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Why SCE is doing even worse in tournaments compared with previous version?


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On 9/24/2018 at 9:34 PM, PJetski said:

I'm going to sound extremely elitist here, but... I'm not going to consider a tournament with Destruction and Phoenix temple in the top 4 and zero Seraphon players (imo the best army currently) as a competitive event :P

Kudos to the players doing well with "weak" armies, but this shouldn't be used as a representative sample of what the competitive metagame is like.

AHAHAHA

GROTS ARE DA BEST*

 

There was a seraphon list on table 2 (or 1?) game 4 that got wiped inside 20 minutes by the legion of blood. Seraphon post FAQ aren’t the strongest there but they are still good .

i think the game is at the stage that good players are countering netlists. bandwagon players jump on netlists and expect to do well. That’s just not the case.

My win ratio with destruction has been relatively consistently 80%+ in tournaments (in last 3 singles I’ve been to anyway). Would I win more if I played DoK/seraphon/surechage? Probably not, i enjoy what I play and that drives my performance more than whatever is hot that week.

 

 

*with a frostlord

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3 hours ago, Donal said:

AHAHAHA

GROTS ARE DA BEST*

 

There was a seraphon list on table 2 (or 1?) game 4 that got wiped inside 20 minutes by the legion of blood. Seraphon post FAQ aren’t the strongest there but they are still good .

i think the game is at the stage that good players are countering netlists. bandwagon players jump on netlists and expect to do well. That’s just not the case.

My win ratio with destruction has been relatively consistently 80%+ in tournaments (in last 3 singles I’ve been to anyway). Would I win more if I played DoK/seraphon/surechage? Probably not, i enjoy what I play and that drives my performance more than whatever is hot that week.

 

 

*with a frostlord

This is an important point. Being good, and having a good build are only the first building block. A good player with a functional list tuned to their experience, who has a lot of experience will often beat the netlist. 

Netlist are netlists because they mechanically do the thing they are expected to do reliably. That is a weakness as well as a strength. It means it doesn't take much experience to pull it off, but it also telegraphs the game to the opposition. 

A good, and experienced player will win that game unless the mechanics of the netlist exist outside the rules of the game. Changehost is a good example of this. 

SCE have some of the most obvious netlists, and therefore it isn't a surprise to see them go 4-1, or 3-2 because of it. 

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14 hours ago, Freejack02 said:

 

Guess what the point of a tournament is? To see who is the best; who comes out on top.

....

Winning will be the main goal of nearly any tournament, what on earth is your post even going on about. 

Wrong,  lists are winning and the player who can abuse over powered units, broken combos or rule-gaps the best. Some might even be good players though it only matters little due to the list is winning for them.

my post was going on about a much larger issue within the tournament scene most people won‘t be able to realize due to a very narrow point of view. That issue is destructive to the community, the hobby and to the acquisition of new players. 

If you want to know what I am going on about, feel free to read some of my replies in other topics in which I point out several aspects of this issue.

 

one of these aspects is that tournament players are the majority of vocal players and they promote a very limited view of what this hobby is and what it is about.

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26 minutes ago, JackStreicher said:

Wrong,  lists are winning and the player who can abuse over powered units, broken combos or rule-gaps the best. Some might even be good players though it only matters little due to the list is winning for them.

my post was going on about a much larger issue within the tournament scene most people won‘t be able to realize due to a very narrow point of view. That issue is destructive to the community, the hobby and to the acquisition of new players. 

If you want to know what I am going on about, feel free to read some of my replies in other topics in which I point out several aspects of this issue.

 

one of these aspects is that tournament players are the majority of vocal players and they promote a very limited view of what this hobby is and what it is about.

You do know NEOs exist and run some absolutely amazing events right? Our hobby can support multiple types of players and games. 

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17 hours ago, Freejack02 said:

 

Guess what the point of a tournament is? To see who is the best; who comes out on top. Tournament players are there to try and win (if they are just there for the "experience" or to have fun and see some cool armies, then they fully expect to be at the bottom and may as well watch in my opinion). The Word Cup or the Final Four isn't about playing ball with some buddies, it's a competition to see who is the best. 

Winning will be the main goal of nearly any tournament, what on earth is your post even going on about. 

