Why SCE is doing even worse in tournaments compared with previous version?

[SwampHeart]

21 minutes ago, PJetski said:

What was the name of the tournament shortly after the new edition dropped, before the Lens of Refraction errata? I recall that tournament having some actually powerful lists. It seems like some people quickly realized there were some serious outliers in terms of game balance (Grots doing 128 damage per hit, Kroak, Lens of Refraction, Ripperdactyls doing infinite attacks, etc.) and brought a lot of powerful lists around those mechanics.

So you mean the only pre FAQ tournament? Almost every one of those lists had its power toned down (significantly) after the major FAQ.  Also to be clear - it isn't a personal attack when what's being said is correct. You've disregarded the tournament as non competitive because it doesn't support the narrative you've created. This is literally called argumentative theory of reasoning. You're programmed to do it (as am I and most other people). 

[Requizen]

3 hours ago, Mark Williams said:

People keep going back to wanting to make this thread about, “People are complaining SC are bad and not doing well and should be doing better.” You all are missing the point of the thread over and over and over again.

Look, I’m genuinely surprised any list using castigators in such large volumes did well. I sincerely think they are a bad unit. My opinion is that the list we were talking about earlier did well in spite of them. I can mildly see some shenanigans with the anvils command ability and allowing them to double tap, but I think in general they are comparatively weak at what they do.

I think this person’s strategy was to bait opponents into bumbling into the evocators, then used command abilities to double tap them and leverage the heck out of them. I think this list proves what we have been saying for a while now, that evocators are unusually good for their points, and are basically the new spammable unit in the list.

 I question, not with ill intent, but with genuine curiosity, how every opponent this person faced could let themselves consistently be rolled over by someone with a one-note, obvious strategy. Many of the people I play regularly would be able to counter it pretty easily, so that confuses me and I’d like to know what happened in his games.

 I have no disagreement that evocators are crazy strong. I have no disagreement that Stormcast on the whole is in a comparatively good place. My concern is the title of this thread. I am concerned that the new book and the rules turned them int a one note army that from this point onwards will have competitive lists built around a single unit, in a book that has literally a dozen options. This makes them predictable, and easy to counter in the long run.

 

 

How insanely narrow minded. "I don't see how it works so anyone who loses to it must be bad". That's wrong on so many levels. 

First, it's possible for a list to not rely on a "gimmick" to win. Most meta lists do have one - Surecharge, Nagash, Witch Aelves Prayer stacking - but there's literally nothing preventing a well rounded list with variety from winning when piloted well. 

Second, not knowing something doesn't make you a bad player. I'm not saying you're stupid or terrible for not seeing the list for what it is. You might just not have the experience with those units or not have played against a similar style list, and it is ok to step back and acknowledge that there might be something outside your knowledge base.

Be more flexible to learning or at least considering something new instead of just flippantly insulting it. If it won, there are reasons other than 'bad opponents'.

1 hour ago, ledha said:

you realize the guy with the phoenix temple list is making top result with it consistently in every tournament he come across since a good time, the organizer of the BLACKOUT tournament and was a member of the english team at the 6th nation tournament of warhammer in 2012  ? Actually, he alone made the phoenix temple the army with the best win/loss ratio in the game right now, far beyond legion of nagash or DOK.  It's not a new and casual player at all, but a battle-hardened veteran.

And Donal Taylor (the bonnesplitterz player) is a veteran destruction player, who participated in lot of very competitive tournaments (blood tithe, london GT championship) and did good ranking with FREAKING MOONCLAN. I've seen him win against a skyborne slayers and a kharadron clown car (when both were very good) with little trouble. Laurie Hugget-Wilde, at third place with Sylvaneth, is the top sylvaneth player in baddice ranking.

The 4th player, Daniel Forde, is the 5th player in the baddice ranking, with best in chaos and blade of khorne. He finished third at the GW Gt final 2017 and the London AOS gt championnship, second at the Warchief GT2 and the Bobo tournament. He participated at 15 tournament since february 2017 and his WORST place in those is 13th. He won BOBO and BLACKOUT in 2017.

