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Tamwulf

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Posts posted by Tamwulf

  1. Square bases for the larger models. GW doesn't really have an oval base size that could support the Griffin or the weapons teams of the Skaven (those still come with square bases).

     

    As a side note, this is where the large bulk of my Skaven army came from. Bought the set, and traded the elves for more Skaven. :)

  2. Imperial Agents is NOT a Sisters of Battle Codex. Where/why has anyone thought otherwise?

     

    Finecrap... Failcast... there is a reason GW moved away from it and is no longer using it. We can only speculate on that reason, but I suspect it was due to the poor, poor quality of the finial product and GW's no questions asked replacement policy (at least, that's what I've heard). I would be very, very surprised if the new Canoness is made out of the same material as Finecast because GW "liquidated" all the Finecast material and equipment several years ago according to their financials statement. This mini is probably going to be made in the same resin material as what Forge World makes.

     

    I hope I get one. :)

  3. Awesome! 330 mile drive to save 20%! Let's see, six hour drive there, six hours back, 42.6 gallons of gas at $2.50/gallon... $106.45 in gas, plus food... Alright! See you on Saturday! LOL Nah, that's awesome that Astral Games gives that much of a discount. Wish I lived closer. I used to get a great discount like that when I lived up in Alaska.

     

    This is just one of those weird times when it's actually cheaper to buy at the UK Online Store then the US Online Store thanks to exchange rates. I'm pretty sure that's why the limited edition Thousand Sons stuff sold out so quickly in the UK, but it's still available on the US Online Store.

     

    It's also a fantastic time to get Forge World!

    • Like 1
  4. Right now, the British Pound Sterling is trading at £1 = $1.25. Looking between the two online stores, US site has a 10 model Space Marine Squad at $40. The same box costs £25 at the UK site. £25 = $31, or a savings of about 23%. It varies from box to box, but it's around 25% off if you order right now from the GW UK site. The UK site also offers free shipping on orders over £40, or $50, even on international orders.

     

    On top of that, the VAT and export tax are already included in the price, so if you are willing to wait an extra week or two, you can get GW stuff from the UK Website at 25% off.

     

    I'd expect the exchange rate to remain the same or actually decline a bit more until January 1st, when GW UK will "adjust" the online store prices to reflect the falling Pound sterling against the US Dollar. Or they might wait until after President Elect Clown takes office. Economics and politics go hand in hand. 

    • Like 6
  5. Wow, visited four game stores today, including the Games Workshop store in Portland, and everyone got plenty of copies of Blood Bowl the box game, but hardly any copies of Death Zone, and only one place got in two boxes of Skaven and one set of dice- both spoken for. They are even sold out at the GW Online store. Did GW misjudge the popularity of the Skaven? LOL

     

    They probably won't be a limited release, but wow. I guess everyone likes the Skaven? I wanted the team because I played them back in the early 90's when the first Blood Bowl came out.

  6. Hoo boy.

     

    Tyranids are in one of those categories. Tau another.

    Eldar are in one. Chaos are definitely in one.

     

    I would agree with this, but it's the actual lists that make it top tier or bottom. You can't say the entire Craftworld Eldar is top tier. You can say that certain lists are top tier out of the codex, and that the entire codex does lend itself very well to top tier play, but a lot of it is the player and list. The same goes with Tau. Now Tyranids and Chaos are the opposite. Certain lists are good, but both codex lean to the bottom tier.

     

    Do some poking around on the interwebz and you'll see "top tier" and "bottom tier" lists.

  7. Yup, saw that. Man, I'm not sure. I know they could clean up the victory conditions on Pitched Battle: Three Places of Power. Maybe restrict the command abilities or artifacts. Other than that, mess around with the points a bit. Some units are way under costed, while others need a reduction. I've primarily concerned myself with the Pitched Battles section. Ya know, maybe they could add a section on terrain... 

  8. You could have a Skaven army containing only those models with the keyword "Skaven"- they would count as having the Skaven Allegiance. It could contain models from the other clans, but only as long as they had the Skaven keyword.

     

    Think of it as a hierarchy:

     

    Chaos

        |

    Skaven

        |

    Clans

        |

     <specific keywords like 'Giant Rat' or 'Monster' or 'Hero'>

     

    To have a Chaos allegiance, is only to have the keyword Chaos on the warscroll. To have a Skaven allegiance, all the warscrolls must have the Skaven keyword. To have a specific Clan allegiance, all the warscrolls must have the Clan name. You can skip down the Hierarchy, but you can't skip up. That is, not all Clan allegiance will automatically have Skaven or Chaos allegiance because they may be missing those keywords. But a Chaos allegiance could have specific Clans that were not Skaven.

