New nids - new love

I have nothing to add to the news floating over the internet. It looks like Tyranids is coming soon. And I wand just to write something about it.

Release date is rumored to be 11 of January 2014 - soon enough. Pre-order is rumored to start at January 4. Three weeks left:)

I found a possible codex cover:

Looks great! It must be a hardcover book, I think. I'll try to go through the codex, gathering all the last rumors together:
 

Cultivating Warhammer 40k community in Belarus

A year ago I was a happy newbie. Today I generate ideas how to popularize warhammer 40k in Belarus :)

I made the first step and organized the first national team tourney on 16 November 2013. It was a good push forward for experienced players from one side and showed that our community is still too small. I think that we have a broad possibilities to grow up, so I focus now on involving new people with the warhammer 40k in Belarus. Here is my plan:

Belorusian Team Cube - 2013 results

This was my first try to organize a tourney and it is successful as I can see. Four teams from different belorusian cities took part in the event. Minsk, Vitebsk, Mogilev and Polotsk participated in the full circle game system. It stands for 3 games if we have 4 teams, actuaaly.

I round result:

Minsk – Vitebsk : 42 -  58

Polotsk - Mogilev : 64 – 36

II round:

Mogilev – Vitebsk : 44 – 56

Minsk – Polotsk : 44 - 56

III round:

Vitebsk – Polotsk: 56 – 44

Minsk – Mogilev : 54 - 46

So, team from Vitebsk won with all three victories under the belt. Team Polotsk finished second, Minsk placed third, while Mogilev right after the Minsk:)

Yes, this 10 cm Dice (the prize for the first place) is made of steel and weights about 10 kilograms:) 

Belorusian Team Cube - 2013

The reason, why i abstained from posting here is that I try to organize some tourneys :)

For those who are not in course of situation with warhammer 40000 in Belarus I’ll make a short report.

I suppose that we have about 50 players in Belarus and only about 30 active players. The average size of a local tourney is about 16 people.

Nevertheless we manage to participate in every team tourney in Moscow and in every European Team Championship past 4 years.

This year we managed to get 3 teams to the Russian Team Cup – that is a great step forward for our tiny community!

Now I want to make another big step and set up a national team tourney! I called it “Belorussian Team Cube - 2013” It will happen on the 16 of November in Minsk. 4 teams from 4 different Belarusian cities will take part in a tourney, representing Minsk, Vitebsk, Mogilev and Polotsk.

Each team consist of 5 players. The format of a tourney is a 1850 pts with ETC scoring system.

For people keen on army lists – check this post:   

http://rpg.by/index.php?s=&showtopic=16743&view=findpost&p=389537

I will not play at a tourney, so I’ll have some time to make some photos to write a report after the tourney :)

Deeper analysis of pairings with team Belgium

Team Belgium captain Tom Adriany presented me their pairings table for team Belarus so I did some more analysis based on it.

I post again the team Belarus table:

And the team Belgium table is here:

 

Team tourney theory - Advantage realization

In the previous article I discovered the situation, where you want to risk against more powerful, usually, opponent. But there can be different situation – when you have advantage in composition and don’t want to be outplayed in the game of pairing. So, this article is about “how to minimize risks versus less powerful teams”.

I showed that opponent can guess our champion to maximize points. So, it’s the worst case for our team, actually and let’s count that opponent successfully did it – he knows our champion! How to hold the ground if such a shit has happened?

How can we choose our champion?

Team tourney theory – Counter-champion

The game of pairings without champion’s game is a game with full information and can be calculated throughout. But when we have a champion’s game everything becomes much-much different. We have to take into account the unpredictable factor – enemy champion.

How can we choose our own champion?

1 – Defender as a champion. Most popular strategy is to play an allcomers army as a champion. So, we just stabilize the champion’s game and can focus on the game of pairings. The minus of this method – our powerful army is away and plays with some opponent’s army that can be not the best choice for the team and can decrease the outcome.

2 – Army without good matchups as a champion. If we have an army that we are not possible to use effectively – we can drop it from hand into a champion’s game. Possibly, it will be the best possibility to find average pairing for that army. It can be an attacker that has no targets or defender with 1 very-very bad matchup.

3 – The weakest army as a champion. Just to drop the weakest army from hand before the game of pairings main part.

4 – Counter-champion. We can try to predict enemy champion and set the best army to counter enemy champion. It’s the method to maximize the result, but if you fail to predict the campion – you can loose by much.

