Welcome to tabletop tommies i'm johnny and i'm phil and if you're listening to this message we are at the welsh nationals hopefully winning but either way we'll be having fun i imagine and in that spirit this episode is going to be all about tournaments we're going to be talking about tournaments we went to we went to roll call not that long ago we took a little break because we were so tired off the back of it we're about to record an episode on it and then lo and behold warlord released all the minor updates and so roll call got rolled so you can expect us to talk about that this episode what else do we talk about phil uh so obviously we may you know briefly touch on the welsh nationals although we will do a debrief obviously after this weekend and then have a think about i guess you know what we're seeing at tournaments in terms of mission types in terms of scoring the kind of lists that we're seeing and then some you know uk events to focus on moving forward for the rest of the year yeah so basically if you're thinking about going to a tournament or you think about running the tournament or you think about playing ball action might be worth listening to so germany i guess we'll start talking about roll call i had a lovely time i don't know about you phil did you have a nice time at roll call.

Yeah i did it was my first time going to roll call so yeah never been there really nice venue it's in a local school it's held in the easter holidays so you know there's obviously no children around and there's opportunity to get set up beforehand and yeah i thought it was really nice nice and central you know it's just close to milton keen so you know easy for people to come to come down you know or for us to travel up in our case but yeah really really enjoyed it yeah good good crowd big big event was it 40 odd or so players i want to say yeah 40 players biggest free three tournaments so far if you exclude beachhead so not then yeah but i believe that was the erroneous call that was made i believe it was and and alex was their joint to over beachhead to clarify yeah yeah indeed but yeah it's pretty i do think that schools are a bit of an untapped resource for tournaments because you've got everything you need in the one place we've not the dinner ladies in i don't think can we sit in ladies now or do we have to not.

Ungendered that term the catering stuff yeah we had the catering stuff in so you could have your school dinner while you're there as well luckily no one stole my lunch money as well which was nice, speaks volumes to the the caliber of player who were there that no one stole my lunch money yeah it was i think it's actually a really good venue because of that you've got everything you need in one place and yeah 40 players there was sort of the regular tournament players there was sort of more of your club players.

And I think there's quite a few sort of brand new faces as well, because what did it pull in last year?

I don't think it pulled in that many players, did it, Phil?

From memory, I don't think it was as many as that.

I think it was sort of in the low 30s, maybe.

What was also nice, we had some guys traveling from overseas.

So we had a couple of guys based in France, one of which I played, Kenny, who was an Australian who lived in France.

But yeah, it wasn't just UK players or UK base players.

There was also people traveling from further afield, which is good to see.

An international drawer.

Also the first year we've included Roll Call on the British Series rankings as well, isn't it?

because last year, I think it was random pairings, but this year it was Swiss pairings.

Am I right in saying that last year it was random?

Yeah, I believe so.

I think it was the last year it wasn't truly Swiss.

So the criteria for being in the Babs is that it's two-day match pairings after round one.

So it needs to be Swiss from round two onwards.

And yeah, roll call was.

So it now appears in the Babs for this year.

Yeah, as I say, I'm pretty sure we got the data last year, but you could see the strength of schedule versus the final position.

Didn't quite match what you'd expect for rank parent this year it did but i'm using this kind of as a segue into something that i found quite interesting which was that because there was only sort of like three levels of differentiation so if you lost you got zero points if you drew got one point if you won you got three points what we found is like there weren't many buckets for players and so like after the first game a third of your players are in first place let's say a third eye in last place and a third eye in the middle with a draw let's say and what it meant was the ranked pairing perhaps isn't as ranked as like it could be because obviously you're having to still randomly sort all those first place players which meant that actually even though the overall trend shows that like there's the harder the higher someone placed the more difficult their opponents were generally you did get the odd anomaly where like someone in the top let's say five got a series so let's say like four opponents who didn't finish in the top 10 and someone who finished let's say 10th all their opponents were in the top 10 and so generally got that trend and i think the reason for those sort of anomalous results every now and then was because basically like the players were always in big buckets and sort of being paired out of that randomly.

Yeah, that's my understanding.

So it became more apparent as you went into round three, round four, round five.

So if you had, say, six players all on the same primary points, so they've got, I don't know, three wins and a draw, for example.

Rather than then ranking them on the secondary score, which in our case was kill dice, it would just randomly pair you within that group.

So if you've got six people on the same primary points those six people assuming they haven't played each other previously they're going to get paired up randomly so yes statistically it is possible to work your way through through the five games and maybe have an easier schedule albeit playing you know winner versus winner two wins versus two wins that kind of thing you're still going to win all your games ultimately haven't you you're still you're still going to win all your games yeah but potentially playing because it's random you could in theory end up playing slightly weaker people in the same pool in inverted commas in order to you know progress as you went through the five games yeah and i think for me what it highlighted is i really appreciate secondaries of tournaments either secondaries or multiple sort of like victory conditions so for like the english open we've done major and minor victories so if you sneak a win that's worth less points than it a major win where you just basically steamrolled the mission and equally the secondaries which is the more common way that we see this being split where every table has a secondary objective and you're playing both the mission and for the secondary.

