After a long weekend of playing and observing the great event that was the Bay Area Open; I knew results and feedback would go out faster than I could physically respond to and having logged almost two full days 40k I needed some sleep! So now I am awake and wondering what I want to say.
I could talk about the slightly douchey Imperial Guard player that won the whole thing going 7-0. I could talk about Reece and company putting on an amazing (for year one) event in record time. I could talk about how basic rule book missions are the best balancer for competitive play– no matter how well-intentioned other systems are over tweaking creates another layer of meta that people can exploit. I could say how Bay Area Open proves again that you never need comp to run a successful non-waac event. All those things I could talk about, but I am sure will be covered in other places.
Instead I made an observation as I looked through my pictures. Below you will find the following pictures showing a potential bad and annoying trend that appeared at the Bay Area Open…
I am not totally sure, but all Grey Knight (many SM and BA) players at the event had at least one Rifleman dread and as you can see for most, one wasn’t enough. If you go to Bell of Lost Souls I am sure you noticed this little ad…
Which makes me think this isn’t a California only development. Since the latest Space Marine codex we’ve had Rifleman dread (the overrated version), but with the Grey Knights you cannot deny just how powerful they now are. So when you combined the biggest bandwagon army since CSM 3.5 with an easy mode unit you have to wonder, what have we gotten into?
So the question of the day: what effect if anything does one unit outfitted in only one specific way have on the game? How has it affected your local scene if any?
If you want to know more about the Bay Area Open tournament here are the results…
https://bloodofkittens.com/bayareaopen/2011/08/02/results/
As well you can follow the on going thread over on DakkaDakka
http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/350862.page
As well the Independent Characters Podcast will have some interviews up from the event as well
http://www.facebook.com/theindependentcharacters
Oh yeah I took a few pictures when I finally stopped playing and started watching….