Greybeard86

I was curious, so I looked into it. https://aoslistbot.herokuapp.com/sotm/ So, it is exactly what I said. If a player picks only top factions, they'll perform similarly across factions. This will lead you to believe that faction doesn't "power boost" that individual player. When listbot is giving you that famous plot, they are potentially falling for this very same thing. As long as the very top performing players are more likely to pick "top factions", then scores across factions for them will vary "relatively" less than for others that choose factions with more power diversity. In other words, the method is as good at identifying skill as the variety in power between factions picked by the players. This is problematic and, based on what I have seen, a possible reason behind "skill is all that matters at the top" conclusion.

This is a question that can be resolved very quickly with listbot's data. This has nothing to do with normalization, it is about establishing the causal effect of armies on scores. He is using the same player playing some other faction as a counterfactual to establish how much the faction adds to scores. If top players tend to play top factions, their scores across factions will differ very little and this metric will conclude that skill is driving most of the results. Which is exactly what he is observing at the very top of the distribution. To rule out this possibility, he would need to look into this explicitly. I do not know what this means, as this is really not about algorithms, but about causal inference. What I am saying is not outlandish and relatively easy to check.

I'd also like to question the results from listbot on the contribution of armies to success. When they pick top players (i.e. high placing players), and compare their performance across armies, finding relatively similar results across armies is NOT a sign of the results being mostly about skill. Those top placing players are hopping between top armies, what you are finding is how busted some metas where relative to others. There isn't a counterfactual of them using "bad armies" because, for scoring tourneys, they mostly do not bring bad armies. I am surprised more people aren't using the results collected in listbot to make quantitative arguments about balance.

I was just joking They are holding our interest, though, so kudos for that.

That's clearly a satyr/centaur, keep your sticky multiple limbs far from the new release. 😘

You are wrong. Also, next time you go for a walk and you hear rustling in the bushes, it will be beasties coming for you. 😈

I have been told that my beasty Kurnothi are coming? I want to field my princess Mononoke! Bring the elf + beast alliance back! We already have plenty of models for the plants side of it...

This is a thing. It just tells you how imbalanced the game is, because it is most definitely happening in casual groups. That shouldn't happen, and there still would be room for GW to bake it whatever ivory tower design they want.

I agree that a subscription service seems like a must. That said, I do think that "some" people would like the idea of tying further rules to lore, and actually telling a coherent story that informs the changes in the army. Let's be frank, who doesn't think that having the decades of fantaysd or 40k story telling compilled into the codex wouldn't be awesome?

These look really good to me. A bit less over the top than the vampires, and more grim looking to my eyes. They should limit a bit though those edge and corners for hair, clothing, armor; for my taste, that is.

Is that true? I guess I am from a different generation, but still, the claim sounds a bit much. I do agree, though, that TW WH was a massive hit and likely a big influx into WHFB. I wonder if the success might be behind the OW project, but that's not a "main system" for GW. Also, is Mordheim sort of back but set in AoS with the new game? Those skeletons look incredibly good to me, even though I dislike some of the other over the top stuff. On that note, I hope they show some restraint in OW. It was the moderation in the setting that made things like Boris stand out on the table top. If everyone is riding bears and swinging magic swords, nothing is special.

I have a lot of sympathy for that style, and WE certainly have a lot of character. I wish GW would focus more on that side than on "metawatches".

I think your initial message, OP, captures the feeling of a lot of people in the hobby very well. Competitiveness as in using armies that are functional in the "battlefield", and in playing to "win" the battle. Desire for balance to provide fun challenging battles for both sides. Together with an appreciation of the hobby and the fluff. But not the current style of "tournament" winning competitiveness, involving constant meta switching, nor the policy of rapidly changing points and rules that completely change the way reasonable armies look. The hobby requires stability, the current approach is all but that.

I agree. However, GW shifts the meta very hard constantly. To support a hobby friendly yet "competitive" playstyle, we need stability. I suspect, though, that stability does not move product fast enough (miniatures and books).

Honestly, while I am a fan of math hammer and war games I d tend to agree. War hammer games are simply not well suited for true competitive play due to their heavy hobby side. But GW is big on insisting on beefing up that side of the game, with constant point updates and what not. So at least let’s try to discipline it a bit and integrate it into the setting.

Reduce the sniping potential. Reduce unit model count; make this the skirmish game with lower model count and OW the ranked game. Be more generous with keywords & reward more variety in compositions. Stop having such large meta waves, it is discouraging for hobby oriented people.

Oh, you'll get lots of sympathy from me for cross-compatibility with other systems and eras. It is just that I have been painting some old minis and them eyelids...headache. I have zero sympathy for GW's crusade to replace my old minis and it is not only about the money, it is the principle of it.

