A Day on Krynn VII: 3rd Biannual Tournament

[Andrew]

What do you think we were hashing out, stupid giant man! We no off topic, you make off topic now! Bah!

[Leudast1215]

Another question: If my Crisis suits are ALL modeled with Plasma Rifles and Missile Pods, and (given most players don't even know what a weapon type is when they look at a Crisis Suit) is it legal to field ALL of said Crisis Suits with Fusion Blasters and Missile Pods and inform each of my opponents of this little factoid before the game? I just really don't want to rip my models apart, and hope it wouldn't be an issue since they all look the same and are equipped the same.

If my criss suits all had differently modeled weapon loadouts on their models, but i wanted them to count as all the same, then I could see the obvious conflict there, for example.

[Andrew]

What's wrong with the plasma rifle? I find it far better suited toward Tau purposes than fusion blasters. There are better ways of fielding them. Plenty of people do actually know what the weapons look like, and when they glance at them on the table they'll still think they're plasma. Just like my devastator squad with multi-meltas that actually counts them all as lascannons, or vice versa...

[e1567]

Yes you will have to model them, we cannot make any exceptions we have posted about this tournament in other places and everyone else understands that WYSIWYG is the underling rule and everyone has to follow it.

[Depayen]

Who all sign up for this now?

[Leudast1215]

i want my melta gun. oh well. Btw Andrew since you don't play Tau, putting a gun twice as expensive as a firewarrior that misses half the time, onto a unit that always seems to be instant-death/kill... can be quite frustrating. It's also strength 6 not 7. Fusion Blasters are almost half the point cost and are strength 8 Melta, much better at making things explode which is more fun ;D.

That, and I don't like paying 62 points for a non-HQ Crisis Suit. But anyways, thanks for answering my question e1567

[Leudast1215]

Another Question: (I got no where to else to ask this lol) Are Forge World units allowed, say from IA 3?

[dragonbait]

Again, like with your IG auxilaries, just make sure you have the book on hand or printouts for whatever you're bringing.

[Andrew]

LOL you baby, not wanting to be wrong, deleting my posts that point out your simple clerical errors...=P

Oh Tom, I'm going to guess that you want Shas o R'myr. I would expect your model to have a double-barrelled plasma rifle and some sort of excessive-looking shield on the other arm for it to qualify as that character, since you don't have any Forgeworld models. Oh, and they updated the rules for it on the Forgeworld website, so print out the update.

[Leudast1215]

Actually I do have such a model It's the only relatively unique looking Crisis Suit that I have: He has a Gun Drone body in the arm with a shield generator colored blue on top with bits of brass colored green stuff sticking out for the shield generator and a double-barrelled plasma rifle on the shoulder with a drone head on top of that too. I actually built it with the intent on proxying Shas'o R'ymr. He's the model that, at the time, fought his battles on his ass because of his stupid ball ankle joint thingy breaking off in that game we played several weeks back Andrew with your Chaos Space Marines and the Konga Line of Khorne hehe.

I'd like to know officially whether or not I can field this guy (a simple post of "yes" or a PM on the forum would suffice), otherwise that model is just going to have to settle for being a twin-linked plasma Shas'el.

Obviously I have to print out the rules in case my opponent needs a clarification.

I'm not even sure if I'd want to field him; kinda pricey to say the least point-wise, but very fluffy, which is the direction in the hobby I've been leaning towards as of late.

I admit Aun'Va, Shadowsun and O'Shova are fluffy too and perfectly legal, but frankly... they have over-priced sucky models and if I'm going to forfeit half my models that I own to play a Farsight Enclave list (no auxillaries or Gue'Vesa basically), that O'Shova model better be that awesome beefy one Warseer posted from GD 08'. Besides, his special character status doesn't even make Crisis Suits better.

Also, any personal tips on how to use this guy? He doesn't appear to have any really well defined battlefield role other than having a 1-trick pony novelty surprise.

Wow I write long posts...

[GiantKiller]

Hiya!

Just wanted to say thanks for a well-organized and well-run tournament. I really enjoyed the format/scenario, and I had 3 great games with 3 great players!

Thanks to everyone involved. Good games!

-John B.

[Andrew]

Sounds good, glad to have another happy member!

So team, no write up yet? How was it received by others? How many people showed? What armies, what places? Slackers!

[dragonbait]

I'll get the results up here later on today/tomorrow afternoon and whatnot. Ian should have pics to put up too at some point.

[Leudast1215]

The two Daemon Prince with Lashes guy won 1st, Frazzel's (spelling? sorry man) cousin got 2nd, and I placed 3rd. I literally could not do a thing against that lash army I lost the moment I was paired up. It didn't help he made a hideously disproportionate amount of vehicle and armor cover saves. It took 28 rapid firing fire warriors to make him role 4 1's?!!!! Wow, if only Delso had that guy's dice... those terminators would've turned the tide of our game.

