Here’s the thing. I used farseers, in particular Eldrad, for years. Probably over a decade. Almost all of that was non-competitive play.
As I began to play more and more capable opponents and more competitive lists, I found that farseers in general became less and less effective.
The first thing that limits their effectiveness is when you move from “one or two” squads of dragons to the full triple threat. Most players do this eventually, generally as they get ‘serious’ about playing Eldar. There really is no compromise, triple dragon is, in my opinion, head and shoulders above any other alternative for any force except footdar....well I guess I’ll get to my thoughts on footdar at another time.
Why does the swap to triple dragon decrease apparent value of farseer? Because you can’t fotune all three. Previous to the switch, you can play with Eldrad (or double seer) and be able to cover all of your primary threats with two casts of fortune, wierd as that sounds.
I ran a double falcon list with Eldrad in one and a seer in the other. It was a reasonably good list at 1500 points in that the two falcons were nigh on impossible to kill, but once you ran it up against genuinely good lists with a decent general it suddenly didn’t seem anywhere near as good (funny how that works)
So eventually I migrated to triple dragons in serpents. From that point on I struggled to find ‘good’ (read worth the effort) targets to fortune. Yes, sometimes one dragon tank is more important early than the others...but more often than not your opponent is equally happy to down the one or two that aren’t fortuned (and your heavy support) while ignoring the fortuned one. If you instead fortune the heavy support (be it falcon/prism or walker) then they down your fire dragons.
However doom is still handy right? Well, yes it is....but do you need it? When is it most helpful?
-Hand to hand combat
-Shooting with a chance to wound of 4+ or worse
Well, my army has.....zero hand to hand potential. It also has.......very little below S6, and the bits that are below S6 shouldn’t be firing since it means they are out of their tank. So it’s primary use was making certain (read article on certainty and chance later) that things would die, which is very helpful, but not essential. In fact if you can get enough firepower available to hit a target (see post entitled Firing order) you often don’t end up using all of it and the odds seem to even themselves out for you.
It’s true that occasionally I really need to kill a target (generally a squad of tac marines it seems, normally about 8 of them) and I miss having doom around for the surety it provides. But on the flipside, my army performs the same way every game or near enough for my satisfaction.
The psychic defence is the biggest loss, as I’m sure most Eldar players would instantly guess. That said, when playing a full mech Eldar list, what does the loss of psychic defence REALLY expose you to?
Well, it exposes you to a whole bunch of shenanigans from Space Wolves, that’s for sure. That said, how often do you really WANT to be driving your tanks around next to his rune priest? Often enough for it to annoy you when he has the storm up, but not as often as perhaps you’d think if you are trying to avoid the storm.
It makes it a lot harder to keep Grey Knight vehicles stunned/suppressed. That’s a genuine pain. Their other powers aren’t generally as troublesome given that if they are using hammerhand in an effective manner against you it indicates something more critical has already gone wrong.
Vanilla marines don’t have many powers that bother you, the gate can be annoying, but to be honest, a disembarked squad with a librarian attached.....well that’s just asking for a torrent of S6 isnt it?
Blood angels have several powers that are troubling and not having psychic defence against mephiston is a real pain, particularly since he is an absolute bastard to put down using S6 AP5 weaponry. But outside of him, the shield of sang is their primary power you’d be countering and....you don’t care. Seriously. A 5+ cover save that they aren’t going to use against any guns you’ve got? Who cares?
Tyranids are an issue, you lose the ability to counter/deny FNP. Which, combined with the type of shooting your army has, hurts Eldar more than it hurts a lot of other armies. I work by the “kill whatever doesn’t have FNP” maxim. Generally they protect hive guard, so you kill tervigons with your S6 (or little things) and try to drop fire dragons on the hive guard if they are a massive problem (which depends on where they are). If they FNP their tervigon, then you torrent the hive guard and fire dragon the tervi’s. Of course its not that simple....but it never is.
Dark Eldar, Imperial Guard, Orks, Necrons, Tau.....None of them have psychic powers of consequence to a Mech Eldar force.
Chaos marines have powers.....that you don’t care about. Nurgle demon princes with wings and warptime are scary.....but they die to torrent at least as well as anything else in the game.
So, what are we really taking this defence for? Grey Knights, tyranids and that’s all?
So I stopped using farseers. Which lead to the discovery that they weren’t actually doing anywhere near as much for me as I thought they were.
So what can you replace them with?
Well, you have a couple of options, but I’d already realised that what I wanted was the ability to reliably start off-table and deliver a decent hit in turn two.
So double autarchs is where I ended up.
So from the whole migration I’ve come to the following opinions:
1. Fortune is simply not that useful for a force with multiple redundancy, you can’t fortune all of them and since they are all identical the opponent doesn’t mind targeting a different one.
2. Doom is not necessary as anything but a reliability tool (which is in itself quite valuable) to ensure that you are not subject to those freak incidents where you hit six times with your cannons and only wound 3 times on a 2+. You can’t cover for the loss of that reliability BUT the double autarch does ensure that you get more sources of firepower on the board at the same time, allowing for more things shooting that target.
3. Psychic defence, while seemingly handy, is actually only really handy in a comparatively small number of matchups. It is VERY handy in some of them (GK obviously and it really hurts psyker battle squads) but generally it’s not needed, it’s a nice to have.
4. Double autarch allows you, when getting the option to go second, to completely remove one full shooting phase from your opponent without having a corresponding phase where you are at half strength.
Showing posts with label General. Show all posts
Showing posts with label General. Show all posts
Tuesday, 4 October 2011
Monday, 3 October 2011
Evolution of an Ultimates list......Doubts
Can I take an army I’ve only started playing a few months ago, with only a dozen (at best) games, to the ‘ultimate’ tournament for Western Australia, and perform well?
I’m not sure. Which is the problem. I’m pretty sure I could take my Eldar and perform well, but I doubt that it is a ‘winnable’ tournament for Eldar under my usual evaluation criteria. The mission information is still not available and may not be until the day of the tournament.
Blood Angels I’m confident are capable of winning under almost any mission criteria using the army list I’m looking at.
Unfortunately I’m not as confident that blood angels with myself as general are as good as the theoretical general.
That said, after a period of soul-searching (an admittedly quite short period) I’ve decided to just run with the angels and see how it goes.
The current list is down to 5 squads of assault marines with meltas and a power weapon, mephiston, three priests and a librarian.
I’m not convinced that I actually need the librarian, shield is very handy, but the vast majority of the time I’ve been able to get cover through the conventional methods easily enough. Particularly if you are willing to lose a model every now and then to dangerous terrain. Which I am.
The math says that the 5+ save versus 4+ with a dangerous terrain test on up to 3 models, evens out on casualties as soon as you suffer 3 wounds that need cover saves. Which is quite reasonable, I don’t generally mind if one marine gets insta-gibbed by a melta gun or single missile. It’s really only when a squad of melta/plasma/missiles opens up that you need your cover. At which point you’ll be taking more than three (and may even consider going to ground). You can also run into the cover, minimising the number of dangerous terrain tests required, particularly if you’re close enough to walk back out....though that doesn’t happen too often.
So, it’s possible that the librarian is a crutch, that I could instead rely on decent terrain/table setup and/or just rely on working around it.
But at the moment I can’t come up with a better use for that 125 points. The Librarian doesn’t just bring the shield after all, he also brings 4 S10 attacks, that are at I5....which is substantially better than a power-fist.
I’m becoming, without the chance to playtest, more and more convinced that Mephiston is needed, the army needs someone to deal efficiently with the nastier enemy characters, and I feel fairly confident I can get him completely out of line of sight, just using my other infantry since he’s on a standard base and they are all wearing jump packs for extra bulkiness.
Bit concerned my use of sanguinary guard models as sergeants may upset people, likewise my use of vanguard models as standard assault marines. I’m hopeful that if I can find some banners or make them i can mount them on the vanguard models and thereby make them look like characterful additions to the army.
