40k: Black Templar Rumors and Analysis

A fresh new batch of Black Templars rumors are circling the web, and they seem a bit more specific than the last round, so it’s worth going through them and analyzing, I think.  Let’s see what we got…

“Relic Dreadnoughts.”  “Chaplain Dreadnoughts.”

My guess would be that these things are one in the same.  Or maybe the relic dread is a Reclusiarch type upgrade to the basic Chaplain that creates some kind of Litanies of Hate Bubble for the army.  Would be a cool replacement for the Preferred Enemy we are sure to be losing, if not an overly competitive option.

“Land Raider spam army.”

The only way I can see this happening is if they get a deep discount on Land Raiders for Crusader Squads AND there is something like Blessed Hull/Ceramite Plating standard.  No one (in 5^th Edition) is going to spend 250 points on a Troop transport that gets blown up at the first sight of an IG trooper with a meltagun.

“Named Emperor’s Champion.”

Same rumor as last time.  Hopefully he has some useful army-wide special rule, because spending more points for a more killy CC character is more or less useless.

“11 point Initiates, 6 point Neophytes.”

Now this is exciting, and certainly supports the army concept they seem to want.  What would the drawback be to justify a deep points decrease?  My guess, and this is purely speculation, would be replacing And They Shall Know No Fear with Righteous Zeal/Rage, and base leadership 7 stat.  That would be interesting.

“Named character on bike with eternal warrior.”

The idea of a lance wielding grail knight type character is cool, and I already have the model built.  Though at this point the idea of super killy close combat characters that don’t have any army-wide buffs frankly bores me.

“Land Raiders that get another turn to live after they are blown up.”

This is a good idea to make them useful as assault terminator transports, but probably not going to be cut it to make them useful for Crusader transports.

“Helbrect makes Sword Brethren scoring/troops.”

This could be awesome or garbage.  The parry rule from the last rumors didn’t make me explode with excitement, though.

“Assault ramp Rhinos.”

This is the wish list of every Templar player, and if true means that you won’t be seeing Land Raiders being spammed unless 6^th Edition makes light mech crap.  If we could assault out of Rhinos now BT would be the best assaulty marine army in the game, so something makes me think either this isn’t true or 6^th edition will make Rhinos less desirable.

The rumors are starting to actually make me look forward to the new book moreso than fearing it and losing the good stuff we have currently.  The elephant in the room though, is 6^th Edition, which could change the game significantly enough to make a rumor that appears awesome in 5^th Edition to be a non-factor, or even a drawback.

40k Theory: Evaluating in the Dark

Nurglitch poses a good question, how do we determine whether something unique is also good?

Before I answer that, let address one more point he makes.  He indicates that there are units which mathhammer on paper very well, but are useless on the table top.  I presume he is talking about things like Plasma Cannon Devastators, which kill marines by the handful on paper but no one in his right mind would actually play in a tournament.  

Doesn't take an expert to evaluate these guys.

Both of these questions have a simple solution: playtesting.  If a new codex has a quirky unit that defies mathhammer but you suspect it may still be good, by all means playtest it.  Frankly, while I can think of several units that mathhammer well, but in actuality rather suck, I struggle to come up with a list if units that mathhammer poorly but play well on the table top.  The closest I can come up with are force multipliers like Sanguinary Priests, or Haemonculi or Vulcan etc.

Playtesting isn’t really the answer anyone is looking for, though.  We crave theorycraft, so let’s theorycraft.

For Imperial armies we can see they all have a familiar skeleton for the most part.  Even the most radical departure from Codex: Space Marines (GK I suppose?) still fit into the framework.  Certain things will be true across the platform.  Barring a tremendous points discount, Heavy Bolter Devastators won’t be worth the FoC slot.  OK, we can handle those kinds of comparisons with ease.  Something completely different like Mephiston?  I would argue he mathhammers rather well, but besides that point, an experienced 3+ armor save player can make an educated guess how he will fit in with the known framework of a 3+ list.  Subsequent playtesting will reveal whether Mephiston is better or worse than predicted, but I can’t imagine a sober, thoughtful analysis by an experienced MEQ player would be too far off of reality in either direction.

