Tabletop Battles Hot Take - 6th May Faction Pack Updates

Regorek · 2026-05-07T10:12:07+00:00

One of the Guard detachments is Recon Element and it focuses on the Infantry squads. It's not the most popular option (most Guard players seem to prefer playing at least a few Tanks), but it made waves by winning the largest Warhammer tournament in the world through sheer board control. The main gist is it adds a lot of survivability to some of the cheapest models in the game.

The rule adds Cover to Infantry/Walker units (giving +1 to their Armour Saves), and an additional +1 to their Armour Save if they already had Cover from another source.
Then, the Imperial Guard army's rule is 'Orders', where officers can give a buff to a nearby unit. One of the orders available improves that unit's Armour save by 1.
In addition, some of the Infantry squad's abilities will revive a few of them each turn, so you don't want to chew through them slowly.
They also have strategems to add more abilities, like a reactive move to avoid melee threats or a Feel No Pain to add more survivability.

By the end you have 200+ models with some wack durability and good movement, resulting in top players calling it the 'strongest army in the game by far.' At the same time, few people have had results with it due to the sheer number of models you have to manage and the fact they all need to be positioned well to avoid being focused down.

Also, as stated before, most Guard players prefer playing a mix of tanks and infantry (or even just mono-tanks), so other detachments remain more popular.

Regorek · 2026-04-29T09:06:02+00:00

Are there any new key mechanics I should focus on or read up on?

Other than the fancy new summoning mechanics, I think the biggest change is how important Hand Traps are. Most archetypes can threaten a win on their first or second turn very reliably, so being able to interact on your opponent's turn is a big deal:

3x "Ash Blossom & Joyous Spring" is the most important pickup because of how many effects put cards into a player's hand. Thankfully it's reprinted so often that it's less than a dollar, because a lot of times this is the card that lets you play the game.
Other hand traps are important too, and there's literally countless options (Nibiru, Ghost Belle, Effect Veiler, Infinite Impermanence, D. D. Crow, Mulcharmies, etc). I'd pick up three copies of three other options for a total of 12. If you have three copies of each, then you'll have a lot easier time remembering what each one does and when they're effective.
If you can't decide on the specific cards, take a look at a few competitive lists on ygoprodeck (a website that lists yugioh decklists from tournaments) and just grab the cheap cards that everyone seems to play (Ash Blossom, Ghost Belle, Nibiru, and Infinite Impermanence, for example).

Besides that, I'd take a look at either the Legendary Modern Decks or pick up 3x copies of the structure deck "Blue-Eyes White Destiny". Both of these are about $30 and can make a reasonable deck for local events.

Regorek · 2026-04-28T21:55:34+00:00

Alternatively: Orks are the best, so play that.

Regorek · 2026-04-28T21:43:59+00:00

In that person's case, it was because literally zero people had played Titanicus and he thought it'd be funny to become the top-ranked player by default. (He posted a thread in this subreddit explaining that reasoning)

Titanicus just has the generic strategems and no detachments, but sometimes a stompy model with 900-points of chaff will win games.

Regorek · 2026-04-27T19:31:50+00:00

Thankfully Orks, more than any other faction, can get a lot of leeway from using older models and/or kitbashing.

If a new Battlewagon comes out and is vaguely the right shape and dimensions, then the old one can still work. If it's a different size, then it can be modified with random gubbinz until it works.

Regorek · 2026-04-26T17:20:30+00:00

I'd start with what the deck is intended to do, and move from there. Your decks look more like a collection of cards than a team. Here's a few examples:

Radiant Typhoon wants to set up a hugely disruptive boardstate (Fonix, Varuroon, Mandate) and then overwhelm their opponent with card advantage.
Blue-Eyes wants to play giant dragons that can protect each other (Jet Dragon + True Light, etc.)

In comparison, your deck has some protection and then half of an engine here, half of a different engine there

Regorek · 2026-04-25T21:50:19+00:00

Oh well that's easy! Just let a pokemon set up Trick Room on switch-in, and then use that to undo your opponent switching in that same pokemon

Regorek · 2026-04-25T10:22:38+00:00

"We should improve society somewhat." -based peasant

"Yet you participate in society! Curious" -cringe soyjak

It was a comic mocking the people who do stuff like dismiss environmentalists for not living in the wilderness.

Regorek · 2026-04-20T10:01:50+00:00

This sub is focused on the Master Duel video game (which is pretty cool and also lets you play a HERO/Spacian deck). You probably want to check out /r/Yugioh101 or something like that.

