List Building Strategy: Analyzing a List

List Building Strategy: Analyzing a List

As a follow-up to Play Your Game and Analyzing Your Units, I decided to take a list and explain how and why it works.

An easy and obvious example, I figured we could breakdown the army I took to NOVA this year.

Ravenwing Strike Force:
Librarian, Bike, Eye of the Unseen, Auspex
6 Black Knights
6 Black Knights
6-Man Command Squad, Banner, Apothecary, Grenade Launcher
Darkshroud

White Scars Librarius Conclave:
Level 2 Librarian, Bike, Hunter's Eye, Sword
Level 2 Librarian, Bike, Axe
Level 2 Librarian, Bike, Sword
Level 2 Librarian, Bike, Axe

White Scars Combined Arms Detachment:
Chaplain, Bike, Auspex
3 Bikers
3 Bikers, 2 Grav guns, combi-grav
Attack Bike, Multi-Melta
Attack Bike, Multi-Melta

What’s interesting about this list, compared to the original version which used an inquisistar, is that there are no gimmick units here. This list has very few chances to “go big” and get everything I need (psychic powers, perfect match-up, etc) but also a lot more room to outplay opponents and few situations where most of the army is useless, which is a very real problem for any gimmick unit.

The black knights are the core of this list, and going by my own definitions they are a generalist unit. They’re survivable against most shooting, have excellent shooting, scout, hit and run, can bully weak melee units, and can be taken with no tax units thanks to the Ravenwing Strike Force. Like scatterbikes in an Eldar list, these guys form a core for the army that other units can be added around, or can support other units. In this case, other units will be added around them.

The librarians are also a generalist unit, and the most important thing about them is their adaptability. Depending on the matchup I can look for invisibility or veil of time if I need defense, or things like psychic shriek or technomancy for offense. Identifying what psychic powers are needed and when to use them is the most important part about learning to use this army, but librarians can plug the holes that black knights are missing like melee defense or quantity shooting.

The first niche unit of this list is the darkshroud, and it is a powerful unit. It folds like wet paper in melee and has a mostly useless gun, but it is nearly invulnerable to shooting that doesn’t ignore cover, is incredibly fast, and provides a bubble of defense for my army. When my list is completely relying on the black knights, the support for them that the darkshroud provides is worth the points (and it doesn’t take up a contested force org slot or require a tax).

The regular bikes fill a strange niche. The White Scars Combined Arms Detachment does not actually need to be in this list. I could easily take more black knights. However, in NOVA you give up 2 secondary points every game if you have no troops units. These regular bikes help prevent this and also give me a source of objective secured that are fairly durable. Generally I keep them far away or hold them in reserve so they can show up once the black knights are stuck in.

The attack bikes fill a similar role to the regular bikes. They exist to give me units that can be thrown away to screen for charges, suicidally grab objectives, or be held in reserve to stop my opponent from dropping cheap units into my deployment zone. The multi-meltas occasionally help out against vehicles as well.

Finally, the chaplain boosts my black knights in melee. While this sounds like a utilitarian option, black knights are at their weakest in melee, and taking a unit who improves their melee isn’t necessarily a boost I will always want or need. However, I already have 5 librarians in the list and the chaplain’s built-in invulnerable save is helpful against things like baleflamers or some melee weapons.

I hope this list breakdown makes sense. I may do another later in the week with my friend’s Eldar army because it has more examples of different kinds of units. As always, let me know if you have any questions, and don’t forget about the painting competition.

November Painting Contest/Giveaway

November Painting Contest/Giveaway

This blog has grown so much and so fast that I can't help but want to thank you guys.

I really enjoy writing this blog, and from what I can tell, you guys really enjoy reading it! With the holidays coming up and to celebrate the recent strides the blog has taken, I'd like to hold a reader painting contest. Over the first 3 weeks of November, send to me (either on the blog or by reddit message), your best painted 3-6 Dark Angels (or successor chapter) models. If you've got a display board, or action scene to go with them feel free to use those, but I plan to judge the models strictly on the paint and coolness factor (conversions, basing, etc) with display being tiebreaker/bonus points.

Now here's the sticker: the winner will get a copy of Space Hulk: Deathwing for PC within a few days of it coming out IF we get entries from at least a dozen different people.

