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Show Notes
Date: 8-22-18
Intro
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News
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Upcoming ITC Events
Upcoming 40k ITC Events
- APTG August Shadespire ITC, Yuba City CA, August 24th, 2018
- Battle of Wolf Island ITC, Ulvon, Sweden, August 24th, 2018
- GT: Clash of the Tetons 2, Cheyenne, WY, August 24-26th, 2018
- YHP 2000pt RTT Nova Format, Fredericksburg VA, August 25th, 2018
- Toad’s 40k Back to School Tournament, Toad and Tricycle Games, Logan, UT, August 25th, 2018
- August Dice N Duels 40k 2000 points, Dice N Duels, Fernley NV, August 25th, 2018
- LAX 40k: Champions of Character: Hero’s Reunited, La Crosse, WI, August 25th, 2018
- Warhammer 40K Tournament Michigan GT Primer, Recess Games, North Olmsted, OH, August 25th, 2018
- GT: Bridge City Open, Travelodge Saskatoon, Saskatoon Canada, August 25-26th, 2018
- War College 40k ITC Tournament, Colpar’s HobbyTown, Aurora, CO, August 25th, 2018
- Gameology 40K ITC Tournament, Gameology, Montclair, CA, August 25th, 2018
- Lords of Sydney 40K Series 2018 Final, The Hall of Heroes – Campbelltown, Campbelltown, Australia,August 25th, 2018
- MAJOR: Siegeworld 40k Major, St. Louis, MO, August 25-26th, 2018
- Old Wolf WarGames Summer 40K Event 1500, Desert Sky Games, Chandler, AZ, August 26th, 2018
- Highlander RT, Winnipeg, MB, August 26th, 2018
Upcoming AoS ITC Events
- Clash of the Tetons 2, Cheyenne, WY, August 24th, 2018
- OFCC 2018 Age Of Sigmar (AOS) Tournament, Vancouver WA, August 25th, 2018
- Age Of Sigmar Tournament, Fremont CA, August 25th, 2018
- War Zone Age Of Siggy Diggy Monthly, Mattoon IL, August 26th, 2018
40k ITC Top 10
| Rank | First Name | Last Name | Points | Events |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Matt | Root | 691.07 | 5 of 5 |
| 2 | Mike | Porter | 668.88 | 5 of 5 |
| 3 | Joshua | Death | 644.8 | 5 of 5 |
| 4 | Nick | Nanavati | 640.11 | 5 of 5 |
| 5 | Trent | Northington | 627.26 | 5 of 5 |
| 6 | Geoff | Robinson | 619.99 | 5 of 5 |
| 7 | Nick | Gower | 617.09 | 5 of 5 |
| 8 | Don | Hooson | 616.2 | 5 of 5 |
| 9 | Archon | Skari | 608.81 | 5 of 5 |
| 10 | Daniel | Olivas | 605.23 | 5 of 5 |
40k ITC Hobby Track Top 10
| Rank | First Name | Last Name | Points | Events |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Matthew | Bodnarchuk | 387.13 | 4 of 5 |
| 2 | Jeffrey | Merrick | 348.7 | 4 of 5 |
| 3 | Nick | Gower | 327.37 | 4 of 5 |
| 4 | Lou | Rollins | 324.73 | 3 of 5 |
| 5 | Antonio | Cedeno | 307.41 | 4 of 5 |
| 6 | Mike | Genoni | 290.4 | 3 of 5 |
| 7 | Shawn | Prosser | 286.89 | 4 of 5 |
| 8 | William | Ivey | 279.72 | 4 of 5 |
| 9 | Nick | Barden | 279.19 | 4 of 5 |
| 10 | David | Danuser | 277.86 | 4 of 5 |
AoS ITC Top 10
| Rank | First Name | Last Name | Points | Events |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Joe | Krier | 469.64 | 4 of 5 |
| 2 | James | Thomas | 446.05 | 4 of 5 |
| 3 | Mathew | Jones | 439.17 | 4 of 5 |
| 4 | Joshua | Harvey | 427.39 | 4 of 5 |
| 5 | Steven | Hyche | 419.67 | 4 of 5 |
| 6 | Ken | Eubanks | 417.31 | 4 of 5 |
| 7 | Alexander | Gonzalez | 415.73 | 4 of 5 |
| 8 | Randall | Nelson | 388.51 | 4 of 5 |
| 9 | Jarrett | Zazuetta | 387.53 | 4 of 5 |
| 10 | Matthew | Pashby | 381.09 | 4 of 5 |
AoS ITC Hobby Track Top 10
| Rank | First Name | Last Name | Points | Events |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Philip | Verduzco | 248.57 | 3 of 5 |
| 2 | laljit | sidhu | 208.52 | 2 of 5 |
| 3 | Joseph | Halfacre | 173.36 | 2 of 5 |