For Xenos armies, it is a bit trickier; since we don’t have a quick plug and play mental framework for ‘how it’s supposed to be,’ especially when the book gets a radical re-design like Necrons.  A lot of Necron wargear is geared for close combat, but on the surface Necrons appear to be garbage at close combat.  So just how good is all that close combat stuff then?  Is Necron close combat greater than the sum of its parts?  My guess is mathhammer can answer that, honestly.

How about weird stuff like a IC who gives you a 4+ chance to seize the initiative?  Or wargear that makes the first turn always nightfighting?  That stuff IS hard to quantify in numbers or theory.  Having the first turn, for example, is only as good as it is important to the army.  We know from experience the Dark Eldar benefit greatly from that.  Space Wolves don’t particularly rely on it.  With a new codex we don’t have the experience to make a perfectly accurate snap decision.  But for things like that, we can make assumptions based on things we CAN mathhammer, like the defensive ability of the army.  Or the type of long range firepower that benefits from getting the first turn.  And so on.

To sum up, nothing will replace actually playing with the stuff to come up with a good evaluation.  But the gut instinct of an experienced player, combined with mathhammer can give us a good starting point, even if it isn’t perfectly accurate.  A good player may not be able to tell you how deep the water is just by sticking his toe in, but he should be able to tell you the temperature.

40k Theory: Being Unique Isn't Everything (Or Anything)

When people crack a new codex, or try to build a list from an old codex, the first thing they should look for is where the efficient anti-tank and anti-infantry units are located, and start from that core.  Disagree if you wish, but that is the best and most basic starting point for every good 5th Edition list.  On some level, this is common sense and something you probably do subconsciously.

But a new groupthink has emerged in the 40k blogosphere/forumsphere.  I will refer to it as the 'Cult of Uniqueness."  A new player writes an email to an influential blogger asking him how to build a 'proper ______ army.'  The groupthink response is, "identify what you can do with that codex that no one else can do, or what you can do more cheaply than anyone else, and build around that."  In essence, "find what makes your codex unique and focus on doing that."

Psyflemen are the dream: cheap, efficient, and unique

My contention is that this is highly misleading, and just as often wrong as it is right.  First some hypothetical examples, and then some real examples.

Imagine a hypothetical MEQ codex (let's say Iron Warriors Legion) where you can take a decidedly suboptimal unit, like a Assault Cannon/DCCW equipped Dreadnought for something insanely cheap like 85 points.  We can all agree that 85 points for a Dreadnought is too cheap, regardless of weapons.  Someone following the CoU would say, "nobody else can bring Dreadnoughts that cheaply, so you should bring 3 of those for your Elites."  This is almost certainly incorrect.  We don't know what other elite choices are available at what cost, but as this unit provides neither efficient anti-tank nor efficient anti-infantry, there is no utility provided.    Just because you can do something cheaply or uniquely is irrelevant if that something provides no utility to your army.

Not especially useful even at 85 points

A good real world example would be Codex Dark Angels.  People who subscribe to the Cult of Uniqueness will tell you that the only good builds are Deathwing and (to a lesser extent) Ravenwing.  Why?  Because they do things that no other codex can do.  If you press them further, they will explain that Dark Angels other options are not efficient compared to more recent codices.  While the second point is true to an extent, the first point isn't a reason to do anything.