My main point of the tournament is to see friends. Sure I enjoy competing, but the highlight of my weekend was chatting to my NI mates who I don’t see often enough, meeting Domus & Tom from the US and seeing a bunch of mates from the scene that I haven’t seen for anything between 2 months to a year. 

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17 hours ago, Freejack02 said:

 

Guess what the point of a tournament is? To see who is the best; who comes out on top. Tournament players are there to try and win (if they are just there for the "experience" or to have fun and see some cool armies, then they fully expect to be at the bottom and may as well watch in my opinion). The Word Cup or the Final Four isn't about playing ball with some buddies, it's a competition to see who is the best. 

Winning will be the main goal of nearly any tournament, what on earth is your post even going on about. 

That's really  not true for most people who go to tournaments. Most people want to go to a big event, see other people playing games, and play against people they might not otherwise in their local area, in an organized space. Most if not all AoS tournaments have equal prizes for Best General, Best Painted, and Best Sports. WarhammerTV streams rarely show the top tables outside of the last game. 

The amount of people who go expecting to get a top 10 finish is half - maybe. If you ask any TO, especially for huge events like LVO, Adepticon, or NOVA, finding the "best player" at the event is only one facet of putting it together and running it. Just because it's your main reason for playing, doesn't mean it's the same for everyone.

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3 hours ago, JackStreicher said:

Wrong,  lists are winning and the player who can abuse over powered units, broken combos or rule-gaps the best. Some might even be good players though it only matters little due to the list is winning for them.

How is anything I said about tournaments being a contest "wrong"? It's literally the definition of a tournament. Your post was an odd rant of what you apparently wish the tournament scene was; but that's not the reality. Saying that players should be restricted from bringing any named characters or a "netlist" (which who the hell defines what constitutes a netlist) is absolute nonsense. If you want a "tournament" that is narrative focused or not cutthroat, they are available - happily attend and have a great time... just don't tell players attending traditional style tournaments that they are doing it wrong.

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50 minutes ago, Requizen said:

That's really  not true for most people who go to tournaments. Most people want to go to a big event, see other people playing games, and play against people they might not otherwise in their local area, in an organized space.

I get this, and I agree that large organized events are a great way to get out and expand your playbase. See new armies, meet new people, have fun!

 

50 minutes ago, Requizen said:

Most if not all AoS tournaments have equal prizes for Best General, Best Painted, and Best Sports.

Which is awesome and I fully support that, but those categories are still competitions. My post was responding to the idea that tournaments should forcibly hamstring their entrants with arbitrary rules based on what someone thinks a healthy tournament scene should look like. Imagine if the Best Painted section outlawed Citadel metallic paints and washes? Or maybe Vallejo black, because they're considered the "net standard" and it promotes "stale painting ideas". Pretty stupid, right?

 

50 minutes ago, Requizen said:

Just because it's your main reason for playing, doesn't mean it's the same for everyone.

I'm not a tournament player (yet), I was only correcting Jack's impression of what a tournament actually is compared to what it "should be". 

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On 9/24/2018 at 9:34 PM, PJetski said:

I'm going to sound extremely elitist here, but... I'm not going to consider a tournament with Destruction and Phoenix temple in the top 4 and zero Seraphon players (imo the best army currently) as a competitive event :P

Kudos to the players doing well with "weak" armies, but this shouldn't be used as a representative sample of what the competitive metagame is like.

I’m keen to understand your experiences of “competitive metagame”? Will help add a bit of context and weight to what you’re saying. 

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On 9/24/2018 at 9:34 PM, PJetski said:

I'm going to sound extremely elitist here, but... I'm not going to consider a tournament with Destruction and Phoenix temple in the top 4 and zero Seraphon players (imo the best army currently) as a competitive event :P

Kudos to the players doing well with "weak" armies, but this shouldn't be used as a representative sample of what the competitive metagame is like.

Usually when confronted with consistent evidence to the contrary. You must conclude you are incorrect. 

I don't recall a significant seraphon presence at really any event. But also, imo Seraphon really aren't that good at actually winning the game( as it is now), and results have shown that if you investigate the actual scores they have been getting not just win/loss. 