All of them finished higher than Tony Moore (12th),  a multi-tournament winner who was during a long time and last year the top player in the baddice ranking, the captain of the England AOS team and arguably one of the best player of age of sigmar.

If a tournament with those guys is not a "serious competitive" event, i wonder what are the criteria to be one.

Yeah, this is really what happens when people hone in too much on net listing. There's a reason top players stay on top - not because they jump on the most powerful meta build (though many do), but also because they're just good at the game. They don't make those small mistakes, like deploying 1" off of optimal, or moving models incorrectly. They know their decisions and make them quickly and with more surety than most players. They analyze their play before and after the game. This sort of thing is just as important if not moreso than list building.

1 minute ago, PJetski said:

What was the name of the tournament shortly after the new edition dropped, before the Lens of Refraction errata? I recall that tournament having some actually powerful lists. It seems like some people quickly realized there were some serious outliers in terms of game balance (Grots doing 128 damage per hit, Kroak, Lens of Refraction, Ripperdactyls doing infinite attacks, etc.) and brought a lot of powerful lists around those mechanics.

Off the top of my head right now the best lists I'm seeing are DOK, Legion of Blood 3x VLOZD, Thunderquake Starhost, and the Bloodthirster bomb. The best lists are incredibly difficult to play around because they have multiple threats, great zone control, powerful focused fire, and great mobility. They are versatile and can adapt to face just about any army.

In the second tier I would put lists like Dracothions Tail, Gavriel + Evocators, Kroak, 3x GUO, Nagash, Anvilstrike, skeleton spam, and Idoneth. While still formidable, they are more limited strategically and easier to pull apart than the first tier lists. 

Third string lists are something like Flesheaterns, Tzeentch, Bonesplitterz, and Beastclaw; "gatekeepers" to competitive games, they're popular but not particularly strong. If you can't beat those common lists then your list isn't ready for tournament play.

I have never said they are not good players, but that they are playing soft lists, and thus I don't consider it to be a "serious competitive" event but more of a social one.

I have played against the Phoenix soup list a fair bit over the past 2 years, and I'm not impressed. Phoenixes do low damage and cant retreat + charge so they get tied down by typical wall units. After their support wizards are killed (which is not hard to do) they lose their +5 to save rolls the army falls apart quickly.  

Maybe I'm missing something, but I don't think it is an impressive army.

To quote Super Smash Bros competitive playerbase - Tires don exits Tiers Don't Exist. They're a metric for average power level - if people of comparable skill go against one another with different Tiers, the one that's higher will probably have an edge. That's it, and edge at best. People at the top levels of their games know this - it's why characters in eSports can be used even if they're not "top tier", it's why in regular sports you see plays and formations that are "out of date", and it's why "middling" armies can still do well in the hands of someone who knows them. Because that edge that you get from using a "high tier" doesn't outweigh the strength of just knowing the game better and making the better decisions (or just being a lucky sunovabitch who never fails a 9" charge when it counts). 

I would agree with at least most of your listing. Just on book power and rule sets, these are great starting points. But I can guarantee that the tier listing isn't indicative of what you'll see at events.

1) Good players will play what they want, and they might not enjoy or think their playstyle meshes with the "top tier" pick. 
2) People like to break the meta. Donal loves Destruction and will hone his list to challenge meta armies and to know every trick and shenanigan he can get out of his "non-meta" army. His knowledge of what his list can or can't do and how it wins games is much deeper than most people's.
3) People just don't like meta lists. While there were a lot of Changehosts and Vanguard Wings prior to AoS2, a large amount of good players basically rebuffed it because it wasn't fun to play and didn't make a game of it. Some jumped on them, but others refused because there's a stigma against filth.

 

Maybe in another version of the game, you could win on list building alone. That's how 40k was for a long time, but honestly it's not how AoS is right now. Refusing to respect results because the lists don't look good enough is just silly.

