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Wednesday, February 17, 2010

Reply out...

Comment found here. Rather than clog up comments I'm going to reply here to Shanvir.

As for your last point, I'm honestly intrigued. What metagame do you come from? I don't mean this as an insult, I've played in two or three different parts of the US and what's good and bad varies greatly depending on where you're at (heck I've seen it change greatly just an hour or two drive away). The tactics you're mentioning makes me wish I didn't scare away the local Tau players (they played gunline footslogging...I wish they'd gone heavy mech and made it an interesting match like you're discussing). Anyways I'm curious as to what metagame you're from because I hardly see raveners (given what's being played a lot here) as worthwhile (my second army is nids) while at the same time writing off nobs. Yes, they are expensive. But throw them in a battlewagon and they gain range and a bit of durability over bikers. A tad cheaper too given the number of bodies you can amass. Apologies if you thought I fielded nothing but boyz but with the warboss being both an incredible combat HQ and a way to field one of the nastiest melee squads in the game I find myself taking at least one nob squad in every list. It does cripple me a bit in single HQ games but they're pretty rare anyways.

Firstly, there is no metagame. Everyone plays under the same rules and each codex is capable of making a balanced list which can take on any other list. Some books do this significantly better than others (i.e. Tau, SM/SW, DE, IG, Eldar over Orks, Daemons, CSM, Daemonhunters, Necrons). When you start changing your list to what other people play in your local "metagame" you're tailoring. You should be able to take your list anywhere and win. So I play in the "metagame" of good armies.

Secondly, Nob Bikers suffer from egg basket syndrome and the Orks can't put a good army around them. This leaves them open to blocking and feeding sac units. Nobs in BW need lots of upgrades to still be effective in combat and are still extremely vulnerable to shooting. They are certainly an upgrade on Boyz but the Nobs still don't scare any true CC units.

I'm not quite sure what you mean about training. I don't have a warseer account or anything but do you mean lining it up so the facing you're looking at is completely obscured by another vehicle? In most cases its going to be some real interesting geometry to pull that off for two vehicles affecting each other. Do you have a diagram of it? It sounds quite interesting.

A trukk is roughly 80% of the length and about the same width as a battlewagon. While I rarely need it its not that terribly difficult to get cover to my wagon from a trukk. I do agree on the footprint of the wagons...I sometimes envy the people with the oldschool shoebox sized battlewagons. The area covered by their KFFs is huge.


I'll see if I can make a picture model with Vassal or find a post on it from Stelek's blog. I doubt people on Warseer know anything about this, they don't listen. Essentially you use the initial chasis to completely block LoS to the armor facing of tanks behind. This gives it a 3+ save or requires you to move to a different facing. Utilising a few smokes or when you get good at it (see StJohn) 1 or 2 you can give your whole mech army at least a 4+ save and quite a few a 3+ save. Orks can't do this and its still not easy to get Trukks to give 4+ cover saves to BWagons. Remember you have to cover 50% of the facing and because of it's narrow width you need to cover the sides which Trukks against find difficult on BW.

The whole point of the big mek (and the reinforced rams tbh) is to try and help me ignore the table as much as possible. That's mostly because I'm rather weak when it comes to initial setups regarding line of sight taking first turn shots but I've found the setup works quite well. There's very few things that make me play a board full of terrain and a bare one differently...until my stuff is out of its transports. But that's more about my personal failings as opposed to a failing of the army list.

Again with other mech though they don't need to rely on outside help and rate of fire still really scares Trukks with or without cover. Even when one wrecks (and doesn't explode) they provide cover for other vehicles. Trukks never do.

I've used lootas before to pad points in my list and I've experimented with a lot of different builds but I'm not quite 100% happy with any of them. Maybe you're correct, maybe its just a bad list and I'm against a bunch of really bad players. But I think you're overlooking a lot of things in your analysis.

Use lootas, they're good against whatever you want. If the players you play against (present and past) used Tau gunlines I'd lean towards bad. In a direct matchup with other Mech or Hybrid style lists, Orks fail miserably. Even if my analysis is off on Trukks they still cannot reliably take out other Mech which still gives the advantage to other Mech lists.

6 pinkments:

Shavnir said...

Firstly, there is no metagame. Everyone plays under the same rules and each codex is capable of making a balanced list which can take on any other list.

