Imperial Guard in LVO

[Halfpint100]

Due to popular demand (aka: duz_) I thought I would summarize the top 20 places in the LVO (Las Vegas Open), focusing on the guard influence:

 

The top 3 places were all Eldar with some form of Ynari detatchment full of dark reapers (shock horror)

 

4th place was a imperial soup list (6 thunderwolf characters, 5 cyberwolves, 3 assassins, 2 BA jump pack thunderhammer captains with mephy, 6 guard infantry squads with mortars, a platoon commander and a quad launcher). Valhallan 

 

5th place was BA (1085pts) with guard (915pts) (guard brigade, but the top of the list is missing so guard HQs are unknown but costed 143 points, so assuming 4 company commanders with toys, 2 platoon commanders, priest, 10 mortar infantry squads, 3 multilaser scout sentinels and 3 HWT mortar squads, all catachan) Supported by sang. preist, libby, chaplin, 15 sang guard, sang ancient and 15 scouts.

 

6th was pure BA

 

7th was more ynari

 

8th was more eldar

 

9th was more BA with guard (noticed the theme yet?) (mephy, lemartes, captain, preist,15 scouts, 24 death company, 16 sang guard, 2 company commanders, 6 infantry squads with mortars) Vostroyan

 

10th was sisters with BA and guard (celestine, 45 seraphim with 20 inferno pistols!!!, 2 jump pack, thunderhammer captains, mephy, 10 death company, 15 scouts, 2 company commanders, 4 infantry with mortars and 3 HWT squads with mortars) Cadia

 

11th smurfs and templers

 

12th FIRST PURE GUARD ARMY!! catachan -> straken, company commander, primaris psykers, 6 infantry squads (4 mortars), priest, platoon commander, ogyrn bodyguard, 1 artemia pattern hellhound, 2 normal hellhounds, 6 sentinel power lifters. Cadian -> company commander (usual relic of lost cadia), 3 basilisks, 4 HWT squads with mortars, manticore, autocannon chimera. Supreme command of 2 primaris and 1 inquisitor.

 

13th death guard

 

14th chaos soup

 

15th pure wolves

 

16th more eldar

 

17th tau

 

18th, Guard with BA (My favourite list). Liby, tech marine, 15 scouts. Primaris psyker x 2, company commander, 3 infantry squads with mortars and 15 Artemia pattern hellhounds (yes 15!), 14 with multimeltas hull. Tallarn 

 

19th BA with sisters and guard. celestine, 10 seraphim, company commander (Cadian), 5 HWT mortar squads (Cadian), mephy, lemartes, 15 death company, 15 scouts, company commander (valhallan), primaris psyker x2 and tooled up shadowsword (valhallan).

 

20th more eldar

 

So top 20: 

 

7 eldar

6 imperial soups (All BA and guard, some included sisters or wolves)

1 pure guard 

1 pure space wolf 

1 pure tau 

1 marine 

1 pure BA

1 Death guard 

1 Chaos 

 

Discuss!

[Inso]

LVO?

[walter h]

Las Vegas,Nevada. Las Vegas open(I didn't know what it was at first,and I'm in ,America myself)

[Frater Cornelius]

Looking back an competitive play, I am happy that I am out of it. Looks like little has changed. Eldar still dominating and Guard still used to fill the space for more important armies. And when it comes to Guard its just mortars upon mortars, dudes and the occasional artillery piece. Exciting! What's next? Watching paint dry? Oh boy!

 

Anyway, sarcasm aside, thanks for the summary ;)

[WarriorFish]

So looks to be almost entirely to get cheap numbers on the table to hold ground etc, with mortars being a budget way to add a bit more fire power (indirectly too). Given Guard have long been useful for cheaper units to hold ground and such as allies I don't think that's a new secret. A bit like how Eldar can have strong builds - nothing new here right?

 

As a wider point I've never been convinced about tourney as a metric for an army's strength explicitly - more an indicator of where GW dropped things This demonstrates that quite well I feel... In this case Eldar being powerful and soup being taken full advantage of - neither being new concerns!

