Tomb Kings FTW

[MexicanNinja]

Can it be....Tomb Kings win the Master's...SHUT THE FRONT DOOR.  I partly watched the last two games and that last one was huge when the wizard got sucked out of the game from the soul quench.  The game was in the hands of the High Elves before the dimensional cascade took the wizards poor soul.

 

On the flip side, it's hard to argue that Tomb Kings aren't competitive.

[Don't Panic]

tomb kings are great against elves and are superb overall with lore of undeath.  undeath is just stupid, no offense to those who take it cause heck its legal.  jacob brandon is a very good general but he made plenty of silly rules mistakes so its not like he was insanely superior to the other guys.  undeath i mean i saw the potential of it and its why i never cared to play a game against someone with it(ok i played one person with it and won...) but wow... raising things with dispell scrolls(or whatever upgrade, great job GW and your care of rules clarifications!!!) and ethereals or fliers that give zero victory points and wreck units?  its just silly... i bet they make a big change in swedish after seeing the ONE player who brought undeath just annihilate people with the worst army in the game.... i was happy to see a tk player win, but at the same time i found it sad that the rules changes in end times GREATLY had an effect in how the masters played out.  this coming from a player who is playing beastmen legions so a little hypocritical i know but still im adjusting to the changes and it doesnt necessarily make me 'happy'......

[Kremmet]

Ehh, speaking as someone who was there the change was nice. I mean LoU didn't have any more of an impact than lores like Death or Life generally do. Sure it definitely was the point of that TK list, but he needed to run an army with low enough natural comp to make that possible in the first place. It does have several dumb rule snafus like allowing the summoning of multiple one use items, but if you'd seen the Masters FAQ you'd know they don't shy away from changing things that break the game.

[Threejacks]

Ehh, speaking as someone who was there the change was nice. I mean LoU didn't have any more of an impact than lores like Death or Life generally do. Sure it definitely was the point of that TK list, but he needed to run an army with low enough natural comp to make that possible in the first place. It does have several dumb rule snafus like allowing the summoning of multiple one use items, but if you'd seen the Masters FAQ you'd know they don't shy away from changing things that break the game.

I was wondering how that would work with the one use items and always assumed that you couldn't do that...are you saying they let him summon up base Necro`s with deispel scrolls multiple times?,if so that's pretty cheesy stuff there.

[smashthedean]

I think the ruling is that you can't do dispel scrolls if you already had one in your list, but if you didn't already have say a power scroll, you could summon one of those up once per game. Still pretty cheesy IMO, but not as broken as it could be I guess.

[MexicanNinja]

We all have our own opinions and are greatly entitled to them.  I will say this though, we all have our own tools which we chose to to use or not use.  Every army, besides dwarfs, have access to lore of undeath and is part of the game.  Everyone who didn't play a dwarf army had the option to take that lore.  However, the player an army which one the title at The Masters chose to do so with Vampire Counts.  To take it one step further, I'm pretty sure the high elf player would have won that game if his wizard didn't die to the dimensional cascade.  I think it is extremely awesome that Tomb Kings won this thing.  I also think it was wonderful the army won because it shows that you can take even an army which the vast majority of this gaming community is quick to state is weak and non-competitive.  This player showed everyone they were wrong.  I applaud his victory!

[MexicanNinja]

I was wondering how that would work with the one use items and always assumed that you couldn't do that...are you saying they let him summon up base Necro`s with deispel scrolls multiple times?,if so that's pretty cheesy stuff there.

How is it anymore chessy than summoning terrorghiests for screams or hexwraiths?  I don't know if he did or didn't do that; however, this was a competitive event and if that's what he did....kuddos to him for doing such a thing.

[Threejacks]

How is it anymore chessy than summoning terrorghiests for screams or hexwraiths?  I don't know if he did or didn't do that; however, this was a competitive event and if that's what he did....kuddos to him for doing such a thing.

