My experience providing GHB feedback to the design team and my thoughts on GHB2019

[RuneBrush]

2 hours ago, Dead Scribe said:

Ben Johnson is the AOS lead designer.  I would imagine that means he has a hand in writing rules, unless lead designer does something that completely confounds me.

Ben is (as far as I'm aware) the Lead Product Developer (it even says Product Developer on his Twitter profile).  I've never seen anything that has state he's Lead Designer - I believe that mantle belongs the venerable Jervis Johnson.

[whispersofblood]

1 hour ago, BobbyB said:

do you have a link then? because his twitter bio says product developer for a start

Why would you consider the rules as not part of the product?

[BobbyB]

41 minutes ago, whispersofblood said:

Why would you consider the rules as not part of the product?

Sorry where did I say that?

[Dead Scribe]

1 hour ago, RuneBrush said:

Ben is (as far as I'm aware) the Lead Product Developer (it even says Product Developer on his Twitter profile).  I've never seen anything that has state he's Lead Designer - I believe that mantle belongs the venerable Jervis Johnson.

I can see where that causes confusion.  To me a product developer and a product designer are the same basic thing.  But I'll chalk that up to my understanding of the words vs across the ocean understanding of the words.

[stratigo]

On 6/18/2019 at 9:17 PM, Dead Scribe said:

I think tiers are very useful, and I find the graphic above to be fairly accurate in terms of difficulty level for armies.  Thats what tiers are.  The difficulty level you can expect to face if you and your opponent are both playing as hard of armies as you can construct with the rules.

I'd definitely say Daughters (my army), FEC, and Skaven are super easy mode.  Thats why I play them.  Because they give me the best shot at winning tournaments.  

I'd definitely say the trash tier that they have identified is indeed a non playable tier of forces that players should avoid at all costs unless they are hobbyists that like painting those models.  If they like the game at all, they need to avoid the trash tier, and I'd say the "D" tier as well unless they just really like a hard challenge.  Some people do so thats good on them, but people caught unaware that find models in the trash or D tier are usually angry a month or so into starting because they find out that their armies are grossly outmatched.

Matched play they say is about balanced games, but I haven't found that to be true, and I have accepted that and embraced that and collect whatever they have decided to make super powerful so that I can enjoy my tournament experience.  I think matched play is really more about a structure to build powerful forces within, and I think thats why the initial AOS failed so hard, it had no points to build forces within.  Balance I think in this game is a pipe dream and I think the sooner people accept that and learn to love that, the better off they will be.

 

There’s an issue I find in this view in that a person can buy an Army, but then find a change shortly making them bad for years. And then the answer becomes, buy a new army or don’t play. But that is essentially “be upper middle class or don’t play”, and I am deeply ambivalent to even more economic gatekeeping in my hobby

[Dead Scribe]

18 minutes ago, stratigo said:

There’s an issue I find in this view in that a person can buy an Army, but then find a change shortly making them bad for years. And then the answer becomes, buy a new army or don’t play. But that is essentially “be upper middle class or don’t play”, and I am deeply ambivalent to even more economic gatekeeping in my hobby

I think your assessment is dead accurate.  That is the model at play in AOS.  If you want to be competitive you have to be willing to churn and burn your collection.  Any other route means you have to be ok with and embrace losing because of army disparity and be ok with that.  That is also the biggest complaint that I personally hear when we have recruitment.  New players don't want to churn and  burn, or they jump in and after the first GHB kneecaps them they sell their collection and leave for good because they don't want to keep that cycle.

I started about two and a half years ago and of our initial group which was about 18 players , there are only four original members remaining because the others got out because they didn't want to have to buy new armies.

[Fulkes]

1 hour ago, Dead Scribe said:

I think your assessment is dead accurate.  That is the model at play in AOS.  If you want to be competitive you have to be willing to churn and burn your collection.  Any other route means you have to be ok with and embrace losing because of army disparity and be ok with that.  That is also the biggest complaint that I personally hear when we have recruitment.  New players don't want to churn and  burn, or they jump in and after the first GHB kneecaps them they sell their collection and leave for good because they don't want to keep that cycle.

I started about two and a half years ago and of our initial group which was about 18 players , there are only four original members remaining because the others got out because they didn't want to have to buy new armies.

As much as I hate to say it, but this is an issue that Warhammer of all flavors has this problem as far back as I can remember, only the stuff that's at the top of the heap can get smacked off the pile a lot sooner than it used to be. 