| 4 | Josh | Lara | 170.36 | 2 of 5 |
| 5 | Jon | Christenson | 161.9 | 2 of 5 |
| 6 | Frank | DeLoach | 158.62 | 2 of 5 |
| 7 | Scott | Reed | 155.07 | 2 of 5 |
| 8 | Joshua | Harvey | 150.5 | 2 of 5 |
| 9 | Ben | Nelson | 146.37 | 2 of 5 |
| 10 | Josh | Greenfield | 124.35 | 2 of 5 |
Shadespire ITC Top 10
| Rank | First Name | Last Name | Points | Events |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Mike | Corse | 333.98 | 3 of 5 |
| 2 | Brandon | Ulick | 325.46 | 3 of 5 |
| 3 | Matt | Everhart | 318.32 | 3 of 5 |
| 4 | Andrew | Everhart | 298.73 | 3 of 5 |
| 5 | Josue | Ibarra | 297.42 | 3 of 5 |
| 6 | Tony | Field | 276.65 | 3 of 5 |
| 7 | David | Escobar | 263.04 | 3 of 5 |
| 8 | David | Cutts | 256.37 | 3 of 5 |
| 9 | Julian | Johnson | 231.87 | 3 of 5 |
| 10 | Christopher | Avalos | 228.06 | 3 of 5 |
Tactics Corner
- Let’s talk Space Wolves!
- Space Wolves Warlord traits updated.
- Tips, tricks and combos.
Completed Commissions
And remember, Frontline Gaming sells gaming products at a discount, every day in their webcart!
While I still don’t think Skarbrand is worth it – he doesn’t fall into my “Greater Daemons suck” statement.
Skarbrand has something very unique – ignore morale, +1 atk and can’t fallback for everyone. That’s waaay different than other greater daemons: Kairos, LoC, Rotigus, GUO(non-bell), Bloothirster, KoS – who are just very overpriced fragile beatsticks that can be targeted.
They suffer from the problem that most of the bad units in 8th ed suffer from – inefficient and not unique. When it comes to that – you just never take them unless you want to make your list worse. With Skarbrand you can actually outplay people.
And an amazing player can of course win with a greater daemon in their list. I am sure Nick Nanavati could take a chaos list with a Bloodthirster and win an RTT. But that does not change the fact that the Greater Daemon in their list will make it worse because it is just an inefficient beatstick in a world of efficient beatsticks that also have tricks up their sleave.
Like seriously – why does a 340 pts greater daemon have a 5++ and a generic dude in power armor that costs 130 is borderline immortal to shooting as long as he has some chaff around him and has a 3++ (oh and he has better aura and stratagems)? That makes 0 sense to me.
Because the Greater Daemon is an NPC intended to show off how badass that Space Marine Captain is 🙁
*cries in Avatar of Khaine*
Ahhhh, so it went from all the big stuff to not Priamrchs, to not Skarbrand….methinks you are backpedaling, sir! =P
Don’t get me wrong. I still do not think primarchs are THAT good. And people like Nanavati, Hooson, etc. are of the same opinion. That’s not a bad crowd to share an opinion with
And Skarbrand is bad. But not beatstick Greater Daemons bad
The fact that Nanavati’s ETC team brought multiple primarchs to the tournament (and won) would seem to imply that he doesn’t agree with you.
He does not think Magnus/Morty are good enough for competitive play in 1v1 tournaments, not team tournaments. Team tournaments have a completelly different meta, because you can pick match-ups. Seriously, why do I have to explain the obvious?
And I’m not making shit up. I read all his articles. He said that in the post faq world Morty is still bad, however Magnus might be worth it. He then tried him in an RTT and some practice games and found out that Magnus is still really unreliable – the opponent gets turns 1 and easily deletes him off the table, earning 4VP in the process. When that happens – you’re playing 4VP and ~500 pts down.