Don't get me wrong im totally down with LoU as you know and I think its great that a straight TK list used it to full effect.However I think being able to bring in an item that clearly says can only be used once in an army list multiple times is rather broken if in fact that's what they did.I just never considered even trying that.Sure summoning can bring in Monsters and nasty Cavalry but remember that you can take multiples of those in your base list anyway,and actually, short of having Nagash in your list,counting on getting a TGhiest out every game with it being a 6 die throw will lead to disappointment most every time.

 

But yeah as Smashthedean stated I can see it working that way were you could list in a scroll and maybe one or two other items then plan on summoning in others with caddies,feedbeck scroll and stuff like that.

 

Im actually very happy to see LoU doing well,,I would like to think that GW added this new lore in to do just what it did in this case,that being buff up an army that has been struggling.I know I like to have it with my OnG`s now:).Does that mean that every army should take it?..not sure on that but it certainly wouldn't hurt to have a chance at throwing out a little chaff now and then.

[McNathanson]

Awesome!  I've always liked TK and back in 6th they were a juggernaut.  Adding in LoU brings them back to top tier, great!

However truth is, I still firmly believe that the Masters results (like most high-level construction-based games) tells us a lot more about the current Masters-circuit meta than about anything else really.  So to me, the results of the masters don't really mean much from an army book "strength" perspective.

 

That said, I've also never really bought into the idea that books are per-se significantly different, since we ALL are doing meta-game balancing with our list construction.  In a few rare cases there are books which are so good, or so bad, that they can't really tune down or up to fit the meta, but I think that's far and away the least likely explanation for most wins and losses.  Usually it's play skill, dice, matchup, army build, terrain, that decide the outcome, NOT army book intrinsic goodness.  

 

That discussion aside, I'll add that the only thing I don't like about the LoU idea is that I just don't think it fits most armies to be raising undead helpers.  Wood Elves?  Bretonnia?  High Elves?  Lizardmen?  Whaaaa???

But nothing about the game balance aspect really bothers me.  It's all up to us players to make it fun and interesting, anyway.

[ratrek]

Stock? Then I agree with you. But where I think you miss a bit Nathan is adding Swedish to the equation. Certain armies get away with a lot more then others there which can then effect matchups if you seed by score banding.

 

So yeah, it's not the intrinsic nature of the army book, it's how the comp score takes that into effect.

[Guest]

For reference, found the list used:
 

 

Liche High Priest, L4 Nehekhara, Dispel Scroll
Liche High Priest, L4 Undeath, Scroll of Shielding
Tomb King, GW, Dragonhelm, Ironcurse

Tomb Herald BSB, Charmed Shield, MR3 Token

18 Archers, Command
18 Archers, Command
16 Archers, Armour, Command
5 Horse Archers
5 Horse Archers
5 Horse Archers

40 Tomb Guard, Command, Halberds, Razor Standard

Catapult
Catapult
Casket
Heirotitan

 

Found here: http://www.thefieldsofblood.com/2015/02/winning-list-from-us-masters-tomb-kings.html

 

EDIT: Battlescribe has it at 2,499pts

[King Mekhet]

It was a very solid list played by a very solid player, and well deserved to win the Masters. Yeah his opponent cascaded his wizard off the board last game, but the TK player was up in points and his HE opponent needed a 15-5 to surpass him. So he had it in the bag either way.

 

As to Undeath, as someone who's run it before it really isn't all some people crack it up to be. You're giving up the ability to affect the board NOW for an ability to affect the board a turn from now. There are times (i.e. raising chaff) where this is worthwhile, but it is often a stopgap where a more direct lore would have a much more significant impact.

 

Where that changes is when you can overpower someone with the lore. I ran a level 4 undeath with a casket against an opponent with no wizard in 1,500 points and raised 1,000 points of stuff during the game. The above list uses a casket and hierotitan to achieve roughly the same effect. Also helped that the rest of his list was just a massive razorguard deathstar shielding all of his support pieces, and archers picking apart the poorly defended infantry that appear a lot in swedish.