So to summarize:

• 3-6 models painted in Dark Angels or Successor Chapter colors. Alternatively, a single large model such as a Land Raider is acceptable
• Any 40k models are fine (Forgeworld is ok, but not models specific to 30k), Characters, Vehicles, etc. but must be at least minimum-sized units (3 bikers, 5 tactical marines)
• Must include before, process, and after pictures (3-4 pictures total is plenty)
• All submissions must include a few lines (2 sentences to 2 paragraphs or so) explaining who these guys are and what makes them cool
• Display boards/scenes are not necessary but may be worth bonus/tiebreaker points
• All submissions must be in by Midnight EST Thursday, November 17th. I will announce the winner November 18th and post the winner along with runner-ups on the blog
• The winner will receive a copy of Space Hulk: Deathwing for PC if we meet the criteria!
• Feel free to contact me if you have questions

This is my thanks to you guys for making the blog so popular. I hope you'll continue reading and I can't wait to see your entries!

Talons Alight Fall ITC Tier List

Fall ITC Tier List

This is a follow up to my post about a new kind of tier list. My own take at a tier list for ITC tournaments.

A few disclaimers about how this list works. I mostly wrote this list myself, with some collaboration with members of my club. This list is based off of units, formations, and detachments rather than codices, ordered by faction. I will give a rough explanation of each tier but not every unit in it. I judge each unit/formation/detachment based on its points cost (including how difficult it is to include in an army list), strengths, and (when applicable) other similar options. Also note I have not included Genestealer Cults as they are relatively new.

S Tier:
Battle Company

Scatterbikes, Skathach Wraithknight

Daemonic Incursion

Probably no surprises here. These are all the cores of army lists that currently dominate the meta and have been strong in both ITC and NOVA. The Skathach leapfrogs the regular Wraithknight in ITC thanks to the hellstorm template not being ignored by invisibility.

A Tier:
Librarius Conclave, Drop Pods, War Convocation, Culexus Assassin

Warp Spiders, Jetseer, Wraithknight, Warp Hunter, Riptide Wing, Decurion

Fateweaver, Screamers, Fleshhounds, Lord of Change, Renegade Wyverns

Void Shield Generator

Probably not many surprises here either. These are all incredibly powerful units, formations, and detachments, including two that are more than the sum of their parts. Otherwise these are units that fill in all the gaps for those meta-defining armies but are no-brainers to take on their own as well. Lots of Eldar here, to no one’s surprise.

B Tier:
Skyhammer Annihilation Force, Tigirius, Grav Centurions, Black Knights, Darkshroud Thunderwolf Cavalry, Company of the Great Wolf, Nemesis Dreadknight, Imperial Wyverns, Psykana Division, Pask (Punisher Tank), Tech Priest Dominus, Kastalan Robots, Inquisitor Coteaz, Imperial Knights (Castigator, Warden, Paladin, Crusader), Callidus Assassin

Swooping Hawks, Vaul’s Wrath Battery, Wraithguard, Lynx, Corsair Raiding Party, Void Dreamer, Stormsurge, Marker Drones, Drone-Net, Canoptek Harvest, Necron Destroyer Cult, Necron Wraiths, Flyrant, Zhadsnark, Buzzgob’s Kustom Stompa

D-Thirster, Burning Skyhost, Herald of Tzeentch, Murderhost, Renegade Medusa Battery, Cyclopia Cabal

This is probably going to always be my most populated part of the list. These are all the units you see sneaking into top-tier lists because they are strong or work very well with other top units. A couple of these units suffer from the state of the rest of their codex and could very well be A-tier if they were easier to take (Wyverns, Flyrants), while others are often crowded out by better options (Swooping Hawks, Corsairs). This is where we start to see the strength of all of the options Imperial armies have as well, as there are tons of units that work well and can be great when taken in the proper list. The two units I was on the fence about placing here were Thunderwolf Cavalry and the Cyclopia Cabal, but the weakness of stars in ITC compared to NOVA knocked them down from A-Tier.

