Right, hello and welcome to Turbo Tabletop Episode 2. This time I am joined by a Mystic League member, Isaac. Hi. So I talked about you in the last episode, and you are the Black Legion player.
I think I picked you up. Oh, a little too much. Maybe. But as it stands, I think you are provenly correct.
But why don't you start with the... What faction are you playing? So you are Black Legion. Yeah, something that Black Legion who are one of the Chaos Space Marine factions, arguably the main Chaos Space Marine faction, I know that last episode you mentioned the Death Guard who are one of the old legions, but the Black Legion are very much the main antagonist, I think, in the 40K universe.
They're led by Abadon de Dispoula, who at the moment is, I would say, the single best melee character in the game. But their whole thing is that they, as Space Marines, fought and bled for the galaxy, only for it to be taken away from them and given to the kind of bureaucrats and politicians. And Abadon believes in forming a legion of brothers who can retake the galaxy for themselves and replace the Emperor of Mankind. And that's kind of his long-term goals, whether or not he achieves that, or whether or not, that is still his driving motivation with the influence of the Chaos Gods, I suppose he's debatable.
Yeah, he likes to think that he isn't being controlled by the Chaos Gods, but you could probably argue that he very much is. Yeah, so unlike a lot of the other champions Abadon hasn't made deals, so he is given boons by the Gods to try and tempt him, but he hasn't made pact with individual demons or gods, his strength comes from so Corn wants him, Nurgle wants him, Slimesh is in, they all want him. And in order to try and tempt him to fight for them alone, they give him more and more power, and he plays them off against each other in order to gain greater standing. But with Bela Kor, they've, who is the first demon prince who all fall gods, but their parents who previously they've kind of learned that they can't give too much power to a mortal man, but at the same time Abadon doesn't want to become a demon prince, and it wouldn't be practical for the gods to make him a demon prince, because then he would lose his foot holding the mortal realm and become a much less useful tool for them to use.
Yeah, because all the other like demon primarchs, like the first ones that failed Chaos and accepted those specific boons, they don't care anymore. They're off doing their own little thing. What are they all doing? I think we were talking about this in a video.
Yeah, yeah, they're all kind of, you know, Angron's just a friskrap. Magnus is often kind of the pseudo-knowledge and kind of further power, and Motharian's very self-loathing. It would have been honest, he's angry. Yeah, but at least Abadon is still, he's still around at the table.
But on the tabletop, though, he, like you said, he kills everything. You can't kill. He's a Motharian, who you mentioned on the last episode, the Nurgle Primarch is a tough match up Pravedon, because he's got that film of Pain Save, and the damage reduction, which makes him a little more durable, and because he can do damage in three phases, he's got a pistol, I think, the lantern is. Yes, he's got a pistol.
He can shoot in some LA, he can strike in some LA, so Motharian poses a big threat. I went to a tournament a couple weeks ago, where Abadon did one round, Motharian, which is quite impressive feat, but I turned off his invulnerable save with the Death X-likey power to kind of level the playing field a little bit. Yeah. The Knightbringer is a really horrifying match up Pravedon, because it has the same, I don't want to lose three wins per phase, which makes him so durable that, and the marks of chaos that he has, but the Knightbringer can only lose three wins per phase, but also ignores the three wins per phase cap.
So it's able to kill him in a single round, but he can't kill it in a single round. So the Knightbringer is arguably the worst match up Pravedon. Yeah, I remember you'd complain about that. It does seem a bit weird to have a phase like a wound cap, and then ignore it at the same time, the balance does seem a bit off.
I think that's what sat uncomfortably with me. I'm a big fan of Hero Hammer. I think that these sense of piece models should really be dictating the state of the game, and I think that what frustrated me as a Dark Angels by Dark Angels was, I wasn't really taking Belial, who is an awesome character, you know, Lawwise, he's the first captain of Dark Angels, he's one of the greatest swordsmen in the Imperium, but you know what I'm taking, because he's about 140 points, I think at the time, and for 125 points, I could make a Chaplain, and I don't know if you remember my entire game, Chaplain, you killed everything that hit him, you know, he had 10 attacks on the charge, he was a really impressive model, but he wasn't the name character, and I think that they should be significantly better in a lot of cases than they are. Yeah, do you reckon we'll see a change when the new edition comes supposedly late this year?
I would really hope so, I think we've seen a bit of a swing, so Abaddon, I think, was one of the first big ones. He was a real standout, a lot of people had a lot of issues when he came out, because of the damage output that he does have, which they've tried to address at the point increase, which I wasn't a fan of for various reasons, but we've been, you know, Angron is, Angron's a brute. I think Abaddon almost still kill Angron, nine times out of 10, because Abaddon has that face cap and Angron doesn't. I think the face cap plays a much bigger role in the game, and I think that the Primark models, Mautarian, Magnus, Gilliman, and Angron, and the lion, hopefully, I think we'll see in a couple of months, they need that face cap, because when we played recently, I killed Mautarian in the first turn, and that shouldn't happen.
