Australian gamers

Since moving to Australia for work in the last couple of weeks I have since discovered that Perth has a lively and interesting 40k scene.

Now having spent a couple of consecutive afternoons at the local store I can see myself coming back however what I'm more interested in is getting these people out of their retail happy-fun-vibe shells and into something a bit more brutal and competitive.

In looking at Kirby's post about competitiveness in people he is fundamentally correct. At a psychological level people who play sports are instinctively compelled to compete against others for material benefit, despite any claims to the contrary. Whether that material benefit is measurable eg money or un-quantifiable eg prestige and leadership value is moot. They tend to come hand in hand.

One minor observation about Australian players so far is that they have no, read 0 (zero) functional knowledge of the direction of GW and performance based analytical review of what they're using, where or why.

Simple example: yesterday I was watching IG and CWeldar fighting it out on a 4x4 board. I'm assuming about 1k each player though I could be wrong.

Rough estimation of player forces:

Eldar; farseer with guide. (yes only guide. No army list but no other power or wargear expressely used so this is my assumption.)
Bikeautarch w/ laser lance
roughly 20 guardians with support platforms (2x scatter lasers) with warlocks in each squad.
1x10 dire avenger squad
Wraithlord with brightlance and sword?
Nightspinner with shuriken cannon?
falcon with scatterlaser. no upgrades.

IG; 6man command squad with at least 1 voxcaster, one commander and 1 commissar.
2 chimera with heavy laser thingies both containing melta veterans
1 basilisk (? really. so retarded)
1 mortar squad of 3
3 hwts with MLs & HBs on opposite side of board.

Amazingly the IG player lost. The falcon died in turn 3 having accomplished fucking nothing but shaking the basilisk and the guardians did fuck-all as well. Autarch creamed a chimera and its veterans before dying like a chump to MLs.

CCS did nothing. Like literally nothing except fire off orders once and dying like bitches to moving after being hit by nightspinner. Idiot. So fucking stupid. Basilisk fired once AT GUARDIANS WOO.

I could go on but it's just so sad.

I mean look, these guys are nice enough but they're obviously new and totally can't accept an alternative point of view on what they're fielding. The eldar player told me he'd been playing for 3 years which is hard to believe since he was using store models in 2 cases. Even if he was telling the truth he took himself pretty seriously while he chopped up a total newb with a bajillion unpainted models with his own craptacular army.

It wasn't just the list construction that was poor, it was their utilisation as well. The whole game reeked of amateurish decisions with little to no understanding of the underlying principles of the game. I'm all for playing 'just for fun' but these two clearly thought they were pretty pro, even going as far as to argue (admittedly only a little) over a couple of things. Totally pointless. I would savour bringing my army to the local scene here and totaling that other eldar player. I wouldn't even need to build a list specifically designed to do it either, a balls-standard army could have done the deal in 3 maybe conservatively 4 turns.

My list to use against that other eldar player?

3x5 Direavengers w/ gunxarchs in eml waveserpents w/ scannons.
1x autarch w/ pw & fusion gun
2x falcons with eml and holofields.

that's roughly 1k isn't it? I don't even care to count.

9 s6
10 s8
everything able to move 24"
reserves manipulation.
Anti-infantry to deal with stupid troops choices.
Why holofields? Simple. Falcons take only 1 hit to kill. So holofields increases chances of weapon destroyed? As if I give a shit? I have only 2 MBTs, if weapons get popped that's better than losing the chassis and everything else at the same time. The 70pts those holofields cost me wouldn't be justified by taking more troops, another autarch or warwalkers or whatever since the falcons themselves are there to suppress infantry and KILL tanks.

Who is the workhorse here? Noone, really. Waveserpents carrying 3 s6 1 s8 can multirole, falcons can multirole, autarch is there to mop up. Direavengers dont have bladestorm since that's a waste of points. The extra Ld and a higher I for at least one guy seems justified though.

And there you have it. Resilient and flexible. Not even designed to specifcally kill his list, it just will though, through being better constructed.

Working on some fiction

So earlier this week I started writing up some background to my army. In lieu of actually being able to paint/build what I've got since it's in another part of the country, I've taken to writing up some speculative fiction on them to stay interested.

It probably won't last but it's worth starting anyway.

Another note on GW policy.

Just reading forums and /tg/ and seeing a lot of  'finecast is a moneygrab'. This is true. Harkening back to an earlier post I made on the subject; the reason it is a moneygrab is because the market is saturated with readily available models. At a discount.

