Team USA 40K - Episode 3 - Assembling The Puzzle

[Music] Hello everyone and welcome to episode three of the team USA 4 to K podcast. We are getting deeper and deeper into 11th edition with this one and I am now being joined by Anthony Vanilla, I'm a wonderful co-host and vice captain for team USA as we talk about how we are getting ready for 11th edition which is basically here right now. It's basically here. I mean, yeah We have the overwhelming majority of things at this point. We just got the tournament at the time of recording We just got the tournament and the team's companions. We got all of the faction packs this week. We are down to Points and rules clarification Clarifications is the missing part of the puzzle right now Yeah, I think there's a couple more rules clarification so that I would just like objectively like to have right now that we don't have But we have everything else. We have new detachments. We have Dispositions. We have all the guards. We basically are playing the edition yet from activity in the team alone I think there's been four to five games every night since we've started to get faction packs and stuff that people just kind of guessing at points. Yeah, it's been really nice to kind of have the team back together. I think I enjoyed having a short break or having a Less busy period and I think other people did too or at least they pretended they did but I missed it. I'm glad we're back Miss hanging out with my friends. Yeah, I mean just having everybody. I mean 40k is kind of like an all-encompassing hobby right? It very quickly at least at the level right becomes your you know, it's your social outreach. It's your like time with your homies That's your actual primary hobby. Even if it doesn't feel like a hobby sometimes, you know And the time when you take down time is good to get your shit together a little bit as a human But also like you know kind of without your hobby which sucks Yeah, I like you know getting your shit together. It's always a relative thing like who really has their shit together all the time sure Yeah, I couldn't believe it. Yeah, it's it's been really fun to watch Everyone start to get back into this swing of things seeing the reactions of people now that Almost everyone on the team has played some games 11th edition Since you know before is a lot of people are waiting and now we don't have points cost But most people have been willing to say like I'll just play some 10 points games We'll just we'll just solve that in a week or two because we know that the points are coming next week Like we're we're already we know it's time. We know it's now right or we've just been playing like you know You throw some stuff in the wall at like 1900 and see what sticks and then if you have extra points to play with Look in the sweet, you know Yeah, I'm not gonna be bad about that later if I have points later. I will spend them right Yeah, I'm gonna do it if I've got more points later. I've never once finished writing a list I've been like oh man. I have more points at the end dammit Except if I can't spend those points, and that's how you get the 1985 folks. I yes, the beautiful a beautiful world leader list Yeah, so We're we're now at the point we have to start Assembling everything and like planning things out because we now have all of the information like we now have everything And so we had this really awkward period going into this where We just didn't have everything and that kind of sucked for everyone There's like a there's a little bit of a Information imbalance that just kind of exists between teams, right? Which always makes things really difficult to to process and approach as a unit. Yeah I mean just like the the basics of it right because we're doing such a wide game with so much depth rate It's both wide and deep It is very very very challenging to deal with Any part of the you know the puzzle as the title of the episode in place If you're missing any of the pieces You're missing everything basically like one small chain could just be like and your whole comp doesn't work the way you thought it did Yeah, I haven't forbid but but yes It really just could be like that. That's just is an option. It could happen. Yep. It would be bad if it happened But it could well, I mean even to use like a really basic. I really you know The recent example right the the reveal today of like the team's pack that a defender is Automatically a defender in the game is one of those lines of text that you kind of just like cruise past on first read And then like the record scratch freeze frame from Ned's declassified happens and you're like wait a minute That said what again Because that has huge in game implications that entirely changes so many things about how you have to think about the game And that's just like this one little line of text and some teams back it Yeah, and and like that's that's just so easy to miss even if you're a content creator Yeah, I didn't even get to read it like I I saw that thing when it was up on a work on someone tagged me like Oh boy, something I haven't read yet. I wonder what this does and I got to read I was like oh Oh, no, yeah, my goodness. Yeah This does a lot of things Which is really fun, but within the team. I think that it's been a little bit challenging up until this point And I think this has been one of the things where Objectively, I am a content creator and so I Get you know generous access from games workshop provided to me of rules and amount of time in advance or You know more accurately. I have no idea what's coming But the literal second that it goes live. I already have an edited battle report on my youtube channel So obviously I didn't have it in advance. Obviously, but you know really really working those editors hard Yeah, you just you just got to freeze everything, you know, it's type of all time chamber. It goes pretty hard but But it's always awkward. It's like oh wow. I really want to talk about this stuff So I want to talk to people I can talk to But that's not everyone. So it's it's like I yeah, I want to talk about the new stuff and therefore I'm not talking to these people because I can't talk to them and that kind of sucks Yeah, and each year the number of people that we can and can't talk to changes is there's different changes to the systems and stuff Like you know the level of access that you have is different to the level of access that I have is different to the level of access that you know Any of the team starters Academy or otherwise has and it creates this really like disjoint old feeling in the team right before we're about to go into like the most intense preparation period It's a little awkward to solve This year my solution to that has been just like playing other games at folks like I had Sam come down for a weekend We did play 40k through one of those days. We also spent the entire rest of it just hanging out I'm playing Baldur's Gate 3 with Zach and stuff like that to try and find other ways to bond with folks so that we don't lose our team Goation Yeah, that is Kind of what you've got to do I'm like I mean like what I've just been doing is you know like I'm hanging out in the voice chat I've tried to talk to people about what I can which for me is very easy because I look at the release schedule I'm like ah yes video I