Sunday 8 December 2013

Escalation: Laughing at competive play.

Lol, we all knew it was coming. Escalation is a turning point in 40k gaming. Up until now, we have seen players spend hours building lists, read through thousands of tactic articles, test lists until they have mastered it's play, and, most importantly, built a reputation as competent generals. Well.....those days are over.....officially.

Unofficially, most tournaments will simply ban Super Heavies. Not all, but the majority will. I'll be interested to see how GW handles it at their tournaments. I've just read through all the rules and here are my impressions.

Firstly, having +1 to seize means nothing. Most Super Heavy Generals will be taking Coteaz to force you to re-roll that 5+, or to gain a better seize themselves. The additional secondaries make it a bit fairer, b

Secondly, Dark Eldar are back! Having access to the Revenant means a lot. As an Eldar/DE player, I am loving it. Okay, so it costs a lot of points.....but seriously.....that doesn't mean anything when it just walks around destroying everything.


As for the rest of the Xenos, Tau have it the worst. Tyranids is a decent option, so is a Stompa. Necrons are beastly. Spicerack will be doing a complete breakdown of all the Baneblade Variants available to us.

The funny thing about Super Heavies, is that, armies who include Telepathy psykers, Puppet Master can be used against them. Be'lakor is particularly hilarious as he is guaranteed to have it. So, some seriously hardcore armies will have a Super Heavy, PLUS some form of Puppet Master. Guard + Chaos will be good for this. Those games will be pretty amusing. Super Heavy blows half your army to pieces, will Puppetting your stuff, whilst you're doing the same!

I would argue that in a battle of lists that both include Super Heavies, the Eldar/DE have a serious advantage. Dropping four Destroyer Large Blasts (that can be Guided.................) means the enemy Super Heavy is dead turn 1. That can mean both a whole heap of additional VP's on your first shooting phase.....ridiculous. However, In games of Super Heavy vs standard list, I think some of the Baneblade variants have a better cost/use. Especially since the Hellhammer can bring A LOT of shooting for, relative to Orks, Eldar and Chaos, relatively cheap. Necrons to. 

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One last thing, I can't see why independent T/O's won't open up the rest of the available super heavies. Squiggoths, Cobras etc. They are no less OP than their "legal" brothers, so why not. Obviously not an Emperor class Titan though....

4 comments:

  1. So far my biggest complaint about this is that the Marine armies seem like they get hosed... The ONLY thing they gain is an insanely expensive ($/GBP) model no one has... Though I suspect they will see some of their 30K things become "legal" in short order... IG win big with SO many choices and thy are all fairly cheap

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    1. 100% agree mate. Marines got boned by this deal. Not nearly as bad as Tau though!

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  2. Something that bears thinking about is the ability of psykers to buff super-heavies. The previous edition of Apocalypse specifically disallowed this, and it makes me curious whether it was something forgotten in this edition, or if it was actually intended.

    After all while a Revenant and Eldrad might make up 70% of your points at 1850, it means that particular bad boy gets his 4+ holo-field roll, then a rerollable 4++ (provided the right powers are there).

    It's certainly going to be interesting to see how this system is integrated, and what sort of impact it will be allowed to have on competition.

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  3. cannot ever see this being allowed in a tournament... cannot see anyone agreeing to a game vs. eldar/DE with a titan... (really, did Eldar need a boost?) so really don't see the point of this release at all given for the majority of games and tournaments it just won't be allowed.

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