[NatBrannigan]

15 Hellhounds is great, my fav as well. Also liked the 6 Powerlifter Sentinels in a list, a refreshing choice!

 

Hopefully this stops the moaning about our codex once and for all. Get people to stop taking our Infantry in their armies, don't just make them worse! Damn Marines, coming over here taking our jobs Guardsmen...

 

This highlights the madness of the Eldar yet again though. That -1 to hit and those Dark Reapers... I'd say the reason Blood Angels were so strong here was that they don't care if you have a -1 to hit with shooting. Knowing GW they'll probably nerf Blood Angels rather than fix the -1 to hit thing though.

[Feral_80]

That's unsurprising really.

 

And yes, It's possible that BA will be nerfed. Eldar will also probably, but just slightly, because it's already far too late for GW to fix the single most unbalancing rule they have added to the game, ie -1 hit.

 

Well, some way or another we'll hang on until 9th ed. fixes this. And then messes up everything again in some other way 

[Halfpint100]

The -1 to hit wasnt the issue with those eldar lists. The 3+ to hit anything dark reapers were the issue, that needs a fix. 

[Feral_80]

Well the nr. 1 list used Alaitoc (for basically immortal Rangers and Wave Serpents) besides the Ynnari+Dark Reapers combo.

 

And, one of the things that makes Dark Reapers broken is exactly the fact that they always ignore any -1 hit modifier, which obviously any army that has access to tries to abuse. Otherwise, Dark Reapers would just hit on 3+ like normal Marines. So in both cases, directly or indirecly, that damned rule is highly relevant.

 

Finally, do not forget that Eldar are the faction with the easiest and most abundant access to *extra* -1 to be hit due to psychic powers/stratagems, so certainly that had some effect in terms of defence. As it stands now, Eldars are essentially extremely tough (when not nearly invulnerable) to most ranged attacks from any army in the game, and particularly so from BS 4+ armies.

 

I have not seen the other Eldar lists yet.

[Frater Cornelius]

Well, around here we say that playing Eldar is like cheating legally :P

[Mileposter]

The top list could have used just about any Craftworld trait and it wouldn't have mattered - their list wasn't built on sing the Trait to begin with. It was build to abuse a spammable bit of gimmicky firepower.

 

That's always the thing about tournament lists... It doesn't guarantee what's winning is OP. It only shows what's 0.5% better - because an edge is still an edge.

 

The -1 thing is so easy to counter it doesn't surprise me that many of the lists shown don't really have any reliance on it.

[Schlitzaf]

Do what have the list the Templars Ultra Player Brought or where I can find it?

[Feral_80]

The top list could have used just about any Craftworld trait and it wouldn't have mattered - their list wasn't built on sing the Trait to begin with. It was build to abuse a spammable bit of gimmicky firepower.

 

That's always the thing about tournament lists... It doesn't guarantee what's winning is OP. It only shows what's 0.5% better - because an edge is still an edge.

 

The -1 thing is so easy to counter it doesn't surprise me that many of the lists shown don't really have any reliance on it.

 

Yes, he could have picked just any Craftworld. But somehow he picked Alaitoc. I'm sure that happened by chance, perhaps even by mistake.

 

As for the fact that the other (ie Imperium) lists did not rely on -1 hit, that's obvious: Imperium factions have no access to it. Or, to be more precise, those few who do (Raven Guard, Stygies VIII) are considered weak otherwise for a tournament scenario. Again, certainly it must be by pure chance that Imperium lists that qualified in the high tier were all heavily close-combat oriented, ie the only effective way to face -1 hit spam, which apparently is not 'so easy' to face otherwise. Which means that, if you also want board control, your best bet is to go Imperial soup. Too bad some players reasonably do not like the idea to build unthematic, diluted armies like that, or even to buy models of armies they are not necessarily fond of. For these reasons, AM (and most Imperium, apparently) alone proves to be very hard to use competitively at the moment. It is not so enjoyable to have 1.000 different list-building options if 90% of these are made useless by game mechanics. While an all-around strong Eldar army, that can both spam *and* ignore -1 hit very effectively, tends to dominate.

 

But that's ok, let's go ahead and continue this rhetoric exercise in denying the obvious.