recorded at some point in the past and it comes out today therefore I can now talk about Theory of detachment right I can now talk about what I think about priority assets and so you know focus on what I can do and other than that I like Just like I've been hanging out or you know, I'm playing a little bit of slay this fire with you and Sam at different points And then once other people started to be able to play I would just like immediately just like start to watch the game to just kind of like help where I could yeah With like oh, you know, you may not have caught that yet, but like this is how it's how it works You know based on you know like this thing that he's actually out Yeah, I need to double checking myself There's been so much to you. I've noticed of like if obviously we're all really enthusiastic about the game So you want to follow along with like the rumored changes as they kind of come in right But one of the dangers of that is you're you're following rumored changes that may or may not be right So in a bunch of the practice games I've been watching If I've had to do like little corrections or like him and that doesn't work that way that was from our reddit post Not the rules pack we got yesterday right or like an incorrect article that somewhere posted, you know Like the oh this chaos lord can lead these warp talons or whatever it's like do be literally looking back and back as They they cannot do that right now. Don't do that. I I got got by that. Yeah, I got got by that. I who have You know Well, I have held the core rule book in my hands. I painted the arm again box to its completion I thought that psychic weapons ignored rune mods. They just don't yeah, that's just not a thing that happens Right? It's like it got mentioned in enough reddit threads and voice chat styles around that I'm like and I haven't like really Well, they said it. Yeah, they slip of the tongue didn't one of the one of the GW videos, right? They think they were just like you know talking fast and get hit wound mods and everyone was like and wound Yeah, that's crazy. Yeah, uh, yeah, that's just not it. Just not what it does. I like play a whole game with that after playing it correctly In other games I was like wow, I didn't realize it was that good. I'll start playing with this Kind of done that whoops. Yeah mistake I think people don't realize as well like speaking of you know reveals is just how crazy that psychic changes Because like off the top of your head you're so used to or at least I'm so used to like Ignore hit mod stuff is obviously good, but it's never like oh, you're never like oh, that's so fucking game changing But now there's so many minuses to hit that exist in the game that every time you take one of those It's like yeah, a four-up re-rolling is you know 75% to hit But man, have I had dice leave my hand enough times and not- before ups that I'm like, I don't want that to be what I have to do. Yeah, it's it's been really interesting like now that I'm playing actual games with people and realizing what is like way more impactful. Right. Yeah. Psychic ignore hit mods and blisters gonna watch critically is in fact way more impactful than it was before. Yeah. It's like, oh boy. Just a debuff no longer for the psychic keyword. Yeah, so it's been really fun kind of getting everyone back on the same page. I have very much missed that and then I've really I've really enjoyed just like getting to hear everyone's opinions because when you're locked in your little you're locked in your room essentially. I've like, all right, I have an exciting thing that I'm working on for work but you know I like my job so I'm fortunate that one. But I can only talk to my co-workers about it. I can only talk to a very small group of people and inevitably there's just a little bit of bias. There's just a little bit of like, you know, I don't think this is real because I don't like it. And then you finally get to talk to everyone else. You're like, oh, you know, when you explain that I do see why that would be good. I didn't think about that that never really came up. Oh, that that is that is pretty nice though. Right. There's a lot of that that always goes on. Well, there's always the there's the coin flip of that too, right? Like in years past, we've had this come up with like nights and guard indirect and booger and guard and you know, whatever. We're like, you don't want to believe something's true where you're just like, no, it's truly it's bad. But then you start like playing it and testing it like, damn it, it's good. Fuck. And you're just trying to be like, all right, I have to acknowledge that now that has to be something that I'm, you know, including my testing and so on and so forth or it. Yeah, that that's a thing. And we're starting to get through that where you like, you know, you want to believe that the new addition solves all the problems of the old or like maybe at least contorts them. You're like, oh, no, that thing that was good before is still pretty good now. All right. Yeah, like, you know, there's always the chance at this point that, you know, the repulsar executioner goes up, you know, 40 points and I cut it. Like, broadly speaking, it was pretty good at the end of 10th. It's good to have to shoot terrain, covers different, I still have ways to ignore cover. It's probably still gonna be good. Yeah, man, like, you know, same, it's the same kind of beat for like those big world eater, you know, it's right? Like, yeah, they all have to be with the nine of each other. But like plus two to charge real charges is pretty far from that one enhancement. Yeah. So maybe it gets hot. That's hard to tell. Obviously, early day stuff. But yeah, there's there are reasons to be excited for most factions is how I would describe it. Yeah, I think it's I think it's pretty accurate. Same it. Oh boy. So yeah, what do you want to start now? I mean, like, the things that have stood out to me most is that like, we've gotten all these new detachments and that's prompted a, because we thank thank goodness, we got it at the same time as the detachment costs. Yes, they give us the costs, the discbos, like, you know, we're in there. We know basically like what armies can do. Oh, should we talk about the Dispo restriction on how it impacts us as a unit? Oh, yeah, that's gonna be a that's gonna be a challenging one, I think. Yeah. So do you want to break down what it is? And then I'll go over like kind of the impact I think it'll have in fives. And then you can maybe talk to him, just talk some about eats. Yeah, let's do it. So what this is is we've got all the forces positions. There are five ways to play where I'm in our five primary missions, but watch in case you haven't caught up yet. And in now that we have the term a companion, this was like the worst kept secret on the internet because there was a T.O. call and in the T.O. call, I wasn't even in this call to be clear. But in the T.O. call, everyone's like, yeah, the theme of the T.O. call was, here's what's changing. Please don't tell everyone. We just want to give you a heads up. And that hits Reddit. I don't know, usually about three minutes after the T.O. call ends. Right. Sometimes during. Sometimes during. And and so it was a very like known secret in every discord channel I've ever seen of yes, you