 

In an uncomped tourney im not sure how this exact list would work, but I really appreciate the basic scheme of it.

[McNathanson]

Stock? Then I agree with you. But where I think you miss a bit Nathan is adding Swedish to the equation. Certain armies get away with a lot more then others there which can then effect matchups if you seed by score banding.

 

So yeah, it's not the intrinsic nature of the army book, it's how the comp score takes that into effect.

 

I see Swedish Comp as an improved balancing system over stock.  I like that it is objective and deterministic.  But I think it's still pretty easily abused, and that it still allows for RPS armies (though it GREATLY curtails those builds).  Given those two things, the onus is STILL on us as players to make lists that are fair and fun.

 

And if the players are doing the final "balancing", I'll still assert that I don't think the book has nearly as much bearing on outcome as those other things I listed.  And moreover, the results from the Masters (being a different meta with different goals I believe than ours) has even less relevance to our local meta.

[Romes]

Please note that Lore of Undeath was JUST included in the Swedish system. Using it as an example of swedish being "easily abused" is a bit unfair. 

 

I would characterize it this way:

 

Swedish is a continually evolving system that has a strong tendency to undercomp new things because they haven't been out and developed sufficiently. The most undercomped armies in swedish tend to be newer books, because they've had the least exposure to the system.

 

Last year at masters Dark elf lists got away with a lot by "abusing" the comp, and all of that was fixed within the next couple of months.

 

So, was Lore of Undeath/TK a brilliant move/abuse (depending on how you look at it)? Sure was. However, it worked because of the window of time in which it occurred, and is not really an example of how easy it is to abuse the system, which I don't think it is.

 

The problem with falling back to player preference as for whats fun is that player preference is highly subjective. What's fun depends on who your are, what your biases are, and what armies you play. This leads to strong personalities pushing individual preferences over game balance.

 

For example, (theoretical) I HATE playing against cannons, so if I was responsible for "self comping" I would feel I could never take more than one, and then if my opponent took 2 (which swedish does allow, as you pay a penalty) I would think that list was unfun. My opponent may not. Depending on our personalities that may cause conflict because we think the other player is being "gamey" (I strongly dislike that label)

 

I believe a neutral, external system is a better final backstop for lists than relying on self audits for this reason.

 

Note that I think self audit/manual audit systems are OK, (and I really like the black sheep system), but I think they have bias issues which people tend to gloss over.

[McNathanson]

Absolutely agree with you Romes about the difficulty of the problem of self-policing, and the issues with subjective "comp".  And I should add, I highly respect your opinions and your way of stating things.

Let me be clear (haha): I agree again that Swedish Comp is a great improvement.  In fact it tends to score my preferred builds very nicely and eradicates the most obnoxious of the Net Lists.  Please don't mistake me for denigrating the fine job they've done at an impossible task (which is to say, balancing an ever-changing game system whose designers seem to intentionally unbalance the game every few months!)

 

That said (and I almost feel like I should start a separate post so as not to take away from my genuine like and appreciation for Swedish Comp), it is "easily" (okay, with some effort by someone who is pretty good at analyzing game systems)... circumvented, shall we say?  Meaning for example, it will almost always be easy to make an army "harder" without affecting its SC score.

 

In my 25+ years of playing WFB (and a myriad other competitive sports and games at a relatively high level) I'll submit this as my "key learning": the only way to really find a satisfying competitive gaming experience (a SCGE) is to find players whose definition of a SCGE that doesn't conflict dramatically with your own.  The PLAYER GROUP makes the game ultimately rewarding, not the efforts of the game designers (though they go a long way for sure!), or the Swedish Comp authors (though they help a LOT!).  This is true of basketball, MtG, WFB, computer gaming, etc.