However outliers don't disprove stats, they only highlight that further investigation might be required. Including investigation you can't do from behind a keyboard. 

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Gotta love the ego of people whose mentality would seem to be "If it's not good enough for the Top Ten best players in the world then it's not good enough for me at my club."

The vast majority of people playing "competitively" are not playing in the competitive meta. You'd get skinned alive if you were, probably against an army you're utterly convinced is sub par.

Playing Matched Play with internet lists does not make you a sage competitive veteran. 

 

 

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People keep going back to wanting to make this thread about, “People are complaining SC are bad and not doing well and should be doing better.” You all are missing the point of the thread over and over and over again.

Look, I’m genuinely surprised any list using castigators in such large volumes did well. I sincerely think they are a bad unit. My opinion is that the list we were talking about earlier did well in spite of them. I can mildly see some shenanigans with the anvils command ability and allowing them to double tap, but I think in general they are comparatively weak at what they do.

I think this person’s strategy was to bait opponents into bumbling into the evocators, then used command abilities to double tap them and leverage the heck out of them. I think this list proves what we have been saying for a while now, that evocators are unusually good for their points, and are basically the new spammable unit in the list.

 I question, not with ill intent, but with genuine curiosity, how every opponent this person faced could let themselves consistently be rolled over by someone with a one-note, obvious strategy. Many of the people I play regularly would be able to counter it pretty easily, so that confuses me and I’d like to know what happened in his games.

 I have no disagreement that evocators are crazy strong. I have no disagreement that Stormcast on the whole is in a comparatively good place. My concern is the title of this thread. I am concerned that the new book and the rules turned them int a one note army that from this point onwards will have competitive lists built around a single unit, in a book that has literally a dozen options. This makes them predictable, and easy to counter in the long run.

 

 

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For myself and probably 95% of people who I've spoke to who attend tournaments, from a lot of game system the primary reason for attending is massively driven by the social side of the game. Do we go to events to compete? 100% but that said the primary reason for my self is to spend a day / weekend around like minded friends who you share laughs with and make memories. That's the reason people pay money and give time to play wardollies. 

Got to say some of the comments in thread are mad and I personally think some peoples attitude is massively disrespectful/arrogant/naive so I'm just going to walk away from trying to make this thread constructive. 

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Just now, Mark Williams said:

 I have no disagreement that evocators are crazy strong. I have no disagreement that Stormcast on the whole is in a comparatively good place. My concern is the title of this thread. I am concerned that the new book and the rules turned them int a one note army that from this point onwards will have competitive lists built around a single unit, in a book that has literally a dozen options. This makes them predictable, and easy to counter in the long run.

 

We have the first AoS 'Big FAQ' due in Jan, so points corrections may be coming the Evocators way soon enough.

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2 hours ago, whispersofblood said:

Usually when confronted with consistent evidence to the contrary. You must conclude you are incorrect. 

I don't recall a significant seraphon presence at really any event. But also, imo Seraphon really aren't that good at actually winning the game( as it is now), and results have shown that if you investigate the actual scores they have been getting not just win/loss. 

However outliers don't disprove stats, they only highlight that further investigation might be required. Including investigation you can't do from behind a keyboard. 

That's not how logic works. Evidence has context. In wargaming popularity is not 1:1 with power for multiple reasons. To name a few:

1. Time investment to paint models. It takes time to paint up new units to react to a changing metagame.
2. Cost of new models. Nobody has the entire range of miniatures, people are making lists with what they own. Sometimes really powerful lists are locked behind big paywalls (eg: Seraphon with 4x Salamanders and 4x Razordons).
3. Personal preference. People play the armies/units they want to play, and sometimes that means they aren't playing optimized lists.
4. Enthusiastic hobbyists are not necessarily good generals. The intersection of painting and strategy gaming should be celebrated but it is quite rare - these are two mutually exclusive categories.
5. Other games exist. AOS is not viewed as a competitive game by the vast majority of its players. The few competitive players can get their fix from other more popular games, like 40k or Warmachine.
6. Big events cost more time and money. Most people can't afford to fly across the world and play games for two days straight, so events like that usually end up with a lot of local boys.

I'm not disparaging anyone that brings a soft list (like Phoenix Temple) and manages to pull a good score... but I'm also not going to pretend that's a strong list when I have played against it multiple times and can see it is objectively weaker than so many other lists in the game.

