Getting 7th Edition Tournament-Ready

[Sam]

So the new edition is out, and I've been devouring the book. There's a few big changes, and lots of little ones, but those are going to be covered amply in other threads. The topic I want to address now is how to take a game that seems to be more aimed at awesome explosions than at competitive play, and tweak it so that it can run well for tournaments.

Fortunately, 7th edition is written much more clearly than its predecessor, so finding the shaky spots is a bit easier. What I'd like is for anyone who's interesting in competitive play to offer feedback here, so we can start coming up with some ideas for making Battleground events compelling, challenging, and fun. So here's how I think we should start:

1. Point out a specific part of the new rulebook that might cause a problem in a tournament setting.
2. Briefly explain what about the rule makes it less than ideal for tournament play (too random, too unbalanced, etc.).
3. Offer a suggestion for a solution, or a general method of solving it.

Here's a few to get us started:

Daemonology (Conjuration powers)
1. The Malefic side of Daemonology, as written, allows for a Chaos Daemons player to generate a truly absurd amount of Warp Charge, then spend it to create ridiculous amounts of free models (potentially doubling an army's size).
2. Other methods of generating free units (such as tervigons) are limited and not especially reliable. This method, by contrast, can't really be stopped unless the opponent also has crazy amounts of Warp Charge (Daemons or Grey Knights), and even then the chance to Deny non-targeted powers is low. Players facing a daemon army will never know if they'll be up against 3000+ points of Daemons in a 1750-point tournament.
3. Warhammer Fantasy has solved this by limiting the number of dice that can be generated in the phase, and limiting how many dice can be spent to cast a power. I've also heard a suggestion that we limit the dice used for casting to Mastery level + 1; so a low-level psyker can only reliably cast powers that use 1 warp charge, unreliably cast ones that use 2, and are unable to cast anything more potent than that.

Tactical Objectives
1. These seem like a poor fit for tournament play.
2. Planning and strategy don't mean much if your objectives keep changing. One player could get lucky and be required to hold the same objective three turns in a row, while the other could be required to make his opponent fail leadership checks.
3. We should probably just stick to the Eternal War missions for serious tournaments, and leave tactical objectives to casual play and more laid-back formats (like doubles).

The Eternal War Mission "The Scouring"
1. This mission has objectives worth differing amounts, randomly placed.
2. One player could get completely hosed by objective placement, finding that 7 points worth of objectives are sitting in his opponent's deployment zone, while he's got 3. That's too divergent to make for a good test of skill.
3. Either change the objective rules so that they match Big Guns Never Tire, or just abandon this mission completely for tournament play.

That's what I've got so far. Comments on any of the above are more than welcome. And feel free to add any other issues that you've noticed, and ways we might fix them. Overall, I think 7th could be the edition that brings back competitive play, but it'll take a little work from us. Thanks, folks!

[Dalymiddleboro]

Here are my thoughts to make things balanced.

Limit primary detachments to 2.

Cap the warp charge pool to 12 (or around here).

Ban Unbound lists

Ban maelstrom of war missions.

Ban Come the apocalypse allies.

[robpro]

You're supposed to paragraph for each of those why it's a problem and what they fix.

[MM3791]

I don't think we should ban "Come the apocalypse" allies just because it may not be fluffy. Remember when 6th ed came out and a million people complained about Necrons & Blood Angel allies, just to find out that no one took "Desperate Allies" anyway?

There is a ton of niche fluff to draw from,
- Inquisitor Kryptman & Tyranids vs Orks
- Chaos Marines & "Mid Turn/Falling" Space Marines
- Rogue Dark Eldar Sorcerers summoning daemons
- Genestealer Infested Tau/Astra Miltiuram

I can't see how lists like this could hurt, especially since we probably won't see them anyway.

[Benjamin]

1) GW suggests models should be painted.
2) Rulebook pictures in the past have suggested this, and tournaments at BG have awarded painting. But it's hard work and not everyone can paint and people are willing to pay other to paint for them.
3) Screw painting.

[MM3791]

Derek has been very clear on his rules and feelings about painting.

[andalucien]

1. The new version of the psychic power Invisibility is ridiculously powerful.
2. If it goes off, the target essentially become invulnerable.  The unit is only hit on 6's in shooting or assault, and still gets whatever save it would normally get, and is immune to blast damage and template damage.   As far as I know there is no "out" to it that lets you realistically kill something that is invisible?  All psychic powers can be dispelled with a certain amount of effort but this is way too swingy.  It's "6th edition deathstar in a box". 
3.  Tone it down?  Make it work the way it worked in 6th?

[MM3791]

This hilariously sums it up http://www.frontlinegaming.org/2014/05/28/is-7th-ed-40k-a-new-beginning-or-the-beginning-of-the-end/

[AstartesXXVI]

It would be better if I hadn't seen the same kind of article every time GW release a book...