It shouldn't happen, and especially with Mautarian and Magnus, they're just too big, they can be shot from anywhere and everywhere. It's impossible to hide them. You need a very specific piece of terrain, and you have to convince your opponent that it's like, you can't see it, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Or you have to sign up for that, I think it's ITC, rules where three-story buildings, all of the windows are closed, so you can hide those bigger models with a catchy line of sight, so they can't hide behind a terrain, they can't hide if you physically see them, and that is, I suppose, a fair bit of game balance, but then the obscuring rule is ignored by those models to provide that game balance, so you can't hide Angron's turn one and then spring out and slaughter half an army. Yeah, yeah, the terrain rules are a bit, sometimes are a bit weird, but I like, if you can't physically see it, then that makes sense that you can't shoot it, but yeah, to have him stood behind, like a two-story building and say, oh no, you can't see him, then that doesn't work. When I found that obscuring was just kind of an invisible wall that goes from table to space, it's actually infinitely high. I remember thinking, but if I've got a chaos knight who is twice the size of the building, and he can't see the sort of space marines on the other side of the board, because that 5.1-inch building is in front of him, and I just felt really silly to me.
Yeah. So I think that the terrain is a really interesting part of the game, and I think we certainly as a community of mystic have started to understand more the significance of terrain, particularly with the thousands of players, Steve, who's a big terrain expert, it is really important to have a well placed board. Yeah, and very like busy board. You need the places to hide.
Yeah. You still want to create those like firing lines, and if you mismaneuver your screws, you're going to be shot from a very particular angle, but if you move correctly, I think so much of the game does come down to movement, and the deployment, if you deploy wrong, and go second again, that's a may as well be game over. I really struggle with deployment. I don't think I've ever set a board up and gone, yeah, I'm really happy with that.
That feels like a good thing to do. I often forget how far, I'm getting better at it, how far my opponents things can move, and how far I can move. So I've just got to the point now where I just go. First thing that goes down, I've been on goes down near the middle objective, and next thing that goes down to the 10 terminators and the master of possession, and my mid-board brick just goes down straight away.
Yes, there's no point in mincing around, like everyone knows where it's going. I'm not hiding anything by saying, oh, I'm going to leave the gap in the middle of the board and see what goes down next. Yeah. To be fair, like with my current blood angel list, where I've got the two tenths and the two dreadmills, I've got, I pair them up, so I've got a 10-tonne dread on one side of the table, and then on the opposite, and my like, sanguinary guard and all the characters are in the middle, because again, that's where they're going to get the most effectiveness.
And for some of the secondaries that I'm choosing, it's like, it's walk ritual, or open at the moment, they, you want to be in the middle of the world. Yeah, I take walk ritual quite a lot. I'm going to turn it into a solider in my list, you solve function is, secondaries. Yeah.
And my army is really built for mid-board brawling. I struggle with six objective games, because with, especially with the points and creases to chaos, I just haven't got a unit count that you can test to hold three and to push a four. Yeah. Whereas with three, the terminator's gone to one, I've got my possessed, which can take a second, then you've got your home objective, which is often safe.
And with the, the advanced charge options that chaos can get access to, Abaddon has often got the maneuverability to circle anywhere on the boards within reason, that, where is with the lack of centable objective, I often find Abaddon and the terminator's go one way. Everything in your opponent's army goes to the side of the table and you've got nothing to kill. And I've suddenly got 700, I mean, I think now it's about 800 points of, that's a lot of just doing nothing. Can't get across the board.
Yeah. And that makes play quite difficult. And the tournament games that I, I didn't do so well in. It was just that the, the murder ball got stuck in one half of the board and just couldn't.
And the customer did a lot of heat restricted piloting and consolidation, which really meant that I couldn't take advantage of the 10 in the unit. I was on fighting the three, which meant that the customer's a really durable one going down. In hindsight, I should have spent two CP, fell back and charged and got them all in and just mopped it up. But it was a, we didn't have a lot of time.
He spent, as you said, moving parts really important he spent probably a good two thirds of the whole play time in his movement phase. I was having to rush my turns quite a lot to catch up with play. So I think that I wasn't maybe, it was a point of flexion of the lot choices I could have made that would have made the only little more manoeuvrable that I often don't think about. Yeah.
I mean, it's movement phases is important, but I don't think that's where you should spend mostly your time. Sometimes you just physically have more models to move and that does eat up a lot of time. Just don't. Just don't know.
Orcs, yeah. When you move in 20, boys, but yeah. Sometimes just making those decisions where the move can, but if it's taken so much time that you then have to rush your game or your turns, I don't think that's on. No, it's difficult in the tournament setup because you really should kind of be saying, come on, I want to get the tournament organised across and I did speak to him quite a few times until we're going to hurry up.
You've just finished your first movement. The guys on the tables next, it was on turn two already. And I don't think I would have won the game. He beat me about 95 points till you know, 56 or something.
It was quite sound loss, but up until kind of the third time we were level-paying points-wise. Sure. Things like I didn't really play my terminators correctly. Because things were being rushed.
