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Show Notes
Date: 11-28-18
Intro
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News
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- The big news this past week came from the Vigilus Open Day! So many awesome announcements and beautiful new minis on the way.
Upcoming ITC Events
Upcoming 40k ITC Events
- ITC Warhammer 40K 3 Weekday Tournament, Campbelltown, Australia, November 28th, 2018
December 2018
- SÃO PAULO CLASH – Tournament Of WH40k, Sao Paulo, Brazil, December 1st, 2018
- The War College ITC 2k, Aurora, CO, December 1st, 2018
- The Gathering Games Warhammer 40k ITC Winter Brawl, The Gathering Games, New Richmond, WI, December 1st, 2018
- ITC Warhammer 40K 1 Day Tournament, Campbelltown, Australia, December 1st, 2018
- Dicehammer December Doubles 40k ITC Tournament, Lake Forest CA, December 1st, 2018
- GT: Allies of Convenience Wales GT, Firestorm Games, Cardiff, Wales, December 1-2nd, 2018
- No Surrender 40K, Woolston Club Inc., Christchurch, New Zealand, December 1-2nd, 2018
- GT: Nowhere GT: Warhammer 40K, Military Gamer Supply, El Paso, TX, December 1-2nd, 2018
- GT: 4th Annual Portal Warhammer 40k GT, The Portal, Manchester, CT, December 1-2nd, 2018
- MAJOR: Games of Westeros V (Westeros ITC IX), Västerås, Sweden, December 1-2nd, 2018
- Scroogehammer Invitational RTT, Louisville, KY, December 2nd, 2018
- The Twisted Road To The LCO, England, December 2nd, 2018
- Warhammer 40k 8th Edition Tournament December, Critical Hit Games Cafe, Liverpool United Kingdom, December 2nd, 2018
Upcoming AoS ITC Events
- Midgard 2k AoS December Tourny, Derry, NH, December 1st, 2018
- GT: The Hammer Of sigmar GT, Spokane Valley, WA, December 1-2nd, 2018
- Age of Sigmar Tournament, The Portal, Manchester, CT, December 8th, 2018
- Game Kastle Presents: The Path To War, Santa Clara CA, December 15th, 2018
- Age of Sigmar 2000pt Tournament, Legions Hobbies and Games, Pittsburgh, PA, December 15th, 2018
- Age Of Sigmar Tournament, Fremont CA, December 29th, 2018
40k ITC Top 10
| Rank | First Name | Last Name | Points | Events |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Nick | Nanavati | 755.16 | 5 of 5 |
| 2 | Mike | Porter | 744.54 | 5 of 5 |
| 3 | Trent | Northington | 699.34 | 5 of 5 |
| 4 | Matt | Root | 694.28 | 5 of 5 |
| 5 | Nick | Rose | 675.67 | 5 of 5 |
| 6 | Brandon | Grant | 653.36 | 5 of 5 |
| 7 | Joshua | Death | 651.29 | 5 of 5 |
| 8 | Archon | Skari | 650.81 | 5 of 5 |
| 9 | Daniel | Olivas | 637.23 | 5 of 5 |
| 10 | Christopher | Wright | 633.5 | 5 of 5 |
40k ITC Hobby Track Top 10
| Rank | First Name | Last Name | Points | Events |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Matthew | Bodnarchuk | 476.65 | 5 of 5 |
| 2 | Scott | Rumple | 430.96 | 4 of 5 |
| 3 | Lou | Rollins | 422.14 | 4 of 5 |
| 4 | Michael | Genoni | 403.04 | 4 of 5 |
| 5 | Michael | Ralston | 397.92 | 4 of 5 |
| 6 | David | Danuser | 381.96 | 5 of 5 |
| 7 | Joshua | Death | 379.85 | 4 of 5 |
| 8 | Antonio | Cedeno | 357.1 | 5 of 5 |
| 9 | Derek | Page | 351.26 | 4 of 5 |
| 10 | Jeffrey | Merrick | 348.7 | 4 of 5 |
AoS ITC Top 10
| Rank | First Name | Last Name | Points | Events |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Joe | Krier | 531.97 | 5 of 5 |
| 2 | Matthew | Pashby | 448.34 | 4 of 5 |
| 3 | James | Thomas | 446.05 | 4 of 5 |
| 4 | Mathew | Jones | 439.17 | 4 of 5 |
| 5 | Bill | Souza | 439.11 | 4 of 5 |
| 6 | Joshua | Harvey | 427.39 | 4 of 5 |
| 7 | Alex | Gonzalez | 423.04 | 4 of 5 |
| 8 | Steven | Hyche | 419.67 | 4 of 5 |
| 9 | Ken | Eubanks | 417.31 | 4 of 5 |
| 10 | Gregory | Goede | 410.22 | 4 of 5 |
AoS ITC Hobby Track Top 10
| Rank | First Name | Last Name | Points | Events |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Sid | Singh | 298.4 | 3 of 5 |
