I'm going to make this short since my blog will cover most of the issues I have with the game and company itself so here goes ...

Worlds had 40 people attending. Of the 40, there were (I think) about 6 Bolt Thrower decks. I was playing the deck, and a small team of 3 were playing the deck, as well as 2 other guys that i knew from other games. The problem was that (obviously) there were very good players playing the deck and the tournament was probably going to be a crap shoot. Really, if you believed that BT wasn't degenerate, and you've been hating in the forums for months, you can now pretty much either believe the deck is entirely too OP or just keep hating and continue to be absolutely wrong (Honest, I'm not joking.)

I left before the event concluded but I know at least 3 Bolt Thrower decks made top 8 (2 Dwarf Board, 1 Empire Board). I assume one of them won but I don't want to assume. The BT decks were at the top tables all day. My loss was round 2 to a top 8 competitor playing BT and round 5 to Wytefang who was running Dwarves with 3 Disdain and 3 Demolition (beatings). Now, I'm going to briefly talk about Warhammer OP, and I SWEAR this will be brief as I'm still heated over it.

First off, we had 40 people. The rule of law is that if you have 16-32 people, you play 5 rounds. 33-64 players, you play 6 rounds. Well .... we played 5. As you can see, that math doesn't work out and things are going to suck pretty bad (as you'll see). Secondly, the end of time procedure is absolutely absurd and needs addressed if this game wants to have even a semi-serious organized play. Here's how it works: If time is called, the game ends immediately. You don't finish your turn, you don't get to ask questions, there are no tie breakers, the game just ends in a tie.

...

.............

Yes, I'm serious. This is absolutely unreal and completely unfair. I have nothing against anyone that plays the game, I got along with every person at the event and even made quite a few new friends. But this is unreal. People were being casual about things, talking to friends during matches, hearty chatter with each other, etc. If my opponent was ever doing this, and we tied because of it, I'd be a little ticked, not gonna lie. Fortunately, this didn't happen to me, but it screwed a lot of people.

I especially feel bad for Wytefang. Going into the last (I guess) round I was 3-1 and he was 2-1-1. Little did we know that him beating me (fair and square I might add) not only screwed me, but screwed him. To have someone go 3-1-1 in an event and NOT TOP 8 is ridiculous.

Listen, if you're a "casual tournament player" and don't care about any of this and think that I'm overreacting ... fine. You can have an opinion. But there were PLENTY of players at the event that felt the exact same way as me. If I'm ever going to play in another W:I event, I need to know that the correct number of rounds will be played and that I'm not gonna just tie with my opponent because he had to pee mid-match or he took a call from a friend while I was attacking for 5 minutes.

/end rant.

Sorry.

BT is overpowered.

I'm really done now.

-SF

From the Day 4 video the world champion wasn't running BT; thought I heard him say he was using Chaos.

Looking at the video at the 1:06 mark, the winner played Dwarves. He played vs Paul Bitner in the finals who is also the UFS World Champ and Call of Cthulhu World Champs runner-up. He's an excellent player and my round 2 loss in the mirror match. Paul was using a Dwarf board which is a much worse matchup against the Dwarf deck because he has less Flames of the Phoenix and harder to cast Disdains. Also has 3 Master Runes of Spite which is pretty much dead in the matchup. I'm almost positive the Dwarf list had 3 Burn it Down and 3 Demolition. It's dumb that you're FORCED to play those cards in order to have a chance to beat a deck.

Even the eventual winner himself said the BT decks were too good. I assume all of them in the t8 beat each other. Destruction is absolutely unplayable while BT exists and it's absolutely annoying as crap.

Anyway, congrats to the winner, and to Paul. Despite the Organized Play issues the tournament was a lot of fun and I enjoyed meeting all the players.

- SF

The winner played straight DWARVES: karak-kadrins, longbeards...Aggro.control I guess...He talks about lots of support destruction...

Glad to see it!

As a first world championship I wouldn't bother that much...40 players were a great things and even if some rules can be upgraded (as they did with the new FAQ), I guess we can be happy with it, if compared with previous LCG/FFG card games worlds.

Hi,

If there where no tie-breakers that is against their own tournament rules... thats a very bad joke FFG !!

Hey, if the winner is a dwarf deck that means it's possible to build such deck to win over both BT and destruction rush.

