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"Never won a major tournament"


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Why does this seem to be the primary metric by which people decide whether a faction needs a nerf?

There are two threads currently running which both decry their factions lack of tournament wins as a reason why they should not have received warscroll changes or significant points increases.

If opponents games against a certain faction are distinctly  "un fun" should this not be a valid reason for making a decision? What about length of games with this faction? 

Is it just that is an easy metric to source? Or is this the only one which is valuable in making decisions about units?

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It is arguably one of the most readily available and tangible sources of information as to how a faction performs at a competitive event, after all by compiling results from all major tournaments around you'll find that barring the odd outlyer similar factions rise to the top in terms of competitive builds. Otherwise you're stuck boiling down balance to GW play testing (which people also decry) or anecdotal evidence from players based on what they do/dont like to play (which may be more down to the player than the units)

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I think it also comes down to who is making the complaint. Open and narrative players are likely not the ones complaining about points, however, as @Melcavuk says, with tournaments being the pinnacle of Matched play, this is seen as a reasonable metric for Matched Play players.

I would theorize that at the top of the tree, where all players know the game inside out, actual wins, are probably less important than placing in the top 5-10%. I remember that Russ Veal of Facehammer was remarking on Tomb Kings being overpowered on his podcast and saying that the reason they had not won an event was down to player skill, rather than the faction being properly balanced. He then ran Tomb Kings at the Masters and won, where before they'd been placing high without taking the top prize. Whatever you think of the statement and the subsequent balance (trying not to derail the thread...) the winning of the event was not solely down to the strength of the faction.

As a slight side note, I was trying to find a list of recent tournament winners / top threes and couldn't find one with a quick Google (Bad Dice sometimes lists the result, but doesn't always seem to). Will have a proper look when I have a bit of time, but if anyone knows of a resource like this and has a link to hand, I'd be interested.

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18 minutes ago, Melcavuk said:

It is arguably one of the most readily available and tangible sources of information as to how a faction performs at a competitive event, after all by compiling results from all major tournaments around you'll find that barring the odd outlyer similar factions rise to the top in terms of competitive builds. Otherwise you're stuck boiling down balance to GW play testing (which people also decry) or anecdotal evidence from players based on what they do/dont like to play (which may be more down to the player than the units)

I somewhat agree with this. Using the most relevant and available statistic to assess whether something is 'good' or not is a logical approach - but it is also important to factor in other things such as the player behind the army (do they usually place high/perform well, but not with this army? Is it because the army is bad, or because their own playstyle does not favor their army pick?)

- the meta/current environment the army is competing in (some armies are objectively good, but does not perform well in a meta that heavily favors their weaknesses; a mobility meta, shooty meta, alpha strike meta, etc. These armies are not -bad-, and trying to fix the issue by buffing them significantly will make -them- a problem once the meta moves on to something more neutral to them.)

- playstyle (somewhat connected to the meta point above, but this is more about the enjoyment of the game. Like it or not, the game is meant to be enjoyed, and some army playstyles would, if too strong, severely hinder this. Most things can usually be dealt with tactically, and I'm not referring to those (beastclaw raiders, skryre warpfire, etc), but let's say, for the sake of this argument that I use an army who's playstyle is to deny the opponent their a actions, their usage of abilities, or something along those lines - if this army got too strong, it would impact -enjoyment- but not neccesarily dominate the competitive scene. Here, the enjoyment/fun factor must/should be accounted for.

 

If anyone disagrees with my points above, that's fine - my most important point is this:

An army does not have to WIN anything to be viable in a competitive scene - they'd just have to be good enough to compete. At that point, it is up to the player behind the army to give it the push it needs to come out on top :) plenty of armies are good enough to win, plenty of players are not. An army does not have to be number one to be considered strong enough ;)

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An army does not have to WIN anything to be viable in a competitive scene - they'd just have to be good enough to compete. At that point, it is up to the player behind the army to give it the push it needs to come out on top [emoji4] plenty of armies are good enough to win, plenty of players are not. An army does not have to be number one to be considered strong enough [emoji6]


In the olympics, and many other competitive sports there are minimum specifications that must be met to be "good enough to compete".

For wargaming tournaments, if you show up, and pay the entry fee you've just met the "you're good enough to compete" line ... typically these aren't invitational events.

However, If you're not the lead dog the view never changes.

While they may not have to win anything, they need to have the appropriate tools to be capable of winning.

If an army has never even "placed" in the top 3 with all of the tournaments then one could argue that it doesn't have the tools to compete.

Most folks enjoy winning. You don't typically go to an event where you're paying money to loose. Almost everyone goes to a tournament with the hope of winning the tournament.
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There are so, so many things that affect how 'good' and army is. For example the player ability - at the recent 50-player BOBO event 1st place AND last place went to almost identical Bloodbound armies!! Also top players e.g. Ben Johnson and Russ Veal seem to be able to win with ANY faction - and have demonstrated this many times. Match-ups at tournies also have a big effect - the recent win by Squigs at Heat 3 was partly due to skill of the player, but also due to not getting matched up against strong shooting armies. The 'Meta' changes constantly and so the results of events only 2-3 months ago may well be irrelevant. Thus in many ways winning in events is a very poor measure of how good an army is.

