Chances of a new battletome

[zilberfrid]

6 hours ago, Mark Williams said:

There's a handful of lists that are okay-ish. The best one is shootcast. The average stormcast list that isn't one of these lists is dog-******.

So you have the extremes of the army as a whole doing ****** poor, and a handful of very specific lists that are top table contenders. All the armies wash together in the end to get your 43% average.

If I don't use Gavriel, I'm basically a 2/5 army. With Gavriel I can win 3/5 pretty consistently. If I want to go any higher than that I basically have to swap to anvils and longstrikes. Then I can go 4/5.

That's where the army is right now. Options are limited. The average army without the gimmicks is real bad compared to other competitive armies.

Win rates of 50% indicate good balance in the whole game. Your numbers indicate win rates of 50%.

What is wrong?

[Turragor]

7 minutes ago, zilberfrid said:

Win rates of 50% indicate good balance in the whole game. Your numbers indicate win rates of 50%.

What is wrong?

I think ppl try to shoehorn the win ratio in an example of what's wrong with SC but that's not really what's wrong.

It's not even the range of lists that is a problem:

• I've been tooting the Starcast horn most of last year (and Kroak makes it pretty tasty now).
• Shootcast is always the recommended choice by 90% of SC players.
• A lot of desolators and ballista can be a good build.
• Dracolines are good. Gavriel can still surprise.

There are tweaks on each, maybe not enough to constitute another "option".  Still, these usually give good results to good SC players. Some better performing armies have fewer choices.

I think the main source of bad feeling is the deadweight in the tome in terms of warscroll options. I read some players of other factions complain that unit X or maybe unit X, Y and Z are no use.

SC need extra letters in the alphabet to write similar summaries

 

[zilberfrid]

32 minutes ago, Turragor said:

I think ppl try to shoehorn the win ratio in an example of what's wrong with SC but that's not really what's wrong.

It's not even the range of lists that is a problem:

• I've been tooting the Starcast horn most of last year (and Kroak makes it pretty tasty now).
• Shootcast is always the recommended choice by 90% of SC players.
• A lot of desolators and ballista can be a good build.
• Dracolines are good. Gavriel can still surprise.

There are tweaks on each, maybe not enough to constitute another "option".  Still, these usually give good results to good SC players. Some better performing armies have fewer choices.

I think the main source of bad feeling is the deadweight in the tome in terms of warscroll options. I read some players of other factions complain that unit X or maybe unit X, Y and Z are no use.

SC need extra letters in the alphabet to write similar summaries

I think Cities and Stormcast have a similar amount and percenage of dead warscrolls, but Stormcast is a lot better in internal synergy, freedom of realm and batallions.

[readercolin]

7 hours ago, zilberfrid said:

I think Cities and Stormcast have a similar amount and percenage of dead warscrolls, but Stormcast is a lot better in internal synergy, freedom of realm and batallions.

Here you are clearly wrong.  Remember, Cities has the dead weight of its own poor warscrolls AND the dead weight of all the bad stormcast warscrolls.

/s

[zilberfrid]

39 minutes ago, readercolin said:

Here you are clearly wrong.  Remember, Cities has the dead weight of its own poor warscrolls AND the dead weight of all the bad stormcast warscrolls.

/s

I don't consider Stormcast part of Cities.

I do consider Sylvaneth part of Livibg City and Kharadron part of Tempest's eye, because I am a hypocrite.

Edited April 2, 2020 by zilberfrid

[armisael]

“Enjoyed the preview? Thirsty for more? Well, good news: we have another Warhammer Preview in the chamber for you – mark your calendar for the 18th of April and prepare for even more awesome. We’ll see you there!“

 

Stormcast new chamber?

[Dukeus]

Could be :). Are there any hints what a new chamber could look like? Iam not familiar with the lore at all. 

[The World Tree]

Nooo. It is about a bullet being ready in the chamber of a gun. It is not a hint at Stormcast

[wayniac]

On 4/1/2020 at 8:13 PM, Mark Williams said:

That's where the army is right now. Options are limited. The average army without the gimmicks is real bad compared to other competitive armies.

You say this as though nearly every army doesn't suffer from the same thing in competitive play. It may not be as detrimental with some compared to others but every army only the gimmicks are worth considering when you decide to focus on competitive above all else.

It's been the major problem with competitive play forever: 80% of your options are garbage and may as well not even exist because it's not the cheesy/gimmicky choice.   It's the price you pay for breaking everything down to numbers. 

Edited April 26, 2020 by wayniac

[The World Tree]

1 hour ago, wayniac said:

You say this as though nearly every army doesn't suffer from the same thing in competitive play. It may not be as detrimental with some compared to others but every army only the gimmicks are worth considering when you decide to focus on competitive above all else.

It's been the major problem with competitive play forever: 80% of your options are garbage and may as well not even exist because it's not the cheesy/gimmicky choice.   It's the price you pay for breaking everything down to numbers. 

This is simply not accurate. 

[wayniac]

1 hour ago, The World Tree said:

This is simply not accurate. 

How so?  I've seen for years now where most of a book is deemed to be "garbage" because it's not the most OP option, therefore meaning it will never get seen in competitive play except by people who want to try to dark horse things.  I've seen this for over 15 years now across Warhammer and most other tabletop games (usually to a lesser extent than Warhammer due to balancing).  Half of the options in AOS you're told to skip out on and take whatever the FOTM netlist is if you ask for what works and what doesn't.

Edited April 26, 2020 by wayniac

[Mark Williams]

@wayniac

I think the difference comes down to the extreme ends of the spectrum that Stormcast presents. If you built a parabolic curve representing the performance of different variations of the army lists, the “hump” of the curve would lean mostly towards the “bad” side of the chart, with a small sliver extending out towards the “good” side. I’d ideally like to see a more balanced curve. I think it’s accurate to say that quite a few armies out there have a much more balanced distribution, or in layman’s terms, they are more forgiving to play.