I’ve already laid out a lot of thoughts on the many problems with GW’s latest expansions. In our parts, after an extensive survey, Redcap’s has decided to ban Escalation for its regular tournaments.  There’s still some discussion going around though, so these are a couple further thoughts.

Training

One notion is that if we don’t regularly play with these components, players from our community will be unprepared when they go outside to other events.  I don’t think that’s a concern. Whether the global community consensus is correct or not, I think that’s totally misreading the direction things are heading. Unless something changes, most likely you won’t encounter them at other tournaments either.  Taking a quick survey of where things stand with some bigger events:

• LVO: No Escalation or Stronghold.
• 3++Con: No Escalation or Stronghold.
• Adepticon: Only the special Exterminatus track allows Lords of War.
• Nova: No official ruling yet, but their survey pretty conclusively had little support for allowing Escalation and Stronghold, though I could believe they’ll be allowed in parts of some tracks (e.g., Narrative, the 2k games in the Team Trio, etc., not the GT & 1k Trios).

Among other local monthly tournaments around Philadelphia, both Stomping Grounds and Alternate Universes frequently ban allies and generally put a lot of soft pressure against power-combos, let alone supers.  Stomping Grounds’ first tournament this year did not allow hardly anything.  Based on reports from players who’ve gone out there, Showcase is apparently doing a lot of ad hoc comp as well, again against regular combos let alone supers.

Decision Making

There’s also a notion kicking around that maybe D close combat weapons are ok. They’re obviously less powerful then D blast templates with crazy ranges.  But D as a strength just doesn’t make sense in game terms.

Consider a 35pt Rhino versus a 250pt Landraider, both undamaged. Against the previous heavy hitter, a Str 10 AP 1 hit, the Rhino would with 100% probably at least lose a hull point, and with 42% probability explode and be instantly destroyed.  The Landraider would only face a 50% chance of at least losing a hull point, and a 17% chance of exploding.  Even setting aside other Landraider advantages, that’s a reasonable tradeoff between points & survivability.  There’s an actual strategic list making decision to be had there.

Against a Str D AP 1 hit, both the 35pt Rhino and 250pt Landraider are necessarily at least losing a hull point, and both face the same 92% chance of being instantly destroyed.  There’s no tradeoff to be had, a major decision and strategic component is eliminated from the game.

In point of fact, the 250pt Landraider, generally considered one of the most armoured and most expensive units in the game, is actually more likely do die than a 6pt Guardsman: The latter only faces an 83.3% chance of death to a Str D hit.  Like I’ve said before, in the presence of D, you shouldn’t take anything but your own supers with D weapons and hordes of Guardsmen, because everything else is at least as dead as the latter, if not more so (somewhat ridiculously).

For a quick explanation of those numbers:

• Str 10 AP 1 against AV11 auto-glances, has a 5/6 chance to penetrate, and on penetration a 3/6 chance to explode (don’t forget the +2 bonus on the damage results table for AP1): 5/6*3/6=42% chance of instant death.
• Str 10 AP 1 against AV14 has a 3/6 chance to glance, a 2/6 chance to penetrate, and on penetration a 3/6 chance to explode: 2/6*3/6 = 17% chance of instant death.
• Str D AP 1 against any vehicle has a 1/6 chance to penetrate and a 3/6 chance to explode on that penetration; the other 5/6 of the time it just outright explodes: (1/6*3/6)+5/6 = 92% chance of instant death.
• Str D against any single wound model has only a 5/6 chance to kill that model: 5/6 = 83% chance of instant death.

Closing Thoughts

Obviously in an actual game there are tons of other factors, but theory does actually say useful things about the game.  In this case I can’t believe anyone could look at those numbers and not have serious concerns about not just those weapons being overpowered, but the degradation of the game as a game.  Before 5th edition 40k was mostly a super expensive game of rock-paper-scissors.  Numbers like the above indicate the expansions are going back to that state at full speed.  For the moment tournaments seem to be all coming to that consensus as well and responding to it by banning the supplements outright.