I am back from the great city of Seattle. I went to see some old friends and play in the five game 40k tournament TSHFT. It is put on by Heart and Fire Game Center, for more information visit the Website here. I went over my personal game experience through the eyes of Fabius Bile, this post is about something greater, something that is often hinted at from other blogs and forums…
4th ed armies vs 5th ed armies.
At the TSHFT tourney the two overall players used 4th edition armies. Before anyone goes crazy, and starts talking about scoring methods of the tournament, there was no comp score, sportsmanship was minimal, and painting was not that important. The overall winner played a Blood Angel army. The second overall played Space Wolves. This also dovetails from the previous discussion surrounding BoLScon where a 4th ed Tyranid army won. We currently have the five codices made with 5th ed in mind (SM, Orks, Daemons, IG, Space Wolves). If it is truly list building makes an army great, why haven’t these armies consistently win all Tournaments? You can make an argument about each one not performing up to their potential.
Space Marines: Played by 40% of the players means a lot of inexperienced players entering tournaments and getting beat or lists designed to defeat MEQs.
Orks: Usually in the top three of every major tourney, but never taking the cake. The argument has been beaten to death: they cannot deal with mech and pie plate spam.
Daemons: Seemly obvious, GW thought of Fantasy 1st and 40k second, plus the lack of effective shooty builds.
Imperial Guard: The codex is too new, give it a year and we shall see their total domination. My theory and another topic, is Guard have shitty BS for the most part and that is the underlying balancing force.
Space Wolves: Not even out, but we already see how potentially cost prohibited they are.
All the arguments run the meta landscape, but they seem to always avoid the most important factor: the player. As is the case with TSHFT and Bolscon the experienced player won out. They were not flavor of the month players relying on the list. The winners of these tournaments played balanced forces that they have honed, instead of following the codex creep train. Even the Ork player that took Best General had an Ork army with a lot of elements both mech and foot.
My thesis overall is simple. Extreme lists and average players can only get you so far. Even extreme lists and great players can run into their rock to their scissors. It is the balanced force in the hands of practiced experienced player that have the best chance to win.
I want to know what you folks think? One caveat, let us not have this devolve into my list would beat that list.
Take a look at the PDFs of the top three armies for TSHFT and tell me what you think?
Take a look at the photo gallery I have from the event I tried to get a good sample of most of the armies.