After a very good, if sparse, tournament season last year and a solid start to 6th ed with a tournament win at Brighton and consistent high placings at events like Caledonian Uprising... I've gotten a spot on the team.
This means that this blog hosts not 1 but 2 England ETC players - Alex and I.. Killswitch and Venerable Brother.
Now, this is amazing and is a real culmination of some hard work by me to demonstrate consistent play..but it does mean a few changes.
I will now NOT be talking about tactics for certain armies or playtesting results from forces that we are fancying..
This does NOT mean that you won't be getting quality content or interesting reading. The blog will continue to evolve and increase the depth of its tactical and hobby content. But for me.. I will simply be focussing on winning with armies that perhaps you may not expect ..
For me then - Tau, Eldar and Space Marines will be my focus here. Tau - after building my Barracuda a few weeks back, I desperately want to work on them.. so this weekend I'll be mainly celebrating my mothers 60th Birthday, catching up on the Super Bowl (which I, of course, failed to avoid related news items...:( ) and repairing and air brushing my Tau and finishing the airbrushing on the Ravenwing..
Thanks for your support and I promise to make the 5 minutes a day you spend when we have new content..worthwhile. Thanks!
Congrats. Well deserved id say. I will be posting some this week as well. More hobby stuff, and on a subject you wont expect. To give you a clue, I just sawed a landraider in n half (top and bottom)!
ReplyDeleteThanks dude. I'm intrigued now... Top and bottom...for extra height? Eugh.. What? Building old school demon engines from Epic? Lol
DeleteBring on the return of Atreides I say.. I saw you'd signed up to Blog Wars 5 ..coming to take my crown? There was a time when you were king brother.. Will that time come again? It worked for Rocky..
You're using the top half to represent a Land Raider making an amphibious landing on a beach somewhere - it'll be surrounded by surf, tank traps, and possibly private Ryan...
DeleteThe bottom half however... er... upside down in the mud to represent a Blood Angel deep strike mishap?
Oh, and Ven, congrats. Hoping to make BW5, we haven't crossed swords in any previous event but I think everyone who goes to Blog Wars both wants to avoid you and test themselves against you :-P
Private Ryan lol..
DeleteThanks Ginge! Bring it on my man.. Not sure what Ill be playing with yet.. It will not be Necrons though..
Welcome to the most prestigious team in the world ;) Hope you enjoy your stay...tea boy :P!
ReplyDeleteLol.. How DO you have your tea Master?
DeleteCoffee, white, no sugar pls newbie.
DeleteStill find it funny you think I was applying and not also a selector :) Welcome aboard anyway mate
Chris
Lol, Chris I had no idea mate!
DeleteWhite, no sugar..coffee... Right, got it lol
Thanks for the welcome
Well done congrats!
ReplyDeleteFrom what I know in fantasy ETC some armies are agreesive and some there to deny the opponents agressive armies their victory points. Have you descused about armies do you know what army you are playing?
-Greek spy.
We are still in discussions regarding that. You are on the right lines though ;) Since 6th Edition is completely new to us, compared to the 5 year experience most of us carried through 5th, this year will be a challenge to not just ourselves but the rest of the 40k community worldwide!
DeleteShush. Don't tell him anything.. See how he signed off? A Greek spy? It's a Trojan horse double bluff.. Would a spy sign off so obviously? Not if he didn't want us to think he really was a spy!?
DeleteTricksy Greeks
Congrats.
ReplyDeleteInternationals are fun, I've played for both England and Ireland in FPS games before, good laugh, found events manage to be both really laid back and intense at the same time lol.
The only objective really though, other than to win, is to make sure you smash the states if you play them!
Though Ven I'd have been sneakier and next leveled the opponents, been really "public" about what your doing, and just completely misinform the field.