However, it is the least bad way to assess an army in a simple way for most players. So long as we are aware of it's many limitations, it can be a useful way of flagging up armies that may be better than most and warrant further investigation.

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31 minutes ago, TheOtherJosh said:

If an army has never even "placed" in the top 3 with all of the tournaments then one could argue that it doesn't have the tools to compete.

Its often more to do with the player behind the army as well. There are incredibly powerful army builds in the current game that aren't being taken by the top level players, either because they don't want to or just don't have the army available to them at the time.

You will often see netlist "filth" being push around the mid tables of a tournament by a player who just doesn't understand how the army works, where as a more skilled player would be on the top tables with it.

But you are right in that some armies just can't compete for a podium without a great run of favourable match ups and and some good luck on the table. Death for example just doesn't have the tools to beat a lot of armies as it has almost zero ranged threat available to it. The same goes with Ironjawz currently, hopefully with allies they can get in bolt throwers etc to fill the gaping hole in there competitive ablity.

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I think it stems from the fact that in a discussion you can only rely on "evidence" as opposed to "anecdotes".  So looking at tournament results is the only common ground we have when discussing things; the fact that someone in their local meta can take a "weak" army and dominate doesn't indicate the army is good elsewhere, just in their meta against armies they face it is good.  So I think relying on "major tournament wins" is used as sort of a default baseline to discuss.  If I go and say that X list does really well locally so it's super good, what I'm not saying is that my meta is really casual and laid back and nobody plays tournament lists; as a result my anecdote doesn't apply elsewhere.   But if you look at a big tournament, you can see trends and are discussing things that can be seen as less of a "well in my 4 person group I do X" and more "This establishes readily-available sources for discussion"

However, this also proves to be a double-edged sword:  When you start only discussing tournament environments, you discount everything else and start to get into reading trends and seeing "evidence" that isn't always applicable to everyone, but gets talked about as though it was.  If you never see a Kunnin Rukk or similar tournament style list in your meta, then seeing and hearing talk about it and how you "need" to have a way to deal with it kinda not as useful.

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Yeah it is really hard to judge that.

There are of course categories of armies (or at least there were. We'll see how it works after the GHB2017. I assume there will always be stronger and weaker armies).
But there is also Some kind of Rock,Paper,Scissors in place. Example (not the best one probably but bear with me):

Some Seraphon lists can demolish Ironjawz. The same lists however will be absolutely demolished by Flesh Eater Courts while the Ironjawz list they beat can actually run over that FEC list. So with a bit of luck you can get into the top 10 of a tournament with your Ironjawz while getting absolutely destroyed by your local gaming group who plays Seraphon, Wanderers, and Moonclan, which in most cases don't even make it near the top of tournaments.

Another point are synergies. If a tactic is very strong, but relies on a single hero to keep it up, it might be beaten by a list that can just snipe well, even though that list is so bad they cannot win against any other army. A sniping list will demolish Seraphon, but Ironjawz can shrug it off. That kind of thing.

Then of course an unusual list (such as the Squig list or Darren Watson's Kroak list) might catch people flat-footed or be a hard counter to some often-played lists and actually achieve a lot.

So the lack of presence up there  in the top ten is not a sign of an army being weak.

....the other way round it works better though. If half of the top ten of major tournaments consists of the same two or three armies it is safe to say that this is probably a strong army.
Some armies are either easier to play (or at least have lists that are easy to play), or their models are just a tad too cheap, stuff like that.  But you can only effectively judge the very good ones. Being on top once or twice may be luck. But do you know a SCE player who wins less than half of his games against any army if they just try to kill each other?

 


In a game with objectives that looks different though. An army with good move and defense that is otherwise ****** might win by points. They will never kill the other army and they would lose if they tried to. So they don't try.

 

Oh and also keep in mind, there is something radically different about a local meta: When you play the same guys all the time you get to know them, and their lists. I can beat my Ironjawz-playing friend pretty reliably with my Seraphon because I know what he will bring. If I had to build my list not knowing whether he will bring SCE, Ironjawz, or Bonesplitterz I would probably lose against all three.

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All excellent points and I think clarify what I was thinking, it seems like some will only admit that their faction is overpowered if it is consistently winning tournaments. But as you've all pointed out, the list is only part of it, so of course it won't win every time.

Consistently in top 5-10% of field would be a much better measure but would need more data and is expect is not as exciting.

"Which army won the major tournament?" Vs. "which armies were in the top 5% of the field" it's not quite the same.