know, you are limited by dispositions. If you are playing a five player team event, there are five dispositions. Congratulations, you get one of each. That's it. Yep. And that means that now that we have this, that there, there are, there's going to be some team events coming up soon, like ATC at the end of a of June heroes cop. I'm going to be at heroes kept going to be fun. I now can say without, even knowing points, there will not be a single list, a single team call by heroes cop that has both. Cotary of the conceded and Mott cop. They're right. Forge the foe. You just can't take them both. When I play Cotary, or when I play you see, I play Cotary. And like, I've got, you know, like some people on a team like Tyler, when Tyler plays tile, Tyler plays Mott cop. One of us isn't doing that. And I think for us, right, at like a team USA level, right, to just jump straight to the top. We have so much like infrastructural privilege in this space, right? We have people we can borrow from. We have experience swapping armies late. Our players are flexible. Our team is flexible. Our access is flexible, right? Easy money. Not a big deal. My concern for the space is what it does to gatekeep teams further for the average player is I think you share this opinion that teams is broadly a better way to play 40k. And it's now a little more challenging to get into in in fives, I think, just because like, you know, fives is the like, we all fit in one car, even if that's a little impractical type of way to play teams, right? It's the lowest barrier to entry. But now asking five more casual players to be like, oh, hey, man, the way you normally play the game, even though we all play different factions, which is already a hurdle to get over, now you actually can't, is a little tough, right? And for certain armies, it's not a huge deal, right? A carnivalist and a coterie list are about as different from two lists as you can get an EC. And they still have like, I don't know, call it 1700 points of overlap. It feels like half the time. So it's not too bad. But when you get into these like bigger ranges, like if one of your players isn't work pilot, right? And it's like, oh, sorry, man, you can't play war hard. We actually need you to play like speed cult. It's like, dude, that's, that's a grand and a half of models that I just don't own. What do you mean? Yeah. And, you know, we can see it with some armies like guard, right? You just use, like you don't, you could theoretically change your, like your Rizzled Company to combine arms. And that's going to feel bad for the guard player. If I'm like, hey, I really want to play blade, would you mind just playing a worst attachment? Right. Yeah, there's objective downgrades within the space, right? Yeah, but what else are they going to do? They're going to switch to recon. If your guard player is not a recon player, they can't switch to recon. Right. Got to already be a recon player. It doesn't, yeah, doesn't really work. Yeah, you just have to be like, recon's not a, you know, a fly by night type of army, right? Yeah, if someone's not a recon guard player, I can't in good conscious ask them to become one. Just for their back pain alone, right? No. Right. Like plus I like to eat lunch with my friends. I don't want to come back. I don't have to like front them lunch every day because they have to pay into the lunch break and then relate for a dinner reservation because there's to play a recon. Right. Like it's a whole mess. Right. Yeah, no, it's definitely like a whole thing and, you know, in an effort to avoid that. I think that's going to be one of the early hurdles for, for that specific setup. I do think, however, to pass you the mic for a second, it is somewhat alleviated in eights because eights is a little bit of a higher barrier entry in the first place. But if you want to talk about how it impacts us in eights, go for it. Yeah. So in eights, we have theoretically the same thing where we are forced to take each element of the team components. We are like, we have to take each disposition one time. It's just like probably easier to do because we get to take one of each and then we get to double up three of them. And the ability to double up some means that you have flexibility. I could take Montcaw and Cotary. And sure, I can't take a Montcaw and Cotary. And I don't know what a Necrond is, is Star Shutter first of the film? Uh, Pantheon. Berserker Warband. Berserker Warband. There you go. Well, well, yeah, easy example. Now it's like, I can't take Montcaw and Berserker Warband and this other thing. Like I can't take everything, but at least I can get most of it. And I can choose between a couple of things. And that feels like that's reasonable. Yeah. Again, particularly in the space where we're talking about a national team, totally achieved for it. But amongst the homies, I think in eights, it's a lot simpler, right? You guys all sit down at the beginning. You kind of sketch it out and you're all right. One of you needs to play this thing. Sorry, I know none of us, it's our first choice, but someone's got to be, you know, purge and recon or whatever, right? Yeah, so someone's got to do it. Like that, that feels fine. Yeah. Yeah, I just, I think that in eights, it's going to be pretty cool. And I think that in five, it's going to sometimes feel a little bit bad. When you have to tell someone, like, yeah, I need you to play X, Y, Z, like, sorry, even if you don't want to, someone has to do this, because it's occasionally going to lead to, I think on like the larger teams, you know, there's always like the super teams where it's like, Like, we have 15 people, we're gonna make, you know, AB and C teams of our club. - Right. - It's gonna like, you're gonna have to like, move things around a little bit, honestly. It's like kind of a little unfortunate, right? Like, there's gonna be like this element of like, yeah, well, I would just rather play my thing than not. I would just rather play Montcaugh than have to learn a different thing. Therefore, I'm going to play Montcaugh anyways. Sorry, I want to play Montcaugh. So either you need to move or you can just put me on another team. That's uncomfortable. - Yeah, and that's awkward to solve, right? I think they can get a lot of good while out of the way by being like, I don't actually really know how to solve this. I'm gonna be honest and a five man. Like, 'cause it really, like, teams shouldn't be incentivized to take five times, you know, purge, right, or take an older, whatever the one that ends up being good, when they roll the dice it. Shoot WHQ each balance patch. (laughs) But I think landing in a space where like, it's harder to form team comps. Does, it does push a bit of like, innovation in the space. I just, you know, obviously is a mostly mono teams player at this point. I worry about access, right? That's something I'm trying to think about here is like, oh, how do we get more people into teams, right? So. - Yeah, that is always a really big question. And I worry just about anything that might make people more disenfranchised with games. - Right, yeah, 100%. But I do think on the whole, it is not a bad setup. I think it's just one that's gonna take a little bit of time. And that's how I felt about a lot of the stuff of the 11, there've been pretty no