The list Richard posted there with the abusive amount of SM air did win the GT and I don't think would be much fun to play. I agree a change is necessary.

We've had similar lists at tournaments in the past (thinking back to Mansfield Gas Club days), the tournament organiser reserved the right to reject lists during the list checking process if they were clearly abusive, I don't know if this right was exercised but we didn't see those lists again until now. You can't regulate everything in a rules pack, there will always be rules lawyers, the TO needs to apply some common sense. Why on Earth was this list allowed anyway?! Poor sportsmanship score should have relegated this list too, even if it was played by an absolute gent.

Regardless, this feels like a knee jerk reaction. Also worth considering where this leaves the Ork Horde list which has always been the one most open to abuse (Lots and lots of Stormboyz filling the table with overlapping ZoC)?

Sigh, place a five (5) aircraft maximum in the 3k list folks.

That is 1 a/c per 600 points, which is plenty to play with, and allows any admix of tbrick, T-bolts, LC or Maurader. Heck you can even go wild and use the 1st company, five ternie formations in tbricks if you want.

Using this simple limitation keeps the flexibility in the list that Rug, I (and I hope others) want to retain.

The list won the GT, so did Mintroll's 14-gunfortress speed freeks list back in 2011.... fortunately sanity prevailed and the clearly overpowered gunfortress lives to fight another day....

I think the thunderbrick list is a nasty prospect and does come close to breaking the game, however it didn't come up against Ferals, Necrons, Krieg or Tyranids, all of which would be tough nuts for it to crack, it really had few answers to Steve's bunkered-up black legion in the final game and as the meta develops and people start to bring more ground flak embedded into formations so it's less easily suppressed/sniped, the list may be less effective going forward.... or maybe it won't..... I think more data would be useful, some test games using the thunderbrick lists versus some more tailored lists would be helpful in painting a clearer picture... after all Steve C remarked that the list has no real answers to feral orks with all their war-engine based Macro AA shooting.....

I think a better solution would be for stronger sportsmanship penalties for clearly skewed lists, and like the idea for slow play, if multiple people complain about the list, the penalty is stronger.... it's easy enough to separate the player from the list (Dan is a thoroughly pleasant guy to play on a personal level, and a good chap all-round but perhaps this would encourage folks to work more on creative tactics rather than leveraging a particular loophole in list building?) or perhaps put tbolts up to 175pts to account for the SR boost when marines use them? it would knock an activation off the thunderbrick list without invalidating lots of other air-heavy marine builds which nobody has particularly complained about previously?

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What kyussinchains says!

On a side note, I'd love to have a go against that list! And does no one remember The Real Chris' Hydra battery spam list....?

Actually, I would compare this with TRC and his infamous Siege list; 16 indirect artillery formations backed up with some scouts to grab objectives in turn three. Very one-dimensional and not really fun for either player. Personally I would go for something like;

900 for 6x T-bolts
450 for 3x scouts
250 for 1x bikes + chaplain
1400 for 7x Thawks

Giving two turns of 13 air activations to ‘soften’ things up at long and then shorter ranges, followed by objective grabbing at the end of turn 2/3 as appropriate with the four onboard formations. Or up to 17 activations as appropriate.

The assault marines are actually a surprisingly potent addition, as they can disembark i think 15cm rather than 5, meaning they're not intermingled if they just drop and take objectives.

Necrons are not a strong counter to the air assault list btw, you effectively play 1 turn, get out-activated, and a bloody air assault on your blitz as the last activation for the game makes it generally a 2-0 or a 3-0 to the marines (if they've managed to take out your BTS as well). The DE 1 turn list is pretty much the same deal for the Necrons, it's basically just a horrible matchup for them if there's nothing on the ground for them to assault.

Agreed. The only reason for the bikes is that they are a stronger formation with better FF for +25, for the penalty of mounted. Almost worth shuffling stuff to get one of bikes + chaplain, and 2x assaults.

As was stated at the GT we asked people to test and try what builds are restricted by the TH and LC moving into the air+titan 1/3 so a decision can be made for 2018. I'd agree that the list in question was helped by not playing many lists suited to combat it but we would like to avoid lists being legal that offer no possibility of a player being able to win against them.
Regarding the point previously of the changed mooted stopping Warlord+air assault at 3k I'm not sure this is particularily relevant given that its never been done AFAIK and is only possible for 1 other list.