     

    You have to be careful though. Some Skaven warscrolls do not have the Skaven keyword on them, such as Giant Rats. Their keywords are Chaos, Moulder, Giant Rats, meaning that you could never take them in a Skaven allegiance army, but you could in a Chaos allegiance army, or a Clan Moulder allegiance Army, or a Giant Rats allegiance army.

     

    I didn't look at all the Skaven warscrolls, but it looked like they all contained the keyword Chaos. Any Skaven allegiance army you make will at least have the Chaos Allegiance. 

     

    Still confused?

     

    Clanrats have the keywords Chaos, Skaven, Verminus, Clanrats, but under the Chaos Pitched Battle Profiles on pg. 130 of the Generals Handbook, they have a battlefield role of Battleline with no qualifiers. Like the entire army doesn't have to have a specific Allegiance for the Clanrats to be a Battleline. So you could make a Skaven Army with the Keywords Chaos, and Skaven, and use Clanrats as your Battleline. You would NOT be able to claim Clan Eshin or Clan Skrye as your Allegience as you don't have the proper Battlelines for them (as well as containing models without the keywords Clan Eshin or Clan Skrye). 

     

    Side note: If you make a Skaven allegiance army, you can go further down the hierarchy if you want to include a specific warscroll Battelion like the Warscroll of Eshin Clawpack without making your entire army a Clan Eshin allegiance. Then you could use that warscroll Battelion if you added 1 Skaven Assassin, 3 units of Night Runners, and 1 unit of Gutter Runners. They all have the Skaven keyword. 

     

    I hope that helped.

    • Like 1
  9. Dude, chill out. You asked for advise- which is a verb, and means " to offer suggestions about the best course of action to someone."

     

    Did you mean advice? Which is a noun, and means "guidance or recommendations concerning prudent future action, typically given by someone regarded as knowledgeable or authoritative."

     

    I advised you on what you will probably face at LVO, which is exactly what you asked for:

     

    Some advise needed.

  10. I won't speak for anyone else, but I for one self identify as a competitive player and find this statement incredibly insulting. It is a gross over generalization and comes off as incredibly holier than thou. Get off of your high horse buddy!

    Type in "Competitive Player" in Google and see what comes up. Here was the very first result of my search:

     

     

    1. cut-throat, aggressive, fierce, ruthless, relentless, antagonistic, carnivorous (informal), dog-eat-dog Modelling is a tough, competitive world. 2. ambitious, pushing, opposing, aggressive, vying, contentious, combative, carnivorous (informal) He has always been a fiercely competitive player.

    https://www.google.com/search?q=competitive+player&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8

     

    Is that really what you self identify as? And do you really have fun playing 40K that way? I think it's pretty spot on for the "Competitive Players" I've faced.

  11. The #1 rule of 40K is to have fun. If you are not having fun, then why play? This is the crux of tournament play. If you have fun losing to competitive lists, then have a nut! If you like building incredibly complicated lists that fully take advantage and exploit the rules system, then have a nut! However, don't expect everyone else to see the game the same way. This is why I don't like to play in tournaments. They are not fun to me. And I bet they are not fun to a lot of people either, but if it's the only game in town and you want to play, then you are kind of forced into it, aren't you? Surely you have totally recognized the point when your opponent has stopped having fun playing against you. Did you change the way you played? Or did you just forge on kicking them in the nuts because you were having fun and they weren't? Indeed, the arrow flies both ways. Do you ever feel guilty or wish the game could have been more fun for your opponent? In other words, did you have empathy for your opponent when they were losing or winning, or just ignored him in the name of "competitiveness" and justified it with "He should have brought a better list" or "L2P, noob!" because this is a tournament, and only competitive, tournament minded people should play in a tournament? When you are standing on the podium, hoisting that trophy high, do you look in the eyes of the last place player and wonder if he had fun?

     

    Your argument about fluff proves my point. People cherry pick and use the fluff that best explains the army they build. Battle Company and War Convocation are formations placed in the game after the rules had already been written. I would buy the argument that they follow the fluff. Too bad the bonuses the armies receive for taking that fluffy formation are not balanced or equal to what other armies can take. Formations exasperate the problem.