qualms that check. That like, I do broadly, I have a lot of faith in a future state of 11th, which I didn't necessarily have for 10th when we first started playing it. Just because at the beginning of 10th was like, spilling dev wounds and these crazy overwatches and all this other stuff, race nights, right? But it feels like a lot of that stuff through three years of maturity, through a new game balance team, through all this stuff has kind of been chipped away at, slowly but surely. - Oh, you're getting to you. - They're getting there eventually. But I'm hopeful that, you know, we'll play WTC. I'll take a nice six month break. And then I'll come back to a game that's, you know, very healthy, right? (laughs) - Yeah, that's kind of how I'm expecting it to go as well. Like I don't think anyone ever expects the addition to land perfect. - No, I mean, I think we could do to expect more from the billion dollar company, but they are showing real improvement and a real commitment to improving in this space. So we do have to let them cook a little. - Yeah, I think that's, I guess very reasonable. - Yeah, they get six months before I flame them for real. (laughs) - Yeah, fair enough. Yeah, I've been quite happy with what I've seen so far. Honestly, the biggest point of feedback that I've repeatedly seen is that everyone seems to just be having fun. - Right, right. Like, which is just that, like, yes, we enjoy the game. And I'm like, oh, well, you know, it's weird that I didn't ask myself this earlier, but that does seem like a very good prerequisite of like how, how we feel and so far. If everyone says, yep, I'm having fun, like, oh, that's a, it's actually a pretty good place to start. - That's an important step one, dude, for any game, right? You know, people tend to lose the plot with that a little bit where they're like, this game's really well balanced or this game's really nuanced. So this game has this or this game has that. It's like, it's still a game, though, right? Like rule one is, like, is it fun? Again, for most people, right? Where psychopaths that are going way beyond the pale of what you should expect from a game, see aforementioned flying to Europe a lot in previous episodes, but like, you know, just for the average person interacting with 11th. I think that the way 11th is with Hidden, if you were playing on GW Awards already, is a big upgrade. - Yes. Yeah, I've found that it really is just like an easy, like Hidden hasn't been like world changing, but it's just been useful. It's been fun. It's given me more things to do. It's been like a different puzzle to solve, which I've enjoyed. It really has just like, everyone is fighting. I'm usually early on, it wasn't the case, but I've kind of gotten to a point of like, now it's like, yeah, I am playing five turns of Warhammer pretty often. And that is new. 'Cause like there's just been less table in the people, I guess, right? There's just been less like, oh, and now you're dead. - Yeah, I mean, I think a thing that really talented players would not love to admit is that they're even their first couple of games, like first dozen games, probably of the new edition are gonna be on Bambi legs. Like you're gonna be a little like, oh, I did that wrong. I was so stupid, so avoidable. I'm losing units for nothing, right? And as like deeply entrenched players were used to the experience of like, oh, I know what I'm doing, right? You know, you're the slick gunslinger where you know everything about the ins and outs of the thing you're doing. But I think for a lot of people, this like early stumbling period is challenging from like a mental and tilt perspective, right? - Yeah, it is really easy to just get like, oh, I've been doing it wrong. Like even like, you know, talking to some people is like we're playing our like no points, yes, rules, games. It's like, oh, man, I can't believe I, if I done this differently, I'm like, hey, it's a, this is your second game of having to do charges this way. Like, that's okay, let's just like look at it. Let's just like look at what we should have done and then just talk about that. And that's fine. And it's like really all you need. - Yeah, slowly and surely getting people to accept that take backs are a natural part of the early practicing experience, you know? - Ah, yes, always, always fun to try to convince people. Like, you know, really it's okay. We can just have some take backs right now. - Yeah, you didn't know that that was possible. Just move the thing. You're gonna lose that unit before it activates. - What is this teaching you? (laughing) - Nah, everyone on TV says too good to need take backs. That's right, dude. We're all perfect execution. I can't even get through the rest of the sentence 'cause this is such a meme. And I don't even play that way at WTC. (laughing) - Yeah, yeah. - It's just not worth it. Warhammer is not, it is, it is a cooperative game that has a scoreboard. If you play 40K too adversarially, man, it's rough. (laughing) - Yeah. Yeah, so like it's, ugh, yeah. It's been fun getting through these early processes, but like we're still, as Team USA, not in VIA. And now we're writing our hard core lists yet. Like I'm not, I'm not there yet. I don't think you're there yet. Like we're trying, we're definitely trying to get there. But like objectively, I don't think we're there yet. - Yeah, I mean, it's just so easy to like, I think anyone that's like, I know what I'm playing at WTC at this point is trolling. Like it's, there's so much little context that matters so much in a, eat man comp. The disruption, like the disposition thing, oh well. And then there's all the little micro interactions. We're still finding out stuff like the defender thing. Like there's so many things that the idea that like, we got it solved at like this point. Honestly, even a week, you know, weeks from now, I think is unlikely, right? We will almost certainly list sub, but we'll go live. Like we'll be able to see other people's lists. And we'll be like, oh, that is smart, dammit. You know? - Oh, that happens every time it will happen again. - Yep. - Every time. Yeah, I don't know, I, I, um, what I've kind of been looking at so far is just that it feels like the field is really wide open for a lot of armies right now. We're like, there are strong armies, but the, the detachment and disposition thing that they've done has been a really interesting shakeup for now how I'm trying to solve it. Does that make sense? Explain. So I, let's just use an easy army like space Marines. I love me some space Marines. I usually, just like for the last while, I've just played Blade of Ultramar. I have reading comprehension. I can look at the space Marine, like detachment to be like, yep, found the best one. - Yep. - Like, yep, that's, that's the one right there. - Blade remains God's gift to the space Marine. - Yeah. - And so like, I don't have to like, export too much if that makes sense. And now it's like, oh no, there's, there's some stuff worth exploring. Like now it's like, is Blade better than, you know, Hammer of a Vernie. Yes, for John it is. I sure love Hammer of a Vernie pop off, but it's definitely better for me. But I can totally see now it's like, oh, would I like this plus a 1DP detachment? Is that better? I don't know if that's better, actually. - Right. - I