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 outweighs 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 only 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!

Tactica: Reserves Denial

Yesterday I mentioned "An Autarch's Master Strategist making Reserves Denial more reliable" and Warhammer 39,999 rightfully pointed out that I was talking about something I've never mentioned on here. (Well, except maybe by inference.)

Reserves Denial follows a simple tenet: That which cannot be attacked cannot be killed.

I'd toyed with the idea in 4th edition, but the Reserves special rule was too irregular to really base a strategy on. It was one of those things that was situational and sometimes annoying, but not reliable.
Then out came 5th edition with Reserves in every basic mission. Reserves was suddenly reliable as more than just a tactic of opportunity. When combined with an Autarch's cumulative +1 on Reserves rolls, you could even base strategy off the idea...
At about the same time, the Space Marines codex had just released with the "new" Drop Pod Assault rules. Eldar have always been better at hitting hard but not really so much for taking a hit. Pods gave Marines a way to hammer Eldar lines up close and personal before the Eldar could whittle them down. There was a lot of debate on how to respond.
I'm sure I wasn't the first to talk about this idea, but I was certainly one of the early birds with this post. Rather than putting all your guys on the board to be slaughterd, why not hide them in Reserves for a couple turns? I called the idea Reserves Denial. Even though an Eldar list geared for this will be the master of this type of play, it can be a viable and even beneficial choice for any army. It's certainly a good tool for a player to have in their repertoire.

The advantages:
1. While in Reserves your units cannot be shot.
2. When everything is in Reserves, your opponent has nothing to deploy based on nor react to.
3. When entering from Reserves, you can react to the enemy deployment as you move onto the table. This allows you to match units to their best targets, concentrate firepower and generally take the initiative in the battle.
4. When entering from Reserves, you have the opportunity to strike before being struck in return. Heck, you might even have a chance to charge on the same turn.
5. It times perfectly with Outflanking forces.

The disadvantages:
1. You have less turns to accomplish your objectives.
2. You have to rely on Reserves rolls. Bad rolls can mean your army enters the board piecemeal.
3. You rely heavily on speed or having an opponent that comes to you.
4. It's usually pretty obvious when your army is geared to do this. There's several ways to counter it, especially by mirroring.

Why are Eldar the best at this?
1. Autarchs. A cumulative +1 on the Reserves roll is nice.*
2. Move & Fire weapons. Few things in the Eldar list cannot move and fire at full effect.
3. Speed. Eldar have Fast Skimmers, Fleet, Jetbikes and many other mobility advantages.
4. Anti-gravitics. It's theoretically possible to run a conga line of units down an entire edge and make someone unable to enter the board from Reserves due to the 'may not move within 1" of an enemy model unless charging' rule. Skimmers, Jetbikes, and Jump Infantry get to ignore this rule and can jump OVER enemy models.
5. Theme. Eldar are often referred to as a "glass hammer" army... that they hit really hard but shatter when hit in return. The background also supports a highly mobile form of warfare. This kind of play really is the Eldar bailiwick.

*A unit's cumulative chance to arrive is:
Normal: 50% Turn 2, 83% Turn 3, 97% Turn 4.
1 Autarch: 66% Turn 2, 94% Turn 3, 99% Turn 4.
2 Autarchs: 83% Turn 2, 97% Turn 3, 100% Turn 4.

***Image courtesy of r7ll's DeviantArt. Go check out his other stuff, it's NICE.***