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| by Dashofpepper | September 2nd, 2010 - 3:27 pm
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Hey folks!
Since being crowned King of Warhammer 40k and being ranked the top 40k player in the country, I’ve been getting a lot of e-mails, PMs, phone calls, fan-mail, and even a plane flying over with a banner asking me how I manage to do so well.
Well, I didn’t want to answer them all individually, so I thought I’d give a bit of a walkthrough of my typical day and how I keep in top form for tournaments.
1030: The Early Bird Gets the Worm!
My day starts early! I roll out of bed filled with vigor for a new day and immediately sit down in front of my computer to surf the internet looking for new tactics or rules loopholes that need consideration. You can’t let a day go by without looking for possibilities that you haven’t explored before! The absolute worst possibility in 40k is to be surprised by someone pulling a fast one on you and pretty much all the pros work hard to stay on top of new information.
1130-1230: Exercise!
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| by Dashofpepper | August 21st, 2010 - 8:30 am
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Hey folks! I wrote a thoughtful assessment of my local problems over at Dakka, but it got locked shortly after being posted….so I thought I would begin my authorship at Bald and Screaming with a Dramafest™.
If you’re reading this, you hopefully know who I am – I write Battle Reports. Here’s a few of the tournaments that I’ve done batreps for.
Since most of my batreps devolve into drama even when they shouldn’t, here’s a fair warning to you, the reader: Making personal attacks to other Dakka B&S posters commentors in this thread article is likely to result with you not posting commenting on Dakka B&S. So don’t. The point of this thread article is:
1. Humor for you.
2. Warning for the general populace about this store and its patrons.
3. Cathartic therapy for me.
Setting the stage
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| by Danny Internets | August 17th, 2010 - 10:30 am
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It’s been a big year for me in gaming. A couple of months ago I managed to win the ‘Ard Boyz Semifinals at Brothers Grim Games in NY and this past weekend I clinched the Renaissance Man award at the NOVA Open hosted by Mike Brandt in Virginia. For those who don’t know, the Renaissance Man award is the equivalent of Best Overall at a traditional GT, which combines both soft scores (appearance and sportsmanship) and hard scores (game outcomes) into an overall ranking. At the NOVA Open both the Renaissance Man (Best Overall) and Tournament Champion (Best General) were awarded an invitation to the Games Workshop sponsored Throne of Skulls tournament in Las Vegas in addition to a boatload of other loot: Warstore voucher, Back-2-Base-ix voucher, an Ork Stompa, and a ticket to Adepticon 2011!
Not that I expected to have a serious shot at either, but getting the Renaissance Man award really came out of left field for me. Honestly, no one was more surprised by the result than I was. Hell, the only reason I was even paying attention was because I expected Jawaballs, Nick Nanavati, or Hulksmash to win it. I almost didn’t bother taking my army back out for paint judging because at no point did I think I was in contention for anything other than Tournament Ace (going 4-0 in the first day).
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| by Danny Internets | August 6th, 2010 - 8:30 am
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When speaking to the strength of a particular build or army in 40k it is inevitable that tournament performance gets dragged into the discussion. After all, why shouldn’t it? Tournaments are competitive events by definition so they should naturally see good showings by the most competitive (ie, “best”) armies in the game. However, there are many hurdles that prevent this deceptively simple argument from being convincing from an analytical standpoint, all of which fall under the umbrella of using non-uniform standards of measurement. Specifically I refer to problems of scoring, rules, scenarios, popularity, population, and sample size.
Scoring
No two events in the 40k community seem to have the same scoring these days, and nearly all factor soft scores into who wins the so-called tournament portion. Personal preferences on event format aside, this presents an enormous problem when attempting to build an aggregate data set by drawing on results from different competitions. If Hobby Event A weights game outcomes 90% and Hobby Event B weights game outcomes at only 30% then is it appropriate to include winners from both in the same analysis? Obviously, the answer is no–nevermind apples and oranges, it would be like comparing apples and elephants. Throw in differences in rules, wacky scenarios, and skewed army representation and any hope to draw conclusions from the set goes out the window.
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| by Danny Internets | July 10th, 2010 - 8:19 pm
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Does anyone really think the Tyranids codex is too strong? Apparently, someone at GW does.
