uk gt heat one results.

[hornywingythingy]

Well surprise surprise no csm remotely near the top, and the only chaos is a screamerstar with guard allies... I don't think anyone is surprised at eldar in first and second, but dark eldar instead of tau as allies is interesting, I wonder if they were allowing the grisly trophy shenanigans with psychic tests?

 

http://s542.photobucket.com/user/Mort2k/media/Snip20130922_6_zpsf9a20ec8.png.html

 

Anyhow, hope these are of interest, its a glimpse of what the top players in the uk are running atm.

[the jeske]

Not bad 2 csm in top 40.

[hornywingythingy]

Considering last year heldrake csm was everywhere, and won one of the heats it shows the waning in popularity, some of those names are or were csm players, who have jumped ship.

 

Still, it shows that da can do okay in a heldrake light environment.

[the jeske]

yes I agree with you.   I have been telling even before the codex was leaked. DA was a very good codex , had flavor , covered different playstyles and wasn't bad, even had good ally options.

[Sception]

We've kind of only gor the one gimmick. There is bike/spawn/mauler rush, but that's not as good, and is outclassed by other equivalents, particularly daemons. Now that the tools exist to beat the drake, csms functionality is way down. We may see some rebound after people stop using drakes, and others no longer feel that drake spam is an essential build to test against, but I do think our books short lived day in the tournament sun is over. Nice to see dark angels doing better with drakes reigned in.

 

Does go to support my view that drakes would have killed mech chaos builds even had chaos mech not sucked, and I still think they should betoned down, given how much of a terror they still are in local settings, where players aren't keen to just drop whatever they used to run to field tau or eldar instead. The native answers to drakes in da snd sm certainly don't cut the mustard, and if every faction had the tools to handily fend off drakes, I'm not sure what non-drake fliers could still be considered fieldable.

[Hellios]

I'm not sure about making them weaker... more expensive maybe... The problem is the lack of other viable lists. for chaos. If I talk about 3.5 (I know, I know), whenever I played against Chaos I had no idea what I would be going up against. Each legion list created at least 1 list that was different... and most of those lists were at least middle tier... a few being top tier.

 

I would like it if the heldrake was still as good (as I say maybe bump the points up), but that the Chaos dex had a number of viable builds which would favour other alternatives. If they weren't spammed everytime, I don't think they would be a problem... especially as more aircraft and AA options are released into the game.

[daboarder]

Yeah the heldrake doesn't kill the chaos codex, the lack of options does.

 

Basically were playing with the 1st 3rd ed codex with some new daemon engines thrown in and the daeemon packs taken out, whereas every other codex has the benefit of over a decade of development behind them.

[Sception]

A book is allowed to have more than one problem.  There are many problems within the 6e Chaos Marine book.  The baledrake is one of them.  Not the greatest of that number, no, but not the least of it, either.

[Warsmith Aznable]

The AP 3 of the Baledrake doesn't seem OP to me, probably because I fight a LOT of TDA or armour centric lists. More and more anti-air is becoming available, as well, so there is that, too. With flyers becoming more prolific, I think more often I may take the cannon instead.

[Sception]

How many of you guys have played against the baledrake, rather than just with it? How many of you have tried taking a meq based army from some other faction with decent meq, meq on the level we all say we wish we had, and run it against baledrakes spam?

 

Yes, spam is in check now, but that doesn't mean it's no longer a negative influence on the game or on the CSM codex, both in terms of your own drakes edging out your other units for points and slots, and in terms of your enemies' drakes wiping you off the field if you dare to run something else.

 

It's no longer ruining the game, but it still has a pretty nasty effect on our book and others.

[Warsmith Aznable]

I fight the Grey Knights about 45% of the time. Anybody who doesn't like the Baledrake can cry me river.

 

That's how I feel about that.

[Sception]

And as long as that's our attitude, that will be the attitude of any non-chaos players we complain to about our book.

[Scribe]

The drake is too impactful (is that really not a word?) on the meta for its own good. Its simply bad for the game.

[Sception]

That impact is down at the moment, at least in tournaments, but its unlikely to go away entirely. The viability of, say, dark angels or space marines infantry armies is pretty much directly related to the ubiquity of tau or eldar armies capable of putting the drake down, and that's a bit too blunt of a dynamic to be healthy.

[Warsmith Aznable]

And as long as that's our attitude, that will be the attitude of any non-chaos players we complain to about our book.