[ianob]

Stormcast top 10’d Facehammer and had multiple lists in contention going into rounds 3, 4 and 5 - and not all the same build, either.

Its looking great for Stormcast right now, I’ll just reiterate something I said farther up the thread that there is no substitute for good play and experience with your lists; it’s all there for Stormcast to win at the moment!

[PJetski]

1 hour ago, SwampHeart said:

Also to be clear - it isn't a personal attack when what's being said is correct. 

You are making assumptions about my intent and character, have not commented on the arguments I put forward, and are now claiming that ad hominems are justified because of your assumptions.

By all accounts it seems that you are the one being unreasonable here, and I am not going to entertain this absurdity any further.

1 hour ago, Requizen said:

...

I agree that an army is only as powerful as the person piloting it. I have nothing against good players doing well with soft lists... but I'm not going to pretend that Bonesplitterz vs Free People is the pinnacle of competitive AOS.

When discussing tiers I always assume both players are very competent. When both players are highly skilled then some armies are strictly better than other armies. Phoenix Temple is not a good army in that scenario, because power is relative and other armies are just strictly better.

Players can make mistakes, but that doesn't invalidate the idea that some armies are strictly better than others.

[SwampHeart]

5 minutes ago, PJetski said:

You are making assumptions about my intent and character, have not commented on the arguments I put forward, and are now claiming that ad hominems are justified because of your assumptions.

By all accounts it seems that you are the one being unreasonable here, and I am not going to entertain this absurdity any further.

I literally put forward why you're doing what you're doing. It isn't unreasonable to assume you are operating at a 'normal human being' level. You are pre-conditioned to (as am I) to ignore evidence that counter acts your view point, this is a deep seated psychological drive. It isn't about attacking you, its about literally stating that this is the default method by which humans discuss things. Also please do respond to the fact that your 'competitive' tournament was pre FAQ. Given your assertion I feel you need to provide a post FAQ tournament that you feel qualifies as a 'competitive' event. You've stated Facehammer doesn't count because of the lists on display and then when asked to provide a counter argument you've used an invalid event so you still need to give an event with which Facehammer can be benchmarked. 

[Future]

So this thread feels like its devolving into intentional trolling. Can we stop for a second and say congrats to the winners of facehammer? Also if someone is getting 5th (out of 80+) with a list, its not a soft list. A lists viability is specifically how well it can win events, so if someone is doing that it might be counter meta but its not soft. Also 2.0 isn't old enough for any players to know whats good yet so what does well in tournaments is really the only heuristic we have.

 

We've had less than a dozen events with over 60 people (maybe close to that number by now) so I don't think we can even draw patterns yet outside of maybe 1-2 lists being really good. I think we can have healthy discussions about what feels weak, compared to other units (like the point of this thread). However, I think calling peoples lists soft or disregarding events they won is just a personal attack and insulting.

[Requizen]

1 minute ago, PJetski said:

I agree that an army is only as powerful as the person piloting it. I have nothing against good players doing well with soft lists... but I'm not going to pretend that Bonesplitterz vs Free People is the pinnacle of competitive AOS.

When discussing tiers I always assume both players are very competent. When both players are highly skilled then some armies are strictly better than other armies. Phoenix Temple is not a good army in that scenario, because power is relative and other armies are just strictly better.

I'm not sure I agree at all. 

What is a soft list vs a hard list? If a list is taken and wins, does it matter how soft or hard it is? In my opinion, if your list is designed to win and has counters to multiple threats (or at least ways to reduce them), it can be competitive. Netlists may be the "mathematically best" lists, but they are by no means the only way to play, and often can fall short when faced by off-meta things that are built to counter them. A good player bringing a list they think is going to win automatically makes it a "hard list" in my mind.

