Welcome to tabletop tommies i'm johnny and i'm phil and in today's episode we're talking about the warlord gt we're going to talk about our experiences at it how it was um references some other stuff you might have seen online about it and then at the end of the episode there'll be an announcement about the channel but i think we should jump in straight away with the warlord gt and sort of like an overview of it it is the i believe it's the biggest bolt action tournament in the world according to russell uh i think officially i think it's the biggest bolt action tournament in the world so there were just under 90 tickets sold there were 85 lists submitted but for the weekend itself 80 players which listeners do correct me but i believe that is the largest event for third edition in the last what 11 months it's been now isn't it august yeah 11 months since third edition came out yeah even but pre-third edition 80 players a lot of players and i think i'd struggle to i couldn't think of another tournament that would draw that kind of crowd maybe warzone atlanta yeah i don't know about things like adepticon or warzone atlanta cambridge too far that was quite large wasn't it but that's going back a long a long time yeah But yeah, I think you're right.

I think since that finished, I can't think of anything in the 80s to 100 range.

And the idea at one point, like when we're talking about getting 100 players, it was...

Impressive and yeah 100 players was doable there was enough tables there was there was enough terrain the to team was large enough to manage it so i know from talking to gaz bets who's the lead to since the event that 100 is the ambition is the aim for next year yeah and it'd be great to see it wouldn't it like tournaments bigger than 100 it also would justify that sort of because it's a six game weekend yes and it justifies that sixth game i think the more players you have the more games you need to differentiate them don't you yes yeah absolutely yeah and i'm sure we'll get onto that when we talk about the final standings and where you and i finished and relative to others and so on but yeah exactly yeah but in terms of having so many players i thought as a from a player's perspective it was very smooth there was the intervals were about the right length i think he didn't get bored in between games but equally he didn't feel too rushed lunch was provided which is always quite nice yeah it felt very smooth what about you phil.

Experience yeah absolutely and you know it was six games as well so the first game was on friday night i know last year we had six games over two days over the saturday sunday that was quite pressured i this felt more relaxed and and this and the timing felt better the venues changed as well and i really did actually like that the new venue it shifted from from nottingham to leicester due to the where they previously were renting due to a change of policy with them rather than any any issues as it were but yeah over the six games the friday night you know everyone was was, mostly ready to go by six half six three games on a saturday two games on a sunday it didn't finish too late on the sunday yeah so the guys of us who live on the south coast those who came down from scotland you know gary morgan from from wales like we could all get back at a reasonable time on on sunday evening so yeah i i thought it was you know the timings were good the space things were good lunch being provided was good.

Yeah, I'm not a huge fan of the Friday night game.

I've always been, because it's fine for like the locals, but the further you go, the more you have to commit a full third day for one game.

And so I'm not, I'm still not sure on it, but I think you raised a good point that if you don't put it on the Friday night to have six games feel will become very pressured at the venue.

Yeah.

Touching on the venue as well.

the the new venue i think is spot on like there's zero complaints from me i didn't have the sun in my eyes at any point which was a problem of the old venue and there was plenty space for everyone and i think we could have fit even more players in like we wouldn't have struggled at 100 in terms of as i said the to team like i know you and russell did a lot behind the scenes you did the list checking and it's always a bit contentious when you have players who do the list checking but actually it kind of helps because if the list checker is a tournament player.

They're more likely to spot errors and obviously we do the situation where you get your list in beforehand it does mean you get to see everyone's lists beforehand but obviously you've already committed yours so i guess you've got a small advantage that you've had longer to think about the difficult lists but it's only a couple of weeks isn't it that implies that i thought about the difficult lists in advance.

But yeah, so myself and Russell Wright were the primary list checkers.

If we weren't sure on something, then we'd bounce it up to Gaz as the head TO.

Our lists, they went in early.

Yeah.

They got approved and at that point we saw lists so some lists were submitted before ours were but we didn't get eyes on them at all so as soon as ours were approved by you know my case russ and gaz and in russ's case by me by me and gaz we could then start doing the list checking and i just want to say the warlord app makes it so much easier now compared to previous years where you know with the warlord app it will throw up where there is a an error so it gives you a verification error or sorry a validation error if if the list is incorrect now that does assume the law lord app is correct but but i've got a good relationship with with malaric with stacy and jamie and the app developers so i spotted one one thing where the app wasn't quite accurate and ironically it was russell's list it was to do with the size of marine hq units basically how the app had followed through from the book that got changed straight away was able to email malaric and it meant that you know all the lists that came in which were app based were relatively smooth to check and then what i did was then put every other list that wasn't app-based so easy army or you know a word or excel into the app so that we had standardized formatting for lists which helped us you know russ and i went on both channel it helped us to show to show the list and so on but it also meant that you know again we just could just check really thoroughly by using the app so yeah the app is is made a big difference you know compared to previous years i hadn't list checked before for the gt but previous years where you know list checking for our events or.

Beachhead or whatever it's like okay got a way through easy army double check with the books, you know and all that sort of thing so yeah the errors are getting picked up much quicker than they ever were an easy army which is good to see it means as you say it's just much easier for everyone and actually funnily as i was gonna say it also it also means that you can push the list deadline.

