Destruction showing at Facehammer GT - Debrief

[heywoah_twitch]

1 hour ago, Nico said:

Those allied Ogors cannot be Battleline - but only a big issue if taking BCR allegiance.

Yeah I just phrased it weird since they're just called ogors, but that's also their race. Though I'm tooling around with them and mournfang so I really could do whichever allegiance.

[Auretious Taak]

On 10/3/2017 at 6:41 PM, Sheriff said:

I'm not convinced these nerfs are as bad as everyone suggests, you can adapt to them with the new allies and bigger units and other new goodies we got etc. 

Seems like people are over-reacting and jumping on new flavour of the month bandwagon lists. People will always under-estimate the mighty power of goblins! 

Don't forget that giants (aleguzzler gargants) have been a fluffy mainstay of goblin armies since warhammers initial editions decades ago. Giants were a unit available in the first dedicated night goblin (moonclan grot) army lists  for example. Also, consider doing your bog standard destructiona rmy with Gordrakk as the general. His Voice of Gork ability  can target ANY Destruction unit. A Giant with 3 kicks and 3 headbutts (the headbutt attacks are ace in 3's) as well as 2 extra attacks to the club swing, is surprisingly nasty.

But for serious Gordrakk abuse with the little mushroom chugging gobbos run a unit of 20 squig hoppers and if they get a double on their charge (3 dice with that voice of Gork not 2!) then they get an extra 2 attacks for their massive gob full of teeth, plus the 2 from Voice of Gork and you suddenly have squig hoppers churning out 6 massive gob full of teeth attacks as well as the 3 slitta attacks from the riders, EACH. It's somewhat crazy, and people won't expect that style of shenanigans to emerge. You should abuse it when you want to really surprise someone who underestimates the damage output of some of your units.

 

On 10/3/2017 at 7:38 PM, Chris Tomlin said:

We both used 2x3 Gore-gruntas. Without the Ironfist they are, IMO, vital as they do give you some speed and the ability to reach out for objectives early doors if required. Its so strange as my opinion on them has almost completely flipped! A crucial part of my list now. Still not the most reliable unit damage wise, but their overall utility is good. Deploying them sideways as a big fat pork screen is a personal fav, which I used to good effect over the weekend.

 There's no doubt the changes have hit Destruction hard in some places and that in turn has put people off using them. But without people using them...we don't really know how bad it actually is, if that makes sense?

What I'm seeing more is people aren't innovating and trying different things. One big thing that stands out to me is Goblin Chariots. They are a mere 40 points each, you can take a unit of 6 of them but you can also run them in solo units. If you adapt the 40k rhino/tank blocking tactics where you deploy your tanks on the side, and do it with the goblin chariots then you are presenting a much larger blocking base at a fraction of the points of some of the other units, and more, you can keep pace with even your fastest units to keep the charge blocking/bubble wrap happening and then you get the added bonus of them being able to shoot even when they've run. Little ranged attacks add up over time. You can also utilise them to help secure objectives early on and to keep pressure on your opponents back line as many people will ignore them especially if you decide to pretend they are not a threat and you don't actually attack anything with them but use them to gain board control (some players will ignore your units if you don't actively use them to damage them, or they don't have the damage solo to make an impact). Even just one of these bad boys will add a lot more flexibility to a list, but if going for the pure Ironjawz and n allies then all good. But again, utilising things that very few people use to gain tactical and strategic advantages because most people look at raw damage potential only is something that needs to be abused more often.

One of the aspects of the AoS community (not just here) that annoys me is that people seem to ONLY gauge the strength of a faction based on tournament placings. Not everyone can get to tournaments (heck, I'd be screwed these days, stable hand work 13 days a fortnight, split shifts early morning and late afternoons, yeah not happening), but more importantly, and this comes into the soft scores discussion above, tournaments aren't always the best things to base the strength of a faction off of especially if those tournaments being examined have overall rankings utilising sports and painting and army softness (comp) scores to determine final placings. Remove sports, painting, and comp listing points from the above and look purely at generalship points and what are the rankings of all the factions then? (again this will be influenced by less hardcore lists being bought because really strong players can play less powerful lists better then a lot of weaker players can play stronger lists and thus abuse the system to gain a better overall ranking before the tournament even begins). This is not me throwing an agenda out there, it's the simple truth of the matter - remove any of the scores that have no direct impact on the overall strength of an army list or how it performs ingame at achieving the mission/scenario objectives/win conditions as well as all comp/soft scores have an effect on list building to help game ones' overall ranking and you'll get a much stronger and clearer representation of a factions' standing and overall power. I've experienced this first hand in 40k back in 5th ed half a decade ago, I took the softest list to a tournament (I like a challenge), but it was more a sleeper power list ina  comp tournament because I understood what I could do and the TO had no idea (he had words with me before the event began telling me he couldn't see how the list was broken but he knew me and knew I had something up my sleeve) and I proceeded to win all 3 of my games virtually tabling my opponents for minimal losses. The tournament  had a large painting score contributing to final rankings but you also could play with an unpainted army, which I did. It resulted in me ranking 3rd last overall, but remove the painting score and even the comp score and I was 3rd overall on generalship score. When people say the comp/soft scores and painting don't have an impact on the strength of a faction and then state that people who bring up this arguement have an agenda they are throwing in peoples' faces, it's rather disheartening. Being objective about army strength and generalship skill is very important because it allows everyone to get better overall. I totally went off on a related tangent not directly (indirectly to the last sentence) related to your quote above but to other statements in this thread. Heh.

