40K ETC 2012 photos

40K: 40K in 40 countries?

Not much hobby work is getting done these days, the paint table stands strangely idle, clean and orderly. The Boyz are busy sharpening their choppas and loading extra dakka onto the wagons in preparation for the ETC2012. The choice of Panzer Waaagh of Horde Waaagh seems against the flow of popular Ork Kultura. I see their point, in defense of the Panzers in five event they have got 3 1st, 1 2nd and 5th while the horde got 1 st , 2 3rd and a couple of low scores. Which would you bring to the biggest scrap of the year?

Why 40K in 40 countries? Poland will be the eleventh country I have rolled dice in. only 29 countires left to get to play 40K in 40 countries :)

Sisters Storm Salzburg Austria

I like mIKE

Odd post this, about six months ago I was on a long train trip to somewhere. I started to write a post on a five year plan for Ireland to win the ETC (it was a long trip). One of the sections was a profile of what were the characteristic to look for in the team, the players, captain, etc. (I had been doing something on team development for a work project at the time) . The idea being to profile what was needed then figure out the best fit. Below is an endorsement of why I think Mike Tangley should be the Irish 40K ETC captain for 2011.  

I like mike argument

I think it would be a good idea if,

-The guy responible for managing Irish ETC team was an actual manager in real life.

-The guy responible for the travel plans for the team was a travel manager in real life.

-The guy leading the team to an international event had a lot of international events experience in real life.

-The guy dealing with the international captains council dealts with international captains in real life.

-The guy captaining the team says "I am busy, it will take a while" rather than "I am too busy it will not be done".

If proven Leadership, logistical planning, experiance, commitment and people skills do not matter in the choice of captain. Then what does?

Last year Mike missed out on the captaincy. Since then he has won a best in europe leadership award. Became the second best player for ireland in the rankings and gone on to win events in different continents. While making a top 25 international captain's list that includes Barack O Bama. If they not achievements wanted in the captain of the Irish ETC team what are?

We should judge a potential captain not just by what they say they will do but also what they actually do . And I think so far Mike is doing the right things?

Think what kind of standard could set for the captaincy and what example would that set for future captains?

Sitrep (40K): That is a wrap,the ESC and the ETC pt 2

The big show.  With a Waaagh in effect going as a shield meant this was going to be a rough ride

Frist up Finland. They beat use last year so it was interesting test to see how far we had come.  My opponent Jukka Halme playing chaos space marines, aka double lash, in kill points. Jukka won the roll off to pick side and picked the corner I wanted. Fortunately neither of us released the best piece in the entire ETC was now on  my side. There was a beautiful ruin with three solid walls within running distance of the Orks table edge. For most of the game Jukka tried to lash the Orks mobs into good positions for the obliterators. A lot of boyz were killed but no kill points were earned. Meanwhile the deff dread, Crushinator and a mob of killa kans infliterated the ruins.  With time running out Jukka concentrated on the ruin targeting it with two squads of obliterators, both the princes and all the available chaos marines.  The killa kans shuffled forward and put a couple of wounds on the nearest Prince before the Crushinator broke cover and killed him. Down on kill points and missing a prince the marines fired 12+ melta shots into Crushinator destroying him while the last prince charged the kans.  The game end with the prince locked in combat with the kans  for a even draw.

Round two was against Beglium this time space wolves lead by Louis Aerts.  The Orks won the roll off and picked the side with the most objectives and best cover.  The Wolves rolled on and opened fire with little effect. The wolves were reluctant to advance while the orks controlled most of the objectives and did not feel in a hurry to be anywhere.  Realizing the orks were not going to charge forward, the wolves charged in but it was too little too late. To add insult to injury one of the Ork mobs won their combat and consolidate towards the wolves only objective to contest it and the end of the game with a suprise win. This was the high water mark for the team making it into sixth place in the rankings.

Round three was agnaist Sweden (playing with the big boys now). The enemy was battlewagons Orks (my favourite kind of Orks) led by Oakim Engström. Looking at the lists Oakim commented that I should have some deff koptas in my list. Considering I picked up a 20 point penal for having an extra 100 points worth of deff koptas I had to smile.  The game was very cagey the first casualty (one of mine) was not until turn three.  Then it degenerated into a blood bath as battle wagons and mobs started to commit.  The wagons rolled over the kans destroying them, then pinning the foot boyz in combat. The game end in a win to the battle wagon boyz who contested the foot boyz objectives while keeping their own objectives clear.