     

    About your final point- GW purposefully, and explicitly has avoided making tournament rules or supporting tournaments in general. The base rules of the game don't cover it, provide for it, or balance the game in any way around tournaments. It's the players that demanded it, and when GW didn't produce the rules for it, we (the players again) made our own tournament rules. Warhammer 40K Seventh Edition is NOT a tournament system and is not meant to be played in a tournament. I don't know why you can say it's GW's fault for not making the game for tournaments when GW has made it pretty clear that the game is not for tournaments. We, the players once again, have taken a casual game meant to be played with beer and pretzels with our mates, and forced it to be played in a competitive, tournament environment. It's like trying to force a square peg into a round hole. It doesn't work. With that being said, yeah, I can see how someone would think it's GW's fault for designing the rules to not support tournament play.

     

    GW over the last five years hasn't listened to it's customers or players, and pretty much told us exactly how we are supposed to play 40K. The fact that a lot of players ignore that and try to play the game differently is what has caused the game to be the way it is now. It's not GW's fault that we are trying to play the game the way it was not intended to be played. Should GW have listened to only the competitive players, the casual players, or a mix of both? Form my viewpoint, they didn't really listen to the customers/players at all when they made 6th and 7th edition. Yet we still bought and try to play the game competitively!

     

    Competitive 40K players don't want a fair system, they want a system they can exploit to win. You want the ultimate competitive game? Backgammon, Checkers, Chess, Go. All games where both players have the exact same armies and rules, and it's the players skill, not the army they take, that determines the winner*. A competitive 40K player doesn't like those games because he can't take more Knights than Bishops, or because he takes a couple red markers, he gets a +1 on his dice rolling. In short, the competitive 40K player can't exploit the rules to give him an advantage in the game. It's not GW's rules that force a competitive player to exploit the game to win, it's the self imposed "rules" the players have made on themselves to win that causes these lists. In other words, blame the player, not the game.

     

    Queue more "It's GW fault" and "you don't know what you are talking about!"  :rolleyes:  :laugh:   

     

    *Unless you buy into the theory that white has the advantage because they always get to go first. Lots of interesting theories and articles about that.

  12. That's just the type of stuff you'll probably face. I posted all that stuff to see if you had a plan for dealing with it. Your 10 Decimators can't kill two or three units of 30 Orruk Arrowboys before they pin-cushion you. You don't have the range they do. Those 30 Orruk Arrowboys have a 5" move, 2 wounds, 6+, and each one shoots three times, (that's 90 shots!), 18", hits on 5+, wounds 4+. Oh, and they have a Warscroll that allows them to reroll misses. So out of 90 shots, 50 hit, 25 wound, you fail 12, so take 12 wounds- or 4 Decimators. Rinse and repeat. More than likely, the Orruk player will kill your Liberators and Judicators first, and tie up everything else. 10 Arrow Boys only cost 100 points, so 60 of them is only 600 points. The lists I've seen online consist of 60-100 Arrow Boys. If you can deal with 180-300 arrow shots for 2-3 turns, then awesome! 

     

    Ten Protectors need "Good" rolls to kill Nagash. Here's the deal: You won't see Nagash. He sucks in competitive play. You'll see a Mortach, and a ton of a spammy units- Dire Wolves backed up with Corpse Carts giving them a 3+ save. The other big nasty critters- you can't depend on your one unit of Monster Slayers actually getting to attack that monster! A good opponent will recognize this, and take steps to make sure that fight never happens. 

     

    I think your Judicators will be your best units. Have you thought about Prosecutors? The Knight-Vexilor is good, but I wonder if the Knight Heraldor wouldn't be better because of all the terrain you are likely to face? The once per game abilities of the Vexillor limit his utility, while the Heraldor can be blasting all those Sylvanth Woods killing tree huggin' hippy Elves every turn.

     

    The Lord Celestant on foot is a good hero, but I wonder if he will be "good enough" to be your General? I imagine there will be a lot of scenarios, if not tournament rules, that will reward your General's performance (how many wounds he inflicts), and head hunting (killing the Enemy General). The Lord Celestant could be a little "squishy" for that.

     

    The whole magic thing just sucks for the Stormcast. You'll just have to "suck it up" and plan on your opponent always being able to successfully cast spells.