C Tier:
Space Marine Scouts, Space Marine Bikes, Azrael, Wulfen, Ironwolves, Brother-Captain Sternn, Deathwatch Veterans, Vulture Gunship, Tempestus Scions, Kataphron Destroyers, Xenos Inquisitor, St. Celestine

Corpsethief Claw, Firebase Support Cadre, Optimized Stealth Cadre, Necron Immortals, Ghost Ark, Warboss

Daemonic Tetrad, Pink Horrors, Nurglings, Warpflame Host, Furies, Black Crusade Detachment

The bottom competitive tier, this is mostly units you see filling a tax and do so because they’re cheap. Also I’ve included a few options that I think are decent units that don’t see a lot of use due to their price tag (Tetrad), the unpopularity of their army (Warbosses, Vultures, Corpsethief), or are relatively new (Black Crusade, Deathwatch).

What do you guys think? I would especially appreciate feedback about the format and how it could be improved. Also note that this is a “living document” that I may update based on suggestions for the new couple weeks.

First Tournament with the Orks. October 22, Game Castle, NH

Format: NOVA Missions, ITC FAQ
Number of Players: 14
Rounds 3
Placing: 4th

I consider this a pretty big success for my first run with the Orks. Of the top-tier lists I have my hardest matchup against Eldar and my best matchup against Space Marines, with a 50-50 or so against Daemons depends on their army comp. Thus I played against 2 daemons players and none of the 3 marines players there.

List:
Orks Combined Arms Detachment
Zhadsnark (Warlord)
Painboy, Bike
Mek
Mek
4 Warbikers, Nob, Power Klaw
4 Warbikers, Nob, Power Klaw
Deffkopta, Rokkits
Deffkopta, Rokkits
Deffkopta, Rokkits
5 Lootas
5 Lootas
Buzzgob's Big Mek Stompa, Klaw, Kannon, 1 Supa Rokkit

Orks Combined Arms Detachment
Warboss, Bike, Klaw, Lucky Stikk
Warboss, Bike, Headwoppa's Killchoppa
Mek
Mek
10 Grotz
10 Grotz

10 Grotz
Deffkopta, Rokkits
Deffkopta, Rokkits
Deffkopta, Rokkits
5 Tankbustas
Void Shield Generator, 2 Extra Shields

Game 1: Khorne Daemonkin

KDK are one of my tougher matchups from daemons because they're fearless, and this guy had Skarbrand and 2 D-thirsters. Luckily he split up the bloodthirsters and I was able to shoot one with the lootas, tankbustas, and stompa, while zhadsnark and a squad of bikes brought the other one down before it could swing. In a hilariously lucky roll I killed his heldrake with the lifta-droppa.

25-6 Win

Game 2: Imperial Knights

Oh boy. 5 knights. Going into melee with them with the stompa would probably be a mutual kill so I put everything under the void shield and made him come to me. I killed 3 knights on turn 2 at the cost of a few deffkoptas and a bike squad, and zhadsnark and his unit got a mutual kill with the 4th on turn 3, leave a single one to run to my backfield and grab an objective. The score didn't reflect it but I won this game pretty handily. 

17-13 Win

Game 3: Tzeentch Daemons

I'm really sick of every tzeentch player getting that stupid +1 invuln warlord trait. I wanted to go second to make him come to me, but he won the roll-off and had me go first. I definitely clumped my units up a bit too much early and made it easy for him to hit extra units with the beam and novas. This was a close game and it ended with his dthirster getting a mutual kill with my stompa so I couldn't contest the relic. Had I contested the relic the last turn we would have tied and rolled over to victory points, which I would have won.

22-12 Loss

I'm really happy with how the army performed. I dodged both my worst and best matchups at this tournament but I got 3 good games that made me think a lot instead of having easy wins. I expect to run this list or a similar one for the next few tournaments I go to.

List Building Strategy: Analyzing Your Units and Avoiding Pitfalls

List Building Strategy: Analyzing Your Units and Avoiding Pitfalls

This is essentially a follow-up to Play Your Game, and I’m going to discuss how to analyze different units when list-building.

I’ve had a few requests to expand on the list-building advice in Play Your Game, so I thought I could do a breakdown on different roles units fill. If you haven’t, you should definitely go and read that first. Think of these as guidelines for analyzing the units in your codex and figuring out if you want them in your list. A lot of this advice requires good self-analysis, and as always the best way to make a list is to build it and then ask for feedback, but this should help you get an idea of what units do when constructing the list in the first place.