Later on so originally when the pack came out the list deadline was like four weeks before the event which meant the arm is a gb at that point wouldn't have been published and talking to gaz about it we were like well we can we can check them in two weeks that's not an issue so let's push the list deadline you know to later in the day which allows people to use the arm is a gb book so yeah that's another advantage of speedier list checking oh absolutely yeah and having said you and russell got your lists in early and got them approved before you saw any lists so that you could make sure i don't think seeing other people's lists would have changed what you and russell did because russell built air cavalry and he was always going to build air cavalry even if everyone had brought like exclusively flack and that's all they brought i think he was so committed to the bit that he was going to do that either way and i believe russ russ bought two armies you know he He had his Vietnam version.

So he bought, you know, if you go and look on Bo's video, you'll see it.

Russ had a full World War II version with all the correct models and all the correct vehicles.

And then he replicated it using various manufacturers, Vietnam era ones.

And I think he basically he would say to his opponent, if you don't want to play the Vietnam version, we'll just play the World War II.

And I think pretty much he played the Vietnam one all weekend whilst dressed like Kilgore, playing Riders of Valkyries and generally, you know, having a fun time.

But you're right.

We both committed, Russ and I committed to USA very early and no tanks.

That was our two sort of pledges to the world.

Well, yeah, exactly.

We both went a very similar route, I think, in that we'd seen the big tank meta and decided we were going to go anti-tank meta.

Not as in taking lots of anti-tank, but just avoiding tanks like the plague, basically.

Which I think probably it's a good point now for you to tell us what you actually brought in.

So my list was, was us.

It was 17 dice.

I had a rifle platoon, which was the, the, the literal bare minimum.

So inexperienced officer with a rifle.

I didn't, I didn't shave off the one point with a pistol.

I had a four man inexperienced INR squad purely to, to be one of the two compulsory units.

And I had a four man inexperienced military police squad, two with pistols, two with rifles.

They did have a role because the MPs allow you to add plus one to your role for coming on from reserves so your us you're ignoring your reserves your minus one and then you're getting the plus one with them and that was significant because of the rest of the list so the rest of the list were four engineers four veteran engineers five man squads one flame thrower two smgs in three squads one in in the fourth squad four scout cars regular m3 scout cars and then i did take an armored platoon but i didn't take tanks so i had two m16 gmc so two of the quad hmgs and i had two of the fargos the m6 fargos so these are anyone who will listen to me i'll talk about these one of my favorites from v2 they are yeah but they're really good in v3 so they are only armor six and they're soft skin so they die on the six but they are forward or rear facing light at guns and the way i use them in in the four games i won they were brilliant and in the two games i didn't win one of them they weren't very good spoilers here phil.

You stick him in reserve you know there's 65 points for for a, a 12 inch 12 inch move on an advance light at gun it's cheaper than a bazooka in a jeep okay it's not as many dice obviously it's one dice not two but it's only one activation and you stick them in reserve you bring them on when you need ideally you know point bank range if people are trying to trying to break through and if you do the whole like end of turn start of turn combo if you miss at the end of the turn hopefully you get the dice early on at the start of the turn and and you shoot all you've got to do is kill one vehicle and you've doubled your points effectively you know 130 140 point vehicle and they've done it or you dismount a transport you blow up a transport force a dismount and dice come out of the bag for the passengers and you've got the dice advantage in that turn so yeah the two of them were you know they weren't quite mvps the the m16s were the mvps but they were pretty close to being the mvps well they're probably the best bang for buck and yes aren't they like because the m16s are like nearly twice the price yeah and so i think bang for buck i bet they did more than the m16s yes yeah as i said the two the two games that they didn't they weren't that useful in one of them i was playing an all-infantry list so they didn't have a lot of a role i was just taking he shots at you know random random loan officers and so on and the.

Other one that was against a very very mechanized armor list and once you know once they'd gone i was kind of running out of long range at options at that point because they're so firmsy because you put enough rifle shots into them invariably you're going to roll a six at some point and they go oh yeah absolutely but if they're shooting that they're not shooting something else and that's the other benefit of if if they start the turn and they're having to shoot this soft skin rather than your m16 yeah it's actually not a bad thing for you what were you using your company commander for.

Oh, yeah, I forgot.

Yeah, sorry.

I had a company commander too.

Forgot by him.

So the company commander was for the ultimate snap to shenanigans where you've got a company commander with an engineer in one scout car.

You've got a platoon commander with engineer in another scout car.

You know, with one dice, you can snap to two scout cars with two engineer squads.

You advance them up, you get out, you flame something.

Ideally, you're taking one or two dice out the bag at that point.

equally because everything's open tops you know the m16s and the scout cars having the company commander around just to shout at people from his own little scout car was really helpful for keeping people moving yeah without that company commander the list the list wouldn't work because you've also got to negate the extra pins that you're getting every time you fire a flamethrower so yeah it was a thought through list it wasn't cobbled together everything had a role the iron squad their role was simply to be to make it legal but everything else had a purpose and did something, you know, constructive.

Yeah, how were the INR squads?

Did they actually get up much?

The final game against Ian, they were awesome.

They took out a veteran bazooka team.

So for four-man inexperienced rifle squad, took out a veteran bazooka team.

Rest of the game, the rest of the event, they just hid.

Just, you know, don't lose a dice, basically.

