Mission: Vanguard – All infantry count as scoring units. Three objectives, placed by the TO
(This was queried and jump infantry were added to the list....)
Opponent: Tau-
5 x Devilfish with 5 warriors
2 x Rail head
1 x 2 Broadsides
Commander with missile pod and flamer?
1 x 3 Crisis team with missile pods and flamers
1 x 1 Crisis with twin-linked fusion
1 x 6 pathfinders w/ Devilfish
2 x 1 piranah
The ruling that all jump infantry counted as scoring units meant that my opponent suddenly gained 13 scoring units taking his total to 18 scoring units... I gained fire dragons and my autarchs, taking me to 9 total.
I started this game with a bad feeling. I don’t really have the guns to take out more than about 4-5 tanks in an entire game generally and that left enough for him to cordon off two objectives out of the three.
I had the option again, so I chose to go second. This time around I flanked with all three squadrons of walkers. There was one objective up either end (roughly) and one central, all three roughly on the center-line of the table. I figured whichever end the walkers came in from they would be of use, and I needed side/rear shots to have a chance at cutting through the number of vehicles.
His first two turns he secured one flank and one objective, circling it with three tanks. The central objective he put a few units forward towards but didn’t come far enough forward to be hit by dragons in the turn they arrived. All of his drones disembarked and the table was a flood of scoring units. His solo fusion blaster crisis didn’t arrive.
My turn two everything came on, almost all of it going flat out, the exception being one Dire Avenger tank which found a spot to fire from where it was given LOS cover from the other tanks. The Dragons were up in his face along with the autarch tank and one DA tank.
My general tactic against tau is to push forward, get in their face and then tankshock as much of their army off the board as possible. It works better the more crisis and broadside teams an opponent takes, my worst matchup against Tau is really a tank-heavy build, since the suit heavy build relies on missile pods and rail guns to bring down my tanks and its rare that they can bring down enough to stop 3-4 of the serpents getting into multi-tank-shock range...at which point the Tau army falls apart. Low leadership on expensive models that move 3d6 on a fallback is a bad combo.
Anyway, with that in mind I’d thrown a LOT forward, hoping to cut him off from the central objective, put pressure on him, hopefully live through the three turns necessary and win two objectives to one.
My walkers that came on came from the opposite flank to his castle, by choice. Originally i had wanted to get the rear armour shots, but the new plan (conceived after he’d moved for two turns) was to solidly lock down my end’s objective and then put so much pressure on the center that he couldn’t get anything in there and keep it alive long enough to stop me winning. Upon entering the field the walkers stunned the nearest hammerhead and settled in, one of the squadrons instead shut down a piranha, failing to kill it but leaving it stunned. A missile stunned the second one.
His turn three the pathfinders lit up a dragon serpent and the broadsides obligingly blew it out of the sky, no cover save for me. I started worrying. If he could do that a few times I was going to really struggle. The rest of his shooting thankfully did very little. The walkers were out of range of almost all of his shooting, the other railhead did bugger all and his general vehicles dropped a variety of shots into the exposed dragons. His solo crisis suit appeared, scattered onto my tank (with rerolls from pathfinder fish) and got put back in reserve.
My turn three the dragons made their entry and shut down a pair of devil fish. Both my autarchs dropped out and one went for each piranha. Some dire avengers got out of one tank to take down some fire warriors that had been evicted from their tank. Then my tank shocks started. His broadsides ran off the board, the pathfinders held and two drone squads disappeared. My autarchs dealt with the two piranha, one in the shooting phase, one in the assault phase.
His turn four saw another serpent go down and a second squad of fire dragons eat it. He got into position to try and pressure the center, while on ‘my’ flank, his hammerhead and one drone squad tried to get a line on contesting my objective. His solo crisis suit appeared, scattered onto my tank...again (with rerolls from pathfinder fish...again) and got put back into reserve...again.
My turn four the serpent on my objective moved to block the hammerhead from getting in range to contest (no guns that end of the field that could hurt the hammerhead) making certain its REAR DOOR was near the bloody objective this time! Meanwhile everything that could focussed on shutting down his crisis team that was close to the center objective. I failed miserably in that, they stood through multiple tank shocks and a lot of fire, having a couple of dudes left at the end of it. More drones died, by my estimate he couldn’t contest the center objective except with three squads of drones.
His turn five proved me right. He got three squads of drones in place to contest, plus got his crisis close...but not close enough. His commander also failed to make the distance. The center objective was mine for the taking. His shooting had minimal effect and all in all I was pretty confident.
My turn five saw probably my biggest stupid move of the tournament.
I lined up death for all three squads of drones, sending one autarch after each of two squads and a walker squadron blew one completely off the table. During my shooting phase the two autarchs both killed one of the two drones in the squads they were headed for, and I finished off one drone squad with dire avengers...but for some unknown reason, i then stopped shooting the other one. My mind went “that autarch will clean up that last drone in CC no problems, better look at what to do about the other things coming in in case we go to turn 6...”
I was wrong. The autarch failed in CC to deal with a single drone (Turns out if you do the math, thats not very surprising what with no power weapon and all) and of course the game ended.....so it was a freaking draw!
Great game, well played by my opponent who had pretty poor luck all game and still eked out a draw courtesy of smart play by him and stupid play by me.
Two silly mistakes in one tournament, both cost me a win to a draw....
Saturday, 29 October 2011
Friday, 28 October 2011
Ultimates Game 4
Second day, seeded games from here. Having two wins and a draw I was expecting upper-middle pack competition, hopeful that I could get a win or two more on the board, I moved into....
Game 4
Mission: Scorched Earth – 4 objectives, every piece of terrain is either smoking (+1 to cover save if you’re in it) or on fire (Dangerous terrain). Either way, it blocks ALL line of sight drawn across it. Hope you don’t have lots of long range guns.