Maybe in the future it would be wise not to make the center of the table the only realistic way to score/win the game? In my scenario, my opponent just surrounded the middle of the table (he went first) with 4 Rhinos. I literally could not have contested even if I wanted to and spent the next 4 turns playing out an inevitable defeat.

Also... I can see why people on Warseer are crying foul of that lash of submission. 24" is too far for that kind of power on a Winged Monstrous Creature.

Minor quibble and not with mission design (#4) or the players, but just over-all kind of a let down to see so many (Chaos) Space Marine armies they're the only army i got to fight. It got repetitive real fast.

I would've killed by game 3 to have fought that one cool Dark Eldar player from our last tournament just for a change of pace.

[Andrew]

Well, that's something for the board to take into consideration next time. Do they want a hardcore tournament, which involve dual lash armies and the like, or do they want a more laid-back play arena, where they limit certain things like that? I could go either way myself. Unfortunately it falls a slippery slope when banning certain things because it's not like Magic where there's a list of certain cards that are banned from anyone. Each army is different and etc. You'll just have to piff those DP's with railguns quicklike, or leave units in transports so they can't get affected.

Dual lash is also teh only super strong power gaming list the Chaos codex can produce. Before it had a couple, but it's only that now. This means you can start plotting tactics to defeat it, since you can expect it from every chaos player in the world except me, because I hate playing power gaming lists but love defeating them. That and I don't have any DP's. But then I don't use any lashes anyway.

BTW, mathhammer says you were lucky to kill those 4 terminators; you should've dropped only 3, even if all 28 were in rapid fire range. That doesn't account for markerlights, but yea.

You could've destroyed the rhinos...

[Leudast1215]

Yeah about those Rhinos... again, a hideously disproportionate amount of vehicle cover saves were made and a hideous amount of armor penetration rolls of "1" on my part = bad. Destroying the rhinos wouldn't have mattered much anyway, Plague Marines surrounded an objective vs. Fire warriors = I lose. I mean I literally could not contest the objective, even with dead Rhinos, cause the infantry just would've just piled out and surrounded it (my opponent was very shrewed and smart).

In retrospect railguning the DP's would've helped, but again this guy's rolling was as impeccable as mine was for my Crisis Suits in our last Apocalypse battle and I thought his DP's were T6 (my bad). Still would've lost, the mission is to take the objective. My list just wasn't designed to fight his lol, but I enjoy analyzing what happened so I can learn for the future in a tournament setting.

Actually I did keep my Fire Warriors in their Devilfish for the entire game specifically because of the 36" threat range of the DP's Lash of Submission, only unloading em' on turn 5 for some vengeance killing cause I couldn't even contest the objective (he just went and killed the immobile parts of my army with the DP's).

As far as limiting tournament options for units in the future... The only real cheesey thing about Lash of Submission is the range on a Winged Monstrous Creature. One would be fine, two is too much. With that said, maybe having an army composition score (not a sportsmanship score; just another way for a power gamer to screw their opponents in overall score) would help balance things out.

I probably could've owned that army had I fielded all Devilfish and Hammerheads, but I chose to play a fluffy more fun list inspired off of Imperial Armor 3 using Shas'O R'ymr (totally not worth his points, but cool) and auxillaries (Kroot) and slaves (Gue'Vesa'La) to make an overall balanced army with no blast templates to speak of. I also used Markerlights, something rarely seen in what is widely considered a 'competitive' Tau list because Mechanized is still the strongest, and with 5th Edition even more survivable, just a bit slower.

This kind of army (mine, not the Mechanized) should score very high on a army composition score, for example, or like the Iron Fist/Space Wolves armies present at the tournament should also score high. The Iron Fist player went to the effort of painting his Marines yellow, that deserves a high army score in and of itself.

A pure multi-cult troop army of Khorne and Plague (the most competitive) with Monstrous Creatures wielding one of the few broken psychic powers in the game would score low on any army composition score, cause it contradicts fluff and theme.

[dragonbait]

This is going to a rather longer post, at least for me.

First, the standings. There was a calculation error when we (mostly me), did the final results. Sorry Tom, but you didn't rank 3rd Place. Final results (based upon win/loss/draw and tiebreakers by points) are as follows.

#1) John B (Chaos Space Marines) Win/Win/Win 8 Points
#2) Dubs (Tyranids) Win/Win/Loss 4.5 Points
#3) John R (Imperial Fists) Win/Draw/Draw 3 Points
#4) Tom (Tau) Win/Draw/Loss 4 Points
#5) Talon (Eldar) Win/Draw/Loss 1.5 Points
#6) Carl S (Space Wolves) Win/Draw/Loss 1 Point
#7) Delso (Ringer Space Marines) Draw/Loss/Draw 1 Point
#8) Aaron (Tyranids) Loss/Loss/Loss 0 Points

When we have our exec board this meeting, I'll present the error to the rest of the board and we will decide what should be done. Please do not suggest what we should do, it will be taken care of one way or another.

