New ITC Poll

[white_devil]

https://www.frontlinegaming.org/2015/11/24/black-friday-sale-itc-vote/

[fluger]

Took me a while to find, it's between the Toughest Girls and the X wing banner. 

[InfestedKerrigan]

Riiiiight

[white_devil]

Results are in.

 

https://www.frontlinegaming.org/2015/11/29/3rd-quarter-mid-season-itc-update-poll-results/

[pretre]

Results are in.

 

https://www.frontlinegaming.org/2015/11/29/3rd-quarter-mid-season-itc-update-poll-results/

Coordinated Firepower reigned in and Stompas given a big buff (at least points wise). Gotta get me a stompa!

[AgentP]

So let me get this straight, a stompa is normally 800+ points, and now every Ork player will have one for 400pts.  Geez.

[AbusePuppy]

Welp, looks like Tau are gonna be pretty mediocre this time around. Being a shooting-only army that loses shooting wars to other armies and can't deal with deathstars is a bad place to be.

[Kingpin]

The Tau are fine... Try playing the Guard

[AbusePuppy]

Since Guard just won a GT here very recently, I don't think they have a lot of room to complain. Despite the fact that so few people seem to use them, they have a lot of really strong stuff.

[WestRider]

I still don't really see what adding in special Rules would have done to help Tau against DeathStars that much. Ignores Cover would wreck psuedo-DeathStars like pure RavenWing ones, but I'm not really seeing anything in the list of available Tau special Rules that would be making a whole lot of difference against TWC Stars or ScreamerStars or whatever. What am I missing here?

[AbusePuppy]

TWC-stars, no, but you don't tend to see those as much (and they rarely are as successful)- Ravenwing is the more relevant one. It's more of a big deal against MCs (like Corpsethief Claw) and vehicles (like Battle Company.) However, it also needlessly makes a lot of other stuff potentially weaker, like using Fireblades, Darkstrider, etc.

 

Tau don't really have any solutions to stuff other than shooting, so if they're losing the shooting war to armies they're in a bad place. I think people were also drastically overestimating how good the Buffmander would make the army- he can still be killed off by enemy shooting and has to hang with a unit, making his T5 not very relevant. Just getting caught by a Wyvern or whatever is likely to cause a LOT of damage to him and once he (and/or the Markerlights, which tend to be REALLY fragile) are dead, the army is basically done.

[WestRider]

OK, yeah, for Corpsethief and Battle Companies, I can really see it. That said, I've been seeing a lot of people talk up the extra Counter-Assault options that StormSurges provide, and the Mont'Ka stuff looks like it might open up some different possibilities, too, so I'm interested to see if the Army manages to morph into something more aggressive.

[AbusePuppy]

Stormsurges are surprisingly beefy in assault (because,as it turns out, Stomp is amazing) but they give up a LOT of maelstrom points if you take a unit of two of them and you're concentrating a huge portion of your army into two models that aren't THAT tough at the end of the day- they can shrug off Grav pretty well if you buy the 4++ (or can get cover), but T6/3+ isn't really enough to stop them from being ground down by Scatter Lasers, Krak Grenades, and even just normal Las/Boltguns that are so often the bane of MCs.

 

I don't think the Dawn Blade is a terribly good formation overall; rerolling to wound/penetrate against one unit per turn is a decent bonus, but it commits you to a pretty heavy Tau inclusion (being a minimum of like 900pts or so if you want to get anything out of it) while not solving most of the problems Tau tend to have- and, notably, you lose access to the superior Tau relics (whereas the Imperial detachments can use both sets of relics) getting only the crappy Farsight ones instead and have no ability to take a Stormsurge except as part of a Hunter Cadre. The Firestream Wing, Ranged Support Cadre, and Riptide Wing all have some potential as formations (although, bizarrely, the Riptide Wing does not appear to be an option for a Dawn Blade detachment) but none of them seem like standouts to me without the ability to combine shots.

 

The issue with aggressive Tau lists is that they don't really have a lot of support elements- Riptides are fine against basic Marines in combat (although you can get unlucky and get Swept) and Stormsurges the same with the added killing power of Stomp, but in neither case are they tough enough to expect to get stuck in with dedicated combat units and come out on top- Wraiths, Thunderwolves, and Knights should absolutely scythe through both of them in a fight and even basic troops are hitting on 3s and wounding on 4s with their Krak Grenades, and those wounds can stack up quickly.

 

That's not to say that Tau are garbage- they aren't any worse than they were before, certainly- but the new releases don't do anything to address the issues that kept them from fighting at the top tier of tournaments in most cases, so I don't think we're actually going to see a significant upsurge in Tau after this. Maelstrom is still a huge problem for them, as are certain kinds of deathstars, and they still have very weak/expensive scoring units and issues dealing with enemies like Scat Bikes that both outrange and outmaneuver them. For players that play casually, or at smaller/non-ITC tournies these may not be huge issues, but for play at ITC events it's a pretty huge blow I think.

[fluger]

Not gonna lie, this has me thinking of ways to use a stompa in my Ork list.  

[fluger]

Better question, which book has the rules for that thing?