mean, all the speeder data sheet has been a real bastard to play against Marines for quite some time. And then adding a thing, a new version of the speeder that is really good and a detachment to support them makes you look at other stuff, man. - Yeah, it really does. I've definitely been, you know, I quite like my speeders, right? I don't think that's much of a secret. I'm quite fond of my speeders. So like, I'm just looking at this as like a. Oh, yeah, I can just have better speeders. What does it cost me? I just have to choose that I want the better speeders. - Right, okay, I can't do that in blade. Can do that anywhere else. I'm like, yeah, well, that's nice. So like, do I just do that instead? Do I just say, you know, forget what I was normally gonna do and just say, yeah, I want this. Like, it's like this. - Right. - It's not hard to justify just like having the better thing and being like, yeah, I'll just have a different attachment so that I can play this thing again. - Especially if it's easy to get access to, right? Like if it's like, oh, I like these other things a little bit already. Let me give them a little extra shine and maybe it's worth, especially in the context of what the disposition was, being not blade, right? - Yeah, just like being not blade is a, it's not like, it's normally like a hard thing to sell. But now it's, I am also getting to choose to be not priority assets. And you know what, I'm not like, at a point where I'm like, I hate these dispositions, I love these ones. I actually, I think I like priority assets. I think it's good. But if the team is realizing, we have a lot of people who like priority assets. I'm like, all right, well, I don't love priority assets so much that I'm gonna be viscerally upset if I have to play taking hold. - Yeah, you don't find me to be comp warping. Well, the other thing is with Marines, you have other detachments that though worse are not like bad, right? Whereas other armies can't quite do that. Certain armies have like a much more restricted setup where they're like, these are the only good units in my army. This is the only detachment that buffs them. Well. (laughing) - Yeah, that is a real thing for people. And I'm lucky that I don't have to deal with that as the Marine player. I love my Marine privilege, you know? - Right. - Yeah, so I think like, we're now like at a point where it's like, if I want to test Marines and Marines are admittedly probably the broadest army just due to sheer quantity of detachments when you combine the chapters in. If I want to test every space Marine that I could want to play, that is going to take me so long. I don't know if I can test only space Marines and nothing else in time for WTC. - No, honestly, like, you know, I also tend to like my first children. I like a couple of different armies. I am not just a space Marine player. I also like tyrannidze, sometimes like castmates in guard. I have played custodies at WTC more than any other army. - I forget not that you stuff to play games for work, dude. Like it's not like, you don't clock out a team USA and then you're like, "All right, no more 40K for the week." (laughing) - Yeah, I'm done now easy. - Yeah. - Yeah, not that simple as a matter of fact. So yeah, it has been very interesting to say, like, "Oh my God, there's just so many more options than I'm used to, so many more." That's been a really interesting part of it. And I think that with everyone that's going to be a thing where it's going to be really hard to get the depth of each faction because you're learning into addition, you're also trying to learn how, you know, your faction worked. If you are responsible for full tool factions, you now have to test a lot of things that you previously should have decided. Because like, it just didn't take me that many games to determine that hammer of a verney was not as good as plates. We're going to use the same example. Because obviously the French are listening to this and they're going to find out that I, that I like coded or the conceded or something. But like, as soon as I add libraries, like, ugh, I'm going to have to evaluate those libraries and hammer of a verney look better than this. - Yeah, and like maybe, kind of got to check. - I mean, you definitely have to go back in and look and you do not want to land, you know, face first on a place where you're like, all right, well, that was good. Shit. - Oh yeah, nothing worse than like reading someone else's list on BCP and being like, wow, that's a, that's a good list. We've been there, it stings a little bit when it happens. - It hurts so much every time. And it can't not happen, right? That's the worst part. - Yeah, there's no way to avoid it. That just is going to happen. - Yeah. - Yeah, I mean, the adapting each army to 11 is going to take a lot. And I think I'm hoping that's where BS Team USA have a little bit of an advantage due to size of the team where we are privileged to have a wonderfully, relatively large group of, you know, good players that we get to draw from. - Yeah, I mean, our Discord has what's like, across advisor, academy, extended, and starters. It's 67 people in that Discord or something like that. - So it's a pretty high amount, nothing mentioning you. - Yeah. - Yeah, it's a lot of people. But like, we get to have that. And so I've got people to help me figure out space marine. So you know, I'm hoping I get to do the thing where I'm like, all right, hey, does anyone have time to play games of like this thing that I don't normally play? I would play Iron Storm for Team USA. I would not say that I normally play Iron Storm. But if we look at the, we look around and say, yeah, maybe Iron Storm is the best. I will take that into account. And I will just play some Iron Storm. That's like, that's what we have to do. - You know, the ninth, 14 inch moving speeder in the list, it's, we can't, we can't call it slow anymore, John. (laughing) - I do like fast moving speeders. I really like fast moving speeders. Yeah, no, it's definitely not slow. But it's really nice now that I get to say like, ah, yes, personnel my team, can you play some Iron Storm? Can we make sure that we've got what we need down? - Right, and that's kind of what I'm hoping for is where we can leverage an advantage for Team USA is in that kind of a space. - Yeah, for sure. - People testing more options than most people get to test. - Yeah, I mean, being able to just spread the testing out alone is quite helpful for it. And I think too, with 11th, with a new addition in general, I think at least for me, I've kind of moved past the like, oh, why is it set up this way? We're properly into the like figuring out the puzzle, like it doesn't matter if something's broken anymore. Like the time to be upset about that has passed. We are purely in the like, what is broken? How do we abuse it, period of things? (laughing) - Yeah, yeah, no, we're getting there. We don't have the answers yet, but I'm excited to start to get them. - Um, I do like it once we get to that acceptance stage. We're, 'cause we have a, we have like a what, middle of June rules cut off for WDC. I wouldn't be shocked if GW dropped like a quick, like a quick KFQ, like, there's a lot of like messy things in the love of the addition right now. For example, the Chaos Knight Lancer still makes