Why is Bonesplittaz vs Free Peoples not "high competition"? Is it not still a duel of skill and wits where both players are trying to outmaneuver one another and break the opponent? I would rather watch two people who have honed those armies and know every edge case and rule, than a DoK player go against a LoN player who make mistakes, miss rules, or are caught off guard by an enemy rule they didn't prepare for. 

An army is just a tool in the hands of the player. If the game was just about taking the "strictly best" army based on math or some other metric... it would be boring. Yes, some armies have tools that fit the metagame better, or maybe have a trick that does not have a direct counter, but that does not make other armies unusable comparatively. It just means you have to find different ways to achieve victory and lessen the blow of things that naturally counter you.

In my opinion, this type of thinking is far too narrow, and what leads to underestimating opponents and getting beaten by "low tier" armies and lists. It's happened to me, I faced a non-Rukk Bonesplitterz list earlier this year and thought it would be a cake walk, but he knew the ins and outs of his army way better than I did and positioned himself to win in a way I didn't see coming. Your skill can be supplemented by a strong army, but a good player does not need the latest internet filth to win the game against "top tier".

[Mark Williams]

This is not a troll. I just want to respond quickly to a few of the last posters who responded to me. You made claims that the Facehammer list was “just good”, but then went on a very compelling argument stretch explaining how player skill matters more than lists. In a certain light, I see this as an admittance that the players were so good, they were either winning in spite of their lists, or had comparatively poor competition (ie their opponents weren’t as competent as them).

This is a theory that I tried to put forward earlier, but was shot down. Now it’s being used, but said in a “more positive way.” Despite all that’s been said, or how narrow minded you feel that I’ve been, I don’t see a “logical” contradiction between what I’ve said and what you’ve said. If you’re position is just simply that player skill is stronger than lists, I never ever had a disagreement with that position. My comments in this thread were always meant to be heald with the assumption that player skill and familiarity was relatively equal.

[Requizen]

14 minutes ago, Mark Williams said:

This is not a troll. I just want to respond quickly to a few of the last posters who responded to me. You made claims that the Facehammer list was “just good”, but then went on a very compelling argument stretch explaining how player skill matters more than lists. In a certain light, I see this as an admittance that the players were so good, they were either winning in spite of their lists, or had comparatively poor competition (ie their opponents weren’t as competent as them).

The list is "just good" in the meaning of "it's well rounded and has a variety of threats and answers, and therefore can react to most things without being focused on one gimmick". Most netlists rely on a trick of some sort and therefore are easy to describe as to why they are strong, so when a list doesn't do that, but is well rounded, it's hard to describe as anything except "a good list".

The list vs player skill debate was more focused on the assertation earlier that an event can't be competitive if the lists in the top 10 are not at least majority meta lists. The rebuttal that skill is more important is not saying that the lists in question are bad, but rather that tier rankings don't really matter and an event can be good without just being netlists all over the place.

[Mark Williams]

Another honest question, in an event with 80 players and only 5 games is it possible that there’s some mathematical reason that randomness of player seeding might result in players of equal skill still not playing someone at their level even into the final rounds. I ask this in seriousness, as the last 40-player event that I went to, I didn’t hit a great player until my 3rd round. The first two games were still establishing a filter.

Second question, again please don’t read too much into this, but is it possible in such an event to control how much you win by in order to prevent yourself from facing too many tough players. Ie barely win your first few games in an attempt to try let some other players knock themselves out fighting each other.

I’m not saying any of this happened, I’m asking more, is it possible that it happened, at least with a few players? And is it possible that with 80 players, you need to play a larger number of games to start getting good data?

[Requizen]

What you're talking about is common in every tournament. "Submarining" is a term you hear a lot, especially in big 40k events like Adepticon or LVO, where people will purposefully take a minor win to have an easier round 2 or 3. Unless the TO specifically seeds (which is generally considered a faux pas and/or bias), it's basically inevitable.

If you think you can reach top 10 purely by luck in matchups, then the answer is "probably but it's quite unlikely". 