We'll see this well this weekend as it were when when you guys watch it obviously we're not there yet because we're this is tuesday but the welsh nationals the secondary is included if you hold the secondary at the end of the mission it's included in your primary point score so not only do you get points for win loss draw you also get a point for secondary and i remember talking about this the last two years after the world's nationals where players maybe had a worse win draw loss record than somebody else but because they've gone out there and gathered up the secondaries sunzu wickens mentioned this last year they've done they've done better than somebody who's got more wins than them because they've they've been able to grab a point per game per secondary yeah i like it because it sort of there's a little bit of extra tactical play there for players It also helps to split the pack a bit, as we've already alluded to.

And the thing that I really like about secondaries is in kill points missions, it kind of focuses the battle because I find sometimes in kill points missions, everyone just hides and it's like long range plink and you go a few dice up and then you hide.

Whereas if the secondary is always in play and it's worth actual like serious points.

It's worth fighting over.

Yeah, definitely.

And I've said this before when we've done Torn and Debris, I'm not a huge fan of just the straightforward kill point missions.

So having something to play for, either because maybe I'm not winning on kill dice, but I still want to grab something that's worthwhile, i.e.

The secondary, or because actually I'm comfortable in terms of kill dice.

Now I can push myself for the secondary because it's going to help me in the overall standings throughout the weekend.

Yeah, and I think actually saying that about still having something to play for, that is one of the things people say where, you know like end of turn three you know you're out of the game and a lot of people say like that's it's fine for people to concede in that case because it's just boring actually that's a good way as you say to keep people in the game yeah i've played other game systems at events where, i've been well and truly smashed or i've been well and truly smashing someone and you're on turn three turn four and you're like do we really need to finish off but you do because you get battle points and so on actually i'm just going to jump on that that as well what would be lovely.

Is there to be an app that is universally available that works for bolt action because i know that some people use best case pairings some people use other things i don't know the top of my head tawny keeper thank you but people jump around don't they and different different apps do different things in different ways and it would be nice if one of these major you know app developers were able to create one or if people listening are using one that works let us know because i know for the english open for example we run it all through a spreadsheet i know that same with the wcc you know spurley and and pete you know they've written a spreadsheet macros all over the place and it does does the pairings for them and so on it would be nice if if there was something out there which was available which people could use so that you can start differentiating by secondaries be that a secondary objective kill dice dice preserved whatever it is tertiaries as well yeah it.

I think it's possible.

I think the thing that's always put people off is like the customizability and like people wanting, as you said, cause you said by secondaries and then listed three secondaries.

So you're going to have to, unless we all just agree how we're going to run tournaments, which actually we almost certainly did.

There was a point when every tournament you went to had secondaries and had the primary points and then the secondaries.

And so actually maybe all you need is like the points.

Secondaries and kill points really but i guess that's a long-term thing yeah yeah you know we're in danger maybe of going down the the sort of the 40k tournament route which is these are your tables this is your terrain this is your scoring system if you want to label yourself as a gt or an rtt this is what you need to do otherwise it's not legal same with the naff and blood bowl for example yeah that's really funny actually because we've often talked about variety being good and actually that's one of my big things like variety of tournament as is as important as how well run an individual tournament is yeah and actually that is one of the things your risk isn't at that if everyone's scoring points exactly the same how you score points is sort of an element of tactics in the tournament absolutely yeah 100 yeah and so maybe actually we don't want everyone to be scoring the same maybe we do want to keep it as it is where everyone's using quirky little systems like their own custom spreadsheet and stuff yeah but if we could have an app that did it for us that would be great it's nice to have the choice it is missions then what what did you think of the missions at roll call.

Yeah i thought i know i was a big fan of them i thought there was variety i don't i could be honest i can't remember the order off the top of my head but you know we had key positions we had seeking destroy we had sectors we had envelop no breakthrough didn't we and we had more seeking destroy but the final game was quarters and pre-deployment i want to say as opposed to meeting engagement and long edge which was the first iteration of it absolutely so yeah so what you had was a variety of missions with deployment types and deployment zones that worked what we didn't see and i was so glad that gaz didn't do this we didn't see demolition we didn't see top secret we didn't see manhunt we didn't see hold until relieved and if you if you were wondering why i was saying this listen to previous episodes because certain missions certainly with v3 now certain missions just don't really work for me in a tournament setting and i thought gaz got it absolutely spot on with the the five types of missions that we had played from the rulebook so that so it wasn't like gaz had taken the rulebook missions and then made some tweaks and i'm all for that don't get me wrong but you know for players who were maybe still getting to grips of v3 because we're only six months in you know still getting to grips of v3 and and all going to their first event there really wasn't a lot of like needing to check the rules at the start of the of the mission to make sure you're playing the right thing it was in the rulebook as long as you knew what mission deployment and deployment type of deployment zone there were and gas announces obviously.

