NOVA 2013: The Armies

Good evening everyone,

So I wanted to just reach out about my observations of the most common lists I saw at the NOVA open and what I felt about their validity overall and if I felt the list was a gimmick or a completely legitimate all comers GT winning army. I am also going to try to cover if the army is difficult to win with or easy to play. I am going to grade each aspect of the army based purely on my observations. Please keep in mind that these are my opinions that I am sure people will try to change my mind over it. Save us all the time and don't start any arguments in the comments section. So lets get right to it:




Tau w/ no allies:

Lists for Tau at the NOVA were pretty common; some kroot, missile sides, a couple riptides, some marker lights. Mix well and you will be blowing your opponent of the board in no time! This list is extremely easy to play once you get your target priority and order of operations down. Your assets are very easy to defend and your throw tons of dice at your opponent as they try and fail miserably to get out of line of sight.

Gimmick/Legit: B+ really no gimmicks so to speak here, the only reason this did not get an A+ is purely based on the fact that the troops are often used as sacrificial and anything that makes it to melee will be devastating.

Ease of use B+: Easy to play but you still need some semblance of target priority and ability to defend your units.


Eldar w/ no alles:

List for Eldar were simple; do you have 8 wave serpents or 5 and 3 wraithknights? Skill involved is keeping your rear armour protected and not letting stuff charge you.

Gimmick/Legit: B- no gimmicks here as well. Stupid  amount of long range fire power in a difficult to kill chassis. Only reason why this did not get an A+ is because you still have to get your soft squishy troops out to grab objectives and every Wave Serpent that is destroyed is a significant amount of the armies effectiveness destroyed.

Ease of use A-: Easier to play than the Tau because as long as you know how to turbo away from melee, and keep your wave serpent butts away from the business end of everything you will be fine. Oh yeah; and don't wait to turn 5 to move towards objectives. The 48" moving scoring units are a bit of help too.


Taudar:

This mix of tau and eldar is pretty funny because they are so cost effective that you can literally take all the best stuff and really sacrifice nothing. Farseers that are twin linking two units, eldar jetbikes, wraithknights, riptides, missilesides, and wave serpents? Yeah fuck it, throw it all in. This army rock solid in everyway with literally zero weaknesses. Going to get charged? Wraithknight and dcythes can fix that! go ahead and charge them; Tau can supporting fire on them too!

Gimmick/Legit: A+- Like I said; little to zero weaknesses and rock solid reliability makes this a really amazing army.

Ease of play: B- This is a little harder to play than the standard Tau or Eldar with no allies because you have a bit of one of everything list here but the pay off is well worth it. You have not much redundancy so you have to play everything efficiently.


Tautau:

This is the infamous 4 riptide list. This is a really difficult list to look at because on the surface it looks like the definition of gimmick and spam but the unit you are spamming is so versatile that it makes the army just amazing. Oh yeah there is also a deathstar in here that consists of nothing but giant robots and independent characters.

Coolness: A+ this is the only army I will give a coolness factor because it just looks fucking awesome on the table and is very pacific rim.

Gimmick/Legit: B-: This was a reallly difficult section for me because the one of everything love inside me makes me want to give this an F but I just can't do it. The list have incredible fire power, durability, mobility, and actually isn't terrible in close combat. It really only gets grade points off it because the troops are very small and pretty easy to wipe out from underneath the noses of the giant robots.

Easy of play: C+: The list is powerful, but the troops again being fragile takes a big hit here. Every game I watched ended with victory for the robots most of the time but because they were contesting all the objectives and only suit or kroot squad lucky enough to live didn't fail a morale test. Too close for comfort for me. The game we all watched it lose was due to; you guessed it; the troops all died.


FMC Daemons: Do I really have to review what was in the list; its flying monstrous creatures and some of them had heldrakes.

Gimmick/Legit: B-: Another powerful army but it loses points for two reasons to make it not gimmicky; it needs the right player that does not have bloodlust with giant monsters and if you get unlucky you can lose very very quickly. Luckily Fateweaver helps overcomes many of the things that are usually an unlucky factor such as the warp storm table, getting grounded and the grimoire.

Easy of play: D+ FMC is easy to play but difficult to play very well. You need to be spot on when you engage enemies or your army is just devastated. It is also hard for most players to get over the fact that the FMC army is NOT A MELEE ARMY.



Screamer star/council:

I am not looking forward to this because I know people who feel really really strongly about this list being amazing. Keep in mind I am looking at this from a W/L format and I think this list has alot more merits in a battle point format so this isn't always the way the wind blows so to speak. The list consists usually of 3 heralds of tzeentch in a unit of 9 screamers supported by fateweaver and 2 daemon princes.

Gimmick/Legit: F- This list is the definition of a gimmick list. Argue all you want but the bottom line is the list does in fact rely on a certain power (forewarning) and an item that has a 30% chance to fail (grimoire). Yes it is something like 15% with fateweaver and an 85% change to get forewarning but that is far from guarenteed especially when you have eight games. With that many games you will fail a handful of grimoires and get one or two games without forewarning which means in a win/loss format means you have a good chance to lose. There is also the runic staff and shadows in the warp which are both exceptionally easy to use against the powers. When the powers do work though and the grimoire is up this quickly goes to an A+ but it is not guarenteed period........I knew a couple of friends at the NOVA with my who had this list and each time they lost I had to chuckle because they said the same thing; "You wouldn't believe it, I failed grimoire even with re-roll." You wouldn't believe it, I failed forewarning even though it was on LD10." "You wouldn't believe it, i didn't get forewarning with 9 rolls!" etc. etc.

Easy to play: A+ you run the unit in front of an army and laugh as you pick what to kill next turn and your deamon princes fly on and off the table as the screamer star bleeds your opponent to death. Super easy to play, super easy to win, just don't get tar pitted.

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