That's absolutely true that destruction could not pull of such deck yet, mostly because it's much weaker resource base. Otherwise it would be able to use it's tools. (Pillage, Grimgor + DE effects etc.) Also, chaos is especially toothless against everything except units.

Cain

I was King of Swiss going 4-0-1 with Bolt Thrower (Empire version, 58 cards built that morning, my first time playing a Bolt Thrower deck...). I finished 3rd overall.

2 things need to happen in my mind.

One, Bolt Thrower needs to do what it was intended to do, i.e. if you have x devs in the Battlefield you can shoot x indirect 'ONCE' per turn. Obviously this was the designer's intent, but the outcome/wording was botched...

MORE importantly, the Dwarf Ranger cannot have a 'forced:' effect that wins games as easily as -> grudge thrower (or any other sac effect of which dwarf have many, karaks/spite/etc.) + 8 units played (or 16 resources if you play 2 cost dwarf units). The forced: makes it so you couldn't win a response war against it, i.e. you try to do anything to stop it and they just react to sac units AND THERE IS NOTHING IN THE GAME TO STOP UNIT SACING, except return to hand which is a) restricted to your turn only in mass quantity, or b) relatively inneffective othewise. It is 1 damage targeted to any capital board and once two Rangers are out it is basically game.

I will have a full report up ASAP, but it isn't hard to get 2 Dwarf Rangers into the quest zone what with all Dwarf damage redux/developing tricks they just stall till they do. Once you do you just sac 8 guys and you win (+ more for any devs in a zone, but lets face it at least one won't be developed often, and less any zones that have indirect damage from your **** book of grudges that also trigger on sacing).

The tier of brokeness really is Dwarf Ranger -> Bolt Thrower and both need to be fixed immediately, anyone who doesn't believe that just needs to try them out and understand the action response chain and how it works (it limits answers to both of them, go to stop/destroy and they just act in response, the one a forced so you can't outstack it...)

THE only thing effective against Dwarf Ranger direct damage wins is forced march/return to hand stuff (some a your turn only one, so they keep in hand and then play 2 rangers on their turn x with other units in play = win).

My proposed solution: Well, Bolt Thrower is up there... And the Ranger needs an errata a) to make the damage it deals indirect to capitals, or in general because 23 vs. 16 is a bit watered down b) to have Quest, Action: After one of your Dwarf Units hits the discard you may... (not Forced: ...), or c) you may pay 1 resource to activate the direct damage kill, but something needs to happen - no jokes.

Bolt Throwers don't use the battlefield phase, unit sackers don't need it either, what's worse is that they can they can do both - attack with the units and then sac away when they are in danger/killed/removed otherwise.

- dut

If the text of RBT read "once per turn" that card were completely useless.

The intent was clearly to create a semi-combo deck...I am pretty sure RBT archetypes is strong, but remember that we've played for months with Skaven + Destruction stuff ruining the overall metas with 2 turns wins. That was overpowered...Nothing happened: the game just changed and new stuff came out...that's the LCG spirit.

Each month you have the opportunity to give a twist to the meta: an half cycle is enough to test new decks...In a couple of months we'll get March of the Damned and maybe something will change...

If you change RBT, you ruin it. That's what happened for Shrine to Nurgle: a powerful card became almost useless. And the point is not that it was nerfed...The point is that some cards shouldn't have been created.

Dwarf Ranger is strong and I completely understand your rant...That's an important thing and there are ways to give it an errata without nerfing it..."Indirect damage" is a solution, maybe.

The fact is that Dwarf Ranger forces Dwarves player to play around it and the only aim is "control until it comes". I lost a thousand games against it...

On the other hand I don't think is "stronger than" other strong stuff...It's a strong card, yes, but I'm pretty happy to see Dwarves win, even with it, because we used to have the "mono-dwarves" issue for months and now the game's opening to new horizons, where Dwarves are just as effective as others are.

The statement "control until it comes" doesnt' mean "the deck works alone"...That's what Skaven decks do.

Dwarves decks need some effor: you have to spend and sometimes "save" some resources for responses...You have to choose the right moment to pull things out. Resets hurt them a lot...

All of these points make the "Dwarf concept": wait, build up your capital, make it tough, reach a great level of income and than start attacking-sacking using recursion/dying effects to hurt the oppo: it's a long and difficult process, that's because Dwarves deck do pretty well each time but it's rare to see them winning alone.

Congrats to the winner, not to Dwarf Ranger!