Spearhead deployment
Opponent: Tyranids
-Prime
-Tyrant with two guards
-Doom in spore
-2 x 3 hive guard
-Tervigon
-Gants x 20 in spore with some upgrades
-6 warriors
-Tyranofex
I went second...you guessed it, reserving everything. Once again there were a couple of objectives on either side of the table, so I was pretty confident the walkers would be able to find a target by simply walking on.
His turn one the Tervigon pooped itself with 14 gants that he then conga-lined across two objectives, giving license for the rest of his army to push forwards.
His turn two he placed both spores very aggressively and moved everything else forward, generally sweeping towards a central location.
My turn two everything bar one tank rolled on, so I castled up in one corner effectively, with walkers as far away from the hive guard as possible. What I didn’t really put together in my head is that the hive guard were completely unaffected by the bloody terrain rules.
My walkers shredded the entirety of the termagant squad down to one model, a single missile took care of the spore pod itself. I completely ignored the doom, since at strength four he was no threat until he ate some people....who were all in tanks...at the moment. In an unusual turn of events the fire dragons didn’t jump on the first target they could reach (this is an exaggeration, they normally jump on their predetermined target at the first opportunity though) since I wasn’t yet certain what I was going to use them on. I had one troop choice out of his four pretty much dealt with. I was trying to work for a good turn to wipe out the warriors in. I was planning on ignoring the Tervigon , just contest whichever objective it went for. The only other question was if I could get something into the termagant conga-line.
His turn three he immobilised a tank in my front line (one of the dragon tanks), not a good outlook for them with a tyrant and a bunch of other gear bearing down on them....all of which were invisible to my entire army due to one piece of terrain. The doom and the remaining termagant moved forward (not sure why, that termagant was a scorer if ever I saw one, I would have run that bugger into some smoky terrain)
My turn three i lined up the dump and dropped ten dragons and some missiles into 6 warriors with a prime....the dragons started bucking the odds and killed two. My missile took another one while another missile took out the dooms spore. My walkers butchered the doom. They were going to return nothing against the warriors who had feel no pain up.
His turn four he enacted a reprisal against my dragons and the ten exposed ones all died. Another tank dropped from the sky (fire dragon tank) courtesy of the Tyranofex (or tryranofex as i like to call them)
My turn four the five dragons in the immobile tank dropped out and prepared to die in much the same manner as their late colleagues (Contact the craftworld...we need more dragons...stat) and between them and a bunch of other shooting I put down the warrior squad. Now he had two troop choices left while I had four mobile troops left. My autarchs went around the back to reprise their role in my last tournament where they died taking termagants off an objective. The gants don’t kill them, the friends do.
His turn five he worked towards forcing a win using MC’s to contest and the tervigon to try to hold while the termagants conga’d the two, but he was exposed, with two objectives held by one squad of 14 termagants and his tervigon didn’t make the distance on the run. His tyrant buried itself in a squadron of walkers.
My turn five more walkers joined the tyrant dance in order to make sure it couldn’t break out and contest. My tanks closed on objectives, the two autarchs plus five dire avengers butchered the termagants in a compilation of shooting and close combat.
The game ended and was a win at 3 objectives to nil.
Good game, in my opinion he wasn’t careful enough with his troops, throwing them into the fight rather than conserving them, other than that I could have played better but got through.
Game 4
Mission: Scorched Earth – 4 objectives, every piece of terrain is either smoking (+1 to cover save if you’re in it) or on fire (Dangerous terrain). Either way, it blocks ALL line of sight drawn across it. Hope you don’t have lots of long range guns.
Spearhead deployment
Opponent: Tyranids
-Prime
-Tyrant with two guards
-Doom in spore
-2 x 3 hive guard
-Tervigon
-Gants x 20 in spore with some upgrades
-6 warriors
-Tyranofex
I went second...you guessed it, reserving everything. Once again there were a couple of objectives on either side of the table, so I was pretty confident the walkers would be able to find a target by simply walking on.
His turn one the Tervigon pooped itself with 14 gants that he then conga-lined across two objectives, giving license for the rest of his army to push forwards.
His turn two he placed both spores very aggressively and moved everything else forward, generally sweeping towards a central location.
My turn two everything bar one tank rolled on, so I castled up in one corner effectively, with walkers as far away from the hive guard as possible. What I didn’t really put together in my head is that the hive guard were completely unaffected by the bloody terrain rules.
My walkers shredded the entirety of the termagant squad down to one model, a single missile took care of the spore pod itself. I completely ignored the doom, since at strength four he was no threat until he ate some people....who were all in tanks...at the moment. In an unusual turn of events the fire dragons didn’t jump on the first target they could reach (this is an exaggeration, they normally jump on their predetermined target at the first opportunity though) since I wasn’t yet certain what I was going to use them on. I had one troop choice out of his four pretty much dealt with. I was trying to work for a good turn to wipe out the warriors in. I was planning on ignoring the Tervigon , just contest whichever objective it went for. The only other question was if I could get something into the termagant conga-line.
His turn three he immobilised a tank in my front line (one of the dragon tanks), not a good outlook for them with a tyrant and a bunch of other gear bearing down on them....all of which were invisible to my entire army due to one piece of terrain. The doom and the remaining termagant moved forward (not sure why, that termagant was a scorer if ever I saw one, I would have run that bugger into some smoky terrain)
My turn three i lined up the dump and dropped ten dragons and some missiles into 6 warriors with a prime....the dragons started bucking the odds and killed two. My missile took another one while another missile took out the dooms spore. My walkers butchered the doom. They were going to return nothing against the warriors who had feel no pain up.
His turn four he enacted a reprisal against my dragons and the ten exposed ones all died. Another tank dropped from the sky (fire dragon tank) courtesy of the Tyranofex (or tryranofex as i like to call them)
My turn four the five dragons in the immobile tank dropped out and prepared to die in much the same manner as their late colleagues (Contact the craftworld...we need more dragons...stat) and between them and a bunch of other shooting I put down the warrior squad. Now he had two troop choices left while I had four mobile troops left. My autarchs went around the back to reprise their role in my last tournament where they died taking termagants off an objective. The gants don’t kill them, the friends do.