tank shock cost zero CP. And you know what, I wouldn't be shocked. If at some point we get a little patch of FAQs, do they say every single time a unit reference is tank shock, you can use it on crushing. - I'm crushing him back to you. - Like, let's just, like, we all know what the goal is. You know, the first person to tell me I can't use it on crushing impact on the Lancer, I'm, they're gonna get a pretty stinky eye. It's all I'm saying. - Yeah, like just taking out of the discord, dude. That'll surely happen in practice. If it's gonna happen at all before the event, you should bat 'em. - I just mean to add an event. Can you imagine if I got to the event and someone's like, yeah, you can't do that. - Sorry, that doesn't say that. (laughing) - Can you imagine? - Of a no, I do think that, like, we're probably just like playing what we got. - Sure. - Maybe they'll change that kind of stuff. We're probably just playing what we got. And so now it's, yeah, let's just roll with it. And I love at least that team's mitigates it. Because if the repulsor executioner is broken, there won't be 24 of them. - That's right. - For Bid, there's a broken data sheet that multiple armies can access, but that's unlikely. - No, that's why we voted against two space marine armies as a collective group of captors. - That's also why we didn't play in May, dude. We voted against the stable medic 'cause the new addition's gonna fix all our problems down. - You know, with the benefit of hindsight, I don't think the main meta was actually that stable. - You know, I think with the benefit of hindsight, we could have figured it out. I think we had it pretty solved in April. If you asked me. (laughing) - I do think we would have stabilized on four crab armies, yeah. - Yeah. - I think we would have pushed it to four, honestly. I think we would have gone four. Oh, crazy. Yeah, it's fun to be staring around the barrel of this. I'm looking at this as like, oh my God, I have to play a lot of games, which I'm going to. My wife is on a cruise this weekend, which is great. - Nice. - Yeah, now that, you know, I've been with my wife for approaching six years, and so we now have clockwork, which is that, you know, I always encourage her to take trips with the girls. It's a great, healthy thing to do. We don't have to do every vacation together. God knows she doesn't come to every four to get tournament. She gets cruise with the girls. But the best time to do cruises with the girls is June and July. - Of course. - You know what? It's summer. It's a great time to be on a cruise ship. And also, I, with love for my wife and my heart, I'm going to be busy. - I will find something to fill the time. I'll miss her, but the days will go by fast, you know? For sure, dude. I mean, it's, you know, we're the, I think people don't quite get how much the testing is like timing-consuming. Like, these early, like TTS games are not fast. - Oh my God, no. - And with that is the like, You know, if you're trying to play three, four games in a day, it's the day it's rough to that's that's the day and some, you know what I mean? Yeah. I definitely have faster tournament games than practice games usually. Yeah. Yeah, I believe that. Yeah, it's just like. Yeah, it's just like I. It's like I teach us is nice because it saves time on table set up unless it's early edition when I have to make the gosh darn table. Yeah, I mean, that's rough. Yeah. Now that we have all the maps, we can do a cool like. You can do like this like import thing basically using an image onto the table mat and you have to play with flat terrain and not, you know, actual terrain. But you can play with like an 11th map that is scale accurate, which is actually kind of that actually honestly sounds kind of nice. So I don't have to worry about clipping into the car containers and shit. Yeah, exactly. You can just kind of move stuff around. I really liked it. I watched a little bit of someone playing on it before we got on this to do this. And I was like, oh damn, that rocks actually. Yeah, my current plan was to spend one day painting just like some stuff for work and just like talking list concepts with people. Because I figure if I give it 24 hours, someone is going to make most of the maps on TTS by then. I imagine by Sunday that we'll all be available. Yeah, that's what I think I'm like, I bet these are up soon. I've got a couple that are made. I'll just play one more game of priority versus taken hold. Sure. I'll just play the other side of it this time. And then by the time I'm playing new games, someone has made all the maps and that'll be easier. Yeah, that LCT that new LCT base map is great. I would encourage everyone to switch over to it if you have not already. Yeah, LCT. LCT. Cool. Well, hopefully they they've got the full maps up pretty soon. And then I'll be then I'll be all excited about playing all the different things. I also just want to like click between the maps, honestly. Yeah. I really want to just like open it up, grab my army, set it to the side and then click through the 15 different maps that I can play on with priority assets. It's not going to be real. I haven't looked yet. I mean, just a quick hit of like where can I deploy on this is. It's helpful, right? It's really helpful, but it's not so helpful that I'm like willing to Microsoft paint on to 15 different images. Right. Yeah, I'm not doing all that. Because like it's like this would be helpful. If WTC was tomorrow, I would do it. WTC was tomorrow and I don't have the. I don't have the things I would do up and I'm like, yeah. WTC is in August, I will have the tools by then this part can wait. I'll focus on other things now. Of course. Yeah. Yeah, we're nearly there. Like we kind of been saying like we're at like, you know, functionally the one you're applying, right? Yeah, at this point, at this point, I'm I'm I've transitioned to practice mode. It's like, yeah, I can play games out of the points. I can start talking about everything. All the rules openly. That's enough. That's enough that I can. I can play real games with my friends and talk with my friends. And that, you know, yeah, it would be nice to have to have final points soon. Right. Close enough, honestly. Am I close enough? Yeah. Yeah. Um. What's that? What's the? Oh, yeah, the last twist, I think is the mission pack, right? That's kind of a big one. Yeah. The the changes in the roles. The what do you mean the role? Like how I like attacker defender work. Oh, yeah. I mean, that was huge. That coming out today blew me away. I've been thinking about it basically since I found out every couple of minutes. I'll find a new way to be like, oh my god. So impactful. Like. Yeah. So, um, so what this is another fun thing. And this is what I can work on now, because it doesn't have all points. Is it like pairing strategy for teams is going to have to change? I mean, it's basically completely different, right? Yeah. And like, we haven't been doing a lot of pairing spread for team USA. Because like, you know, pretty early on, they announced like, yeah, dispositions have their own tables now. And so we were like, okay, so the tables aren't by rounds. We don't know what this looks like, but we know it's very different. Therefore, practicing pairing doesn't really help. Because like choosing tables might