I'm not a big fan of assault, Haven't been since I shelved my Chaos Space Marines (due to their lack of competitiveness being compounded by 5th Edition, Codex Creep and the fact that apparently everybody else writes Marines better than Gav Thorpe).
I briefly became interested in winning by punching stuff again with my Cavalry Daemons list. This one to be exact. Unfortunately that list is inherently flawed because Daemons have several almost insurmountable inbuilt problems.
1) Your effectively fighting with half an army for your first turn.
2) There's a 33% chance it will be the wrong fucking half.
3) Any army who can effect your reserves makes this even worse.
4) Your best ranged weapon is only S8.
5) If your opponent has Land Raiders and remembers to move them, your only going to destroy one with a lot of luck, 2 with divine intervention and 3...well...never, if we're being honest.
As anybody who knows me will tell you I have a somewhat rocky relationship with the Dice Gods. They have an uncanny habit of deciding that a 1 to hit is all I'm going to have for 5 turns but that all my opponents vehicle damage rolls should be 5's or 6's, lol. Then occasionally they'll give me all my luck at once and I'll end up utterly destroying someone in the most unimportant game I play that month...but I digress...
So most of my Marine armies win by shooting stuff so I'm as guilty as anybody of what I'm about to whine about. But It's both the games I've lost hideously and won in the same 'only one of us is having fun' fashion that's decided the theme of this post.
Some examples so it looks like I thought about this a bit...
Imperial Guard.
If a well constructed IG army goes first your going to be in the shit quite quickly. They have ranged firepower a plenty that can be easily improved through orders, Valks and Vendettas that can deliver 3 Meltagun troops units into your lap first turn and the ability to both improve their own reserve rolls and fuck up yours. Going first or 2nd they have many ways to annoy.
Blood Angels.
5th ed. made vehicles a lot tougher, BA rhino variants can move extremely quickly and with the addition of smoke launchers cover save take a lot of firepower to destroy. Combine this with the ease with which you can give 'Feel no Pain' and 'Furious Charge' to anything you damn well please and you have an army that can do the old fashioned 'Rhino Rush' with remarkable efficiency. Also with 'Descent of Angels' they don't even need the Rhinos to be in your face on turn 2 with no way to counter them at all without IG style 'Bubblewrap' units.
Tau.
Tau can only do gunlines so I might be unfair including them in this list, after all if a Tau player is looking at the assault stats of a non-Kroot unit he''s probably about to lose.
Space Wolves
You can easily cram 9 Las/Plas Razorbacks and support units into a SW list which again does a lot of damage from your first turn salvo...
I could go on and on with similar examples but the basic point is this...
90% of competitive lists will pwn you if they go first and are in fact designed to do so.
So how do we counter this trend for boring games where you might as well just shake hands after the first turn 'roll-off' and go and have a beer or 3 instead of playing a game which will just make one of you frustrated and the other one feeling the need to apologise.
Lets look at the potential solutions then.
1) If you can't beat 'em join 'em - Build your own army that works on the same principles and hope you go first instead. At least you'll be the one having fun 50% of the time.
2) Bubble-wrap - Protect your own important units with expendable crap. Sadly this only works against lists that 'Alpha strike' you up close and requires you to actually have bubble-wrap units which unfortunately applies only to Tau (Kroot), Imperial Guard (Infantry Platoons) and possibly Tyranids (Gaunts and the like).
3) Reserves - If your not there he can't hit you, right. Again this plan also has it's problems, If your against guard they can effect your reserve rolls for the cost of a whole 30 points. Blood Angels armies can get to you anyway through sheer speed of movement and turning up piecemeal against an army designed to cripple entire armies is never going to end well.
4) 'Castling', 'Turtling' or whatever you call it in your area - Put your highest armour at the front, hide the rest of your army behind and wait and see what survives. Guard can deal with this by dropping big fuck-off blast templates into your lap as they can't really miss if your in a big clump and Blood Angels have the 'Blood Lance' psychic power.
And of course there's the times when you thought you where going to get to go first and your opponent seizes the initiative...
So the question I'm asking is this,
Is a 40K game between 2 competitive lists fun any-more if either or both are of the 'Alpha Strike' variety *?