His turn five he worked towards forcing a win using MC’s to contest and the tervigon to try to hold while the termagants conga’d the two, but he was exposed, with two objectives held by one squad of 14 termagants and his tervigon didn’t make the distance on the run. His tyrant buried itself in a squadron of walkers.
My turn five more walkers joined the tyrant dance in order to make sure it couldn’t break out and contest. My tanks closed on objectives, the two autarchs plus five dire avengers butchered the termagants in a compilation of shooting and close combat.
The game ended and was a win at 3 objectives to nil.
Good game, in my opinion he wasn’t careful enough with his troops, throwing them into the fight rather than conserving them, other than that I could have played better but got through.
Ultimates - Game 3
Game 3:
Mission: Recon – Get complete units of troops into the opposing deployment zone at end of game.
Opponent: Grey Knights:
-Coteaz and a second inquisitor
-2 Psiflemen
-2 stormravens with DCA henchmen in them. No meltas in with them...
-2 empty razors from the DCA henchmen
-4 bolterbacks with psybolts, 3 guys in each, 2 melta guns
-1 bolterback with psybolts and purifiers inside
I believe I won the roll and chose second, I reserved everything...again. He came forward in his first two turns, sweeping forward across the board. His two psyflemen stayed back
I rolled on turn two and put multiple penetrating results on a dreadnought and stacks on a razorback....I blew it up after 9 penetrating hits....then discovered it was empty....sigh.
His turn three bought down one serpent, but the walkers were predominately safe from his bolterbacks and the ravens were up the other end of the table. Since they had no melta in with them there was bugger all the death cult assassins were going to do, so he kept them effectively out of everything as two free scoring units and the two ravens just zipped around using machine spirit to launch lascannons at wave serpents...who promptly ignored said lascannon shots for most of the game.
My turn three I dropped all three squads of dragons, popped three (OCCUPIED) bolterbacks and used the walkers to drill the squads that popped out (three man squads don’t last long against 18 S6 shots)
His turn four saw him returning fire, drilling the dragons (Jesus I go through a LOT of fire dragons in a tournament, there must be some craftworld somewhere dedicated JUST to the production of fire dragon babies and some crazy fast-mature process) and not a lot else.
My turn four saw him down to the two troop squads in the ravens and one more squad still mobile but outside its ride, so it was hiding. I threw my troops squads forward round my flank and buried them in his deployment zone while the walkers did their johnnie walker impression. Over the course of the game I have no idea how much they killed, but let’s just say they got their points and didn’t die.
His turn 5 the ravens advanced a little to try to give cover to the cowering squad who boarded an empty razor and got into my deployment zone, they almost kill a walker and generally look more threatening than they actually were.
My turn 5 I directed 54 S6 shots at the nearest raven and did bugger all. Bloody thing. I got four troop choices into his deployment zone, after having to go back and do a ferry trip for a squad who’s ride got immobilised. Ended up with 10 Dire avengers hiding behind a building in his deployment zone while my autarchs jumped back in a tank and, with a cry of “RAMMING SPEED” launched themselves merrily to hell courtesy of the front armour of a psyfleman.
The game ended at 4-3.
Overall a good game, he suffered from having three man guardsmen squads as his troops and a profusion of S6 that couldn’t get good shots at walkers but also couldn’t do anything to serpents. His two DCA squads in Ravens really were of minimal use against me which, given that they were probably close to 800 poitns between them, was a large chunk of his army doing nothing.
Mission: Recon – Get complete units of troops into the opposing deployment zone at end of game.
Opponent: Grey Knights:
-Coteaz and a second inquisitor
-2 Psiflemen
-2 stormravens with DCA henchmen in them. No meltas in with them...
-2 empty razors from the DCA henchmen
-4 bolterbacks with psybolts, 3 guys in each, 2 melta guns
-1 bolterback with psybolts and purifiers inside
I believe I won the roll and chose second, I reserved everything...again. He came forward in his first two turns, sweeping forward across the board. His two psyflemen stayed back
I rolled on turn two and put multiple penetrating results on a dreadnought and stacks on a razorback....I blew it up after 9 penetrating hits....then discovered it was empty....sigh.
His turn three bought down one serpent, but the walkers were predominately safe from his bolterbacks and the ravens were up the other end of the table. Since they had no melta in with them there was bugger all the death cult assassins were going to do, so he kept them effectively out of everything as two free scoring units and the two ravens just zipped around using machine spirit to launch lascannons at wave serpents...who promptly ignored said lascannon shots for most of the game.
My turn three I dropped all three squads of dragons, popped three (OCCUPIED) bolterbacks and used the walkers to drill the squads that popped out (three man squads don’t last long against 18 S6 shots)
His turn four saw him returning fire, drilling the dragons (Jesus I go through a LOT of fire dragons in a tournament, there must be some craftworld somewhere dedicated JUST to the production of fire dragon babies and some crazy fast-mature process) and not a lot else.
My turn four saw him down to the two troop squads in the ravens and one more squad still mobile but outside its ride, so it was hiding. I threw my troops squads forward round my flank and buried them in his deployment zone while the walkers did their johnnie walker impression. Over the course of the game I have no idea how much they killed, but let’s just say they got their points and didn’t die.
His turn 5 the ravens advanced a little to try to give cover to the cowering squad who boarded an empty razor and got into my deployment zone, they almost kill a walker and generally look more threatening than they actually were.
My turn 5 I directed 54 S6 shots at the nearest raven and did bugger all. Bloody thing. I got four troop choices into his deployment zone, after having to go back and do a ferry trip for a squad who’s ride got immobilised. Ended up with 10 Dire avengers hiding behind a building in his deployment zone while my autarchs jumped back in a tank and, with a cry of “RAMMING SPEED” launched themselves merrily to hell courtesy of the front armour of a psyfleman.