Team tourney theory – Minimax strategy calculation

To clear out what is minimax strategy I’ll make an example with a 3x3 player game. We’ll have 3*3*2*2 = 36 pairing variants in this game, but not all of them are acceptable for us or our opponents! Let’s take a look at the evaluations table:

	BA	GK	SB
IG	3	10	11
DE	16	8	2
Tyr	6	4	15

Team tourney theory – Pairings with full information

When I just started to play team tourney I heard that “champions in a team tourneys make it unable to calculate the whole pairings process throughout”. But how? I decided to investigate that with a minimax strategy taken from the game theory of the mathematical statistics. Let’s look at the pairings evaluations table, like I posted in the previous aticle (values range from 0 to 20 according to the expectations of points taken from the game):

		Enemy team
		GK	CSM	Eld	Tyr	BA	DE
Our team	Eld	5	13	10	15	11	6
	IG	13	13	16	2	4	16
	Dae	15	5	3	2	14	3
	GK	9	14	13	14	8	13
	SM	6	5	6	9	16	4
	SW	6	14	17	16	10	14

I did this example in 5th edition, so don’t try to think on the values itself:)

If you want you can count that the average of this table is 10. So. It must be the game with equal composition strength.

Now let us consider the game of pairings without champion game! If both team’s evaluation tables are the same, then one can calculate all 518400 combinations of pairins for this table. On each step each captain chooses the best variant for his team. I did this calculations for the table and the results are:

Team tourney theory – Composition

Composition is, actually the list of armies in a team or the army lists included in your team.
For simplisity lets assume that all the players are of equal strength and there are no luck or unluck in the games and the outcome of each game depends only on army lists. I mean that Tyranids with 18 raveners looses to venomspam DE, DE looses to mech IG while mech IG looses to Tyranids:)
I'll cover the game for 6 persons in a team again.

How to build a perfect team?

1. Toolboxes. We can take the most powerful army lists possible, according to the results of the singles tournaments - they are called toolbox lists or allcomers. It's easy - just look at the top-10 of the Grand Tournaments around the world and choose the best armies. For example: Tau+SM, Eldar+Tau, CSM+Necrons, Necrons, Tyranids, Daemons+CSM. Looks solid and every list is designed to play with any kind of the opponent army.

Team tourney basics – The game of pairings

I was asked to do some translations on the topic on team tourneys. I'll start with covering the rules for the team tourneys for 6 players in a team.

The team consist of 6 players, one player is a team Captain. Every player in a team should run an army from a unique codex (at least its primary detachment).

Every player play with his army and only his army at the tourney, no rotating usually possible. Each round a team plays with a different team simultaneously at 6 tables. The opponent team is chosen by the tourney organizers (TO). After opponent team is defined – team captains have to do the pairings (I’ll call it “the game of pairings”).

The game of pairings routine:

First each captain secretly write down the name (or army) of one of his players. Then captains roll off to see who should start the game of pairings first. The captain who lost the roll off chooses one of his players as the first defender (he cannot choose champion, though). Then the captain who won the roll off choose one player from his team to play with the first defender. So, the first pair is defined. Then the first defender chooses the table on which to play (he can choose any table from 6 available).

Then the captain who won the roll off chooses the second defender and the opposite captain chooses the player to attack that defender. Second defender chooses the second table and so on, until all 5 players find their pairs and chose tables.

After all five pairs are done, captains reveal the champions, who play at the last (unchosen) table.

Composition ideas after ETC

Our composition on the past ETC-2013 looked like this: 3 defenders, 2 semi-defenders, 3 attackers. I tried to get the best possible pairings for our attackers while playing defenders and semi-defenders as champions, defenders and as last man standers. Let’s look at our composition in detail:

Defenders:

DA+IG – the “first defender” based on the Azrael-boosted platoon with punishers and Vendettas, the list that never get more than 12 points, but do not give points to the opponent.

GK – razorback spam, a lot of fast cheap troops. It has no destruction points, so it can bring points in any match and also has the capability to attack several builds that are afraid of mass S8 shooting.

IG+GK – the second mech-defender with punishers. It synergies well with GK and DA, creating something like a similar defender type.

So, all our defenders need the same types of attacking build to be constructed for them. Something like a target overload for opponent’s composition, that might not include 3 attackers on mech armies.

Russian Federation Team CUP – 2013. Game 5 - Orks+Tau and results

The last (5th) game from the Russian Team Cup – 2013 was against a team filled with ETC Team Russia players. We decided to try to outplay them on pairings and put tyranids, me, into first defend. Russia attacked me with Orks, so I played with Aaz13 and his Meganobz!

Russian Federation Team CUP – 2013. Game 4 - GK again

Game 4 from the Russian Team Cup – 2013 was against Frei and GK again! Actually it was the only bad pairing in our team, so I had to save some points while others earn points with good match-ups.