Frankly I like the more frequent shake ups because it means stuff that's broken doesn't stay broken forever, but at the same time I can understand why many find it frustrating if they feel a need to chase the current hotness in the meta.

[PlasticCraic]

On 6/18/2019 at 6:22 AM, swarmofseals said:

So why not give these factions some aggressive buffs to get them back in the game while they wait for a tome? To me, that was the key question. There is a clear answer though: whiplash. Let's say GW is planning on updating an army within the next year.  In order to make that army relevant in 2019, the points on many warscrolls might need to be cut by 25-50%. People will be stoked to play that faction. Now everything is way cheaper and actually decent! Of course, you'll need to buy a lot more models to fill out your army list now.

Skip ahead a year, and now the battletome is dropping along with updated warscrolls and a suite of powerful new abilities. Suddenly the whole army needs to be dramatically re-pointed again, only this time the point values are going to be going way, way up. Suddenly all of those models that you just bought can't be put on the table at the same time anymore. Yes, you have access to a lot of new abilities but now your 2k army is a 3k army and you need to make drastic cuts. 

If that happened, players would be LIVID. And justifiably so. 

Excellent post @swarmofseals, and thanks for sharing your experiences.  It's a great insight.

That concept of whiplash is an interesting point, I'm not sure I agree though.  By not changing points sufficiently, GW essentially make armies obsolete and unusuable pretty quickly.  People don't exactly love that.  You don't have to look far to find people who feel like they had their pockets picked with BCR for example. 

It's a repeated pattern: pump an army up, people buy in, army gets left behind, people buy a new army.  If GW were deliberately trying to suppress sales and keep people playing the same armies that would make a lot of their decisions seem very strange, and would be illogical commercially.  You definitely get people who jump off the carousel the first time they get burned in that way, but there are others jumping on board every week, and a decent percentage stay on board for the long haul (whether they are frustrated by that cycle or not).

There's been a lot of talk about Gordrakk still being 100 points overcosted for example.  What's the worst that could happen?  People end up with max 10 more Ardboyz in their collection?  I think most people would take that in a heartbeat, if it means they can get some use from an army that has been gathering dust (and there are plenty of Ironjawz armies out there gathering dust, believe me!). 

If and when the Ironjawz book comes out, you just end up with options.  Today I'll run the Ardboyz heavy list and use all 40 that I own, tomorrow I'll go with a more balanced army and sub some out for Gore Gruntas.  One "spare" unit in your collection to rotate in and out will be no great hardship, and certainly less likely to antagonise the customer base than selling them an army and letting it rot.  So I find it difficult to believe that discouraging more sales out of benevolence is the true motivation behind this business model.

Some people would complain about whiplash.  More already complain about feeling compelled to churn their armies, because they are not supported and properly balanced.  A few of those people quit.  More of them just suck it up and buy a new army.  And so the cycle continues.

TBH I actually like the cycle of dynamic imbalance, I think it's the only way to run the game and keep it fresh and alive - I just wish the armies I loved weren't so consistently down for so long!  I personally think it's the right system, not always implemented the way I would have done it.

[swarmofseals]

14 minutes ago, PlasticCraic said:

By not changing points sufficiently, GW essentially make armies obsolete and unusuable pretty quickly.  People don't exactly love that.  You don't have to look far to find people who feel like they had their pockets picked with BCR for example. 

...

There's been a lot of talk about Gordrakk still being 100 points overcosted for example.  What's the worst that could happen?  People end up with max 10 more Ardboyz in their collection?  I think most people would take that in a heartbeat, if it means they can get some use from an army that has been gathering dust (and there are plenty of Ironjawz armies out there gathering dust, believe me!). 

...

If and when the Ironjawz book comes out, you just end up with options.  Today I'll run the Ardboyz heavy list and use all 40 that I own, tomorrow I'll go with a more balanced army and sub some out for Gore Gruntas.  One "spare" unit in your collection to rotate in and out will be no great hardship, and certainly less likely to antagonise the customer base than selling them an army and letting it rot. 

...

More already complain about feeling compelled to churn their armies, because they are not supported and properly balanced

 

I'm going to break my response down into three main parts: the changes necessary to achieve competitive viability, some thoughts about Ironjawz specifically, and the question of obsolescence and churn.