Failing that I could always buy more regular assault marines since I really need them for the 2000 version of the list anyway.
I’m not sure. Which is the problem. I’m pretty sure I could take my Eldar and perform well, but I doubt that it is a ‘winnable’ tournament for Eldar under my usual evaluation criteria. The mission information is still not available and may not be until the day of the tournament.
Blood Angels I’m confident are capable of winning under almost any mission criteria using the army list I’m looking at.
Unfortunately I’m not as confident that blood angels with myself as general are as good as the theoretical general.
That said, after a period of soul-searching (an admittedly quite short period) I’ve decided to just run with the angels and see how it goes.
The current list is down to 5 squads of assault marines with meltas and a power weapon, mephiston, three priests and a librarian.
I’m not convinced that I actually need the librarian, shield is very handy, but the vast majority of the time I’ve been able to get cover through the conventional methods easily enough. Particularly if you are willing to lose a model every now and then to dangerous terrain. Which I am.
The math says that the 5+ save versus 4+ with a dangerous terrain test on up to 3 models, evens out on casualties as soon as you suffer 3 wounds that need cover saves. Which is quite reasonable, I don’t generally mind if one marine gets insta-gibbed by a melta gun or single missile. It’s really only when a squad of melta/plasma/missiles opens up that you need your cover. At which point you’ll be taking more than three (and may even consider going to ground). You can also run into the cover, minimising the number of dangerous terrain tests required, particularly if you’re close enough to walk back out....though that doesn’t happen too often.
So, it’s possible that the librarian is a crutch, that I could instead rely on decent terrain/table setup and/or just rely on working around it.
But at the moment I can’t come up with a better use for that 125 points. The Librarian doesn’t just bring the shield after all, he also brings 4 S10 attacks, that are at I5....which is substantially better than a power-fist.
I’m becoming, without the chance to playtest, more and more convinced that Mephiston is needed, the army needs someone to deal efficiently with the nastier enemy characters, and I feel fairly confident I can get him completely out of line of sight, just using my other infantry since he’s on a standard base and they are all wearing jump packs for extra bulkiness.
Bit concerned my use of sanguinary guard models as sergeants may upset people, likewise my use of vanguard models as standard assault marines. I’m hopeful that if I can find some banners or make them i can mount them on the vanguard models and thereby make them look like characterful additions to the army.
Failing that I could always buy more regular assault marines since I really need them for the 2000 version of the list anyway.
Evolution of an Ultimates list, part 3
Weekend just past got the chance to play a slight variant of my proposed ultimates list against a solid vulkan list, which i think is one of its less favoured matchups and is, conveniently, the one I play the most against since multiple friends use it. Terminators with thunder hammers (and rerolls) don’t care much about FNP, and they shut down libbys and preists pretty quick.
This time round I included the Sanguinor in place of a libby and chaplain. I wanted to try a couple of options, the first was the sanguinor. I suspected he wouldn’t be even close to worth it, on paper and in my head he didn’t cut it, but I wanted to try him on the tabletop and see how it went.
On the plus side he’s another ‘bubble’ of power, which sort of works synergistically with the existing bubbles as force multipliers. I guess the maths theory would be two things that increase effectiveness by 20% together increase by more than 40% (approximately 44% but thats not as dramatic as I’d like so lets call it 200%!!!) The downside is losing the chappy who is in himself quite the force multiplier and losing the second libby who was handy for his cc but also handy for the backup shield which you sometimes need to get through psychic defence or if you are prone to failing LD tests.
In return though the sanguinor gives you:
-One nerfed opposition character (hello vulkan)
-One talented mofo in close combat
-One souped up sarge
-A bubble of extra attacks
To fit him in I also had to cut out power fists. As it turned out, they would have been handy, though probably not very handy. The melta bombs i considered WOULD have been handy. Several times I ended up in base contact with an immobile land-raider and simply had nothing that could hurt it.
So, first, the two games I ended up playing:
His list was:
Vulkan
10 assault termies split in two
Two raider redeemers
3 tac squads in rhinos
1 land speeder
Mine was
Sanguinor
Libby
5 x 10 assault marines with 2 melta and a power weapon
3 priests with power weapons
First game was objectives. I got to within 22” or so, he came forward, dumped termies and wiped a squad or two, I dropped everything into the termies and wiped them in return, Sanguinor took down vulkan after I got a bit lucky on the two raiders and then multi-charged his marines to win the game narrowly.
The second game was kill points, he put one raider forward and the other back which i thought was a mistake at the time, it looked like the game was mine at the start of his fifth...until his two remaining rhinos landed two shocks each and ran both my full remaining squads (With all three priests attached) off the board essentially (with some shepherding from his land speeder). The sanguinor did his thing through the first four turns and was still upright on a couple of wounds with two full squads and three priests (the libby died to vulkan) going into my fifth, against a land speeder (that had played hidey all game) and two tac squads with two rhinos. Looked rosey for me, my turn was going to wipe the board....until he launched tank shocks through both units with both rhinos. I failed, both ran, his speeder parked near them....five kill points going bye bye. Meanwhile his two tac squads and the storm bolters on the rhinos were enough to finish off the sanguinor. GG
So, what did I learn:
1. Again learnt (though I obviously didn’t learn it last time) that librarians die easy. Need to be more careful with them. May even have to give up on sword of sang and start using lance, simply because putting the bastard into close combat seems to result in his death every single freaking time.
2. The biggest lesson was one I’d suspected from my Eldar play, but had never had a real chance to test: Tank shock is the key to beating Blood Angel jumper armies easily. No good way to mitigate it either. The chaplain can give fearless and the Sanguinor ‘super-sarge’ gives you one Ld10 squad, but I failed the first on an 11 (which was the super sarge with two priests) and the second on a 10. Not much to do about that. Will have to try to position squads such that they cant easily be shocked. I need to be a LOT more careful about my melta placement, but even then, you cant shoot unless you pass the leadership test...
3. The sanguinor was definitely worth his points in the first game, probably made his value in the second. He gives the army something rock hard in CC (something with an invul....) and he boosts the effectiveness of everyone around him more than you’d think. The ‘super-sarge’ he gives the army is also more useful than expected. Extra initiative is gold, extra WS is gold and extra attack is obviously gold. He is also plain nastier in CC than I expected him to be. On the other side, this opponent didn’t have much by way of long range firepower. My belief is that he’s much more likely to die early in a game vs ranged enemy (obviously)
4. The lack of powerfist/melta bomb meant my guys were definitely at a loss once in CC with a tank. They can deal with rhinos while FC is up, but raiders are an issue. Dread’s are an even bigger issue.
4. I didn’t miss the chaplain much, though without him the librarian effectiveness does drop dramatically and it looks like the blood lance might be a better option, or possibly unleash rage.
5. Librarians are squishy. Really, seriously squishy. Its very annoying.
6. I want psychic defence, I also need something that can threaten vehicles in CC and if possible draw fire from other targets.
7. I’d like to keep shield of sang in the army, though I’m not certain I use it as much as you’d think
8. I have not yet deployed off table and I’m not sure there are any circumstances where I would
So from these, I’m thinking my next iteration is to try Mephiston in place of libby+chappy. That means i’d have him and another librarian in the army, not sure if I need a normal librarian, but I’m not willing to give up shield yet.
The other option is changing out a priest into honour guard and running two libbys still
Libby x 2
Honour guard
5 x ASM
2 x priest
Vs
Meph
Libby
5 x asm
3 x preist
An advantage to Meph is that I have the model already, whereas I’d have to buy the sanguinor and/or a second libby.
He also is dead hard in CC and I suspect (haven’t tried it to be certain in a game) that he can be easily hidden completely from LOS using normal assault marines.