So now people are saying that the switch to resin will just promote the piracy effect of casting your own models.
Wakey wakey this is what they want to happen because it's easy to sue people and generate money from fines than it is to peddle metal/plastic/resin to a tight market. Lawyers get it good because it's like finance. They don't actually have to produce any kind of good that gets sold. The pen truly is mightier than the sword.. by perception.

I think that we're about to see GW downsizing its model production immensely. The fact that their products are at an unsustainably high price over their production levels is no secret, what is a secret is that it doesn't matter because all you do is close stores, shift the product to independant retailers and reduce the size and number of your production facilities. In a sense, GW could have and maybe should have opened localised production factories in its major centres. Especially now since they've switched to resin.

NZ has oilfields. It can supply the very minimal amounts of resin/plastics needed to GW plants. The US? Detroit hello? Large population of impovershed ex-factory workers in a society that celebrates the implied slavery of 'working for what you're worth' and 'the invisible hand of the market' even though most historical evidence suggests that conditions will never improve for the larger population unless they murder their social superiors. The US could very easily manufacture, locally, the required levels of product-X and pay fuck all to the employees there as well. The UK? Forgeworld already exists. Expand it. Problem solved. Greater Europe? I imagine Serbia wouldn't mind the work.

Maybe I don't know what I'm talking about and if that's true its most likely legal issues rather than ones of purely production/markets/sales.

5e Necrons and GW game design

So I'm browsing /tg/ and reading up on 40k rumours through the webs.

There's a couple of comments being made across the world that don't make the greatest sense..

Try dodging or parrying a blade that can phase through anything, it'll be hard as shit, especiall when Pariah were NOT slow asshat robots and were semi-human.

But yeah, you guys think it's fine when why not have EVERY closecombat weapon be something thats a power weapon that adds +2 strength.
Because A warscythe. a Klaive and an Honourblade are all practically the same thing right?

In fact, lets hope Gauss weapons are bolters exactly, with no anti-tank or rending rules because hell! it makes sense too right? It shoots at people, and it hurts! So it must be equal to the mighty bolter!

Well that's just fascinating really. A very simple way to look at 5th edition and the inevitable 6th edition is: simplify, streamline, better core rules, fewer core rules.

So in that sense you have races which relied on oodles of special rules have throughout the editions received fewer perks over the big 3 (Chaos, SM and Orks). Some races still have special rules in their 5th edition format (IG for example) but the general format of the game as a whole is moving towards, summarily: convergence.

It is held that evolution converges on certain designs as needs see fit. Horses and Zebra? Buffalo and Cow. Lynx and Tiger. Yes they share genetic ancestors but so do Humans and Apes and yet we developed cities and they are at the mercy of their environment. Certain physiological designs gain prominence and stay on top while poor or overspecialised trends die out. It's nothing to fear really.

The same concepts can be applied to game rules. Rules which are poorly designed or overspecialised will be scorned and un-used while the cheesiest will be abused and find their way in to every list. So we are observing convergence on the game rules here; what specifically is happening?

The base unit attribute set is still the s3/t3/5+. Necrons specifically are converging toward contemporary space-marine stat-lines (albeit now with a 4+ save however they have their technical 5+ secondary save and are cheaper) and their weapons are being diversified at the expense of their special rules. So now Necrons quite truly have Lascannons and Assault Cannons and probably Melta Guns and in the case of Pariahs specifically; they are rumoured to being removed from the game entirely. Perhaps they are.

So they are converging to the 5th/6th edition standard of codex and greater game design. As said elsewhere by people with longer gazes than I. From my perspective we're seeing the game shifting to being a matter of having 3 templates that the armies are based off and deviation from the armies themselves is simply a matter of applying unique abilities to that army as a whole rather than trying to balance 9 different sets of stats AND their weapons/special rules.

Where does that leave the other armies then? I think CSM will stay much as they are. Their unique problems are more that they are overshadowed by contemporary SM's and not so much that they as an army are outright terrible. They need to be updated and have the things which gimped their army removed. I'm not saying to give them back Daemons in the bloodletter/GUO sense but certainly make the overall effect of taking a themed Lord have more impact, eg, Lord of Khorne opens up bloodletters but restricts Tzeentch units. Whether or not the Daemons themselves become worth the purchase is a different question altogether.

Tau? BS3 firewarriors. At the very minimum. Heavy weapons options on more squads. Whether those take the form of railguns, missile launchers or meltabomb-kroot I don't know but that's the theory.

 Craftworld Eldar? Now there's a good question. Were it up to me, banshees would be dropped and there'd be slight decreases in price on our tanks and heavy weapons. As far as infantry are concerned? DarkReapers with access to EML on each unit member (really, 35pts a piece, 55 for exarch with EML. Most expensive HS infantry ever?) CWEldar are a tough cookie because they are only just sub-par right now so any sweeping changes to them would probably put them in the easymodo catagory.