There was a bit of sort of faff about where his jett bikes actually were because he hadn't come round the table to move them and things like that to save time. So I don't think I would have won, but I think I could have closed the gap by maybe 10 and 15 points or something. Yeah, because it wasn't that game for third. Yeah, if I'd won, I'd probably would have come third.
Because we were on the third-text table. He came third. I ended up dropping to 12th. But I was quite pleased with it.
It's my best tournament run today. Usually I win, lose the first one, win the second one, lose the third one. And then I kind of, the way I've bounced around. But that, the Oxford onslaught, which was really great to run by the did-cop, wall gaming club.
I managed to go 3 for 5, which I was really pleased with, because that was my tournament aim, which was to do that. And the armies I got beat by were Grey Knights and Kissed Oats. And it was just the move ability that my army lacked. The Grey Knights literally teleported off the half of the table.
I was on. I always forget they do that. Yeah, it sucks, doesn't it? Yeah.
And they have this ridiculous secondary where if they unit teleports and then kill something, they get five victory points. Wow. So what's the argument to do? Well, especially when you've got two years of cultists.
Yeah, left out unprotected. Not even that. You've kind of protected them. But then you, I just haven't got the model count to screen really well.
So you know, I dread not teleports into the opponent zone. They can see one cultist and zip the whole squad's gone. And you're like, all right. And again, I think that was like 90 points to 67 or something.
So it was a sound beat thing. It wasn't. But little things like that, I just hadn't. And that's not knowing, so when you play in a quite small kind of meta, I suppose, as we do here, you end up knowing the armies.
You play quite well. Yeah. But not. Yeah, that's it.
I think, as a community, we know what blooding talks quite well. Yeah. Black Legion, Deathguard, and a couple of other Necrons. Necrons.
We ran up all the way to see what the most played faction was. And it was Necrons and then Deathguard, the second. Everyone on Space Marines. Yeah.
So I think that's, I'm trying to get more tournament play. And I was hoping to go to one Saturday, but then I didn't apply soon enough. And then Space is filled up. So I'm not waiting less.
Things crossed. I'm a double pulled out. Well, four or five people need to pull out before I get to go. So it was a small covered outbreak I managed to get.
I managed to get tournament space. But I think playing more tournaments will really help. And I think that's what's really exciting about the league. It's quite a long time here we played.
Thanks to your effort, particularly, this is before you worked for Mr. Games of the Narrative side, we played a lot of Crusades. Yeah. And that was really fun.
That was good fun. And pushing the kind of narrative. And Crusades, I love that. I kind of want to go back to it.
But being able to take your units on a journey, and they level up and get better. And some of them get just outrageously good. Oh, they're stupid. You're Chaplin.
I played Sergio. Sergio, he's a really good player with my Dark Angels. And by the end of my first turn, I had an interrogate Chaplin. And I want to say, I think it was a 10-man tournament squad left, but she's still quite a lot points.
And you had to walk off the board into deployment zones. And I walked my tournament squad off the board. Well, I walked into his deployment, and they sat there and just kept firing their cycle and missiles at the tanks. And because a lot of hiss was flying, it took two turns for it to get off the board.
And my interrogate Chaplin reaped the back line. He killed, I think, six or seven units by himself. Wow. And I ended up winning the game because basically two units tabled an entire army by themselves.
And that was, I think a bit of an eye up when I switched to my chaos shop, you have to that, because in Crusade, you can end up with silly armies. I mean, especially the space marines, they shall know fear. You get like X9 of XP every time you don't fail morale test. Yeah.
Deathwing can't fail morale. They automatically pass morale. So after a handful of games, you're definitely terminators, which are silly levels. They were hitting on twos.
They were re-rolling ones. Yeah, because you would give them the plus one, but let's just go plus one. So yeah, six or fill no pain. Even just a squad of intercessors would be really good.
All right, a squad of heavy intercessors, that one of the dark angels genders you have to hunt for, and I managed to, in the fifth turn, pick off this fallen with a squad of heavy intercessors. They managed to shoot them down as he was running. And you get the option to upgrade them to a number of blade guard, or just give them the circle key word. So I had bog standard, I mean, grab a set of heavy and heavy ancestors, grab a set of their T5 three wounds.
Well, they had permanent transhuman. Which is insane. Oh, it's disgusting. Yeah.
You're looking at strength vibes. So it's a type of five, so durable anyway. And then with that permanent transhuman, it was just sort of silly level. So they were just sat in a backboard objective, hitting on twos because dark angels do when they don't move.
And then rerolling ones because they were veterans, forced to wound. And it just starts to get silly. And it wasn't, the problem we had to think here was we had loads of people playing two or three lists. So their army wasn't leveling up as regularly.
And also if you aren't able to get down every week, you would fall behind. But it's really fun. And I think that it'll be interesting to try and explore the league set up through in one narrative lens. Yeah, knowing that it can work, and we can almost lock people in.
Yeah. So at least semi-regular games with the same army, I think, on a slightly smaller scale. Because we've got 18 for the league. I think you don't need that many for crusade.
