NOVA Open Results

[Smurfalypse]

Batreps will come later as I just got home and am exhausted. 

 

Players - 223

 

Blood Angels - 7

Daemons - 37

CSM - 16

DA - 14

Dark Eldar - 7

Eldar - 28

Grey Knights - 12

IG - 15

Necron - 22

Orks - 5

Sisters of Battle - 3

Space Marine - 4

Space Wolves - 9

Tau - 37

Tyranids - 7

 

Players - 223

 

That's right. . . 44% of the field was primary detachment of Tau, Eldar or Daemons :P

 

Top 30

Eldar

Tau

Tau

Eldar

Tau

IG

DA

Tau

Grey Knights

Tau

Tau

Necrons

Daemons

Necrons

Eldar

Daemons

Eldar

Daemons

Eldar

Eldar

Eldar

Daemons

Daemons

Daemons

Tau

Blood Angels

Daemons

Daemons

Eldar

Tau

 

There is still another two games to play but they do not effect the over all standings and are just to see who wins in each bracket.

 

 

[Scribe]

Yikes.

[daboarder]

Tells you something when a codex only a year or so old fails to make it into the top 30 at ALL.

[the jeske]

nova is invitation only right ? loads of pro players.

[daboarder]

so what can we conclude? That the 16 pro chaos space marine players failed to even scratch the competition?

[Sanctimonius]

Invitation only CSM pro players, so we can conclude that the people who are basically wholly focussed on winning cannot make a winning list against their peers. Hmm. 

 

Of course, some of these codices do not have the most up-to-date releases, like necrons, Grey Knights etc. Which makes it worse, I guess. More recent, yet less competitive. Still, at least it makes the victories sweeter - you not only beat your opponent, you beat the odds, the metagame and apparently GW all at the same time.

[hornywingythingy]

Wow, that's a rather damning indictment of the state of the game, though I'm intrigued by the da army which came 7th.

[daboarder]

Ravenwing banner list most likely, that thing can be mean if done right.

[the jeske]

Ravenwing banner list most likely, that thing can be mean if done right.

yes As long as you don't run in to a list with helldrakes it is rather effective.

 

also I find it funny how there were fewer IG players then chaos players , but there are more IG players in top 30, same with DA and BAs.

[Iron_Within]

pathetic.

[Pariah Mk.231]

So 102/223 are Tau, Eldar and Daemons, which becomes 24/30 for the last 2 rounds? That's rather telling of how powerful those armies are. I've only experienced Daemons first hand in 6th, but my rolling in that game was so terrible I couldn't really guage their strength. For someone who has just started with tournaments, this is not very inspiring. Well, time to grit my teeth and get more experience for my Chaos boys, since I'm not changing off them anytime soon.

[Smurfalypse]

Tells you something when a codex only a year or so old fails to make it into the top 30 at ALL.

 

I agree, though there were a fair amount of CSM players there the codex cannot stand up against Tau who was the primary person (I ran CSM as allies).

 

 

nova is invitation only right ? loads of pro players.

 

There are two tournies basically. One is invitational (I think 32 players) and one is the GT. These are the GT results as I think the invitational is still ongoing today.

So basically the 226 players were a mix of "pros" and normal players like myself.

 

 

Wow, that's a rather damning indictment of the state of the game, though I'm intrigued by the da army which came 7th.

 

Well it is a competitive setting and people are going to play what works best and is most reliable. Also the state of the game from a competitive standpoint as been the same since they started doing things like this. In 5th the primary armies would have been IG, Grey Knights and Necron. In 4th it would have been Orks, Space Marine and whoever else I cannot think of. In 3rd it would have been Craftworld Eldar and CSM (3.5 was a monster). The state of the game has always been the same from the tourney standpoint, there are a few codex's that have very strong builds and you see that build in minor variations en mass.

 

 

Ravenwing banner list most likely, that thing can be mean if done right.

 

One of my buddies who was there is a DA player but swapped over to a Tau/Eldar list for this tourney and I am sure will post what the dude ran on the DA forums if anyone is interested.

 

 

 

Ravenwing banner list most likely, that thing can be mean if done right.

yes As long as you don't run in to a list with helldrakes it is rather effective.