[Sam]

I wish the title wasn't so doomy, but that's a solid article overall. Definitely points out some areas that need attention. Keep it up guys; this is some excellent feedback.

Except Ben, naturally.

-Sam

[MM3791]

I think the title was just to justify having a picture of Homer Simpson holding a doomsday sign 

[Chase]

We had a pretty good convo on Bill Souza's facebook page and came to the same basic conclusions as that FLG guy, who I'm beginning to dislike.  Today Alex Fennell and Ben Mohlie chimed in saying:

Alexander Fennell
I don't think there needs to be a cap (yet) on warp dice. The chances of successfully casting without a perils vs 6th edition just got a lot worse. Summoning daemons is dumb and invisibility is stupid, otherwise nothing else seems game breaking at the moment

Ben Mohlie
Yeah Alex I agree, I think lots of warp dice is fine if you aren't summoning daemons. I think a ban or severe restriction on malefic power, a change to invisibility, and we are in business. I got some games in yesterday and loved the maelstrom of war missions. Also, command barges are now awesome!

It'll be interesting to see where it ends up.  Several people have come to the conclusion that because everything has been more or less cleaned up, it's a lot easier to identify what's potentially problematic.  That's good for everyone.

[rdeane]

I agree completely with your points Sam.

On the topic of limiting Warp Charges (WC) available to a player (dice pool) I think that limiting total dice any psyker can use when attempting to manifest a power to Mastery Level (ML) +1 is a much better fix.

Firstly, it limits the ability of any Malefic Daemonology player to summon hordes of daemons on command, the percentage chance of a ML 3 herald of tzeentch to pass a WC 3 conjuring power is a measly 31% while also having a 13% chance to perils. A ML 4 caster has a 50% chance of casting a WC3 power with a 20% chance of perils when using 5 warp charges. A ML 4 caster with the ability to reroll failed psychic checks will have a 75% chance of success (there is only 1 of these in the game that I am aware of that is also a daemon). All peril chances are for Daemon models only, for non daemons the chance of perils on 4 dice is 72% and on 5 dice is 90%.

This will severely limit the total number of successful summonings whilst also allowing players to still play with their new powers.

With other psykers with this limitation you are really going to be just taking away the "auto" success of overpowered psychic powers (I am looking at you Invisibility/Fortune) whilst also allowing players to still use their psykers to good effect. Every psyker will know more powers than they can conceivably cast in a single turn, given the new psychic focus rule. Limiting the total number of dice will just force players to cast more powers and not just throw 8 dice at invisibility each turn.

If we were to try out the "limit total warp charges" route than that would do absolutely nothing to players who are banking on getting a single power off each turn to make their deathstar invulnerable. For example, if we go to the much beloved beastpack/farseer combo, even with just 2 farseers I will have 7-12 dice to throw at either invisibility/fortune each turn while saving 1 die to prevent perils with my ghosthelm. limiting the total dice in the pool to 12 would do absolutely nothing to prevent this from happening while limiting the total dice to 4 to attempt to cast fortune/invisibility would reduce the chance to success each turn to 68%, still great but not guaranteed and much more fun to play against.

This also would be in the spirit of the game imho, where a more powerful psyker (read higher ML) would have a greater chance of success of casting a psychic power than a less powerful psyker.

[Bill]

I agree with Ryan, under duress 

[AstartesXXVI]

Speaking personally (and to the wall, I suppose, but what the hell, why not?), I would rather see conjurations capped to a points value or banned outright, than an all-psykers nerf.

Nerfing all the psykers for the problems with one discipline's conjurations seems a bit over the top. It will introduce issues and generally weaken a lot of units, particularly those that rely on it for shooting. Also, you want to try and stay as close to the book as possible; simply banning Daemonology or Conjurations is a lot less of a jump from 40k's current core, than a blanket change to the Psychic phase would be. Taking things away is better than modifying them and causing far-spread unforeseen repercussions (which will surely be brought up the day after an event by the usual pitchfork-toting crowd that gathers after such things in this game).

I know there has been some outcry about how an army with lots of warp charge has an unfair advantage, etc., but it is not generally true. Historically you could cast powers to your hearts' content, Perils almost never happened or mattered much, and the "non-psychic" armies had no real chance to stop the powers anyway. So other than the fact that some powers have been strengthened to make up for the danger in casting them, not much has changed in that regard (except that the psychic powers might even be less superfluous, as previously easy casts now take 3-5 Warp Charges to cast reliably...previous ML2 psykers might not not even cast both their powers a turn, something which was practically automatic...so there's that).

Either way, re-writing Malefic or Conjurations would be more effective/less sweeping than changing the entire psychic phase. Limiting warp charge is just ham-fisted (especially since there have been very few games played so far). I'd just limit the amount of summoned models to a certain number of points and be done with it.