     

    I'm not trying to discourage you, I'm just saying you need a plan to deal with all the nasty stuff. Like don't count on things like your Protectors being able to kill monsters/behemoths. Plan on them engaging cheap, throw away units of troops. Your army is slow, except for the one unit that can teleport (isn't that a special character, or is that from the Warscroll?). Might be a consideration. Overall, I like your army, but I really think it will do poorly vs. skew lists. Against another all comers army, I would bet on yours. :)

  13. Clan Skyre: Take one Arch-Warlock, then the rest of your army as Stormfiends with Warpfire Projectors and Ratling Cannons. Have them tunnel, pop up, shoot and charge. Rinse, repeat until enemy is dead.

     

    Clan Pestilens: Verminlord Corruptor, three Plague Furnaces, the rest Plague Monks and Censer Bearers.

     

    Those are the big ones that come off the top of my mind. You can also try:http://http://underempire.net/ or https://1d4chan.org/wiki/Age_of_Sigmar/Tactics/Edition_1.0/Skaven for more info.

     

    All the competitive Skaven Lists are very spammy. They maximize Mortal Wounds to ignore armor saves. And they have a couple Battleline units (I can't believe Stormfiends are a Battleline unit!) that are just too good.

     

    Looking beyond Skaven, Spam lists seem to be the most competitive.

  14. There is a huge disconnect between casual and competitive play in 40K. Casual lists bear little resemblance to what you see at a competitive tournament. Personally, I hate playing against tournament lists, because they have little to no resemblance to fluff. You can argue about fluff all day long, but an army of Space Marines should be Space Marines, not "Super Friends", not all the elites and heavy support with 100 points of troops (in an 1850 game). It shouldn't be this arcane, and incredibly complicated formation using multiple CADS and bonuses stacked on bonuses, that you have to accept the word of your opponent on, because there is no way you could spend an hour during a tournament to check it. Even the Judges don't question it.

     

    The game should be about the models and fluff, not the statistics of the army. My opinion is that Rule of Cool should rule the table, not the fact that if I spam 30 of Model X, they will have a 66.7% chance of hitting, wounding, and the enemy failing armor saves. If I field model X, Y, Z, and take this wargear, they will have a re-rollable 2+ invulnerable with a 4+ FNP. Then I'm going to take three of these tanks that when they fire at the same unit, they become a large template D-weapon AP1. Finally, I really need this psychic power, and this formation gives me a bunch of Psykers, so I'll take that. Oh, and all I need is one more unit of W, then I can get this formation bonus! OK, that's the core of my army. How many points do I have left over for what I have to take? The so called "army tax" that shouldn't be a tax at all. Must take choices shouldn't be a burden, or feel like a tax, or be the last consideration of list building. GW has tried to minimize that with formations, but I think it's backfired and made it even worse.

     

    This is where finger pointing starts: "If GW didn't want us to play that way, they wouldn't have made the game like this." Well, they kind of did. They stopped supporting tournaments. Remember GT's and Games Days? Only recently have they returned to them, but they are a shadow of what they used to be. They have the #1 Most Important Rule: Have fun. It's not fun getting kicked in the balls repeatedly. It might be fun for the kicker, but not for the receiver. GW has tried to stress again and again it's about playing the game, not winning and losing. GW's stubborn refusal to even comment on competitive play should tell you exactly how they want you to play the game. It's the players demand for competitive play that has driven the ITC Rules, and other house rules for tournaments. This might blow some of you away, but not too long ago, GW actually had an Official Tournament Rules Pack. Say what you will about GW and "poor game design" but they saw where the competitive play was leading, and tried to stop it. 

     

    I'm hoping my other favorite game system, Privateer Press' Warmachine/Hordes starts to recognize the growing gulf between casual play and competitive play and does something about it.

  15. What are you going to do against a big, nasty critter? Like a Blood Thirster, or Ogor on their Mammoths, Dragons? What's your game plan for them?

     

    What about a magic heavy army, like the Undead?

     

    Finally, the two armies that have been huge PITA's in the meta: Bonespittrers Savage Orruk Arrowboys (like 60+ of them, so 180 shooting attacks...) and the Skaven Stormfiend list (big, beefy, multiwound models that pop up in the middle of your formation and do 2d3 auto hit mortal wounds to a unit within 8").

     

    That's the type of stuff you will have to deal with I'm sure. The winner is probably going to be one of those two armies...

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