3 hours ago, CountryMou3e said:

I’m keen to understand your experiences of “competitive metagame”? Will help add a bit of context and weight to what you’re saying. 

Lists that can reliably table opponents in 2-3 turns if not disrupted, cripple somebody beyond recovery with 1-2 turns, have some kind of insane combo, or hold objectives so decisively and stubbornly that they cannot be taken off in time for the game state to change.

19 minutes ago, stato said:

We have the first AoS 'Big FAQ' due in Jan, so points corrections may be coming the Evocators way soon enough.

Hopefully they do more than just nerf Evocators... Stormcast internal balance is a hot mess. Lots of units are not worth their points.

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16 minutes ago, PJetski said:

 

Lists that can reliably table opponents in 2-3 turns if not disrupted, cripple somebody beyond recovery with 1-2 turns, have some kind of insane combo

But what are YOUR experiences of this, where have you done it and what lists have you done it with. 

Im talking serious competitive events such as Facehammer/South coast. Not picnic bench gaming with chumps on a sunday

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20 minutes ago, CountryMou3e said:

But what are YOUR experiences of this, where have you done it and what lists have you done it with. 

Im talking serious competitive events such as Facehammer/South coast. Not picnic bench gaming with chumps on a sunday

I play in lots of tournaments. Why are you implying that my opinion isn't valid unless I attend these two UK events?

If people are placing top 8 with soft lists like Phoenix Temple and Bonesplitterz then I don't consider Facehammer to be a "serious competitive" event.

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5 minutes ago, PJetski said:

I play in lots of tournaments. Why are you implying that my opinion isn't valid unless I attend these two UK events?

If people are placing top 8 with soft lists like Phoenix Temple and Bonesplitterz and then I don't consider Facehammer to be a "serious competitive" event.

Would you mind sharing a couple of examples of the tournament packs and the final results? It will be interesting to compare your tournament/meta experiences with other notable AoS 2 events this year. 

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1 hour ago, PJetski said:

I play in lots of tournaments. Why are you implying that my opinion isn't valid unless I attend these two UK events?

If people are placing top 8 with soft lists like Phoenix Temple and Bonesplitterz then I don't consider Facehammer to be a "serious competitive" event.

you realize the guy with the phoenix temple list is making top result with it consistently in every tournament he come across since a good time, the organizer of the BLACKOUT tournament and was a member of the english team at the 6th nation tournament of warhammer in 2012  ? Actually, he alone made the phoenix temple the army with the best win/loss ratio in the game right now, far beyond legion of nagash or DOK.  It's not a new and casual player at all, but a battle-hardened veteran.

And Donal Taylor (the bonnesplitterz player) is a veteran destruction player, who participated in lot of very competitive tournaments (blood tithe, london GT championship) and did good ranking with FREAKING MOONCLAN. I've seen him win against a skyborne slayers and a kharadron clown car (when both were very good) with little trouble. Laurie Hugget-Wilde, at third place with Sylvaneth, is the top sylvaneth player in baddice ranking.

The 4th player, Daniel Forde, is the 5th player in the baddice ranking, with best in chaos and blade of khorne. He finished third at the GW Gt final 2017 and the London AOS gt championnship, second at the Warchief GT2 and the Bobo tournament. He participated at 15 tournament since february 2017 and his WORST place in those is 13th. He won BOBO and BLACKOUT in 2017.

All of them finished higher than Tony Moore (12th),  a multi-tournament winner who was during a long time and last year the top player in the baddice ranking, the captain of the England AOS team and arguably one of the best player of age of sigmar.

If a tournament with those guys is not a "serious competitive" event, i wonder what are the criteria to be one.

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2 hours ago, Mark Williams said:

People keep going back to wanting to make this thread about, “People are complaining SC are bad and not doing well and should be doing better.” You all are missing the point of the thread over and over and over again.

Look, I’m genuinely surprised any list using castigators in such large volumes did well. I sincerely think they are a bad unit. My opinion is that the list we were talking about earlier did well in spite of them. I can mildly see some shenanigans with the anvils command ability and allowing them to double tap, but I think in general they are comparatively weak at what they do.

