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Blood Vow

Happiness is success... (Buddha)

Sunday, March 10, 2013

Crucible 2 Review

Here is my review of the 40k GT and 6th edition so far in a large tournament environment. Keep in mind it was their first year running 40k... This is an expansion from Warmahordes. The first thing I noticed is PP really supports tournaments a lot more than GW... to many that's quite obvious. PP has lots of really cool stuff like awesome pins for the winners... We all love the swag. I think at one time GW did a good job supporting tournaments but for whatever reason they have moved on. I think GW is really missing out on this element. Sticking your head in the sand is not a solution. As far as the rules go I think 6th edition has been around long enough that dedicated tournament players should know them thoroughly by now.

In regards to Crucible the two main plusses were my opponents and the head TO for 40k. I had a lot of tight games with some very fun people. The games were competive and we worked together to solve the few issues. I think in the future I might skip the team tournament though... It took too long time and I would have rather slept more on the Friday night. Yah I'm getting old, it happens. Like I said the people were fantastic. I had so much fun. There were a good number of 40k players for their first GT and that is a good sign.

Each mission had three tiered objectives along with bonuses for First Blood, Slay the Warlord and Line Breaker. I really like the de-emphasis on First Blood and think it unbalances the game. These missions it was really not worth exposing your army to get First Blood. So basically it was battle points, not Win-Loss, which I think works a lot better currently for 6th edition since the meta is so loose now.

The prize support seemed pretty good. My one suggestion is to find ways to speed up the rounds. Time just seems to fly in 6th edition and I know it is more of an issue now. The start of a game takes longer to complete... There are actually 12 steps. It's more fair which is a really good thing for sure but it takes more time. I don't think cutting back on points and eliminating double FOC is the answer though. Things like mystery terrain and objectives have to go... It's really not worth it. I think of it this way - if you and your opponent play in a reasonably timely fashion then you'll have more time during the end game when it really counts. Holding objectives is what is required to win and this aspect can be a lot more tactical than blasting away one enemy unit after another.

Forge World was very open with no problems I'm aware of during either the team tournament or GT. It was a relatively small event compared to other GTs though and everybody that used it brought the actual Forge World models as far as am I'm aware except for one super amazing converted Vulture gunship. I had one game in the team tournament and one game in the GT versus armies with any Forge World. My opponents had the rules and always showed them up front for my two games against them. It added no extra time and was not a problem for me. Crucible proved that Forge World can work in a large tournament environment.

Finally thanks to my opponents for a fantastic weekend. I'll definitely attend again next year.

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