Given some of the rules debates I've ran across in the past I'm not sure if any of us play with exactly the same rules, but that's a complaint for another day. ;)

There is a metagame due mostly to the fact that not everyone picks an army to be the "best" or the like. You end up with subtle variations on what's played in what areas due to personal taste and unless you've got a large enough sample size to deal with variances due to individual taste you're going to see different play styles and lists depending on the region. Admittedly I come from a WM background before getting into 40k and one of the common things to do to prepare for the major conventions (GenCon, TempleCon, couple other biggies) is evaluate what other regions consider great and what they consider crap. I think its a bit overzealous to declare one's opinion on power of armies as law without sampling a decent pile of the country, however that's due to my own limited observations. I'll be moving down to to the south here in a few months and I'd be very surprised if I run into a carbon copy of the tactics I see regularly in the midwest. Either way if there was no metagame how come I'm starting to see a lot more psychic hoods after the last two codex releases ;)

What sort of formation would you be using for training, something like an arrowhead or more a staggered diagonal line? I'm still not seeing it I guess.

Out of curiosity (and my love of expected results math) what unit would you pit against a nob squad? For reference my normal nob squad build goes like this :

10 nobs, full 'eavy armor / cybork, painboy, 3 klaws (one with waagh, one with bosspole), big choppa, kombi-skorcha

I sometimes toy around with throwing another klaw or an extra special weapon or two but that's the template the majority of my nob squads are built off of. I've been meaning to try a game with no 'eavy armor and only cybork but due to how often I get in melee the change from 75% to 66% might prove worrysome.

Unknown said...

There isn't a metagame. I can take a list that can beat any other list even with tailoring. That list that tailored cannot beat every list, it's going to have a scissor to its paper or whatever analogy that you'd like to use. I can take any of my lists and go to any tournament, in any country or region and compete based on my list (generalship aside) assuming there are no stupid restrctions (i.e. uses the 40k 5th edition rules). Good balanced lists don't care if you play lists which thrive in an area of hordes or mech or whatever because they can always take out another list. If it's not capable of doing so then it's not a good balanced list (read: Orks; you still haven't pointed out how Orks can take down mech). And adding psychic hoods isn't adapting to a metagame, it's adapting to codex changes. If you want to say there's a metagame it's this: mech is good. There are no regional changes because of individual preferences. If you want to make a good list that can take any other list you have to build around the rulebook and army book not personal preferences or what others around you play. Again, that's tailoring.

I'll make a post about the training later, can't be bothered atm bringing up Vassal to use the sprites and show an example but I'll do so ASAP.

That squad is 435 pts + Transport and I'd rather not take it head on and divert it, feed it sac units. But otherwise I'd send a Command Bike squad in or Termies quite happily and because I'm more likely to get the charge (my mech > your mech, biker speed, sac, etc.) I'd attempt a string with tank shocks. Otherwise TH/SS termies, councils, Thunderwolf mass charges, etc. Any other super cc unit but again I'd rather shoot it and divert it.

No math for you! lol The squad you list (like a Nob Biker squad) is generally going to decimate units it meets in combat (yes even TH/SS termies) but it comes down to can I do enough damage? The Termies for example would take down prob half the unit for their lives which is fine by me (see above in how I would deal with sucha unit).

Unknown said...

That's even with tailoring against me sorry. Sounds bad the way I wrote it (first line). Woops lol.

I R SMARTL IKE ROCK said...

Firstly, there is no metagame. Everyone plays under the same rules and each codex is capable of making a balanced list which can take on any other list. Some books do this significantly better than others (i.e. Tau, SM/SW, DE, IG, Eldar over Orks, Daemons, CSM, Daemonhunters, Necrons). When you start changing your list to what other people play in your local "metagame" you're tailoring. You should be able to take your list anywhere and win. So I play in the "metagame" of good armies.

Alright I'll go down the list here. Maybe the problem is your definition of metagame is different then others and that's where the issue is. If you truly believe that Tau are in the top end of the scale then where were they in the 'ard boyz last year? http://www.games-workshop.com/gws/content/article.jsp?catId=&categoryId=&section=&pIndex=4&aId=9500009&start=5 Also DE only had 3 players, and didn't even make it to the top 15. In fact the top 15 is split pretty evenly between, IG / Space Marines / Orkz / Eldar / CSM.

Secondly, Nob Bikers suffer from egg basket syndrome and the Orks can't put a good army around them. This leaves them open to blocking and feeding sac units. Nobs in BW need lots of upgrades to still be effective in combat and are still extremely vulnerable to shooting. They are certainly an upgrade on Boyz but the Nobs still don't scare any true CC units.