At the start of each turn each round you could crack on with it.

Funnily, the one that didn't come up that I've actually been quite enjoying, but I haven't decided if it's good for tournaments, it's the Fog of War deployment.

Because actually, I played key positions with Fog of War the other day, and I thought it was going to be trash.

But it was quite fun.

It was a lot of fun, and it wasn't hugely unbalanced.

As long as you're aware that it's going to be Fog of War before you set them up.

So if you do rules written by the rulebook, there's potential to mess that up.

But if you're doing an atonement where they say it's key positions it's fog of war the but I'm glad it didn't come up because it's always a pain at tournaments because trying to get around the table just becomes a real faff yes but I do think fog of war isn't as bad as a first thought it was my reflection, I'm not a huge fan but it's better than Holden to Reliefed or Demolition in my view.

I mean the other thing as well was there was only one objective mission so So I think two objective missions is a good amount, really, because I'd rather have more objectives than kill points, I think.

Because it kind of forces the infantry element of the game, doesn't it?

Which is what we always talk about.

It's actually supposed to be an infantry game, and objectives do that better than any other type of mission.

I mean, V2 was an infantry game, less so now, and we'll come on to that, I'm sure, in a bit.

I think the problem is that in the main rulebook, there is only, for me, there's only really one genuine ornament objective mission, which is key positions.

So if you're sticking to the rule book, unless you play key positions in two different ways, so Fog of War versus Meeting Engagement, for example, or you bring in something like Heartbreak Ridge or...

Well, I think you hit the nail on the head.

What I would have done was do, in the way that Gaz did Kill Points two different ways, I would have done key positions two different ways, I think.

Just because then you're forcing especially if you tell people up front it means you're going to discourage certain builds yeah that aren't as fun to play against potentially yeah what i thought was interesting so gaz didn't announce the missions before the weekend didn't announce the missions before each round to be fair it was only at the start of the round it was like you're playing this next it did mean that you you ran the risk of building a list that would do well in certain types of missions or deployments but actually you could become you could come unstuck when you got to the weekend itself well funnily you've led me into another point about the missions there which was ben did exactly that didn't he so ben built his ben andrews yeah yeah his pershing list yeah we have two persons and some veterans two two veteran pershing so it was an eight dice list bearing in mind this is like 13 and 10 points so ben was doing it because but ben so with the wtc this just happened this weekend ben was a member of england too and one of the big changes this year to WTC which I'm really big fan of is that you submitted five lists but you could take five lists with you so when.

We went the previous year you submitted five lists but one was a dummy list this year you could choose which four of your five lists were going to be played so Ben's primary list was a Japanese list but he felt that that wasn't the strongest on I think it was certainly kill points and I want to say maybe demolition I'm not sure so Ben had taken or ben had submitted a persian us list for the wcc and he was using roll callers as a way to it wasn't the same list but it was it was a way to kind of practice with that but yeah his his roll call list was mad you know it's a couple of veteran persians i think one maybe two air observers the what you call it the military police so that you if you really wanted to you could you know keep your vehicles in reserve and that kind of thing but yeah and he did really well on the kill points because very little can touch a veteran person obviously you start playing sectors or development and it's going to struggle because well it wasn't envelopment this was the problem you see so exactly as you said with players building themselves into a corner with certain lists.

Because we played breakthrough where there's only points for movement yes and he came up against alex's pulls with all the lances and tank heads so he's out diced at least two to one let's say yeah there's no way for him to win that game because he can't get off the table and stop his opponent just because of the number of dice basically yeah and that for me like yes you could say if the missions have been in advance he might have built a different list but i actually think breakthrough for me probably isn't a good tournament mission because of that because.

Because there's only one way to win it does mean that if you are going like wanting to have a chance to win or at least draw most games then you're going to not build certain things so you're not going to if breakthrough is in there you're not going to build a slow list you're going to make sure that half your force is mobile and so i was thinking about this with fog of war as well so if you built a so i played chris davies at three good men and obviously that's slightly different because you had three lists and you built them you know depending upon the mission chris had a really nice soviet list that was an artillery platoon and heavy weapons platoon so a load of static units which was fantastic for for missions where you know it may be objectives because you could just blow the opponent off the objective or kill points or so on but if if you took that kind of list to fog of war mission or you took that kind of list to a breakthrough mission you're really really going to struggle and it i guess it kind of moves into the whole rock paper scissors thing but it's it's not just rock paper scissors based on the list you're playing it's kind of rock paper scissors based on the mission that you're playing as well yeah i have less of an issue with the fog of war than the breakthrough because even if you're static.

You can stop your opponent sneak up behind you by just going into ambush and that's sort of like the maneuver you can do you can put your bazooka on your back line go to ambush you know that tank's I'm going to sneak up behind you now.

Or if it does, it's going to, it potentially has a bad day.

It's going to run the risk.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And so...

And so like the Fog of War feels like it still has a potential counter where you could still lean into your big artillery build, but have a chance.

