ORKS and WTF GHAZGHKULL!?!

     The very first thing I did upon deciding to jump back into the hobby was to purchase the new Ork Codex.  Bear in mind that I'm still hazy on post-5th Edition rules, so correct me where I'm wrong, but let's jump into this particular rant.

I’m Gonna Stab the Next Person Who Suggests Altering 7th the First Week!

There, I said it. I’m going to stab the next person online with my magic internet knife that suggests altering 7th edition before we even play the damn game.

Oh yeah, I’m back by the way :)

7th re-ignited my excitement for the game and most of the….posts?...that are circulating about it make me sad. Remember, I’m a tournament player due to my availability so everything on here is pretty much from that perspective.

40k is a Shooting Game? Pt. 2

First off thank you all for the particiaption in the last post. There were some good thoughts but this is one I wanted to address directly as it King does a good job at stating why he perceives the games as slanted toward shooting. This is naturally open discussion. Everyone is entitled to their opinion and I'm not cutting or slamming TKE. I felt I should point that out as, while I'm sure TKE knows it, I wanted to make sure other readers did too.

TheKingElessar wrote:

Vis-a-vis a shooting game, however, I have to disgaree that the two are perfectly balanced in the core rules. The fact that you hit vehicles on the Rear is poor compensation for hitting them on 4+ or 6s virtually any time you catch up to one you haven't already damaged, only getting a single strike from Grenades, Melta Bombs not being AP1, and then the myriad issues with time constraints, distances, blocking, bubblewrap, and the fact that (barring Kharn) it will always be easier for skilled shooting units to hit and thereby have a chance to inflict damage than for combat units* - there are a great many more limiting factors to inflicting melee damage than shooting damage.

Is the gap as wide as perhaps it is sometimes asserted? No. However, if hyperbole is the only way to get people to pay attention to the debate long enough to see for themselves the inequality, then I have no qualms with that.

* - For anyone who doesn't already realise, this is two-fold: the fact that you can hit on a 2+, and often with a re-roll built in, shooting, but can't in CC; but also because shooting rolls to hit are based only on your own ability without the comparative process for Weapon Skill. A Shooting unit will always be exactly as good at hitting in any circumstance, but a combat unit is inherently less reliable, despite the variation being small and unusual, but they also variably take damage BACK, a much more important factor as they can hit things that kill them much more easily than they'd like.

The Nova, Terrain in 40k, and 40k is a Shooting Game

So…..lots of stuff in that title J

This post is going to be long. It might be a bit ranty here or there and might be a bit holier than thou in some places but I feel some of it needs to be said. Also I’m going to try and intersperse it with photos to break the text wall and entertain you with boobies (images stolen from my buddy Spags at TheBack40k cause I'm at work and looking might not be a good idea).

We’ll start first with NOVA. This part is a little gushy. This is the event that started a firestorm. There was a cry for a while for a more competitive format (in terms of clearly defined winners based on record) and Mike Brandt stepped up and took on the challenge of creating a tournament to provide it. His ideas influenced quite a few events in one way or another and normally in a good way.

Clarification: Now to be clear I’m not saying that Nova is the only or best format but I do feel Mike’s openness in his approach and his general urge to reach out to the community has helped create the environment we have on the circuit. Right up there with the guys from Adepticon, WargamesCon, and newly on the scene Reece’s group over there at Frontline Gaming.

And this format is Mike’s baby. He’s constantly tweaking and playing with it. He takes in ideas on how to make it better from the community and builds on it. In other words he’s a great TO. Some of you might be wondering why I’m blowing smoke up Mike’s ass. It mostly has to do with the fact that, as an event that is often considered the flagship for competitive 40k (even if all 40k is competitive in its own way), Mike takes a lot of hits from parts of the community and that can be draining on a person. Especially when the heat he catches is primarily from a small subset of people who consider themselves a big part of the competitive community. Most recently it’s been about terrain which segues nicely into the second part of the title.

Dashofpepper: Still Alive, Updates, and Necron Rantings

Hey folks!

I’ve been incommunicado for a couple months now. I had back surgery near the end of the year – an old injury suffered while playing Army Rugby at West Point has been continually spiraling downward over the last decade, to the point where I could hardly walk, and every game of 40k played hunched over a table left me a debilitated mess (which had no small influence on my decision to booze it up as a measure of pain control).