not work the same way. And now we know. And honestly. Could have been worse. I was I was really worried that they were going to like, because like, I didn't know how this was going to end up. I was really worried that we were going to have to not use the 20-year diff system or something. I know there's like a with terrain being assigned. There's kind of a push to do everything GW way. Right. Instead of having a WTC format. And so like the WTC format is probably going to be a lot more similar to GW format that it has been in the past. You know, we'll see if it ends up identical or not. But it would be more similar, not less. Right in the past. And so it was just very much like, oh, what is this going to be? And so now we know. Now we know that it's still a 20-year diff system. Thank you, James Orkshop. Yeah, I'm glad that they didn't mess with that too much. The attacker defender, you know, and the scrum part still works the same. They gave them names. I don't know. The names are fun. The names are fun. It's like what is it? It's like skirmish. It's like initial skirmish, main engagement champion. It's cool. Yeah, it's cool. It's mildly annoying because those are just different names than what I used. But there's still cool names. So like, it's like, all right. I'm sure that we will adopt those soon enough. Oh, by the way, if you click on the Warhammer community article, because I decided to bring this up for the new four to get downloaded the event companions, you can actually see Sam in the. Yes. Yeah. I didn't know to send to like just now. I was like, yeah, like I was looking up the names. And I was like, hey. Hey. Yeah, you get long hair. Sam, dude, tragically taken from us by his most recent haircut. I know. It's just a just a heartbreaker. So it's really. It's going to be really interesting now to see how that changes. Because we don't have the answers yet. We're going to go work on that starting like today. Yeah, yeah. I'll hang up this call. Yeah. That's about what I'm going to start on now. I'm going to. Right. I'm on my computer headphones. I'm going to switch to my phone headphones. And then I'm going to start like to be like, hey, parents, people hop into school and just like start reading this. Yep. But yeah, now that the defender doesn't have a limited set of tables to pick from to pick the same one. Now it's like, instead of I want my defender to be built for light to rain, it's like, I want to build my defender for hammer and animal or table quarters. Or one. And then it's a, okay, well, I want to build my defender for this. And it no longer matters when they go down, right? I don't need my tower defender down first because he wants the best a worst table. The evil table. Yeah, he wants the evil table. Yeah, the defender gets the same table no matter when he goes down. And so it's just who has the most armies that they're not scared of who is right. Or the least armies they are scared of is probably the best way to phrase that. So now that will influence the owner. So it's interesting because first, second and third defender is. Impactful in different ways than before. So we have to redo our entire thought process on that. Oh, what we want to defender to do is going to have to change. And now I need to go figure that out and talk to people before I tell the team. Because like, I don't want to just be like, hey, everyone, this has changed. Adapt the best way you see fit. And then someone's like, I built to only play on dawn of war. Oh, what do you, what are your bad matchups? And most of them, like, okay, all of them on dawn are bad. No, yeah, I don't know. It's like, like, I need to give people directions. So it's. I really wish that I had gotten like the pieces of the puzzle at different times. But instead, I'm just going to kind of squint my eyes and blur through the next two months. And we're going to, you know, we're two months in a day from WTC, by the way, where I'm from WTC Eve. I know, I know. You're up for like five days at that point. Yeah, two months. I'm like, real I was like, I should go back playing ticket sometime soon. Oh, bro, if you haven't done that yet, they are not cheap. I know they're not cheap. That's the problem. That's why I want to wait for the next paycheck, but if I wait for the next paycheck, they're not going to get cheaper. Yeah, dude, it is. I bought, so Anna and I are going into this is a thing we should talk about, you know, the stuff around WTC rights. Anna and I with the young Sam Pope actually are going into Amsterdam first this year. Getting out there, you know, leaving the Friday night, landing the Saturday, the week before the event. But like, you know, that's added to non zero amount of expense to the trip, right? Like, yeah, to Amsterdam, you know, thankfully like the price difference between flying into Amsterdam and out of Brussels was honestly not that far off from just like adding a bunch of fuckery to our journey. So it was that that that part was actually okay. But have you done Amsterdam already? I went to Amsterdam and we went to Europe trash for. Oh, but I was just like, we just like had Chinese food knows it. Well, I was there a little bit earlier. Remember I got there earlier the day before, whatever then you guys did and I hung out with you know a bunch. Oh, nice. Shout out to Dino for your show me around where I'm actually going to have Dino exactly show me and Anna and Sam route where we got there. I had a really good time in Amsterdam. I think it's super nice. It's really pretty. It's easy to get around. They're one of the cool Euro cities where you buy one ticket for the public transportation, which rocks. Oh, well, that's not so much. Yeah, I did a two years ago WTC. So like right after that, actually, I did a Amsterdam for three days with the cable. Right. You went with the cable, right? Yeah. Yeah. That was the year where my flight got delayed by over 48 hours. So I had to take my free trip and turn it into a post trip. Yes. And we were worried that I wasn't going to get there in time. Pervericate for a second. I'm going to let Anna back in your back. Yup. Yeah, I thought I had Amsterdam super fun. But yeah, there is, I think we'll have to do this as a feature episode. We'll have to do a like the rounds of WTC because the reality is that everyone who goes from the USA to. you know, continental Europe. We usually do it for some extra time. And so there is a lot of like extra stuff around WTC that turns WTC into like a week and a half of just like extra stuff and fun, bringing the partner-- - Yeah, it's like 10 days, right? - Yeah, it's usually like a 10 day thing. I think I blocked the in the hotel room, 'cause we had to put our initial like hotel room that's been in. I think I blocked it in for like eight or nine nights. It's just like Monday to Monday, right? Like it's like, you know, you can do it differently, I suppose. But like you end up adding a bunch of stress. And I have to worry about jet lag and all this other stuff. It's just like, WTC is a 10 day experience. Just let it be with this. - Yeah, it's, I think that with the I've like, I've tried to like, try to travel out Sunday night. And it is at no point ever been, but I wanted to do. - No, I think the Sunday is brutal, dude. - Yeah, I can't do that. So I do Monday travel now exclusively. - Yeah, for