 

Russian Federation Team CUP – 2013. Game 3 - GK

Third game from the Russian Team Cup – 2013 was against Arisk. Actually I did pairings extremely bad and my worst nighmare stood across the table – Paladins with Draigo!

 

So, this is a 0 point match for me:) Paladins can easily push me off the table – I have nothing to do with them.

Russian Federation Team CUP – 2013. Game 2 – CSM/Daemons (Xellos)

I’ve posted 1 report already from Russian Team Cup – 2013. As I have no photos from the games, It will be easier to post a short reports with some conclusions – it will be better to read and understand.

My army is Tyranids with 18 raveners:

Bealrus at ETC-2013. Afterword.

Organization

I found myself a bit slow, so I still has no account at warhammer org to say thank you to organizers, so I’ll do it on my blog now.

THANK YOU, Serbia for great event! It was my first ETC and I fell in love with the event. Organization was at a very high level, in detail:

+ Terrain on the tables was fantastic! Playable and different! Great job!

+ The place was conditioned!

+ Dinner! Not something exotic, but nutritious and fast, actually!

+ 2 games a day with 4 hours per game was great!

+ Transport from airport to hotel and back!

+ Magnets, T-shirts for the event! Cards for pairings! Awesome!

Belarus at ETC 2013. Game 6 - Tyranids vs SM+IG

The last game for the ETC-2013 is against Team Latvia. I played with Andrew 'Weran' Isaev. Andrew is a great guy – we laughed a lot along the game, besides the game was highly competitive itself!

His army is an interesting SM+IG built with a Kor’Sarro Khan in a platoon and a lot of flyers!

Belarus at ETC 2013. Game 6 - Latvia - Pairings

The last game we were paired with LATVIA, the russian-speaking team, ah, finally, It's so pleasant to speak russian instead of poor English:)

If we win this game, we'll place in top10. So, it was an important game for me, cause the best place Belarus ever took at ETC was 11! So, top10 was our goal for this tournament, actually.

Belarus at ETC 2013. Game 5 - Tyranids vs IG+SW

My Scotland opponents was Brett "Chunk" Armitage wis a nice mech IG army.

His list:

Primary Detachment: Imperial Guard

HQ 1: Primaris Psyker (70) Force Axe (-) = [70] - WARLORD

TROOP 1: Infantry Platoon 1

TROOP 1a: Platoon Command = [30]

TROOP 1b: Infantry Squad (50) Autocannon (10) Power Axe (10) Meltabomb (5) = [75] + Transport 1

TROOP 1c: Infantry Squad (50) Autocannon (10) Power Axe (10) Meltabomb (5) = [75] + Transport 2

TROOP 1d: Infantry Squad (50) Autocannon (10) Power Axe (10) Meltabomb (5) = [75] + Transport 3

TROOP 1e: Infantry Squad (50) Autocannon (10) = [60] + Transport 4

TROOP 1f: Infantry Squad (50) = [50]

TROOP 2: Infantry Platoon 2

TROOP 2a: Platoon Command = [30]

TROOP 2b: Infantry Squad (50) Autocannon (10) = [60] + Transport 5

TROOP 2c: Infantry Squad (50) Autocannon (10) = [60] + Transport 6

FAST 1: Vendetta = [130]

FAST 2: Vendetta = [130]

HEAVY 1: Manticore = [160]

HEAVY 2: 2 Griffons = [150]

TRANSPORT 1: Chimera (55) Multi Laser (0) Heavy Bolter (0) = [55]

TRANSPORT 2: Chimera (55) Multi Laser (0) Heavy Bolter (0) = [55]

TRANSPORT 3: Chimera (55) Multi Laser (0) Heavy Bolter (0) = [55]

TRANSPORT 4: Chimera (55) Multi Laser (0) Heavy Bolter (0) = [55]

TRANSPORT 5: Chimera (55) Multi Laser (0) Heavy Bolter (0) = [55]

TRANSPORT 6: Chimera (55) Multi Laser (0) Heavy Bolter (0) = [55]

Allied Detachment: Space Wolves

HQ 1a: Rune Priest (100) Living Lightning (-) Storm Caller (-) Meltabomb (5) = [105]

HQ 1b: Rune Priest (100) Living Lightning (-) Jaws of the world wolf (-) = [100]

TROOP 1: 5 Grey Hunters (75) Flamer (-) = [75] + Transport 7

TRANSPORT 7: Rhino (35) = [35]

FORTIFICATIONS: Aegis Defence Line (50) = [50]

This is the army I was prepared to fight with. The only unpleasant moment for me is 1 runepriest with JotWW. Nevertheless, as there are no droppods for this guy I’m fine with it.