The theme as always is convergence.. but when the race in question is the one who sets the standard if you screw it up you screw over all the others that are based on it.

Fundamentally the 3 templates are CWE, SM and Nids. Tell me I'm wrong.

CWE = DE, Tau, IG
SM = CSM
Necrons = Tyranids, Daemons

Eldar heavy weapons; the complete edition

From thread; http://www.librarium-online.com/forums/eldar/206944-repairing-our-codex-one-unit-time-part-ix.html



Post 1;

In thinking of what I've just said on the vypers discussion page.. we really need to talk about the heavy weapons choices for Eldar. Do we need to add any? Can we replace one? Do we make them rending or give them a lower AP? Add more blast templates? More flamers?

Unfortunately lazy me cannot just grab a synopsis of the units from MWG.com but since we have so few heavy weapons anyway I hardly think it matters.

So, me first.

We definitely need a largeblast heavy weapon. It can be low strength for all I care (though if it is <5 I demand rending). Let's say... hmm..

Sunburst; S4, AP4, 48", Heavy 1, Largeblast, Rending, Blinding*.
"The sunburst is a new weapon seen employed by eldar forces. It fires a nimbus of energy at the target, which explodes in an intense flash of heat and light. Eyes are burnt out, optics damaged and tyres singe and burn under the projectiles energy release."
*Targets of the sunburst roll for a 3+ coversave. If they fail, they are considered blinded and move as if under the USR slow and purposeful and they fire with a -2 BS modifier for their next turn.

Eldritch zephyr; S7, AP5, template*, Heavy 2, pinning.
"In recent years, the increased militarisation of the Craftworlds has borne new weapons to their arsenal. In addition to new aspect warriors emerging or re-emerging after prolonged absence, bizarre and frightening equipment has surfaced on the ancients' vehicles and wraithconstructs. Of these, the bizarre psychic 'flamer' has also been recorded. Soldiers who have come under this weapons furious grip sometimes emerge alive, though very rarely. Video records show soldiers burnt to cinders or falling down, spasming and frothing from the nose and mouth, lightning dancing over them as they thrash and wretch. Others still are seen stiffening in place, typically from the arcing energy off an already dead comrade."
*The eldritch zephyr fires out from the firing model with a range of up to 6", place the template so that the narrow end is within 6” of the weapon and the large end is no closer to the weapon than the narrow end.

--- ahem----

So that's two new weapons. I'll let others talk about the infinitely more graspable weapons we already possess.

Post 2; 

At the risk of combining better weapons with better BS..

The IG codex has demonstrated that a large variety of heavy weapons is achievable (though not always fair or economic).

Post 3;

We have approximately two cover-ignoring heavy weapons, both of those are mounted on Forgeworld tanks. One is a d-flamer and the other is the doomweaver (Nightspinner might be codex approved but it is still a forgeworld creation so dig it). I'm totally confident to say that if we left the Eldar purely in the hands of GW and its staff, then all you'd see is a reshuffling of points and strengths on our current weapons totally ignoring that yes, we still don't have a decent multiple-barrage weapon or a tank-mounted flamer of any kind.

Post 4;

Let's not lie to ourselves. A wraithlord is a 3-wound AV12 dreadnought and DarkReapers are gimped Devestators. So the exarch gets a multiple-barrage weapon? Only available thanks to an FAQ ruling. That hardly counts. It's S4 ffs. We need something s8-s10 that's ordnance and a decent tank-mounted flamer.

Post 5;

Actually now I'm really liking that mirv idea. Would be better than a tankmounted flamer anyway.

Post 6;

If that's the case then our heavy weapons platforms need to be more accurate no? These guns aren't literally being held by infantry, where their heartrate or jostling from running or whatever is having an impact - these are guns mounted on tanks mounted on anti-gravatics. If we are going to depend on singleshot, non template weaponry, then our tanks should be BS4 base, with wraithlords and prisms being BS5.

If we are not going to significantly change our modus operandi for the weapons themselves, then we need to adjust the platforms they are mounted on. Ok so we pay 40pts for a brightlance on a wraithlord, make it AP1 and consider it's now on a BS5 AV12 dreadnought with 3 wounds. Is that worth it yet? What if brightlances were S9?