WTC, you know, maybe for a USA event, I'll check my mind. - Yeah, we can, that's a little different, right? You know, you're not getting just the travel so long, right? And I love playing, so it's not a huge deal for me, but it's far, man, you're up there for a long time. The time zone shit gets weird when you're going back and forth. Like, yeah, it's tough. Definitely better to have the days budgeted for it to make it less miserable, right? - Yeah, right, minimal misery. That's the goal of Euro travel, 'cause we need to like actually be healthy and happy while we're there and not stressed. - Yes, it's almost worth not having to like, on the same day as potentially the finals, like stressing about packing my stuff. And like, it's almost worth it just for that alone to not have to clear the hotel room before I do that. Let alone the fact that, frankly, after the 7 rounds at WTC era, I usually try to cram it in an hour, not before dinner. - Yeah, I mean, when WTC ends the like, emotional outlay of it all is, it's nice to be able to be like, "Okay, it's over." (laughing) - Yeah, take the coldest shower of the year. - Yeah, like, real adrenaline dump hours. (laughing) - Yeah. - But it's good, like again, like those first couple days, right, where it's like, oh, we're like, especially with Maclin, right? Maclin is, you know, it gets a lot of like, Rose colored glasses points with me, 'cause that was like our first one, right? But going back to there is very like, oh, like, you have those couple of days where we kind of like, you know, we're a huge portion, we're the lion's share of the town's population, it feels like. - Yeah, yeah. - And, you know, we're just like, people are everywhere, you're out and about and doing things. Some of this is the charm of a walkable city to a simple American, but, you know, all the friends in there, it's awesome. - Yeah, it's fun, like my first time in Maclin is funny, 'cause like, I had no idea what the scale of Maclin was. - Right, right. - It's like, the first night, like, I'm sitting down, I haven't found anyone yet, and then like, I get just like, ambushed by three German people I've never met. - Right. (laughing) - Yeah. - Yeah, at the time, you're like, international circle was much smaller, right? It was before, you know, especially as Team America, we had really like, set up any degree of like, partnership or integration in the community really, especially in our first year. I had a little bit more, just 'cause of like, an online presence type beat, but in general, I would say that it's, you know, it's obviously massively changed. Some of the people from Europe are some of my closest friends, that, right? - Yeah, and it's so it's been, it has been nice getting over there, like, getting to know people, 'cause it's made to travel a lot of these. You're right, like, my first Maclin trip, I just like spent some time in Belgium, adjusting to the time, it was my first time in Europe, I didn't know anyone in advance. And so I just like, had to go do what I could do and I didn't really do much. I was just kinda in Maclin viving for four days. - Right, just guessing. What's going on, who knows? - Yeah, yeah, like, got to Maclin, realized that my phone didn't work. I thought I had set it up to work, did not do so successfully. - Well, I'm here and my phone doesn't work. - You can't fix it now, I'm lucky. - Yeah, logged into Discord on McCale's phone, check it once per day. All right. - All right, that'll do, I guess. (laughing) - We've come a long way since then. - Yep. - All right, that's kind of what I got, right? We're past the awkward time of I can't talk to everyone. I'm glad that the team is coming back together. We're starting to swing of things. I would say we're at like 80% speed now. It'll probably go to 100 once points or out. 'Cause that's why. - Yeah, I see some time at the next week or two that we'll have. - Yeah, but we already have everybody ready for this. - Back and active. And then there's a lot to be active about because there's a lot of things that we have to work on now. So that'll be fun. - Yeah, we, woohoo, yeah, we ha. All right, I think that's where that's gonna take us for now. So we'll be back soon, even. - I've got a team event in two weeks. Yeah, in two weeks. In two weeks, I'm flying to a team event. - Oh my God, here's Cup is in two weeks, dude. - Here's Cup is in two weeks. - Oh my God. - Oh, dude, we are, oh, points aren't even live in this thing's in two weeks. - Oh God, dude, I'm so happy. I'm so happy for that, I'd be so stressed right now. - Dude, I mean, this one is just gonna be a seed of the pants and I made my peace to, look, if I could do more, I would, and I would be stressed. And will I be stressed as soon as points come out and I have to work with my team on whatever I'm staking 'cause right now no one knows what they're taking. Yep, I, at Hero's Cup, I am going to take space marines of the last disposition left open. - That makes sense. - That's what I told her. - That's what I told her for people picking, you'll be like, oh, figure it out. - Yeah, like that's just what I'm gonna do. I could place it in me see if they are really nice and leave me birds of the foe. I'm kind of assuming they won't, so I've made my peace that it'll probably be like a space marine. But like, space marines, I could take all five dispositions on space marines. So I'm just kind of like playing space marine games 'cause I need to understand space marines a little bit better before I can either say yes, I am playing them or no, I'm not playing them at WC, of course. So I'm just like playing a bunch of everything. I've tried, I've played four of the five dispositions with my space marines so far. And I'm just gonna like let my team lock their stuff in and then whatever's left, just gonna open a document, find the end, find the disposition and what's attachment goes with it, pick and run. That's all I'm gonna do. - Yep, just do your best. - Yeah, I don't know what else I can possibly do. - Right. - Oh yeah, good times. - What can man do against such reckless change? - I just, you know what? Sometimes you just gotta put on your seatbelt. - Yeah, I mean what else are you gonna do, right? - Yeah, just put on your seatbelt and go with it. All right, so that's for us this week. Of course, if you enjoy listening to our matter ramblings, if you enjoy kind of hearing a little bit about what we're doing at Team USA, please let us know. We've got the podcast now is up on Apple Music and Spotify and YouTube. If you haven't watched us on YouTube, we are also up on YouTube because I know some people mentioned that they wished that it was on YouTube 'cause that's easier to listen to for certain people. So you can subscribe to YouTube channel all that. All of that is for you, no ads on any of it. If you want to support us, the best way to do that is Patreon. We have a Patreon for Team USA and you'll get, you know, podcast episodes are just up by the way right now, but it's just a good way to show support for Team USA and to help us out as we get ready to go to Europe for a big old summer and what we expect to be an extra special crazy one. So thank you so much for listening. Thank you for supporting and we'll catch you all next time. Thanks for being with me Anthony. Of course, have a good one, guys.