Belarus at ETC 2013. Game 5 - Scotland - Pairings

At the end of day 2 we had only 3 points from 4 games. It's below average, so I was frustraited. What have I done wrong? Why we did so bad? I felt guilty and almost ruined in the evening...

I awakened with abolutely different mood. I decided to givemyopponents a good fight. Wonder that I found my team in the same mood - nobody was relaxed. Everyone were sober and ready to do the best! And the next team is again not the weakest team of the tourney - Scotland. They've lost to Russia and lost to Ukraine. So, we can do that!

Our pairings evaluation table was quite optimistic (as usual) but I looked at it carefully at each match up to match the evaluations with my own feelings about that or another match up.

Belarus at ETC 2013. Game 4 - Tyranids vs CSM+Orks

In a game with Finland I met a great guy – Jukka "Tukka-Jukka" Halme! 

He played a CSM army with 9 obliterators and Meganobz as allies. Here is his list:

Belarus at ETC 2013. Game 4 - Finland - Pairings

After 1 great victory and 1 major loss  and a draw we had 3 points and met with team Finland – surprisingly not an easy opponent at this point level!

Our mech defenders look quite solid against Finland, so I decided to play this pairings game with no risk at all. I sent Tau into champion game to get some points, because all available champions have to give points to Tau. Here are our table of evaluations:

Belarus at ETC 2013. Game 3 - Tyranids vs Tyranids

My Belgium opponent was… Tim “Lizardous” Verbeek.

It look like a magic, but before the tourney I met a guy from Belgium in vassal and we played an interesting game, then chat a bit in skype, etc. It’s wonder that that guy's name was Tim. So, that’s the same person, actually:) To be honest, I relaxed, and our game was full of jokes and fun.

Belarus at ETC 2013. Game 3 - Belgium - Pairings

After 1 great victory and 1 major loss we met team Belgium. Team Belgium has solid armylists, so we felt a bit nervous about the result of pairings.

Our table of expectations looked like this:

Belarus at ETC 2013. Game 2 - Tyranids vs GK+SB

My opponent for the second game was Jan "Veiovis" Heidrich. 

His army is a GK with Celestine. Actually my evaluation for the match was 13-10 (13 if I win the roll-off, 10 if I loose). Nevertheless I wanted to get some points from this game!

Belarus at ETC 2013. Game 2 - Germany - Pairings

With 121 point victory we placed second after Germany, who kicked some Slovenians in the first game. In real life this guys looks funny...

... but at the tables we felt no fun at all!

Belarus at ETC 2013. Game 1 - Tyranids vs IG

My army for the ETC looked like this:

Alexander "Erle" Ivanov (CAPTAIN)

ARMY PRIMARY DETACHMENT DESCRIPTION : Tyranids

PRIMARY DETACHMENT: Tyranids

HQ1: Hive Tyrant (170), 2 x TL Devourers (2x15); Wings (60); Leech Essence (0); Paroxism (0) [260 pts] {warlord}

HQ2: Hive Tyrant (170), 2 x TL Devourers (2x15); Wings (60); Leech Essence (0); Paroxism (0); Old Adversary (25) [285 pts]

Elite1: 2 x Hive Guard [100 Pts]

Elite2: 2 x Hive Guard [100 Pts]

Troop 1: Tervigon (160), Stinger Salvo (0), Scything Talons (5), Toxin Sacs (10), Catalyst (15) [190 pts]

Troop 2: Tervigon (160), Stinger Salvo (0), Toxin Sacs (10), Catalyst (15) [185 pts]

Troop 3: 10 x Termagant Brood [50 pts]

Troop 4: 10 x Termagant Brood [50 pts]

FA1: 9 x Ravener Brood (270), Rending Claws x 9 (5x9) [315 pts]

FA1: 9 x Ravener Brood (270), Rending Claws x 9 (5x9) [315 pts]

Army Total: [1850 pts]

Army idea: It's an army designed to open up transport parkings of Imperial guard and Grey Knights. It's not a problem if opponent has Fortifications but the army is afraid of many manticores and GK dreadnaughts. Raveners and Tyrants get into close combat turn 2, so they synergies well. Two tervigons give 2 FnPs as well as let me stabilize the point outcome if the attack of the raveners fails.


My first game at ETC is against Vít "Hamster" Iľkanin with a mech IG army.