Generalist units are any unit capable of threatening multiple enemy unit types, and are a surprisingly difficult unit to include in a list. Usually, the more targets a unit is capable of threatening, the higher a premium you pay for the unit. When including a unit that should be able to threaten several different targets, make sure that unit is serving an actual purpose in your army, and you’re ok with the usually steep price associated. Scatterbikes are a powerful generalist unit because they have weapons that can threaten anything, are fast, durable, and fill a troops slot. Sternguard veterans are an example of a bad generalist because their guns aren’t particularly good at killing anything (even though they can threaten a lot of targets), they’re slow (drop pod is pretty much required), and take up either an elites slot or require one of several very chunky formations. The middle ground would be Deathwatch veteran teams. They’re still slow and just a squishy marine statline like sternguard, but are troops choices and can take frag cannons which don’t just threaten a lot of targets, they can also reliably kill most enemy units.

When deciding whether or not to include a generalist unit, you need to ask yourself if you actually need it. Unless they’re incredibly powerful and utilitarian (like scatterbikes), you’ll usually be better served by a more niche unit. In the example of deathwatch, they’ll work well if you’re running a death star and want a unit you can drop into your opponent’s deployment zone to remove backline units that your star can’t touch. Those backline units may be anything from riptides to thunderfire cannons to pink horrors, so a generalist unit is a good pick.

Niche units are ones that fill a specific role, and/or threaten only a single enemy unit type, usually without any form of support. Marker drones are an example of a good niche unit. Marker drones are only as useful as the army they support, but the markerlights they throw down are a core part of almost every tau army. Assault centurions are an example of a terrible niche unit. They’re expensive, slow, don’t have many attacks, lack an invulnerable save, and have ranged weapons that won’t hurt the things they want to charge. For an ok niche unit example, we’ll use grotz. Grotz don’t do anything and die to a stiff breeze (or their own runtherd when they fail morale), but they’re cheap as chips and fill a troops tax, making them perfectly acceptable backfield objective holders.

When deciding to include a niche unit in your army, you need to ask yourself two questions. First, how good is this unit at doing its job? Grotz are great at hiding on backfield objectives, so if you need a troops tax that can do that, you’ve got your answer. Second, is this job even needed? Do you really need a space marine command squad in a drop pod with meltaguns when your local meta includes no heavy vehicles? Marker drones are in every tau list because every tau list needs markerlights, but not every army needs to be able to threaten every potential enemy unit.

Lastly, I’m going to touch on a slightly obscure topic, gimmick units. Gimmick units can act like a generalist or niche unit and require support from the rest of your army. The most important trait of a gimmick unit is the chance of it crashing and burning. A good gimmick unit is most popular deathstars. They usually rely on psychic powers and/or the unholy conglomeration of a dozen special characters, but they find their way into many top-tier lists. A bad gimmick unit is assault units in a flying transport (we’ve all at least thought about it). They rely on reserve rolls, at the absolute best won’t be in combat until turn 3, and will take a lot of damage if the flyer gets destroyed. Finally, a decent gimmick unit that can serve a purpose is a skyhammer annihilation force. With proper support, dropping eight grav cannons on your opponent turn one is amazing and threatens most enemy units. When used poorly or not properly supported, the assault marines will manage to be even more useless than they already were and the devastators won’t kill enough to make back their points.

There aren’t a lot of hard and fast rules to gimmick units when list-making. Usually you should start getting wary as soon as a single unit is sucking up a large amount of points or you’re bringing a lot of other units just to support it. Make sure it can give you a high enough return on investment for the points and resources it sucks up. If you can’t decide, more than anything else you should try the list out. If the gimmick consistently fails, go back to the drawing board.

I hope this was a good follow-up to the original post. If there’s any topics you guys would like discussed, you have a list you’d like me to review, or you have questions or comments, feel free to let me know. Also if you haven’t already, please switch off ad-block on this site to help support the blog!

Roadblocks: Playing Against Fast Armies

Roadblocks: Playing Against Fast Armies

I get a lot of comments asking me how to play against fast armies. Rather than answer them one by one I decided to write a tactics discussion about it.

First, let’s define “fast” units. For the purpose of this discussion, “fast” units are anything that can consistently move at least 12” without sacrificing firepower, and at least 24” if it does. That would mean bikes, jetbikes, and fast vehicles all fall under this category. This specifically precludes units with inconsistent movement or one-use abilities like jetpack infantry or the dreadknight, as well as deepstriking units. Cavalry will be our one grey area, because while they technically don’t meet those parameters, with fleet they can shoot up the board quickly and are usually melee units, so I may occasionally mention cavalry units, but for the most part they will be left out.