 

You say that is if the rest of the CSM codex doesn't limit me into a narrow range of builds if I want to win. We don't have much, and even if the Baledrake makes MEQ players cry, it's about the only thing in our codex that makes up for all the suckage therein.

[daboarder]

The drake does one thing well, kill marines.

 

Against anything with a 4+ save or worse its a glorified heavy flamer and against any thing with a 2+ save its useless.

 

Every attempt I've seen to "balance" the drake either involves destroying the baleflamer (AP4 is useless, and I mean really doesn't rate compared to similarly priced fliers that get twin assault cannons, multi meltas, 4 missiles and assualt transport for slightly more, or twinlinked Tesla doom guns and transport for significantly less). Or is a demmand that the price is inflated so much that the drake suffers form Thousand sons syndrome.

 

Does it need a price increase, sure making the baleflamer a 20pt upgrade wouldn't be a bad thing. But it most certainly doesn't deserve to be gutted. And yes malisteen I DO play against the Bale drake, and quite frankly in the age of Tau, Eldar and the new marines the drake is lucky if it gets a single turn of shooting before its destroyed. Nor is it unique in its ability to remove marines form the table, there are plenty of AP3 (or better) weapons that readily ignore cover now or weapons that have such a huge volume of fire that they don't care about your armour save, and most of them are on platforms that are more maneuverable than the drake due to being unconstrained by flyer movement rules.

 

3++ did a great article where it broke down the current fliers by their battlefield effectiveness, They rightly identified that the most powerful fliers were the transports because they allowed you to out maneuver you opponent and the only "gun boat" that made it into the top 5 was the heldrake. Take away the heldrakes ability to do damage and its a fancy looking paperweight.

 

edit: and the main purpose of that statement was mostly to suggest the idea that what we really have is a 1st 3rd ed codex instead of a 6th ed one, hell even the 1st 3rd ed codex was more internally consistent than this one with a ready ability to field consistent legion forces.

[Scribe]

That impact is down at the moment, at least in tournaments, but its unlikely to go away entirely. The viability of, say, dark angels or space marines infantry armies is pretty much directly related to the ubiquity of tau or eldar armies capable of putting the drake down, and that's a bit too blunt of a dynamic to be healthy.

 

Yeah, thats just it.

 

If there was nothing stopping the drake from thriving, it would eat marines/bikers. Which would mean Necrons would continue to thrive, probably?

With Eldar/Tau out there, there is nothing stopping the drake from getting eaten.

 

Its a paper/rock/scissors mentality that leaves CSM...lacking.

[Hellios]

A Baledrake turning up now and again isn't a problem for infantry MEQ armies. All armies have tough fights, or units they would prefer not to face. The problem is that the Baledrake (or 2... or 6) turn up a lot. This means in a tournament or in many metas it isn't worth the advantages of playing MEQ infantry when the chances of facing one is so high. If the Baledrake was only turning up in some Chaos lists, and infantry MEQ lists were taking AA options it shouldn't be too much of a problem. In regard to the Baledrake I think two things need to be done. 1) It's cost (pts) needs to go up. 2) The rest of the dex needs to be more viable so less people will take the Baledrake in the first place. This means the Baledrake will no longer be dirty cheap, and it won't be spammed all the time. Also, the Baledrake will remain just as effective as it is now (excluding outside influence from new releases), but it won't be so cheap that you must take it, nor the only option you have in the first place.

 

The only way I can see the Baledrake remaining somewhat viable while making it less effective would be going down the whole Chaos is random nonsense. 3+d6S and d6AP or the like. This means that Chaos wouldn't be able to rely on it... but people would cry when it flames their Land Raiders of Terminator squads into ash.

[daboarder]

wait for another major tournament or two now that marines have their shiney awesome codex your going to see a huge rise in them at tables. And I'd say that the tournament results are showing that the drake isn't a major oncern seeing how if it was an insane unit Chaos would be showing up more at tournaments. The fact of the matter is that while the drake gained shock and awe for being in the first book out the door its pretty much par for the course as far as 6th ed codexes go.

[Tenebris]

Well I think that the Helldrake dread is over since any serious player would plan and would take in consideration that in an average tournament he has high chances to face one or two almost as granted. Thus people already build their list and consider the impact that the Helldrake can have on them, thus you still see Rhinos or other troop transports, 2+ whenever it is practicable and possible, one or two options for AA defense...the list is long.