Lists being asked to change - I'm not sure this ever happened in the rose tinted gas club days, if it did it was very rarely done. I'm not keen to start subjectively banning legal lists, should the TO say no to optimal DKOK lists or 100 skorcha freeks or all terminators or 3 wwind all tank SM (IMO boring to play against and unfluffy). Too subjective and, as we've seen in recent threads and in the rare cases where people have lost points in tournaments too liable to produce friction.
That goes along with your point Kyuss about sportsmanship, IMO the EUK events are run in a great spirit and most of the players who have sometimes been problematic are not active anymore. We revamped the sportsmanship questions several years ago but I've largely abandoned them as people so rarely mark players down even when an issue has arisen (usually slow play).

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I played TRC at a tournament once where he took a Warlord and some sort of air support, maybe a Thunderhawk and a Strike Cruiser? It was a long time ago, think maybe the drop pods had Scouts in them. I won, as I recall.

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pretty much every recent dark angels list including yours and mine would fall foul of the new restrictions, in fact many of the recent marine lists originally pioneered by dptdexys with 2x thawk, 2x tbolt/nephilim/storm talon and 1x LC would no longer be valid with the 1/3 restriction in place.... not neccessarily the end of the world, but is it a price worth paying? who knows



I've definitely taken a warlord list with 2 thunderhawks to a tournament, managed 2 winning draws and a loss with it, I don't think I'd consider repeating the experiment again



agreed, most of my games are enjoyable and fun and are obvious full sportsmanship scores but the ones that are less pleasant I generally don't bother with because the penalty is really just a drop in the ocean... 2 points off a score rarely matters in the grand scheme of things and the downside that someone finds out and holds a grudge is much worse IMO... equally though we don't want the games to be run in fear of losing sportsmanship scores for the tiniest infractions so I don't know what the solution is.... maybe leave LC out of the flyers allowance? it would prevent the thunderbrick list without nerfing many existing builds (including E&C's triple landing craft extravaganza!) and LC are too expensive to deploy en-masse.... I'm pretty sure the problem here is massed battlecannon spam followed by swarms of tbolts shooting everything up....

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Heh, don't tempt me, I expect to be able to make tournaments a bit more regularly next year. :-)

How abouts, instead of shifting the Thunderhawks/LC into the 1/3rd - You may not have more Thunderhawks/LC than ground formations.

Would that fix the billion Thawks list, without touching every other major build?

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Yup, totally agree.

Though I have never seen this list in action, I have played TRC enough times to know exactly how it would work. (The 5 aces for the very old hands here)
Effectively, it works in exactly the same way as he used to play the original Siegemasters list from Swordwind; large numbers of activations with unopposed shooting at formations anywhere on the table, followed by last minute, targeted objective grabbing, anywhere on the table.

And I also totally agree Steve, it should not be up to the subjective judgement of the TO whether a particularly juicy or eccentric build in any list should be allowed or disallowed. You are taking the totally correct course of action in canvassing pleayer’s opinion about a particularly troublesome issue with the core codex marine list. So in this case, I would applaud Dan for his skill, daring and inventiveness, the various TO for letting him use that particular build, and his opponents for playing against it.

That said, IMO this particular build oversteps the mark, not just by being virtually impossible for some armies to play, but also because the potential presence of the build (or it’s clones) skews other race and build choices, and thus the entire tournament meta, in a wholly undesirable manner.

So, something needs to be done here to fix this particular build without wrecking the rest of the codex marines (or other marine lists). There are obviously lots of possibilities ranging from inclusion of either or both THawk and LC in the aerospace 1/3 (IMO a very bad idea, but still an option), a separate limitation on THawks and LC per 1000 points or army fraction, linking them to the number of transportable formations, my simple numerical limit etc.

You know my preference, but why not hold a poll?

All good points kyussinchains, I think there's a few things with Dan's list just to correct. Yes, the are some specifically bad match ups for it but the main issue is that it's just not fun to play against (basically the game is reduced to making aa armour saves against battle cannons). It's that more than it being super OP (Dan's won one of the four tournies he ran that list in this year). That said, I don't think the 175 tbolts quite solve the problem. The netea list has that he went 5-0 at the euros with just 1 less unit of tbolts (finishing ahead of my super broken krieg). I like the idea of massive sportsmanship deduction but I think prefer not having to go down that route as it still means you've had a less than enjoyable game and then get into what can be quite contentious territory. If something can't be run, then there's no scope for disagreement.

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Would another option be to look at the 75cm range on the THawk battlecannon, this gives it a massive tactical advantage for suppressing AA which I can only imagine helped the massed THawk list to some extent?