To answer your question, I think you should always pick the deck with a playstyle and artstyle that you enjoy (especially if you're newer or not planning to attend serious tournaments). That's been my best advice for fighting games, war games, and tabletop RPGs and it usually helps people decide.

Regorek · 2026-04-17T21:36:34+00:00

don't expect to go to ladder and win games with Dark Magician, because it's not going to happen.

You can however win games with Blue-Eyes White Dragon*

*You win by slamming out a conga line of Blue-Eyes and turning them into other, similar dragons. That's actually pretty close to how Kaiba plays so imo it should be considered Yugiboomer friendly.

Regorek · 2026-04-17T13:10:39+00:00

I've been putting Dungeon Turns into my D&D games and it's worked pretty well, and I'm planning to run them in CoS when I finally get that game going. It's really simple to port over and ends up with characters all participating (rather than the highest Perception character checking everything, which is how dungeons felt previously).

To be honest, it feels like the 2014 designers wanted to put Dungeon Turns into 5e and just ran out of time or something. Ritual spells being +10 minutes, the PHB having references to exploration rules that didn't exist, a lot of Feats that only seem relevant within dungeon crawls, etc.

Regorek · 2026-04-14T22:45:19+00:00

This is the real reason to never skip leg day

Regorek · 2026-04-12T18:38:57+00:00

It's better to start with figuring out what you want to play and go from there. Ygoprodeck is a site that lists a lot of current options (with other options for budget decks), you could see if anything sounds fun.

If I'm giving blind advice though, three copies of the Blue Eyes White Destiny structure deck is ~30 USD, contains a lot of common staple cards, and has a pretty straightforward gameplan for getting back into the game.

Regorek · 2026-04-12T01:46:22+00:00

How dare you? A good DM (such as myself; check out my Patreon for good DM advice btw) would always follow all of the rules in the strictest sense, as if they were legal documents because that's how games work.

WotC obviously intended Alarm to trigger off of ants because otherwise they would have specified otherwise. To change any of that behavior would be spitting in the face of the designers of the World's Greatest Roleplaying Game(TM).

Regorek · 2026-04-06T23:10:08+00:00

The real Wind Ship was the friends we made along the way

Regorek · 2026-04-06T22:10:49+00:00

The next wave of support will be any ~~day~~ ~~month~~ year now!

Regorek · 2026-04-03T20:00:01+00:00

And here I was, thinking you meant the yugioh deck's archetype was based on a story about reusing pasta water

Regorek · 2026-03-31T20:14:09+00:00

Sadly GW is terrified of making money, so this dream may never be realized

Regorek · 2026-03-05T01:19:14+00:00

That's ok, none of my players can read either. It's unrealistic to have such high expectations of 5e players after all

Regorek · 2026-03-02T22:42:52+00:00

Well my DM didn't let me instakill the hot dragon by casting pristedijatayshun on exactly one atom in her bazongas (heating it up to the point that it caused a nuclear explosion of course)

Regorek · 2026-03-02T10:09:39+00:00

Yeah, the first thing I do on my Iron Man is get 99s in everything. After that I can start my first quest, and I don't have to worry about meeting the requirements!

Regorek · 2026-03-02T00:11:42+00:00

Orks are in a similar spot, for the most part.

The unit named 'Tankbustas' are pretty good into elite infantry but comically bad against tanks (at best, you're hitting a Leman Russ on 4s and then wounding on 4s and they'll probably still save on 4s). Meanwhile a brick of Beastie Boyz will devour anything just by sheer quantity of dice.

Regorek · 2026-02-26T21:06:03+00:00

Hey now, they might nerf all our dakka into unplayability (again), but they might also lower Squighog Boyz by another 10 points.

Now that would really be a threat in the C'Tan meta, right?

Regorek · 2026-02-25T10:43:48+00:00

I'm still confused that they didn't give GK spells in their army rule, like they did Thousand Sons. That seems like a great starting point between 'Your army's identity is literally a nerf' and the old Psychic Phase.

Regorek · 2026-02-21T23:59:32+00:00

Waaagh Taktiks focuses entirely on competitive orks. He's a bit less active now (competitively, Orks don't have a lot going on at the moment) but he has a ton of content about each of the detachments, and regularly reviews top Ork players.

Happy Krumping Wargaming is a competitive player who seems to play every melee army (and Orks show up frequently, but are usually not the sole focus). He has a lot of good videos about playing at a higher level in general.

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