I think you are underestimating what would be needed to make some of these armies viable. Simply dropping Gordrakk by 100 points would not be enough to make Ironjawz good, although Ironjawz are a weird case that I will discuss further below. There are many factions out there that would need massive points drops to become viable. It wouldn't be a question of buying an extra 10 'Ardboys. You are absolutely right though that enfranchised players would likely not be bothered by picking up a few more boxes to fill out their arm only to find out that they don't need those boxes when the battletome hits. I'm more concerned about new players just buying into the army. Some factions might be able to support the idea of "OK, well now that the points have gone up I have options" but other factions are non-competitive in part because they are currently really narrow. In those cases you might just end up with twice as many models of the same type as you need, and half end up rotting on the shelf without really providing any versatility. 

Ironjawz in particular are a weird example. There are definitely some armies out there that you could push very far and not really need to worry about them becoming overpowered, but Ironjawz are not one of them. I think if you push Ironjawz too far you risk them becoming DoK. DoK is a real anomaly in the metagame. Most factions that are good are fast and/or have a lot of reach. DoK isn't. DoK is good because it's very, very efficient. Ironjawz are pretty much like that too. They have a great buff game, a little magic, and not that much else. They aren't slow, but aren't really fast either (just like DoK). The problem is that the frame that the buffs go on isn't that efficient.  A mediocre base with great buffs ends up somewhat less mediocre, while a great base with great buffs ends up insane. Figuring out where the sweet spot is for Ironjawz is really hard.

Lastly, I disagree with you a bit on the question of obsolescence and churn. There definitely are examples of armies that GW has abandoned to actual obsolescence, at least at a tournament competitive level... but there are fewer than you think. Of all of the armies with modern battletomes, only BCR, KO, and Gloomspite are currently below 45% win rate, and Gloomspite is just barely below that mark. I'd also argue that Gloomspite is a weird case in that it's actually quite a difficult army to build and play for tournament success and it's numbers are likely dragged down by that. BCR and KO, however, are clearly not functional. And all of this is from a metagame that has featured several armies that have win rates well above the generally acceptable range. There are three factions with win rates over 60% and and four more between 55% and 60% (not counting factions that have a really tiny sample size). Nerfs to the overperforming factions should help everyone else out significantly. 

I think that a big part of the problem is that many players aren't just looking for their faction to be competitive. They are looking for their faction to be dominant. It shocks me how many people claim that their faction is "terrible" or "unplayable" when their faction has a win rate that is close to 50%. If you feel the need to abandon your army and chase a different one every time there is a faction posting a win rate over 55-60%, then yeah you are going to have a lot of churn and feel pretty unhappy. No matter how good GW gets at balancing the game, there are going to be times where factions push into that range. 

I hate to see this, but I also see a lot of mediocre artists blaming their tools. I see so many posts around the internet that take the form of "How can I ever beat Faction X?" citing an example of a game they lost where typically several of the following were true:

• Their own build was poorly thought out
• They made major play errors
• Their opponents rolled well above average
• The actual score was extremely close but they feel bad because they lost most of their army over the course of the battle

And yet the single example blows up into a rant about how their own faction is unplayable and this other faction is grossly overpowered. 

I think people chronically under-estimate the amount of skill in AoS. Yes there is a lot of luck in the game, but that is true in a lot of games that are also very skill intensive. There are so many decisions in each game of AoS. Precise movements and correct analysis of risk can and will pay huge dividends over time. It takes practice to get really proficient with a faction, and if you are constantly switching armies to chase the best win % you are never going to reach that necessary level of practice. I'd see this all the time in Magic: The Gathering -- people chasing the best deck without ever spending enough time with their current deck to maximize it. 

That got a bit longer that I was anticipating, but suffice to say that I think if a person feels compelled to abandon their army to pick up a new one because the new one is getting more buzz, that is really the player's problem (in most cases) and not GW's. KO and BCR are obvious exceptions, but I think both of those are kindof "perfect storm" situations (I'd be happy to expand on that if people are interested). 

[Dead Scribe]

I think that a big part of the problem is that many players aren't just looking for their faction to be competitive. They are looking for their faction to be dominant. It shocks me how many people claim that their faction is "terrible" or "unplayable" when their faction has a win rate that is close to 50%.