[Mark Williams]

13 minutes ago, Requizen said:

The list is "just good" in the meaning of "it's well rounded and has a variety of threats and answers, and therefore can react to most things without being focused on one gimmick". Most netlists rely on a trick of some sort and therefore are easy to describe as to why they are strong, so when a list doesn't do that, but is well rounded, it's hard to describe as anything except "a good list".

The list vs player skill debate was more focused on the assertation earlier that an event can't be competitive if the lists in the top 10 are not at least majority meta lists. The rebuttal that skill is more important is not saying that the lists in question are bad, but rather that tier rankings don't really matter and an event can be good without just being netlists all over the place.

If you can eliminate the evocators cleanly, I don’t see any big damage threats left in his list. I understand that castigators can in theory help kill heroes, but I also know that their damage output is very low for their points. If the evocators die it’s just a defensive list at that point. Again, I’m just confused how it survived against the armies. How was he almost wiping a DoK list off the table? The main issue I’ve had against DoK time and time again is that I just can’t make them roll enough dice at the end of the day. What did that DoK list look like? (Serious question.)

If someone were asking me these questions about my games, I feel like I could break down fairly subjectively how my army performed, what worked, what didn’t, where I got lucky, where my opponents outsmarted me, where I made mistakes. Etc..

This is how I evaluate the army at the end of the day. I play games and think about what would happen if I played a dozen games with someone I’d just played. How would their strategy evolve if they knew what I was going to do? How would their list change? What would I do against myself if our armies were reversed?

Basically I’m looking for some introspection on why the person placed as well as they did, beyond the arguments in this thread, beyond our personal disagreements, beyond wanting to win the thread, etc...

I don’t see myself doing well with the list posted primarily because it seems like a reactive list. It can’t press a focused attack into a small area of the board quickly enough. It seems to rely on counter attack strategies, which inherently rely on the enemy coming to you. Many of the games I personally play seem to go poorly when my list isn’t played aggressively and I can’t press an attack across the table. I’m still trying to work my head around how the list is successful, as I don’t think my experiences are invalid or that I’m being narrow minded, despite the assertion that I am. I feel like I’m asking reasonable questions.

[Requizen]

22 minutes ago, Mark Williams said:

If you can eliminate the evocators cleanly, I don’t see any big damage threats left in his list. I understand that castigators can in theory help kill heroes, but I also know that their damage output is very low for their points. If the evocators die it’s just a defensive list at that point. Again, I’m just confused how it survived against the armies. How was he almost wiping a DoK list off the table? The main issue I’ve had against DoK time and time again is that I just can’t make them roll enough dice at the end of the day. What did that DoK list look like? (Serious question.)

If someone were asking me these questions about my games, I feel like I could break down fairly subjectively how my army performed, what worked, what didn’t, where I got lucky, where my opponents outsmarted me, where I made mistakes. Etc..

This is how I evaluate the army at the end of the day. I play games and think about what would happen if I played a dozen games with someone I’d just played. How would their strategy evolve if they knew what I was going to do? How would their list change? What would I do against myself if our armies were reversed?

Basically I’m looking for some introspection on why the person placed as well as they did, beyond the arguments in this thread, beyond our personal disagreements, beyond wanting to win the thread, etc...

I don’t see myself doing well with the list posted primarily because it seems like a reactive list. It can’t press a focused attack into a small area of the board quickly enough. It seems to rely on counter attack strategies, which inherently rely on the enemy coming to you. Many of the games I personally play seem to go poorly when my list isn’t played aggressively and I can’t press an attack across the table. I’m still trying to work my head around how the list is successful, as I don’t think my experiences are invalid or that I’m being narrow minded, despite the assertion that I am. I feel like I’m asking reasonable questions.

People have given you reasons it's done well. I have as well. That guy literally responded to you on the bottom of the previous page. 

Don't get hung up on the Evocators doing all the heavy lifting. 5 Sequitors hit pretty darn hard (7 attacks 3/3/-1/2) and aren't easy to chew through without solid commitment. Ballista and Castigators will whittle away numbers from a range. Arcanum can deal fairly reliable MWs as long as he's protected. And the Dracolines are no slouches, while also tying up enemies pretty well. 