Whereas yeah, the breakthrough just, I can't see how you do it if you haven't built a list for breakthrough and your opponent has basically.

I mean, we said this after Beachhead and I would love to see breakthrough being played like it used to with kill points being, being a factor.

So yes, you're still encouraging mobility, but actually you can also do well in the game with kill points i played gerwin in breakthrough roll call and we spent the first four turns just beating each other up in terms of kill points and i was like i actually need to kind of move towards his deployment zone because yes i might have scored a load of kill dice off him but that was irrelevant to actually winning the mission, yeah absolutely and this was the game i was playing where i was letting him come forward but I was playing Mike Jones with his amazing fins.

Like his fins were actually pre-update fins.

Pre-FAQ, yeah.

It was a lovely list.

A lovely list.

But it was exactly, I looked at it and I thought, this is the finish list that actually I'd like to play because basically what he'd done is he'd put Sissi.

Faust, which is something you can only do in V3, in Coms Amolets, and he just basically had loads of them, some Shreks, nothing heavy.

It was all infantry-based.

and it meant that if i approached his lines i was going to get wrecked and so what i had to first do was long range plink them off yeah and then get up but we just we basically ran out of time so that's how we ended up as a draw because both of us were playing the game where we were trying to basically find a gap in the line but by the time the gap in the line appeared the game was over, and so yeah it's i mean welsh nationals were playing envelopment which nice to see yeah which basically solves that problem because you've got both kill points and movement.

However, the thing that's really interesting is it's asymmetrical in its victory conditions.

And...

I'm excited to hear in next week's episode what I thought of that because I think it shouldn't cause huge problems if you've both built balanced lists because you can play both sides.

But I can imagine certain builds, as we've just said, will be desperate to win the roll off to choose to be either attacker or defender.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Is it worth talking about builds now?

So we've obviously talked about...

We've nicely segued into it, I think, yeah.

Yeah.

So roll call was interesting.

so of the top 10 list i would say eight of the 10 leaned into something heavily so from memory if you'd say the winner stew hawkins congratulations stew unbeaten all weekend fantastic performance stew had what three stugs three t28s only four five man infantry squads he heard he's got a tank wars event i believe yes so very heavily leaning into the armor for the fins paul wickens He was second, had his triple artillery observer British list.

The infantry were, I think they were just regulars maybe, you know, with some, some vicars and vicars tanks and so on.

Yeah, it was vicars heavy, but you're right.

The core of his list was that triple observer threat so that he could get out six in the first round.

And I faced two, I'm sorry.

In my first three games, I faced six observers because I had someone who'd taken one observer in the first one.

And then the following two lists were all like, oh, we're going to push the observer again kind of thing.

Johnny ferg's list was very similar again british but a lot of infantry rather than vehicles i think chris davies had a lot british a lot of vehicles in his list i think he was an observer one as well wasn't he i think so i mean it certainly wasn't three because you know johnny's and johnny's and paul stood out but yeah if you're taking brits at the moment you're going to put you and i lent heavily into flamethrowers in in armored transports mine was the sort of the the barbecue list but first you tenderize the meat with high explosives don't you yeah mine was uh it actually was a historical build but it also did have five flamethrowers in it so.

I've managed to find the historical justification for five flamethrowers as you do well they're used somewhere they were used somewhere we've mentioned alex bundok he had his polish list so a lot of a lot of lances and a lot of tankettes and so on so yeah of the 10 of the 10 you know top 10 lists mike jones's list he had a you know like you said he had a lot of infantry and consomalettes but yes it's leaning into a theme but it's not leaning into all flamethrowers all big tanks you know triple artillery observers tankettes and and ponies you know yeah i'd put mike jones's list in a little bit with alex's list where it was basically it was target saturation and very sort of like low cost units or at the very least sort of like not high armored because both of them basically had armor seven throughout good fighters so i thought yeah i think it's there's something there's something to discuss and and it'd be interesting to see you know the welsh national lists battle of britain warlord gt coming up wtc to an extent although because it was a team event you're able to pick if you if you want to you're able to pick five lists that do certain things rather than one list that needs to play five or six missions over the course of the weekend but it'd be interesting to see if the prevalence of lists that are focusing on one maybe two things a lot continue to do well or if people maybe realized actually we need a bit more of a balance i can't think of any.

Any major uk event or indeed you know national international event since v3.

Came out where a balanced list in in the v2 sense of a balanced list has been.

Podiumed i think they've all been or near enough all been very lean very strongly leaning towards a certain thing.

Yeah, I don't know.

I think in V2, it was similar, you know, because a lot of the lists, it's just that the meta's changed.

Whereas the meta used to be certain units because of the false organization charts, false selection criteria, we've pushed the spam.

Like we've, we've made, we've turned the game into tank wars effectively.