And this concept in bold is why we started the OFCC, and that is why it is an invitational event.  Because there are a lot of personal definitions of what a SCGE looks like, and some of them clash irrreparably.  I'm not talking about jerks vs. nice people here.  I'm talking about people who derive satisfaction from complimentary things, vs. those who derive satisfaction from mutually exclusive things.  Sure, we can find that sometimes we can both get our rocks off from different things and still enjoy playing each other.  But often, those things conflict (e.g. you hate cannons and I play the game strictly because I have always enjoyed everything to do with cannons).

What I'm saying, and what I've been saying for 10 years or so since OFCC inception, is that we the players create the meta, and it is and always has been our responsibility in a game like WFB to self-police.  Swedish Comp helps, especially against Net Lists and a stagnant meta.  But at the end of the day we have to account for ourselves.  Are we getting sucked into a WAAC attitude and building an army purely to maximize odds of victory?  If yes, and if that's what we really want to do, we should find a like-minded group to play with.  Or are we considering what will make a fun and rewarding game for both players?  If yes, then we probably want to a play in a different group from the former players.

 

Hope I'm making sense.  Thanks for the conversation!

NtK

 

[Romes]

NTK,

 

That all makes sense, thank you for the well thought out reply.

 

I think I would challenge the idea that both players who want to play competitively and players who want to play more cooperatively should ever need to split off. Here's why:

 

First, I've seen this term on this forum a lot, WAAC, or "win at all costs". All costs is very broad, and I think this can refer to people who build a list to be as competitive as possible (within a comp)*, and people who play the game in a way that is unsportsmanlike. To me these are very different, and should be addressed separately (I'll only be talking about the first).

 

If you consider these behaviors inherently different, and you exclusively look at being inclusive between people who find competitive list building to be a rewarding part of the hobby and those who would rather take whatever feels fun to them, than I think comp *can* handle that.

 

I totally agree with you that any list not designed with Swedish breakpoints in mind can be made more powerful by optimization. However, I think that the goal should be that a handicapping system that, if well enough written, should make the power difference between an optimized list and a non-optimized list small enough that the player who does not enjoy the competitive list building aspect (or the non-WAAC player) is not left significantly handicapped on the table by the difference in power level.

 

However, I realize that the jury is still out on whether or not it's possible to make a comp good enough to do that.

 

*I say within a comp because the power level of lists in no comp are so drastically different that it is possible to build lists which are not challenging to win the game with against players not attempting to do the same, which (to me) defeats the point if your goal is to be playing a competitive game (see Kairos/Epidemus combo). This causes separate issues, which I could ramble about at length!

 

TLDR for that ramble - most of the hyper-competitive personalities I've played with prefer heavy comp systems because it puts everyone on the same page.

 

My worry is that the feeling or need to break off groups of players ultimately stems from the vast power level differences available in a truly no comp setting. I think OFCC taking Swedish and modifying it for use in your format goes a long way toward resolving the issue. It seems like a huge foward step and I look forward to seeing how it plays out this year.

[generalripphook]

I think the beauty of a comp system is it takes two players lists the competitive player and the fluff player and makes their lists "equal". 

 

It makes it that the game is won my generalship and luck. 

[McNathanson]

Romes I think we're in agreement, to be honest.  

The group of players that (at least originally) were invited to the OFCC were by no means "take whatever is pretty, have a beer, and roll dice" players.  For example I think several of us were recent GT winners at the time, and most of the players were "high-caliber" from both a list construction and game play point of view.  So I hope that clarifies that I am not advocating splitting off competitive from non-competitive gamers.

Rather, if I had to come up with a simplified delineation, I would say it's closer to "players who think a closely contested game, between two thoughtfully-constructed armies, played at a high level, is fun" vs. "players who think a win is fun in an of itself, and a loss is mostly not fun, no matter how the game went".  The second attitude is by the way what I think of as "WAAC"... it's an approach where the primary consideration is coming out with a victory, even if that means (for example) a static gunline that never has to expose itself to risk and wins 90% of its games without losing a unit (if such an army existed).  I consider that mindset (the "oh man I'm going to smash face and not have a close game all day, YES!" attitude) to be very much in conflict with the type of game I'm looking for.

