The More You Know - Nova 2012 Edition

So last year’s article on how much and how I screwed up is officially my most popular post. It’s views doubled any other post since I started this blog so I figured why not go ahead and do a 2012 version. It’s going to be a little long. But we’ll start with what everyone wants to read about, me losing J (I’m only humble 95% of the time!)

What is Anti-Tank?

This is something that has been getting to me for a while. Forgive the intrusion into what is going to be quite a bit of necron posting but this is something I feel might need to be put out there. It is mostly geared toward non-imperial armies but I think it has something most people can take away.

So what is Anti-Tank? Well if you listen to the internet anti-tank is melta. That’s it. Nothing else counts or is considered. It’s an unfortunate but true tale. I’m going to cover the different aspects of anti-tank in this post hopefully to give people a different view that shows them that anti-tank can exist without the big “M”.

The More You Know - Nova Edition

This is going to be an article to cover the glaring mistakes I made in my games at the Nova that led to my 9-5 record this year over the Nova weekend. I had a great weekend and almost all of my games were great against fun opponents. I’m going to preface the following with the fact that it was my mistakes that cost me all of my losses and had nothing to do with dice. Every situation I had where my dice weren’t so hot could have been mitigated if I hadn’t oopsied before the dice needed to be rolled.

I’ll include a brief rundown of the game I lost as well as the minor and not so minor mistakes I made during the games. Here we go:

Dashofpepper Strategeries: On Changing Point Levels

One of the great things about co-authoring with Hulksmash is that we bring such different perspectives to the table on so many issues. This particular issue is something we’ve chatted about from time to time, and our opinions differ.

In short, if I pick an army…take Orks for example, my 1500, 1750, 1850, 2000, and 2500 lists all follow the same theme. I might even call them modular. If I want to bump from 1850 to 2000, I can add another unit of XXX. If I need to drop from 1850 to 1500, I can cut a unit of YYY. I play Battlewagon Orks led by Ghazghkull Thraka – and at every point level…that theme is readily apparent - a solid army core of my theme with modular additions and subtractions based on point level.

Hulksmash on the other hand subscribes to the theory that an army’s playstyle changes at point levels. Tyranids at 1500 are different than Tyranids at 2000. To some extent, I agree…my Necron theme works at 2,000 points – but I can’t keep the theme below 2,000 points, so I would have to change it. So I don’t play Necrons below 2,000 points. =p

Dashofpepper's Guide to Tournament Success!

Hey folks!

I'm relocating articles I've written to the blog here, so while you may have read this before, I wanted it archived here.

Before the Tournament:

List Creation: If you're going to be playing in a tournament, you want to make sure that you have a "Take All Comers" list. Popular and powerful builds: Mechanized IG, Mechanized Spacewolves with Longfang Spam, TWC Spacewolves, Mechanized Blood Angels, Mechanized Eldar. Is your list capable of competing against these six builds? There are certainly others, but if you can stand toe-to-toe with those six builds, you'll be able to adapt and deal with other builds too. I don't want discussion about this article to devolve into a discussion of what makes a competitive list - there are a lot of theories about it, and it deserves its own thread - this isn't even a topic that can be summarized across all codices, but I list those six because they are amongst the most popular and the most likely that you're going to see across from you on the table in a competitive scene. The one thing I will offer here is that you should bring a list that you are comfortable playing (see my note on practice) - just because someone on the internet has had fantastic experience with a list doesn't mean that you are going to as well - a list is just a piece of your experience in a game; how you use it, what you face against, and your ability to adapt to changing needs on the table play a much bigger part. For example, I play a nonstandard Ork list that gets immense critique when I post it on the internet. It isn’t supposed to work, it isn't a netlist, but I have phenomenal experience with it because I'm intimately familiar with its strengths and weaknesses and what I need to do with it to pull out a win. Find what works for you, what you're comfortable playing, and tweak it and tweak it until you feel like it has the ability to face "all comers."

Dashofpepper on Objective Placement

Two thirds of Warhammer 40,000 games revolve around objectives – either Capture and Control with two objectives, or Seize Ground with three to five objectives. The purpose of this article is to discuss how to most advantageously place objectives on the field for your benefit and to your opponent’s detriment.

There are two, possibly three army archetypes in regard to objective placement.

1. Armies that prefer objectives to be as close together as possible. This would be slow armies, foot-slogging armies, and armies that rely on being massed for their strength. Things like Orks, Tyranids, and Necrons.

2. Armies that prefer objectives to be as far apart as possible.

3. Armies that don’t care how far away objectives are. This would be fast armies and deep-striking armies.

After putting some thought into it, while #2 makes logical sense, I don’t think it is a realistic category – I can’t think of any army that would benefit from objectives being far away from each other, although I can think of many armies that don’t care, and would place them far away from each other in order to create a disadvantage for an enemy army.