[Mileposter]

... yes. Because only -1 to hit alone determined the entirety of the Tournament lineup. Not getting baited into that argument. The game is not binary.

[Feral_80]

Obviously it is not. But trying to deny that these factors had a huge impact on the game balance still remains a very funny attempt.

[TheUbikator]

... yes. Because only -1 to hit alone determined the entirety of the Tournament lineup. Not getting baited into that argument. The game is not binary.

To some extent yes. Every other army that came close to top 10 was either: A) Ynnari soup of doom or B;) Close combat oriented Imperial soup.

[depthcharge12]

I’m confused as to why it should be an army wide trait for -1 to hit when honestly it should be +1 to cover. High explosives dontgive a flippity do dahabout youhiding in the shadows :P

[Halfpint100]

Do what have the list the Templars Ultra Player Brought or where I can find it?

It was Bobby G, 3 fire raptors, celestine, primaris psyker, eversor assassin and 20 templar scouts

[Mileposter]

I do not deny that the -1 to hit has affected game balance. I simply deny said impact on balance has been 'huge'. Nor do I think said impact is necessarily negative. Many of the traits and options available to the standard player (read: not just the tournament scene) have required players to break the mentality of "The way this army is played", and I approve of that.

 

The -1 to hit isn't what won the Eldar the day. It's strong, but it's presence on the winning list alone doesn't give support to the doomsaying of "-1 traits is what's wrong with 8th".

 

Tournaments are always a horrible pace to look to for balance in a game. They're always hunting that 0.5%. While we can agree that in a perfect world nothing would have 0.5% (or whatever arbitrary low or high number) advantage... It's a complex game and that day will never come.

 

That's not a statement of complacency, either. Always strive for balance. It's a caution against extremism. Always strive for balance.

[Colonel Cross]

Unsurprising results. The negative modifiers to hit are so obviously strong, particularly for Eldar that you can see it in all the top builds. Why did folks gear up for cc? Why did that guard player use 15 Hellhounds? Cuz guard hitting automatically is the only reliable way for us to take out that crap. I've already started changing my list to be more in your face, but that does make it very difficult to have a chance against cc armies and death guard.

[Feral_80]

Ok master Yoda, obviously balance is always good, but I'm afraid you tend to underestimate things a bit. If Eldar-Ynnari armies are clearly dominating the top-10 list, we are definitely NOT talking of some '0,5%' balance edge. The edge is much more significant than that, unless you are also ready to argue against probability.

 

I would be perfectly fine with -1 hit if *all* armies had balanced ways to access/counter it. The fact is, that is very far from reality. Result: a severe lack of balance in the game.

[Major_Gilbear]

Interesting, but unsurprising. As WF says, this just shows what has always been that way.

 

With respect to the army-wide -1 to hit, its interesting that neither 'Nids nor Raven Guard made that top 20 with *their* -1 to hit armies (or at all for that matter).

 

Makes me wonder if the Eldar are the bigger balance issue, even noting the distorting effect that -1 to hit clearly had on most of the armies listed.

[Finkmilkana]

-1 to hit doesn’t make you win tournaments, but in order to win tournaments you need to be able to deal with -1 to hit. Which means you either have to ignore it (dark reapers, short range, flamers) or at least mostly hit on 3+ or better (so -1 to hit ‘only’ decreases your output by 25% and not 33%).

 

Power lifter with straken near by are by the way incredible strong, I’ve already wondered when they would finally show up in lists. 12 (9 without straken) Str 10 AP -2 D2 attacks that hit on 2+ with stratagem for 135 is almost insane on such a mobile unit. I’ve brought them a few times in my local meta and then decided they are too much against non- tournament lists.

[Thorakitai]

In and of itself, -1 to hit is good, but not broken. It starts to break the game when that -1 becomes a -2, or a -3 or even a -4 in extreme cases. Eldar are powerful because they can largely ignore this, and spam it themselves. Fast assault armies are the counter to this, so they do well too.

 

Hellhound spam in theory counters both of these decently, so I'm not suprised (amused though) that that list did well.

 

This could probably be fixed simply by stopping the stacking of - to hit modifiers on units being shot at.

[Reviler]

With only mortar HW taken I bet they go up in cost at the next errata