Last week, the FAQ for the 5th edition Tyranids codex was finally released after five and a half months of waiting with bated breath. Credit should be given to whomever was responsible for selecting the questions in this FAQ because they touch on all of the contentious issues that gamers have been arguing over for almost half a year now. However, as usual, we have a large number of rules changes disguised as clarifications, many of which harm existing army builds and limit effective combinations in an already decidedly gimped codex.
It’s not that Tyranids armies are bad, but the codex is written in such a way that it puts severe limitations on the types of armies people can take if they wish to remain even remotely competitive. By paging through the book it becomes immediately clear that most of the premiere (and interesting) selections are crammed into the Elites section of the Force Organization Chart, a poor decision compounded by the poor options available in the Fast Attack section (Gargoyles being the notable exception). The competition over these three coveted spots is made all the more intense by simultaneously concentrating all effective firepower options (Hive Guard and Zoanthropes) here (except the Tyrannofex). This ultimately serves to undermine the greatest strength of the codex, which is the emphasis on synergy and lack of spammable units. Unfortunately, this synergy does not come without making painful sacrifices, many of which doom armies to failure.
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| by Danny Internets | June 30th, 2010 - 8:30 am
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While there are many myths about ‘Ard Boyz, the most widespread misconception is that one can succeed competitively at 2500 points by riding a gimmick. With such a large pool of potential resources on which to draw, many players look at the large game format of this event and conclude that a wacky collection of models can achieve some critical mass of unorthodoxy that will prove impossible for all (or at least most) other armies to overcome. Unfortunately for these enthusiastic hopefuls, reality shows that the opposite is more or less true.
Can gimmicks work in competitive 40k? In a condensed tournament format limited to only three games it’s very possible to be paired up with opponents unable to deal with your one trick pony. This is true for any army build, however. Many armies lean either towards a shooting or assault-heavy build and their strategies involve leveraging superiority in these domains to achieve victory. For instance, my mechanized IG will exploit its long-range superiority over an Ork force, but when faced by an even shootier Tau army I’ll look to another strength, mobility, and make that the core of my battle plan. A gimmick list, however, depends on a single overwhelming aspect–if the enemy can’t deal with it then they will lose. If they can, then they win. There is very little room for middle ground and games are often reduced to rocks-paper-scissors.
Some gimmick armies depend on an oddball tactic, some unexpected or powerful combination of rules, but most rely on good old-fashioned unit spam. Whether we’re talking about 180 Orks or 120 Genestealers or 9 Leman Russes it’s all the same, and consequently they all suffer from the same fundamental weakness. Believe it or not, Warhammer 40,000 is a fairly well-balanced game overall. While every codex has some completely worthless units (Possessed, Ratlings, Swooping Hawks, Pariahs, Vespids, etc.) there are few units without weaknesses. Those well-rounded selections equipped with 31 flavors of kickass and no Achilles’s heel to speak of tend to be prohibitively expensive, and rightly so.
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| by Danny Internets | June 24th, 2010 - 8:30 am
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Today GW made good on their promise in White Dwarf to release updated and totally free versions of the Inquisition codexes. Both the Daemon Hunters and Witch Hunters books for Warhammer 40k are now available on the articles section of the Games Workshop website. Of course, everyone already knew that they could be found in 3 seconds flat on Scribd, but now it’s legit and everything.
These releases caught me off guard for two reasons. First, I don’t read White Dwarf (it sucks) so I had no idea this was coming. Second, with the recent success of the semi-finals ‘Ard Boyz scenarios and higher-than-usual-quality of recent FAQs, I would have expected a little effort put into these updates. Instead, GW chose to chop out a couple of pages and simply post these absurdly outmoded codexes online. They had the perfect opportunity to correct some of the hugely glaring issues with these books, such as how DH stormshields function, clarification on what counts as a Daemon, Machine Spirit, and so on, but instead they half-assed it.
It seems clear that the true intent of this release was to remove the ability to use DH allies. But rather than re-wording the rules for allies, some lazy intern decided to simply chop out the offending page altogether. Interestingly, this page also had the Force Organization Chart requirements for Daemon Hunters. The 40k rulebook never states that armies must take the standard 1 HQ 2 Troops loadout, so technically DH armies are now exempt from this. To complicate things further, different versions of the army books have been uploaded to the various international GW sites–some have the allies rules page of the DH codex removed while others don’t. Was the omission of the page a simple mistake?
