John Lennon with Ultramarines!

He beat the lovely Sam Pope playing World Eaters in the finals after dominating the field all event.

I unfortunately do not have a BCP account so cannot see the lists but if someone wants to share them in the comments I can add them to the post later.

Disclaimer: On BCP you may see this was a manual override moving John to 1st. One of the TOs (Anthony Vanella) has stated in the Stat Check discord that he and the players decided that the event finals would be for the win regardless of whether or not one player or the other has already won the event on paper due to win path or tie breakers. They didn’t want a finals where one player had no shot to win the event.

It was discussed with all x-1 and x-0 players and they all opted into it so that the last round wasn’t meaningless.

**EDIT: Lists!

John's

Assault/Terminator Storm Force/Deathwatch (Take)

Marneus + Wardens + 6BGV

Librarian in Phobos Armor

Roboute Gman

1x5 Heavy Intercessors

2x Impulsor

2x3 Melta Eradicators

2x5 Reivers

2x5 Deathwatch Terminators

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Sam's

Warband/Vessles (Purge)

Kharn + 10 zerks

Lord on Jug + 20 with Battle-Lust

MOE + 20 zerks with Favored of Khorne

MOE + 20 zerks

Angron

1x Rhino

1x Jakhals

I enjoy armies that are usually t3-4, have good secondary play, like doing actions, make up for low durability with good damage, speed, and activation economy. Unfortunately, all of those things are completely useless in 11th edition so far. The meta is all in on stat checks and keeps getting worse (looking at you, CK armiger spam).

I’ve been jamming CSM because Renegade Raiders at least kind of plays the game the way I like while not just falling over to 18 Allarus, 30 Terminatorss, or Necrons. I’ve even swapped to Huron’s Marauders and Bile just so I can have the raw damage needed to chew through these armies.

But I look at my Sisters, GSC, Aeldari, and Guard armies and just kinda feel bad lol. Even Emperor’s Children has a hard time into these checks. I make lists for these armies, then look at the meta and the math hammer on activations into the durability skews and scrap them.

Do we just sit it out? Hope GW does something about the insanely greedy meta we’re in? What’re my fellow rat army players up to?

On yesterday’s Statcheck episode a nice discussion was had between Anthony, Floof, and Innes. T’au had a 51% wr and 1.4 overrep, putting them behind Necrons, Marines, Orks, and Imperial Knights.

Anthony and Innes seem to agree that T’au is a negative play experience but is not necessarily as unbalanced as they were made out to be. They’re not blowing people out of the water the way the internet expected them to, especially now that other armies have found their stride in 11th.

Despite this, the three all agree that some changes are still needed to address the NPE of playing vs T’au.

Innes argues that rules changes such as Strike Swiftly should not be able to be used on vehicles would be his preferred method, though does concede that crisis suits should maybe do more and cost more so they can be the “centerpiece” of the army.

Floof agrees and references TSons as an example of a tricky ranged army that doesn’t have a million units.

As a T’au player who’s pretty used to the ire the faction receives, it is nice to see some nuanced takes that aren’t calling for us to be wiped from the game and instead just want minor balance changes to make the army less unfun to play into and maybe less hordey.

These have been opinions in T’au circles for forever and it’s cool to see people with influence sharing them.

Thoughts?

I keep seeing posts and comments about how the dispositions aren’t in the spirit of a wargame because WAR is about KILLING. Thats not true and I’ll use examples from the Horus Heresy to prove it (spoilers in advance).

Calth

The Betrayal at Calth was a full invasion of Ultramar’s upcoming jewel of a world by the Word Bearers. The goal of the invasion was to distract the Ultramarines (Disruption) while Lorgar and Angron took their fleets deeper into Ultramar so they could reach Nuceria specifically (a Priority Asset).

While on Nuceria, the World Eaters went on a rampage against the civilians and local forces for the sins of the high risers (Purge the Foe). During this, Ultramarines across Ultramar were fighting to reclaim their territory (Take and Hold).

