They confirmed Waiqar v Uthuk at 3:30 Central time. Can't wait to see it!

2 hours ago, FranquesEnbiens said:

SA wins, 590-463

Congrats, SA! Were both SA and NC equally represented in number of players?

Thomas lost Lord Vorun'thul on round 2 from a Warsprinter Berserker charge. It was ugly.

EDIT: Or pretty, depending on your point of view.

2 hours ago, Budgernaut said:

Congrats, SA! Were both SA and NC equally represented in number of players?

SA had four, I believe, and there were two from NC.

4 hours ago, FranquesEnbiens said:

SA had four, I believe, and there were two from NC.

Sounds like NC did pretty well, then.

Church is the mighty master of the demon horde. All hail our new overlord!

Well played everyone (except me haha). It was a great experience and I enjoyed meeting all of you. Looking forward to another awesome year of runewars.

Also, I will have to gloat so hard now when I manage to beat church in our local madlands games in the future.

What happened? Everyone went radio silent after the start of the top 4.

40 minutes ago, DekoPuma said:

What happened? Everyone went radio silent after the start of the top 4.

Semifinals:

- JJ smoked Shane due to some epic Ravos rolls. Otherwise a close match from what I’m told.

- I beat Thomas in my game. I managed to get the ideal range and runes to catch and one-shot LordV in a long charge. His counter reanimate charge that would have flanked and badly hurt my berserkers missed by less than 3mm. Those events in a single turn hurt pretty bad.

For the final, I played JJ. The very high level summary is that I put more force on my right flank and she put more force on my left flank. I was able to drag out how long it took her to roll that left flank. I was able to roll the right flank faster and start working the middle first.

1 hour ago, Church14 said:

Semifinals:

- JJ smoked Shane due to some epic Ravos rolls. Otherwise a close match from what I’m told.

- I beat Thomas in my game. I managed to get the ideal range and runes to catch and one-shot LordV in a long charge. His counter reanimate charge that would have flanked and badly hurt my berserkers missed by less than 3mm. Those events in a single turn hurt pretty bad.

For the final, I played JJ. The very high level summary is that I put more force on my right flank and she put more force on my left flank. I was able to drag out how long it took her to roll that left flank. I was able to roll the right flank faster and start working the middle first.

So when you played Thomas how much damage did you roll? I thought it was 12 damage with 3 hits and 4 health or did I miss something? With Vorunthal being a 3 defense 4 health character he should have lived with protected shouldn’t he?

25 minutes ago, Brikhause said:

So when you played Thomas how much damage did you roll? I thought it was 12 damage with 3 hits and 4 health or did I miss something? With Vorunthal being a 3 defense 4 health character he should have lived with protected shouldn’t he?

3/4 for 12. One blue so protected one to make it 13. I was threat 4 with FL thresher and had Tempered. So 3 hits or 2 hits and surge gives me 12 and the Berserker sacrifice for 13.

the roll ended up being a natural double hit on red and hit on blue. I killed a Berserker to clinch it

44 minutes ago, Church14 said:

3/4 for 12. One blue so protected one to make it 13. I was threat 4 with FL thresher and had Tempered. So 3 hits or 2 hits and surge gives me 12 and the Berserker sacrifice for 13.

the roll ended up being a natural double hit on red and hit on blue. I killed a Berserker to clinch it

This is pretty devastating... Warsprinter is gross...

Congrats on the win @Church14 ! Sounds like it was an awesome event. I'm gonna come out next year and try to drag out as much of my group as I can.

So the finals have been Uthuk only in both Worlds and Origins, the two largest events by a good margin (21 and 17 participants)?

I might be mistaken, but I also think there were 3 Uthuk in top 4 in both tournaments.

Is that proving something or are the jury still out on Uthuk clearly being stronger?

1 hour ago, Church14 said:

3/4 for 12. One blue so protected one to make it 13. I was threat 4 with FL thresher and had Tempered. So 3 hits or 2 hits and surge gives me 12 and the Berserker sacrifice for 13.

the roll ended up being a natural double hit on red and hit on blue. I killed a Berserker to clinch it

Ok was trying to figure out how the damage was done thanks!