If you don't think you could do well with a reactive list, that's cool. Not every playstyle will fit every player, and that's expected because the game is varied and not every army has the same tools. But it's clearly not impossible to win with it. 

[Mark Williams]

I’m not arguing that it’s impossible to win with. I’m not arguing it can’t do well. I’m saying I’m not understanding how it did as well as it did. That’s different than saying it can’t win or do relatively well. I did see the person who owned the army responded, but it didn’t give any details or insight into how the army works and how the games went down.

[Black Blade]

I remember commenting on this thread and starting my own critiquing the state of stormcast, I'm back now because twitter notified me of a popular Sigmar related tweet that seemed to me pretty mean spirited. I don't know though if the trolling happened before this tweet or if the tweet brought the trolls. I hope we can talk about all this reasonably and appreciate points of view backed by evidence.

https://twitter.com/PlasticCraic/status/1044775346518675456

[Mark Williams]

I’m a bit saddened at the hyperbole on both sides, and frustrated that people keep interpreting it as some kind of whiny thread. Perhaps I’ve contributed to it; I was not trying to.

 My interest in the discussion from the very beginning was to try to explore where Stormcast are after the new rules and battletome hit. I’ve been to two tournaments this year and about to go to a third. The perception I’ve consistently seen in my area is that sce are not a serious threat anymore, and in the last series of games I participated in, there was a very clear “attitude” from my opponent that stormcast aren’t scary and just a speed bump at the tournament. My opponents set up aggressively and without guarding themselves. I did as well as I did, when I did well, because people basically underestimated me and expected me to be a pushover. That general feeling and attitude, I believe, comes from somewhere. I think it’s a general belief among the community that sce a a second tier army.

My interest in the thread from the start was to explore that thinking within the community. I don’t believe it just sprouted out of nowhere.

[Cas797]

1 hour ago, Mark Williams said:

If you can eliminate the evocators cleanly, I don’t see any big damage threats left in his list. I understand that castigators can in theory help kill heroes, but I also know that their damage output is very low for their points. If the evocators die it’s just a defensive list at that point. Again, I’m just confused how it survived against the armies. How was he almost wiping a DoK list off the table? The main issue I’ve had against DoK time and time again is that I just can’t make them roll enough dice at the end of the day. What did that DoK list look like? (Serious question.)

If someone were asking me these questions about my games, I feel like I could break down fairly subjectively how my army performed, what worked, what didn’t, where I got lucky, where my opponents outsmarted me, where I made mistakes. Etc..

This is how I evaluate the army at the end of the day. I play games and think about what would happen if I played a dozen games with someone I’d just played. How would their strategy evolve if they knew what I was going to do? How would their list change? What would I do against myself if our armies were reversed?

Game 1 against DoK, didn’t win due not getting to turn 4. However dok player had half a unit of witches and 2 x flying witches left, I had my army minus the dracolines.

i targeted the characters and killed them as quick as possible. No buffs meant witches die. 

Game 2 old style warrior brotherhood list. 

Basically new stuff is better 

game 3 mixed distruction 

stone horn, 2x thundertusks. 3 x 10 savage orcs, big brute unit and ironjaw hero. I focused on the thundertusks and Bute’s, used castigors and ballista to kill the orcs. And focused on the objectives. I lost more kill points but won on vps.

game 4 Oger army

got hit hard. Lost evos and dracs after killing his hero’s basically. Ballista helped a lot in this game. Again concentrated on objectives

 

game 5. Sce sureheart 2x 10 evo, 2x seq and 20 seq

used my hero’s and drops to control board space as best I could forcing his evos into one part of the board. He drop down charges, I drop down counter charge, due to his deployment forced by the charges etc I’m able to focus on each evo unit. Having killed all the seqs earlier in the game. Focused on holding 2/3 objectives to claim the win.