And my two big things that I think people are thinking as the meta at the minute in the UK are observer spam and tank spam that seems to be the two that people are leaning towards the most i find and obviously observers might die very soon well i believe they are aren't they it's been we've seen it haven't we in the uh was it wargames illustrated or yep we've we've seen the clip of the british national rules and the british artillery observer is not getting the double shot anymore so paul well done you really enjoyed your time at rockwell but actually that triple observer list is not going to be well you still might take it but you're not getting six strikes potentially per game the u.s ones obviously they still get the double airstrike yeah but i think he's less potent and also i think what will happen is as we settle into more pintles and things i don't see the air observer being a long-term sort of meta piece i think if the brits hadn't lost that double strike i think we would see that for a long time But as you said, we now know that that's going away.

A couple of miners still get it, but obviously that'll go away in the long term, I imagine.

But even if not, you want the Brits so you can have all that choice.

For me, the one that I think is going to linger the longest is tank wars.

I think there'll always be players who lean into the armor because you know that it's hard to deal with for a balanced list.

But if someone doesn't bring any anti-tank at all, you've basically auto-one.

And it's not just tank wars, it's also armoured vehicles, armoured transports.

So, you know, it's the Commissar Mallettes.

Not so much Bren carriers, because I'm not sure that five blokes in a Bren is as good as, okay, six in a Commissar Mallette or eight in an M3 Scout car.

Obviously, the German Hanamags.

And all of those, you know, the Hanamags, particularly coming down in price, do make them interesting now.

Yeah, I'm not convinced on the Hanamags.

The Brens, I'm definitely not convinced on, because the bang for buck.

Yeah.

It's not enough shots out.

This is why I don't think we'll see the T20s anymore, the Comsomolettes, because again, the bang for buck isn't worth it.

And so you'll see one or two delivering like flamethrower teams and stuff, but you're not going to see.

And even the Hanamag is good enough now to be, if you needed to transport and you wanted it armored, it's good.

But I don't think you're taking it offensively.

I think it's the armor seven tanks.

Maybe it's even a cheeky armor eight.

They're the ones that I think we're going to see people spamming.

Lees, for example, three Lees.

if you're paying if you're playing 12 50 up yeah that's hard to deal with yeah and and the new plastic kit looks great as well so if you know it's not you haven't got to buy the big chunk of resin that the warlord used to have or 3d printer affiliate link in the description yeah they are it is lovely and i will be building one soon and showing you on the pod yeah absolutely and yeah i do think i didn't want to play tank wars and i do think what like the four selection criteria combined with people leaning towards heavier points limits it hasn't pushed us into big tanks that everyone's wanting to see like tigers and panthers it's pushed us into spamming those light little tanks stuff with like multiple machine guns auto cannons stuff where like your bang for buck is just in the sweet spot sort of like 100 point tanks yeah yeah and yeah i don't know if I'm here for it, to be honest, the tank wars, I'd quite like to go back to sort of like one or two tank per army.

And so I think we either need to shift our restrictions slightly or shift our points limits back down.

So two things here so yeah just in terms of the particular units i took panzer spar wagons to roll call because i i love the panhard you know for the french the panzer spar wagons obviously the captured captured german version so i chose my list based on which units had the panzer spar wagons so it was the 20th panzer division then looks at well where did they fight and then battle of rosny what happened engineers took the bridge what did engineers have flamethrowers tick here's the justification for my flamethrower list of panhards but the panhard you know it's 100 and what 10 15 points or so for armor 7 light 80 with recce they were brilliant all weekend you know more so than the panzer 3 that i took i didn't really didn't use the the panzer 3 with with the extra machine guns a lot but actually if i'd taken maybe three panhards or panzer sparwaggers rather than two i think i could have saved those points in the panzer 3 and put them elsewhere.

In terms of the amount of armor so something i was thinking about this week in tank war in v1 and v2, there was suggestion well it wasn't suggestions they they had examples of the typical number of tanks taken in a troop or a platoon so depending upon the nation certain nations so the brits for example it was generally four was in a troop for the germans it was five for light and medium tanks but then it dropped down to three for heavies and so on i wonder if actually being able to take five armored vehicles in an armored platoon is causing an issue and actually if we drops it down or maybe and this is i'm speaking off the top of my head here jumping back to your point when we looked at the armies of germany in u.s where you were hoping to maybe see some different platoon selectors within the arms of books it would be great maybe if down the line we start to see okay in the armies of i don't know japan for example your armored platoon has only got four armored slots not five because historically typically a japanese armored platoon only had four.

I don't know if that's true or not, but you get the point I'm making here.

Actually, the thought that I was having there is, In tank wars, so when you used to offer armored platoon versus infantry platoon, the compromise was if you take that armored platoon, you don't have any infantry, basically.

You've got a couple of squads.

Which had to be transported as well.

Yeah, exactly.

And so I do wonder if what we do that could fix it is basically you can either have a rifle platoon or a tank platoon, pick one, and then that way you either get all your lovely tanks or you get your lovely infantry.

But if you do go for the tanks, you're either paying a surplus for engineers, a surplus for recce vehicles in order to get the infantry.

And I do think that might solve it.

The problem is, though, all those players who want to run a single tank suddenly can't run a single tank, which is sad.

