SCGT Rankings and top three lists

[Aginor]

As a fellow Seraphon player I have to applaud the guy taking that list to the tournament and showing all the guys that our army is still there.

Of course he needed a super cheese list and lots of luck, but I guess he knew the chances and still picked the lizards and made it pretty far instead of picking an army that is strong in the current meta.

My hat's off to him! 

[swarmofseals]

45 minutes ago, Auticus said:

Some will sure, but when I was active in the GT community back in the 90s and early 2000s, the guys trying to win the event that were taking the uber powergaming lists also commissioned their armies for paint jobs to max out their painting score.

Do we really want this? The hobby is already expensive, particularly if you chase the meta a bit and buy a new army specifically for a tournament. Feeling pressure to need to pay a ton of money to get your army commission painted to a high standard sounds terrible to me. What if you enjoy painting but are new at it, or just don't have great natural skill, or have a physical disability that makes brush control difficult? Now you need to drop an extra couple hundred (minimum) to get your army painted by someone else so that you can be competitive. This is the absolute definition of pay to win.

 

As an aside, I also find painting judging to be somewhat problematic. If the rules are set so that a clearly defined minimum standard receives the maximum score then that's one thing, but many tournaments with painting scoring don't do this. The very first tournament I ever went to was a local event (maybe 20 players total) during 3rd edition 40k. I put a lot of time into painting my Eldar army and got it to a pretty decent standard and had been getting compliments on it all day. I managed to win all my games but got dinged heavily on painting and came in second by 1 point. When I asked the painting judge why I had received such a low score (I think 10 or 12 out of 20), he pointed to a few small details and that was it. I was still happy with my games, but needless to say that was a pretty big turnoff to playing in future events for a teenager going to his first tournament!

[Pete Scholey]

The painting standard was no different to any other event.  Some fantastic armies. Some good,tabletop and then average.  But it's all subjective and down to individuals own skills.  Alex again won a major tournament.  So what if people don't like his painting.  Didn't stop him cleaning up on the table.  Would anyone care if he came 48th like me. No. It's pathetic for people to complain about a winner when no one mentions Joe soap down at the bottom end with his poor paint Job.  Clearly Alex is the new hotness and the current best AoS player in the country.  We need to concentrate on trying to beat him and forget about whether his army has two highlights or three colours 

[Drillz]

BUFF IRONJAWZ!!!

[Sleboda]

1 hour ago, AlexHarrison said:

If people want to paint my army for me im more than happy for you to do so. Ive been painting for years but I still can't get any better, sorry im not as good as you guys  

In my defence, they do look a lot better in real life than over a camera

Heck, Adepticon allowed borrowed armies. You don't have to paint,  or even own, your own armies in this competitive "hobby" anymore. Damn sad if you ask me. 

[Iain]

Does anyone have a photo of the army? Not wanting to judge, just feeling left out of this conversation without seeing it

[Liam]

5 minutes ago, Auticus said:

 

The game is already pay to win.   

 

 As a Fyreslayers player I can confirm this is rubbish ?

[Dannathar]

The problem with skyfires, khunters with bows and kunnin is not the points, not the dakka and not the characters stuck out of units. The issue is tournaments don't have the right terrain. Look at the tables its a shooting gallery. We need los blocking stuff and a lot of it. So shooters actually need to move and commit to kill stuff. Not just derp shoots with impunity. Every time you try and move a unit you opponents shooting just lets loose. The table we play on around me have good los blocking and shooting is still amazing if you out maneuver your opponent 

[Pete Scholey]

This is true. More big buildings 

[Adymc]

1 hour ago, AlexHarrison said:

If people want to paint my army for me im more than happy for you to do so. Ive been painting for years but I still can't get any better, sorry im not as good as you guys  

In my defence, they do look a lot better in real life than over a camera

It does, I had a good look at it and it was better than a fair few at the event , well done 

[AlexHarrison]

22 minutes ago, Iain said:

Does anyone have a photo of the army? Not wanting to judge, just feeling left out of this conversation without seeing it

 

Here is some I have just taken. Im not a photographer or a great painter so first time attempting this haha. Sayl's white is 4 layers to make it look dirty which im happy with :).

 

[ThereIsOnlyJoe]

This thread is so funny. 

[Paul Buckler]

Was gonna posta long reply, but deleted it all as I am not gonna get drawn into it.

Seriously folks take a breath and stop yourself, otherwise this place is doomed.

 

[Veterannoob]

First off, I really wish I can make SCGT one day. Seems like a baller event. I wasn't there so not my place to comment on anything except what I did see and that was from twitch. And that's nothing to do with the event even, I was just a bit disappointed (and I'm not in the place of the guys who do this stellar commentary) that I watched two games basically end quick when it seems they were still going which was kinda a bummer. But I'm probably missing something ?