I’m going to split this discussion into three parts, general advice, advice for fast armies vs. fast armies, and advice for static armies vs. fast armies.

As far as general advice goes, there’s two rules for playing against fast armies. First, always watch their ranges. Fast units have threat ranges with their guns or potential charge ranges that you can measure out (or use the average of, for random things like charge range). This seems like basic advice but very often I see people deploy where my black knights can hit them turn 1, then complain about my army being “too fast”. You may need to throw some other units in the way to prevent things like charges, but you should constantly be paying attention to their range. The second rule is to try to limit their movement options. If you’re able to surround a fast unit, you can either block off its movement completely or force it to give up shooting/charging to get away from you. You can also bait them out, especially when they need to score objectives every turn like in maelstrom. This sounds easier said than done but I’ll explain it more in the sections below.

Playing against a fast army as a fast army is usually incredibly challenging, and some of the most fun games of 40k I’ve ever had. The hardest part of this is constantly thinking one to two turns ahead. Depending on where you move, you need to guess where he will, and what units need to be there so you can get into threat range before he’s even moved there. Fast armies are typically capable of completely avoiding each other if they want, so the army that is able to force their opponent’s hand usually gains the advantage. This is also a time where going second can be a boon. Getting a minimum of one turn of your opponent having to expose himself to score objectives is incredibly powerful in this kind of matchup.

Mostly, pay attention to each army’s strengths. All fast armies are not alike, and when you're both fast, you need to take advantage of your other strong points. As an example, in a matchup of black knights vs. scatterbikes, the eldar have vastly higher range and are a bit faster, while the black knights are more survivable and will pulp the eldar at close range/melee. So the game becomes the black knights trying to corner the scatterbikes or bait them out, while the eldar try to pick off the black knights from afar. Additionally, there are few armies that are ALL fast units. Try to pick off the stragglers like backline objective holders or ranged units like the warp hunter that’s in almost every eldar list. At worst you’ll force those units to run away, and at best you might draw out some of his faster units to try to protect it.

As a player with a slow army, you need to consolidate your strength. Understand that unprotected or isolated units are going to get picked off quickly, and that there is no way you are going to spread out and catch your opponent. Instead, focus on one side of the board or a couple of objectives. Use screening units to protect your important things, especially long ranged units that can hit most of the board. Deploy redundant units if your opponent has a shorter-ranged fast army, so if he moves up to kill a unit there is a second or third unit nearby to threaten him. The biggest mistake I see in these kind of matchups is opponents being too scared to lose units so they split up their force and get picked apart. Hold your ground and pick your battles, you aren’t going to kill all of your opponent’s units and you probably won't hold every objective, but you can force him into compromised positions once in awhile and take enough ground to beat him at the end.

As always, feel free to ask questions and clarifications here or in the reddit comments. Also, as I mentioned early, there will now be ads on the site! The money from the blog goes right back into the hobby, so please switch off any ad-block software you have while on the blog, and let me know if the ads are intrusive or distracting.

Need for Speed: The Importance of Speed in 40K

Need for Speed: The Importance of Speed in 40K

I’m going to try and tackle both the importance of speed in 40k and how it came around. As always, these are meant more for competitive play, but all of this is applicable to casual games as well.

After switching from NOVA to ITC format for tournament games recently, I saw how difficult a time both formats have trying to create a balanced game for slow armies. ITC uses maelstrom missions which are usually only ½ to ⅓ about scoring objectives and the rest about killing enemies or holding your own deployment zone, while NOVA allows players to choose to score their objectives each turn rather than have to score all of their points at the end. The normal 40k rulebook is far less forgiving. Many maelstrom cards involve taking a specific objective or a number of them, and the eternal war missions are all score at the end. Neither of these mission types are particularly good for slow armies.

Before I continue, the point of this post is not to complain about the prevalence of fast armies, or even say the game hasn’t moved in a good direction. Fast units give players options, and a battle between two fast armies is usually much more interesting and challenging than two gunlines shooting each other across the board all game. Static armies like leafblower guard or skyhammer marines tend to be all about tabling you before they can do anything, and those kind of games tend to be over quickly with one player being crushed. I like speed, and I’m glad it’s one of the focal points of the game at the moment.

