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"Never won a major tournament"


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13 hours ago, TerrorPenguin said:

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?

It's one of the better metrics for making actual changes. An army being 'un-fun' is totally subjective and has more to do with what you're playing than what you're opponent is. Stormcast find Skryre incredibly unfun but Squig grots could give a ****** about them. Kharadron hate playing Dracoth Stormcast but don't care at all about something like hammerstrike. That said, plenty of the people involved in playtesting are high level tournament players who can see abusable mechanics better than most, even if those mechanics aren't placing top 3.

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6 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 its just so point and click easy mode there would be no point in them taking it. It wouldnt challenge them on the table and neither player would have a good experience at the table.

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Having watched Russ handily obliterate Sylvaneth with a pick n mix Seraphon army on the twitch stream last night, i think its fair to say the tiers as we know them are no longer relevant.

Also more support for the theory that a good player can kick butt with any army (which in turn supports my personal theory, rubbish players gravitate towards netlists cos theyre easy mode!)

I cant wait to see the sheer variety of armies that should be making an appearance in the near future!

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2 hours ago, Auticus said:

I'd love to see some battle reports where less powerful armies beat down easy-mode netlists myself.  I know for me personally I'm an "ok" player but for me to win tournament level, I require an OP netlist and always have.  I can't do well at tournaments with the same lists that I campaign with, and I can't do well against tournament lists in general with the campaign lists I run.  A lot of that though is simply I've never really seen the weaker lists do well, so I have nothing to go by and would really like to see it happen so that I can improve.

There's an excellent Skaven verminus battle report that shows ingenuity applying a 'weaker' list in a clever way that resulted in victory. I'm pretty sure it wasn't facing a netlist (my memory is a bit fuzzy on the details) - but it is a great example of how one can apply mindgames and strategy to topple an opponent despite, or even due to, the appearance of being at a disadvantage. 

I'll see if I can dig it up for you.

Edit:
Here it is!


Do correct me if this is not a proper example, or not what you're looking for. There is another battle report by a different guy that I know of that is pretty high on my list of favourites that employs goblin skulkers very creatively, in a clown car fashion, to catch his opponents off-guard and wreck their high-value units at very little risk to getting wiped out himself before he can do so (through hordes of rank-and-file goblins to soak up whatever first-turn shenanigans is thrown his way) - I do not remember whether he faced any "netlists" - but it was certainly carrying it's weight against whatever it faced. 

Edit edit:
No wait, it was the same guy.

Apparantly @Nico is my favorite strategist. Those two are my go-to examples :o

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20 hours ago, Mayple said:

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

While true, there are certainly mass numbers of tournament players who collect the winning stuff for the most part, and will play OP stuff to get the wins.  If KO was so overpowered, we'd have seen it reflected in some tournament somewhere.

 

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17 hours ago, Terry Pike said:

Or its just so point and click easy mode there would be no point in them taking it. It wouldnt challenge them on the table and neither player would have a good experience at the table.

You have a lot more faith in 100% of the community that plays competitive events not being WAAC players and taking only what is broken and will help them win, sadly, it's just  optimism.  There are plenty who will take the most OP list they can find so they can pad their victory total.  As I've said, we'd have seen it doing well somewhere by now if it was broken.

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3 hours ago, Primarch1 said:

As I've said, we'd have seen it doing well somewhere by now if it was broken.

There are a good chunk of players who don't know whats good in AoS and need people to show them, write lists for them, basically spoon feed them a strong list.

They either can't be bothered to figure it out themselves or just aren't creative enough.

I can tell you now doing a podcast episode, youtube video etc called "how to win at warhammer" got more hits than anything else. Some people like creating funky lists, others just wait for people to find them.

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8 hours ago, Primarch1 said:

While true, there are certainly mass numbers of tournament players who collect the winning stuff for the most part, and will play OP stuff to get the wins.  If KO was so overpowered, we'd have seen it reflected in some tournament somewhere.

