Goatboy’s Warhammer 40K: First Big Event Lessons Learned
Goatboy here and I learned a lot of lessons about 9th Edition after my first big event of 2021. Here’s what you need to know.
I just got back from my first 40k event in over a year. It was the Dallas Open and it was run extremely well. Terrain was decent, it ran on time, and there were no issues I had nor that I saw hampered what was a pretty dang big event. It was over 180 players and had a lot of people I haven’t seen in forever. That was probably my favorite thing about the whole event was that a ton of friends were there. People I haven’t even seen locally in a long time. Just getting back to throwing dice made me thankful I got vaxxed up and was ready to party.
What were the things I learned for those ready to hit the competitive table tops? Well first of all there were a lot of things I needed to practice.
Oh crap, that was a bad turn one…
First Turn Woes
This would be looking at tables in a better way to circumvent some of the disadvantages of going second. My two losses (I did not play all… 8 games… with my voice gone and allergies I wanted to save my throat a bit) were to losing out on first turn to the new Dark Eldar. I would set up to try and push and advantage as I knew I had to do as much damage to their boats as I could – which left me exposed to not going first. I don’t know how much of that would have helped – but it felt like if I had a better thought processing to setting up to go Second I might have had a better chance. Still, that is a lot of the game – set up and controlling what your opponent can damage the first turn.
Harder to sink that many players expected…
Can Your List Sink Boats – Fast?
From there I think I was going in the right direction with some rate of fire options as well as long range damage dealers. This brings me to my next thing – if you can’t pop a boat or two with shooting them you need to rethink your army. This edition is going to be full of the Dark kin until a new book that just wrecks all their boats comes out. Beyond just wrecking the boat you need to have some bolter hell-like options to as you need to remove the squishy bits that come out. It will make you rethink your Marine armies as well as your Death Guard options in the coming future.
Hail to the king!
The Drukhari ARE Fierce
Speaking of the Dark Eldar – they should probably look at some of the things in that book. Liquefier guns from Dark Technomancers are a tad bit – well bull*Bleep*. They have no disadvantage on overcharging and while most likely making them expensive would be a right call it would invalidate the choice in any other Coven style list. I think they need to look hard at the whole – making one Cult, Coven, etc the best and try to make all things decent.
I don’t like how everyone can ride in a specific group’s Raider as everyone else has to have that limitation but the Dark Eldar don’t? If you thought the whole “Salamander reroll” was annoying just wait for the Dark Lance Black Hard Kabal reroll will be heard all over the top tabletops. The army punches a little to high up for the cost but I am sure when we get a pure shooter hell army that is also fast will see the Dark Eldar cry.
Rethinking Secondaries
From there I think the missions for 9th need some work. I think we have too many good secondary’s that armies will always take band will never lead to any of the others getting chosen except for a few try hards. My suggestion is to only allow 2 to be chosen and the 3rd always being one from the mission being used. This way both armies still have to do more of the same thing at times and force some interaction. It also means you can create some funky mission secondaries instead of just seeing each army take their guaranteed 3 that don’t care about opponent interactions. This would be a big change I think and would help diversify some army choices. It might make it where everyone takes 2 specific secondary’s but I am sure forcing a locked-in 3rd one would force some armies to update their options.
Welcome to game 7 – DEPLOY!
How Many Games is Enough & Soft Scores
I talked a little bit, but man 8 games is rough unless you are playing in some kind of top 8. I like throwing dice but by the time I hit 6 games my voice is pretty shredded, I am tired, and most likely sleep-deprived due to drink, food, or snoring jerks (me!).
I wonder if we see events move to more esoteric points for overall etc to bring back some of the old days of Paint being important? We can still leave best general for battle points but really get into the more interesting side of things with other point-scoring options. I also think we should see all armies set up and a judge will go around to see if you deserve the 10 points per round for a fully painted “army”. There could be a lot of close calls and other things that an opponent might not see when looking at your army so having a judge go around and say – yeah this gets 10 points per round would be useful. Heck, add it to BCP so it can auto adjust the points in the end.
I am sure I will have a lot more to talk about as I get into next week and my other planning tips. Up next I want to talk about writing yourself Cheat Sheets to ensure you don’t spend too much time searching for rules as well as other simplification methods to making your armies work on the tabletop. I think there is a lot of Hobby discussion too as we look at getting our armies up to snuff for the tabletop as well. Is anyone else excited about 2 days of 40k sweetness during the previews this week?
GW, can we get another Daemonic Primarch? – Please!