No, it'll be awesome. But I think half as much or 12, we have just 10 people. Because you don't need a pair off and stuff like that. I think that'll be a good.
And we could come home broad a little bit, so that rather than your army getting 12 upgrades at the end of the game, you maybe choose one for one unit. I think in a ways, we could try and mitigate the absurdity. I mean, there was a deathguard player. His army was putting out so much 30 mortal wins a turn.
I don't think he once played the objective, but he was tabling people. He went on the feet, didn't he? He did. I have big regrets about my play them really early on.
I took some tactical Marines to try and play the narrative. And it came down to five points or something like that. It was really, really small margins. And I kicked myself.
Whether or not I could have beaten the list, I don't know. But I just think, why the hell was there any time? It's power level. I could have taken intercessors for the set, and they're just so much better.
But yeah, you went on beating, I think, for 17 games, didn't lose one. Because even though you get that CP, you know CP, you can't spend enough CP to save yourself. Yeah, because people were ended up with the same amount. Yeah.
And it kind of led to a bit of a situation. That's why I started playing chaos with that point. Because my Dark Angels have gotten silly. I think I lost two out of 17 games or something.
It stops being fun at that point. For everybody, you know, not just for, you know, it's not like I'm sick of winning, because you're playing with a loaded deck. You're not playing that it's not a fair measurement. Because if your army is just hitting on two and reerling ones, nothing misses.
When everything is really durable and really killy, like death wing are, nothing dies. It doesn't matter if you've not got off deck, because you're not, you're not running a death guard or a death wing guard. You know, nothing will survive around the melee with you. Yeah, you're just kind of neverthing.
And that's not fun for anybody. No. You know, there are games where you can really play as you're kind of winning a turn two or three. Because you can't prep for crusade upgrades.
You can't write a list. And also with an entry crusade, you're kind of fixed in to buy your units at the start. And then you cycle through a kind of different to the league. It's not like you can cycle anything through.
And, you know, just walking you do against six attack bikes with multi-melters hitting on two. There's nothing you can do. And apparently the Devastated Doctrine's in there not as an AP5. So it's got silly.
But talking about the league, then, how many games have you done now? I played one game so far. I've got my second one tomorrow. OK.
So your first one, talk to your first game. First game was playing against the Sisters of Battle with my Black Legion. The general is playing, and my own mission is a lot less experienced. He doesn't play competitively.
Where he's, I mean, you and I have been to a tournament together outside of Michigan. We've taken part in, I think, three here. Two doubles and one singles. So I've maybe played in about seven or eight tournaments, I think.
And what I've had very mixed success is I say, usually winning. One, losing. Two, I did confirm that I missed it doubles, but I still am uncertain as to how that happened. But we won't get into that.
But he didn't have that competitive experience and had kind of, I think, listened to quite a few podcasts or watched a few YouTube videos and had to run competitive sisters list. And in turn one, he storms the mid-boards. He shot out this tiny, like, three-wounds character that he was like, this is like the murder character. The video I've watched says you can sling them into melee.
Kill everything. And that character charged a 10-man unit of chaos terminated without any of their buffs at that point. So he's turning one. He killed one of them.
That's pretty good going, to be fair. Yeah. And then the champion hit back by himself and crushed him with a chain fist. Or crushed her, I should say, with a chain fist.
And then following down, I resurrected the Terminator. But I took his ass and ate because he had my five characters. So that was me scoring three victory points straight off the bat. I then progressed into the mid-board with Abaddon, a fully buffed unit of time.
And so they now tough his five. Mine's one's a wounds. They've got a five. They'll feel no pain.
They get silly. They'll fight first. And Abaddon has got full re-rolls hitting wounds. So Abaddon, so they walked onto the mid-board and got possessed.
And my flanking unit to my warp talons and possessed a flue round to the side. And because he had overextended his front line. And this was, I think, where the game really came down. You know, you talked about the death pile for what I sent.
So I kind of wore him a grip at the end of 10-1. I killed about 1,000 points. Because he had just come into the mid-board and provided us, you know, we talked earlier about shooting lanes. Because sisters aren't really durable.
And I'm looking, Timothy's now gone, which was a godsend for a lot of armies. I've got this one CP strategy, which means that I get, I can increase the AP of a bolt around to AP1. So you terminate it. So you've got six, six, 24, about 32 shots, just off the one squad with four re-rolls to hit and wound.
I just picked a sister squad. They all, that's his big squad with multi-melters, post squad killed. You know, I've been on the terminators, then charged into squads of, I can't remember the call the sisters with shields and halberds. Blade guard.
I've been on kill all 10 of them by himself. Yeah, I've always had good success fighting those things. And the person controlling them is always out. Yeah, I think when you're thinking, you know, good by sister standard of melee is still, and that's not good in the context of 40k melee.
And because he had overextended, I meant that I was scoring points on second trees. I had no right to be scoring turn one. Like I shouldn't have been scoring long, long, long, which is taking objectives and killing things on objectives. I shouldn't have been scoring a Sassanate turn one.