Signus Prime

Meanwhile the Blood Angels are sent by Horus on a wild goose chase to the Signus star system. While on this adventure they encounter the hive world Holst and send reconnaissance forces to investigate the strange happenings on the surface (Recon). They then crash land on Signus Prime and march against the forces of Khorne and Slaanesh to rid the world of daemonic influence while the daemons were attempting to hold a citadel containing a psychic force that enhanced the Red Thirst in their quest to turn the Blood Angels to Chaos. (Purge the Foe vs Priority Asset).

#Sotha

Later, during the Imperium Secundus arc, while the joint Ultramarine/Imperial Fists/Imperial Guard local forces are defending the Pharos beacon on Sotha, (a Priority Asset) from the Night Lords, a group of scouts led by Obedeii run a series of recon missions (Recon) to feed information to Ultramar to call for aid. While doing this a contingent of guardsmen and Imperial Fists lay booby traps and set up kill boxes to delay the invading Night Lords who are after the beacon until reinforcements arrive (Disruption vs Priority Assets)

I could go on. Yes, war involves the killing of your opposition but that’s not all there is to it. Not in fantasy and not in real life. I think it’s very apt for a wargame to consider these alternative angles and motivations.

I know this is the competitive subreddit so maybe this isn’t exactly on topic but I would argue part of being a competitive Warhammer player is enjoying the army you build and play. I think understanding that war is more than killing — even in the 41s millennium — is important to keep in mind when aligning your own army with the dispositions available to it.

Also this isn’t a defense of GW’s assignment of Dispositions to Detachments wholesale, some of them are indeed weird.

Yes we all know you want to play Gladius as Purge, bring 3 RepExes, and table your op on turn 3.

Or Awakened Dynasty as Purge to punish your op for not being able kill your units that are designed to be unkillable.

The fact that you can’t do these things is the point. There have been like 5 posts this week about misaligned dispositions… but they’re not misaligned. They’re intentionally designed to force some armies away from playstyles they are capable of leaning into to the point of being unbalanced if given the opportunity.

I understand. I wanted Host of Ascension to be Recon or Disruption. Take and Hold sucks for it. But it’s also strong enough to overcome that and means I have to build a different style of list which is fine.

If we could all take our best units in our best detachments with the disposition of our choice then the whole DP system falls apart. I believe this is truly a case of restriction breeding creativity.

Hey folks, I thought it’d be fun to discuss how we’re all generally feeling about 11th now that most of core rules and primary missions have leaked or been spoiled. Here are a few things I’m looking forward to and feeling positive about:

• They didn’t kill evasive styles of play: in the switch from 3rd to 4th Ed AoS they almost completely removed shooting and action-forward playstyles from the game. Almost every match is a melee slugfest in the middle with reinforced big units. I’m thrilled to see 40K embracing the fact that not every force is designed to kill opponents or stand on primary. I play a lot of t3-4 fast armies (Aeldar, GSC, Sisters, EC, T’au, etc) and was concerned that they would follow the same path they did for AoS 4 but they did not. I’m ready to play the hell out of Recon and Disruption primary!

• Cleaner Rules: Rules are numbered! And a lot of the oddities of the previous edition have been addressed (like Hazardous, Desperate Escapes, and Emergency Disembarks all being homogenized into Risk tests). I think the cognitive load of these rules is lighter while also being far easier to look up and understand… so far at least lol.

• Skews are ostensibly less effective: In 10th every army needed to be ready to play any mission at any given time. This pushed folks into generalist midrange lists that then got extremely punished by stat-checks like Knights or Necrons. Toughness skew armies also got free wins when Purge was drawn as a mission vs generalist or msu armies. Now, since lists can be tailored for the primary mission you’re attempting, losing the matchup lottery is less punishing.

• Beginner Friendly: They’ve removed several of the strategies that felt unintuitive and gamey but were correct to do if you were competing. No more stringing out 20+ man units in immersion breaking conga lines, move blocking is a lot more awkward bc of 2cp Heroics, and they’ve codified cascading as “Overrun Combats”.

Obv these things are based on what we know now which seems like 90% of core rules, 100% of missions, and like 50% of faction rules (as we wait for the dataslate and full detachments).

What’re you looking forward to? What are you excited to try? I think I’m looking at GSC as my starting point!