This time round I included the Sanguinor in place of a libby and chaplain. I wanted to try a couple of options, the first was the sanguinor. I suspected he wouldn’t be even close to worth it, on paper and in my head he didn’t cut it, but I wanted to try him on the tabletop and see how it went.
On the plus side he’s another ‘bubble’ of power, which sort of works synergistically with the existing bubbles as force multipliers. I guess the maths theory would be two things that increase effectiveness by 20% together increase by more than 40% (approximately 44% but thats not as dramatic as I’d like so lets call it 200%!!!) The downside is losing the chappy who is in himself quite the force multiplier and losing the second libby who was handy for his cc but also handy for the backup shield which you sometimes need to get through psychic defence or if you are prone to failing LD tests.
In return though the sanguinor gives you:
-One nerfed opposition character (hello vulkan)
-One talented mofo in close combat
-One souped up sarge
-A bubble of extra attacks
To fit him in I also had to cut out power fists. As it turned out, they would have been handy, though probably not very handy. The melta bombs i considered WOULD have been handy. Several times I ended up in base contact with an immobile land-raider and simply had nothing that could hurt it.
So, first, the two games I ended up playing:
His list was:
Vulkan
10 assault termies split in two
Two raider redeemers
3 tac squads in rhinos
1 land speeder
Mine was
Sanguinor
Libby
5 x 10 assault marines with 2 melta and a power weapon
3 priests with power weapons
First game was objectives. I got to within 22” or so, he came forward, dumped termies and wiped a squad or two, I dropped everything into the termies and wiped them in return, Sanguinor took down vulkan after I got a bit lucky on the two raiders and then multi-charged his marines to win the game narrowly.
The second game was kill points, he put one raider forward and the other back which i thought was a mistake at the time, it looked like the game was mine at the start of his fifth...until his two remaining rhinos landed two shocks each and ran both my full remaining squads (With all three priests attached) off the board essentially (with some shepherding from his land speeder). The sanguinor did his thing through the first four turns and was still upright on a couple of wounds with two full squads and three priests (the libby died to vulkan) going into my fifth, against a land speeder (that had played hidey all game) and two tac squads with two rhinos. Looked rosey for me, my turn was going to wipe the board....until he launched tank shocks through both units with both rhinos. I failed, both ran, his speeder parked near them....five kill points going bye bye. Meanwhile his two tac squads and the storm bolters on the rhinos were enough to finish off the sanguinor. GG
So, what did I learn:
1. Again learnt (though I obviously didn’t learn it last time) that librarians die easy. Need to be more careful with them. May even have to give up on sword of sang and start using lance, simply because putting the bastard into close combat seems to result in his death every single freaking time.
2. The biggest lesson was one I’d suspected from my Eldar play, but had never had a real chance to test: Tank shock is the key to beating Blood Angel jumper armies easily. No good way to mitigate it either. The chaplain can give fearless and the Sanguinor ‘super-sarge’ gives you one Ld10 squad, but I failed the first on an 11 (which was the super sarge with two priests) and the second on a 10. Not much to do about that. Will have to try to position squads such that they cant easily be shocked. I need to be a LOT more careful about my melta placement, but even then, you cant shoot unless you pass the leadership test...
3. The sanguinor was definitely worth his points in the first game, probably made his value in the second. He gives the army something rock hard in CC (something with an invul....) and he boosts the effectiveness of everyone around him more than you’d think. The ‘super-sarge’ he gives the army is also more useful than expected. Extra initiative is gold, extra WS is gold and extra attack is obviously gold. He is also plain nastier in CC than I expected him to be. On the other side, this opponent didn’t have much by way of long range firepower. My belief is that he’s much more likely to die early in a game vs ranged enemy (obviously)
4. The lack of powerfist/melta bomb meant my guys were definitely at a loss once in CC with a tank. They can deal with rhinos while FC is up, but raiders are an issue. Dread’s are an even bigger issue.
4. I didn’t miss the chaplain much, though without him the librarian effectiveness does drop dramatically and it looks like the blood lance might be a better option, or possibly unleash rage.
5. Librarians are squishy. Really, seriously squishy. Its very annoying.
6. I want psychic defence, I also need something that can threaten vehicles in CC and if possible draw fire from other targets.
7. I’d like to keep shield of sang in the army, though I’m not certain I use it as much as you’d think
8. I have not yet deployed off table and I’m not sure there are any circumstances where I would
So from these, I’m thinking my next iteration is to try Mephiston in place of libby+chappy. That means i’d have him and another librarian in the army, not sure if I need a normal librarian, but I’m not willing to give up shield yet.
The other option is changing out a priest into honour guard and running two libbys still
Libby x 2
Honour guard
5 x ASM
2 x priest
Vs
Meph
Libby
5 x asm
3 x preist
An advantage to Meph is that I have the model already, whereas I’d have to buy the sanguinor and/or a second libby.
He also is dead hard in CC and I suspect (haven’t tried it to be certain in a game) that he can be easily hidden completely from LOS using normal assault marines.
General thoughts
Some points on this blog in general:
-I am not a blogger by anything vaguely resembling profession. My apologies, but the update schedule is random, unreliable.
-As a result of the above, I cant guarantee the quality of the posts. I post what interests me, crosses my mind or is forced out of my mind by me sitting down to force myself to write.
-I will tag the posts as best I can to sort them, but there is no plan in terms of pattern of release and topic.
-I may swear. I'm not expecting to, but its quite possible, even likely. If you are desperately averse to swearing, then I'd suggest you get someone else to read the post first :P Or just dont read my blog
Some myths to dispel (although they are more 'general' myths about bloggers rather than specific pre-existing myths about myself)
-I've been playing since the 1990s, about 1994 I think.
-I havent played thousands of games
-I havent played using every army lots of times, many I have only played a very small number. In the case of Necrons i've probably only played using them less than 5 times.
-I certainly havent played lots of games with every army combination within the codices.
-Even the Eldar, who I've been playing for a very long time (since 1994 funnily enough) I still have probably not played every possible combination. Whether or not you need to have played every combination in order to predict how they will play and whether or not they will be good....well in my opinion you dont, but I accept that others may not feel that way.
-I'd estimate that I've played somewhere between 150 and 400 games of 40k, which I'd consider to be quite a lot. I'm certain many people have played a lot more, but I feel confident that a lot who claim to have played more, havent.
-I've played in the vicinity of 20 tournaments. I doubt its much more than that. I have no idea if thats a lot or not. Its certainly enough for me to have developed strong opinions on what can affect tournaments :)
I guess what I'm trying to make clear is that this blog is my opinion. Based on my experience. If you disagree, please explain why as clearly and reasonably as you can.
I would welcome other peoples opinions and experience (who am I kidding, this blog has a readership of 0 so its a moot point :P ) and I'm eager to see what other people's experience of the game is.
It seems many other players who use the Eldar have a different experience to mine, this has become evident in the YTTH forums, the westgamer forums and the BOLS forums as easy examples.
Hopefully even those who dont find my opinions in line with their experience can still find something of interest to discuss or think about here.
Enjoy.
-I am not a blogger by anything vaguely resembling profession. My apologies, but the update schedule is random, unreliable.
-As a result of the above, I cant guarantee the quality of the posts. I post what interests me, crosses my mind or is forced out of my mind by me sitting down to force myself to write.
-I will tag the posts as best I can to sort them, but there is no plan in terms of pattern of release and topic.
-I may swear. I'm not expecting to, but its quite possible, even likely. If you are desperately averse to swearing, then I'd suggest you get someone else to read the post first :P Or just dont read my blog
Some myths to dispel (although they are more 'general' myths about bloggers rather than specific pre-existing myths about myself)
-I've been playing since the 1990s, about 1994 I think.
-I havent played thousands of games
-I havent played using every army lots of times, many I have only played a very small number. In the case of Necrons i've probably only played using them less than 5 times.