But because of the fact, you know, he overextended and provided other shooting lanes, my army, which is a set of mid-board rolling, melee army, they saw melee turn one, and I killed 1,000 points. And then second turn, I killed a further, I want to say 800 and 900 points. Oh, we go. So I went second, and by the start of my third turn, he had one sisters character left in melee with Abaddon.
And he just picked him up. Yeah, he picked her up, sorry. He just picked him up, and that was it. I can roll for this.
But I only have to get one attack through and he is dead. Because of the nature of 40K, you then play out the rest of the game. Yeah. So we just kind of talked through what second trees I would score.
And I think I scored something like 97 points. It was a very high scoring game. Which is my highest scoring game. I've not quite met at 100.
But it was, you know, I think it was really good. Because we had a long talk, because we played the game a lot longer than it should. Because we talked through options he had and where he should be moving things. And because the competitive of 40K is just going out to table your opponent.
It's, you need to plan an army that will score it second as well, that will be able to survive long enough to score objectives, that will be able to kill enough to prevent your opponent scoring. But equally, you then need to play around your opponent's second trees. So he took defend the shrine and one where you kind of score points were falling actions. So it's only one I tell both of you.
A rubric Marines managed his way from the score performing the actions, killed them all. Scored long war. And denied him some seven points in the first time. So kind of shutting down your opponent's second just we had a long chat about how he could have shut down some of my second trees.
And then, you know, he moved things, moved them back. And we kind of, a bit more of a coaching game. Which I think is beneficial for all people. Yeah.
I think in a game like that when it's very obvious that you've won. That's a very clear winner. And in the league, you're not going to play each other again. So you're not giving away any secrets or anything like that.
I think, yeah, you can only learn from that. And he did. He's had his second game. And he has lost.
He scored a lot more. It was about 80 something to 80 something. It was a really, really close game. Whether or not that's because of my fantastic tutelage, I don't know.
I said it. I said it. Yeah. And by no means am I an extraordinary competitive player.
I don't think, you know, I think I can do all right. We were just talking earlier about the chaos win rate is down at about 38%. It was 50% pre-Arks of all, which is the new mission stuff that's dropped along with some points increases with chaos. But they're win rates by 38%.
And I managed to put in a 60% at a local two-day tournament. So I was quite pleased with that. I don't know how it will go in the rest of the league. I think that I had a very, very strong opening game.
But I'm quite concerned about my game tomorrow. I know we kind of talked about the towel players in our pod being a big concern. But I'm more concerned about the orcs, honest. Yeah.
There's power claws on the knobs. Can we scare you? I think that is what he has, right? I think it's...
I think he's going to be running Sweet Dog boys, commandos, two kill rigs, and a couple of characters. I don't know if you'll take Gazgirl. No. I think Gazgirl's a solid choice in the water games, but he's not going to be able to go to the top of the other one.
They've both got the wind cap, but have it on fights first. Yeah. So you'd put in two sets of wind stuff done, and then have it on again. But Gazgirl has a lot of...
He shows a lot on the golf pressure list. He does. But I don't think Oli runs him. I think my concern is that I have such a low model count.
It's very much like your blood angels. When I lose a unit, that hurts. Because chaos recently went up by quite a few points. Chaos was a 52nd faction, and there was a couple of legions.
So it's in the sub-factions, the average children and the creations of Byle, who were doing particularly well. And they, as a result of that, have kind of nerfed the whole faction, which, you know, is tricky because the Ten Man's Terminator brick, which is quite famous, now everyone knows what it is, what it does, what the buffs are, has gone up by about 30, 35 points, which isn't a lot, but that 35 point increase means that you then, you know, that's what a legionary is you bought, suddenly become a squad of cultists, because you can't afford that. And then Marcus and Esh went up, so my... And Abadon went up, so my competitive list went up by 120 points.
Which is huge. Yeah, that's a squad of upgraded legionaries, or a squad of raptors or an obliterator. You know, there's a lot you can do with that kind of points that I feel like I'm missing. Yeah, you're basically down a worthwhile unit, and you've not gained anything in return.
There were a couple of things. So legionary's got free war gear and free icons. Now the icons is cool because if you've got a mark on an icon, you become better like your corn is plus one strength if you charge, sorry, if you charge from heroic intervention, you've got an icon you just flat plus one AP. So your chainsaw's got AP2.
Now, I'm a contempt is gone. AP2 chainsaw's a big. Well, in combat zerkes, because they, for some reason, they count on an icon in chaos, which the rubric marines don't. AP3 chainsaw's.
Strength 5 or strength 6 on the charge. Wow. Which is big. And they, you know, if there's things like if they shot and move up an objective with their blood raid or blood lust or whatever, they complete an action.
So there's actually some incentive to kind of run combat zerkes and have them just sit on a mid-board objective, perform something like a small dominions. They get shot. You run 5 inches off the objective, but your action goes off and that's maybe 4 victory points. And so the icon's being free is big, but the marks are still 15 to 20 points.