Back in the days of 4th edition, speed was usually a tradeoff with survivability. Melee was more prominent, so it was far more dangerous to get up in your opponent’s face, and armor saves in general went a lot further than they do now. 5th edition made vehicles much tougher, so we saw the age of mechanized infantry, where the game was all about shuttling your troops around and trying to crack each other’s transports. The addition of jink and the nerfing of vehicle survivability and melee in 6th and 7th edition is how we got where we are today. Bikes can now bring their own cover save with them, while vehicles have a hard time finding one while parked in a forest. Meanwhile, getting up in your opponent’s face early is much less threatening when they’re usually lacking in strong melee units.

The result of these changes has been, predictably, a meta shift. Every army with strong, fast units like Eldar, Space Marines, and Daemons have hopped to the top. Other armies have fallen behind or adapted, finding new or old units that can work in the meta of speed daemons. Tyranids and Necrons spamming flyrants and wraiths, respectively, are both partially a product of this emphasis on speed. Meanwhile, armies like Imperial Guard and Chaos Space Marines (cue whining) have fallen behind, lacking reliable fast units. 

Emphasis on speed, along with changes to psychic powers, has also led to the rise of deathstars. Wolfstars aren’t just good because they’re hard to kill and killy themselves, they’re also fast. They can shoot up the board, fight you, then break off all of their characters to score objectives. This is why slower death stars like lychstar, inquisistar or ghazghkullstar never really caught on. You also see fewer deathstars in ITC (besides invisibility nerfs), because emphasis isn't just placed on speed, but on having many fast units so you can score you maelstrom every turn  which makes armies like Eldar, Daemons, and Space Marines even stronger.

There isn’t really a bottom line to this post, in terms of a message. Speed is one of the key tenets of the game at the moment and it’s interesting to take a look at how we got here. Changes to the rules or tournament formats could very well make a shift back to slower armies, but only time will tell with that.

I’ve also begun putting advertisements on the site. If you’re a regular reader, please turn off your ad-block. Right now you’ll just see a few blank boxes while I set up, but once they’re ready they’ll be an important part of helping to keep the blog running.

Other Ravens, Other Bikes

Other Ravens, Other Bikes

As I said earlier, I'm retiring my Ravenwing for a bit. The changes to invisibility and 2+ rerollable saves in ITC removes a lot of their hardiness and I'm ready for something new. To that end I've hauled my Orks up to Boston. In case they don't pan out, I've got a Dark Angels battle company in the works, as well as a Raven Guard alpha strike list I'm using at a NOVA format trios tournament tomorrow. After a little playtesting against Eldar and Tau, here's how the Ork list looks:

Orks Combined Arms Detachment
Zhadsnark (Warlord)
Big Mek, Bike, Kustom Force Field
Mek
Mek
4 Warbikers, Nob, Power Klaw
4 Warbikers, Nob, Power Klaw
Deffkopta, Rokkits
Deffkopta, Rokkits
Deffkopta, Rokkits
5 Lootas
5 Lootas
Buzzgob's Big Mek Stompa, Klaw, Kannon, 1 Supa Rokkit

Orks Combined Arms Detachment
Warboss, Bike, Klaw, Lucky Stikk
Warboss, Bike, Headwoppa's Killchoppa
Mek
Mek
10 Grotz
10 Grotz
Deffkopta, Rokkits
Deffkopta, Rokkits
Deffkopta, Rokkits
5 Tankbustas
Void Shield Generator, 2 Extra Shields

My Stompa and scratch-built void shield generator, as well as my kitbashed tankbustas.

The grotz on his shoulders are magnetized so they can be removed when Buzzgob uses his oilers.

Usually when people want to use a stompa they try to load it up with meks to make as many repair rolls as possible. In practice I've found the stompa usually dies in a single turn or gets so low that unless you have about 20 meks in there it won't make a difference. Instead I have 5 (including buzzgob), and some tankbustas to ride along. Other than that, I pretty much cherry picked the best things the Ork codex has to offer. Lootas are a really solid ranged unit, especially because snap shooting doesn't effect their BS much. Grotz are cheap as hell and people hate to shoot them. Deffkoptas are fantastic, cheap blocking and throwaway units, and warbosses on bikes are the best CC unit that Ork codex has to offer. This list is all about the stompa, and it opens up a lot of opportunities to lock down the center of the board and flank or do a hammer and anvil style deployment, depending on how fast my opponent is. ITC is all about speed and this list has plenty of it. The low number of models in each unit also means that leadership tests don't mean much, as I've already lost a chunk of the unit by the time I'm taking them.