-I certainly havent played lots of games with every army combination within the codices.
-Even the Eldar, who I've been playing for a very long time (since 1994 funnily enough) I still have probably not played every possible combination. Whether or not you need to have played every combination in order to predict how they will play and whether or not they will be good....well in my opinion you dont, but I accept that others may not feel that way.
-I'd estimate that I've played somewhere between 150 and 400 games of 40k, which I'd consider to be quite a lot. I'm certain many people have played a lot more, but I feel confident that a lot who claim to have played more, havent.
-I've played in the vicinity of 20 tournaments. I doubt its much more than that. I have no idea if thats a lot or not. Its certainly enough for me to have developed strong opinions on what can affect tournaments :)
I guess what I'm trying to make clear is that this blog is my opinion. Based on my experience. If you disagree, please explain why as clearly and reasonably as you can.
I would welcome other peoples opinions and experience (who am I kidding, this blog has a readership of 0 so its a moot point :P ) and I'm eager to see what other people's experience of the game is.
It seems many other players who use the Eldar have a different experience to mine, this has become evident in the YTTH forums, the westgamer forums and the BOLS forums as easy examples.
Hopefully even those who dont find my opinions in line with their experience can still find something of interest to discuss or think about here.
Enjoy.
Evolution of an Ultimates list, part 2
Got a couple of games in with the list this weekend gone and it functioned well, the deathstar unit is quite effective, but I’ve identified a few issues with the list:
- The use of a deathstar (of sorts) makes it feel a bit make-or-breaky, as if all the eggs are in one basket which I guess is to be expected, and wouldn’t be such a problem if the deathstar didn’t have a couple of serious weaknesses.
- Librarians have no invulnerable, and have 2 wounds. They are bait for anything at S8, but also bait for anything that can deliver 2 power weapon wounds on T4. The power-fist problem is real, but not actually the biggest issue in my opinion.
- Chaplains have an invulnerable, which is good. They are still bait for S8 but less of a target when in a unit with libbys.
-The real issue is Initiative. The whole unit is initiative 4, 5 on the charge. That’s pretty standard, which is the problem. Anything with I of 5 or higher will generally kill your librarian. Vulkan is the example that caused me the most trouble.
So the problem is this: The squad has two libbys, a chaplain and a priest plus its full assault squad. That’s pretty much overkill on anything you can find you would think. BUT.
Run it into 5 TH/SS termies with vulkan, even with you having the charge, and a bunch of problems pop up (similarly if you run into anything else that has higher initiative than you, whyches come to mind)
First problem is: How do you distribute your attacks? Everything in the squad against you will instagib the librarian, except for vulkan....who fights before the librarian, at S6 with a power weapon...
So you have three IC’s that are subject to death if they are left with a termie, and only one non-termie for you to target.
-If you put both libbys on vulkan, he kills at least one, possibly both (which is disastrous) , the remaining one has a pretty good chance of killing him, but not a VERY good chance. On average you’ll put 3 wounds on him, which is about a one in three chance of him living. If he lives, you’re in serious trouble.
-If you put both libbys on vulkan then your chaplain, sarge and priest have to, with the aid of the squad, kill all five termies or you lose your priest and possibly the chappie too if you’re unlucky. The odds say that at best you’ll kill 2-3 with your power weapons, leaving 2-3 to be killed by general attacks....which is doable certainly, you should hit with 22 or so and wound with 15ish. Thats 2.5 dead....
-If you go the other way and drop everything on the squad, giving vulkan just the normal marines to kill, then the odds say you will destroy the squad, vulkan will kill 3-4 and lose by 1-2. He’ll hold most likely and you’ll have to put the libbys in contact with him in the next phase and he’ll have a selection of targets. Probably killing the priest and a librarian. Though he may go for the double libby kill.
So either way you get through his squad, but you come out of it with quite possibly no librarians and a priest dead. If you’re relatively lucky.
If you’re unlucky, you lose both librarians and maybe a priest also.....not a good result for your deathstar, makes it a one-shot weapon and now you have no shield of sang.
On top of that, the fact that everything is at the same initiative means that the end effectiveness of the power weapons is reduced. In game I quite often do the characters separately, but that’s not correct and I’m cheating, I just often don’t think of it. If you do them as a single group, then the enemy gets a much better chance of dealing with it.
So the key problems I ran into were:
-Squad with whole group at similar initiative
-Initiative too low to deal efficiently with quality opposition CC characters
-Two wounds and no invulnerable makes the librarian very susceptible to being singled out and killed by even reasonably weak opponents, let alone solid opponents.
-Deathstar as a whole is a lot more susceptible to enemy CC than expected (Probably should have seen it coming)
On the plus side:
-Chaplain fearless gives a squad protection from tank shock
-The mini-deathstar is very difficult to shoot off the table, as predicted
So, from that I’ve decided to have a go at a couple of other options.
- The use of a deathstar (of sorts) makes it feel a bit make-or-breaky, as if all the eggs are in one basket which I guess is to be expected, and wouldn’t be such a problem if the deathstar didn’t have a couple of serious weaknesses.
- Librarians have no invulnerable, and have 2 wounds. They are bait for anything at S8, but also bait for anything that can deliver 2 power weapon wounds on T4. The power-fist problem is real, but not actually the biggest issue in my opinion.
- Chaplains have an invulnerable, which is good. They are still bait for S8 but less of a target when in a unit with libbys.
-The real issue is Initiative. The whole unit is initiative 4, 5 on the charge. That’s pretty standard, which is the problem. Anything with I of 5 or higher will generally kill your librarian. Vulkan is the example that caused me the most trouble.
So the problem is this: The squad has two libbys, a chaplain and a priest plus its full assault squad. That’s pretty much overkill on anything you can find you would think. BUT.
Run it into 5 TH/SS termies with vulkan, even with you having the charge, and a bunch of problems pop up (similarly if you run into anything else that has higher initiative than you, whyches come to mind)
First problem is: How do you distribute your attacks? Everything in the squad against you will instagib the librarian, except for vulkan....who fights before the librarian, at S6 with a power weapon...
So you have three IC’s that are subject to death if they are left with a termie, and only one non-termie for you to target.
-If you put both libbys on vulkan, he kills at least one, possibly both (which is disastrous) , the remaining one has a pretty good chance of killing him, but not a VERY good chance. On average you’ll put 3 wounds on him, which is about a one in three chance of him living. If he lives, you’re in serious trouble.
-If you put both libbys on vulkan then your chaplain, sarge and priest have to, with the aid of the squad, kill all five termies or you lose your priest and possibly the chappie too if you’re unlucky. The odds say that at best you’ll kill 2-3 with your power weapons, leaving 2-3 to be killed by general attacks....which is doable certainly, you should hit with 22 or so and wound with 15ish. Thats 2.5 dead....
-If you go the other way and drop everything on the squad, giving vulkan just the normal marines to kill, then the odds say you will destroy the squad, vulkan will kill 3-4 and lose by 1-2. He’ll hold most likely and you’ll have to put the libbys in contact with him in the next phase and he’ll have a selection of targets. Probably killing the priest and a librarian. Though he may go for the double libby kill.
So either way you get through his squad, but you come out of it with quite possibly no librarians and a priest dead. If you’re relatively lucky.
If you’re unlucky, you lose both librarians and maybe a priest also.....not a good result for your deathstar, makes it a one-shot weapon and now you have no shield of sang.
On top of that, the fact that everything is at the same initiative means that the end effectiveness of the power weapons is reduced. In game I quite often do the characters separately, but that’s not correct and I’m cheating, I just often don’t think of it. If you do them as a single group, then the enemy gets a much better chance of dealing with it.
So the key problems I ran into were:
-Squad with whole group at similar initiative
-Initiative too low to deal efficiently with quality opposition CC characters
-Two wounds and no invulnerable makes the librarian very susceptible to being singled out and killed by even reasonably weak opponents, let alone solid opponents.