Some of the tanks got free, free guns. You know, the Hellbroods have got access, like free multi-malto-hero flamer. I will shamelessly admit that I was converting my monopose Hellbrood the other day so he now has a heavy flamer glued to the underside of his forearm. But I mean, some of these chaos compasses are in decimators, which are about 100 quid on Forge World.
Yeah, they're not cheap things. They're really good on the table. Because I think when I was running my Defguard in Crusade, I just used the award ox. Yeah.
Mostly the same base, I think. But I think there'll be a push to get that, like, torment legal. Yeah, and I think that's the concern. If you go to a local tournament, you could get a really cool tournament organizer that's just like, I appreciate this is 100 pounds model.
You've built something that looks the same, is roughly the same size and outline. Absolutely go and run it. Or they just go. No.
And I don't know, because I think some people are quite keen to come down on that chases, that people don't like this. Every tournament I've been to with chaos, I get asked, are you running every children? Or are you running creations of Byle? And my army is paying to Black Legion.
Yeah. It's the expectation that if you're at a tournament, you are trying to chase the meta. And I'm very clear. No, I'm not.
Black Legion was the first 40K army I ever played. The only reason I didn't get them when I returned to the hobby a year and a half ago to years, might be coming to the T-years soon, was that they were an institution codex. And I didn't want to be playing with an out-bit at a real set. Dark Angels were the last faction I bought before I left the hobby.
So I thought I would pick up with Dark Angels. So Black Legion means a lot to me. I've been on my favorite 40K character. In fact, I talk about it too much.
The group chat stops talking whenever I start talking about him now. They let him fanboy, which is funny. But there's an expectation that you are going to chase out a meta. And you've got to play as rocket to events with armies painted like Dark Angels, but they're actually an ultramarine successor or an iron hand successor.
It doesn't really sit right with me. Yeah. Well, I think we talked about that. I talked about that with Ryan in the last day with Dr.
Nes. Just, if you've got to paint an army in a particular way, you're messing so much time. Just try to make that army work. Or I don't know.
I'm with you. If you paint an army, Black Legion. They're Black Legion. If you paint an army, ultramarine.
They are ultramarine. There's you shot yourself from the foot there. If you want a different army, you're going to have to put your money where your mouth is and buy and paint. I think there's a lot to be said for, you know, if you aren't committed, just make up your own.
Make up your own success and chapter. I mean, there's some really cool stuff. I had just made up my own one when I was 13 before I left the hobby. You know, you look back and you're like, was the sons of slaughter really a cool name?
Or was that like a 13 year old guy? That's really cool. They're going to go back on with a red trim. And then you're realizing that's deaf company, isn't it?
When you're young, you think that's like the most original idea anyone has ever had. And they had a really cool rule. I think it was fourth edition. Where in space, you could take a name to character and use them in a successor just and give them a name.
So I was running against Knuckle Kniston. The southern enders, you've got the spear. You've got the spear. I know the one you were talking about.
So I was running him because relic blades became a thing. And that was really cool. So that was really great to come up with your own successor chapter. And that felt really fun and thematic.
If I was just more concerned about chasing a meta, I would just be painting them in black and just saying, you know, this is whoever, or green, neon green. If you were really into that, I think there are ways around that. You might miss your opponents off at local games. I mean, I don't know how it would go down here if you just rocked up with...
Yeah, these are my pink space marines. They're in different factions every week, depending on who I'm playing. Oh, you've got a lot of tanks out there. They're iron hands this week.
I think that would be people the wrong way because I think here we... So the stores credits are really wonderful, we can prioritize fair play. And everyone's really apologetic when the game goes really badly. No one's out to...
even in the context of the league, no one's out to humiliate anybody. No one's to be that guy. Which I think is really good and seems to be quite rare, especially in a competitive scene. You get bigger tournaments and you hear these stories of these dickish top players.
Who's having fun there? Are they actually having that much fun? Yeah, we've all had bad experiences. One of the ones I went to against a demons character, he got the AP of his weapons wrong.
It was a new codec, so it only been out for about two weeks or something. So this kind of bit of leeway you would allow, but it was some quite big game changing stuff. I mean, the same sort is AP5, it's very different to AP4, especially with armor and contempt. So I'd lost some five terminators to Bellicor, and somebody then came to the table and was going, that's not right, the sort's AP4.
And he said, I do want to reroll the most recent saves, and I did save, but what about the other five or six that you've just killed across the last two turns? I think it was Demonets as well, they fought Abaddon and he got the AP wrong on that. And Abaddon died to them. I did only fail one save, or one too many.
Sure. And that meant that Abaddon died, Kairos Fateweaver, who is a horrible character, by the way, gets plus one to psychic test for every turn, so in the fifth turn he's a plus five. It is ridiculous. Yeah.
And Abaddon charged him and took him down to a single wound in one round of the melee, and with the Demon save, that was quite a good showing. And then Abaddon dies, and the game swings massively because that's your biggest hit that goes down. I could have healed him and then kind of start to clear a bit of board, but getting the AP wrong on a couple of units then becomes a little less forgivable. And there's part of you that quite wrongly, because I think that's the heat of the moment you think of what they're doing on purpose.