[InfestedKerrigan]

http://www.forgeworld.co.uk/resources/fw_site/fw_pdfs/Warhammer_40000/Ork_Dread_Mob_Army_List_Update.pdf

[InfestedKerrigan]

Incomplete Information.  Sorry.  That's just his rules, not his Ride.

[Xavier319]

for 550 points, you get a big mek stompa, with buzzgob in it, a belly deffgun, and an arm deffgun. with no close combat weapon. that's 2 7" str 10 ap 1 shots, with a couple of guns that are great but only hit on 5's. still dies like a chump against a wk for half the cost though.

[fluger]

Yes, but where are you getting the rules for the Big Mek Stompa?

[Lord Hanaur]

The ITC continues to disappoint me.  

 

I said it before and I'll say it again:  It's terrible policy to rewrite rules without a very serious super majority vote, such as was obvious with invisibility, or without any word from GW that it's correct (and before anyone suggests otherwise, I would point out to you that with enough clout Yakface WAS able to liaison with and influence GW FAQ's)

 

I am glad these results can be ignored.  The worst part is the way they word some of these questions.  As for example the Detachments limits that everyone answered because there wasn't a better way to answer it.  Then everyone jumps up and says "I don't care as long as there's clarity".  Then they reverse it because they knew they screwed up.  So its clarity without the clarity!

 

If all you want is clarity, any T.O.'s ruleset will do.  So clarity isn't what people really want from this, it's just an inevitable byproduct. They're just not honest enough to say what they really want from it.  It's for the munchkins.

 

Anywho, once again, just a flat out rules rewrite with no actual serious majority in favor of the ruling.  You coulda had dudes with colds not show up to vote and it would go the other way.  Would they be calling it "clarity" then?  No, they'd do another poll because it wasnt the result they "expected" or hoped for more likely.

 

They mean well, so I don't dislike the people involved.  I dislike the product more every day,

[fluger]

[fluger]

Hmmm, gotta figure out how to convert my Stompa to have that stuff.

 

Off the top of my head I'd pay for the belly cannon but not install it and go with the big gun already on the Stompa.  Then I could build something onto the Stompa's shoulder as the Lifta Droppa?  

[Xavier319]

OH... i've got ideas.. tons of ideas... so many ideas.... O_O

 

I'll keep you informed FLuger. but it has to do with tanks for arms and feet.... >..>

[white_devil]

The ITC continues to disappoint me.

While I respect your opinion sir, I'm glad your in the minority. With more and more events going ITC or similar (many large ones also) I feel this is an overall good thing.

 

The game of 40k is broken for any organized play. Albiet flawed, ITC is overall a great thing for the hobby imo.

 

I'll link a well thought out post from Reece in the dakka thread, addressed to a disgruntled Tau player:

 

___________________________________________

 

I understand your frustration, Orock, truly. I understand why you can feel like this is unfair, or what have you.

 

And yes, you are correct. We DID word the question to indicate how players want to play the rule, not what they think it actually says. What is clearly RAW to you is not so clear to other players. When I first read the rule, RAW was clearly the conservative reading. I actually laughed the first time someone suggested they shared every rule of every model contributing to the coordinated firepower attack because it seemed so far fetched to me. You can go back and watch my reaction, it was live on air.

 

But, a lot of other people read it the other way and I was forced to acknowledge that hey, my reading of the rule was not necessarily the right reading of the rule. I asked 4 of my friends, whom I consider to be 40k experts, what they thought the rule said, they each gave me a different answer! Lol, it is about as clear as mud.

 

So, the only conclusion I could draw was that we had to simply let everyone choose how they wanted to play it. We presented the questions in a way to allow for a wide range of possible outcomes, from most powerful to least and everything in between, and the result we got was the will of the ITC community.

 

I am very sorry to hear you disagree with it. Seriously. I know how frustrating that can be. I have had to change several of my own armies as a result of that occurrence. But, the alternative is chaos, where every tournament has a different format and different rules. Compromise is the nature of the beast when it comes to a standardized format. We all have to concede on certain points.

 

It is still very, very powerful. And, you have a plethora of new tools with Mont'Ka. Tau can still absolutely compete. And do other factions have weird, or powerful rules? Yes, they do. We do out best to try and provide a fun, level playing field for the 40k community to come together and play this game without arguing for an hour about 20 different rules interpretations every game. The ONLY way to do that, is to make tough calls on contentious issues. When that happens, some folks agree, some don't. Some folks are happy, some are pissed, as you are now.

 

The wheel will turn around your way though, bear that in mind. The nerf to the 2+ reroll save arguably benefits Tau the most. Tau also got units of Stormsruges. Tau also got all of their experimental Suits. You've gotten a LOT from the ITC as a Tau player, try to remember that and not just focus on what you feel has been taken away from you.

 

Anyway, again, sorry you are mad. We hate it when that happens, but that is simply the nature of the game. Hopefully when you have had a chance to cool down you will realize you can still have a great time playing your army.

____________________________________

[fluger]

Yeah, considering that Tau were voted to be the only faction that can field more than one GC in an ITC list, I think we can all agree that they got some love.  I also agree with the breadth and scope of Reece's post.