Hooson said the same about morty in the BiF podcast. “I wanted to take Morty, even though he is not very competitive”
Do keep in mind that when Nick says that a unit is “not good enough,” what he means is usually “not good enough to go six rounds undefeated at a Major event.” That isn’t the only meaningful standard of whether a unit is “good enough” or not. If you’re not winning Majors anyways, that limitation may not be meaningful to you.
Also, you aren’t playing 4VP down from having them get killed. The reality of the new ITC missions is that EVERY army gives up 12VP on secondaries now, it’s almost impossible to avoid it.
Well If I’m going to a tournament my intent is to win said tournament. I don’t want subpar unreliable models holding me back.
Example tier list:
Tier 1(Should get nerfed): Slammy, Castelan, etc
Tier 2(Could get nerfed): TS Daemon Prince, DG tanks, etc
Tier 3(About right): Magnus, Morty, etc
Tier 4(Could get buffed): Skarbrand, etc
Tier 5(Should get buffed): Every other Greater Daemon, etc
And Magnus and Morty are good as long as they don’t get shot off the table before your first turn and you don’t roll really poorly for their saves when it matters. However that unreliabily makes them an “include because the model looks cool/I don’t want 80 more models instead because of transportation/chess clock reasons”.
And before you say anything along the lines “isn’t a good model good enough?” – no. Not in competitive it isn’t.
Slam Captains and Castellan aren’t so bad in a “normal” list with maybe 10 CP and no farming.
What’s broken with those units/lists is they are performing “once a game, game-changing-style stratagems” 5 times a turn and more.
What hopefully get’s addressed in the FAQ is the CP farming, limiting CPs to stratagems of the faction that generates them, abolishing double-dip farming as with Grand Strategist/Veritas Vitae and/or capping CP regeneration in general and/or toning down Grand Strategist to either 6+ per CP spend or 5+-and-one die per (hopefully Astra Militarum only) Stratagem played.
Lemme ask you this, rvd, and I’m not trying to be be offensive here or anything: how many GT+ events have you won? Because until you’re getting to the point where that sort of achievement is a realistic accomplishment for you- that is, it’s something you’ve done often enough that it is no longer “holy shit I did it” but rather “hey good job I did it again,” it is probably not going to be your army holding you back.
8E has already proved in spades that talented players can make some very strange lists work quite well. And certainly you should play the best list you think you can bring… but if you’re still in a position where you’re only occasionally taking RTTs and haven’t yet won a GT, it is not your list that is the thing holding you back. Again, I say this not trying to disparage your skill as a player (I have no idea who you are or how good you are), but to make a point- if you aren’t a top-level player, the distinction between a top-level list and an almost-top-level list is essentially irrelevant.
I’m not really in a position to go to GTs. I live in a small country and play in local RTTs, and no – I don’t bring the most amazing broken list. (3 RTTs this year: nurgle+tzeentch+khorne deamons only x2, orks. Undefeated so far).
However if I can’t even use greater daemons in friendly games (they have died turn 1 every single time, even against first time players that I’ve tought the game to during that match), that makes me super sad and makes me think that the people balancing this game have no idea what they are doing or they just don’t care. I know that’s not the case as there are plenty of capable players in the balance team but I cannnot stop that thought from invading my mind every time I look at tournament results(pure armies nowhere to be seen, greater deamons nowhere to be seen(pet peeve), top lists either being exploits that get FAQd or ++, only the -1 to hit subfactions being picked, only the 5+ to get CP traits being picked, etc etc etc) and then I look at Signals where it is always “guys, 8th ed is amazing, every army is amazing, every list is amazing, balance is amazing, it is sooooooo much better than 7th”.
As far as Morty and Magnus are concerned – they are completelly balanced. That’s exactly the power level I want big guys to be at. If uncheched they wreck havoc over the enemy lines. When they work (75% of the time) they feel very powerful and awesome to play with.
And since I read so much about competitive, I study tournament results, watch the games on stream – the balance there is just as important to me as if I was playing under those circumstances, because that’s half the fun of 40k for me
Fair enough. I think you are underestimating how durable the other Greater Daemons can be (excepting the KoS, which is awful.) While yes, they can most certainly die on the first turn… so can most things. People shoot at your stuff and it dies; if you don’t want that to happen, you either need to deep strike it or hide it or give it enough buffs that it won’t get killed. The Unclean One and Lord of Change can both be buffed to the point that they are very hard to get rid of, and the Bloodthirster can come in from reserves and have a pretty decent shot at immediately getting a charge off on something. But if you leave it sitting on the table to be shot at, stuff dies- that’s the whole nature of this edition. Greater daemons die, Morty and Magnus die, Knights die, huge blobs die, everything dies if you put firepower into it. I think it’s worth considering that it may be a failure in your expectations as much as in the game rules that is making it not fun for you to play with them.