2 hours ago, Maktorius said:

So the finals have been Uthuk only in both Worlds and Origins, the two largest events by a good margin (21 and 17 participants)?

I might be mistaken, but I also think there were 3 Uthuk in top 4 in both tournaments.

Is that proving something or are the jury still out on Uthuk clearly being stronger?

Yeah, the game at the highest competitive level has... some issues. Obviously church is a very sharp guy that made excellent use of every tool at his disposal and executed on his plan without errors, but the disparity in options and power between Uthuk and the other factions is staggering.

Certainly the latest wave helped, but they have more work to do and not a lot of time to do it.

Also, congratulations everyone! It was great to meet so many of you!

3 hours ago, Bhelliom said:

Yeah, the game at the highest competitive level has... some issues. Obviously church is a very sharp guy that made excellent use of every tool at his disposal and executed on his plan without errors, but the disparity in options and power between Uthuk and the other factions is staggering.

Certainly the latest wave helped, but they have more work to do and not a lot of time to do it.

Also, congratulations everyone! It was great to meet so many of you!

And, this has happened while Ulthuk was down on units. Toss them 3 more options, see what happens.

12 minutes ago, Darth Matthew said:

And, this has happened while Ulthuk was down on units. Toss them 3 more options, see what happens.

They do seem like mostly horizontal options that introduce new options rather than directly boosting the existing stuff, but more choice can only be a good thing, you're right.

I’ll comment at length about balance later, but as for being down 3 expansions and fears about Uthuk then getting stronger with the new ones: not a single upgrade or unit that Uthuk are getting would have made my list work better. Full stop.

None of the new make the Uthuk “piss pound” strategy any stronger. As Belliom said, it is all sideways growth

24 minutes ago, Church14 said:

I’ll comment at length about balance later, but as for being down 3 expansions and fears about Uthuk then getting stronger with the new ones: not a single upgrade or unit that Uthuk are getting would have made my list work better. Full stop.

None of the new make the Uthuk “piss pound” strategy any stronger. As Belliom said, it is all sideways growth

None of the new releases makes you list any weaker either.

Having more options makes Uthuk stronger. Having a single strong list means that a meta to beat it develops. Having multiple options for viable lists makes it harder to target.

3 days ago the forums exploded about lord OP, looks like we've come full circle.

The new uthuk units provide new options, but not necessarily better options. And now to include these options you cant fit old good options. Let's see what the new units actually do performance-wise before we say its bad.

As the person who has played church more than anyone, it's not the list, its who is using it.

My latari worlds list was built to kill churches list, and it has in practice games several times. I placed 20 out of 21 (and am not ashamed to say it). I only matched up against daqan and waiqar. Had I faced an uthuk list, things could have been slightly different (maybe). Just food for thought.

1 hour ago, Jukey said:

3 days ago the forums exploded about lord OP, looks like we've come full circle.

The new uthuk units provide new options, but not necessarily better options. And now to include these options you cant fit old good options. Let's see what the new units actually do performance-wise before we say its bad.

As the person who has played church more than anyone, it's not the list, its who is using it.

My latari worlds list was built to kill churches list, and it has in practice games several times. I placed 20 out of 21 (and am not ashamed to say it). I only matched up against daqan and waiqar. Had I faced an uthuk list, things could have been slightly different (maybe). Just food for thought.

So what your saying is your list is good against Uthuk but doesn’t do so well versus other types of armies. So this means the game is balanced how?

29 minutes ago, Brikhause said:

So what your saying is your list is good against Uthuk but doesn’t do so well versus other types of armies. So this means the game is balanced how?

I had a list that can crack uthuk 'op' builds, I had almost zero experience fighting ranged units, which is the majority of what I faced. I've been playing against a melee meta for months.