Do you know, I found that with the dogs as well.

You take your four inexperienced dogs, the dogs go off and probably miss the tank or whatever.

But those four inexperienced riflemen who just get ignored, will every now and then take out and off a cell cause a pin that, then you fail your order test it's actually like surprisingly good just having these small inexperienced squads here and there they were quite useful for putting again this was against Ian for just putting pins on open top vehicles just to be annoying and then you hit them with a flamethrower or you hit them with you know the AT gun or the M16, trying to flamethrower force a morale check or set the vehicle on fire from an AT shot and then the pins are just going to help you with that morale check again.

Yeah nice yeah what about yours johnny well i went even further than you down the anti-tank meta and i went to the the anti-vehicle even so i didn't bring any wheels whatsoever no engines no wheels it was entirely foot slogging what i brought was i brought three platoons near enough identical i brought 60 scouts spread across 12 units so that's basically my three platoons and And then I had, so they're veteran, two SMGs each.

I had three inexperienced platoon commander squads, a three-man, a three-man, and a two-man, just to run out of points.

Still getting my free SMGs because I'm not armies of yet.

And then my only anti-tank was 12 dogs, basically.

And because of the dice cap, which actually we didn't talk about in the sort of like the overview of the tournament, but the dice cap was quite important because actually it would have been really useful for me to run them in twos.

Because just from presence around the board yeah but because of the dice cap i had to run them as 12 dogs across three units or four dogs per unit which really because i've only got 24 inch bubble with the six inch advance 18 inch attack it does make it far easier to avoid them and so yeah zero tanks i was basically playing a game where obviously 12 units have infiltrates i'm playing a game where i'm going to get right in your face from turn one and basically just smother tanks effectively and so like against the hungarian nimrods i managed to charge in and take that i couldn't take them out with the dogs but the scouts managed to just keep dropping grenades on the hatches and just blowing them up basically that way yeah and we we played it in tournament in june we're both far less and that was what you're doing to me in in the final game it was just assaulting the m16s or the scout cars with with the scouts if the dogs had missed or were dead at that point yeah when we played the prepared positions quarters i think we played that's right which meant you could push me back far enough with your deployment which then and then i ended up in like rough ground and then you had all your wheels and just like managed to whiz around and and then i just couldn't keep up in that game and so that is the the risk of that list is if you mess up your deployment yeah.

You're probably not going to come back because you are fast yeah you're running once you've set up basically yeah exactly yeah yeah cool yeah well that kind of leads us into missions i guess for the tournament because like were the missions suitable for the lists i guess a lot of movement missions i imagine is would have been very useful for you but we didn't have that we had quite a nice spread didn't we yeah i mean well so the six missions i'll i'll take them so we had what seek and destroy so not in any order we had seek and destroy we had land grab we had old style double envelopment so movement with kill points we had what timely objectives key positions and then hacksaw ridge hacksaw ridge is a combination of objectives and kill points as well yeah so yeah so you know it was balanced in the sense that you had you yeah your Three main ones, movement, kill points, objectives.

And then it was just a question of mixing that around a little bit.

So with double envelopment, old school double envelopment, you have movement, but plus the kill points rather than breakthrough as it's written in the third edition rulebook.

Timely is obviously out and out objectives, but it's scored every round rather than at the end of the game.

Key positions is as it is in the rulebook.

Land grab as it was in the rulebook, except for the prep bombardment.

Only one dice roll for that.

Yeah, and I think the amendment of double envelopment to make it old school was the correct amendment.

I think that made it, it meant that even if you didn't build a list with scout cars and M16s, you could still win the game by destroying the scout cars and M16s basically.

Correct.

And so I think that was a really nice amendment to that.

And the sequencing as well so it started with fog of war on the friday night key positions fog of war on the friday night yeah and then the objective missions were spread out so you know one one three five with the objective missions essentially and then two four six were the were the other ones so you weren't sort of playing back-to-back missions which might favor certain styles of lists to get you know an early advantage on the table or equally if they were you know back-ended yeah so if games four five six were all objective based that would favor a certain a certain build which you might see players shooting up the table as a consequence of that so yeah submarine yeah yeah so so thought went into the missions and the sequencing that's what i'm trying to say yeah yeah and it was it was a nice spread of missions i've never really been a fan of hacksaw ridge to be honest the main thing for me when i saw the pack was i was a bit worried because obviously the gimmick is i'm going to infiltrate get right on top of you very early and two of the missions didn't allow that and so i thought this has probably done me in here i'm probably not going to but obviously actually the advantage of the infiltrators is you do get that additional cover save which is very nice and then i knew we had some hungarians in play as well and it actually resulted in of the six missions i actually got to infiltrate three times and And I was expecting not to do very well because of that.

Yeah, and certainly the missions weren't chosen to shut down your list.

But yeah, that is a good point.

And again, take the objective missions, for example.

There was a caveat to infiltrators, which was that you couldn't deploy within six inches of an objective.

So certainly for things like timely, where you're scoring at the end of each round, it would be pretty frustrating if...