Post 7;

Well it's more than just for fluff reasons. I put down the changes I do because we must break our dependancy on farseers. Our playstyle has stagnated as a race because instead of a farseer being an optional extra that can twist the game in new ways, they're a mandatory choice. It's said best in one of my links, ie that our units have cost of a farseers' guide/doom built into their mostly mediocre stats but then you need the farseer anyway AND the power you're going to cast.

So these series of threads have been a massive experiment for me to determine in what ways we can change the meta for eldar by making the units themselves act in a way that accomplishes their design goals without requiring a farseer to be dependable. So that when we come to look at the farseer we don't have to have doom or guide or whatever as mandatory powers for a farseer, they're optional extras used to boost guardians up to par, that the powers a farseer will possess will be more applicable to *an army* and that the farseer will himself be a just an alternative to other HQs wherein all HQs provide army-wide benefits and that no HQ on its own will be so gamechanging as to be a surefire winner for affection.

Let's face it, if farseers didn't have guide or doom or fortune would you ever take them? I wouldn't.

 Post 8;

Yes. Heavy 3 starcannon seems fair. The gamebreaker of 3rd edition was the crystal targetting matrix, it was never actually the starcannon that was the problem. As for the brightlance I have trouble finding a way to improve it. Maybe just remove it altogether and make the pulsar have lance as a rule? Pulsar for 40pts (50 for wraithlord) doesn't sound too terrible if it has lance. 48" S8 AP2 lance heavy 2.

 Post 9;

Not bad. Let's go one step further:

48" S8 AP2 Heavy2
48" S8 AP1 Heavy1, Lance

NOW it's worth the points.

Post 10;

Example: a 15point brightlance is still just brightlance. It's a singleshot s8 weapon which gains bonuses over less than 50% of ingame vehicles. Contrast with eml which is 20pts and can change to a template with pinning for those times you want to gib some troops. Even if brightlances were 15 pts I probably wouldn't take more than 1 per army. Much more effective to spam EML at a tank and then blast the contents the next turn.

Moving on from eldar

Far from abandoning my CWE book altogether, I'm contemplating running my guys counts-as DEldar. Probably with a view to buying some cheap vehicles as they become available on auctions rather than going all-in for the moment.

But why? Well I think it's because CWE are, at least for the next year to 1.5years minimum, dead. Yes you can still play them but why bother? There are well established 'good' units with plenty of real experience to back them up.. and a good 18 units hardly worth taking in anything more srs than a weekend drinks+game. Fritz manages to pull gimmicks to win, and that's plenty fine but after a while I guess I kinda got bored of his videos because they became predictable and his list never changed.

Which is pretty much a symptom of eldar everywhere. LO, BOLS, warseer, dakka et al just seem to have players produce the same things over and over. And that's only partly the fault of the players (it is tempting after all to dismiss stuff that's "bad on the internet") but unlike (apparently) most of those players I do own about 90% of the models for eldar and have playtested every god damned one. The eldar codex is mediocre at best and cannot unto variety propegate.

So I'll switch over to the next best thing: Dark Eldar. Since I'm not digging their fluff I'll just run as corsairs and handwave the rest as necessity.

Already I feel a zephyr of fresh energy through me. Now I can actually have choices that matter! I can win based on my preferences, not what the internet tells me! New models actually actually!

So ... what to pick. I'm thinking.. assloads of those ghost dudes with the smoke bodies.

Since I can just proxy DA for kabalites I won't worry about them right now, I'll just focus on getting myself the mandrakes or whatever, the guys I actually want to run and then fill out the rest later.

Lesse..
Decapitator.
Vect? Maybe Drazhar instead. A nice counterweight to my Kharandras.
At least 20 mandrakes. With their nightfiend sergeants (haven't seen anything to indicate a unique sculpt for this)
Trueborn? Bloodbrides? Both?
2 squads of each troop probably. I normally run 3 troops so this will give me a bit of flexibility.
1 scourges and some beastmasters look pretty good.
Probably limit myself to 4 raiders. I will want to run some foot troops after all.
A bomber? Ravagers? Maybe a cronos.

I definitely like to run "dickish" armies so the more wacky crap I can pull the better. Nothing quite beats upsetting an opponents grandplan because you refuse to obey the laws of convention.

On the subject of a competitive 40k

I wrote up a series of thoughts on the game a long time ago when I was at work (I had a LOT of free time) and posted it on 4chan originally. Took a lot of time before some people actually got it, and they agreed the potential was there.

One of the sideeffects however would be dropping the max points limit to like 750 or something, at least as far as testing is concerned, because without adding in randomisation again, the games would be too brutal and fast to really warrant a high points limit. You'd spend assloads of time pulling models and not actually playing.

At the same time though that's what you'd get for sucking so who knows?