Many players, I won't use the word most, even though from my experience it is most, are after a dominant faction yes.  The honest ones will tell you up front that is the case.   I will never play a list that is not considered "dominant", "AAA", or "broken" because those are the tools  needed to win tournaments.  We are a binary species in the tournament hall lol, either its really good for its points, or its unplayable.  Thats where you are seeing a lot of people complaining their list is unplayable.  Because while it may have a 50% win rate, it is unplayable... *in the tournament hall at the competitive level*.

The problem with a lot of posts and discussions of the game is there is 99.9% never any context to someone telling someone else everything is fine, or everything is broken.  To have real meaningful context, we'd need an example game to watch for the person to point out why they think what they think and show examples of gameplay where that was the case.  That will 99.9% never happen barring reviewing video battle reports and discussing those.

[prochuvi]

1 hour ago, swarmofseals said:

think that a big part of the problem is that many players aren't just looking for their faction to be competitive. They are looking for their faction to be dominant. It shocks me how many people claim that their faction is "terrible" or "unplayable" when their faction has a win rate that is close to 50%. If you feel the need to abandon your army and chase a different one every time there is a faction posting a win rate over 55-60%, then yeah you are going to have a lot of churn and feel pretty unhappy. No matter how good GW gets at balancing the game, there are going to be times where factions push into that range. 

Dispossesed players disagree with this.

I am a new player(never played to fantasy) and started 3 years ago with dispossesed.

I dont want dispossesed at dok,skavens,fec levels.im happy with order draconis or phoenyx levels

[PlasticCraic]

Thanks for the detailed response @swarmofseals

4 hours ago, swarmofseals said:

I'm more concerned about new players just buying into the army. Some factions might be able to support the idea of "OK, well now that the points have gone up I have options" but other factions are non-competitive in part because they are currently really narrow. In those cases you might just end up with twice as many models of the same type as you need, and half end up rotting on the shelf without really providing any versatility. 

Even in that scenario I don’t see how that would be worse than having whole armies sitting there unused, which is the case currently.  This is  something I touch on more below.

4 hours ago, swarmofseals said:

Ironjawz in particular are a weird example. There are definitely some armies out there that you could push very far and not really need to worry about them becoming overpowered, but Ironjawz are not one of them. I think if you push Ironjawz too far you risk them becoming DoK. DoK is a real anomaly in the metagame. Most factions that are good are fast and/or have a lot of reach. DoK isn't. DoK is good because it's very, very efficient. Ironjawz are pretty much like that too. They have a great buff game, a little magic, and not that much else. They aren't slow, but aren't really fast either (just like DoK). The problem is that the frame that the buffs go on isn't that efficient.  A mediocre base with great buffs ends up somewhat less mediocre, while a great base with great buffs ends up insane. Figuring out where the sweet spot is for Ironjawz is really hard.

Bit of a sidetrack here - and I'm probably preaching to the choir - but I would argue that the concept of mobility is just as important as straight-line speed.  Things like the Gorefist can be fast, but they are also predictable in that they move across the board towards you, and are therefore easily countered.  DOK benefit from deep striking through Khinerai (low-key one of the most important units in the army in my opinion), which has a huge impact on the game as it is actually played (especially since they have the 4+ after move).  Just as importantly they also have access to run and charge and retreat and charge, both incredibly powerful tools.  Not being bogged down is a huge factor in mobility, and it wins you matches.  Since we’re discussing Ironjawz I can tell you that when the Fungoid Cave Shaman could make a Maw Krusha retreat and charge, that combo won me a lot of games.

So personally I like to think about mobility - fast or slow is part of that, but not the whole picture (and FWIW I'm pretty excited about what Hand of Gork means for Ironjawz)!

4 hours ago, swarmofseals said:

I'd also argue that Gloomspite is a weird case in that it's actually quite a difficult army to build and play for tournament success and it's numbers are likely dragged down by that. 

I’d agree with that too actually.  I think your earlier point about the most popular builds (Troggoth and Squig heavy) being less optimal than Grot-heavy builds is bang on the money.  If we have a way of tracking the win rate for Grot-heavy builds, I’d bet good money that it would be much higher than what we are currently seeing.

4 hours ago, swarmofseals said:

BCR and KO, however, are clearly not functional. And all of this is from a metagame that has featured several armies that have win rates well above the generally acceptable range. There are three factions with win rates over 60% and and four more between 55% and 60% (not counting factions that have a really tiny sample size). Nerfs to the overperforming factions should help everyone else out significantly. 