Opponents are able to deploy onto that objective before the game starts especially if that objective's in in hardcover as an infiltrator saving on a two plus if they've gone down so yeah there were little little things that were added to the missions that they were all in line with with the rulebook or the v2 in the case of double envelopment but just a few little things just to make it a little bit more balanced and a little bit more you know to avoid that that feel bad moment effectively yeah the takeaway for me was as i say only half the time i got to use my my rules and so the takeaway was actually that the strength of my list was the veterans because i was winning games where i didn't get to infiltrate and so of the three games where i didn't get infiltrate i actually won two of them and and so actually my takeaway was just having a lot of veteran bodies yeah i think does you really well in v3 and i think actually if people.

Don't take tanks at all don't waste any points on tanks and really load up if your opponent's taking lots of anti-tank they basically wasted their points yeah is it i mean you know we might talk about it in more detail but just at this point if the all the lists are available in a one drive we'll put a link in the description but if you look at the top 10 you know your list was.

Tons of veteran bodies will shipman in fourth with japan again a lot of veterans in that chuck him kong with his fins veterans all the way ray low in ninth u.s rangers veterans ben andrews in 10th japanese veterans so there's like what four or five names i just read out in the top 10 who are even no vehicles or maybe like one or two in the case of ben maybe some some transport vehicles but actually the core of their list are veteran infantry units yeah and i think that is, there's something to that basically that actually if you stop wasting points on tanks you've got more points for veterans you can just weather you can really weather the storm and that's what i found missions like so i played land grab without being able to infiltrate basically because i was playing the hungarians and and so i had to spend a turn running because i already had smgs basically so we started 24 inches apart turn one i was just running forward spent a turn basically weathering of stone, getting hit by Nebel Werfers, FUBAR, and all the rest of it.

And then by the sort of the mid-turn two, I'm starting to have some viable targets.

By turn three, I'm in where I wanted to be in turn one, but I still had enough bodies because I just started with so many.

And I think actually if I'd played against the Hungarians, but not...

But done like the tankless, I think I would have struggled because of the amount of Nimrods and no way to get like close to them, basically.

Correct.

Yeah, I'd agree.

So I guess it's a good point, Phil, to ask how you got on overall.

Did the army do everything you hoped of it or was it lacking in certain areas?

No, it was four wins and two losses.

So I lost the second game, which was Land Grab.

Came up against a bit of a perfect storm in the sense of the table, the terrain, the quarter.

but the army as well.

It was a German mechanized list.

So I think there's four or five 250-slash-1s, each with five guys inside, veterans of SMGs, platoon commander and so on, a couple of Panzer 3s, a Panzer 2.

I think the only thing on foot was an AT rifle team.

So obviously my list is designed, you know, predominantly at some point, not straight away, but at some point, get up close, start flaming people and so on.

And the M16s and the Fargos are there to take out armor.

When you're going up against eight armoured vehicles, it's quite difficult.

And in terms of the, you know, I obviously wanted to push up with the engineers, but if the engineers miss, then my opponent had enough bodies, you know, inside armoured vehicles with SMGs to just go mow down the engineers.

So that was quite a cautious game.

And then the other game I lost was against Will Shipman and his Japanese.

And that literally came down to the last ice.

That was unbelievably close.

So Will got that one.

But the list did what it needed to do against the Japanese, albeit it didn't win.

So I appreciate there's a caveat there that it didn't win.

But, you know, the HMGs, the flamethrowers, they're very useful for taking out fanatic veterans.

The four games I did win, which, you know, there was armoured vehicles all over the place in all of them.

Fine like with respect to my opponents absolutely fine the lid i've played the list seven times before the gt another six times i know how it works it's not quite there yet i think thinking he's a couple a bit more finessing but how i like to play v3 it's doing its job so yeah yeah the heavy armor is it is the bane isn't it when you just have and this is the problem i had in my first game when i played ricky and he had five flam panzer hetzes and and he played an absolute blinder because what he did was playing fog of war and so of course he just charged in from the side with these panzers and sat on the objectives and so they couldn't take them but they could contest and so they're stopping you taking them yeah and so that one should have been a draw and And then on the very last, it was basically the last dice of the game almost.

He did a test on this headset and it panicked and ran away.

And I managed to steal the objective.

And so that was such, and so I really feel the pain with not like struggling with tough armor.

The rest of my games that my list did, did its work.

Basically the one game I got a draw in was against Rich who won overall.

Congratulations, Rich.

and it was hacksaw ridge where i couldn't infiltrate the objectives are directly down the middle so there's no way to sort of like use deployment to anyone's advantage and he had his six armored vehicles my range anti-tank is nothing and i basically just i i went for the draw from the get-go where i just went for two of them and abandoned the other two effectively and just did a little like faint where i just sent sent a few units after the other two as though i was seriously he going to contend all four just to draw some of his force that way so he didn't wipe me out and then we just had a punch up basically and then and then in the end he just he whizzed onto these two and i've been sat on these two that was it but i was surprised as i say by just how well the veterans did obviously in my last game which i think bo talked about i was playing wolfgang who is a very good player so this at this point we're on the second table and so i'm third and he's fourth overall which goes four wins in the draw for you and what wolfgang's on four wins and a loss yeah going going into that final round so you're both playing potentially for top place depending on how rich and michael carrick get on in their final game amongst others yeah yeah exactly and it was meeting engagement i could put my scouts anywhere on the table i wanted with the caveat that he also had infiltrators and so obviously depending on where his goal i can put mine down.