Round Four Was against Danemark I was paired against Andy "Panda" Horvath playing another double lash the primary mission was kill points secondary was objectives.  The CSM again won the roll off for sides and picked the good one with nice terrain.  Deployment was dawn of war with the CSM opting to all roll on except for deep striking terminators,  In response two mobs and big mek deployed up front.  The CSMs played the lash game grouping mobs then plasma/ing them to bits. In exchange the mobz fired rockets at the princes badly wounding one.  It was turn four before anybody claimed a kill point with a prince failing a perils test and passing on to the other realm. Andy responded by lashing a big meks mob and flaming it to bits. The Orcs when Waaagh and fluffed it. Three killa kand failed to hit  land raider in combat. The other mob and some rockets immbolised and weapon destroyed a rhino.  The last big mek and his mob got into a nasty rumble with a mob of obliterators.  The big mek passed 3 5++ to stay in the game with the Nob took out all three obliterators.

The game ended a winning draw to a very shocked Andy.

Round five vs Switzerland and Markus 'Jokaero' Liechti playing genestealer bomb. The mission was capture the flag with with the secondary being kill points. The Orks nested around their objectives with the bugs doing the same, genestealers infested evenly across the board.  The game did not go anywhere fast with neither side pushing hard. Eventually tried of waiting the boyz went on a waaagh. Unfortunatly they rolled a 1 and could only get a couple of boyz into a mob of stealers. To make it worse their support, Crushinator, also rolled a 1 for its run move. leaving it strand against the hive guard.  The Genestealers took their time with the mob before destroying it while the hive guard quickly destroyed the Crushinator.  The remaining orks bunker-ed up waiting for the imminent genestealer bomb which never arrive. the game end on turn five with a loosing draw.

?

Round Six vs Austria. It seemed fair I had played against some of them in the Salzburg and mentioned to TNI what the Austrians thought of their playing skills.  Fair play says the Austrians get to take a shot at the 'free ' Irish ;) Unfortunatly two of the Austrians fled in terror rather than face the Irish, muttering something about flights home.  Meaning the boyz had to sit this one out.

Sitrep (40K): That is a wrap,the ESC and the ETC pt 1

Big Mek Gutbag with kustom cuver maka

The hall

The ESC;

This was my first time attending the ESC, it was also the last dance with the sisters for the forseeable future. Organisation wise it was probably one of the worse organised event I have been to in a long while but the player standard is high so it made for some good games.

Nikoly's grey knights line up. I never figured out what exactly a dread knight did he strayed too close to the sisters table edge and got destroyed by some celestians.

Frist up to bat was Nikolay "Azathot" Golov of team Russia fielding grey knights. The primary mission was kill points with the secondary being capture and control.  The grey Knights shooting was greatly reduced by the terrain, ETC terrain tends to be denser and more LOS blocking.  The grey knight were funneled into killyones before being flamered and boltered back to the emperor. The game end a winning draw (13-7) with Nikolay destroying most of the Sisters LAVs and me forgetting to roll my 35 D6x10 vps for using excruicators on the inquisitor

Round two was against Eugene "Aaz13" Rigo of team Russia using Orcs. Possibly the game of the tournament with the sisters assaulting a battle wagon waaagh backed up by hordes of boyz, kans and lootas. Celestian squad Rose pretty much got a draw on its own. First it tagged time a 30 boy mob, destroying it and break through the enemy lines. It then went on to kill a battle wagon and mob of mega nobz, a big mek, 4 killa kans before being locked in combat with another mob of kans 1" away from the Orks home flag, not bad for a forlorn hope.

Eugene's boyz line up

Warboss's last stand

Round three was against Pekka of team Finland Tyranids and was the wrong kind of massacre with the sister getting wiped out in turn seven.

Last man standing

Round Four was against Jakob "Amasec" Salzmann of team Germany SOB with IG.  Jakob army had one Canoness, three exorcist and a lot of guard with a lot of anti LAV weapons. We fought in a city fight table reducing the effect of the exorcists. It was a tense game with both side jostling to get good LOS sites. Amasec came of the better helped by winning the roll off for sides. He won the primary with a draw on the sceondary but not before Laby Tabita cut of the head of the renegade canoness. Hi light of the game was lady Tabita failing her act of faith only for the renegade canononess to roll triple one to wound with her eviscerater before being behead in the next turn.

Fighting Orks in a city is never pleasant, unless you are the Orks.