Uthuk can field ranged now, but sacrifice face-punch to do so. This could seriously slow them down but be a neccessary inclusion due to better, stronger fortress builds.

A lot of the battle in runewars is knowing how to fight what you are paired against more than what units you are using.

I think the new units (in all 4 factions) need at least 3 months of play before we can really say if uthuk still has the lead or not.

There are certainly a few cards in the uthuk that could be resequenced for more balanced play, but I'm ok with it as is, that's just my opinion.

49 minutes ago, Jukey said:

3 days ago the forums exploded about lord OP, looks like we've come full circle.

The new uthuk units provide new options, but not necessarily better options. And now to include these options you cant fit old good options. Let's see what the new units actually do performance-wise before we say its bad.

As the person who has played church more than anyone, it's not the list, its who is using it.

My latari worlds list was built to kill churches list, and it has in practic  e games several times. I placed 20 out of 21 (and am not ashamed to say it). I only matched up against daqan and waiqar. Had I faced an uthuk list, things could have been slightly different (maybe). Just food for thought.

I think that's a key point. If you meta for one list and one style, it can take you out of contention for the other factions.

I think also there are some good Latari options hiding in the new units that barely made it before worlds, which help them build lists that can match up against the full meta rather than building for just part of it. I know plenty of Latari were working Fire Rune, which is pretty good against Uthuk low armor, but which does poorly against high armor targets.

In my experience both playing versions of Church's list, and in scheming against it, the list has more high-damage units coming across the board than most lists can block effectively. It feels normal for Uthuk given what units they have, but it is a rarity for the lists most people field.

14 hours ago, Bhelliom said:

Yeah, the game at the highest competitive level has... some issues. Obviously church is a very sharp guy that made excellent use of every tool at his disposal and executed on his plan without errors, but the disparity in options and power between Uthuk and the other factions is staggering.

Part of me worries about this then I remember that Daqan armies can still place in the Top 10 IN THE WORLDS so they will probably do ok on the kitchen table vs my girlfriends Latari elves. ?

(I totally understand what you say about high level play. This is just to remind myself to chill out and enjoy the game without worry!)

3 hours ago, Suhawk75 said:

(I totally understand what you say about high level play. This is just to remind myself to chill out and enjoy the game      without worry!)

Well spoken, the game is not broken, it just has a tiny slant that does not prevent enjoyment but should hopefully be corrected with a few good releases for the less powerful factions

Frankly, I would find the analysis flawed if you looked at these tournament results and used them to conclude that Uthuk is OP. A couple points:

1. Though Uthuk went 1-2-3, 4-5-6 was Waiqar-Latari-Daqan, which actually speaks to a lot of diversity in high-level lists, despite everyone still learning their new tech.

2. Church could win with a juice box tank and a snack bag of Doritos for ranged support. Whatever he plays, it's going to be in the top 4. It's impossible to conclude "because Uthuk," so I'm inclined to ignore him for the purposes of evaluating faction strength.

3. Shane makes hay out of playing the thing nobody practiced against / no one saw coming, and it really works for him (ask us about Dreamblade sometime). His list is not durable once it loses the element of surprise. In my opinion, his excellent play combined with the novelty of the list caught people unawares, but not because the build is actually good or the faction is too strong. He was also in and out of the top 4 all day, and just like I did, benefited from some lucky timing on the pairings. He had to score an 8+ victory in round 5 to make the cut, and it was close. You can hardly say his list dominated. (Tom's #4 Waiqar list eviscerated it in round 4.)

4. OK, that leaves me. I went 4-1 with four units of Spined Threshers doing ridiculous scuttling tricks. It was highly entertaining and rewarding to play. But I've also asked Shane to play it against me during testing, and I've beaten it with other factions. Is it OP? Possibly? ?‍♀️ Is it vulnerable to concentrated ranged damage? Absolutely.

So yeah, Uthuk went 1-2-3, but that's not the whole story. We need more time to develop skills with the units that have recently been released. I think the meta could be totally different by Spring.