Yes, Dark Angels are the only ones who can bring TH/SS Cyclone Missile Launcher Terminators as troops.  This is very unique.  But is it useful?  Not necessarily.  Deathwing armies lack cheap melta units, and have don't even have very great long range anti-tank either.  Space Wolves find your 10-12 missile shots and 6-9 melta shots per turn in a 2k list to be quaint.  Essentially, the Dark Angels have a very unique thing their codex can do, but that unique thing isn't actually that competitive.  I would go so far as to argue that a top notch player would have an easier time winning a GT with a Dark Angels tactical squad based list than Double Wing, all things being equal.  Deathwing is a fun and unique list, but it isn't great at anti-tank or anti-infantry and thus isn't great.

It isn't good enough to be unique or cheap: you have to be useful (defined by me as being good at anti-armor or anti-infantry) in order to be competitive.

There are times when uniqueness/cheapness merges with utility, and these are the truly outstanding 40k units.  Long Fangs.  Tervigons.  Black Templar tank hunting shooty terminators.  Psyflemen Dreadnoughts.  SM Dakka Predators.  Ork Lootaz.  Sanguinary Priests.  This list goes on, I'm sure you can think of many, many more.  The point is, these units are not only unique and (relatively) cheap, they are also very good at what they do.  You don't have to be unique to be competitive, you just have to be useful.  Useful is a must, cheap is a plus, unique is a bonus.

One last word.  Cheap isn't even especially great.  Many people complain that Unit 1 from Codex A costs more than the same exact unit from Codex B.  People in the Cult of Uniqueness will say that players of Codex A should shun that unit, since someone else "does it better."  You are playing 40k, not keeping up with the Joneses.  If Unit 1 is the only thing, or the best thing, in Codex A at killing tanks you need to bring Unit 1, even if Codex B can take the same unit 10 points more cheaply.  When building a list for Codex A, you shouldn't spend any time worrying about the contents of Codex B.

Comments?

P.S. Happy new year everybody, I look forward to a fun year of hobbying and blogging about it.

Real Life: 2011 Year in Review

Plugging my cycling/training blog.  Wrote an article summing up my year of training and racing.  It was a fun year.  Please check it out. 

Regurgitated Content: Orcs and Goblins

Over the past month or so I've been a busy bee by starting to write some Armies in 8th articles at 3++ for Kirby.  The first army I wanted to do was Orcs and Goblins because it's an army I know somewhat well, and because it's an army that 40k players looking to get into Fantasy might be initially attracted to.

I had already written a rather lengthy OnG review here when the book first dropped, as the kids say.  Now with several months experience under our collective belts I wrote the articles for 3++ from scratch.  Some of my ideas changed, and some initial opinions were confirmed.  There were some people who told me that I didn't have a clue about Fantasy (which I find to be typical of ANY 40k blogger who dares to mention Fantasy, my guess is these folks are adult children) but for the most part the comments from people who disagreed with me on one unit or another were pretty constructive.

I'm sure most of you who stop by this blog already read 3++, but for those of you that might have missed my OnG series there, please check it out.  If anyone has any comments about the series as a whole, I'd love to hear them.

Part One

Part Two

Part Three

Part Four

Part Five

If I don't get another post in before the calendar turns, have a happy new year.

40k Theory: The Razor's Edge

Originally posted on 3++, but I felt like re-posting it here on the off chance that someone who reads my blog managed to miss it on Kirby's...

In and Out Burger: how to NOT be on the razor's edge

As some of you (translation: none of you) may be aware, I am a racing cyclist and something of a fitness/nutrition nut.  There is a concept I’ve been thinking about lately from the endurance sports world that crosses over to 40k list building, oddly enough. 

In endurance sports, there is a concept called “the razor’s edge.”  In short, the idea is that in running/cycling/triathlon etc. you want to weigh as little as possible and have the least body fat possible.  Mostly because the less you weigh, the faster you are, especially in areas with hills (or even mountains) because gravity is only second to wind resistance in forces to be overcome.  In the racing world, you measure your watts of power output divided by your weight in kilograms to get a good idea of your relative speed compared to other athletes. 

Enough about that.

