Battle for Planet OG - Part II - Sat September 10th

[badusernametag]

You bring the Eldar...

How about throwing in a city fight or other non-standard deployment/terrain mission. That would mix it up a little and adding a few buildings for the last game wouldn't be hard.

Though ultimately I think going in blind has got to be the best option if you DON'T want people to taylor the lists to the missions. But that is a different kind of tactics which is fun. Seems to me that you're supposed to build an army to face all comers. Why not having to build an army to face any potential challenge/objective/mission?

[fatolaf]

Why not having to build an army to face any potential challenge/objective/mission?

Agreed, and the new missions will be up by the wknd.....

[badusernametag]

Agreed, and the new missions will be up by the wknd.....

But if we agree then there won't be any missions cos they will be secret no?

[CraigM]

Just as an aside, I tailored my list to try and at least compete against the "Craig List", i.e. Large numbers of infantry, often in blocks above 10 models. Ironically, he couldn't play with his Orks...

Wow, I totally got meta'd against. I'm going to make a 40k tactics blog now called Craig's Lists? 

It's always going to be subjective (and therefore difficult to nail down), but at 1500pts, a lot of books/builds don't have enough boots and/or guns to deal with codices that can provide very cheap infantry en masse - whereby you can spend half your points on so many models, and still have plenty left over for the hard stuff. Marines of whatever flavour start at expensive from the first choice you make, mitigated by their durability... but that's often offset by weight of dice against you.

The other problem is, if you run the tourney higher than 1500, some books just scale up far quicker/better than others - making the need for a balancing factor more important.

The points value of the tournament will always be a major part of the "comp" itself. Having taken the Orks to several 2-day events of the last 2-3 years I've found the 1750 points is generally just too high for our codex, as it doesn't have the toys to scale up well. We max out our troops first generally, as they are our strongest asset, but that is usually less than 1000pts worth, so what to do with the rest? Other codices at that point bracket are much stronger, as they finally get to bring the extra umph they've been missing in lower point games. So lower point games will always favour the likes of Orks (I don't think anyone could argue my Ork tide lists were unfluffy?), as the disparity between the number of the models on the table is greater. with less "toys" to balance things out. After about 1000points the Ork dex becomes massively innefficient, spending points for the sake of spending points (unless you go down the route of lots of nobs in battlewagons - but IMO that's not very Orky, I don't like to have more than one squad of nobs).

I'm not really sure where I'm going with this, but have enjoyed reading this little discussion. It's a tricky one to get the balance. Everyone wants a chance of mid-table mediocrity!

[StraightSilver]

I too have been finding this all fun to read. 

I guess I approach 40K quite differently from a lot of people who play in tournaments, primarily because my first love is painting and collecting, and gaming becomes secondary to this.

Of course that might be my excuse to disguise the fact that I am a somewhat mediocre player! 

Whenever I go to tournaments it's often commented that my armies are very "GW Codex". In other words a selection of pretty much one of everything.

That's because I am an incredibly slow painter, and get bored quite easily. Once I have my minimum troops choices down I then tend to pick a unit of something I like, paint it and move on to something else.

This is the case with both my Ultramarines and Cadian armies. Both are what would be considered fluffy, and do work out to be quite balanced.

The problem with this is they tend to be less competetive, although I do alright with my Ultras, not so well with my Cadians though.

Last year I decided I would like to start taking part in tournaments and so started a new Guard army, trying to build a competetive list that would also be fun to paint.

The problem is it turned out to pretty much be a leafblower list which becomes a bit boring to play, but also gets a few comments.

I supose my point is there are two ways of playing 40K, the casual way and the competetive way and both have their merits.

The difference is the attitude of the people of playing the game. I don't really mind coming last in tournaments, (although I did beat Ben this weekend, which he has taken no amount of stick for - sorry mate!) because for me it's more about meeting new players and looking at other people's armies (so I can shamelessly steal all their ideas!).

So I suppose my point is you can't please everyone because everyone has a slightly different approach, but the point is for everyone to have fun.

What appeals to me about OG is that it doesn't take itself as seriously as other tournaments. That doesn't mean to say it isn't serious, just that it seems more fun.

This is partly down to the wacky missions, but also because it is fairly small and has a great bunch of players.

I had some fantastic games this weekend, in particular my second game even though I knew from playtesting the mission the week before there was slim chance I would win it. Beautifully painted Blood Angels too, and I think our lists were pretty evenly matched to be honest.

So I don't think there is much more that can be done, to be honest I wouldn't really change anything as the last couple have worked for me.

I do agree though that it would be good to arrive not knowing what the missions were in advance, as most of us had already sussed out the way to beat them before we played.

Plus it would indeed stop army tailoring, not that that affects me as I can only bring a limited amount of stuff as I take about 2 years on average to build an army!!

[Angelus Mortifer]

@Craig - I actually think your Ork Horde is incredibly fluffy - fits the background very easily. It's also challenging to face too ;)

I think mission variation, and details found out on the day, can be very good leveller - with the added involvement of non-player comp to avoid too much of a mis-match. This will likely keep hold of the fun side for the event itself, and the fun players have against their opponents.

[fatolaf]

But if we agree then there won't be any missions cos they will be secret no?

2 missions up and 1 top secret...

[fatolaf]

I do agree though that it would be good to arrive not knowing what the missions were in advance, as most of us had already sussed out the way to beat them before we played.

I think if we made all the missions secret that it might backfire and you could end up with some awful lists, 2 open missions and 1 secret will be fun IMO.
With the 2 open missions designed to put off certain types of builds...

Going to put them up now

[Cheese or Death]

I know you've just put up the missions - my only 2 cents would be to tidy up what happens at the end of the game if it doesn't reach turn 6 (or 7..). At the moment we've just been adding up what you've got left on the table and taking it from there - however that isn't necessarily the fairest option. Say for example my opponent has three troops choices left on the table with a transport and I have 2 flyers, a tank and a couple of fast units. Technically I have the most amount of points on the table but also I am less likely to win the game because they are not able to take and hold objectives..
Yes, we should be able to finish the game in the alloted time but that can't always happen. I'm not sure what the best solution would be is - do we get an adjudication from the group/TO or settle it in a 10 minute tie breaker etc?

My other point is the use of proxies - it can be quite difficult to play against a proxy army without having to keep asking what a unit is etc.I'm more than happy to play against unpainted figures but stand in's just add another level of something to keep track of!

[fatolaf]

Ben - If a game runs over, we normally have time to get it finished, if it proves a problem, I will work out the result at the time.

I will be strict on proxies, have we had issues in the past with them?