| 2 | Philip | Verduzco | 270.45 | 3 of 5 |
| 3 | Josh | Lara | 260.24 | 3 of 5 |
| 4 | Ben | Nelson | 239.3 | 3 of 5 |
| 5 | Joseph | Halfacre | 173.36 | 2 of 5 |
| 6 | Jon | Christenson | 161.9 | 2 of 5 |
| 7 | Frank | DeLoach | 158.62 | 2 of 5 |
| 8 | Scott | Reed | 155.07 | 2 of 5 |
| 9 | Joshua | Harvey | 150.5 | 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 | Andrew | Everhart | 333.63 | 3 of 5 |
| 3 | Brandon | Ulick | 331.53 | 3 of 5 |
| 4 | Matt | Everhart | 330.9 | 3 of 5 |
| 5 | Tony | Field | 329.89 | 3 of 5 |
| 6 | Michael | Rundles | 329.17 | 3 of 5 |
| 7 | Britt | Davis | 317.72 | 3 of 5 |
| 8 | Adam | Brazzell | 316.27 | 3 of 5 |
| 9 | Sean | Ratner | 303.71 | 3 of 5 |
| 10 | Mike | Melody | 303.66 | 3 of 5 |
Tactics Corner
Completed Commissions
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Reece, please rate the Greater Daemons post CA in the scale ranging from:
Grey Knight Terminators <— aka, nothing will change
to
Sooooooo Good
to
LVO top 16
I anticipate them still costing the same as a Knight without offering any of the utility.
Little faith. 🙂
Gotta wait for Daemons 2.0 my dude, points alone won’t save Codex: Troop choices.
I mean, stuff like Swarmlord are apparently dropping 50pts. And he’s already an auto-take for tyranids. So Greater Daemons better drop 120+ minimum.
Yeah, really the only fair thing is to make a Bloodthirster 2pts and also increase its Attacks to 37. Anything less than that and it’s completely worthless.
I’m not making up the number. I tried reducing the cost by 100pts of all greater daemons. And even then they are less efficient than Knight Gallant and Flyrant.
You may want to consider factors outside of the raw math of the unit when looking at what is good and what isn’t. By the pure statistics of it, Dark Reapers and Lootas are actually not all that impressive of units.
I did look outside math in this situation:
Flyrants are faster
Flyrants are more durable
Flyrants have better auras (morale immunity, -1 to psykers)
Flyrants have guns(so they can affect the game at full efficiency without relying on 9″ charge from deepstrike)
Flyrants deepstrike without CP
Flyrants cost less so they fill the HQ role more efficiently
Flyrants are customizable
Flyrants have better spells(I’d take tyranid spells over all daemons spells combined any day)
BTW, if they are reduced by 100pts, most of them are still less durable per point when compared to the flyrant. And the flyrant isn’t some amazing 3x autoinclude unit. Most people just take 1 or 2 at max.
It really feels like you don’t grasp just how terrible they are. I’d take a Stompa over a Greater Daemon.
So you, uh, didn’t consider any factors outside the raw mathematical efficiency at all, then. That’s okay, you don’t have to if you don’t want to.
I think what I wrote is very relevant. Especially considering that none of them get gamebreaking stratagems/traits/relics like Skullreaver DP, Lootas/Dark reapers, Castellan – these guys break the math because they break the game. Flyrants and Greater Daemons are not game breaking units. Which means it’s mostly back to the basics – reading their datasheet.
To add on to that pile of “why greater daemons suck” – you need a reason to take them over DPs.
And please enlighten me what magical thing I’m missing here.
For me what I look for when evaluating a unit is:
Durability per point (and leadership)
Damage per point (and reliability and the ability to deal with most prevalent targets (see not taking tankbustas because they do nothing in horde matchups despite them doing more damage than lootas))
Mobility
Range (involving melee getting into combat)
Stratagems
Traits
Relics
Other units I can take instead
What other armies have that can do it better because I want to play with the strongest thing my army has(be it melee, psykers, ranged or whatever).
