Warhammer 40k Tabletop IX: "Mech is king? I never voted for it."

[Trixie]

In Australia, Chaos Marines are the top-ranked army, followed by Space Marines and Eldar. And by top-ranked, that means "Has the most points." which means that a lot of people play them.

Remind me, isn't Australia also country with comp system routinely skewing outcomes of the battles according to whims of the judges who might overlook how dangerous a given combination might be?

The Best General for;
Space Wolves; 6th overall in the country.
Chaos Marines; 7th
Blood Angel; 21st.

You do realize singular event means nothing, right? If you give even five top players, it might have meant something. Or, better, fifty.

Yes. The highest ranked player that plays Blood Angels in the country is 21st in the country. In the US, the Best General for Blood Angels doesn't even make it in the Top 50, although, the US is a big country, and, from what I understand, people over there change their armies a lot, so it might be hard for somebody to rack up points for one army if they're never consistant.

You just pointed out why using such data is worthless - C:SM is flagship army, meaning most players have been using them for a long time, while both SW and BA were extremely subpar and hard to get before 5th ED, meaning there has been only a year to accrue these points, not to mention experience playing them.

You once said you prefer brevity over facts.

Facts? You mean Mathhammer, right?

CSM

You mean, the Codex that has exactly one, tired competitive build: 9 Oblits, 2 Lashes? Which begins to collapse as soon as it runs into someone with psyker protection or means to target these Oblits quickly? A Codex that penalizes itself as soon as it starts taking other units?

In Australia (my relevant Meta-Game), the #1 ranked player, plays Vanilla Marines, and, Vanilla Marines have the second highest total points score across all players. Which, again, means, despite how 'non-competitive' they apparently are, people still play them.

Again, comp scores and length of playing them. Worthless data.

Let's look at recent big tourney where everyone played to the same rules, hundreds of games were played (to give big enough sample), and no one was favored:

European Team Championship 2010.

Highlights? Both BA and SW, despite being very new and inexperienced back then, are in top 5 [by averaged score]. Meaning, all their new players performed better than veteran Chaos guys with their lashes and oblits. Best BA general outperformed everyone else save for Tyrannids, being one of two players that broke three digit points barrier. Ayup, BA and SW are not top armies at all

Where are "Competitive" Spees Mareens? Ah, yes, way at the bottom, below even 3rd Edition Witch Hunters and Dark Eldar, despite number of games pointing at big faction of veteran players playing them.

C:SM, not competitive? HAH! Anyone who says that has no idea. No idea at all.

Codex:SM used to be competitive, back when it was one of the few 5th ED Codices. Now? It is outperformed by virtually every single other 5th ED Codex, saved only by skewed comp scores and veteran players. Not because GW hates them, but because they lacked 5th ED codex building experience back then.

Just look at their HQs - most of them are utterly worthless and superfluous from competitive perspective, with only Kantor and Vulkan giving any good advantages/options compared to Mr Vanilla Captain (Khan and Shrike arguably give small, but good in some cases advantage). Take these four away (as Tournaments in Poland do, where uniques are banned) and most lists SM can field disappear, leaving only a handful of underpriced units carrying them. Yes, you can field more lists than Chaos can, but that isn't really an accomplishment. Others can field the same amount or even more competitive lists anyway.

The other 5th ED Codices, while also reliant on HQ options to some extent, can do just fine without them - they can load up on heamonculus/rune priests/blood chalices and go to town with many builds with non-unique units. SM? Not so much. That's why in Poland they have opinion of being weak without these "broken" ICs, as they really lack options.

That's why I said C:SM would be better with Badab War characters - not only they're more interesting from fluffy perspective than Utra/Fist cardboard cutouts from the Codex, they give you many new, viable builds Codex Astartes should give you anyway without being stronger or more broken than Khan or Vulkan. Replying to this that you should just "try harder" or that you can hang to that one broken build you still have (which somehow makes you competitive, instead of "competitive" as most players know exactly what you'll do) is really uncalled for.

Even from the point of fun, fluffy games without strong unit spam, these new characters would give new life to the Codex, allowing for many new interesting options, instead of the same old, tired choice of vanguard-weak units or meltaspam by Vulkan which isn't the best list if you want to play non-competitively anyway.