-Deathstar as a whole is a lot more susceptible to enemy CC than expected (Probably should have seen it coming)
On the plus side:
-Chaplain fearless gives a squad protection from tank shock
-The mini-deathstar is very difficult to shoot off the table, as predicted
So, from that I’ve decided to have a go at a couple of other options.
Friday, 30 September 2011
Evolution of an ultimates list part 1
So I have an invitation to Ultimates. It’s set at 1800 points this year and as yet we don’t know the missions to be used.
16 players total, first day will be 3 randomly matched games, second day will be 3 seeded games.
They’ve made it clear players will not play the same opponent twice, regardless of scoring which is a good thing in my opinion.
I have three options for armies to take: Eldar, Chaos Marines and Blood Angels.
At this stage I’ve been planning loosely all year to play blood angels at ultimates, so I’m working on that theory.
At 1800 I can put together an Eldar list that is identical to my 2000 list, minus one serpent full of dire avengers and minus two power weapons on the autarchs. I don’t necessarily dislike that army as a concept, but four troop choices is starting to cut it fine for objectives and the army doesn’t particularly perform well on kill point or victory point missions (depending on whether they are a “Difference” or “absolute” victory point scoring system.)
At 1800 I can put together a terminator heavy chaos marine list, my models mean that I’m limited to a maximum of 14 plague marines, since I don’t wish to buy more stuff for my chaos marines. I’ve got bucket loads of berserkers and a squad of noise marines as well, but they don’t see a lot of action. It will end up as 15 or so terminators, abaddon (Probably, depends on missions) and three oblits, plus a couple of land raiders and some troops in rhinos. Not inspiring but workmanlike and only really ‘good’ in specific missions
At 1800 I can put together a variety of different blood angel lists. I’m only interested in playing jump-heavy, since that’s the entire reason I like blood angels. I started with just five full squads of assault marines and went from there. Three priests, two librarians and a chaplain is the first variant I’m going to try. It’s not what most people on the competitive scene would state as top of the line, but I’m playing with a deathstar unit that is portable and therefore impossible to kill. It’s not the MOST brutal deathstar, but 8 S10 and 12 S5 power attacks followed up with 25 normal attacks at S5, all of which are rerolling to hit, is a pretty solid hit and is death for almost anything short of full paladin/nob squads. It’s also pretty hard to wipe the unit out since it can migrate to any other squad any turn. 9 ablative FNP marine wounds is pretty hard to wipe out in a turn of shooting at 1800 and the migration means you’ve really got to do it in one turn.
If I drop the second libby and the chaplain, then I get 250 to play with, which can be vanguard or sanguinary for example...but I’m not sure it’s actually enough to offset the loss of a seriously solid CC threat.
Other things i may try using are vanguard and dantewing, though I think at 1800 both may simply be too costly. Will get to try the first variant in a couple of games this weekend.
Tuesday, 30 August 2011
Why I dislike Kill points
I’m not a fan of kill points as a mission type. I’m not even a fan of kill points in the 5x5 system that Stelek espouses. Though his is a very substantial improvement on the rulebook mission.
My reasons for this hatred of kill points can be enumerated:
1. Simple: Eldar aren’t good at them.
2. In my opinion they favour close combat armies simply due to the increased ease of wiping out an entire unit using close combat versus shooting.
3. They unfairly punish a player for having cheap things in their list. That just seems pointless to me. I guess if everyone comes to the game knowing that’s the case, maybe GW saw it as a counter to the tactic of using lots of small things to contest objectives in the other two mission types. But in general things like single piranhas (Dont get me started on the drones) become a liability.
4. If players know kill points are a major part of a tournament then lists which I think are silly become very powerful. Now, I’m aware that this is hypocritical, since I’ve said previously that I like the idea that lists become more and less powerful according to tournament/mission setup..... but if you refer to item 1, you’ll see my problem.
5. They don’t mesh with the other missions. This means that in a tournament where tactics are being played throughout the other missions, you have this one mission where its quite likely that rock paper scissor will shut you down.
If you gave me a tournament where every game was kill points. At 1750 points, this is the sort of thing that appeals to me:
Draigo – 275
10 Paladins, Apothecary, 4 psycannons, 1 hammer, master craft all four psycannons and the hammer
10 Paladins, Apothecary, 4 psycannons, 1 hammer, 3 halberds, master craft the four psycannons and the four special hand to hand weapons.
So, I’ve got a total of 3 kill points in my army. It puts out on average 14 S7 rending hits per turn against each of two targets.
If I bring down three kill points total, so three rhinos...then you have lost unless you table me.
Have fun tabling 40 wounds worth of FNP terminators plus draigo.
You can’t kill me with small arms fire, you’re unlikely to have enough heavy arms fire to do the job and god help you if you have to rely on close combat. The front unit with the halberds and draigo is not a fun prospect for anyone.
Want to take it to 2000 points, you can add another squad...or a librarian to make it even sillier lol. Oh look, my paladin unit has stealth.
I can’t make an Eldar army that can beat that in a kill point mission. Hell, I can’t even get close.
If they get within 24” of an Eldar army, that’s game. One round of shooting will completely wipe a walker squadron. Heck, one decent round of shooting has a pretty good chance of downing a serpent. If anything gets out of a vehicle...its toast.
So the paladin army needs to kill three things to win....oh wait no it doesn’t. It only needs to kill one if you don’t have a way to kill any of its three. That sounds silly right? Of course you’ll kill one.
Go make an Eldar army that can reliably kill one of them at 1750 for me. I bet it’s got fire dragons x 3 and that’s your only hope. If they stop a dragon serpent on the way in, it is quite likely you will not take a single kill point.
Take a balanced Dark Eldar list and see how it fares. Dark lances are great and you can hold range (with night shields the termies shouldn’t get a shot at you). Its only 20 something dark lance wounds to kill a full squad. Of course Draigo takes the first one each time and he’s got a 3+, and he can shift between squads.... but realistically you will probably manage to kill a squad over the course of a game if you’ve got 12 or more dark lances at your disposal. Assuming the opponent doesn’t teleport in or just walk in from reserve and cut down your time shooting and if he DOES teleport in, assuming he doesn’t nail two raiders on the turn he arrives.....want to do the math on him landing within 18” of a raider and NOT killing it?
Against any other army, any three light vehicles or small squads is game
I guess my concerns can be summed up by this:
Kill points as a mission type takes away almost all of the variables in a game besides list building. I like list building to be an important part of a tournament, but I don’t want it to be the only part.
My reasons for this hatred of kill points can be enumerated:
1. Simple: Eldar aren’t good at them.
2. In my opinion they favour close combat armies simply due to the increased ease of wiping out an entire unit using close combat versus shooting.
3. They unfairly punish a player for having cheap things in their list. That just seems pointless to me. I guess if everyone comes to the game knowing that’s the case, maybe GW saw it as a counter to the tactic of using lots of small things to contest objectives in the other two mission types. But in general things like single piranhas (Dont get me started on the drones) become a liability.
4. If players know kill points are a major part of a tournament then lists which I think are silly become very powerful. Now, I’m aware that this is hypocritical, since I’ve said previously that I like the idea that lists become more and less powerful according to tournament/mission setup..... but if you refer to item 1, you’ll see my problem.
5. They don’t mesh with the other missions. This means that in a tournament where tactics are being played throughout the other missions, you have this one mission where its quite likely that rock paper scissor will shut you down.
If you gave me a tournament where every game was kill points. At 1750 points, this is the sort of thing that appeals to me:
Draigo – 275
10 Paladins, Apothecary, 4 psycannons, 1 hammer, master craft all four psycannons and the hammer
10 Paladins, Apothecary, 4 psycannons, 1 hammer, 3 halberds, master craft the four psycannons and the four special hand to hand weapons.