 

everyone I played knew what they were about. There was luck on both sides. There are some things I would do differently but I enjoyed every one of my games 

[Mark Williams]

28 minutes ago, Cas797 said:

Game 1 against DoK, didn’t win due not getting to turn 4. However dok player had half a unit of witches and 2 x flying witches left, I had my army minus the dracolines.

i targeted the characters and killed them as quick as possible. No buffs meant witches die. 

Game 2 old style warrior brotherhood list. 

Basically new stuff is better 

game 3 mixed distruction 

stone horn, 2x thundertusks. 3 x 10 savage orcs, big brute unit and ironjaw hero. I focused on the thundertusks and Bute’s, used castigors and ballista to kill the orcs. And focused on the objectives. I lost more kill points but won on vps.

game 4 Oger army

got hit hard. Lost evos and dracs after killing his hero’s basically. Ballista helped a lot in this game. Again concentrated on objectives

 

game 5. Sce sureheart 2x 10 evo, 2x seq and 20 seq

used my hero’s and drops to control board space as best I could forcing his evos into one part of the board. He drop down charges, I drop down counter charge, due to his deployment forced by the charges etc I’m able to focus on each evo unit. Having killed all the seqs earlier in the game. Focused on holding 2/3 objectives to claim the win.

 

everyone I played knew what they were about. There was luck on both sides. There are some things I would do differently but I enjoyed every one of my games 

Thank you sincerely.

As a general note, I’d like to bow out of this thread at this point, and apologise to anyone who I may have upset in pressing the issue. The above response, or something like it, was exactly what I was looking for from the start.

 I would be interested to analyse why this list works on a more detailed level, but I don’t think this thread is a constructive place to have that conversation.

My final take away from the thread is that any perceived diminished performance from sce compared to previous editions were probably a result of people figuring out how to use the new units, as well as needing time to incorporate them into their army.

 I’m still concerned that lists may continue to revolve around a single unit (evocators). And I’m still not sold on castigators (I feel an army could spend the points on other similar things and get better results for the points). But both of those are separate discussions and I don’t want to have them in this thread anymore.

 I appreciate everyone’s opinion and insight.

[Future]

Thanks for the write up. Sounds like without time constraints you would have been 5-0 at the event. Do you think slow play was a problem due to model count? Anything you would have done differently to win the game faster than turn 4?

[wanderingrogue]

9 hours ago, PJetski said:

I play in lots of tournaments. Why are you implying that my opinion isn't valid unless I attend these two UK events?

If people are placing top 8 with soft lists like Phoenix Temple and Bonesplitterz then I don't consider Facehammer to be a "serious competitive" event.

wow

 

[Cas797]

7 hours ago, Mark Williams said:

Thank you sincerely.

As a general note, I’d like to bow out of this thread at this point, and apologise to anyone who I may have upset in pressing the issue. The above response, or something like it, was exactly what I was looking for from the start.

 I would be interested to analyse why this list works on a more detailed level, but I don’t think this thread is a constructive place to have that conversation.

My final take away from the thread is that any perceived diminished performance from sce compared to previous editions were probably a result of people figuring out how to use the new units, as well as needing time to incorporate them into their army.

 I’m still concerned that lists may continue to revolve around a single unit (evocators). And I’m still not sold on castigators (I feel an army could spend the points on other similar things and get better results for the points). But both of those are separate discussions and I don’t want to have them in this thread anymore.

 I appreciate everyone’s opinion and insight.

Happy to discuss why I think it did well.

7 hours ago, Future said:

Thanks for the write up. Sounds like without time constraints you would have been 5-0 at the event. Do you think slow play was a problem due to model count? Anything you would have done differently to win the game faster than turn 4?

As always it’s hard to tell. I didn’t play the death list or Ian’s bonessplitters or Chris’s phenoix list.  So I may have come undone. That’s things with tournaments so many what ifs. 