And finally extra unique abilities.
>Flyrants are not gamebreaking units
Yeah, uh, last year’s meta wants to disagree.
>And please enlighten me what magical thing I’m missing here.
>For me what I look for when evaluating a unit is:
So you’re missing an incredibly important piece of the puzzle, namely a unit’s role within the context of the army and codex it is a part of. All of those things you listed are important, and all of them contribute to its role… but a unit’s role is much more expansive than those factors alone.
Let’s take Stealth Suits as an example- at the most basic level, they are nothing particularly special. They have infiltrate-style deployment and are moderately tough for their cost, but by the numbers they don’t _do_ anything really interesting that other units from the Tau codex can’t do better. None of their armies are unique, and SM Scouts can do everything they do better and cheaper.
But Stealth Suits are still, despite all that, probably one of the five best units in the Tau codex. Why? Because they fill an absolutely vital role _for the Tau army_ that other units cannot do as effectively, and a role that is more necessary to Tau than it is to other armies like SM. Pure numerical analysis of the Stealth Suit in a vacuum, and of each other unit in the codex in a vacuum, will always miss that fact because it completely fails to address the meta-level analysis of deciding what units an army NEEDS, as opposed to what units are good.
To take another example: Hormagaunts are just straight worse than Ork Boyz. Although they are marginally faster, Boyz are more reliable, come with better support abilities, have a MUCH better statline, and have better upgrades, stratagems, and equipment. And yet Hormagaunts are still a really good unit that Tyranids will take thirty or more of in a typical list because the existence or non-existence of Boyz doesn’t change the roles that the Tyranid codex needs to fill within the context of its own army.
I’m not saying greater daemons are particularly good (though they have placed top ranks as several GTs, which would seem to kinda indicate they are better than the “unusably terrible shitstains” that you always paint them as.) But your analysis of them strikes me as very, very close-minded and one-to-one comparison with a unit that fills a totally different role in a totally different codex (Tyranids and Daemons, despite both being melee armies, do not function the same way) is at best missing the point and at worst fundamentally flawed in perspective.
>Flyrants are not gamebreaking units
>Yeah, uh, last year’s meta wants to disagree.
Yeah. That’s why they were nerfed. I’m not talking about their previous cost when comparing the units. That’s irrelevant. I’m talking about the current flyrant and how much it is used in top tyranid lists – which is not much.
>So you’re missing an incredibly important piece of the puzzle, namely a unit’s role within the context of the army and codex it is a part of. All of those things you listed are important, and all of them contribute to its role… but a unit’s role is much more expansive than those factors alone.
Which why I wrote these two factors:
1. Other units I can take instead
2. What other armies have that can do it better
This is exactly what you’re talking about – roles.
#1 is does my army have anything else that can do the same thing. If not – that’s a big reason to at least try out the unit. <– this is where both your examples fall into
#2 kicks in when it is something like Flayed Ones for Necrons or Ruststalkers/fulgurites for AdMech. If you look at AdMech, Necrons and Nids, you'll see: ok, they all have shooting and ranged units. However at the end of the day Flayed Ones, Ruststalkers, Fulgurites, etc are just mathematically inferior and they just can't do what tyranids do movement wise.
The problem with Greater Daemons specifically is that they fail most of the tests:
Durability per point (and leadership) <- Complete trash
Damage per point (and reliability and the ability to deal with most prevalent targets) <- Meh. Can't get into melee with valuable targets and don't even have efficient damage per point
Mobility <- really bad, big base, annoyed by terrain, no charge bonuses
Range (involving melee getting into combat) <– melee range with psyhic powers(their only redeeming quality)
Stratagems <– Pretty much no synergy
Traits <– Awful traits for something the opponent can shoot
Relics <— actually really good for Khorne and Tz
Other units I can take instead <— DPs and heralds
What other armies have that can do it better because I want to play with the strongest thing my army has(be it melee, psykers, ranged or whatever). <— monster mash is better done by nids, knights and primarchs
And finally extra unique abilities. <– The morale isn't a bad bonus, but not for 320 points…
So yeah. DPs and heralds exist. Primarchs, Knights, Nid Monsters exist. That's why greater daemons don't.
>Which why I wrote these two factors:
Neither of those factors are anything close to the things I was talking about. In fact, one of them is the literal exact opposite of what i was discussing and provided a counterexample to.