This post has already gone on a bit long, so I'll post the Raven Guard alpha strike list after I've gotten to play it a bit. Let me know if you've got questions about the Ork list!

Self-Analysis, Criticism, and Improving as a Player

I had a pretty difficult time deciding how to tackle a few topics on types of players and personal improvement. I think I managed to divide the discussion pretty evenly and keep it brief.

I like kicking off these conversations with what lead me to think of them. In this case it was a comment in the reddit thread for my last post. /u/SocksofDeath said “If there was an event where everyone used the same list, I'm willing to bet that the people who did well would be the same ones who do well in all their tournaments.” I think that’s a very interesting point, and it got me thinking about how players can improve and what pitfalls most people run into when becoming a better player. More than previous posts, I think this can benefit casual players as well as competitive ones, because there is nothing stopping you from improving as a player from a casual game.

Don’t let yourself get hung up on little things. It is the hallmark of a poor player to lose a game very badly and then insist they lost because of a single thing going wrong or a single dice roll. If you were tabled in two turns, do you really believe it’s because you couldn’t strip the last hull point off his knight turn one? Yea that probably sucked but if you put yourself in an all-or-nothing position like that your deployment or target priorities were bad. In my opinion, there is only one time the game is decided by a single dice roll. That’s when the game is incredibly close, and comes down to the wire when a single dice roll decides whether one person controls the last objective or the game keeps going. In any other situation, you either played wrong and are fixating on something bad to shift the blame, or your entire list may have been gimmicky/flawed from the get-go. Try and catch yourself making this excuse and look a little deeper for why you were even in a situation where one bad roll leads to you getting demolished in three turns.

Don’t blame your list or codex. This one is more targeted at casual players. Tournament players usually put together strong lists and understand that they will have bad matchups and they can’t change that. I’ve played plenty of casual games where my opponent made dozens of mistakes but was more interested in whining about the state of his army or a unit he really likes than recognizing those mistakes. I understand that some people just want to play fluffy armies and don’t care about improving, but if you’re willing to complain about a game you just played, why not spend the time to think about how you could have improved? Sometimes you will lose because of a bad matchup, or because your opponent brought his tournament list and you brought your fluffy Goffs army, but plenty of other times you made mistakes, ones you as a player can fix. I don’t want to go too far into list-building when it comes to fluffy/casual games, but remember that a fluffy list doesn’t have to be a bad one. If you really like a sub-par unit there are plenty of ways you can build a list to support it and get it where it needs to go. It might not do its job as efficiently as another unit, but it doesn’t mean it doesn’t have a job it can do, especially in a casual game.

Don't change your list too much or too radically. This is definitely more geared towards tournament players. It is much harder to improve when you bring a different army to every tournament. Changing out a few weapon loadouts, swapping one character for another or one squad for another are small tweaks you can make based on your own analysis. Switching from a Gladius to a Scarblade or even from Daemons to Eldar between two tournaments because you had bad results in your first tournament is almost never the right decision. Good play takes experience and practice and it's a very rare player who can pick up an army and play it to full effectiveness their first time.

Communicate with your opponent. This is the point that is the most nuanced, because it depends on the environment and your opponent. Obviously not every opponent can offer you good advice, and you probably won’t want it every time. If you’re feeling emotional after a game, especially a tough loss, take a break, get some water, talk to a friend. Then see if you can track down your opponent and ask what they would have done in your situation. One common pitfall I see when asking for advice is to try to guide the conversation to what you thought went wrong. Ask your opponent for their opinion first before saying “well do you think I should have charged this unit”? Maybe they didn’t think you needed to be in that position at all. Remember your opponent is just another player, and they probably have their own opinions that may disagree with your’s. Even if you later decide their advice wasn’t what needs to be changed, having another perspective never hurts.

If you guys like this discussion I will take a crack at casual vs. competitive players and how the groups relate and can enjoy the game together.