 

On 10/4/2017 at 8:15 AM, heywoah_twitch said:

The idea of painting 120 tiny men leaves me tossing and turning in troubled sleep at night. Even the current state BCR is in I can't bring myself to ally in and paint a hundred tiny stupid looking grots. I just don't like how they look, and I don't want to play with hordes of chaff. I want the viable super elite monster mash I was advertised!

So I'll just be over here allying in a butcher and 6 battleline ogors, and hot swapping stonehorns for mournfangs (4 of which I think are now just superior to a stonehorn for less points).

At a point in every player's life they must make a choice whether or not to chase the meta. Maybe that's how I'll start on a second army, who knows?

It depends what the tiny men are though. 3 units of 40 gitmob grots (gah, common goblins damn it!) with bows have a decent amount of accurate shooting, they are cheapish too and might surprise you. Models,w ell you can't do much about those, so fair enough.

To taking the super elite monster masha dvertised and then dropping in ogors and mournfangs, you totally should be taking the giants - aka aleguzzler gargants. They might surprise you, think of them as a big distraction unit, you don't care if they die, but if they do make it to combat then they are going to do some solid damage. Your super elite killy death dealing monsters still can do with big fodder monsters that can also support you, so just a thought there.

[Sheriff]

@Auretious Taak surely gordrak as a moonclan general means he has to be an ally? But allies can't be your general? If you use destruction allegiance then you can't have squig battleline which is seemingly the main benefit of the allegiance. 

I think I'll wait til the next handbook or moonclan tome before committing to full moonclan. 

Would be great if was allowed somehow, as the squig general is just awful. 

Edit: i get it now. Never mind. 

[Auretious Taak]

I wouldn't agree that the main benefit of taking Moonclan as a faction main rather then destruction is that cave squigs and squig hoppers are battleline.

Look at it this way - You can spend as little as 270 points on battleline for a generalist Destruction army by taking 3 units of 10 Orruks. 270 points for units that can be used in a variety of ways is not a lot of points, and whilst taking hoppers and cave squigs as battleine is cool, you are, vitally, limited to just 400 points of allies at 2,000pt games. There are a lot of shenanigans and disparate elements within the Destruction allegiance that can come together to provide strategically and also tactically interesting options within games. (NB: Strategy is the overall approach, think army list design and general approach to games; Tactics is the turn by turn, unit by unit interactions and choices, a lot of people don't really seem to grasp the differences, it's sort of like those people who understand that annihilate means to destroy everything whilst decimate means to destroy/kill just 1 in 10 of the things {it's a word from history, one of the big generals of a thousand+ years ago captured a city through surrender and to enforce his strength he ordered 1 in every 10 men, women and children to be executed, thus decimation is commonly used incorrectly so, so often it hurts the brain!).

Now, for myself, I played Night Goblins (aka Moonclan) across 2 editions of WHFB many moons ago and highly successfully, especially against Dwarves (a friends' dwarf artillery army was banned at a number of australian tournaments at the time because it brutally tabled anything that it went up against and I took my gobbos and we had a blast that ended ina  draw with very little of both sides left, whilst a regular opponent who had perfect guessing for his artillery every time ended up eventually taking pure combat dwarves because they were the only Dwarven army that stood a chance, and thus was in the age where combat only dwarves was completely unheard of!), so I understand the appeal. But I also look at them and look at other greeenskin units and can see many synergies which could be tactically advantageous in many instances where a purist army is not.

My advice is to not give up on them just yet but go and get some games in and try and think outside the box a little. Pre-GH2017 they placed highly at the UK GT and then that pretender gobbo player, despite being featured on the warhammer community website with an article and interview went and took a Slaanesh army for the final, serves him right for not having faith in the little fellows and doing considerably worse! We know they can be competitive in the right hands, so mix and match and think more strategically and tactically. You may be surprised.