So, I’ve got a total of 3 kill points in my army. It puts out on average 14 S7 rending hits per turn against each of two targets.
If I bring down three kill points total, so three rhinos...then you have lost unless you table me.
Have fun tabling 40 wounds worth of FNP terminators plus draigo.
You can’t kill me with small arms fire, you’re unlikely to have enough heavy arms fire to do the job and god help you if you have to rely on close combat. The front unit with the halberds and draigo is not a fun prospect for anyone.
Want to take it to 2000 points, you can add another squad...or a librarian to make it even sillier lol. Oh look, my paladin unit has stealth.
I can’t make an Eldar army that can beat that in a kill point mission. Hell, I can’t even get close.
If they get within 24” of an Eldar army, that’s game. One round of shooting will completely wipe a walker squadron. Heck, one decent round of shooting has a pretty good chance of downing a serpent. If anything gets out of a vehicle...its toast.
So the paladin army needs to kill three things to win....oh wait no it doesn’t. It only needs to kill one if you don’t have a way to kill any of its three. That sounds silly right? Of course you’ll kill one.
Go make an Eldar army that can reliably kill one of them at 1750 for me. I bet it’s got fire dragons x 3 and that’s your only hope. If they stop a dragon serpent on the way in, it is quite likely you will not take a single kill point.
Take a balanced Dark Eldar list and see how it fares. Dark lances are great and you can hold range (with night shields the termies shouldn’t get a shot at you). Its only 20 something dark lance wounds to kill a full squad. Of course Draigo takes the first one each time and he’s got a 3+, and he can shift between squads.... but realistically you will probably manage to kill a squad over the course of a game if you’ve got 12 or more dark lances at your disposal. Assuming the opponent doesn’t teleport in or just walk in from reserve and cut down your time shooting and if he DOES teleport in, assuming he doesn’t nail two raiders on the turn he arrives.....want to do the math on him landing within 18” of a raider and NOT killing it?
Against any other army, any three light vehicles or small squads is game
I guess my concerns can be summed up by this:
Kill points as a mission type takes away almost all of the variables in a game besides list building. I like list building to be an important part of a tournament, but I don’t want it to be the only part.
Eldar: Picking your battles
Please keep in mind that this is all my opinion and my own internal logic. I make no apologies if it doesn’t fit with your own. Most of this should not be news to anyone who had played Eldar with any desire to win.
The Eldar, unlike the best armies in the game, cannot produce a true “all comers” list that will perform well in any conditions. As a result there are many tournament formats that they simply cannot be competitive in.
Given that fact, I consider very carefully which tournaments I will take my Eldar to. I don’t mind losing to a better player or to the ever-present lady luck, but I try not to set myself up to fail.
So long ago I determined that I would only take Eldar to a tournament if I felt it was possible for them to compete.
That doesn’t mean limiting myself to tournaments where they have a true advantage, mainly because I’m not certain it’s possible to make a tournament where they are truly advantaged over all others. I’m merely talking about not using the Eldar in tournaments where they go in with a significant disadvantage due to the format or scoring.
To work out the characteristics that would define a tournament as Eldar friendly or hostile I considered my list of what I saw as the good, bad and ugly of Eldar options.
The good:
Delivering a reserve force using double autarch to reliably get everyone on table turn two.
Capturing objectives in the last turn of a game (preferably while going second). This ability is diminished by the variable game end, and amplified by tournaments that state an end point for games (games shall go for 5 turns only)
Delivering what must be considered, by anyone’s standards, a metric crapton of Strength 6 shooting.
They do offer one of the more mobile forces in the 41st millennium, indeed until the recent release of the new Dark Eldar codex they were possibly the most mobile of the lot.
Delivering Melta to specific targets. As long as there aren’t more than 2 of those targets. Above two it becomes quite unreliable. Above three it’s pretty much impossible unless your opponent is very unlucky or terminally stupid.
Passable:
Eldar are a passable army for straight out victory point wins. There are three distinctly different ways of using victory points in a tournament though and they are only passable in one of those three. I aim to deal with this in another post.
The bad:
Delivering mass melta to many targets. Their limit is three. Yes you can offer up double melta guardians as an option but let’s face it, it isn’t.
You can pull a fourth using two autarchs plus a guardian unit, that gives you a reasonably reliable melta unit, but it costs a bundle and its suicide duty for both your autarchs and the guardians... which feeds into :
Kill point missions. They just are. Yes you can build an army with few kill points in it if you try, but it’s generally quite poor. Alternatively you can play your normal army and find that you simply don’t have the wherewithal to finish units off definitively with anything that doesn’t simultaneously trade itself out. Kill points makes the suicide of two autarchs a particularly expensive option.
The final option is to play a denial game and that also loses, though for different reasons that I will go into in another post.
From those thoughts, I started looking for tournaments that featured positive factors:
1. Objective based missions such as Capture and control or seize ground, with a higher number of objectives and more spread out objectives being preferred
2. Fixed end point rather than a variable duration (games end on turn 5)
3. Missions where mobility is required, such as ‘recon’ or ‘break-through’
4. Missions where specific or limited targets need to be killed such as ‘assassination’ or the “kill the enemy’s elite/heavy support” as long as the number of targets is 3 or less.
And negative factors:
1. Victory point missions, particularly “Absolute” and “Difference” Victory point scoring
2. Kill point missions
3. Tournament rules that in any way limit mobility (smaller than normal table size)
4. Tournament rules that limit reserve usage
5. Tournaments that have houserules that affect skimmers “There is a warp storm on turn two....all ground is difficult”
Thursday, 25 August 2011
Competitive...?
There’s “Competitive” and then there’s “Competitive”
I’ve noticed in my years of trawling the internet that communication is prone to almost unlimited misinterpretation. The larger the audience, the less likely the message will be consistently interpreted.
Though there are a thousand culturally significant examples of this, the one I’m going to choose for this forum is the advice/opinion of a man named Stelek at the blog “Yes the truth hurts”.
If you haven’t read his material, you should. He’s an intelligent and amusing author with a wealth of knowledge concerning 40k.
He has very specific and strong opinions on the strength of the different armies in a competitive environment.
His detractors often point to results in tournaments that seem to contradict his opinion and go “See, Stelek has no idea what the hell he is talking about, clearly Orks are a very competitive army, they are winning all over the place.”
The problem here isn’t that Stelek is wrong. It’s that his statements on the strength of the different armies are predicated on an assumption of competitive conditions.
That’s the crux of this blog.
In a competitive environment as Stelek sees it, the terrain, mission and scoring system are designed to not favour either player, regardless of their army choice. Leaving ideally only two factors that can decide a game: General and the inherent strength/weakness of their list.
Under those conditions, he is essentially saying that if you turn up with Orks, against an opponent with a similar skill level, you will lose to the armies he has ranked above Orks.
For what it’s worth I agree with his rankings. Under the specific competitive conditions he assumes.
The point is that tournaments are anything but a truly competitive environment, particularly by the narrow and specific definition that Stelek espouses.
Under the conditions that are common to existing tournaments it is quite possible for Orks to perform well, in fact they commonly do. Chaos demons can perform well, though they require very favourable conditions and often custom missions that accidentally favour them heavily.
Stelek is on a crusade (a successful one judging by NOVA) to create tournaments that are competitive and in those tournaments it’s no surprise to see mech based, MSU armies doing very well. Particularly space wolves and blood angels.
For the rest of the world, and my home state of Western Australia, its a different kettle of fish. Some of our tournaments are competitive in layout, some are not.
I’m happy with that personally, to me it adds another dimension to the game when you are thrown a different set of missions and you need to think about what list will perform better in that environment rather than in the ‘absolute’ environment of a truly competitive tournament.
I guess to some extent I would argue that you need these ‘non-competitive’ tournaments to make those who play the less optimum armies actually fun to play at a tourney.