In the end

I think things will change before we find a good solution for this "issue": that's what's happening with rush and that's what will happen with everything else.

A ban/errata to stop an archetype gets more effort than simply waiting some months and involve new cards in the environment to solve the problem.

Cheers

DB

see, I never though Ranger was quite that powerful because I always thought you needed something to enable the death/sacrifice, hence the inclusion of Grudge Throwers and Lure Them Out. You can't just sac to the ranger can you?

I'll post a huge report later today but just wanted to respond to Swingjunkie's post - you normally would need Grudge-Thrower to help you Sacrifice someone if you wanted to force the Rangers' ability to fire-off BUT (and this is something that many didn't seem to realize from what I saw at GenCon) you can simply use the Slayers of Karak Kadrin's power to kill off one of your own units when you're attacking. If you're running Stand Your Ground, it's a nifty play, I can assure you.

That's why I didn't run a Thrower in my deck - they work well and are cheap but you can play the Dwarves successfully without one, thanks to the Slayers.

swingjunkie said:

I didn't want to sound like I was ranting, just putting out my thoughts on what things should be addressed one way or another (and I was typing after my 9 hour flight home, so yeah I come across as a rambler).

I think ban/errata is bad too, there are rarely any perfect answers, I just think something should be done granted of the top 8, 6 boards were Dwarf, 3 were Repeaters, and it was all 'slightly' degenerate - although I still had a blast, the long thinking style games are just as fun for me as rush ever is

- dut

Shub, thanks for the kind words - I'll post some thoughts in my big write-up (coming later today) but can you re-list a link to your Blog again, I can't recall where I saw the link before and going forward, I will most certainly be reading it.

Just for the record, Shub's a class act and it was a pleasure to play against him and learn from him (as well). He's an excellent player.

Wytefang said:

Which guys were you and Shub? I didn't want to go around asking - 'what's your name on the forums?' I was the red/auburn haired glasses guy who took empire to third after suffering the good ol Swiss Curse ^^

- dut

dut -

Did you play the Bolt Thrower on Empire or was it a different Empire deck.

Brian

I know someone played BT on an Empire deck (iirc) in the finals, which I thought was odd but it clearly got someone to the final 8 so more power to them.

Dut, I was wearing a red wolf shirt on the final day. Shub, well he looks Italian, is somewhat shorter with a thin build, black hair, 6 o'clock shadow. I think he was wearing black mostly.

Berning22 said:

I was Bolt Thrower on Empire, the 'other' top 8 Empire deck was run by Chris - one of many new friends - and it was Empire rush, which shocked and awed me to no end. It'll all be in my full report, so much fun!

- dut

I wasn't that impressed with the Empire jumping-jack deck (from what I saw) but he (Chris) seemed like a really cool guy and it seemed effective enough. Still it was very gratifying to see 2 Empire boards in the final 8. I was literally shocked. I'm assuming you won your match against him....

ShubFan27 said:

Yeah, you usually play 6 rounds with 40 players (32 > x > 64). I am confused about why they went to the trouble of revamping the tiebreaker system in the official tournament rules right before GenCon and then ignored it. That is a serious WTF for me. And you really mean no tiebreakers at all? Like, you're 1-0 and on game 2 when time is called, and therefore it's a tie? The new version of the tournament rules goes completely in the other direction where it's actually impossible to tie if I'm reading it right.

dupotd: as for Dwarf Ranger, it is a decent card but somewhat slow against rush. The bigger issue that you're not seeing there is that the Thrower decks push out anti-unit strategies - Chaos Control or Vomit Orc, for examples, are mildly irritated by the Ranger but in no way terrified. I do not think the Ranger is too good, it's just ok. Note that when you look through the deckbuilding forums, a whole lot of Dwarf decks in the last couple of months don't bother playing Rangers. The timing of the quest ability (it works at cost speed not Action) is fiddly, for sure.

I really hope that something happens about the Thrower decks though - I feel that they are constricting the metagame.

As I've said, Dwarves are definitely at the height of their power right now - albeit not quite as high as the Skaven were right after the Deathmaster's BP - so I am not surprised to see a wall of Dwarves in the tournament. 6 Thrower decks is more than I expected to see though.

I don't disagree with anything you've said there Clamatius, I just know I could build a 'Dwarf Sacrifice deck' and play it just like a Thrower deck does against rush, fog effects galore.