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| by Danny Internets | June 14th, 2010 - 7:01 pm
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Another month and another round of ‘Ard Boyz down. I hitched a ride with Bobby down to my favorite store, The Brothers Grim (Long Island, NY), where we met up with Jawaballs, the three of us from Battle for Salvation representing 3 of 18 total players. We were all pretty shocked by the low turnout given that there were only two local semi-finals locations this year. I’ve heard that the other location, Time Warp Comics (NJ), had a large enough crowd to warrant renting out a hotel conference room (as they did a couple of years ago when I went), totaling 30-40.
Having only practiced one of the scenarios prior to the event I was curious to see if they would play out as I had envisioned. I spent a lot of time this past week thinking about strategies to use against different army archetypes in these contexts, particularly with the third mission’s radically different deployment options. My overall impressions of the missions were ultimately spot-on. Thanks to search lights, the fog in Mission 1 had almost no impact on my game and with 8 Troop units I had no problem seizing 3 objectives. Getting a Massacre in Mission 2 was obviously going to be hard without tabling someone due to the need to capture all 5 objectives (and it was). Finally, Mission 3 was dominated by shooty armies both at my venue and elsewhere according to battle reports across the internet.
Interestingly, there were no Orks or Tyranids represented at Brothers Grim. I know at least one of the players won the preliminaries with Orks, but chose to take a different army based on the nature of the semi-finals scenarios. From memory, the codex representation was as follows:
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| by Danny Internets | June 10th, 2010 - 8:41 am
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The scenarios for this weekend’s 2010 ‘Ard Boyz semi-finals have been updated with some minor clarifications. They are a available here.
The changes include the following:
Scenario 1
Clarified the conditions for using fog and the Night fight rules
Clarified that in the case of a tie when determining highest points units, you must choose one.
Scenario 2
Added impassable terrain rules for deepstriking objectives.
Changed the first battle point modifier to be more obtainable and not require a massacre.
Clarified that in the case of a tie in objectives, having 5 or more Kill Points than your opponent counts as a Minor Victory.
Scenario 3
Clarified that all reserves come in via either the short or long table edges and is an exception to the Dawn of War deployment.
Clarified that in the case of a tie when determining highest points units, you must choose one.
Source
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| by Danny Internets | June 8th, 2010 - 7:40 pm
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As promised, the ‘Ard Boyz missions for the 2010 semi-finals are now online one week four days prior to the event scheduled for June 12.
Click here for a direct link to the PDF.
Because the missions don’t change the fundamental victory conditions of the game (like scenario 3 did in the preliminaries) I don’t foresee the need for people to tailor their armies. As such, any complaints about putting the missions online on such short notice are mostly hot air. There’s very little to complain about here.
That being said, each mission has its own set of wacky special rules and deserves targeted commentary:
Mission 1: Da Fog of War
Spearhead deployment? Good. Three objectives? Not bad. Hold all objectives for a massacre? OK. Wacky night fight randomness depending on which table quarter you’re in? Stupid, but could be worse.
So many armies have searchlights as standard equipment that the impact of this will be minimal, but the armies that do without could potentially suffer. The only problem with this scenario is the randomness. Assault armies will obviously choose approach paths that skirt through the edges of fogged quarters and hope that the weather holds out. Depending on the dice, it very well could–on average, the fog won’t be completely gone until the beginning of Turn 4.
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Email Danny Internets
TastyTaste: After about the first 15 comments I thought to myself wouldn’t it be fun to calculate the average...
Tyr'sVanguard: I suppose I get belligerently drunk too often to be a champion… :(
Dashofpepper: Hod, that has nothing to do with my success. The flash cards on the other hand, have everything to do...
Hod: @Dash Sex good. I think thats sacrifice enough. Though one thing you do present that has been the staple of...
yermom: I guess thats why im only 13th. I spend far too much time with females!
Green7: Why havenbt they ever put in the results for BoLScon ? Paul Murphy would be ranked #1 if they did. I talked...
Yur Ahlozer: wow fail.
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