 

In the end bar the Helldrake the CSM have almost no impact on the game since most of their units are there to buy time until the Helldrake or Helldrakes arrive and to kill something or cap an objective in those three turns. Sure an argument can be spoken in favor of the Axelord or the Brand lord, perhaps even to some zombie spam, but in the end the CSM are no longer the threat that they were a year ago. People are now familiar with our units, know that they are weak and their only concern when facing a CSM army, at least in my experience, is how to kill fast the Helldrake once it comes on the board. So with us it is actually a waiting game. 

 

Why the results are so low, well we can argue about the internal balance and power level but the simple truth is, we are a one trick pony and once this pony is killed all you need is to mop up and score some points. Nothing flashy or all, a thing as simple as target priority can very well liquidate us from the board. 

 

To recap, kill the Helldrake and it is game over in 8/10 cases. 

[khurdur]

surely, do we not have any units capable of causing damage bar the drake? I mean, 6-9 nurgle oblits with vets for LD tests are horrible strong and will slowly shoot down the entire enemy army unless they have S10 or bucketloads of plasma.

 

An axelord in either a bike unit with a bike or jug is horrible, or even TDA in a land raider. A black legion sorc with mastery lv.4 is quite nasty...

Bikes in either small units with double specials or large units with a HQ and either slaanesh FNP or Khorne with the banner of wrath are capable of devastation and can cross the board extremely quickly....tau can't kill 10 bikes with a HQ and cover save real quick and deal with 6-9 oblits shooting their riptides...add a helldrake and its a fearful army.
Just steer clear of our elites and troops and we have an OK list I think, I've never found myself particularly handicapped playing CSM.

 

[hornywingythingy]

surely, do we not have any units capable of causing damage bar the drake? I mean, 6-9 nurgle oblits with vets for LD tests are horrible strong and will slowly shoot down the entire enemy army unless they have S10 or bucketloads of plasma.

 

An axelord in either a bike unit with a bike or jug is horrible, or even TDA in a land raider. A black legion sorc with mastery lv.4 is quite nasty...

 

Bikes in either small units with double specials or large units with a HQ and either slaanesh FNP or Khorne with the banner of wrath are capable of devastation and can cross the board extremely quickly....tau can't kill 10 bikes with a HQ and cover save real quick and deal with 6-9 oblits shooting their riptides...add a helldrake and its a fearful army.

Just steer clear of our elites and troops and we have an OK list I think, I've never found myself particularly handicapped playing CSM.

 

 

It depends, down your local club, you are probably at only a minor disadvantage, in a tournament like this? They will just remove your units, tau can remove bikers in one turn, easily, because their dex has synergy, its parts get stronger in conjunction, specifically markerlights, meaning they can easily remove a unit of bikers and lord in one shooting phase, oblits are good, but they pay through the nose for that flexibility. If you listen to these players on the podcasts, they just don't fear csm anymore, tau, eldar and likely now marines know we will be an easy victory for them.

[the jeske]

9 oblits cost crap tons of points . If you take them then either your runing realy minimum troops and probably tough melee unit [biker+lord for example] , or your not runing any oblits. And sadly oblits aren't so good anymore . back in 5th melta was king , razorbuilds were king . At the end of 5th we had problems with multi shoting armies . Right now we have even more multi shot stuff in armies , then there was in 5th and plasma is kind . plasma which doesn't half its range after movment .

 

So it is not that oblits are bad.their are just a too 5th ed unit [+they got nerfed] and don't cut it against eldar/tau , and they will get by marines a lot because of the +2sv.

[Tenebris]

Yeah Wingy is right, the problem is that the CSM are very low on the threat meter in the tournament scene. People know that once they shoot down the Helldrake the Chaos player will be hard pressed and thus as I have said above, it is a waiting game. A few days ago three Centurions shot two CSM squads to pieces in three turn, he was simply after my troops and I tried my best to keep them in cover but alas the Centurions shoot godly. 

[the jeske]

Painfuly true for me it was , when 6th was coming and I had to test leaked chaos with my friends . After 2 games we could divide armies in two groups.  good armies that don't get hurt by helldrakes and bad armies that get hurt by helldrakes a lot . Remember when I was saying that the bale drake is the worse unit ever ? kept getting called crazy and stuff .