I do think that it’s important to distinguish between armies being left behind and factions being left behind.  Let’s look at what was the most feared and respected armies were this time last year: Changehost and Vanguard Wing.  When was the last time you saw either of those around the top tables, or at all? 

Tzeentch I think is actually in a decent place right now, but anyone running Changehost has probably had to buy a whole lot of new models to keep going.  They aren’t used very often, but when they do, they do just fine (which would be consistent with them being a popular choice for players following the flavour of the month when they were top dogs, and those players moving on to other armies with more buzz when their existing dominant builds were nerfed).  Enlightened, which were rarely seen previously, became their powerhouse unit when BOC dropped with an improved warscroll and Skyfires have long been out of favour.

In the case of Stormcast, the new book essentially ripped up the existing playbook and gave them a whole new set of tools to play with.  You can look at the stats and (quite correctly) point out that SCE are in reasonable shape, sitting (just) above 45% win rate.  But it’s quite naïve to say that the faction is ok, therefore people’s armies have not been left behind.  All of those blocks of 30 Liberators are sitting looking pretty on display shelves as we speak.

To use a third example, look at Fyreslayers.  Not a faction that has been left behind by any stretch – I’d personally put them right up near the top, and I’m sure their stats will bear that out once people have all their Hearthguard painted up.  But that’s the point – even long term FS players have a lot of painting to do, because those 90 Vulkites aren’t the power pick any longer.

My point is that even if the faction is sitting in the healthy 45% - 55% band, competitive armies within those factions (and therefore large swathes of people’s collections) are left behind with more regularity.  And people live with it, so for that reason I don’t agree that whiplash would be any worse than that in practice. 

4 hours ago, swarmofseals said:

If you feel the need to abandon your army and chase a different one every time there is a faction posting a win rate over 55-60%, then yeah you are going to have a lot of churn and feel pretty unhappy. No matter how good GW gets at balancing the game, there are going to be times where factions push into that range. 

I’m actually not saying that churn automatically makes people unhappy.  Almost the opposite in fact – a lot of people proactively embrace churn, others learn to live with it.  Either way it is not a hobby-ruining experience for the majority of people. 

My proposition is that army strength is cyclical, churn does happen, and people are telling us with their actions that they broadly ok with that. 

The point therefore being that if people can live with that, and I believe my examples above illustrate that they can, we could also (as a community) live with the whiplash effect you described.

So it’s a matter of opinion (and yours obviously carries a lot of weight), but I personally wouldn’t judge any potential whiplash effect to be sufficient reason to prevent bolder moves in points reductions.  That’s my premise in a nutshell, for reasons outlined above.

And I'm not for a moment suggesting that the goal of those points adjustments should be to converge on a win rate of exactly 50% - that will never happen, and as you point out some people will still moan because they actually want easy mode.  But I think a band of 45% – 55% is a pretty good goal. 

There will obviously be times when armies moves outside of that – it’s not a perfect world – but I think the goal of points and rules updates should be to move those outliers back into that band.

You won’t always hit the nail on the head, but I think it would make for a commendable goal.

Edited June 21, 2019 by PlasticCraic

[JackStreicher]

5 hours ago, swarmofseals said:

It shocks me how many people claim that their faction is "terrible" or "unplayable" when their faction has a win rate that is close to 50%. 

I disagree on that.

The best example remains Idoneth:

it‘s 4 Unit’s that are being used to achieve that high win rate. 4 Units and one possible army build don‘t represent a faction, so I think that complaining in this case is absolutely warranted.

[Fulkes]

After listening to the Warhammer Weekly crew talk abouy the GHB, I feelmlike some of the reactions could be putting the cart before the horse. We still have a FAQ coming, and with it could come some changes that address things points can't.

Points have limits in how they can reasonably affect the game, but eratta has more room to shift.

[Sleboda]

7 hours ago, PlasticCraic said:

It's a repeated pattern: pump an army up, people buy in, army gets left behind, people buy a new army

In all my years of Warhammer, I've never bought an army based on its ability to help me win games, at least not as the purchase motivator (and I've owned a minimum of 1000 points of every fantasy army (with some going over 20,000 points) and at least half of all the 40K armies ... not to mention the sideline games).

It's always, always, always "Man, those are some sweeeeeeet models that I want to paint" followed by "and the background info is cool too" and lastly "plus, they have a great set of rules."