* I mean fun for both of you. Obviously if your opponent is the kind of cock who microwaves his dice, brings his fan-club to games and rolls his dice without actually telling you what the roll is for till after he's seen the result then 'fun' probably wasn't going to be happening anyway, lol.
Editors note : It would be nice if anybody who comments could avoid using the phrase 'Leafblower'. BoLS did not invent the 'Alpha Strike' list or IG fucking gunlines despite what they'd like you to believe and if your going to give your army a nickname try and make it a cool one for fucks sake.
From a personal point of view I find competitive lists a chore and not much fun. Okay some can be fun, I liked Mikes imperial fists and his valks, and I guess you could almost include my nurgle force too but I don't think I’m a competitive player.
ReplyDeleteanyway I guess they could be if you enjoy a challenging game and are roughly equal in skill and list writing as you said there are many ways to counter alpha strike, with the battlefield roughly even in that respect I guess it could be fun.
I do however wish there were more casual games and less heavy competitive lists, after all 40k wasn't and isn't designed for tournaments. Maybe some more themed lists, by which I mean appropriate scheme and style of fighting to a fictional army, where you give self imposed restrictions based on what would be available. Less tweaking, obviously you should alter complete failures of units but not to the extent of absolute efficiency
Campaigns maybe a way to go or at least a tale of X gamers with less emphasis on how effective a unit is but more on what looks cool
Anyway I’m off to clear leaves using my leaf blower
I disagree about 40k not being designed for tournaments. You might have had a case back in 3rd or 4th, but 5th is very well balanced and the newest crop of Codices have a lot of viable builds and playstyles that are fluffy and powerful.
ReplyDeleteIf you build an army that isn't reliant on 1 or 2 units getting up in somebody's grill, alpha strikes aren't as scary. Protective measures such as finding cover and reserving are easy to do and boosted movement from outflanking, deep striking, scouting, and the like is equally viable.
The fear of the alpha strike is one of those internet things. In real life, a lot of that dakka will miss or fail to damage, a lot more than you think.
@Mark - have to agree with Chumbalaya that 40K is much more viable for tournaments with 5th Ed. combined with the higher standard or writing seen in the newer codices.
ReplyDelete@Chumbalaya - I wrote that post a few days ago after a few particularly annoying games where going 2nd, combined with shockingly bad (for me) and ridiculously good (for my opponents) dice led to a selection of rather frustrating games. I wasn't actually going to post it till I read it again and thought that despite coming across a bit whiny at times it at least made (imo) a few good points about counter methods.
yeah 5th ed is more viable competition wise but still has patchy areas between rule books and codex, i think its all too easy to forget sometimes that originally warhammer (and 40k) were designed for cool and fun games, and the most important rule still states this, the rules aren't rockcrete and its up to the individual. but thats all off point really.
ReplyDeleteand yes as we have all mentioned there are plenty of counters to alpha strike, how many you include is up to the individual but everyone has reserves availble with normally another form of deployment too.
very good point about the deadly units of killy being essential to battle plans and ultimatly vulnerable to alpha strike, it does lead to the tough choice in army desgin and counter measures.
I am very sorry for that game you have mentioned I will fully agree with everything wanted to go my way even down to the fact that i seized 2 games running
ReplyDelete@Dave - It's not a problem. It's just that me, you, Mike, Flello and a few others are so evenly matched now that who goes first seems to be the deciding factor in most of our games so I thought the subject was worthy of a post.
ReplyDeleteI had a game today in which my opponent conceded on turn 4 after I was basically walking through what was left of his army with my Terminators while torrenting the rest from afar with my Predators, ironically he won the roll-off but made me go first.
my luna wolf drop pod list is an alpha strike list, but due to hte nature of it going first or second doesnt really factor into it (except that against stupid oponents going 2nd makes it easier)
ReplyDeleteyou know, i did have an awesomely long comment to put here but now it seems somewhat "covered by everyone else" lol
@Mike - Post the comment anyway. At worst it will just up the comment count and make my Blog seem more popular ;-)
ReplyDeleteDid you do any more work on that 'Kill Points' article you were working on, because I'm happy to post it when your done?