As soon as I have 2 rangers in hand and x other units out or in hand I em all and go to town killing them off out of combat which is the same thing as Thrower. The thing that makes it even better, being that the Rangers can be used as Scouts if more appropriate timing wise, and that the units both attack and then blow up making it a vastly more versatile deck than the Thrower is.

The first place Gencon finisher is a genius for realizing just how strong that strategy is (he rolled 3 bolt throwers in a row in top 8, going 6 games and 0 against them) and his deck was a masterpiece. He also had some incredibly good luck against me, but that is neither here nor there, he deserved to win and in my mind proved that as much as Thrower was thought to be one of the best decks in the format he should now be thought as being one of, if not the very best, player in the format.

- dut

Great diversity if there are 6 d and 2 e boards.

Do you have a list from the winner?

The big difference is that if you are setting up your combo, you have to play like a zillion units and you are highly unlikely to be able to do that all in one go. At which point your opponent has the chance to interact with you via unit kill and other effects. Hell, even a Thrower deck can do double MRoS to kill off the Rangers. Trying to set up a sacrifice kill against rush is going to run right into Troll Vomit and then the party is over. I really disagree with you on this point.

With the Thrower, they just it and kill you right there and then - it doesn't even matter if you blow it up. If they had to actually attack with something that would be a different matter.

As for the 6 Dwarf, 2 Empire in the top 8 - well, that's kind of what I have been saying about Thrower constricting the metagame, but it's also just because Dwarves are really very strong right now. If Thrower goes away (oh god please ban it), then when we have March of the Damned, I think there's a good chance Destro will be back in town. Dwarves get a little help from March but Destro control gets a huge leg up.

jogo said:

No, but I could probably tell you it with 90-100% accuracy having played it for nigh 2-3 hours. I'm under the impression all top 8 decks will be posted, I will post mine ASAP with a report.

And the diversity thing is what I mean. Honest to god - I played ALL Dwarf in Swiss, that is 5/5 games. The top 12 going into the final round of Swiss were practically all Dwarf but for me (that is 11-12 people) and the other Empire won his last round to finish 8th. It is my opinion the Ranger is the most severe Dwarf issue at the moment, but as Clam has pointed out they are just at their height what with massive synergy everywhere, and I take it back DWARF do have a fast start, easily the second fastest. Ignore my posts to the contrary from last week, I have wronged.

Dwarf sacrifice doesn't attack either, and although it requires more pieces than a thrower it actually requries fewer resources to play them all. (3+3+<2*10>) is about right in my mind, wheras thrower is almost always (3+28) or more and can be stopped more easily because it doesn't have a forced: effect backing it up.

- dut

dutpotd said:

Here's what I expected pre-tournament:

My prediction right now is a solid dose of random stuff (DE, Empire, etc), a fair number of Orcs, a wall of Dwarves and 1-2 Throwers.

So I was wrong in that there were 3x the # of Thrower decks I expected and much less Orcs by the sound of it (or maybe it's just that the Spite killed them and we didn't hear any more). Wall of Dwarves was about right though. The wall was just a bit higher than I thought it would be.

I didn't do a solid count, but from what i saw of the 40, at least half (likely more) were dwarf boards (either grudge or bolt thrower). I think 2 orc boards, 2-3 empire, 1-2 high elf, 1 chaos, and the remainder dark elf.

-Bernie

Sounds like a really fun tournament, sad to have missed it.

Glad to see thrower get the respect it deserves, and the miser in me is VERY glad that thrower did not win the tournament. I really, really hate that deck, despite all the work we've put into it. Regardless, its probably fair to say the win % of thrower decks is leagues beyond every other deck, and that's basically what I expected. 3 in the top 8 with only 6 in the field is a dominating performance by any archetype.

So where do we go from here... I guess I wish thrower didn't exist. The game would be a ton of fun if we were working on how to crack dwarves... March of the Damned has a lot of really exciting cards if thats the problem we're solving, but nothing really interesting at all given the current state of things. And tuning thrower for the mirror.... if this game devolves into just tuning thrower decks to beat each other I will probably stop playing for a while...

ddm5182 said:

If Thrower isn't errated or banned I will eat my shorts. Seriously will put lots of money on it if anyone wants to go for it let me know. Just kidding, but I am 99% sure something will happen that will see you with a smiley face before the next regional/tournament, probably in the next couple weeks.

- dut