The game ended at 4-3.
Overall a good game, he suffered from having three man guardsmen squads as his troops and a profusion of S6 that couldn’t get good shots at walkers but also couldn’t do anything to serpents. His two DCA squads in Ravens really were of minimal use against me which, given that they were probably close to 800 poitns between them, was a large chunk of his army doing nothing.
Thursday, 27 October 2011
Ultimates Game Two
Mission: 6 objectives, 2 are ‘primary’ Deployment : Spearhead
Opponent: Grey Knights:
-Crowe
-Inquisitor
-Vindicare
-3 x 8 purifiers in rhino with 2 psycannon, 5 halberds and a hammer
-1 x 7 purifiers in rhino with 2 psycannon, 3 halberd and 2 hammers
-3 x psyfleman dreadnought
This mission is more my cup of tea, though hte army is not pleasant, I don’t like psyflemen and I don’t particularly like psycannons in squads of marines, they are hard to suppress.
I Lost the roll for first turn and he made me go first. After a brief thought i decided to deploy off table, with no outflanking. Spearhead is pretty good for non-out-flanking walkers, you can be fairly sure of a decent target within 30” of your table edge on the turn the walkers arrive, so there’s no need to flank.
I’ve got limited notes from this game, the first turn for him pushed him forward, I came onto the board with almost everything turn two (It may actually have been everything) and lit up a rhino, put a couple of penetrating hits on a dread and got nothing for my efforts.
Crowe had to be ignored for a while (he’s got a 2+ so it needs a full walker squadron twice to be sure of the kill) and as a result he eventually buried himself in hand to hand with a walker squadron, annoying but not a lot of ways around it at the time. The fire dragons had their hands full stopping a rhino and shutting down a dread, they couldn’t manage the extra dread but their rides went on to obstruct line of fire and generally harass the furthest dread and his scoring unit, keeping them out of the main game area.
Turn five rolled around and I was looking good, had three normal objectives locked down with infantry in the clear and a dire avenger tank sitting on my primary in the clear. Crowe killed himself with perils and I though I was home.
Then my opponent spotted my mistake and punished me for it. My tank sitting on my primary was in fact sitting about 2” behind the primary (front of tank 2” from objective). He shot it and it got wrecked...not destroyed. The dire avengers had to pile out the BACK of the tank....and as a result were not in scoring range. The game then ended and that left me with three normal objectives versus 1 normal and one primary for him.....3 all....draw. Bugger.
Great spot by him, poor play by me, punished heavily for a smallish mistake.
But on such things do tournament turn.
Opponent: Grey Knights:
-Crowe
-Inquisitor
-Vindicare
-3 x 8 purifiers in rhino with 2 psycannon, 5 halberds and a hammer
-1 x 7 purifiers in rhino with 2 psycannon, 3 halberd and 2 hammers
-3 x psyfleman dreadnought
This mission is more my cup of tea, though hte army is not pleasant, I don’t like psyflemen and I don’t particularly like psycannons in squads of marines, they are hard to suppress.
I Lost the roll for first turn and he made me go first. After a brief thought i decided to deploy off table, with no outflanking. Spearhead is pretty good for non-out-flanking walkers, you can be fairly sure of a decent target within 30” of your table edge on the turn the walkers arrive, so there’s no need to flank.
I’ve got limited notes from this game, the first turn for him pushed him forward, I came onto the board with almost everything turn two (It may actually have been everything) and lit up a rhino, put a couple of penetrating hits on a dread and got nothing for my efforts.
Crowe had to be ignored for a while (he’s got a 2+ so it needs a full walker squadron twice to be sure of the kill) and as a result he eventually buried himself in hand to hand with a walker squadron, annoying but not a lot of ways around it at the time. The fire dragons had their hands full stopping a rhino and shutting down a dread, they couldn’t manage the extra dread but their rides went on to obstruct line of fire and generally harass the furthest dread and his scoring unit, keeping them out of the main game area.
Turn five rolled around and I was looking good, had three normal objectives locked down with infantry in the clear and a dire avenger tank sitting on my primary in the clear. Crowe killed himself with perils and I though I was home.
Then my opponent spotted my mistake and punished me for it. My tank sitting on my primary was in fact sitting about 2” behind the primary (front of tank 2” from objective). He shot it and it got wrecked...not destroyed. The dire avengers had to pile out the BACK of the tank....and as a result were not in scoring range. The game then ended and that left me with three normal objectives versus 1 normal and one primary for him.....3 all....draw. Bugger.
Great spot by him, poor play by me, punished heavily for a smallish mistake.
But on such things do tournament turn.
Ultimates - Game One
Game mission: Assassins: All HQ and Elite choices are worth double kill points, transports for said choices are also worth double kill points.
Opponent: Space Wolves
-3 x 6 long fangs with missiles
-2 Razors with las/plas - empty
-2 Razor with grey hunters
-2 Rhinos with grey hunters, rune priest (living lightning) and a wolf guard member
-2 Wolf scout units
-1 Wolf guard unit split among everyone
Synopsis:
Read the mission and immediately assumed I was screwed. It was the worst of the mission pack for my army. My main strike force (the dragons) were now worth 12 kill points for them with their transports. My only other source of melta (the autarchs) were now causing one of my dire avenger tanks to be worth a whopping 6 kill points....
I won the roll off and elected to go second.
He deployed centrally with long fangs in a blob effectively, flanked by two razors and a rhino either side, effectively symmetrical , trying (I think) to block my war walker flanking. He then made the error that lost him the game and deployed his wolf scouts in reserve using behind enemy lines. Given that they were the only two things in his army that were worth double points, and they had no meaningful target to come out behind, it was a very silly move and he knew it shortly afterwards and repeatedly stated it after the game.