This includes a 15 year stretch where I regularly attended competitive events with the goal of winning them. Even now I still go to events and try to win them, but not as often or with as much zeal. I just can't imagine participating in this hobby for only the wins/rules/self-measuring.

So many games are so much more focused on, and suited to, "imma win, brah" than Warhammer is. Square peg, meet round hole.

[RuneBrush]

6 hours ago, swarmofseals said:

I think that a big part of the problem is that many players aren't just looking for their faction to be competitive. They are looking for their faction to be dominant. It shocks me how many people claim that their faction is "terrible" or "unplayable" when their faction has a win rate that is close to 50%.

Can't agree with this more, but I think I'd go one step further.  Hopefully this doesn't come across as too controversial, but there is a portion of gamers out there who let themselves be convinced that they're not going to like an army because it isn't any good* - and by not any good I mean not competitive.

As an example of this, I've a friend who recently posted on a couple of Facebook groups that he was looking to build a new army (this will be his third) and a list of options that he fancied doing in the form of a poll.  The vast majority of the responses were telling him not to go for specific factions and listing the problems for it.  Now he'd made it clear that he was doing this for his own enjoyment not for winning tournaments (in fact many of the options weren't very often seen armies) and the poll results bore no resemblance to the comments, but it's a good example of how somebody is immediately steered down the route of focusing on what's competitive/dominant.

I'm sure we've all heard it "don't go for that model because they're rubbish in game".  This also becomes a self-deprecating issue too - that new player that's been swayed as to what's they'll enjoy promoted the same views onto the next one.  This means that when GW rolls out something to identify the problem (normally points, sometimes errata), people feel really aggrieved that their previously dominating army is now merely "competitive".

* I will quickly add that I don't think this applies to any of us TGA!  This comment is meant more from the aspect of social media

[Fulkes]

5 hours ago, RuneBrush said:

Can't agree with this more, but I think I'd go one step further.  Hopefully this doesn't come across as too controversial, but there is a portion of gamers out there who let themselves be convinced that they're not going to like an army because it isn't any good* - and by not any good I mean not competitive.

As an example of this, I've a friend who recently posted on a couple of Facebook groups that he was looking to build a new army (this will be his third) and a list of options that he fancied doing in the form of a poll.  The vast majority of the responses were telling him not to go for specific factions and listing the problems for it.  Now he'd made it clear that he was doing this for his own enjoyment not for winning tournaments (in fact many of the options weren't very often seen armies) and the poll results bore no resemblance to the comments, but it's a good example of how somebody is immediately steered down the route of focusing on what's competitive/dominant.

I'm sure we've all heard it "don't go for that model because they're rubbish in game".  This also becomes a self-deprecating issue too - that new player that's been swayed as to what's they'll enjoy promoted the same views onto the next one.  This means that when GW rolls out something to identify the problem (normally points, sometimes errata), people feel really aggrieved that their previously dominating army is now merely "competitive".

* I will quickly add that I don't think this applies to any of us TGA!  This comment is meant more from the aspect of social media

I've seen this a lot myself. If I go out somewhere asking what models I need to get first for Bonesplitterz the first thing most people will tell me is to not play Bonesplitterz rather than answer the question.

[Forrix]

13 hours ago, swarmofseals said:

I think that a big part of the problem is that many players aren't just looking for their faction to be competitive. They are looking for their faction to be dominant. It shocks me how many people claim that their faction is "terrible" or "unplayable" when their faction has a win rate that is close to 50%.

I'm going to very strongly disagree with that. I think a lot of players are looking to have games that they feel they can at least participate in.  If I take Nurgle and play 2 games, one against LON and one against Nighthaunt I'll walk away with a 50% percent win rate and a 0% fun rate.

[MrZakalwe]

3 minutes ago, Forrix said:

I'm going to very strongly disagree with that. I think a lot of players are looking to have games that they feel they can at least participate in.  If I take Nurgle and play 2 games, one against LON and one against Nighthaunt I'll walk away with a 50% percent win rate and a 0% fun rate.

Yeah taken a break from the Skaven to run (compendium Highborn based) Mixed Aelves for a slow grow (playing Skaven into a bunch of new players would not be fun for anybody) and I'm really feeling it already. 

The advantage the other side has is massive.

Weirdly I'm having more fun than I was with my Skaven - pulled a win last night and it felt great in a way it wouldn't have as Skaven.