Where what i end up doing is putting my scouts right on his deployment line basically at which point he was like i can't win this because we had quite a long discussion before the game about like how the army's played because with the infiltrators you don't want to catch people out with it so you like so every game i played i was like fyi i've brought 12 infiltrators i'm going to put them right in your face like engage the persons because if someone's going to be upset about you're not there to ruin someone's weekend funnily his brother actually was planning the exact same list so his brother plays soviets and he and i think what wolfgang had said is he decided not to do it just in case the tos just like blanket did something to infiltrate us or just wrecked it entirely and so like he knew exactly what was going on and so once i'd got mine down in his zone, He was like, I can't win this.

He'd done like the, you know, the, like the paper, when you get the chess problems in the papers where it's like mate and seven, it was basically like, and we had plenty of time.

So we had a nice long discussion about it afterwards where I was saying, well, what about your infiltrators?

You're outflanking.

He was like, I think every time I come on, I might kill a scout unit, but I'm going to lose that unit and reply because you're so close to me.

And so I just cannot win this game.

And so he, he conceded that game, which.

Isn't something you really want which is why we spent so long talking about it.

And then what we did was we basically just pushed the scouts right back out of his basically out of his quarter and had a bit of a punch-up for fun where we did lots of stupid stuff like, full veteran squads charging full veteran squads rather than wait until you whittled each other down and like his kugel blitz was like charging through like three units at a time and so we had a nice fun game but unfortunately not the tournament game yeah and i think it's worth yeah i'll jump into this point if that's all right obviously the there's been a bit of chatter online obviously both put out a video about it as well and there's obviously comments on youtube and so on just to be really clear and i'm not i'm not saying this as a tommy i'm saying this as a you know as a to and an experienced player the deployment was legal your opponents were aware of what your list could do the two missions where it could have been an issue both your opponents outflanked obviously Wolfgang decided not to play it through because he'd done he'd done the mental maths and so on and so forth so everyone is crying out saying you know it's cheating it's not cheating it's a legal move opponents weren't aware they were aware TO dealt with it accordingly and let's just you know put put to bed any of that sort of thing the other thing I would say as well it is such a niche to the situation because it's a list that has sufficient number of points at the event to bring sufficient number of infiltrating units with the missions that allow you to infiltrate on first wave, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

Whether or not that is a thing moving forward like it is such a niche case because a lot of people have been saying that you know the rules are broken or the missions are broken or the to team should have thought about this in advance and all that sort of thing if you start mitigating against one list you know for another 79 players by changing that mission or that deployment that's probably an extreme reaction and if warlord come out and go okay blah blah blah whatever it that warlord do again how much of a problem is this we're not we haven't you know we've been playing v3 for 11 months now how many other lists have we seen at major events do this, not to the not you know i can't do any i think if i can jump back in the in terms of as you said like you're absolutely right if you start like our rangers can't lead the way on timely objectives this person can't do this you just push people down to six tanks like that's that's what you do and if you want to play tank wars like that's the way you force people down that road i think the the sort of the compromise solution i do think that like saying 12 inches from the designated sorry from the deployments yeah yeah i don't have a problem with that because actually the the gimmick of my army if you got like if to call it a gimmick isn't like stopping people coming on it's bottlenecking people so basically i come right up i either bottleneck your force all into like a small window so that i've got lots of veterans against a small party of force or i'm.

Just so close to that i get to use my smg straight away like that and so actually having me not on the deployment zone edge and just 12 inches back the game still gets to be played and it does kind of mitigate because obviously in that situation like i deployed on his on his line because i knew he had the infiltrators that would shoot me turn one create that bottleneck or he'd go around the outside there there could be situations and we've talked about rock paper scissors you could get that situation where someone has enough infiltrators to cause a real problem for someone because they don't have infiltrators or they can't outflank or and so just giving people 12 inches i think is is a nice if we do see an errata soon that's probably a nice compromise position yeah what i find interesting obviously in v2 you could forward deploy within your own half okay and obviously in v3 you can forward deploy anywhere now i know halves are not quite the same in v3 because we've got quarter deployments and all that kind of thing but yeah and the other thing i have also thought about is you know to me it doesn't make sense to infiltrate you know right onto to the edge of the deploy the enemy's deployment zone because you know i know it's a hollywood war game and all that kind of thing but in real life you're not going to have infiltrators sat there looking at you know a few meters away the enemy about to roll onto the table where we're going to play the game infiltrating you know whereby you must be out of line of sight of any.

Previously deployed unit or you must be within dense terrain might be another way of doing it so there's various different things you could do and we've also seen from the armies of germany you can only take one infiltrate you can only take the um what they're called what's the germans spa troopers so you're going to take one spa trooper per platoon i believe and you can't increase above four and infiltrate so there's various different ways of doing it it's like i said it's just this perfect storm of soviet scouts where you can increase the number in them they're veterans blah blah blah blah blah yeah and i i don't want to get rid of infiltrate entirely because i think snipers are having such a bad day at the minute we don't want to make it even worse for snipers and so i wouldn't like to see only within your own half and that's why as i say i think leaving it very open because in quarters deployment you've got a lot of table there where you say just not within 12 inches i mean the other thing that i've seen historically for but I think timely is where you'd often see this.