Round five saw the Sisters fighting again on the same city fight table against an horde of orks with a primary mission of kill points in dawn of war. The Orks won the roll off and deployed two 30 boyz mob and a warboss on the half way line. with limited line of sight and a lot of cover saves this was a bloody affair. Squad Rose again went for the throat and got a tag team assault on a mob of boyz with warboss destroying them and assaulting a mob of lootas before being destroyed (two sisters vs 13 lootas as a bridge too far).  Elsewhere the sisters played cat and mouse killing another warboss and mangle another big mob.  The refs called time half way through turn four. With the score the orks winning on kill points 7-6, (damn rhino chassis) with both sides tied on secondary objectives. Annoyingly everybody else played on for another half hour when the Cannoness had her eye nice on a nice mob of grots.

Lootas or Grots?

Sisters sacrificed vehicles to line up good assaults on orks boyz,

Round Six was against Jean "Carnassire" Zvorykin of team mercs playing Grey knights. This time on a fairly open table, not what you want against a shooting army. Turn one started of well with the exorcists and immolators destroying a razorback and killing its passengers.  Then the grey knight opened fire and that was pretty much the end of the game. Despise being in cover and concealed the sisters got shot to pieces in the first round. two exorcist were destroyed. one was made weaponless, one immolator destroyed, another made weaponless and the third immobilised. The sister chewed dirt for most of the game while the grey knights destroyed vehicles at will.  But the clock was ticking the game ended on round five with the sisters hang in for a draw.

Overall the ESC was a blast, my main grip was with the organisation four of the rounds were scored wrong and calling time in round four and not following up was as pain. But the opponents were great fun and hope to meet them again next year. 

Sitrep (40K): Road to the ETC

The ETC looms large. Hard to believe I will  be on the ground on Tuesday and rolling dice by Wednesday.  

A year ago I had planned to return with the sisters but the boys in green need green boyz so the Orks are marching to waaagh.  Hopes for a new army have been dashed by reality the only new guy to make the list so far is an unnamed Big Mek with "kustom cuver maka".  

Not known for patience the boyz are taking a spin up to the Berlin to put the boot in at the Berlin city 40K championship this weekend.  Then returning to join the sisters to march on Montreux.  The Sisters are making their swan song appearance for the ESC(if the new codex rumors are true). Sub par rules, not a lot of flavour and no new models doesn't sell the new list.  The only rule they seem to have got right is "righteous fury" which affects Sisters players whenever they read about the new codex ;)

40K; To Rank or not to Rank that is the question

So the ETC has come and gone and dust is starting to settle. Ireland's performance was good but should have been better. I had hoped for a top half finished instead we ended up in the bottom quarter.

One of the interesting points raised was how the team was selected. There are two distinct schools of thought on how it should be done the first is the Rankers and the second is the Captain choice. The Ranker philosophy is that the top eight ranked players at a given time are the best players in the country regardless of all other factors. Ideally the captain is the best player in the country. The captain choice philosophy is that there are 100+ players that play games in Ireland by picking players for a given purpose a better team can be created. Ideally the captain is not playing and is dedicated on getting a team win.

The common issue with the captain’s choice is that it is open to corruption and the captain will only pick his mates for the team. The counter is that such a captain is a bad captain and a bad captain would be a liability regardless of method selected. Another complaint is that the captains choice would bypass rankings in favour of getting to know the captain. The counter is the same a good captain goes to all/most of the events he should know most of the players, he should be thinking of the big picture the rankings are still important to generate names see how players are progressing. A good captain with freehand to select his A-team and a burning desire to win would be lethal when it comes to ETC. Most of the top teams use a version Captains choice and true so do some of the bottom ones but considering there are twenty four teams ahead of Ireland compared to seven below implies it is more gain than pain.