Edited June 21, 2019 by MrZakalwe

[Qrow]

11 minutes ago, Forrix said:

I'm going to very strongly disagree with that. I think a lot of players are looking to have games that they feel they can at least participate in.  If I take Nurgle and play 2 games, one against LON and one against Nighthaunt I'll walk away with a 50% percent win rate and a 0% fun rate.

My local scene is smallish, maybe a dozen people on the best of days. If I got to a bigger city there are heaps more, but that would require an around 4 hour round trip. So my actual local scene is fairly split, but the main AoS players are the type to by whatever the newest, most OP army is (and complain everytime that they have to by new models to stay competative, instead of just playing what they like).

I don't want my armies to dominate, both of my main armies are in the lower ranks and I haven't even played the FS army because I want to play it painted. I do, however, want to be able play whichever army I want and not get demolished before we even get models on the table. If I take nighthaunt against skaven, then my 200+ point heroes will be blown off the table before I get a chance to even use them, if it isnt them it is whatever heroes I do take. It isn't  fun.

So I totally get where you are coming from, I don't want to dominate others, I just want to know I had a chance to begin with.

Edited June 21, 2019 by Qrow

[Dead Scribe]

51 minutes ago, Fulkes said:

I've seen this a lot myself. If I go out somewhere asking what models I need to get first for Bonesplitterz the first thing most people will tell me is to not play Bonesplitterz rather than answer the question.

Thats likely because the default conversation setting is competitive tournament context, at least online.

I just want to know I had a chance to begin with.

Without chasing the meta and being smart about the army you buy and play from season to season, this is not possible by default without heavy social engineering with your opponent to get them to not play as hard as they can, which many people are heavily opposed to doing.

Edited June 21, 2019 by Dead Scribe

[Fulkes]

18 minutes ago, Dead Scribe said:

Thats likely because the default conversation setting is competitive tournament context, at least online.

Very true, which is a problem in and of itself. Even when people make a point that they aren't looking for the most competetive army or most competetive build the internet still tries to redirect the story that way.

Listening is not the strong suit of the internet.

[tripchimeras]

1 hour ago, Fulkes said:

Very true, which is a problem in and of itself. Even when people make a point that they aren't looking for the most competetive army or most competetive build the internet still tries to redirect the story that way.

Listening is not the strong suit of the internet.

 

I agree that a lot of people asking questions like this just want assurances what they are getting isn't going to make for completely joyless games, but the answer to those questions is entirely contingent on how good their opponents are at the game in combination with how competitive their opponents' lists are, something they probably don't even know the answer to.  I'm not saying I don't disagree that we are all far too ready to just focus on competitive sometimes, but it can be hard to know what the balance is where you are guiding someone away from doing something they will be completely disappointed with, while simultaneously not pushing them down a path that will lead them towards perpetual meta chasing.  The "just take whatever you want" answer is not what people are looking to hear when they post a question of this sort online.

[whispersofblood]

2 hours ago, Forrix said:

I'm going to very strongly disagree with that. I think a lot of players are looking to have games that they feel they can at least participate in.  If I take Nurgle and play 2 games, one against LON and one against Nighthaunt I'll walk away with a 50% percent win rate and a 0% fun rate.

This is a fundamental problem I have with LLV's stats on the honest wargamer. If win percentage is the measure of a faction's quality how are we not measuring the quality of those wins. 

Because regardless of what you may say there is a difference between a faction that closely loses 55% of its games, and a faction that has no chance of victory in 55% of its games qualitatively. 

If for example we find out that FEC is winning most of its games by between 2-5 points. Regardless of how it might feel, small point increases might actually do the job AND the faction keeps all its interesting mechanisms.

[Forrix]

14 minutes ago, whispersofblood said:

This is a fundamental problem I have with LLV's stats on the honest wargamer. If win percentage is the measure of a faction's quality how are we not measuring the quality of those wins. 

Because regardless of what you may say there is a difference between a faction that closely loses 55% of its games, and a faction that has no chance of victory in 55% of its games qualitatively. 

If for example we find out that FEC is winning most of its games by between 2-5 points. Regardless of how it might feel, small point increases might actually do the job AND the faction keeps all its interesting mechanisms.

In all fairness to LLV he does often state that his stats should be taken with a grain of salt and him and Rob tend to dive into their meaning more. That said, I've noticed some players do like to just point to win rate as an end all or an excuse to ignore a faction's issues.