 

also I find it funny how there were fewer IG players then chaos players , but there are more IG players in top 30, same with DA and BAs.

 

I think most CSM players took multiple Heldrakes, not sure how many but there were a ton of them. I allied with CSM and ran a single Heldrake which did okay but nothing to write home about.

 

IG is a stronger codex currently, facts are facts :P

 

 

pathetic.

 

Naa, it was a fun tourney and very well put together. The results were to be expected, more Tau/Eldar with Daemons as a spoiler (Like me). 

 

 

On a side note, there were a few Screamer-stars that did well. Though I did not get to play any of them, my matches were:

Eldar

Eldar

Tau

Space Wolves/Grey Knights

Eldar

Tau

[Smurfalypse]

So 102/223 are Tau, Eldar and Daemons, which becomes 24/30 for the last 2 rounds? That's rather telling of how powerful those armies are. I've only experienced Daemons first hand in 6th, but my rolling in that game was so terrible I couldn't really guage their strength. For someone who has just started with tournaments, this is not very inspiring. Well, time to grit my teeth and get more experience for my Chaos boys, since I'm not changing off them anytime soon.

 

Saw this after I finished my post and wanted to add it on. It is telling but that is normal for a large tournament, nothing new to this type of thing happening, it does show that certain codex's do not hold up (CSM) but that is also normal for each edition (as unfortunate as it is). 

 

Daemons are an odd book, it has TONS of viable builds you can go to tourney and do well with, it has fun lists you can run and not be completely useless, it is fun in all aspects (other than Screamer-star which is boring as heck to play with). 

 

I run CSM as my primary army as well, am a Word Bearer player so I have always had a lot of Daemons in my back pocket to use. I just reversed it for the tourney, Daemons w/CSM allies and it works out great. 15 of those Daemon players did this and 4 of us placed in the top 30 so it can work and do well.

[Zhukov]

As expected frankly. 1 unit can only carry a codex so far. CSM codex suffers from so many issues, even allies can't fix this.

 

It's a shame but it's how it is. One could say "but it's just 1 tournament!". No, it is the most important tournament and it can be explained why CSM just isn't up to par with the good codices.

[hornywingythingy]

I look forward to the batreps smurfalypse.

[Sanctimonius]

I'm interested to see if any of this changes over time, namely with the introduction of the supplemental books. Will the balance of power change? I'm guessing not terribly, since the books so far have tinkered rather than rewritten, but it might be interesting to see if anyone can achieve different results. Still, shame to see CSM relegated to little more than support troops.

[Scribe]

I think really the question I would like answered, is what could be done in the first place?

 

What are the main flaws that we clearly need to work around?

 

Morale on an expensive (after upgrades) MEQ unit?

Delivery options?

Poor supporting weight/punch of our ranged options?

Mobility?

 

All of the above?

[Sanctimonius]

A lack of focus in the codex. 

 

What are we? Are we a close combat-oriented army? Traditionally we are, with (supposedly) better close combat options than our loyalist counterparts. But we don't get delivery options. We don't get dedicated cc units that are actually any good - zerkers are sub-par, especially for the points. Mutilators... I mean, seriously? Slow and purposeful on a unit designed to only do damage in combat? Possessed, less said the better. So we suffer in cc, compared to dedicated armies (and imo compared to non-dedicated, like SM).

 

Are we a shooting army? Obviously not, although it might be telling that we have some of the cheaper options for decent shooting like the cheaper Pred and the autocannon havocs. Oblits are pretty popular too, and more than useful. But our basic troops aren't really built to exchange firepower with Eldar, DE, IG, Tau. A real shooting army tears us to pieces.

 

So we're a combination force, we rely on a mixture of shooting and cc. Except our guys are a bit expensive. We will be outnumbered by most other armies, so our cc needs to do damage despite being hamstrung by Champions of Chaos, and despite not being able to reach the enemy. So our shooting needs to cover them, despite other races doing what we do, but better. We suffer from being a master of nothing and a poor jack of all trades. So we have the helldrake, and are basically forced to take it if we want to win anything.