I took advantage by flanking with the walkers in spite of his deployment. As it turns out, if you deploy centrally, as he did, then you are in range of war walkers even with their 24” range. Unless you can cram your entire army into a 12” channel down the center. If you want to deny flanking, you need to castle on one flank and thereby completely negate the walkers that get stuck coming in from the other side. The rest of my army was reserved.
His first two turns were predictably uneventful other than one scout unit being forced to come on to the table.
So in my turn two i rolled up 7 units.....with only one walker unit. So I took seven units, put some walkers on behind his scouts and the tanks all came on down that flank. My walkers cleaned up the scouts and then hid behind a rock to restrict death from the fangs and the priests.
His turn three his second scout unit came on from the opposite side and he hadsome pretty average shooting, his whole army did nothing until the last razor which evened it up with a dead wave serpent. He felt bad about the turn but in reality 15 missiles and 4 lascannons gets about one dead wave serpent if they are in cover (moved fast). The two preists were the real let down for him, achieving basically nothing.
My turn three i sent one squadron of walkers into the second scout unit (Two for one trade! Yay) and the rest of my army rolled onto the same flank i’d started with. My walkers took a razor and the missiles took a rhino. My suicide walker squad killed the scout squad and immobilised a rhino in hand to hand (multi charge)
Not a lot happened during his turn four aside from the damage to a walker on the major flank and the starting of the destruction of the suicide squad (he killed two, the last one was therefore out of range to charge and power-fist)
My turn four the remaining suicide walker jagged the death of a razorback via its rear armour, taking that squadrons trade-out to three kill points for one :P
The rest of my army opened up on the long fangs, cutting one squad down to one man and the second squad to three men who broke (but rallied and fired thanks to ATSKNF)
His turn five took another serpent down (the one my autarchs were in) and he couldn’t get into range to charge the occupants.
My turn five I killed one squad and the game ended on a scoreline of 7-3.
He killed two tanks and one squadron. I killed two squads of scouts, two razors and a squad of grey hunters.
After the game the obvious conclusion was that he needed to put the scouts on board in deployment and mount them up into the empty tanks turn one. That would have deprived me of four kill points and pretty much tied the game. Simple decisions that a game turns on.
Saturday, 15 October 2011
Victory Points and Tournaments
Victory Points missions and victory point based tournaments can loosely be divided into three types:
Absolute victory points – Your total score is added in each game, regardless of what you lost, i.e. its irrelevant whether you only had one dude left, you score 2000 if you wipe the opponent while one of the other players may score only 1500 points even if he wiped ¾ of his opponents force without losing a man. Often these are divided into range bands and the range band is used to produce a ‘tournament score’
E.g.:
Victory Points Earned Tournament Points Earned
0-500 5
501-1000 10
1001-1500 15
1501-2000 20
Generally these tournaments have give-away names, like TOURNAMENT OF THE BLOOD GOD or similar. Fortunately for Eldar players this is a pretty uncommon tournament scoring system.
Differential victory points – Your score is based on the difference between your VP’s scored and your opponents’. Often these are divided into range bands and the range band is used to produce a ‘tournament score’
Points differential Tournament Points Scored
Win Loss
0-150 10 10
151-400 12 8
401-800 14 6
801-1200 16 4
1201-1600 18 2
1601-2000 20 0
Win/Loss Victory points – As it’s’ name suggests. You either win or you lose based on the total VP scores of the two players. Essentially this is a special case of differential victory points with a bracket that looks like:
Points differential Tournament Points Scored
Win Loss
0-2000 10 0
Or something similar (some still have a “draw” as any value between 0-150 VP)
It’s important which one of these systems is in use since they favour different armies markedly.
They even favour certain compositions of those armies differently.
Absolute victory points for example (which is not commonly used as a primary method of scoring in a tournament but is often used as a tie-breaker or count-back mechanism) is horrible for Eldar.
Win/Loss victory points is a LOT more feasible for Eldar, you can win by playing a denial game, and certain units become a lot more valuable (War Walkers with shuriken cannons are very user-friendly in this context, they are often able to take out far more than their value before being wiped and are actually bloody annoying to completely wipe)
Differential victory points are workable for Eldar, but take a close look at the range bands and their implications for tournament scoring.
For example:
Points differential Tournament Points Scored
Win Loss
0-150 10 10
151-400 12 8
401-800 14 6
801-1200 16 4
1201-1600 18 2
1601-2000 20 0
This system looks ok on paper right?
Well, it IS ok, if you want to screw some armies, benefit others, and reduce sportsmanship at your event.
Why?
Well, if I’m an Eldar player, I’m pretty sure I’m unlikely to manage anything upwards of an 800-1200 VP win. It’s very unlikely even in the first couple of rounds against weaker opposition. I simply don’t have the tools to do it.
If I’m a good guard player though and I’ve got a decent gun line (or a good tau player with a decent gun line) and I’m against a poor player.....well I can get 20-0. It’s not easy, but it’s definitely doable. I can certainly get 18-2.
So, we’re assuming the two generals are of even skill, both with a best of from their respective codex, both against a similar level of opposition; the system automatically favours one over the other. Over the course of a tournament this can often be enough to ensure that a person who goes undefeated...can be beaten for generalship by someone who lost a game. In my opinion not the desired outcome.
The more heavily the tournament points are biased towards a wipe-out, the more difficult it is for Eldar to perform well. Often the scoring system seems to be thrown together with little consideration and you will see things like
Points differential Tournament Points Scored
Win Loss
0-150 4 4
151-500 5 3
501-900 6 2
901-1500 7 1
1501-2000 8 0
Now, the points differential between getting a massive land-slide victory and a close win is only 3-4, as opposed to on the earlier example where it would have been 8-10
Unfortunately now the differential in percentage between a solid win (900-1500) and a close win (150-500) is a lot higher. What you almost never see is something like this:
Points differential Tournament Points Scored
Win Loss
0-250 10 10
251-750 13 0
751-2000 15 0
Now, if you win 5 big wins and lose one, while I win 6 straight, you don’t win. Yet size of win matters still for players with equal win loss records. Obviously the numbers above are randomly selected and it’s an example purely for concept. But the thing that makes it look unusual is that the loser gets nothing.