(That said, the Daemons codex is definitely one of the weaker ones around these days, especially if you refuse to bring in any allies and/or want to go mono-god. There’s certainly things that could be done to improve it, and hopefully GW will make some adjustments with Chapter Approved this year.)
Clearly the Space Wolves flyer should’ve been named Airwolf all along.
Such a missed opportunity 🙂
Lololol, so true!
Is it just me or is the image resizing on mobile chrome way off?
Noticed it since the new mobile interface dropped
In what way?
Ratio is off causing distortion.
I can email some screen shots
Been happening to pretty much every image
Me too, but it sorts itself when I turn my phone to landscape
Interesting. Thanks for the heads up, I will look in to it.
Just caught the re-broadcast on YouTube. The most exciting part? Kill Team at LVO! The most disappointing part? Reecio has shaved off his ‘stache. Now I can’t make “Super Reecio Bros.” jokes to Reece’s face at SoCal, most likely. You win this round, Reecio! But just remember, your Francis is in another castle! 🙂
Don’t let that stop you, we’ve been haunting Reece with some of the pics of him for years now.
To me endless annoyance, lol.
There are 2 big differences between Castellan and other big guys(daemons especially):
1. It doesn’t rely on geting buffed during your turn unlike magnus +1 invul, nurgle -1 to hit, etc. The survivability comes from the trait and stratagem. It is also T8, more wounds, and while it is more expensive for that – it also means that combined with “always work at full wounds” stratagem, it is almost impossible to be in the “I lost 1/4th of my army turn 1 before doing anything”.
2. It is long ranged. Meaning it can be deployed faaar away from everything.
Oh, sure; the Castellan is significantly more survivable than even the daemon primarchs, to say nothing of smaller units. But it also has significant weaknesses- it’s extremely CP-hungry (irrelevant now, but likely to become more so once the FAQ drops) and incredibly vulnerable to Haywire weapons, which Daemons can pretty much ignore. It’s also mediocre in close combat and much more expensive (to the tune of 150pts) than its competitors.
Speaking of close combat, that’s another problem big melee monsters have. Again 2 things:
1. Sniping key targets is almost impossible due to the giant base of the model, where a smash captain can easily fit instead
2. Your opponent can just run away from you the turn after, while multi model units can prevent that by surrounding (which is a very easy tactic once you’ve done it a few times: you either charge 1 unit and surround another with 3 models, or if only 1 unit is in range, you can either pile in to be in range with just one model or use the CCW that every unit has, so you attack with 0 ap). You can of course try to combo a big guy and a multi model unit, but that’s just more work.
Big melee monsters only work when they pack different attacks to damage a wide array of targets. The opponent will usually be the one who chooses against what they face. And that’s specially true with cc, non-flying, speed 9 or less models. Or when they can do decent in other phases, shooting or psychic.
Also, shooting weapons tend to have higher damage values, and a long range, so big models usually need to impact the game quickly, or not make an impact at all.
For example, those are the reasons Haruspexes are hot garbage, while winged Hive Tyrants are the top ‘nid monster, even been both close in cost (well, that and the invulnerable, save being a much better survival tool against anti-heavy weapons, usually equiped with high ap values).
Hey Reecius,
As a struggling SM player I’d love to get a breakdown of the SM army you referenced in the stream along with maybe a small “tourney review” like you’ve done for the other larger tournaments you’ve done! You’ve argued that SM is competitive if run correctly, so I’d like to see what tactics used used successfully with them.
I plan on doing one after NOVA, my friend =) Hopefully after I win a bunch, haha.
i have a question about pre-game stratagems. Reece mentioned that they can be used unlimited times pre-game, but I don’t understand why.
Some stratagems have a different cp cost depending on how many units you use it on (example, any army extra relic strat = 1 cp for one, and 3cp for two. Or same with eldar warpway setup).
What is the point of listing the second cost, if you can just use the strat again on a second unit and only use 1cp again?
Those strats explicitly say they can only be used once.
i swear i know how to read. i swear!
haha =)