Is the infiltrators would get basically a lead-the-way move, which I actually think is quite a nice compromise position as well, where if you're writing a mission where you're worried that infiltrators could swing it too far, you say...

From the get-go.

Yeah, you say that basically at the start of the game, any units with infiltrate get a 12-inch run, or just a run, I guess you could call it, because then if you happen to have infiltrate in Calvary, they can go 18.

Um but basically you infiltrate us get a free run at the start of the game and that means they're not starting on objectives or like in someone's face too much if you're worried that that might be too much yeah so yeah there are definitely options and i'm sure that the playtest team will talk about it and you know give some ideas to warlord and we might see some changes moving forward but i don't think we need to throw the baby out of the bathwater unless that's not knee jerk just because of this this one you know this one specific sort of combination of circumstances in the vents yeah and again this is a this is like the biggest competitive tournament in the world and so you're seeing the game at its extremes naturally because you're seeing people trying things that are new and i actually think it's really good that's why i play the game because i want to try like weird and wacky ways to play it if every single time i play bolt action i'm playing six tanks and some veterans yeah that game is stale within about three games like i can do one a one day three games and i've had my fill of that type of army list because not only am i playing it i'm playing it every game as well yeah it's a bit like where we got to with brits and v2 yeah in terms of the to and as well because you touched upon that because there was a little bit of like, well.

The deal, like there was no issues.

Gaz was perfectly like able to deal with this situation.

He knew exactly what was going on.

The one thing that I did highlight was, is that it was exclusively scored with kill dice and so after the concession one that i did have a like a private conversation with gaz where we talked about what it meant in terms of the kill dice because 18 dice because i wouldn't have probably gotten the 18 dice if we played the game and so effectively it was like well what do we do with the kill dice and i i like the conversation the conclusion of the conversation was basically that if this puts me a few points ahead of someone else that like in terms of kill dice then don't do that because that's too much effectively and so that was gaz's position on that which i think was the right call but i think what it does highlight is something that was missing from the tournaments which i think we both agreed on didn't we phil yeah so the the one change as a player that i would like to see next year is introducing secondary objectives as the the first differential so for the actual event itself it was done on victory points per round so three three wins uh three points for a win so maximum of 18 points victory points then it went down to kill dice if you look at the table one and two were on 16 points three four five were on 15 six was on 14 you then got four on 13 but from 11 down to 19.

Everyone's on 12 points.

Okay so there's too many of these clusters because it's the same going down all the way 10 and 9 yeah nine points you've got 32nd place all the way down to 44th place yeah and so and it's obviously and this is as you say it's there's not a lot of differentiation 310 is there correct yeah yeah so i i you know i've always been a fan of secondaries we've talked about it endlessly over the last you know couple of years but yeah that is what i would put in especially with an event this size like you know i think we we talked i think we talked about it last year actually when you get past a certain point the sixth game is needed in order to differentiate the field because you get you get clusters even more so when you've got 80 players you know so i would like to see secondaries being added as as the first differential and then it's kill kill dice taken and then if we need to it's killed ice lost yeah absolutely that was my takeaway as well that i really would have liked secondaries partly from a individual games mechanics perspective where when you're playing kill points it's nice to have the secondary as a focal point but also as you say the six games isn't enough for that many players so if you if we imagine that each game leads to like a very clear result like a win or a loss one game's enough to differentiate two players two games is enough for four eight 16 32 for five games yeah 64 players you got you're Guaranteed to have one person who's won every game.

Basically, and no one else could have.

Yeah.

And so you'd need to either add a seventh game to make sure that you get that outcome where only one player could have won every game.

Or you add the secondary there's a secondary yeah and i know in my game when in land grab where i was you know i'd realized i'd lost it from turn three so i was just i was just hunting kill kill dice at that point if there was a secondary to play for i would have been focusing on the secondary like the game was gone i couldn't i couldn't stop the mechanized inventory from getting into my quarters to to you know get all the points so yeah i was i was looking for kill dice but i'd absolutely be be going for that secondary in that thing because if i can come out with a loss but a secondary and some kill dice that's much better than just a loss and some kill dice oh absolutely yeah and it's because also we had our next differentiator was dice lost but obviously by the time you get to that it's so far gone because the chances of you having the same dice kills are so and so i didn't even think about preserving my force at any point did it even cross your mind not in terms of the table but my and again i mean this respectfully to my first opponent.

Friday afternoon for a friday evening game we we it was both clear that i'd won it by like turn three i took my foot off the gas purely because it was a long weekend and i had five more games to play it wasn't about preserving my dice it was more about my own personal stamina over six games and three days but after that no yeah once i was in the groove on on day one and day two it was like just chuck chuck stuff forward well if it if it meant i wasn't going to lose the game yeah when the game's won then we chuck stuff forward yeah for me i was just chucking stuff forward either way well of course you were yes the red wave yeah because if i didn't then i wasn't going to be in range was i no.

So at the top of the episode, we talked about the list deadline got pushed back so that British, the new British book could be used.

Did we see a lot of new Brits?

And follow-up question, did they do very well, Phil?

So we did see a lot.

So the second most frequent appearing nation was Brits.

It was Germany, Brits, then USA, Soviets, and then it dropped right down to like three, three and two after that.