 

Last five tournaments on the Bad Dice Rankings website show

13.08.17

Brothers of Sigmar - 2nd Place in Team tournament (Team mate was Stormcast)

6.08.17

BOBO - 2nd and 4th Place in Singles Tournament

5.08.17

Border War - No Individual Faction Records but highest Order placing 6th in Team Tournament

29.07.17

EGGS - 2nd place in Singles Tournament

15.07.17

Four Games and a Roast - 3rd Place in Singles Tournament

Just a quick snapshot and certainly not enough data to form a full opinion, but KO appear to be finishing pretty well at small to medium tournaments in the UK. As previously mentioned I don't think the headline of winning the tournament is the be all and end all, due to the fine margins at very top, but I think consistently placing highly is probably a fairly good indication of army strength.

 

 

 

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3 hours ago, Tzaangor Management said:

Last five tournaments on the Bad Dice Rankings website show

13.08.17

Brothers of Sigmar - 2nd Place in Team tournament (Team mate was Stormcast)

6.08.17

BOBO - 2nd and 4th Place in Singles Tournament

5.08.17

Border War - No Individual Faction Records but highest Order placing 6th in Team Tournament

29.07.17

EGGS - 2nd place in Singles Tournament

15.07.17

Four Games and a Roast - 3rd Place in Singles Tournament

Just a quick snapshot and certainly not enough data to form a full opinion, but KO appear to be finishing pretty well at small to medium tournaments in the UK. As previously mentioned I don't think the headline of winning the tournament is the be all and end all, due to the fine margins at very top, but I think consistently placing highly is probably a fairly good indication of army strength.

 

 

 

Exactly, but because they haven't 'won' a number of tournaments, this is used to justify why they should not recieve any 'nerfs' such as changes to weapon combinations in a unit. 

Personally I think the idea of winning a tournament is a red herring, consistently placing high is what should be looked at

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3 hours ago, TerrorPenguin said:

Exactly, but because they haven't 'won' a number of tournaments, this is used to justify why they should not recieve any 'nerfs' such as changes to weapon combinations in a unit. 

Personally I think the idea of winning a tournament is a red herring, consistently placing high is what should be looked at

Tbf, I don't know for sure that it really was intended as a nerf. If could have actually been them trying to be 'good guy GW' and making it so you didn't have to buy 10-15 boxes of thunderers to get all the weapons you needed (or more realistically an attempt to neuter an astronomically profitable secondary market product).

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13 hours ago, Terry Pike said:

There are a good chunk of players who don't know whats good in AoS and need people to show them, write lists for them, basically spoon feed them a strong list.

They either can't be bothered to figure it out themselves or just aren't creative enough.

I can tell you now doing a podcast episode, youtube video etc called "how to win at warhammer" got more hits than anything else. Some people like creating funky lists, others just wait for people to find them.

This nails it IMO. You see it a lot in sport, where somebody develops a new play or skill that later becomes standard, tactics are developed by the best players and disseminated through the community. What the advent of netlists did was increase the speed at which this happens. With the GHB GW has finally caught up in terms of fixes.

Another point to make is that points aren't exclusively used for top tier tournament gaming. They're also used to balance more casual matched play and narrative games where particularly nasty combinations are less used. Raising points on a unit/army/batallion because it is used in a certain way in top level comp. results in it being overcosted for the part of the community who take a more casual or themed approach to army building, or for beginners who don't know how to get the mst out of their army yet.

Perhaps the best solution is to add an alternative balance mechanism like power in 40k, which in turn would allow them to make points more granular again.

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I'll just echo what @Terry Pike and @AGPO have mentioned. There seems to be a lot of over reaction around some factions and/or units and what some players seem to forget is that these are armies that are in the hands of very good players. I'm sure if you had the same armies in the hands of other players they wouldn't do as well.

Plus as they have mentioned, some players don't like to think about the different things that they can do with the lists now or the doors that GHB2017 will open. I love the idea of allies as it almost gives you a sideboard to play with how your army works once you have something you are happy with

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