And I don't suspect he was. He's an experienced player, he performed quite well at London GT. He was a good player, again I don't know if I could have won that game, but it's those losses where you kind of... It's just like a bad taste.
It sounds the whole day, you come away focusing on the one bad game and not the two really fun ones you had. And it's not for maybe a few days when you've calmed down that you kind of go, yeah that was actually really fun. I've already signed up to the next one, and he probably didn't mean it, but it's just when you get things wrong in a competitive format. That tournament was fun.
It was when we realised that we kind of stumbled into the London GT practice ground. London GT has how many players? It's hundreds, isn't it? It's hundreds of players across two days.
It's the biggest three days, I think. It's the biggest European tournament. It's massive. And half the people there were going to the...
Yeah, and the guy that won, who I had a really good chat with at the most recent tournament I went to, and he got me onto his Dark Angels competitive, Facebook group, he played Dark Angels. We had a good conversation about the state of the game. He came 11th in the London GT. That's...
And the guy that won the Coventry GT won the Oxford onslaught. He was in Boon Hammer, he was in Ospek's tactics, huge... Huge, huge... One of the kind of news players at the time, it's like the times of the one world.
But it was, you know, there's some really big names, but those guys were really cool, like really friendly. People were playing them having a really good time, even though it was kind of over by time three. And there was a lot of coaching and those really important conversations that I think are really important for Warhammer. I think we as a community are quite good at that as well, that we kind of will talk people through.
We're not gonna have to kind of got your moments. Nobody wants to sneakily beat somebody. No. Oh, yeah, but now I'm gonna do this.
And you're like, oh. And you see all these lists of these are the questions you should ask going into any game. And there's like 10 questions you should ask. These are questions you should ask before you shoot a unit or charge a unit.
And I just think, you know, what horrible place for the game to be in. Do you have the question of everything? Yeah. And some of that's the rules below it's massively complicated.
I find transparency is really beneficial. You know, I've got access to the advanced and charge strategy. And the advanced and charge prayer, which makes having on the tenonators pretty lethal because they're slow moving things, but if they can maybe go from five inches to nine inches or even like you roll well, eleven inches. That's game changing because that kind of maneuverability on units that lethal will clear objectives.
It will really, really shape the boards. But being upfront with your opponent about that changes the way they play because they're sat there going, right. So if you roll well in advance, this is where they can get to. And this is a good charge.
And you actually see opponents kind of mapping their models out to try and miss out the charge range. You end up with almost, you know, a 20 inch circle around the midboard where people are kind of not wanting to go because that's threat range. And without that transparency, and when you know you're saying, well, I've been on these three wings of phase and I can heal him with this cycle, people are actually going, I'm just going to follow that on. Oh, yeah, whenever I played it, I've just kind of that.
I think we played the first game. First game where more he went into it, more teary went into it. And it's just like, oh, yeah, he definitely. Even without the rerolls.
Yeah, yeah, because I turned off your rerolls and I still just got just. That's the demon prima. It's a demon prima. He's a court of my army.
He shouldn't die like that. No. But whatever, like, but since then, I just ignore him. It's safer to, I mean, you either have to commit to killing him and put a full turn of things into him or if you've got those sneaky characters that work around the winter.
You go for it. But if not, and this is the other conversation having the people, like you can charge him. You won't kill him. No.
And he will kill you. All you're doing is kind of throwing models into the meat grinder. And yeah, if you've got it in you, you know, if you've got a strategy where you can maybe charge him and kill him in my time, go for it. Because once he's down, my army starts to fall apart and you were saying this on the last episode, at least the last one episode, it could pick us.
My army runs very much on kind of four characters or three pivotal characters. One is just their first psychic actions. When the character starts to die, the list starts to fall apart. And that's, you know, I think it's the way my list functions is I think it's a well written list.
But to the point of which, and this is the problem of chaos around, I have to spend five of my command points before the game starts out of my six. Just to make the list competitive, I've then got to sit and go, right, all of my psychic powers go on one unit. And all of my buffs go on the same unit. And that's why the chaos points increases felt really unfair to me.
There was absolutely a problem with the chaos terminators. You know, I played games where I've been tabled except the terminators and have it on. I've still got 10 left on the board and have it on. I've lost the game, but I've still got 700 points and my opponent's got 200 points.
There was a problem with them. I think stopping them taking the black rune in a damnation, which is their minus one to wounds and I've just learned. Yesterday, sort of makes people suffer pearls of the war more often. If they'd maybe taken that away, they would have been in a different place.
I think the age of Sigmar's got a really good balance where you can only really stack like one strategy or one buff on a unit. And two rules can't affect the same dice roll. So six to explode that does mortals, you have to pick. I think from reading correctly which one you're going to use.
That sounds right. And that I think means that you don't end up in really silly situations where you can stack so much buffs on something it becomes obscene. Yeah, I do like Sigma for that. It just does streamline things because you're only buffing one thing.
You're only doing a small number of things at turn. Whatever it says on the sheet is what you're doing. I'm sure it'll more competitive level. We might get a totally wrong.