Giving points for losing is something tournament organisers love to do, I understand the reasons, and there are even a few I agree with. But if you are going to do it, PLEASE think very carefully about the implications for the tournament results. Tournaments where the difference in points between a win and a loss is small will have their overall winner determined by painting and sportsmanship generally, tournaments where the differential is large, will have their overall determined by generalship.
Beyond that, tournaments with a small differential will tend to have controversial generalship decisions, tournaments with a higher differential will tend to have clearer cut generalship decisions. That said, you may still run into situations where someone has won all of their games by the skin of their teeth and thereby wins general over someone who took a landslide in five games and drew or narrowly lost the last.
So hopefully the TO has designed with that in mind, has come up with a scoring system that ensures that whichever he WANTS to win out of 5-1-0 and 6-0-0 wins, whoever he WANTS to win out of 5-0-1 and 6-0-0 wins and may even (if you’re lucky) have considered what should be better between 4-2-0 and 5-0-1 (which is tricky, one guy is undefeated but didn’t WIN two matches, the other guy has won more matches...but also lost one)
If the TO has NOT considered these things, then you should. Look at the scoring system; determine what will win and what wont. Do you think from the missions that you are likely to win 4, and force a draw in two? If so, where would that put you? If that’s the best you can see your army managing and it doesn’t beat 5-0-1, are there things you could do that would change your outcome in the two missions you think will be draws? Could you possibly get the tools to win one of them at the cost of a guaranteed loss on the other?
The players have the information before they attend, so it’s on you as the player to make sure you understand the scoring system and what it means for the army you are bringing.
If you turn up to an absolute VP tournament with an Eldar keepies-off force (10 AV 12 hulls for example) then you can’t expect to win. You don’t have the guns.
Conversely if you turn up as Tau to an all objectives tournament using a force with two fire warrior squads and a couple of kroot squads, your odds of winning are not good. That same force may do VERY well at an absolute VP tournie though.
As a final thought:
Even WHEN you are going to lose games is worth considering. If you know the order missions will be played in, have you considered stacking your army with the tools to win the later games at a cost of being slightly weaker early? It’s far more likely (though not guaranteed) that the first round or two (possibly the whole first day) will be unseeded in which case you stand a good chance of running up against much easier opponents. Opponents you might be able to beat with an army that couldn’t win that mission against a good opponent.
In recent Tournaments here, the idea of using ‘seeded’ first rounds based off RankingsHQ has just started to take off. If it continues then most players here at least will not be able to depend on an easy first game.
Absolute victory points – Your total score is added in each game, regardless of what you lost, i.e. its irrelevant whether you only had one dude left, you score 2000 if you wipe the opponent while one of the other players may score only 1500 points even if he wiped ¾ of his opponents force without losing a man. Often these are divided into range bands and the range band is used to produce a ‘tournament score’
E.g.:
Victory Points Earned Tournament Points Earned
0-500 5
501-1000 10
1001-1500 15
1501-2000 20
Generally these tournaments have give-away names, like TOURNAMENT OF THE BLOOD GOD or similar. Fortunately for Eldar players this is a pretty uncommon tournament scoring system.
Differential victory points – Your score is based on the difference between your VP’s scored and your opponents’. Often these are divided into range bands and the range band is used to produce a ‘tournament score’
Points differential Tournament Points Scored
Win Loss
0-150 10 10
151-400 12 8
401-800 14 6
801-1200 16 4
1201-1600 18 2
1601-2000 20 0
Win/Loss Victory points – As it’s’ name suggests. You either win or you lose based on the total VP scores of the two players. Essentially this is a special case of differential victory points with a bracket that looks like:
Points differential Tournament Points Scored
Win Loss
0-2000 10 0
Or something similar (some still have a “draw” as any value between 0-150 VP)
It’s important which one of these systems is in use since they favour different armies markedly.
They even favour certain compositions of those armies differently.
Absolute victory points for example (which is not commonly used as a primary method of scoring in a tournament but is often used as a tie-breaker or count-back mechanism) is horrible for Eldar.
Win/Loss victory points is a LOT more feasible for Eldar, you can win by playing a denial game, and certain units become a lot more valuable (War Walkers with shuriken cannons are very user-friendly in this context, they are often able to take out far more than their value before being wiped and are actually bloody annoying to completely wipe)
Differential victory points are workable for Eldar, but take a close look at the range bands and their implications for tournament scoring.
For example:
Points differential Tournament Points Scored
Win Loss
0-150 10 10
151-400 12 8
401-800 14 6
801-1200 16 4
1201-1600 18 2
1601-2000 20 0
This system looks ok on paper right?
Well, it IS ok, if you want to screw some armies, benefit others, and reduce sportsmanship at your event.
Why?
Well, if I’m an Eldar player, I’m pretty sure I’m unlikely to manage anything upwards of an 800-1200 VP win. It’s very unlikely even in the first couple of rounds against weaker opposition. I simply don’t have the tools to do it.
If I’m a good guard player though and I’ve got a decent gun line (or a good tau player with a decent gun line) and I’m against a poor player.....well I can get 20-0. It’s not easy, but it’s definitely doable. I can certainly get 18-2.
So, we’re assuming the two generals are of even skill, both with a best of from their respective codex, both against a similar level of opposition; the system automatically favours one over the other. Over the course of a tournament this can often be enough to ensure that a person who goes undefeated...can be beaten for generalship by someone who lost a game. In my opinion not the desired outcome.