The issue game one was, we chatted a bit as we deployed, the chap I played did everything he could to speed up once we realised how little time we had left. It was a fun and I didn’t feel he took too long in his turns. 

[Donal]

14 hours ago, PJetski said:

What was the name of the tournament shortly after the new edition dropped, before the Lens of Refraction errata? I recall that tournament having some actually powerful lists. It seems like some people quickly realized there were some serious outliers in terms of game balance (Grots doing 128 damage per hit, Kroak, Lens of Refraction, Ripperdactyls doing infinite attacks, etc.) and brought a lot of powerful lists around those mechanics.

 

That event was the 6 nations. It was a super fun event, arguably less competitive than Facehammer because the rules were so silly. having went to both, taken the 192 damage grot and done relatively well at Facehammer I feel like I’m well positioned to say that.

in terms of list strength my facehammer destruction list is WAY better than my damage stacking moonclan list. The other event was a team one so I didn’t have to worry quite as much about bad match ups.

re: the soft list rationale, dan ford played murderhost, the same army he has had success with for 2 years. He finished 4th, a similar position that he’s always had.

The legion of blood player finished 6th, the seraphon thunderquake list was on table 1 game 4 but I think had 2 losses Sunday. Those lists were there they just didn’t finish in top 5. Thank goodness we have competitive events with mixed lists doing well cause I wouldn’t want to play in an environment where only 4-5 lists need to be played for it to be competitive.

[ianob]

 

On 9/24/2018 at 9:34 PM, PJetski said:

I'm going to sound extremely elitist here, but... I'm not going to consider a tournament with Destruction and Phoenix temple in the top 4 and zero Seraphon players (imo the best army currently) as a competitive event

Kudos to the players doing well with "weak" armies, but this shouldn't be used as a representative sample of what the competitive metagame is like.

Not only is your assertion here patently ridiculous , but it shows a deep, deep misunderstanding of not only what makes an AoS list good, but also of the dynamics of playing in a tournament. 

I’d suggest, much like I have in this thread multiple times, that there is no substitute for skill and that you should practice, get better, and learn that there is more to lists than what’s on paper.

I’d also suggest you consider respecting your betters and learning from them, rather than talking bad about them on the Internet because you’re not able to achieve the same results. Everyone you meet or play has something to teach you, and every army you lose against teaches you a lesson. Use those things to get better instead of using them as fuel for internet whining. It’ll pay you many more dividends.

[Andreas]

15 hours ago, PJetski said:

What was the name of the tournament shortly after the new edition dropped, before the Lens of Refraction errata? I recall that tournament having some actually powerful lists. It seems like some people quickly realized there were some serious outliers in terms of game balance (Grots doing 128 damage per hit, Kroak, Lens of Refraction, Ripperdactyls doing infinite attacks, etc.) and brought a lot of powerful lists around those mechanics.

I guess you mean 6 Nations team tournament. I played for Sweden, we had no Lens of Refraction, no Kroak, no Rippers, no 128 damage Grots, no Nagash, really no lists with a lot of these mechanics. I played Fyreslayers. Sweden came second.

Edit: I am not saying our player skills didn't need those mechanics. ? I'm  just saying I think they were not as broken or good as people not playing at the tournament thought at that time, (except Kroak), and after that they where hit by the FAQ. I am sure the lists on Facehammer GT were stronger in practise.

[newsun]

Are they actually performing worse in the tournament scene? What are the statistics for pre 2.0 vs post 2.0 for SCE placings?

 

While gw has been a lot more responsive to player base since the new regime got moving, they have been and likely always will be a company which uses rules to sell more models. Historically that is more biased towards newer items, though as seen in 8th whfb with the shift towards hordes it included a lot of older models no one ran.

 

My own musing is that SCE is currently in a strange place as they are getting ready to make full chapters like Space Marines have and this book here to tide things over until then.

 

Also beer and friends > winning 99% of the time when hobby tournaments are looked back on. I've tried both approaches for many years.