Side Notes: Everyone seemed to have a good time throughout each of the three rounds we did. We cut out mission #3 and just ran 1, 2, and 4 in case anyone was wondering. I've been playing wargames for quite a long while now.

To Tom: I'm not singling you out, but you're the only player that brought up a few concerns. First off, a game is never lost before it begins. Mission #4 isn't an unfair mission either in my eyes. It used to be one of the standard missions back in 4th edition, so we've all played it a bajillion times. Granted your opponent did make a lot of saves against your shooting, but it was kind of funny to see Rhinos stand up against an army's worth of Tau shooting.....and live. I couldn't disagree more about having an army composition score either. Fluff is fluff, and should have no bearings on actual rules let alone scoring. It's something that if taken into account, could decide standings when it has no bearing on the matches whatsoever. If two people were tied at the end of a tournament, taking into account whoever has the "fluffier" army when deciding tiebreakers? Silliness. Two last and minor things. I wore a name tag all day at the tournament lol. It's Frizzell. Dubs is not my cousin either.

To Andrew: We missed your Ultramarines. There was a really huge lack of Space Marine armies. =P I'm all for a laid back atmosphere like you said, so for like an in club tournament it's a lot easier to limit certain things. Again like you said though, it could go either way, but depends on other factors as well.

All in all, I was rather disappointed our turnout was relatively lousy, but otherwise it went well. Everyone seemed to be having a good time, everyone showed great sportsmanship which is something I personally always love to see most, and there were no bumps in the road along the way. I think I can say on behalf of the exec board to everyone that came out thanks for playing and supporting the hobby as well as our club, and to store owner John for tolerating all of our presences. GG everyone.

[Leudast1215]

Believe it or not I have the eyes of a senior citizen and I couldn't actually read most of the name tags... However the mistake in familial relations is unforgiveable lol sorry.

[dubs]

Wow I live with the guy and give him rides places, I don't know what I'd do if I was related to that douchebag! =P Suppose it could be worse. Anywho that was a kickass tourny, and though a very long day, it was a very fun day, GG all.

[GiantKiller]

Hiya!

Just thought I'd throw my two cents in on some of the more specific comments made here.

First, as to banning Lash of Submission from tournaments... I think banning anything that GW hasn't banned is a bad idea. I certainly do not want to take this thread off-topic and fire up a debate about the over-poweredness of Lash Princes. Call it broken, unbalanced, or overpowered, but Games Workshop clearly doesn't think Lash of Submission needs to be nerfed or banned. If GW did intend to ban or nerf Lash, they would've done so in the most recent Chaos FAQ... and they didn't. My best guess as to why GW did not eliminate or nerf Lash is that the Lash's most-commonly-used host, the winged demon prince, is far from invincible at T5 3+/5+. Interestingly enough, I think a far stronger argument could be made for banning off-codex units (white dwarf, forgeworld chapter approved, etc.) from tournaments since they weren't play-tested and taken into account when an army's codex was originally being planned and balanced. But to be honest, I'd prefer to see nothing that has GW's stamp of approval banned from tournaments. More options = more fun, so why take away options?

Second, as to adding "fluff" scores to tournaments... I think that's a bad idea, too. Things like painting, theme, backstory, etc. are very important parts of the hobby, but should have no impact on deciding the results of a *tournament* because they are completely and utterly subjective. That said, I'd have no disagreement whatsoever with paying a higher entry fee to support awarding a "best army" prize (in addition to the prizes for 1st, 2nd, 3rd) which could awarded based solely on things like army composition, army theme, army backstory, and army painting.

Finally, as to comments about the fluff and theme of my particular CSM army, I disagree with the proposition that it should "score low on any composition score because it contradicts fluff and theme." Chaos purists would note that each of my troops units conformed to their chosen deity's sacred number (8 for khorne, 7 for nurgle). Does that make mine the fluffiest chaos army ever created? Of course not. But whereas in the last edition that would've earned me free aspiring champion upgrades, in the current edition adhering to the gods' "sacred numbers" serves no in-game purpose than a nod to Chaos fluff, of which I've been a long-time fan. As for mixing gods in a chaos army, while the previous CSM codex prohibited mixing cult troops, GW has intentionally abandoned such strictures in the current edition. Furthermore, both the current CSM codex and Chaos Daemons codex are rife with examples of the forces of the various chaos gods coming together for the common good bad. While my CSM army was indeed designed to be competitive and versatile, it certainly hasn't abandoned the Chaos fluff to meet those ends.

Again, thanks for an incredibly well-run and enjoyable tournament. After reading a lot of players' impressions on the 'net, it sounds to me like this tourney was better-run than many of GWs 'ard boys tournies this year. Extreme kudos!

-John B.