I think this person’s strategy was to bait opponents into bumbling into the evocators, then used command abilities to double tap them and leverage the heck out of them. I think this list proves what we have been saying for a while now, that evocators are unusually good for their points, and are basically the new spammable unit in the list.

 I question, not with ill intent, but with genuine curiosity, how every opponent this person faced could let themselves consistently be rolled over by someone with a one-note, obvious strategy. Many of the people I play regularly would be able to counter it pretty easily, so that confuses me and I’d like to know what happened in his games.

 I have no disagreement that evocators are crazy strong. I have no disagreement that Stormcast on the whole is in a comparatively good place. My concern is the title of this thread. I am concerned that the new book and the rules turned them int a one note army that from this point onwards will have competitive lists built around a single unit, in a book that has literally a dozen options. This makes them predictable, and easy to counter in the long run.

 

 

As that player I can say, your looking at it all askew.

I had 1 unit of evos and 1 unit of 3 Dracolines. 

The unit of 9 castigators captured objectives, killed hero's (9 shots hitting on 3s with -2 rend softens them up nicely) and in combat are pretty good if used right.

Not one of my opponents blundered into my evos. In fact in one game both evo and drac units were dead from Ironguts turn 2. I won because I used all the tricks I had didn't set my plan around a particular unit and took a balanced list, and when I needed it luck help secure these wins. 

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56 minutes ago, ledha said:

If a tournament with those guys is not a "serious competitive" event, i wonder what are the criteria to be one.

Effectively he won't allow the tournament to be a 'serious competitive' event because it would run counter to his narrative. That's why he's established the view point he has. 

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2 hours ago, CountryMou3e said:

Would you mind sharing a couple of examples of the tournament packs and the final results? It will be interesting to compare your tournament/meta experiences with other notable AoS 2 events this year. 

What was the name of the tournament shortly after the new edition dropped, before the Lens of Refraction errata? I recall that tournament having some actually powerful lists. It seems like some people quickly realized there were some serious outliers in terms of game balance (Grots doing 128 damage per hit, Kroak, Lens of Refraction, Ripperdactyls doing infinite attacks, etc.) and brought a lot of powerful lists around those mechanics.

Off the top of my head right now the best lists I'm seeing are DOK, Legion of Blood 3x VLOZD, Thunderquake Starhost, and the Bloodthirster bomb. The best lists are incredibly difficult to play around because they have multiple threats, great zone control, powerful focused fire, and great mobility. They are versatile and can adapt to face just about any army.

In the second tier I would put lists like Dracothions Tail, Gavriel + Evocators, Kroak, 3x GUO, Nagash, Anvilstrike, skeleton spam, and Idoneth. While still formidable, they are more limited strategically and easier to pull apart than the first tier lists. 

Third string lists are something like Flesheaterns, Tzeentch, Bonesplitterz, and Beastclaw; "gatekeepers" to competitive games, they're popular but not particularly strong. If you can't beat those common lists then your list isn't ready for tournament play.

1 hour ago, ledha said:

you realize the guy with the phoenix temple list is making top result with it consistently in every tournament he come across since a good time, the organizer of the BLACKOUT tournament and was a member of the english team at the 6th nation tournament of warhammer in 2012  ? Actually, he alone made the phoenix temple the army with the best win/loss ratio in the game right now, far beyond legion of nagash or DOK.  It's not a new and casual player at all, but a battle-hardened veteran.

I have never said they are not good players, but that they are playing soft lists, and thus I don't consider it to be a "serious competitive" event but more of a social one.

I have played against the Phoenix soup list a fair bit over the past 2 years, and I'm not impressed. Phoenixes do low damage and cant retreat + charge so they get tied down by typical wall units. After their support wizards are killed (which is not hard to do) they lose their +5 to save rolls the army falls apart quickly.  

Maybe I'm missing something, but I don't think it is an impressive army.

11 minutes ago, SwampHeart said:

Effectively he won't allow the tournament to be a 'serious competitive' event because it would run counter to his narrative. That's why he's established the view point he has. 

I'm open to having a discussion, but not if you continue to make baseless personal attacks against me. TGA is about friendly open discussion, not petty conspiratorial ad hominems.

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