[Rob P]

Those minis are nowhere near as terrible as I thought they'd be from the mentions.

[Sleboda]

56 minutes ago, Dannathar said:

 

The problem with skyfires, khunters with bows and kunnin is not the points, not the dakka and not the characters stuck out of units. The issue is tournaments don't have the right terrain.

 

A-freakin-men!

I hear the complaints that terrain doesn't matter in AoS and think "bull." Make it matter. Yes, it's hard to hide a mawcrusher, but my mounted heroes hide just fine on my tables,  thank you. 

To add on,  the other shooting issue is the assumption that shooters can always see. It has crept into the mindset so thoroughly that I've played tournament games recently where the opponent shot over a hill to a unit down-slope he could not see.  In a later game another player didn't bother to check individual models' line to a target behind a building and rolled for all his shooters.

It may be uncomfortable, but we have to have the courage to politely say "hang on,  they don't have that target available" instead of letting the LoS be assumed to be all-clear, all the time.

[WoollyMammoth]

The painting argument is moot. Warhammer players are a mixed bag of hobbyists and powergamers. We all want different things from the hobby. If you force catering to one side you'll likely lose the other half. Every event organizer chooses a different system based on their own opinions. This has ever been and always will be different from event to event.

As a painter, I'm generally disappointed by how painting works. I don't want to move up in the ranks of a tournament because my painting is good. I want a legit painting competition which judges the tournament army painting on the side, which unfortunately is never the case. Its always by random votes which are always arbitrary. One guy who shows up in a 10 man group gets nominated and everyone in his group nominates him for best. One guy paints something silly that stands out and everyone votes for them. Someone makes some cool centerpiece model with lighting effects and everyone votes for them because that one model is cool. Painting is not taken seriously to where the person who wins best painted is the best painter. I think that if major events had a committee of painters who judged the painting competition as a neutral 3rd party, and with gold, silver and bronze awards - everyone would be more motivated to get their armies painted better. Right now this is only the case for separate painting only events.

Kurnoth, Kunnin Rukk and Skyfires are dominating the game right now and they need to be nerfed in some way.
A. Filling the board with terrain is a good idea in theory but to pull it off is unlikely. Even if they release a cool modular terrain set, most games will still be played without it. its too much to rely on terrain to fix shooting.
B. Since these models are so dominant they need a points increase. I think it's perfectly fine to balance the game by making the units with the biggest impact cost more. It would be extremely hard to make these units so overcosted that no one would use them. They are likely seeing some kind of increase in GH2.
C. Update their scrolls to soften them. This seems to be the way GW likes to update lately ('Secrators, Azyros, etc) but this requires new books, something that these armies are very unlikely to see. 
D. Simply impose a limit in the Generals Handbook on powerful units to prevent abuse. For example; Skyfires: Max 3 per 1000 points. 

For those who say, Sylvaneth would be a weak army without 12 Kurnoth, or that Skyfires are the only thing making DoT competitive, that's not really true, there are plenty of good things. If they stop the "arms race" where each new army needs to be stronger than the last, and take a step back to level the playing field, the game will be a lot more balanced. 

The TK nerf is very unfortunate. They simply nerfed them out of the game. TK lists were fairly soft compared to the insanity going on right now. The absurd point increase for VL on AT really kicked death in the balls hard. The 40 point increase for a necrosphinx was totally uncalled for. This is a rare unit that is very good and keeps the army competitive - now the only unit keeping the army relevant is a Mourngul. Settra was cool and creating some good competitive lists - 460 points for an 8 wound model is total ******. Necropolis Knights were really good but nothing compared to a lot of other things. The Vampire Lord is like the most essential model in the army. 300 points is about twice the cost it should be, unless GH2 is going to make units like Sayl and Bloodsecrators 250 points. 

I think they wanted to make TK unplayable since the models are no longer for sale. If this is the case, they were successful. My only hope is that they are nefing Death so much because they are planning to drop a huge book that makes them scary good.

[tokek]

1 hour ago, Iain said:

Does anyone have a photo of the army? Not wanting to judge, just feeling left out of this conversation without seeing it

It was on the stream, at that distance it looked OK. Not the most stunning army there but up to an acceptable standard.

I would guess Alex is 100% happy coming first on the tables and being nowhere near any of the many awards for painting. Similarly I would hope the great painters were in the running for those prizes and were probably not that bothered about winning the games on the table.

I'm sure Warhammer TV wish every army they showed was a stunner and would inspire people into the hobby but not everyone has those stunning skills.

[Louzi]

I think GW was drunk when writing the Skyfire Warscroll.