I'll be a Sigmar listener. But I think that's why the chaos is kind of nerfed. It's quite frustrating for me because you guys lost the unit. And the list doesn't function without certain things.
And with the league, one of the great things about the league is the ability to tailor lists. You can write a list that will seriously play with your opponents army in quite a nasty way. Or you can shift week to week depending on what sort of strategy you think is going to be pending. And I think Ollie the York player, that's nice for me.
I think he's really, really good at writing lists. He's really good at kind of reflecting on what everything he's doing. His list and his towel list was a really great example of that. And he's just played a game against chaos nights where he paddles them.
No offense to the chaos nights player if you listen to this. But it was a really good game for the Orcs. And because he came in with the game plan and actually stopped playing really well. My worry is that because the chaos list kind of functions on like you need to spend 15, 16, even 1800 points at some times to have that functionality, you've got so little room to play around with.
And everything is so expensive chaos. It feels more expensive than space marines, right? You're wrongly. They feel like a very expensive army.
I just haven't got that. Particularly the points increase. Previously I would have had 120 extra points to play around with. And then that list tailoring becomes more of a thing.
But I think with League I'm interested to see how I will work around certain lists with the towel list. I will just choose violence. Yeah. If they're in melee something's been horribly wrong for them.
And I can pick fast moving units which I do have to get into melee and start to play a shot if successful. The Orcs however are fast and really lethal in melee. There is tons of them. Yeah.
And in the kill rigs there's tons of them. You think I've killed the rig or I've killed the truck. Outcome. Yeah.
Alright, here we go. What's your goal for the League? I would like to win three out of five. I think that would be a good place.
That seems to be beating the average win rate of players. I mean in an ideal world I would love to win the whole thing. Not lose a single game. But I don't know how realistic that is.
I just say I struggle on six objective boards. I've not really successfully found the workout for that. Chaos struggle with the range. They're not a shooting army.
So the knights will be quite tricky because I need to get into melee with the game. And again like Abbot on and then suddenly it's hitting the night, then I will go down. But you've got to get there. I've got to have enough stuff left on the board that I have the ability for those big heavy units to go and do that thing.
So I think three out of five games are really great. I would like to win it but I think everyone is also there to win it. I had a really successful first game. I was hoping to put off playing the Orcs until the end so my confidence wasn't knocked.
But I think I'll have a really, I think having fun, that sounds really cheesy but it's important. I, you know, saying I'd like to win every game I would not like to win every game at the expense of nobody here ever wanting to play you again. Of course. And that, you know, that's not what you want.
You don't want people to feel cheated by you. You don't want those got your moments. So yeah, three out of five are good. And yeah, I think it's difficult to tell where people are at.
I think that's exciting about 40K. You know, I played the sisters list them one by 60 points. And then he's gone on and played a really close game with a towel list. That doesn't mean I'm going to beat the towel by 60 points.
No. Some matchups are more favorable. Yeah, of course. But it would be interesting.
But it was weird from the first week. Because it would narrow like week two of the league. It was very decisive games across the board week one. And now week two, they're worse.
They look up with the size of games. But I think overall the matches were a lot closer. Yeah, you and I won my four points. So I've won one last one.
My goal is to win two. The first one. Yeah. He's a really good player.
He's a really good player. Yeah. I just got shot off the board. Shot off the board.
Yeah. It's the 60s or AP like 25 or something. It may as well be. It's the...
So that's six hits. That's 60 wounds. That's now 12 more wounds. Kind of nonsense the all-down.
No one's rolled the dice. He's just picking out the strands of fate. And you're just taking models off the board. And getting really confused.
Also when it comes to the saves. It's like, I'm going to roll until I fail. And I need to save. And then I'll just use that.
Yeah. Alright, well fine. Hey, guys. I hate Miracle Dice strands of fate.
Look, guys. I think anything that removes the... That seemingly random element of the game. You know, you shouldn't be in a place where somebody rolls badly.
And can just ignore that. Like a re-roll is a re-roll. You know, like... We've still got a roll of the dice.
Yeah, yeah. You know, you know, we know, we've just got a re-roll. A re-roll of a one is always a one. Whereas just being able to pick up a dice and go, that's a six now.
That's just one of those unfortunate ones. I might be saying that because I've never played an army. That's access to them. I'm sure if I was an all-down player, I'd be doing it.
Yeah, yeah. It's counter-balanced as this. It might be a balanced thing that you put a mechanic like that in the game. To help, but I'm sure you'd agree, all that needs.
They don't need that. They don't really need that. Yeah, playing against the gene-steer was really good. Yeah, they've come out swinging.
I was metamunday, which is kind of the bible, I suppose, of competitive warhammer. They're one of the best factions in Arc's environment at the moment. Weird. They look like they should be squishy.
They're really not. And they're getting mellow. They're better in mellow than they have a right to be. Yeah, and Smithy's has...
It's a custom cult, so it's got like a mini transhuman. So you can't ever wound it on a two. And my blood age was where I'm getting plus one to wound. It's wasted.