The other choice, I guess, is you could go back to the generic selector for your tournament.

That's an option.

And then there's a third option that actually Charlie Murphy of England WTC fame was...

We were talking about, which was, we do think the anti-tank weapons are over-costed.

So like bazookas and Shreks especially are so expensive.

And this is why actually those American rules where you can take extra bazooka slots, it's 180 points.

It's more than a steward to take three bazookas.

And you're going to need three really if you're taking on a couple of tanks.

Yeah, if you're not taking tanks as well.

Yeah.

And so I think maybe it's if we knock...

And the funny thing is, FAUS going up hasn't helped this situation at all, because now we're seeing less anti-tank buried in the infantry slots.

Yeah, yeah.

And so actually, maybe if we just do sort of like a 15-point reduction on bazookas.

So imagine like, and actually 50, let's make them 50 points, because then that's in line with a medium machine gun.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And so like, that's quite nice.

Rusted this, didn't he, a World Open War.

So the US, the TAP, the Tornment Adjustment Pack, brought the bazooka down to 45 points.

And that made it, yeah, interesting.

My Welsh Nationals list, I've got no tax.

I've got three bazookas.

That is my AT and a bunch of HMGs on scout cars.

It's going to go one of two ways.

And obviously, you know, when you listen to this, you'll know if it's gone one of two ways from any posts I put up over the weekend.

Because I just want to see if I can do it.

If basically not taking tanks, but taking scout cars, HMGs, bazookas and air observers, will that allow me to deal with big armour?

I don't think it will, but I'm interested to see.

I think those HMGs are a bit of a.

Hidden gem there because the problem with just bazookas is once you lose them which you can do in a prep bombardment even like it could come to that you don't really have anything else so having those hmgs they can whiz around the back even if you're just putting pins on stuff you can potentially win a game by just i mean your opponent could accidentally run off the table with a tank ultimately yeah in the game yeah in in the practice games i played before putting the list in i went up against you know more than you know two at least two if not three or four armored vehicles whatever and if i couldn't take them out with the bazookas or just put pins on just to nullify them because at the very least i'm forcing an order check each turn and yeah they might fail they might then reverse and go down and so on so yeah the games that you know i practiced with it was like unless my air observer takes out the vehicles with you know with rolling a three three four five or six in terms of a medium or heavy how it's coming in i'm just going to try and just stop them from automatically activating by sticking pins on with the hmgs yeah and i think long term that is the actual meta that tanks feel like the meta at the minute but actually i do think the tank wars will diminish over time but it's because we'll have things like at rifles which are really cheap pins on tanks high explosives and actually one of the things that roll call that was.

Difficult was we were in what version four of multi-launcher rules of v3 and that was what a headache that was because well it wasn't i didn't take any but you did so yeah i didn't need to know how many pins they were putting on and what the minimum range was and whether or not a spot a good spot yeah so i believe gaz had written his pack based on d3 pins as per the faq but a minimum range of 12 as per the faq that was out at the time he wrote his pack and so in order to balance it was he put in a minimum range of 30 whatever no no the conditions that were in place when he wrote his pack oh yes well yes and so to balance it as you say we increased the range he made the range so to balance it he made the range 30 inches and so in the packet said the minimum range is 30 inches now between then and now i think we had two faqs but either way basically in summary it was current rules at time of recording which is one pin 36 inch minimum in the faq but spotters are back on the table back on the table yeah but spotters are now off the table for your mortar if it's on the table before the anyway trying to work out what rules we were playing was an absolute headache because you've got like the rule book the faq the extra faq the pack.

In conclusion, we ended up playing 30-inch minimum D3 plus 1 pins.

I think that's what we played for them.

I don't know if spotters were in play because I didn't bring any spotters because I didn't think I could use them when I rolled my helmet.

But anyway, in summary, I do think multi-launchers have a place.

And we saw this.

The Germans took a ton of them to WTC, which they just won.

Congratulations, boys.

Congratulations, boys.

Well done.

and actually in game one because gaz hadn't put how many pins the multi-launcher got in his pack i played my multi-launchers with one pin as per the faq and his pack, and it was only the end of that game he told me that his intention was d3 plus one pins i think, and actually with one pin they were spot on because every time they passed the test they got rid of that one pin yeah yeah yeah i played david parker in in game one he had a multi-launcher it was like oh you got a pin oh you passed you knew you got rid of it great well this is pointless like other than the you might roll a food bar effectively you're just clearing it each time and so i totally see why the germans did well because i actually think multi-launchers are also still in the long-term meta pending the next faq which could do literally anything to them indeed yeah i i do think the best iteration 36 inches do a pin no spotters spotters can be used as per the original v3 rulebook for everyone else that's how i think we should go long term i think that's the simplest it's also the closest to the original v3 rulebook so it's probably gonna cause the least confusion however i am weary of changing anything again anytime soon because can you imagine the chaos if we just keep changing this one rule.

I'm already lost to be honest and i've not really been using them although i will start using them now with the US getting the rocket launcher truck.