There is a downside to weight loss.  Any weight loss is going to come at the expense of strength.  Even if you lose a pound of fat off your body, there is going to be some muscle that is lost too.  And the less fat you have to lose, the more muscle that you lose when you try to keep losing weight.  So in the mad rush to lower the weight side of the power/weight ratio, you can lose power and end up making no gains, or worse yet, losing ground.

Additionally, if your body fat percentage gets too lean, or your weight gets too low, you start having medical issues.  Your immune system gets much weaker and you can catch flu or become unable to fight infection.  For women, you stop having your menstrual cycle and you start developing… masculine traits.  All bad.  So the irony is that your peak performance is so close to a breakdown.  For an elite cyclist, his peak performance might be 130 pounds and 6% body fat.  But if he was to drop to 127 and 5%, he could start physically breaking down.  Many a Tour De France racer, or Iron Man aspirant has been knocked out of their event due to a cold they couldn’t shake because of too low bodyfat.

Hence the term, razor’s edge.  The ideal place for these athletes to be is on the razor’s edge, where on one side they are unhealthily lean, and on the other side they are too fat.  They try to be right on the razor’s edge of ideal performance.  Since it would be impossible to maintain the razor’s edge indefinitely, athletes practice periodization, so that they schedule their diet and training to ‘peak’ right at their target event.  Thus they only put themselves “at risk” for a brief period of time, hopefully short enough to win their event and avoid any side effects.

So after all that banality, you might be interested in how it applies to Wargaming.  I see a direct parallel between the goal to be at peak performance by being as lean as possible and in having an MSU list that is as tuned as can be and maximum optimal.  In both concepts, the goal is to trim the fat and be a lean, mean, fighting machine.  In both concepts it can be taken too far, to have serious negative effects. 

In 40k, an overtuned list can make bad metagame calls.   As some of you know, the terrain and rules of the NOVA gave a lot of cover saves.  Probably a lot more than many people play on the local level, and thus, long range firepower was not as scary (or important) as many people might have expected.  Additionally, close combat was a fair bit more important that many people expected it to be.  Had someone over-optimized their list based on their pre-NOVA conception of the game, they could have brought way too much long range shooting, not enough melta, and not enough defenses against enemy close combat units.  Many a Guard player didn’t have quite the tournament they expected to have going in.

I’ve been a big proponent of playtesting scientifically to tweak your list, and the biggest x-factor in scientific playtesting is your playtest gauntlet.  If you test against 5 lists (assuming them to be the most popular tournament archetypes) and you over optimize to beat them, you may run into a situation where you don’t encounter any of them at the actual tournament and you find your ‘optimizations’ were actually less than optimal.  That said, I still fully endorse scientific playtesting, and a gauntlet.  But I also think it helps to take your tuned list out ‘into the wild’ so to speak, but a test run.  It’s very smart to play your tuned list in a local tournament or two before the GT to find out how your gauntlet tested list performs in the real world.  Essentially what I’m saying is, in endurance sports you can trim the fat and lose muscle and strength unintentionally.  In 40k list building, you can trim what you think is fat, only to find out it was really muscle on the day of the tournament.

In conclusion, one piece of advice that applies to both endurance sports and 40k: don’t make knee jerk changes to your program in response to a minor setback.  In endurance sports, you don’t change your diet plan radically a week before the event because you had a bad training session.  In 40k, you don’t radically tweak a list in response to a loss (or even a string of losses), any changes you make to your list during testing should be minor and gradual so that you don’t accidentally trim the muscle along with the fat.

Shameless eBay Plug

Hey folks.  Just in time for Christmas (so you can spend money on yourself rather than the ingrates in your life) I have an extra pair of Forgeworld Dreadnought autocannon arms for sale on eBay ending in the next few hours and I thought I'd put it out there for you guys.  The price is pretty low so considering conversation rates and shipping and stuff you can get a pretty good deal.  

LINKY!

You know you want another rifle/psyfle-man in your armies.