God knows I’d be stuffed if they changed to all nova format tourneys, my Eldar would struggle, my Chaos would be a write-off.
So I am happy to play as a competitive gamer in a tournament scene that is a different flavour of competitive. Where an additional skill is required, the ability to adapt your list writing to meet changing conditions of different tournaments.
I’ve noticed in my years of trawling the internet that communication is prone to almost unlimited misinterpretation. The larger the audience, the less likely the message will be consistently interpreted.
Though there are a thousand culturally significant examples of this, the one I’m going to choose for this forum is the advice/opinion of a man named Stelek at the blog “Yes the truth hurts”.
If you haven’t read his material, you should. He’s an intelligent and amusing author with a wealth of knowledge concerning 40k.
He has very specific and strong opinions on the strength of the different armies in a competitive environment.
His detractors often point to results in tournaments that seem to contradict his opinion and go “See, Stelek has no idea what the hell he is talking about, clearly Orks are a very competitive army, they are winning all over the place.”
The problem here isn’t that Stelek is wrong. It’s that his statements on the strength of the different armies are predicated on an assumption of competitive conditions.
That’s the crux of this blog.
In a competitive environment as Stelek sees it, the terrain, mission and scoring system are designed to not favour either player, regardless of their army choice. Leaving ideally only two factors that can decide a game: General and the inherent strength/weakness of their list.
Under those conditions, he is essentially saying that if you turn up with Orks, against an opponent with a similar skill level, you will lose to the armies he has ranked above Orks.
For what it’s worth I agree with his rankings. Under the specific competitive conditions he assumes.
The point is that tournaments are anything but a truly competitive environment, particularly by the narrow and specific definition that Stelek espouses.
Under the conditions that are common to existing tournaments it is quite possible for Orks to perform well, in fact they commonly do. Chaos demons can perform well, though they require very favourable conditions and often custom missions that accidentally favour them heavily.
Stelek is on a crusade (a successful one judging by NOVA) to create tournaments that are competitive and in those tournaments it’s no surprise to see mech based, MSU armies doing very well. Particularly space wolves and blood angels.
For the rest of the world, and my home state of Western Australia, its a different kettle of fish. Some of our tournaments are competitive in layout, some are not.
I’m happy with that personally, to me it adds another dimension to the game when you are thrown a different set of missions and you need to think about what list will perform better in that environment rather than in the ‘absolute’ environment of a truly competitive tournament.
I guess to some extent I would argue that you need these ‘non-competitive’ tournaments to make those who play the less optimum armies actually fun to play at a tourney.
God knows I’d be stuffed if they changed to all nova format tourneys, my Eldar would struggle, my Chaos would be a write-off.
So I am happy to play as a competitive gamer in a tournament scene that is a different flavour of competitive. Where an additional skill is required, the ability to adapt your list writing to meet changing conditions of different tournaments.
Eldar Overview
The Eldar: An overview
What is there to say about the Eldar?
Perhaps a place to start is the title of this blog and its origin.
Rhana Dendra is described as the final battle, the end of history for the Eldar, the moment when all of their chickens come home to roost.
Well, with the current state of their codex this surely can’t be far away. Their fallen brethren have a shiny new codex that may even be (shock horror) competitive with Imperial codices. Their phoenix lords are, collectively, a bunch of pansies that enemy forces laugh at, their transports are resilient, but twice as expensive as the rest of the universe’s and you can only assault someone if you’re willing to cop it in the face first.
Yes the issues facing the Eldar codex are numerous and the path to using them effectively in battle is fraught with painful lessons in why things that look ok on paper need to be play-tested before becoming official rules.
So, here the Eldar stand, on the precipice of oblivion in the world of ‘competitive’ 40k. Why they are here is a matter of historical record over the course of several editions, where they are going is anyone’s guess.
But where they stand now is what interests me.
Why?
Because I like them, I like the concepts behind them, I like their play-style (however restricted it has become) and I own a metric ton of their models.
The Eldar codex is plagued by several major issues that I’m sure are familiar to anyone playing at a competitive level. Perhaps the largest are:
-Comparatively over-costed in almost all areas in comparison to recent codex releases
-Extremely over-costed troop transports
-No ‘assault’ vehicles
-reliable melta weaponry in one FOC slot only
-Bloated Elite section
That said, they do have a few things in their favour also:
-Highly mobile options
-The ability to add +2 to reserve rolls (which appears to be on the way out in the new codices)
-Their transports, though expensive, are some of the most resilient transports in the game
-Most points efficient melta unit in the game (not taking into account the transport cost)
-Strongest psychic defence in the game
So what to make of them?
Well, the first thing to state for the record is this: If you are a person just starting the hobby and you wish to be a competitive player, with the aim of winning many tournaments and having your name sung from balconies across your land of choice......the Eldar are probably not the race to take you there.
They have limited build options even on a good day, those that they do have are often heavily disadvantaged by tournament scoring format or mission type and until their codex is re-written, things are likely to get worse not better.
But.
They can win tournaments, assuming it is the right kind of tournament. In fact, in the right environment they can win tournaments easily which is a bit of a surprise to most opponents.
So how, once you’ve chosen to use the Eldar, do you get the best out of them?
Well hopefully the coming posts on this blog will give you some ideas.
What is there to say about the Eldar?
Perhaps a place to start is the title of this blog and its origin.
Rhana Dendra is described as the final battle, the end of history for the Eldar, the moment when all of their chickens come home to roost.
Well, with the current state of their codex this surely can’t be far away. Their fallen brethren have a shiny new codex that may even be (shock horror) competitive with Imperial codices. Their phoenix lords are, collectively, a bunch of pansies that enemy forces laugh at, their transports are resilient, but twice as expensive as the rest of the universe’s and you can only assault someone if you’re willing to cop it in the face first.
Yes the issues facing the Eldar codex are numerous and the path to using them effectively in battle is fraught with painful lessons in why things that look ok on paper need to be play-tested before becoming official rules.
So, here the Eldar stand, on the precipice of oblivion in the world of ‘competitive’ 40k. Why they are here is a matter of historical record over the course of several editions, where they are going is anyone’s guess.
But where they stand now is what interests me.
Why?
Because I like them, I like the concepts behind them, I like their play-style (however restricted it has become) and I own a metric ton of their models.
The Eldar codex is plagued by several major issues that I’m sure are familiar to anyone playing at a competitive level. Perhaps the largest are:
-Comparatively over-costed in almost all areas in comparison to recent codex releases
-Extremely over-costed troop transports
-No ‘assault’ vehicles
-reliable melta weaponry in one FOC slot only
-Bloated Elite section
That said, they do have a few things in their favour also:
-Highly mobile options
-The ability to add +2 to reserve rolls (which appears to be on the way out in the new codices)
-Their transports, though expensive, are some of the most resilient transports in the game
-Most points efficient melta unit in the game (not taking into account the transport cost)
-Strongest psychic defence in the game
So what to make of them?
Well, the first thing to state for the record is this: If you are a person just starting the hobby and you wish to be a competitive player, with the aim of winning many tournaments and having your name sung from balconies across your land of choice......the Eldar are probably not the race to take you there.
They have limited build options even on a good day, those that they do have are often heavily disadvantaged by tournament scoring format or mission type and until their codex is re-written, things are likely to get worse not better.
But.
They can win tournaments, assuming it is the right kind of tournament. In fact, in the right environment they can win tournaments easily which is a bit of a surprise to most opponents.
So how, once you’ve chosen to use the Eldar, do you get the best out of them?
Well hopefully the coming posts on this blog will give you some ideas.
Wednesday, 13 July 2011
Elaboration and plans
I’ve been playing this game on and off for a very long time. It’s safe to say that I have played for every reason under the sun during that period, boredom, love of the fluff, a reason to hang out with mates etc etc.
