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.
Tuesday, 30 August 2011
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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