Are you going to start using the rocket launcher truck?

Are you?

I am.

Yeah.

There's an event coming up at Entoyment in Poole in a couple of weeks, so I'm trying out an idea.

Yeah.

I'm curious about them because now they've got the static firing platform.

They're not as cool as the ones where, where you'd roll on fire, your rockets.

And then obviously you'd be waiting until next time, make sure you survive, et cetera.

And so I'm curious to see if they've got a place, but now you can use spotters with them.

So you take, you take your nonsense.

I assume you're taking two FAOs to use a spot for them.

At least two, if not three.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You see, I think you've gone pricey there.

I think you go for the minimum cost spotters, something like a medium motor i'm thinking we'll see well i'll tell you in about a month as well yeah it's it's three weeks away so you'll find out in a month how it did some offset going on here yeah absolutely.

So just jumping right back to the top 10 at roll call what was nice was the types of builds there was a variety there so yes the builds were probably leaning into something in terms of you know artillery observers flamethrowers armored vehicles but there was at least i would say four or five different types of builds within that top 10 which i think shows there is more variety at this point in v3 than there was at the end of v2 where generally speaking you tended to see you know your daca tank your cheap armored car with a decent decent at option engineers appearing for flamethrowers probably some close assault units coming in some people like mortars inexperienced or regular with a spotter to taste you know 25 pound if it was a british or maybe a multi-launcher if it was if it was an axis and so on whereas i think now with e3 we are yes we are seeing the extremes doing well but we're seeing different types of extremes doing well yeah i think i imagine there's quite a lot of people pulling their how because like as we said earlier it's quite spammy oh it's very yeah if you're leaning into one thing it's what the internet's always just complained about spam um i i don't know if it's better that we have lots of different spam.

Or fewer varieties of spam i don't know which one's better yet yeah i i'm not i'm not saying it's a good thing but it's good in the conditions that we're in yeah and i do think obviously it's all going to change as every three months i'm expecting something to change in some small way at the very least because every three months we're going to get a new army book and if we do continue that trend it's going to be a long time before everything settles down isn't it because let's say two years at an absolute minimum from today, Well, so we know from this weekend, Alessio confirmed there will be an Armies of Commonwealth or something along those lines because the Gurkhas are out of the Great Britain book.

And everyone was like, oh my God, the Gurkhas are out.

But they're out because they're going to appear down the line in the Commonwealth.

We also know that the Armies of Italy is coming out in quarter two, 2026, because the publication date is available on the internet.

And Alessio said that as well.

So we've got Japan quarter one, 26.

Italy quarter two, 26.

Not sure what the order is after that, but there is going to be a Commonwealth book.

If there's an Italian book, I'd love it for there to be a French book.

If we can have early war French, free French in terms of mid-war North Africa, late war French and so on.

And that's before you even start talking about, you know, the minor axis and the minor allies.

What about China?

What about Australia?

I actually know Australia would have presumably appeared in a Commonwealth book, but what about China and so on and so forth?

So yeah, it's two years minimum them because you know that's if it's every three months that's already q4 2026 just just based on france italy commonwealth minor axis minor allies that's just 27 actually by that yeah and i mean this is what we've wanted france as a separate book i mean i have i don't know about you oh no yeah 100 italy is a separate book so these are promising things we're hearing i just wish it wasn't so far away like it's just going to take a long time for this game to settle and i feel like the rate of change of the core rules that are being faqs versus the rate of change of the army rules being released it's like two different people are doing this because you've got one person changing like big things in faqs meanwhile someone else slowly and methodically releasing army books And it'll be interesting.

I wonder if we'll see a thing like we saw on V2 where...

Like the oldest army book ends up getting re-released effectively like are we gonna see armies of germany v4 if you know what i mean yeah yeah yeah or you know by the time we get through the cycle of two two and a half years of books do we then get version 3.5 third edition 3.5 kind of thing whereby it's it's a tidy up in the same way that v2 was a tidy up of v1 wasn't it there wasn't any groundbreaking changes other than templates and he and flavorers and stuff there wasn't a huge number of changes from one to two i wonder if 3.5 will appear in a year and a bit when it's settled what you think another version of bolt action in under five years potentially.

I am i i didn't go through v1 to v2 to v3 i need i only went through the end of v2 to v3 so i can but be hopeful and uh and not appeal to history yeah it's i mean it's got potential if this was games workshop we'd certainly be saying like once you run out of things to release you do a new version don't you and start releasing it all over again i mean one of the things people liked about warlord is that they never really did that i imagine there's a few people at the minute wishing wishlisting so for something completely different faq corner common vehicles in the main rulebook do they.

