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Jack Armstrong

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Posts posted by Jack Armstrong

    Playtesting - an advantage or disadvantage for competitive play?

    in Age of Sigmar Discussions

    Posted

    Some interesting points Mr Charisma (sorry not sure of your name).

    The point about prior knowledge is only an applicable advantage if you can act on it.  I think your point about having models ready is probably very valid as we could anticipate the strong build painted and ready for release.  Then it becomes more of an advantage based on how similar the 'new build' is to the old book one.  For example Tz new Changehost is very similar model set to previous book one, any new releases we only access at the same time.  Trying to think of a book where something new became good, maybe Cities is best example (I had 18 Demi's painted and ready!!).

    I was using the example of winning a tournament as it was the easiest 'stat' I could get without any specific knowledge or tool (or time) to trawl through results.  The best data would be if we could find out average game performance variance over books with prior knowledge of with the variable of how long the books been out.  If anyone could run that data it would be great and I would be really interested to see.

    Playtesting - an advantage or disadvantage for competitive play?

    in Age of Sigmar Discussions

    Posted

    So with some chat recently about playtester advantage I wanted to do a bit more analysis.  I personally think it's a disadvantage (take LRL, I playtested them a long time ago and not against anything in the current 'meta' and had to get the book back out last week to remember what any of the scrolls/combos are).  I also don’t play many practice games in the current ‘meta’ as lots of my theory and actual games are in a meta 6-12 months forward from now.  I appreciate that some people think that it’s an advantage though and without breaking NDA’s it’s hard to have a full and open discussion about it.

    Instead I thought I would have a look at statistics.  Personally, the first book I tested was Blades of Khorne and pre that in AoS I had attended 18 events with an average placing of 2.77 (including Masters/6N which isn’t on Bad Dice).  Post Blades (March 2019) I have attended 7 events with an average placing of 3 – so technically I have got worse although I am not sure it would be viewed as statistically significant.  (I attended one team tournament in March 2019 with a placing of 53rd which would have skewed either stat so hugely I just discounted it)

    Hopefully from that data you can see that my own performance hasn’t statistically changed with Playtesting.

    I’ve then pulled a list from Bad Dice Rankings of the last 49 tournaments.  Of them the following Playtesters won:

    Ben Curry – DoK (March 2020) - released Feb 2018

    Tom Mawdsley – Cities (Nov 2019) - released Oct 2019

    James Tinsdale – Slannesh (Sept 2019) released April 2018

    Tom Mawdsley – LoG (Aug 2019) released May 2019

    James Tinsdale – Deepkin (Aug 2019) released April 2018

    James Tinsdale – Deepkin (June 2019) released April 2018

    Les Martin – Deepkin (May 2019) released April 2018

    Jack Armstrong – DoK (May 2019)  released Feb 2018

    Jack Armstrong – DoK (April 2019)  released Feb 2018

    James Tinsdale – Nighthaunt (April 2019) released June 2018

    James Tinsdale – Deepkin (March 2019) released April 2018

    James Tinsdale – Deepkin (Feb 2019) released April 2018

    If someone wants to go back further you’re more than welcome, I ran out of energy.  If we look at what people have won with they are all books that have been out for a long time before the event.  The only one that was relatively new was Tom with Cities (released 5th October).  Tom was however very new to the playtesting team and hadn’t had anything to do with that book.  I'm not trying to discount a statistic that goes counter to my narrative, I'm just trying to add some context that people may not appreciate.

    The other data we could run is looking at top 3 placings but anecdotally I can’t think of any events where someone who playtested a book has taken it in the first couple of months and rinsed the tournament scene.  If anyone else wants to I would be interested to see it.

    Any reasoned debate / analysis appreciated!

    Jack

    • Like 6
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    Seraphon Lists - Jack's Fire Lance

    in Seraphon

    Posted

    I hadn't actually played with the list and when i did I found myself agreeing with quite a few of Frowny's points!

     

    I like a unit of Chameleons to sit off the board and threaten for objective play.  I also found the sweet spot for Knights to be 10's for mainline buffable units and 5's for quite good flanking units or objective holders.  Adding in some Saurus also help, specially in the Sunclaw Starhost for 4 r1 attacks a model.

     

    The latest version of the list is:

    Carno Oldblood

    Starpriest x 2

    40/20/20 Saurus Warriors 

    10/10/5/5 Knights

    5 Chameleons

    Sunclaw Temple Host

     

    • Like 1

    Seraphon Lists - Jack's Fire Lance

    in Seraphon

    Posted

    Theory of this list is the volume of attacks that Saurus Knights get (7 per model) which aren't particularly good, but when combined with the Starpriest's 6's to wound are a MW means they can put out a good amount of damage.

    So you deploy and send in the Cav in waves, also giving them exploding hits on 6's, plus 1 to hit and the natural plus 1 to hit from Koatl Claw mean they are hitting on 2/3's for all their statline.  Then you have spells, either rr hits of 1's, immune to battle shock and +1 armour save and you have a really nasty unit.  With the +1 to run and charge constellation they can move up 8" and then charge up to 18" away and get +4 to the roll of 3D6.

    The salamanders give you some shooting threat and also very good combat damage and then the two mounted characters for follow up. 

     

    As Ben says it can also play well in Starborne.  The Cav lose two attacks a model but can be deployed and teleported or 'remembered' by the Slann (you would probably go Draco tail sub-faction).  Here they would get the natural 6's are MW from the Firelance formation along with the ability from the Starpriest.  The starseer again is really important to make sure you're getting those 9" charges off.

    Have some games and let me know what you think.

    Jack

    • Like 1

    Does Jack Armstrong need to be nerfed?

    in Age of Sigmar Discussions

    Posted

    Very amusing thread - yes I think I need comping!

    Sleboda - you touch on some interesting points. I think both of the things you say are true to an extent but the way in which they manifest is slightly different.  I find lots of the time people think they have lost before we even start playing and play differently because of it.  My advice to anyone is don't play any different no matter who is across the table from you as if you start the game thinking you've lost, most likely you will.

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