These days the reason I play is for a test of my mind. That doesn’t mean I don’t play for fun, quite the opposite, but the fun I derive from the game comes primarily from seeing a plan executed or a thought sequence proven. I enjoy the process of 40k in addition to the game in a way that I never did earlier in my gaming. I enjoy playing with list ideas in my head, juggling the points around to see what is possible, what might conceivably work and, by exclusion, what I simply don’t think could ever work. As a result I find that quite often I’m more interested in playing unusual builds or with sub-par armies simply to see if I can get them to work in a way that isn’t expected.
While I consider myself to be a competitive gamer, I’m not necessarily talking about ideal competitive gaming. I’m interested in tournaments as they currently exist. The tournaments that you or I could sign up for today and attend tomorrow. This is convenient because the tournaments that actually exist are generally a far cry from ‘competitive’ events in their format and scoring, they often actually make viable options out of armies that would never see the light of day in a truly ‘competitive’ event.
So my hobby recently has been developing armies for specific tournaments and particularly identifying tournaments that I think my two primary armies, both of which are weak, can be competitive.
A classic example is a tournament I played in recently where the games were 1500 point, played on a 4’ by 4’ table with a simple single objective in the very centre of the table. Game length was limited strictly to 5 turns.
This is not a competitive tournament by any balanced standard, it definitely favours certain armies over others and it definitely impacts on the game to the extent that it simply isn’t quite the same game that the general rule-book intended.
Even just the change from variable game length to 5 turns is a massive change for the viability of many armies, particularly since it is an objective based game.
The change to a far smaller table and a certainty of objective location in every game made a host of different things far better than they would ordinarily be. Flanking on a 4’ by 4’ table is completely different to flanking on a 6’ by 4’ table for example. On one side flanking troops with short range or assault capability immediately become better than on a 6’ by 4’ table, on the other side longer range flankers looking for flank shots on vehicles become slightly disadvantaged by the likelihood that wherever they emerge they will be in range for a counter-attack of some form.
The central objective (and single objective) on such a small table immediately boosted assault heavy armies and low-mobility armies amongst other effects.
For this tournament I took an army I would never consider competitive in a general environment. It included abaddon. Why? Because the key thing that restricts his playability and causes him to be overcosted is the requirement for mobility. In the average game an opponent has plenty of opportunity to stop him from getting anywhere useful and can generally leave him wandering around the table on foot having minimal to no impact.
On a 4’ by 4’ table with a central objective that changes significantly. Now all you have to do is get him near the centre and the enemy will come to you.
Was it the best possible army for that tournament? No.
Was it about the best possible tournament for that army? Yes.
I had an army in mind that I knew could work in certain circumstances, so I looked at the tournaments available and waited for one where that army would be useable.
This is an example of what I’m aiming to discuss on this blog. It’s an area that I don’t think is covered heavily elsewhere, so hopefully it is a niche that I can fill and offer some helpful advice along the way.
Sunday, 10 July 2011
An Introduction
I started playing warhammer 40,000 in the heady days of second edition when I was perhaps 14.
I started playing Eldar, though I couldn’t tell you the reason for that choice, I don’t recall being particularly attracted to the aesthetic over others, I think I just didn’t want to play Marines or Imperial Guard and picked a xenos codex at random.
I played for two or three years, through the release of the dark millennium supplement and stopped in the first couple of years of my university degree. As I recall there was no reason for me to stop in particular, I just got tied up in other things, WoW and life in general.
I started playing again seriously about four or five years later and shortly afterwards I moved to England for a year. During that year I got far more serious about the game and changed from what I would consider a purely casual player to a far more competitive player. I also picked up a second army to use more regularly, chaos marines.
I returned to Australia a couple of years back and have been working towards competitive play in the Western Australian community for the last year or two.
I play predominately Eldar and Chaos Marines still, though i’m working towards a Blood Angel jump list for a variety of reasons that I’m sure I’ll get around to going through.
So, I’m a competitive player at heart, playing two of the less competitive codices in the current environment.
I consider myself a very knowledgeable Eldar player and at least a passably knowledgeable Chaos Marine player. My experience with other codices is limited primarily to playing against them and reading their codex. I’ve played by proxy with almost every codex on many occasions, but let’s face it, until you’ve played an army solidly for a couple of dozen games you cant really claim solid knowledge and/or experience.
So my intent is to limit my thoughts/advice in this blog to in-depth information on:
- the Eldar codex
-the Chaos Marine codex
-the general game rules
-the general game strategy
-tournament planning and strategy
Unlike a lot of authors in this area I do believe that list-tailoring has a role to play in competitive 40k. This is because my definition of ‘competitive 40k’ encompasses the environment as it currently stands not as I would like it to be.
Currently we do not have a consistent format for all tournaments, consistent scoring, terrain and victory conditions. Nor do we have an even spread of armies.
If you are currently playing to win in tournaments in your location, then there are factors that should be considered running up to a tournament that would not require consideration in a perfect competitive environment.
Should these factors be excluded from discussion because they are not ideal?
My feeling is that they are valuable areas to consider, factors which, if unconsidered, will result in a poorer performance at tournaments.
I’m not planning to offer advice/thoughts on sportsmanship or painting. I’m no expert in either field, my painting is terrible for a variety of reasons and I don’t believe sportsmanship is something that needs measuring.
I hope there is information housed here that people find interesting and/or useful, please feel free to email me at bobliness@yahoo.com.au or to comment as you see fit on this blog.
I started playing Eldar, though I couldn’t tell you the reason for that choice, I don’t recall being particularly attracted to the aesthetic over others, I think I just didn’t want to play Marines or Imperial Guard and picked a xenos codex at random.
I played for two or three years, through the release of the dark millennium supplement and stopped in the first couple of years of my university degree. As I recall there was no reason for me to stop in particular, I just got tied up in other things, WoW and life in general.
I started playing again seriously about four or five years later and shortly afterwards I moved to England for a year. During that year I got far more serious about the game and changed from what I would consider a purely casual player to a far more competitive player. I also picked up a second army to use more regularly, chaos marines.
I returned to Australia a couple of years back and have been working towards competitive play in the Western Australian community for the last year or two.
I play predominately Eldar and Chaos Marines still, though i’m working towards a Blood Angel jump list for a variety of reasons that I’m sure I’ll get around to going through.
So, I’m a competitive player at heart, playing two of the less competitive codices in the current environment.
I consider myself a very knowledgeable Eldar player and at least a passably knowledgeable Chaos Marine player. My experience with other codices is limited primarily to playing against them and reading their codex. I’ve played by proxy with almost every codex on many occasions, but let’s face it, until you’ve played an army solidly for a couple of dozen games you cant really claim solid knowledge and/or experience.
So my intent is to limit my thoughts/advice in this blog to in-depth information on:
- the Eldar codex
-the Chaos Marine codex
-the general game rules
-the general game strategy
-tournament planning and strategy
Unlike a lot of authors in this area I do believe that list-tailoring has a role to play in competitive 40k. This is because my definition of ‘competitive 40k’ encompasses the environment as it currently stands not as I would like it to be.
Currently we do not have a consistent format for all tournaments, consistent scoring, terrain and victory conditions. Nor do we have an even spread of armies.
If you are currently playing to win in tournaments in your location, then there are factors that should be considered running up to a tournament that would not require consideration in a perfect competitive environment.
Should these factors be excluded from discussion because they are not ideal?
My feeling is that they are valuable areas to consider, factors which, if unconsidered, will result in a poorer performance at tournaments.
I’m not planning to offer advice/thoughts on sportsmanship or painting. I’m no expert in either field, my painting is terrible for a variety of reasons and I don’t believe sportsmanship is something that needs measuring.
I hope there is information housed here that people find interesting and/or useful, please feel free to email me at bobliness@yahoo.com.au or to comment as you see fit on this blog.
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