I do agree that Nob Bikers are a lot into 1 unit which is why I don't use them all that much anymore. but regular on foot nobs are still point effective. I'm trying to imagine a situation where you are hands down I win you lose, to the point where its considered bottom tier

I'll see if I can make a picture model with Vassal or find a post on it from Stelek's blog. I doubt people on Warseer know anything about this, they don't listen. Essentially you use the initial chasis to completely block LoS to the armor facing of tanks behind. This gives it a 3+ save or requires you to move to a different facing. Utilising a few smokes or when you get good at it (see StJohn) 1 or 2 you can give your whole mech army at least a 4+ save and quite a few a 3+ save. Orks can't do this and its still not easy to get Trukks to give 4+ cover saves to BWagons. Remember you have to cover 50% of the facing and because of it's narrow width you need to cover the sides which Trukks against find difficult on BW.

Again with other mech though they don't need to rely on outside help and rate of fire still really scares Trukks with or without cover. Even when one wrecks (and doesn't explode) they provide cover for other vehicles. Trukks never do.

I'll roll these 2 into 1, the Orkz can have a 4+ save for longer on their mechanized parts of the list? So I'm confused on what you are trying to prove with this one. Oh and 50% truly isn't that difficult as you've proven with your own example.

Use lootas, they're good against whatever you want. If the players you play against (present and past) used Tau gunlines I'd lean towards bad. In a direct matchup with other Mech or Hybrid style lists, Orks fail miserably. Even if my analysis is off on Trukks they still cannot reliably take out other Mech which still gives the advantage to other Mech lists.

I R SMART LIKE ROCK said...

Lootas are terrible are even reliably blowing up Rhinos, 15 lootas x 2 ( lets say you rolled 2 on the d3 ) x 1/3 ( bs:2 ) x 1/3 ( needs 5+ to pen ) x 1/3 ( needs 5+ to wreck ) = 30/27 ~= 1.12 So you just spent 225 points to blow up a 35pt Rhino, oh noes those Space Marines are sure worried now.

That squad is 435 pts + Transport and I'd rather not take it head on and divert it, feed it sac units. But otherwise I'd send a Command Bike squad in or Termies quite happily and because I'm more likely to get the charge (my mech > your mech, biker speed, sac, etc.) I'd attempt a string with tank shocks. Otherwise TH/SS termies, councils, Thunderwolf mass charges, etc. Any other super cc unit but again I'd rather shoot it and divert it.

And your TH/SS Termies are 200 + 250 for Land Raider if those 2 can trade then hell yeah. If you are doing a mass charge then you are forgetting the opponent has other units as well. Also where are you diverting it to? This isn't Fantasy where they have Frenzy and have to go where you want them to.

In short, what?

Unknown said...

Seriously? To disprove the notion of a metagame you quote Hard Boyz results at me? We all know what a fallacy that tournament is. Look at that stupid leafblower (the bestest IG list evas) list from BoLS. That won at Hard Boyz? Enough said. And slamming DE at Hard Boyz is pretty fail, too. DE don't work well at high points levels because their codex doesn't scale because GW has moved on from 1500 point matches (except England). Until tournaments are based on wins/loses/draws without varrying the results or rules with shitty secondary objectives (good secondary objectives, okay. Shitty ones, no.) comp, sportsmanship, FoC restrictions, etc. don't quote tournament results. Remember when 5th came out and Daemons were winning because no one knew they couldn't take out Mech? Ya well according to you Daemons were 'the' army then.

I did the math last night and an assaulting seer council which templates before hand is likely to make a 10 man nob squad run though I would imagine a warboss would even that out. Thunderwolves don't like super units and need to mass charge as they are normal unit eaters for a reasonable cost (like Nob Bikers or Command Bikers but who have a huge price tag). And remember I'm blocking that silly Battlewagon which isn't hard so it's unlikely the fight is on your terms and I'm going to shoot at it before hand, etc. etc.

How are you getting that Orks have cover for longer? Orks rely on a pinpoint to provide cover more often than not, each unit cannot manufacture it's own cover. I stop that with blocking or blow it up and either the Ork army moves on without cover and needs to make cover from the terrain or each other (which is harder across the army compared to Imperial and Eldar armies; read) and whilst trukks can provide for each other easily when they die, they are gone. And I get a nice direct shot at the next one. So this means you have to run through terrain more or be more vulnerable to shooting. Your pick.

So you're saying Lootas are bad and still haven't offered an option on taking out Mech? Ever realised everything that takes out transports is way overcosted in relation to the points? That's the bloody goodness of Mech and why it's so effective. Anyways, Lootas are going to cause some damage because of their huge standard deviation. THey cause more autocannon hits than a 2xRifledreads on average and are one of the best ways to take out Mech. Mass TL rokkits can work but I'd rather take 45 lootas first.

Again no one has offered any reason how Mech Orks (or any Orks) can pop Mech reliably.

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