So yeah, we did see a lot of Brits.

Did they do well?

The highest place Brits was 13.

then you're going down to 21 26 32 and and then yeah bottom half of the table so that was interesting and just on that point as well when you look at the top 10 so we've already highlighted the number of like infantry lists or predominantly infantry lists you've got germany's first then soviets then germany then japan then hungary then finland then u.s then hungary then u.s and japan than Germany.

So that's what, five separate nations, Germany, Soviets, Japan.

Hungary, six, Germany, Soviets, Japan, Hungary, Finland, US.

Okay, so six, six different nations in the top 10.

So it isn't being dominated by Germany, for example, nor was it being dominated by Brits.

I think that losing the double tap artillery observer is a big deal for the Brits.

We talked in our episode about guards being a thing, and a lot of the British lists lent into the guards.

I do agree it's a good thing but i don't think you know some of the lists were like eight man, regular rifle guys with guards i'm like you don't need them on that you know stick them on your engineers because they're going to take that pin when they shoot they're probably going to get shot and then they've got two pins to clear yes there's a time and a place for guards i don't think you need to make all british lists you know or british lists being all guards but i thought maybe the the brits would do better that said, Not a lot of the, you know, what we might call the top players or the players to look out for took Brits.

Yeah, and that's my reflection on the Germany as well, that there's a lot of German armies going to the tournament.

And so naturally, a lot of them end up near the top.

And the caliber of player bringing Germany all German aligned.

Basically Hungary, which is basically just like playing Germany, but with an extra bit of fun.

Germany light isn't it or Germany heavy as the case may be and so because of the type of person who's bringing Germany and Hungary because it was sort of the first one out that was competitive.

I think that does skew the German data a little bit I think Finns are an interesting one for me because I think there was only three finish lists and Mike Jones who I played and we had a really tough game because he built a very similar list to me just with a couple of Comsomolettes and so we had a proper punch up it was basically it was a rock meeting a hard thing and it just came down to who cracked first because it was double envelopment and then he cracked first which allowed me to get across the table but he came 14th so we've got 6th and 14th out of 80 for fins and then we've got one near the bottom of the table which actually i think fins are still a good force yeah yeah yeah and yeah chuck him can't do finished six he he was all infantry no no transports at all to my knowledge and it was you know six man squads with panzerfaust yeah some 80 rifles and so on but just a lot of vets which which goes back to what you said earlier about veteran bodies are difficult to shift yeah and i'm starting to think that that is the way we're developing as a meta where you either go tank heavy or very infantry heavy but what you don't want to be doing if you're going to a very competitive tournament is mixing both so you don't want to take like two tanks, what you want to do is either go six armored vehicles or zero armored vehicles.

That's what I think you're going basically.

Yeah, I think we've definitely said this before, whatever the build looks like for V3, you've got to lean into it.

You know, there's no point me taking an engineer platoon with two, with two phone for us.

I'm going to take four or more, you know, have a look at Gary Morgan's and Paul Wickens' list, you know, for genuine like napalm lists, you know, Russell Wright.

You don't take one air observer, you take three.

Okay, doesn't quite work.

The two games that Russell lost were against the Hungarians because they've got so much flack, you know, and Russ and I joke beforehand.

And if we come up against each other, Russ was like, I cannot get through those HMGs in terms of the flack.

So whatever you do, I think, for V3, I don't think, and certainly we're not seeing this in the UK, I don't think the mixed bag list is one that is topping out right towards the top.

It's leaning into something.

That's mechanised infantry or lots of armour or lots of vets or triple air observers.

Before GB came out, Armour to GB, you know, Paul Wickens took the triple artillery observer list to roll call to the English Nationals this year and so on.

So it's just leaning into whatever the thing is that your list does.

Yeah.

And I think you hit a key point that actually, because we don't have a generic platoon anymore.

If I want to take one flamethrower team, I have to pay a tax of not only an officer, but two infantry squads.

And I think that is the reason why the moment you think about taking one flamethrower you need to be thinking i'm taking three or four and that's it is a bit of a shame in my mind because actually i did like i liked the game when you could like throw in one tank for fun or like one artillery piece but now every time you want to add one of something you have to pay an additional officer tax it means that anytime you think about adding anything you need if it's a competitive tournament you're going to you need to be thinking like am i taking is this worth the tax, do I need to lean into this properly?

Yeah.

Yes, you do.

Six players, take seven.

Go on, go for it.

But yeah.

For the next one, I will then.

Good.

Yeah, heard it here first.

Final thoughts, Johnny, overall on the GT?

Pretty good overall.

I'd say, as I said, the Friday night, I'm not certain on.

But I would take players' feedback if the majority like it.

Keep it.

I mean, it's not too bad for me personally.

Personally i'm just always a bit weary of it it was very smooth this year i had no complaints with the smoothness of it it was a good good tournament all in all i've got to say like i i'm really struggling i'm trying to think of something particularly critical to say i don't like hacksaw ridge i guess because i don't like objectives down the center line no and that's i just like to spread the objectives out because i like to have i like players to have the opportunity to choose where they're going to fight the battle on the table anytime you put stuff on the center line so timely again i'm not a fan of timely for that same reason but really other than those two mission choices i had zero complaints with the tournament i mean terrain wise i think i'm not a fan of trains on a table because they tend to create bottleneck situations where if you've got like two carriages together.