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4 hours ago, Tzaangor Management said:

As a slight side note, I was trying to find a list of recent tournament winners / top threes and couldn't find one with a quick Google (Bad Dice sometimes lists the result, but doesn't always seem to). Will have a proper look when I have a bit of time, but if anyone knows of a resource like this and has a link to hand, I'd be interested.

http://www.rankings.baddice.co.uk/tournaments/region=3&game=6&season=0

If you click on the name of each tournament there you will find full standings.

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2 hours ago, Terry Pike said:

The same goes with Ironjawz currently, hopefully with allies they can get in bolt throwers etc to fill the gaping hole in there competitive ablity.

....and then I will finally become all conquering!!!

(failing that I'll paint some more Skyfires ;))

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I think the OP hit the nail on the head. Tourney data is easier to find, quantify, and analyze than other types of data about how "good" an army is.

Unfortunately, that data tends to be rather myopic. It describes only one quality that makes an army "good". Other qualities, such as varied play styles, fun mechanics and themes, interactibility, artistic style of the models, and simply being "fun to play", are very hard or impossible to quantify. These are still very important when someone is determining if an army is "good". 

Needless to "good" is VERY subjective for many reasons. 

I play Seraphon because I love dinosaurs. Nothing GW did or could do about that. I just saw dinosaurs and thought they were awesome! Whether they are nerfed into the ground or "totally broken", I'll still play for reasons that have nothing to do with tournaments. 

To their credit, GW is quite good and consistent about ensuring armies play to their intended themes. That's why the very rarely ever  change warscrolls themselves. Buffing or nerfing whole factions in response to a highly ephemeral tournament meta is noooooot wise.

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Sometimes a list or unit can appear really good because they're new and other list don't have the tools to deal with them. Then a few months later when people are used to playing against them and evolve their lists and tactics they suddenly do less well. Also as a few of you have said player skill comes in to it a lot I've seen super powerful lists lose to average list due to inexperience. 

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Tournaments are still good sources of data purely because they are a place where 20 plus armies can fight it out in a short span of time. If your local scene has this many active people then your data is probably more useful than average. 

My local scene is small, like 4 to six people with a couple armies each. We will not produce the same level of data but if we play 30 games of a certain composition we can still get some data about possible outcomes.

Then we should take this data and compare it to other scenes, such as bigger areas and tournaments, to see if it holds up or not.

This is how you can mix anecdotal local data with the broader data out there.

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There are a lot of good thoughts in this thread, but I'd like to suggest also that there is a very real place for simple math in this discussion. While math alone shouldn't be used to justify all balance decisions, it can certainly inform them to a great degree. If a particular warscroll is just blatantly more efficient than others, it probably needs a points increase. Kurnoth Hunters were a good example of this. A lot of folks thought only bow Kurnoths were a problem, but even as a Sylvaneth player I could see that melee Kurnoths were too efficient at their previous point cost. If you do the math you'll see that they were at the top tier of damage efficiency and between the middle and top tier of defensive efficiency (depending on the situation). Units that are above the curve in both aspects like this without having a glaring weakness are probably in need of a nudge.

Of course, not every above the curve unit was rebalanced in this way in GHB 2.0. For example, I suspect that we will be seeing a lot more Tzaangors soon!

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In 7th Warhammer 40k Tau NEVER won any tournament where Tau'nar was banned. Why? Because every tournament was being won by Eldar and Space Marines.

 

Did that mean that Tau didn't deserved nerfs? Hell no. They had many OP units, but they wheren't as OP to win against the REAL OP ones. The same goes for other factions like Tyranids where they had a very, very Op unit (Flyrant) but the rest of the army was unplayable.

Winning or not a tournament is not the only metric you wan't to look at to achieve balance. Obviously, is one you can see, if some factions are ALWAYS in the top 10, probably is because they have strong pics (That doesn't mean they are all around stronger. Internal balance is a thing that many armies in GW games don't achieve).

 

So yes, units of a faction can deserve nerfs even if they don't win any tournament or even if they don't always end in the top 10 or 25.

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4 hours ago, Terry Pike said:

Its often more to do with the player behind the army as well. There are incredibly powerful army builds in the current game that aren't being taken by the top level players, either because they don't want to or just don't have the army available to them at the time.

You will often see netlist "filth" being push around the mid tables of a tournament by a player who just doesn't understand how the army works, where as a more skilled player would be on the top tables with it.

But you are right in that some armies just can't compete for a podium without a great run of favourable match ups and and some good luck on the table. Death for example just doesn't have the tools to beat a lot of armies as it has almost zero ranged threat available to it. The same goes with Ironjawz currently, hopefully with allies they can get in bolt throwers etc to fill the gaping hole in there competitive ablity.

I would say if the better players are passing on an army, then it probably isn't capable of beating other top tier armies and players. 

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3 hours ago, Primarch1 said:

I would say if the better players are passing on an army, then it probably isn't capable of beating other top tier armies and players. 

Or it simply doesn't fit their playstyle. Preference does play a big part in it, after all. 

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