The more heavily the tournament points are biased towards a wipe-out, the more difficult it is for Eldar to perform well. Often the scoring system seems to be thrown together with little consideration and you will see things like
Points differential Tournament Points Scored
Win Loss
0-150 4 4
151-500 5 3
501-900 6 2
901-1500 7 1
1501-2000 8 0
Now, the points differential between getting a massive land-slide victory and a close win is only 3-4, as opposed to on the earlier example where it would have been 8-10
Unfortunately now the differential in percentage between a solid win (900-1500) and a close win (150-500) is a lot higher. What you almost never see is something like this:
Points differential Tournament Points Scored
Win Loss
0-250 10 10
251-750 13 0
751-2000 15 0
Now, if you win 5 big wins and lose one, while I win 6 straight, you don’t win. Yet size of win matters still for players with equal win loss records. Obviously the numbers above are randomly selected and it’s an example purely for concept. But the thing that makes it look unusual is that the loser gets nothing.
Giving points for losing is something tournament organisers love to do, I understand the reasons, and there are even a few I agree with. But if you are going to do it, PLEASE think very carefully about the implications for the tournament results. Tournaments where the difference in points between a win and a loss is small will have their overall winner determined by painting and sportsmanship generally, tournaments where the differential is large, will have their overall determined by generalship.
Beyond that, tournaments with a small differential will tend to have controversial generalship decisions, tournaments with a higher differential will tend to have clearer cut generalship decisions. That said, you may still run into situations where someone has won all of their games by the skin of their teeth and thereby wins general over someone who took a landslide in five games and drew or narrowly lost the last.
So hopefully the TO has designed with that in mind, has come up with a scoring system that ensures that whichever he WANTS to win out of 5-1-0 and 6-0-0 wins, whoever he WANTS to win out of 5-0-1 and 6-0-0 wins and may even (if you’re lucky) have considered what should be better between 4-2-0 and 5-0-1 (which is tricky, one guy is undefeated but didn’t WIN two matches, the other guy has won more matches...but also lost one)
If the TO has NOT considered these things, then you should. Look at the scoring system; determine what will win and what wont. Do you think from the missions that you are likely to win 4, and force a draw in two? If so, where would that put you? If that’s the best you can see your army managing and it doesn’t beat 5-0-1, are there things you could do that would change your outcome in the two missions you think will be draws? Could you possibly get the tools to win one of them at the cost of a guaranteed loss on the other?
The players have the information before they attend, so it’s on you as the player to make sure you understand the scoring system and what it means for the army you are bringing.
If you turn up to an absolute VP tournament with an Eldar keepies-off force (10 AV 12 hulls for example) then you can’t expect to win. You don’t have the guns.
Conversely if you turn up as Tau to an all objectives tournament using a force with two fire warrior squads and a couple of kroot squads, your odds of winning are not good. That same force may do VERY well at an absolute VP tournie though.
As a final thought:
Even WHEN you are going to lose games is worth considering. If you know the order missions will be played in, have you considered stacking your army with the tools to win the later games at a cost of being slightly weaker early? It’s far more likely (though not guaranteed) that the first round or two (possibly the whole first day) will be unseeded in which case you stand a good chance of running up against much easier opponents. Opponents you might be able to beat with an army that couldn’t win that mission against a good opponent.
In recent Tournaments here, the idea of using ‘seeded’ first rounds based off RankingsHQ has just started to take off. If it continues then most players here at least will not be able to depend on an easy first game.
Reliability in 40K
My attitude towards 40k has morphed steadily as I’ve become more and more focussed on generalship and tournament play.
I used to include things in my army that could work brilliantly but were also capable of failing horribly (warp spiders and farseers in particular, harlies w/ Maugan Ra and Eldrad also suffer the same issue) and their failure generally caused army-wide failure, or ‘system-failure’ as I like to think of it.
Nowadays I don’t. I have become steadily more and more risk averse. More focussed on armies that actually deliver exactly what your math-hammer tells you they will. My lists have become far more simple, which is a huge change for me.
In non-tournament, non-competitive play, I love to indulge the side of my mind that revels in unexpected combinations of abilities and tactics, particularly to try and exhaust the list of concept lists that I have in my mind from the various codices that I’ve read lots and only got to play a handful of times.
But for tournaments I want reliability. I want to be pretty damn sure that the tactics can be carried out by the army without a system-failure.
This is, I think, the primary reason I’m now playing double autarch.
Lots of people play Eldar with farseers pretty much just for the psychic defence (which I think is false economy, but each to their own, i still wheel out Eldrad from time to time), playing with either one autarch or none.
Yet those same players almost always state that their standard going second tactic is to reserve everything.
That doesn’t work for me. I hate the possibility of my entire game being ruined by a string of bad rolls on turn 2.
Even with a single autarch, it’s still quite common for you to only get 50% of your force (about a 14% chance of exactly 5 out of 10, the cumulative prob that you’ll get 5 or less is about 21.3% for those playing along at home, one in every five games). It won’t happen often but it’s still something that will pop up every tournament given the 6 game tournaments that are common over here (Western Australia) at 2000 points.
Really, I drew the line at 7 out of 10. I want to be getting 70% of my force in one go (or more) if possible. Then you can rely on getting 2 dragons, 2 walkers and several dire avenger squads. Using a single autarch, you’re sitting on about a 55% chance of getting 7 or more out of 10.....so every second game I would get less than 7. Not my thing. Particularly when the three things that don’t show up are all fire dragons.
Now, if you go to two autarchs the odds of you getting 7 or more out of 10 jumps up to 93% which is not even comparable with single autarch. So using two I get 7 or more of my 10 units in about 17 out of every 18 games, meaning one game in every 3 tournaments I don’t get 7 or more. That’s what I consider to be reliable. You can base your tactics on that and be pretty sure it’s not going to be the factor that screws you.
It’s the basis of all competitive lists in a way.