The rankers favour rankings because it is simple and is based on merit. At first pass it seems ideal. Others, like myself, think it breaks down too often and that the top eight are only the top eight at the time you look at them, next time you check the list will have changed particularly around the bottom half. Other notable issues are,
The Tristam effect;
Tristam is a good player with the second highest number of tournament wins this year but he did not make the cut for the ETC, Why? Is the answer that he organised and ref'd several tournaments? In organising/running Gaelcon and Vaticon he was penalised under the ranking system, everybody who attended got points but he did not. Without his sacrifice the rankings cannot work and the tournament scene would be a poorer place..
The Mike Brown effect
Some players are annoyingly good. But because of life commitments they have only limited time to game. They do not get to go to many events but when they do they do very well. Under rankings they are penalised despite the fact they are arguably the best players around.
The Mike Tangley effect:
Some players regularly travel aboard for big events and have played in Tournaments from San Francisco to Nottingham. They are penalised under rankings if they opted to play in a large 150+ event aboard instead of a small local 10 player ranked event. Despite the fact they bring so much to the team.
The Vulcan effect;
Some players can build awesome armies that are capable of doing very well and break into the top ten. However, their armies may not be allowable at the ETC and the player may have little or no ability with any other army but they still make the cut on a ranking team.
The Unknown Soldier effect;
Somewhere in the Irish rankings is one or more unknown soldiers. He plays tournaments with his favourite army, it is ETC allowed, the player consistently gets draws or wins but doesn't always win big or score high on the rankings. At the ETC he would be an ideal in a shield role (I will discuss the roles swords and shields at the ETC later). But he will never make selection on a ranked system
The Josh Roberts effect;
Some of the players who make a rankers team will need to change armies either it is not ETC allow or another player has first call on their armies. The argument is that they are good players regardless of armies used, Mike Brown, Dan Aherne and Paul Quigley are examples such players who can switch armies and still do well. I think that works small tournaments but will fail a ETC. A ranker who qualifies and changes army has at most 3-4 months to be become familiar with his army. When he goes to the ETC he will face Josh Robert of team England. Josh has 500 games of experience with his army. That is a game a day for nearly year and half. To get a result against that type of player a big ask of the ranked player. Its even worse if you are asking it of someone who is not playing their first choice army or have had only a couple of months in their new role.
The "I won" effect;
In order for the rankers to pick a team they must pick a point in time and say by this date the top eight are on the team. If a player is in the top eight before or after that date but not on the date they do not make the cut. Consider a player who is in the top eight for seven of the eight tournaments during the year but misses out because the one event he missed was the decider. Or consider the case of a player who makes the cuts but has soon as he qualifies he plummets down the rankings so that by the time of the ETC they are ranked forty seventh.
The precedent;
This year ETC team was intended to act as golden ticket and friends affair with players get invites to play for the team and a couple of others getting to play. As it worked out it ended up being a ranking ETC team. All of the players ranked in at some stage or another. The rankings team consisted of nothing but swords (more on this later) i.e. players who play to win and for who the concept who playing for draw is alien, you don't get to make the top ten by playing for a draw. This team went to ETC and was badly defeated, the players were good the team was not. The precedent is against the ranked team.

The ETC and Pairings
Regardless of the selection method both systems are aimed at doing well at the ETC. They do this by winning the pairings. The ideal team consists of a mixed bag of players some are sword players, they play to win, for them the idea of a draw is alien and their armies themed for that purpose. Others are shield players, they are okay with draw and can hold their own against pretty much anything. The third type are jack of all trades they can do both but not to the same level as dedicated sword or shield players. The Ideal team consists of three swords, three shields and two jacks. The way the pairings work is that one team nominates player the other team picks a nemesis army for him to play against the cycle is repeated three times with the last two pairs consisting of two predetermined team champions and the last free players on teams. The sequence they are played is sword, shield, sword, shield, sword, shield, jack, jack depending on who has the initiative swords and shield may switch places in the sequence. The desired results is win, draw, win, draw, win, draw, draw, draw points wise the win translates 95 v 65 ETC points. There may be some upsets causing a swing of +\-20 points but by and large that is how it should play out.

The ranked team consists of nothing but swords, most of whom will have to play as shields or jacks only three will be playing in roles they are suited for. The Captains choice will consist best swords, shields and jacks available for the ETC. When the Ranked team and the Captain choice pair off both teams will be pretty similar, good players are good players after all, however, where they deviate it will be to the advantage of the captains choice. His players are picked for purpose from a larger pool while the ranked team has players who are in roles they are not accustom to or have had only a couple of month to get up to speed with.

By and large that is what happened to Ireland most of the time the swords were blunted, the shields were broken and the jacks did so-so. Intermittently swords struck and shields held but far far too few times. If you are not convinced look at the scores for Ireland at the ETC. How rounds were won by more than 115 points or lost by more than 45 points? The fault is not the players they are some of the best nor is the issue the captain he has to make do with what he has. The main problem is that team is off balance too many swords not enough shields or jacks. The result was a team where the captain struggled to get good pairings and players struggled to get good results.

Considering that the ranked team did not work this year and suggesting that we use it again next year is like WW1 if the first wave did not work we send in another wave. Yes there is the benefit of hindsight but they had that as well in WW1. It would be far better to change tactics and try another selection system and if that doesn't work then try another system the year after, to keep on driving to create the best selection process.

So having read all of the above and gotten pass the bad grammar and spelling the question is do you rank or not rank?