I can walk again! I can’t lift anything heavier than 15 pounds for the next couple months, so my retinue of Imperial Titans converted into heavy duty cyber-stompas is going to have to collect dust a bit more. I joke; I don’t particularly like Apocalypse games.

Codex Creep – The Myth and the Legend #2 (Unit Comparison)

Let me start this by saying I’m not picking on Corrollax. In fact I think his response actually highlights what a lot of people think and feel when they think of “Codex Creep” and so I thought it would be worthwhile to respond in a full article as opposed to a single entry in the comments section. So thanks Corrollax for giving me some more material to work with. We’ll start by quoting his last comment which was given after I asked how it was relevant to compare Incubi and Purifiers:

Codex Creep – The Myth and the Legend

I know I’ve been a bit quiet lately and part of that is that it’s the slow season for me for 40k with the holidays and lack of general events until February but part of it is also that I’ve been sucked back into WoW a bit and am enjoying some relaxing smiting lately. Anyway I do still read things, generally while I’m at work, and today I noticed Polonius from Dakka put up an article in the DCM section that details his thoughts on Codex Creep as seen by most people around his local store and the internet. It’s an interesting article and if it gets moved out of there eventually I’ll link it here.

Anyway it got me thinking. I sometimes hear even seasoned players stating that certain books break the game or that no Xenos army is ever as good as a Space Marine army. I also hear things along the line of “well obviously it’s going to be broken, they have to make it better than X”. Between those comments and Polonius’s article I thought I’d give my view on “Codex Creep”

Sportsmanship: The Dashofpepper Story

Hey folks! I wrote something on Dakka that I thought I would bring here. A poster is having some sportsmanship troubles for "winning too much" and it struck a chord.

Here's the thread if you care to follow, but I'll post his question and my response.

Dracos writes:
There seems to be an inverse correlation between my sportsmanship score and my battle performance during a tourny. When I started out, I lost many games and got top sports scores. Now that I am winning most/all my games I seem to get a low sportsmanship score. I don't feel like my demeanor has changed during the game, but perhaps its something I'm not noticing. No one has said anything that they found objectionable, so I don't know what exactly it is. For all you guys who tend to win locally, how do you keep your sportsmanship score up while laying down a beating?


*laughing* OP, welcome to my life.

I'm probably going to regret everything I'm about to type, but....it is what it is. I'm going to give you a little backstory in hopes that you can relate - but this is what's happened to me, how it happened, and what I've done to overcome it. I win pretty consistently, both at the local and national level. I've suffered from poor sportsmanship scores at a few events, and some of those have been scandalous in their circles.

Rantings on Dark Eldar: Continuing the Xenos Surge

Hey folks! 

I always forget to write this at the end of articles, so up front it goes:  As always, we appreciate you clicking on ads!  Hulksmash tells me that your efforts might actually pay for our Adepticon Team Tournament next year.  I presume he’s talking about the entry fees, not plane tickets and lodgings and stuff – but anything that helps is help appreciated. J

The purpose of this article is to address what I see as some “myths” about Dark Eldar perpetrating the internet, often advanced by “listened-to” parties about Dark Eldar – things I find irritating, incorrect, unsubstantiated, or a mixture of all three.  I also intend to browbeat army-building techniques and advance my own agenda for how to formulate a cohesive army.  As always, advice I give is flavored with my competitive nature, so apply as needed. 

The Draw of Xenos

Hey folks!

For those of you who read Black Library books, when is the last time you got to the end, and the Xenos won? Never you say? That’s what I thought. And I don’t mean pyrrhic victories or temporary advantages over the forces of the Imperium, I mean a full-on, all the humies are dead, we claim this world, the end. Ghazghkull may have had his way with Armageddon, but he still got driven off the planet by Yarrick. The Necrons in “Fall of Damnos” are virtually limitless, and Necron In-fighting causes them from winning. Where’s the novel written from the perspective of a Tyranid hive ship? Or the novella? One that contains something of the unstoppable force they’re floating across the galaxy with? Humanity doesn’t stand a chance in staying the dominant race in the galaxy, yet every book is an Imperium victory.

Dash of Ranting: Nova Invitational Against Stelek

Good day fine peoples of the 40k universe.

Hulksmash keeps me on a leash here (in jest at least, because I don’t flip out often). Then again, not being on Dakka and far away from stupid people probably helps me contain my fury.

At any rate, I wrote a bit about my game against Stelek in my Nova Invitational Review. I hadn't thought about it since, until today when someone linked me his battle report if we can even call it that.