You don’t really spam because it’s always the best option, in fact it’s quite rare that what you are spamming is the best thing you can take at that role (Fire Dragons are the most obvious example). It’s often the most efficient, but sometimes it may not be the most efficient, it may just be the choice that allows you to have redundancy through being cheaper (not the same as more efficient) and accomplishing almost the same thing as the expensive version.
Is reliability the same thing as redundancy? No. However the two principles DO play into one another quite heavily.
The game is full of factors that are unpredictable, the terrain, mission, location of objectives, moves of your opponent, what the dice will serve up....all of these things are critical to a game and mean that you simply can’t be certain that your super-unit will be where it needs to be when you need it to be there. To counter that, you take multiples of the things you think you’ll need, even if it means downgrading each one.
This is IMPORTANT. Why? Because it means that the redundancy and ‘spamming’ you see in a lot of lists is actually a response to the environment that the composer expects.
If you change the environment then spamming and heavy redundancy isn’t necessarily the best response.
Do you need multiple moderate close combat threats on a 4’ by 4’ table with one central objective? Probably not, one REALLY good CC threat is probably more effective in this case since you’ll be pretty bloody certain of where it’s going to be needed and it’s unlikely your opponent will get the chance to stop it before it gets there. In that situation you may be better off with one big fuck-off unit since you can reliably deliver it exactly where you want it to go, you can depend on having that tool at your disposal when you need it.
If the board is spread out and there are going to be 5 objectives all over the shop, one big squad of terminators becomes a liability. You can’t be sure where you’ll need it, meaning you can’t rely on it being there when you need it, hence you can’t reliably base your tactics on its use.
There is more to be said on this topic and you’ll probably see this as a common thread in many different posts. Just keep in mind, that when I say reliable, it has a specific meaning in game terms.
I used to include things in my army that could work brilliantly but were also capable of failing horribly (warp spiders and farseers in particular, harlies w/ Maugan Ra and Eldrad also suffer the same issue) and their failure generally caused army-wide failure, or ‘system-failure’ as I like to think of it.
Nowadays I don’t. I have become steadily more and more risk averse. More focussed on armies that actually deliver exactly what your math-hammer tells you they will. My lists have become far more simple, which is a huge change for me.
In non-tournament, non-competitive play, I love to indulge the side of my mind that revels in unexpected combinations of abilities and tactics, particularly to try and exhaust the list of concept lists that I have in my mind from the various codices that I’ve read lots and only got to play a handful of times.
But for tournaments I want reliability. I want to be pretty damn sure that the tactics can be carried out by the army without a system-failure.
This is, I think, the primary reason I’m now playing double autarch.
Lots of people play Eldar with farseers pretty much just for the psychic defence (which I think is false economy, but each to their own, i still wheel out Eldrad from time to time), playing with either one autarch or none.
Yet those same players almost always state that their standard going second tactic is to reserve everything.
That doesn’t work for me. I hate the possibility of my entire game being ruined by a string of bad rolls on turn 2.
Even with a single autarch, it’s still quite common for you to only get 50% of your force (about a 14% chance of exactly 5 out of 10, the cumulative prob that you’ll get 5 or less is about 21.3% for those playing along at home, one in every five games). It won’t happen often but it’s still something that will pop up every tournament given the 6 game tournaments that are common over here (Western Australia) at 2000 points.
Really, I drew the line at 7 out of 10. I want to be getting 70% of my force in one go (or more) if possible. Then you can rely on getting 2 dragons, 2 walkers and several dire avenger squads. Using a single autarch, you’re sitting on about a 55% chance of getting 7 or more out of 10.....so every second game I would get less than 7. Not my thing. Particularly when the three things that don’t show up are all fire dragons.
Now, if you go to two autarchs the odds of you getting 7 or more out of 10 jumps up to 93% which is not even comparable with single autarch. So using two I get 7 or more of my 10 units in about 17 out of every 18 games, meaning one game in every 3 tournaments I don’t get 7 or more. That’s what I consider to be reliable. You can base your tactics on that and be pretty sure it’s not going to be the factor that screws you.
It’s the basis of all competitive lists in a way.
You don’t really spam because it’s always the best option, in fact it’s quite rare that what you are spamming is the best thing you can take at that role (Fire Dragons are the most obvious example). It’s often the most efficient, but sometimes it may not be the most efficient, it may just be the choice that allows you to have redundancy through being cheaper (not the same as more efficient) and accomplishing almost the same thing as the expensive version.
Is reliability the same thing as redundancy? No. However the two principles DO play into one another quite heavily.
The game is full of factors that are unpredictable, the terrain, mission, location of objectives, moves of your opponent, what the dice will serve up....all of these things are critical to a game and mean that you simply can’t be certain that your super-unit will be where it needs to be when you need it to be there. To counter that, you take multiples of the things you think you’ll need, even if it means downgrading each one.
This is IMPORTANT. Why? Because it means that the redundancy and ‘spamming’ you see in a lot of lists is actually a response to the environment that the composer expects.
If you change the environment then spamming and heavy redundancy isn’t necessarily the best response.
Do you need multiple moderate close combat threats on a 4’ by 4’ table with one central objective? Probably not, one REALLY good CC threat is probably more effective in this case since you’ll be pretty bloody certain of where it’s going to be needed and it’s unlikely your opponent will get the chance to stop it before it gets there. In that situation you may be better off with one big fuck-off unit since you can reliably deliver it exactly where you want it to go, you can depend on having that tool at your disposal when you need it.
If the board is spread out and there are going to be 5 objectives all over the shop, one big squad of terminators becomes a liability. You can’t be sure where you’ll need it, meaning you can’t rely on it being there when you need it, hence you can’t reliably base your tactics on its use.
There is more to be said on this topic and you’ll probably see this as a common thread in many different posts. Just keep in mind, that when I say reliable, it has a specific meaning in game terms.
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