (or whatever) but then falsely present it as a single 100 person event to get the points.
I know that isn’t what you meant, your intent is to try and accommodate different play-styles, but you really cannot do it in the same event without compromising the integrity of what a tournament is. It is by its nature a competitive endeavor. And while we are all there to have fun, it is the spirit of drawing people to compete that makes the event popular in the first place. Trying to harness that but then not deliver the expected experience is not a good idea, and again, contrary to what we’re building.
So again, I would suggest running a casual or narrative event and drawing in like minded people to have fun that way. Or, run a league with brackets based on skill. We do that and it is mega fun, you get people playing folks of their skill level and everyone enjoys it. But at a tournament? You wouldn’t even be able to determine an actual winner of the event, either as they’re playing in two different events. No, that doesn’t make sense.
Edit:
Misread your seeding point
Agree with your point, not an ideal solution to attempt it either.
Seeding is not what 40k needs right now
Grand Strategist still needs to be on the battlefield to work so I doubt you will get too many Chimera/Taurox sales out of Oathbreaker Guidance.
In a pure/mostly Guard army you can survive the loss. In soup you are significantly increasing the Guard detachment’s point cost for one matchup. If you have an extra detachment slot instead of getting the transport you can also put the points towards bringing another 5 CP with more Guard.
Ogryn bodyguard will mitigate the dominus rockets and is overall a good unit!
That’s actually a good point and one I had not thought of. Nice!
This is what I did. Adding even a single Ogryn bodyguard for 60ish points (depending on loadout) drastically increases your missile survivability for minimal cost. I have only had 1 game so far with it against a Castellan so don’t take my word as gospel, but he took the brunt of both missiles like a champ!
Nice one! I will have to consider that as I too use the single Grand Strategist+Kurov’s Aquilla commander as do many Guard players leaving me very vulnerable to the super heat seeker missile of death, lol
Those ogryn are beyond stupid when you add in potentially two re-rolls of their 2-3+ invul save they typically run with.
Yeah, the 2++ is too much, honestly. It is only in the shooting phase but as a T’au player that is the only phase you get.
I do really feel like Take Cover and the Slabshield should both apply only to armor saves, or cap out at a 3+. Virtually every other way to improve your save in the game caps out at 3++, it seems odd that the Guard should be able to get past that. Guardsmen shouldn’t be tougher than, say, Grey Knights or Daemons.
yeah, it’s a horrible offender to my sense, I know this is just anecdotal evidence, but had two Yvharas not even remove one ogryn over two turns (the guard player used the re-roll from aquilla each turn and re-roll strat each turn… so ridiculous) They collectively ate about 3k pts worth of tau shooting and didn’t lose a single model until turn 3.
The no randomness is why I play ITC missions. The game is random enough and enemy lists, my list, terrain and our changing tactics because of previous games leave plenty of variety.
That being said I do not like how half of the secondaries warp the lists and make some armies artificially too good if their good lists don’t give up points and, for the worst case scenario, make armies much worse when they always have to give up secondaries(ork/daemon hordes, solo big monsters, etc).
The “take the thousand cuts” advice is not very viable. I believe pro players aren’t stupid and they know how it works. However no one wants to be in the “oh you killed 2/5 units? Too bad no/only 1 point for you” position also it makes the in-game decisions even harder because sometimes you want to keep stuff alive to get the points next turn, but you want to kill more for the primary… Meh
OT but is ITC still doing the Reaper secondary thingy for squads of 10 models?
Why not just have the rule say squads that starts with 10W, seems it heavily favors AM with HWT.
Yup. It’s one of the worst offenders. Armies that have to take at least 10 models per unit are really f’d by that. While some like IG get off scot-free
Or just have it round up. SO 9=10 11= 20
But at that point, why not also say that 8=10, since lots of armies can also get squads of eight? You have to make an arbitrary cutoff point of some kind, and I don’t see any reason why nine is better than eight or ten.
Yeah, it’s just an arbitrary number. Some people get upset when AM players tale a HWT to avoid giving up reaper but it’s not that big of a deal, IMO. Plus, AM is one of the only factions on the game with no option for less than 10 model units so it is a bit of a balancing act, too. You can pay extra points to avoid giving up VP on mandatory units.
Scions?
The deal in my view is that i makes already optimal units in a competitive army even more worthwhile without drawbacks so ppl don’t have to look elsewhere.
“Hey i can avoid reaper and take this great hidden mortar which can’t be shot directly and synergizes with Cadian re-rolls etc etc etc.”