[Tenebris]

Indeed, I agree with the post above. The true crux of the Chaos Space Marines is that we lack focus, that our book lacks focus. Why the Daemons are effective, well you have four army templates, but so do we you would say, yes but they have also various items that allow for a mixed army to be effective, from standards to generic daemonic gifts. 

 

The CSM is in a very poor state because it lacks direction. I want a melee army, so I should load Berzerkers but here comes the problem, we have no optimal way to get them in melee before turn three, so this means that my awesome melee army wastes three turns before I can actually do some melee. Lets say that I want a solid gunline army. Well I can load on Noise Marines, place Blastmasters, Sirens and Soundblasters in every squad but with hundreds upon hundreds of points spent I am still relying on Blast weapons and I have no AP 2 and I do necessitate that my adversary takes the bite and rushes forward.

 

Do we want to play attrition. Sure we can, MoN is out there just for that but unless you spam with a very slow zombie list those three squads of Plague Marines wont last long. On the other side the combination of all marks and army types is for us unplayable since we have no options to have some synergy between the units.

 

In the end the poor Chaos Space Marine is an unit that is good at nothing. He is still too expensive to provide numbers, too weak to stand and fight and completely reliant on those two plasma guns to kill something, provided that the guns do not kill us first. 

 

You say, we have the Helldrake, I say that while the new Hunters are unassuming next year is Imperial Guard time, the favorite ally of them all and I dread the prospect of an already strong army with an update for the 6th aka the shooting edition. So once the Helldrake is reliably shot down, what else do we have that will win us games? Nada, ništa, niet... ceramite balls and that is that.

 

Now if we would have an option to make our 20 CSM squads Relentless than up from the sudden we have a superb core troop that can be spammed with bolters and extra weapon for cheap. If we would get an option to assault from vehicles it would be good to, but what is the GW's answer...well if rumors stand true, and usually they do, we will be force to rely on daemons, so I ask where is the point of playing CSM anymore if I have to take Daemons to play say Khorne. 

 

The Black Legion book was a great eye opener. It is a supplement built upon the core book so what we got was a second FOC, Chosen as Troops and some really really expensive terminators. I do not count the wargear since the options from the main book are imo still better and more useful. So don't hope that we will get something out of the supplements. Rumors say that they will allow us to take daemons without an extra FOC, fine if we would not be working on being a standalone army since time immemorial, leaving the daemons alone. 

 

Is NOVA a surprise? Hardly, the Tau and the Eldar have countless ways to knock our main asset from the skies and thus an average Chaos player finds himself at the disadvantage since what remains on the board after the Helldrake is shot down is rather lackluster. 

 

What are we to do?...sadly the count as SM is the only option that comes to my mind or use the CSM as allies only for the Helldrake and nothing else. In this year alone on average 30 games I hardly won 10 of them and since most players in my area resort to either heavy artillery or heavy ranged armies I start each time at a very big disadvantage. I have seen the Imperial Guard obliterate 70 marines by turn three, regardless of my Daemon Prince rolling over them. 

 

In the end,... for a local meta Nurgle is the most rewarding option since is the only playstyle that is somehow well rounded with cheap and resilient infantry and some solid HQ. 

[Scribe]

I hate Nurgle stuff, but agree thats the way, both CSM and Daemons, to the path of least resistance.

[daboarder]

Doesn't work these days as well any more. Oblits are about the only thing not just unmarked these days (and thats to cover a deficiency in the rules) there is too much High S power for the +1 T to be worth it on anything else except maybe characters. anything tau, serpents and bladestorm, and soon grav guns, not to mention all the plasma, makes the T5 from effective to useable.

[Scribe]

So I posed the question on Warseer, but will here as well, given this data, whats the answer? Is there nothing (outside the drake) that is salvageable? Daemons as our best ally?

 

Given a holistic approach to both books, how would you main army CSM with Daemon allies?

[daboarder]

Start running daemons as main with COH support?.

 

I dunno man, the fact that the mainstay of the codex is just so.....ugh!

[Scribe]

Yeah, thats what I have been getting back to all day. Eventually I think just run CSM as the ally as a Heldrake bot, but even then, the heldrake is great but is it THAT great? Meh.

[Sception]

All I can think is "good thing I'm not a tournament player".