Having read it, I'm truly affronted. Appreciative of his commentators that are affronted on my behalf at his sniping, but still affronted myself. So I thought I would address a few things.

First, I'm not writing this as a reply on YTTH because I'm not a member, don't want to have to subscribe to post something, and Stelek has a nasty habit of deleting things I've posted there in the past - the only posts I've made there being on nuances of DE and Ork gameplay.

'Ard Boyz Semi-Finals aka: Screw this shit!

The last couple years have seen a definitive decline of the quality of ‘Ard Boyz, which was had a tenuous claim to any sort of quality in the first place. Prize support has gone down and down, while costs have gone up and up.

Hosting locations are fewer, the missions…while never very good or balanced have gotten worse…and now we don’t even get them on the traditional ‘Ard Boyz stationary. Talk about a dump.

I elected to participate in the preliminary round of ‘Ard Boyz solely to get a bit of practice in before the Nova Open. Attending ‘Ard Boyz required a 2.5 hour drive to my nearest store…and having acquired my pass to the semi-finals, I look to my accumulated experience and seriously wonder if I should even contemplate going.

Dashofpepper at the Railhead Rumble GT: Game Four (with a side rant)

June 10, 2011: Dashofpepper makes the drive the Dallas, TX for the Railhead Rumble GT. I arrived in Dallas, checked into the hotel, picked Hulksmash up from the airport, and headed to the Sheraton to scope out the GT area of A-Kon.

19,200 mostly 16-25 year olds swarming an anime convention…an hour after arriving and pushing our way through dressed up (or undressed) anime fans, we finally discovered that the GT was in the attached Marriott and made our way there to check it out. I’m glad that we did an advance recon, or we would have been extremely late the following morning, which is probably why the GT was an hour late kicking off – others weren’t so fortunate!

I brought my Dark Eldar to the Railhead Rumble. The list is as follows:

Dark Eldar Vs. The Universe!

I thought I would foray into a codex vs. codex ranking and compare my thoughts on how Dark Eldar stack up in a game against other Codices. I’ll be using a ranking system of 1-10, where a 1 is a colossal challenge to not get blown away and 10 is a game I expect to win with one hand tied behind my back.


*ponders* Hrm….but then there are some codices that have builds ranging from 1-10. I’ll have to break down some codices by build.


*ponders more* And then I had a realization. I’ve seen people try doing this for various codices before, or ranking codices in competitive order, or assigning tiers to them. And at the end of the day…it is all meaningless. There is no value add in doing so. Codices can’t be compared in a vacuum, or ranked against each other because the definitive factor in a game isn’t the lists at play, it’s the general behind them. And we already have a ranking system for generals – its called RankingsHQ.

Hulksmash is beating people up with Tyranids. I can’t imagine facing a Tyranid army that I wouldn’t almost laugh off the table. I *do* laugh Necrons off the table…and my Necrons are undefeated.

Your Opinion: DakkaDakka Vs. Warseer

I would estimate that 95% of my online experience with 40k until recently has been on DakkaDakka. My tactical articles, battle reports, questions, threads, discussions - everything.

Since I don't have the ability to GET into Dakka...and using my wife's account would probably get hers banned for circumventing moderation punishment, I created an account on Warseer. I need to be able to upload pictures for battle reports, and a blog isn't always the best place to ask questions or to solicit input from folks.

So...three days after creating an account on Warseer (I'm writing this on Monday, Memorial Day), I find myself quite disappointed with the website. My e-mail to Warseer administration below:

YOUR Hobby and THE Hobby-Running Events

So I've recently been in disagreement with a fairly local (San Diego) group that is going to be running a local GT in February. Now the primary point of contention when it started was simply the missions. They had massively improved everything else over last year and even though the soft scoring was something like 60% of the available points it was clearly laid out and that's fine. Upon commenting upon the scenarios and giving feedback on possible ways to improve them it eventually led to the then resigned scenario developer saying not so nice things about me personally and informing me to go enjoy Adepticon and Ard Boyz and leave them their tournament.

That drama got me thinking about some things and I only post it so that the rest of this makes sense in context.

Something I Think TO’s Should Know

Let me just start by saying that I'm not bashing tournaments that aren't pure BP's and that I personally think all armies must be painted to play. I'm a hobbyist but a big part of my hobby is playing in tournaments and there are a few things I think it might be good for starting and/or veteran TO's to keep in mind when preparing to run a tournament.