At 12:44 PM 4/3/97 +0200, you wrote:
>1. When we began playing the game, two of our players selected Chaos armies
>(pretty miniatures, impressive combat stats) and two other selected Eldars
>(including me, as I'm a defender and their stats seemed to correspond to my
>playing style). The rest selected the Imperium (including Squats).
Okay. Chaos is at a disadvantage vs. Eldar. Most people on the list have
granted this point, although I think my experience is among the most
extreme. I've never lost using Eldar against Chaos. One of the few games I
didn't win in the last 3 years (only about 8 or 10 games, actually) was a
tie when I tried to take chaos against an Eldar force. It just seems to be
a quirk of the forces. They were doing better after WD 173 allowed them to
take thawks, but with the advent of AA guns, they fell back to a losing
proposition.
>We first allowed SM units only, then . . .
Taking any marine detachment as a minion card helps them considerably.
> Getting
>some of the best infantry and transport flyers (SM) with some of the best
>artillery (IG/Squats) is definitely not in the "spirit of the game"
Sticking with SM/IG isn't so bad, but throwing the Squats in really buggers
it up.
>4. I saw some "fast Chaos forces", but I admit there was not enough Thawks
>to pass through the Firestorms. So...
There are other ways to make them fast. Rhinos can reach midboard in one
turn, and since they are separate detachments, they can later do kamikaze
charges to capture objectives. Bikes and beast riders, and Warhounds can
help considerably.
>5. Why is it like that? Why Chaos armies seem useless in our group and not
>in others, even at 5-6000 pts?
It's just Chaos vs. Eldar. They perform better against the squats, ne c'est
pas?
>Is it that we found a way to transmute a GW,
>CC-oriented game into a firefight game? Actually, this was not intented and
>so, I don't know how we did it...
Really high point values will do that. Inflicting casualties becomes more
important than objectives, and maneuver is less important because the board
is so crowded that no one can hide, and everyone has targets.
>Maybe blame on the fact we came from
>historical wargaming, where firefight _is_ really crucial.
That helps, too.
>Your cheap infantry will be chewed up before firing. At least, in my group,
>it would. My point was, as usual, based on the range consideration and not
>on the save mod, of course.
By 6 shots that hit on a 5+ and a handful of bolter ona 6+? They aren't
that good at hitting stuff. And if they go anywhere near cover, then the
chances of them killing any significant amount of infantry is ridiculous.
I've been doing an insane amount of math recently, so I won't, but I am sure
that a 200 pt IG tactical detachment with 10 stands has almost the same
chance of killing an Overlord as a 500 pt det of Tempests.
>>About Jetbikes:
>2. I understand that with the playing philosophy in your group, 2 Wind
>Riders Hosts charging across the battlefield could do important damages. In
>my group, this is just giving up 14 VP's. BTW, the Squats tried this during
>the battle, launching an all-out attack with 2 Bikers Guilds to destroy my
>artillery. I confess I was a little bit worried at the end of turn one, as
>their remnants were obviously in range of my precious Tempests, Doomweavers
>and Firestorms. On turn two, FF infantry and Falcons, combined with some
>Scorpions and Harlequins charging them in CC easily solved the "problem".
Well, he made a mistake moving them within charge range of your specialty
troops. Jet bikes don't have that problem, they can't be pinned. Mostly,
though, I would call that a mistake.
>>>If you're interested, I could post the battle report (on the Web). Maybe to
>>>expose a terrible defeat (but not with my army ;-)).
>>
>>Sure.
>
>Sure, you're interested, or sure, I will be terribly defeated?
Yeah, I'd like to hear it. But if your opponent makes similar mistakes to
the jet bike fiasco above, I wont' consider it a valid test.
>Remember: our insistance on long range firing. So, I always have "large
>numbers of shots", considering few armies can field as many long-range
>units as Eldars. But now I understand what you meant (I think).
Eldar have large numbers of long range shots compared to other forces, but
that is different from a large number of shots. For a lot of shots, try an
IG tac company, a heavy co, and an arty co. That's a lot of dice to roll,
even if they don't hit very well.
>And I never
>talked about Tempests firing at infantry: I only mentionned "webbing" the
>infantry with Doomweavers - seems reasonalble to me after first turn,
>because you seemed to lack of other troops being able to deal with the IG
>infantry.
The proximity of the sentence about "lots of shots" and "Tempests, et. al.
are the key" makes it sound like that is what you intended. Doomweavers are
fine if you want to stop the troops from advancing, but they dont' have to
get very far to be effective. One turn on charge puts even a tactical
company's effective range 70 cm into the playing field.
>Table size: we use a "generic table", 3 m * 1,8 m maximum and adapt it to
>game size. It means that maximum width for deployment of the forces is 50
>cm (pretty much, I know, but it only occurs in _very_ huge games and we
>know wide tables advantage shooty forces, so we're careful). Otherwise, as
>far as I know, there are no accurate rule for deployment width, except the
>80 cm distance between forces. Maybe I will be flamed about this... :-(
If you put a 50cm deployment zone, then range becomes much more important,
as your shorter range stuff can NEVER get within range of units set far back
in the deployment zone, and units with 150cm+ range become almost a
necessity. This would also contribute to your emphasis on firepower.
>>that they are pointless (unless you are extending the board to 10 or 12 feet
>>width, which would probably cause more problems).
>
>width? you mean "length"? If so, I admit this is the case but don't see
>major problems, really.
Yes, I meant 4 ft by 10 or 12ft (120cm by 300-360cm). The problems I see
are that the objectives become very spread apart, and so it breaks the board
up into individual "battle zones" if you will. A single assault force to
each small cluster of 1-3 objectives. This means that assault groups for
slower forces, e.g. chaos, can't support each other. Which, in turn, means
that if the chaos player misjudges how much force is needed in a particular
area of the board he can't compensate for the mistake, whereas a speedy
force, e.g. Eldar, can.
While we are talking about boards, how much terrain do you guys usually use?
That could also skew the game towards firepower.
> I
>think I was wrong, as it appears now we weren't really speaking about the
>same "game" (but well about the same rules). My apologies too for being a
>little bit "hostile" (Michael's words).
Definitely NOT the same game. Think nothing of it.
>the only solution I see, is, you mentioned it, putting most of the
>army in Thawks and going for the fire base. And then? Next time I'll take
>more Firestorms. So he'll take more Thawks. So I'll take more Firestorms...
>I don't call that "playing"...
What if they played a waiting game? Charge into the middle of the board,
hide in terrain by objectives, and say "come and get me." If the terrain is
conducive to that, it would eliminate a lot of the advantage of firepower.
>The same for me in the other direction... One day, maybe. Anyway, if you're
>coming in Belgium, just tell me: we"ll arrange some meeting, if you want.
And if you are in the U.S., I'm in Tennessee.
Temp
Received on Thu Apr 03 1997 - 21:31:16 UTC
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