Get all the national characteristics of the force you take them in or do they not i want to say it is written somewhere in the universe of bolt action that the common vehicles are eligible or you can take them with alongside the armies of books i also want to say that it isn't written that the national special rules apply to those vehicles but i would imagine they would because they're not captured so it's not it's not like the whole you know if the i don't know partisans are using a captured german vehicle does it get the extra shot because the hitler's buzzsaw but i would have thought that a common vehicle you know a light truck being used by the u.s is going to get the modern communications rule i also i'm in agreement i also think that because they are common vehicles that every force basically owned they would get the national characteristics that's my current suspicion but i do think it could probably do with a little bit of a clarifier somewhere just in case anyone queries it because if it's not written anywhere so back to our.

Topic of the episode obviously we've talked about english open pack and take a link in the description for anyone who is keen to join us there that's our thematic tournament what other tournaments have you got on the horizon there phil uh so yeah looking ahead in terms of two days in the uk you've got battle of britain coming up in june the pack has just been released so it's 12 50 12 50 points there unashamedly competitive and i like the fact that that is announced in the in the pack you know this is an unashamedly competitive event you've got the warlord gt which is also 1250 points coming up in august but that is limited to 18 dice and then you have the london gt at the end of september which is also 1250 but with no dice restriction again unashamedly competitive and then obviously we've mentioned the english open coming up in november so quite a few big two days coming up with you know slightly subtle different restrictions in terms of dice cap points or in the English Open's case, you know, the historically plausible themed seed lists and so on.

Yeah, indeed.

And London GT, who's T on that one, Phil?

Oh, I believe it is somebody that you guys may know fairly well.

It's me.

So there we go.

Well, what I do like about London GT is that it's fully competitive.

So we've got English Open in Farnborough, November, Thematic.

That's one where you can play or you can go fully competitive learning GT I do like that there's no dice cap on that that's the one thing I'm really looking forward to the Warlord GT and, Because I do like that it's often one of the most popular tournaments of the year, so you get to see the most variety.

But the dice cap's going to limit that variety somewhat, isn't it?

Yeah, I've been already coming up with ideas for the Warlord Duty with 18 dice at 1250.

And I would quite like about 20, if I'm honest.

There's a particular thing I want to do, and that extra couple of dice is just not quite working there for me.

Yeah, I think if it was 1000, I think the 18 is absolutely fine.

At the 1250, I'm struggling to see exactly as you say.

I don't know.

I either want a couple more dice to throw in something a bit fun.

It's because the funny thing is it's all those small units that I'm going to end up sacrificing things like, I know, like say I was thinking about a bazooka team.

I'm thinking, do I want to use one of my dice?

Nevermind my points.

Do I want to use one of my limited order dice on a bazooka team?

And so I think it's going to push me into a bit like what you said earlier.

It's going to push me into quite a specific build i think rather than a generalist build because i'm going to avoid using my autodice on stuff that doesn't really fit nicely with the rest of the force yeah agreed i yeah as i said i'd have to you know yo-yo back and forth between ideas at this stage obviously plenty of time so i'm not going to commit to it the other thing i do like as well about both the the warlord gt and the london gt is that the armies of gb will be in play for both of them so obviously the when by the time army's GB comes out at the end of July it'll be quite close to the list deadline for the warlord GT but it is also going to therefore be in play for the London GT at the end of September so it'll be interesting to see what people are going to take from the new army's GB book and how that may or may not differ from currently available units for Britain in the main rule book.

Yeah, that will be interesting.

I think it'll also be interesting, actually, to see if we see many, much US uptake.

Because when Germany came up, we saw a lot of German uptake.

Like Roll Call had a lot of German lists.

Roll Call was a bit soon for US.

And so it'll be interesting to see at the London GT, if there is a, not the London, the Warlord GT.

The Warlord GT, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I mean, at London GT as well, I guess.

But at the Warlord GT especially, it'll be interesting to see how well-repped US are.

Because if Germany is still riding high, And Brits are the new hot thing.

The U.S.

might just get lost in the middle there a little bit.

Yeah, I would love to see people leaning into the armoured platoon sections.

Sorry, the armoured infantry section.

So, you know, with the U.S.

Book where if you take one, you can take the extra bazooka.

You've got the armoured LMG squads, the armoured mortar squads.

I think that would be really interesting to see.

I think we might see that at the London.

I'm not sure.

Like I said, at the Wallow GT, having the extra selection doesn't really help you very much if you're limited around ice.

Yeah yeah no agreed and i i've been playing around with the u.s idea for the warlord gt.

Based on that principle of actually if i put some armored infantry and i can take more bazookas i don't need to take a heavy weapons platoon i can maybe not bother with taking tanks blah blah blah oh but i've also gone over 18 dice and i still haven't you know i haven't got got to what i want in terms of the chunky meaty infantry units that can do stuff yeah i might go see a man about two pershings yeah on which not thank you for listening yeah we've got some interesting stuff coming up in terms of tournaments within the uk bit of variety and so on uh be really interesting to hear from from you guys in terms of what you're finding what you're enjoying maybe what you'd like to see as well obviously the these are all major events that are locked in in terms of the uk but that's not to say that you know the one days can can appear with people trying different ideas and different lists you know criteria different missions all that sort of stuff as ever it is tata for now from me and tata for now.

Music.