It's a long it's a long linear obstacle that blocks movement as well yeah especially like for tanks and stuff because you could you can sort of agree with your opponent that actually the the infantry could probably like climb over it giving each other a boost commando roll through the window roll through the carriage come out the other side yeah yeah but equally like having them adds variety so you can't just get rid of them entirely i would say but really like on the speaking only for the tables that i was on i had no qualms with terrain really there was enough of it there was enough variety generally i couldn't really complain so i don't really have any complaints and i think it's if you're only going to go to one tournament a year yeah this is probably the one that's worth going to because it is the warlord gt it's got the most players at it and so you're going to see the most variety yeah yeah i'd agree so yeah my the one change i i would want to see is introducing secondaries next year but other than that you know the the composition of the missions.

You know you you throw 15 missions you know into a pot and let's let's pick but you know pick them and make sure they're balanced and so on we would have had more overseas players actually i forgot to mention i right at the start so there's a there was a problem with spanish airspace and basically a lot a lot of the spaniards were going to come over but for whatever reason there was an issue with passports and all this kind of stuff not them but more to do with spain itself apparently that's sad because it's nice having the international players there yeah and you know next year it will shuffle back to its normal position which is what the first or second weekend in august so it was over the bank holiday weekend this year it will it will come slightly earlier into summer it would be great if we could see you know more players from from overseas not just you know those big names but just you know people who just want to come out and experience, you know experience the uk stay for a bit and come and play you know ball action for for two two days in the night absolutely and i agree we do need the secondaries that is the one criticism that i had that i forgot absolutely agree please add secondaries.

I'll make sure the to team listen to it i've listened to it and there we go so i will i will discuss it with gas and i'm sure russ will have an opinion and colin as well yeah i guess what that means then phil is that the london gt will have secondaries because you are the to for that are you not i am the to for it but i didn't write the pack warlord wrote the pack so currently as as it is there aren't secondaries in there but i will make sure that you know the missions they're going to be coming out of the rule book but we'll make sure that some of those little tweaks etc that worked at the gt find their way in so end of september if you haven't had enough competitive bolt action in the uk for one summer end of september london gt it's the final weekend it is the same weekend as the warlords open day so if you've already got tickets for that just be mindful of that but yeah up to 40 players the london gt is huge you know it's obviously always been big with with 40k and other games workshop events it would be great if if bolt action had a big presence conflict 47 is going to be there as well with regards to demos and getting a chance to see the to see the miniatures and talk to some of the staff from warlord but yeah all the details for london gt if you go on the warlord community website there is an article all about the london gt within that article there is a link to the page the pack tickets all that kind of jazz equally if you just email us our email address i'll pick it up and i can give you the info as well yeah absolutely it's going to be a busy month september for competitive gaming as well because the weekend before that.

Is scottish nationals the weekend before scottish.

Nationals south london warlords are running the south london scrap so we've got those three in.

September which is a busy old month isn't it and then anything coming up in october phil yeah october so we have to my knowledge this is the first uk conflict 47 v2 event so it's.

On october the 18th at cardiff at Firestorm Games and it's going to be Josh from South Wales Warlords and myself very much running an intro event to conflict so it's not going to be like full-on competitive Swiss I imagine that we'll do a sort of jump to the left system etc there are going to be some Warlords staff there who are going to be playing myself and Josh will be TOing and we've had you know eyes on on the rules recently so we'll be able to you know give give our you know hopefully give our input into that etc but yeah the pack will be out soon we'll stick a well if you if you go and look at Firestorm games you'll find the event october the 18th nice and casual be great to see some people over conflict oh absolutely and obviously all of these will be linked in the description so, just scroll down if you're looking for them.

Okay, so we're just coming towards the end of the episode, and we do have an announcement.

All good things must come to an end, much like cheap comms omelets, 250 slash fours with passengers, and Gurkhas representing Great Britain.

This is going to be our final pod as Tabletop Tommies.

So for various reasons to do with time commitments and wanting to maintain the quality of the pod, whilst also we have a lot of other commitments going on, we have decided that as a podcast, this will be our final episode.

But as a brand as an institution as a thing tommies will still exist yeah absolutely so the things that you've come to love from the tommies will still go so obviously we've got warfare coming up in november that'll still be going ahead we've got the rankings that will still be pushing them out because i know there's a lot of competitive bunnies who like to see themselves climb up the rankings there and there may be the occasional video here and there depending on as phil said time commitments and being able to put sufficient time and effort in to put something up of a quality we're proud of if you have supported us on patreon over the last two and a half years firstly thank you so much it's really made a massive difference it's allowed us to put out the pod we will be reaching out to you obviously to say thank you directly.

But we just wanted to take this opportunity to thank you for that support you've given us over the time we've been doing the pod yeah so big thank you to the patrons but also big thank you to everyone who's listened everybody who has you know done all the youtube things in terms of like comment and subscribe we are still going to be around you are still going to see us at events you'll still see us posting as tommy's on facebook so echoing phil sentiments thank you all for listening through all the episodes and thank you for your support over the time doing the pod I'm sure we'll see you around, but ta-ta for now ta-ta for now.