It's a lot like basketball, where I don't want to play with guys who think that winning is more important than making sure you don't  cause anyone a serious injury.  Some guys I've played with clearly think that their health is their concern, and yours is yours, and that's the end of it.  So undercutting me on a rebound is no big deal, because they get a foul called and that's the rules.  I don't want to play with those people.   I play with people who play at a pretty good level and play hard, but who ultimately care enough about each other to be careful in risky situations, and ensure everyone gets to play another day.

In the end I think Swedish Comp fixes the vast majority of the obnoxious unit and item selection imbalances in the game, and allows players to use unconventional selections and builds and be very much competitive.  That's pretty effing cool.  My original point was simply that "TK won Masters => TK is a Strong Book" is a flawed conclusion for a variety of reasons, and also that the Masters results don't really have much bearing on our gaming scene because few of us are actually building to be as "winning" as possible even within the constraints of Swedish Comp.

All this discussion makes me want to play Warhammer instead of theorizing about it haha :)

Have a great day,
Nathan

[ratrek]

Admittedly, I think you lost me there Nathan.

 

My comment was in response to yours about the event meta and army book power. Swedish clearly has an effect on the perceived power of a army book. Dwarves, while perhaps fun are a cack book. Definitely not up there power wise yet they definitely are under Swedish with good construction.

 

So yeah, I agree, the Master's results aren't about the current army book strength. But I do think it says a lot about how Swedish alters the stock army book strength. Perhaps not so much for the winning lists but the types of lists in the top 10 and 20. It's been since like the early doors of 6th that so many Orc armies are in the top bracket (though the shift to MSU armour hammer and elves everywhere have made them a lot better. And people figuring out that playing them like dwarves with magic and better chaff works a lot better) but Swedish and good play make it a good shot.

 

I'm not sure I agree with the comment about relevance to the local meta with the caveat of looking forward instead of the immediate time frame.

 

OFCC is moving to Swedish and that tends to dictate the build of a lot of people during the year. Plus with the Master's using it and people wanting practice for it, I suspect we'll see more Swedish events crop up to build the talent pool in the circuit.

 

So yeah. The short version is that when Swedish is in effect, I think it does change the intrinsic power level of the book and that does alter the power of books enough to change what types of things people bring unless there's a predefined banding score. But that's just my take. I'm certainly not a Swedish expert or anything.

[McNathanson]

Gotcha, yeah I'm in full agreement that Swedish Comp brings all the books closer together, shuffles the meta, reduces netlists, improves intra-book balance, etc.  

All I was noting was 1) I feel we are still responsible for self-policing (the discussion I was having with Romes) even though Swedish Comp has greatly improved the problem space and 2) I don't think the specific finishing order of books at the Masters level (e.g. TK in 1st) tells us much that applies to our gaming scene.

[orkdork]

Boo on that list :(

 

One block that wants to fight. That's it. Lame....

[Guest]

To be fair, the player was techincally fielding Undead Legions, which just happened to include only TK. The TK lose their main weaknesses with the UL list, while gaining no new weaknesses. I don't think the masters evaluation of the TK should apply to the UL list.

[MexicanNinja]

Boo on that list :(

 

One block that wants to fight. That's it. Lame....

That's pretty normal for TK. Normally it's a unit of 6-8 necroknights.

[MexicanNinja]

To be fair, the player was techincally fielding Undead Legions, which just happened to include only TK. The TK lose their main weaknesses with the UL list, while gaining no new weaknesses. I don't think the masters evaluation of the TK should apply to the UL list.

What are you talking about? They can march....that's not a good evaluation how?

[Guest]

What are you talking about? They can march....that's not a good evaluation how?

They march, lose the heirophant requirement, lose the army crumble via death of the general, and heal characters via magic items. It changes quite a bit of the TK army.

 

Maybe I just found an outdated swedish comp, but mine had TK and VC, but no evaluation for the UL list.