Belarus at ETC 2013. Game 1 - Norway - Pairings

This was my first ETC and my first tourney outside of Russia-Belarus and I was a captain, ha-ha! Why? The main reason for this was to get fresh blood to the ETC! To change veterans for guys with hunger for victory. So, our team consisted of:

Yarek - our "heavy veteran", who participated 3 times in ETC before (4 times for now on). He did almost all the captains work actually and was our first defender with a solid DA/IG list.

Fredya - belarusian newbie who plays like a devil. Smart, active and agressive! Our forward with a Tau/SM list.

F9SSS - another newbie with an analitical mind. Calm and coolheaded, he is the man who takes the most heavy matches on his back and draws a tie with a mech GK list.

Warpstone - russian guy who tend to be one of the best russian players. He plays Necrons.

Aeris - russian veteran who joined after team after a drop of another defender. He took a mech IG/GK army to fit into composition.

Skaz - one of the best russian players from St. Pietersburg. He played a popular CSM/Necrons army.

Arsanar - one of our players dropped 2 days before the tourney, so we found a great player from russia who played on ESC and not ETC. He joined our team for the DE army.

Erle - it's me, the captain of the team with Tyranids army!

On the photo from left to right: F9SSS, Aeris, Skaz, Yarek, Fredya, Erle

On the floor: Arsanar on the left and Warpstone on the right.

ETC 2013 - Intro

Hey, I’m back to life! ETC 2013 has ended so I have some spare time to write my blog.

 Yes, it meens that I’ve participated in the Warhammer 40000 European Team Championship in Novi Sad, Serbia this year! And that’s the reason why I haven’t write my blog for some time – I was focused on the tourney. So, now I have a lot of battlereports and articles to write for you.

Russian Federation Team CUP – 2013. Game 1 – CSM (ROH)

I don’t actually understand how, but I became a captain of a 5-man team Minsk & Co for the team championship “Russian Federation Team CUP – 2013”. Our country, Belarus, was represented by 3 teams at the tourney:

Expendables – team composed entirely of our heavy veterans

Vitebsk united – team from Vitebsk, guided by Bubon. A young but ambitious team.

Minsk & Co – my team is a composition of talented newbies, guided by Jarek – one of the most experienced 40k players in our country. I played the role of pairing master and Jarek is our leader and adviser. Our composition is as follows:

Erle – Tyranids (wide attacker)

Jarek – DA+IG (tough platoon-defender)

F9SSS – GK (semi-defender)

Fredya – Tau+SM (mech attacker)

Paul – Necrons+GK (semi-defender)

So, I’m gonna tell you about my own games first of all. Let’s look at my army list.

[1850 report] Tyranids vs Tau/Eldar

I haven’t beeng writing to a blog for a long time. Nevertheless, I think that it’s never late to write another battlereport!

I found out recently that my friend Paul lives 150 meters from me and he has a nice table for 40k.

 

But the first time I got to his place I forgot to buy batteries for my camera, so no battlereport from that game. Just a few words – I faced Daemon and his Tau/Eldar list with Ethereal powered firewarriors, Shadowsun powered battlesuits and new awesome Skyray gunships:) I managed to pull a narrow draw 9-11 in favor of Tau, nevertheless it was an uphill battle for me.

The second time I came to Paul’s place and faced Paul’s Tau/Eldar list (by memory):

6th edition shenanigans - SYNAPSE?

Tyranid rule No.1 : keep everything in synapse!

But 6th edition changed the situation. The possibility to gain 2+ cover save behind the Aegis with Go To Ground, new Rage rules and Fearless rules forced me to look again at the tyranid rule No.1.

First of all I’m going to write some quotes from rulebook, codex and faqs wich I’m going to use in my discovery.

Mycetic Spores – scratch build from plastic ball

As I promised - I made a translation of a Mycetic Spore scratch build guide.

Minsk winter - 2013. Game 3 vs Golio (Eldar)

I got 27 points after 2 games and placed 5-th at the moment. Tourney table looked like this:

1 Fredya (Tau/Eldar)

2 Daemon, my 1st round opponent (Eldar/Tau)

3 Golio (Eldar)

4 [Proxybot] DarkTear (SM)

5 Erle (Tyranids)

6 Johnny (CSM)

Last game Mission is Purge The Alien on Hammer and Anvil!

“Oh, cool” – I said when I saw this table. CSM with double Helldrakes is an easy match for my nids! Golio has nothing to do agains a dual LR list in a KP game. Fredya and Daemon have similar lists, so they may end somewhere in a draw then I will win the tourney!

No so fast, silly tyranid, not so good… Proxybot goes to play with the bottom of the tourney table and I face Golio and his Eldars (Emmm… Golio won the previous tourney as far as I remember!)

Pavel "Golio" Suchkov