> But Stealth Suits are still, despite all that, probably one of the five best units in the Tau codex. Why? Because they fill an absolutely vital role _for the Tau army_ that other units cannot do as effectively
How is this not “Other units I can take instead”? You cannot use other unit that you have access to to fill this role as effectively.
The #2 point is something to use when looking for “what is the strength of my army?”. This is why current AdMech, Necrons are shooting armies with some melee support. While Tyranids,Daemons are melee armies with shooting support.
>How is this not “Other units I can take instead”? You cannot use other unit that you have access to to fill this role as effectively
That would only be the case if you were interpreting that point as “the sum total value calculation of every other unit I could possibly take,” in which case that one bullet point is the only point on your list, which feels like a fairly nonsensical interpretation of it.
The Stealth Suits, in my example, have value not because of the units that you can or can’t take other than them but because of the role that they fill in the army. If another hypothetical unit existed that also could fill that role, it would not make Stealth Suits less valuable, it would simply mean that there was another unit that had a higher value.
>The #2 point is something to use when looking for “what is the strength of my army?”
And I’m telling you that you need to stop doing that, because it’s a fool’s errand. It gains you absolutely nothing, it ignores a large variety of factors that you aren’t taking into account, and it does not accurately analyze the unit in question or the army you’re talking about. There is a time and place for calculating the efficiency of units, but it is only one of many steps in analyzing them that you should be taking- but you seem to regard it as the be-all end-all of analysis. In the recent Chapter Tactics we talked for a bit about armies with 100+ Strike Teams in them, and I mentioned that Strikes are one of the most numerically-efficient shooting units that Tau have access to… but that presumed too many outside factors working out in their favor, and hence why those armies had generally had lackluster showings on the tabletop. It’s the same issue- you need to take other factors into account to understand why units are good or bad.
> If another hypothetical unit existed that also could fill that role, it would not make Stealth Suits less valuable
Well that’s where our views differ. If another unit existed that could do the same thing Stealth Suits do but better (it could be better less obviously like one gets +1 attack, the other is a lot cheaper) then I’d consider Stealth Suits trash. There’s no point in taking them over unit ‘y’ because that is making your list worse in most cases.
“Other units I can take instead” – is kind of the “sum of everything” bullet point. I only wrote the other ones so that you could see how I evaluate the units.
And the 100+ fire warriors thing depends a lot on the player doing it in time, not fking up, etc.
Finally my own analysis ir just 1/3rd to half of what I use to determine a unit’s value. If top players like Nick are taking the unit or the unit keeps showing up on top placings constantly, while I thought the unit sucked – I will always reevaluate said unit
>There’s no point in taking them over unit ‘y’ because that is making your list worse in most cases.
So A, that presumes that the unit is strictly inferior or superior to Stealth Suits, and B, it once again completely misses the point: how valuable THAT unit is does not change how valuable Stealth Suits are. The existence of Meltaguns does not change how effective Autocannons are at destroying tanks; while it may be useful to rank units against each other when building a list, the existence of one does not make the other options nonfunctional (especially when they have non-overlapping abilities and roles.)
>And the 100+ fire warriors thing depends a lot on the player doing it in time, not fking up, etc.
Hey, now you’re starting to get it! There are a bunch of nonmathematical factors involved in unit selection and limiting your analysis solely to the factors you can quantify is actually a flawed system, see?
>If top players like Nick are taking the unit or the unit keeps showing up on top placings constantly, while I thought the unit sucked
I mean, in that case you should be bringing Sniper Scouts and Devastators ’cause that’s what Nick has been playing recently. 😛 But you seem very, very resistant to people actually telling you that units are good, or that armies can perform well, regardless of who those people are. I’m honestly not so sure that if Nick told you something you would actually listen to him.
A unit that mediocrely fills a unique role in your army will always be better than a unit that fills a role in your army well if that role is filled by other units in your army better. That is because when creating a list, I will keep the “mediocre unique unit” in mind while I’ll keep the “good oversaturated unit” in the shelf.
> There are a bunch of nonmathematical factors involved in unit selection and limiting your analysis solely to the factors you can quantify is actually a flawed system, see?
I always keep other factors in mind. And mathematical analysis isn’t a flawed system – I do not write off units unless they suck real bad. It’s just something I use to support my arguments and to form first impressions.
>I mean, in that case you should be bringing Sniper Scouts and Devastators ’cause that’s what Nick has been playing recently. ?