Its hard to do but possible, if people respect you and your team enough, they stand up and listen, and you can shape the meta-game a little bit. MTG pro's have to be really careful when they go into tournaments - for example they are playing at a pro tour on the Fri to Sun, and release an article on the Thursday which 30,000 people read, including 150 of the 200 competitors at the pro tour. The pro can, if respected enough, give subtle and insightful observations, such as "X card is really good atm", and end up playing a deck/set of cards which is just a blow out. Much harder than it reads above, but would be epic to next level the whole ETC event lol.
We did it in RTCW, we made a team believe we were going to use a certain player for their game, this dude was an insanely good sniper, we ended up benching him, and their original tactic had their player on "anti-sniper" duties and their attacks based around not being vulnerable to him. Then as the game starts (we used surnames rather than in game tags so it wasn't immediately obvious this dude wasn't playing), we're just straight up countering them. Obviously this was only possible due to the respect that player commanded, but being a ETC player and blog owner, I am sure there is some element, though a lot of dudes are arrogant at 40K I find and don't listen to others much. I've heard two equally as good players, one on this very blog, say very very different things about Mephiston in 5th for example.
Anyway, congrats!
Wonder if they will do video coverage for the ETC? That would be sweet (and something this game sorely needs, more game coverage).
Hmm...I did think this could be an idea..
DeleteMaybe we are doing that...
Or are we?
Aren't we?
Ooh, who knows lol!!
I personally agree with you bull.. It could be done.. ;)
I also agree that game coverage would be great! Think it'd really help improve individuals gaming as well as providing cracking multimedia coverage for one of the games premier events..regardless of whether you value the format or not..
I mean you idea about the land raiders you sent me in that text cos it dodges all the plasma people are taking right now ... lol
DeleteLike I say there is a thin line. MTG pro's have had backlash in the past, one guy wrote an article about a certain deck, and made minor changes to it and won a tournament the very next day (for a cool $2400 ...). He received a bit of backlash from the community (unjustly, though his changes were legit "last minute meta, not hahaha this is good, no its not"). In another scenario, one high level team went on to do very well at a pro tour (4 of the top 8) - again one of their members had an article the day before the tour talking about certain decks and options, he had a chance to quite literally suggest one card that was amazing against the field EXCEPT the deck his team was on (and non of the rest of the tournament were on) - it was horrible against his deck. The deck that knocked them out eventually (and won the tour) - had it had this certain card, it would have been completely different. He had to make an ethical and moral choice - the guy is incredibly popular and respected, people would listen to him.
There is an element of next leveling people, and I think in tournaments like this you can do it. Knowing what peoples trends are. Look at old lists and players, what sort of armies they like to play - not for your list creation, but so your aware of their history.
Put it this way, when we used to play high level tournaments, I'd have watched all the games available to me on the known opponents I'd be facing (e.g group stages) - this way I could plan shit ahead of time. For example, if I faced civ in a 1v1, I'd run the fuck away, since he was a 1v1 Q3 champion and had insane aim ...
This is why I say footage is quite important, demo's in competitive games have been available for decades, you can go on youtube and watch half of fatali1tys quake 3 career right now, he was playing back in the 90's. Yet, to find old ETC stuff, your at the mercy of forum or blog posts ... again all this shit, another article.
(I'm not a MTG player, nor games like LOL, but I do follow most competitive games/esports out of habit. Not just because I played a couple at high level [world of warcraft in both pve/pvp) and CS/RTCW for FPS's) but mainly because I used to do esports coverage/journalism back in the first half of the 2000's!) I'd actually recommend to anyone to ready up on MTG and its theory sites, if you don't already, its arguably one of the closest games to 40K to try and port its structure over!
I think the ETC is one of the more interesting tournaments that 40K has to offer - I do hope that people are quite open about it and whats going on. Maybe not what they are testing, but how they are testing and what not.
Speaking of which, I better crack on with some of this articles lol.
DeleteGrats man - but speaking as one of the welsh team....dont win too many :P
ReplyDeleteLol..thanks man.. Three ETC Sons? Damn, we are good! ;)
DeleteGrats mate, well deserved.
ReplyDeleteThanks dude, I'll try and demonstrate that .. If I can..
Delete