Bay Area Open results confirm what we already know

In the past 12 months 4 armies have come out that were all considered broken when they debuted: daemon summoning, the Ad-mech war convocation, the Eldar 7th edition Codex and the Space Marine battle company. Three of them are busted because they just give you a lot of free points - what a complex mechanic! The Bay Area Open (BAO) this past week confirmed that these four builds are indeed super powerful, dominating the top 16 lists. You can see fantastic coverage by Pablo at Frontlinegaming.com, and the top lists at bloodofkittens.com.

Some randoms tagged along, including a green tide list (wow!) that made it through to the top 8, and a hard-counter army with four Heldrakes (that didn't make it past the round of 16, because the only hard counter to these lists is another of these lists). Rounding out the rest of the top 16 were Tau firebase cadre lists - another thing everyone said was broken when it dropped. A battle company and a daemon summoning list was in the top 4 at Wargamescon the week before as well. I find all this somewhat ironic because of the number of people who said 'these aren't broken - there are easy counters' when each of these mechanics debuted.

There are certainly other viable builds. A funny list with Tigerius, a librarian, two ironclads in pods, 2 devastator centurion squads in pods and 40 scouts was in the top 4 at WargamesCon. Lictor shame is presumably still strong if well played. Necron lists are around, but almost always Wraithstar with either canoptek harvest or scythes. And I suspect Ravenwing will soon make a debut.

So I suppose it's not all bad - there are still multiple viable builds and skill is certainly a factor. But surely people see that this is lame. This armies are absurdly powerful and take almost no skill to design. Battle company lists write themselves, as does the 40 scout + dev cents lists, as do Decurion lists, as does the war convocation, as do double black knight speeder formation Ravenwing lists, and the Eldar warhost lists. Formations and special detachments like the Decurion make strong units and strong builds incredibly obvious, leading to cookie cutter list building. I suppose this makes the emergence of a meta pretty straightforward, but it also takes most of the skill and creativity out of list building. lame.

1500 point demi company lists

I'm experimenting with some lists for the club tournament this year. Our club tournament is meant to be social but not narrative. There are separate prizes for best general, best painted and best theme (I won theme last year!). There is also a comp system (point 1-5) and a 'no dick lists' clause where a panel can reject lists outright that they think are not going to be at least a little bit fun to play against. Some examples of how this works in practice. Last year a list with a Greater Brass Scorpion, 2 maulerfiends, 2 defilers and a helbrute was rejected  by 2 of the 5 panelists. It got through but comped 1 which meant that even if it had gone 5-0 it wouldn't have won. Another instructive example is that Chapter Masters on bikes with storm shields are generally considered totally fair play, whereas chapter masters on bikes with the shield eternal are not (because of EW). Lists that don't spam things (including, for example, equipping each of your bike squads with different special weapons) is rewarded. It's little things. Also, we played straight book maelstrom last year and I suspect it will be the same this year. That format requires a lot of tools to play well and with a 1500 point limit all the lists end up having some weaknesses. Overall I think it makes for a nice balance of contest of skill and fun had by all.