2 life and a ****** melee profile (like every other shooting unit) would solve many problems, but hey...

[Bradifer]

The problem with the LOS-Terrains style arguments is that AoS was designed to be pretty sleek and concise, rules-wise.

Adding in this weird bend-down and look at your models to see if they can see the other toy soldiers rule adds a lot of grey area, actively feels weird to people new to war-gaming (trust me I was new, and I thought this was the weirdest thing, my friends as well). This could raise constant questions and modelling concerns (Does my spear count?) (Yeah but i converted him with corkboard, should I remove it so he fits under trees?)

Also add that there is inherently a lack of abundant fantasy themed LOS blocking terrain. Stores would have to put a lot of work into adding that.

The poster mentioning suggestions for shooting changes has certainly pushed in the right direction for easy-to-implment and easy-to-enforce rules that would encourage army diversity.

----

Moving on to the tournament, US player here, I was able to watch only 1 game, the Nagash (unpainted?) vs. 27 skyfires. That game was pretty awesome, although I'm not sure how he lost the scenario because of the rules of the tournament, they were non-standard battepans so I think that's just familiarity with the Tournament pack.

I thought it was awesome to see one of the game's iconic characters-Nagash-fighting in the battle, even if it was against the lamest idea for an army I've ever seen. (9 boxes of skyfires, really? There are so many cool model in this game, yet we had to spam 9 copies of the same 3-man unit?! Yuck. That seems horrendously boring to look at or tactically to play against. Have we not played against enough Jetbikes in 40K?)

I'm new enough to competitive wargaming, but I think I see the major winning trend: Spam-2-Win.

Skyfires, Kuroth Hunters, Arrowboys, Thundertusks, Blood Warriors, Necropolis Knights, Retributors, etc...

Plenty of decisions and player skill help take you there, but it's a little off-putting that the game system supports spam so much.

Taking this in contrast with Terry Pike's old Mixed Chaos-Sayl-6 Stormfiends list. While the exact unit wasn't spammed, it was pretty much just mortal wound spam, but fair game that is just the game's best damaging attack. Even then, the mixed chaos was filthy, but at least you got to see multiple methods of synergy interacting, multiple units of different models. Much more interesting IMO.

---------

What happened to Death? That seems pretty said they weren't even in the top 10th percentile. MTG would look unhappy by comparison if a single color wasn't featured in the top 10% of decks. (Different game I know) but it doesn't feel right that death was noticeably absent from the competitive tables. Should we take our skeletons on vacation until a new OP book comes out and hope it's shooting heavy? Seems like sortof a vicious cycle you wargamers put up with. 

--------

Still it sounded like the battleplans were all well-crafted and judging by the speed of the ticket sales, the players must love it. 

Can't wait to hear stories of the games and battle reports.

Would also like to see a gallery or set of pictures for all the armies here, would be fun to see!

Thanks to Dan, Wayne, Russ, and some others I'm sure-for organizing such an impactful AoS tournament.

[Beau]

22 hours ago, Marc Wilson said:

Hi - I can certainly tell you this is not correct. 4th was Seraphon, 8th was Mixed Order shooting - Hurricanum/Hellblasters, and at least two others were Sylvaneth. I don't know for sure any of them were Stormcast.

Apologies on the misinformation.

[Iain]

1 hour ago, AlexHarrison said:

Here is some I have just taken. Im not a photographer or a great painter so first time attempting this haha. Sayl's white is 4 layers to make it look dirty which im happy with :).

These all look great to me, I don't know what people expect!? Painting is a great hobby but it's such a different skill to playing the game,  not fair to expect 'Eavy Metal from everyone. F the haters!

[Dooflunger]

3 minutes ago, Iain said:

These all look great to me, I don't know what people expect!? Painting is a great hobby but it's such a different skill to playing the game,  not fair to expect 'Eavy Metal from everyone. F the haters!

For real, priming and then adding a single layer of glaze looks incredible.

[Donal]

This thread is entertaining but been taken over by many who didn't go to the event... 

@AlexHarrison - think more washes would be an easy way to add depth to your painted army (and also not take much time to add). I actually really like the yellow its just the other colours that weaken the overall visual. Appreciate the army was rushed though. And congrats on the win

The only criticism I have of the event is that it definitely needs a Top 3 for SCGTCoolest now - Oh and lunch needs to open at least 15 mins before the end of the round (maybe more) to save on queue time

Edit: for the lunch comment

[Iain]

2 minutes ago, Dooflunger said:

For real, priming and then adding a single layer of glaze looks incredible.

Where did I say incredible? This is the standard of most the painters in my local GW. Sorry if I didn't know that there was another secret hobby where you need a BA from Goldsmith's!