I would. But I don’t play marines. I respect Nick a great deal. The man is a genius. His opinion is pretty much a trump card against anyone else’s opinion. If his opinion, tournament results AND my analysis show the same thing (Greater Daemons suck in this case) – it will be almost impossible to change my opinion without changing at least one of the 3 factors that formed this opinion. If someone placed top 8 in major tournaments consistently with Greater Daemons (let’s just say “except Skarbrand because he’s pretty bad but he’s not unredeemable trash”) – then I’d probably change my opinion. I don’t want greater daemons to be “OK”. I want them to be competitive. I want them to be something a top 10 ITC player would think of as “This will help me get to top 16 in the LVO”.
> I don’t want greater daemons to be “OK”. I want them to be competitive
That’s really great but not every unit is going to be competitive. By definition, only a small fraction of the units from any codex- and for that matter in the entire game- are going to be top-tier competitive because competitive means ONLY using the very best of the best units. And hey, maybe sometimes that happens- it happened last edition with the Lord of Change. But working under the presumption that “my personal pet unit needs to be THE ABSOLUTE BEST” as a starting point for balancing the game is pure lunacy, because that isn’t and shouldn’t be how games are designed.
Well the current rumor is that they’re all dropping by 75-100 pts. So I’m content with that. At least I’ll be able to use them in friendly and semi-competitive games with that.
What I’m most scared of now is that the only way to run them will be in formations of 3 Greater Daemons (with all these formation rumors).
Daemon players will be happy with CA changes, IMO.
I’ll be excited to see what happens! Maybe after two+ years of not really having a purpose I can use my blue horrors, haha.
Lol, but yeah, CA gives a boost to most of the under-powered units in the game, IMO, across all books it covers. I am sure people will find things to complain about with it of course, but generally I think people will be stoked.
” am sure people will find things to complain about with it of course”
Trump voice: “believe me” *makes a dumb Trump face*
Why are they bringing back the awesomeness of electric guitar marines? I’m so comfy not caring about the game right now, they can’t do this to me!
Really excited for all the new models on the way, they look amazing.
Really not excited for formations, I wanted them to stay gone.
The problem with formations was that they were free. In AOS no one complains because you pay for them
I struggle with the ‘long term target’ for the list analysis. I totally buy that standardized lists helps the community from the garage gang to the small club and up to tournament organizers. More transparency, less arguments, more accurate rankings… that is all great.
However I feel that maybe some of the data collecting purpose is to feed GW with feedback so that they balance the game in a less questionable way. I don’t think that GW needs that kind of data to act. Today some factions like GK are in a tight spot and you don’t need to do much more than playing to find it out. GW is addressing such case as never before, and I feel that they manage doing this by being pat of the community more than by running stats.
The other drive I can think of supporting data analysis development is the gamer curiosity: to know what is the ultimate list in a meta OR to get reassured that one keep losing not necessarily because he/she sucks at 40K but because the faction he/she brings is at that time less favored. In the competitive meta, who wouldn’t increase chances of winning by bringing own twist of the list that has proven to win the particular tournament set up I am going to participate in the next weeks?
I listen to Chapter tactics and I find the data analysis quite fun so far, but is there more arguments in favor of data analysis?
Great episode as always! Keep up the great work guys!
Why would you want LESS data to do things. i dont understand. what is wrong with knowing more.
The thing is, without hard data everything is speculative or anecdotal. If you want to make really informed decisions, you need data to back it up and that is what this will help to do which is awesome! Plus it allows you to measure success with direct and accurate feedback.
Glad you are enjoying the show!
Reece, no offense but i listened to the whole thing and read the comments if everything rather every codex sees improvements are we just back at square one but “new & improved”
Well, I am speaking generally of course. The changes coming are almost entirely positive changes and every book covered in it has things to be happy about. However, some get more than others and how it impacts the game overall I can’t say as it is too complex for my feeble mind to predict the overall impact. That’s why I am sticking to general statements of: you will likely be happy with CA.
After the knee jerking that is sure to happen, I think people will see that this book really helps units that struggle to be more appealing.
Every codex has really bad units, though.
I think that’s fairly consistent. You’ll find most books have a few shining stars (Gallants, Daemon Princes, Cutlists, etc) where as other units are terrible (Screamers, Chaos space marines, tactical marines) by comparison.
Realistically we’d want to see that field leveled, no?
As much as is possible within the parameters of the book, yeah, that’s the goal.
That Sector 17 map is so great for Infinity. Especially since the design goes diagonaly.
Thanks! Yeah, we have indeed mostly been selling 4×4’s in that design.