On list building and how many units to take.

Blaine over at The Lord Commander Militant recently did an interesting look at the current victory conditions and how they shape the army building metagame. Post found here.

The short version: An army with less units will have an advantage in Annihilation battles that outweighing the disadvantage of having less Scoring units in Seize Ground.*

My response as to the reason for this? Control.

As it currently works, you only need 1 unit to control or contest an objective. Heck, if the objectives are close, one unit can even control multiple. In return, it only takes 1 unit to contest an objective too. Additionally, you only need to control 1 more objective than your opponent to score a "win".

Thus there's no real incentive to take more units for objectives games while KP benefits those armies that take less. What could balance this?
1. Stacking control/contest checks. Example: An objective has 3 units on it, 2 for player A and 1 for B, so control goes to A for having more units total.
2. Make winning an objective mission harder. Rather than only needing 1 to "win", require holding half or more. Thus Capture & Control still on requires holding 1 objective, but winning a 5 objective Seize Ground would mean you need 3. (Or do a tiered win system, but that only tends to matter in tournaments.)
3. Add in more missions/victory conditions. Table quarters, Loot, Assassination... there's lots of things that could open up the scope of missions beyond 1 KP and 2 objectives.
4. Go back to VP. KP was a cute idea to simplify victory calculation, but the reality is that it is a failure. There's just too many ways to exploit the rules advantageously.

Of course, the problem with any of the above is that they require a deviation from the main rulebook missions. This means they're relegated to the world of house-rules, tournament organizer choice, or 6th edition. Still, maybe if enough of us call foul, GW will listen. I'll be over here not holding my breath. :-p

*80 battle results isn't exactly a huge sample. Also, there's no mention made of special rules like Combat Squadding. Still, I think the findings show more deviation than these can account for... I don't think the final margin of advantage is exact, but it certainly exists.

**Image chosen in honor of Neil Gaiman and American Gods, where Anubis likes to use "a really heavy feather". A reminder that the system itself can have bias...

Playing fair with conversions

Modeling to advantage. Ah, what a loaded concept. Want all your Fire Warriors to be able to see under a tank? Just model them all with kneeling legs! Want your Wraithlord to be able to get cover saves from Guardians? Just model him crouching or kneeling! Want to stop playing 40K? Just start modeling to advantage and watch yourself get banned from tournaments and lose all your opponents!

Yes, we know it happens anyways. It's sad the lengths that people will go to compensate for bad tactics. I'd think it easier to just learn how to play the game...

But what about the other side of the coin? What about those people who want to do something different, but are worried about being accused of modeling for advantage. A few days ago Enter the Nurgling was contemplating a certain problem: wanting to do a properly heroic base for a champion without people thinking it was modeling for advantage.

Being a rather avid fan of conversions myself, I shared my thoughts over there. Still, I thought it might be good to share here too with a few updates.
When doing a major conversion or base work:
1. Try not to increase (or decrease) the vertical height of the model's head by more than 1-3mm. So for example, a large rock can offset a partial crouch. After all, it's the final position that matters and not how they got there. In the same sense, also try to keep true to the general bulk and displacement of the original figure.
2. Having the base decoration extend off the normal circle is fine as long as it doesn't interfere with gameplay. Overflow shouldn't be anything too overly elaborate and the original base should be visible. It's also good to overflow in one direction only and to follow base overflow of the model itself.
3. Base decorations shouldn't be higher than mid-shin unless the model is interacting with it. The model should be the focus and not the base. (So a column just sticking out of the ground is bad. But one they're stepping up on, leaning around or otherwise "doing something" with is fine.)
4. Even if the base or conversion isn't that extreme, always be willing to swap the model out for a normal model of the same size. I've never had anyone ask me to do this, but the willingness is there if they do.

As an example of this, I offer up the conversion I did to my Farseer's jetbike. Even though it's a custom built conversion, it places the guy at exactly the same height as he'd be sitting on a normal jetbike.

Cheers and enjoy! More Space Wolf unit reviews and maybe actual content posts when I get back from a brief vacation!