For me, this is about putting thought into the balance changes, and how the setting translates unto the table. At the moment, I cannot help but feel that sometimes this is lacking. Same boat. I simply haven't bought a single book since my return, although I have spent a lot on miniatures. And I do like having the books, in principle, but not in these terms. It may be true, of course. Then you see the incredible detail in the HH books and it makes you wonder. Sometimes GW feels like a hydra that bites itself.

Yep, that sucked for me. At the same time, can't help but think that maybe some of the old sculpts were a tad too small. I am thinking in terms of ease to paint.

Enlighten me, oh master! I do 1h a day most days but I am nowhere near that. And you should! The models look very clean and vibrant, I am jelous. I am currently at that stage in which picture them to be better than they finally turn out to be Also, tips on how you handled that battle damaged shield?

Indeed, it is not about balance. Rather, a response to the current feeling that often battletomes feel copy-pasted version with little extra value from the previous ones. I am a player, I was just thinking of "creative" ways to give more value to newer and older books. Doesn't need to be horses, you know . Nevertheless, a common complaint about WHFB is that nothing really changed. So, personally, I would love to see them having to commit to the changes they make and integrate them into the setting. I find that to be quite unappealing, to be honest; everything is "too vague". It seems that GW is actually changing that with books like Morathi's. Of course, easier to do the current thing: update a battle tome, copy paste lore and drawings, change stat sheets and a couple other things. But that's a complaint I have seen also for 40k, that lore pages are increasingly scarce in the new codexes, and hardly ever anything new is in them. New units do not really have much of an introduction to the setting either. IMHO, the current business model is consumer unfriendly, and lots of people are resorting to battlescribe / wahapedia types of resources to avoid having to buy the ever changing books. To me, this means that people consider they aren't getting enough value from the books. I think so too, to be honest, and as I said elswhere I have great foundness for some of the old books. This is something I considered, frankly. But then all the other threads here and elsewhere about battletomes / codexes being a scam got me thinking. Thanks for your feedback, though, I can see well where you are coming from.

Then maybe it shouldn't be more slashy? The rules are supposed to be writen so that we can represent the battles in the fluff with the miniatures. If the fluff cannot justify what the miniatures are doing, maybe the miniatures shouldn't be doing it. Not exactly. I think I wasn't very clear in my first post. It is living in the sense that they balance frequently, but the changes do not reflect changes in the "fluff/lore/setting", rather decisions to better balance competitive play. What I am suggesting is to ground changes and additions to the rules on the setting and its timeline. So, now say little goblins get a "horde bonus". One may write a story about how they superpopulated and then learnt to fight in bigger numbers. But the key to my proposal would be the actually adding physical pages to the book, as opposed to reprinting endless semi-copy paste of the same tome over editions. At the moment, old books hold extremely little value (old AoS battletomes), and it can feel aggravating to buy essentially a 75% identical book with some extra rules and a few new drawings. Instead, sell new content with the updates, and let the battletome be a chronology of that faction over the eras. Wasn't one of the complaints about WHFB that nothing ever changed?

I think I failed to explain myself. I am not advocating for faster or slower releases of battletomes. Truth is, we are already in a constantly changing rule set anyway, and my point is not about that. What I am saying is that current battletomes replace each other between editions, and the changes between them are often not lore justified or connected to a story. For example, is no explanation as to why all of a sudden certain units are more prevalent (point decreases) and others less (point hikes). And still, a new battletome means the old one is effectively just completely obsolete. That’s why many people feel annoyed at having to buy a new book, I think, as it just seems you are rebuying your old book with some changes. But at full price. What if you just bought additional pages to your book? Literally pages you could attach to your book and reflected over time how the setting is changing. Take say a given unit of cavalry in a battletome. In 2019, they were 20 points a model and did no MW on the charge. In 2020 GW releases and expansion and gives them rend and MW in the charge if they are part of a new battalion that costs 100 points. They write a story about how some hero / military genius reformed the way these types of units fought, and then it made them so much more effective but also meant they took longer to train (point increases). Release a miniature for the champion of that unit, limited event release. Now, if a new player comes, he/she just buys the latest version. But if an old player is around, his/her book has two pages for that unit. Those battletomes thus reflect the chronology of the setting, and how the story has evolved over time. It is not a reprint with some often retconned changes, or changes that aren’t mentioned at all. The old pages are still worth something because the are part of the living lore, it is not just wasted space on the shelve. The truth is that GW is already attempting something like this, to an extent. There is the Morathi expansion, or in 40k Cawl s new primaries and indomitus. However, it is a partial integration at best. Finally, what happens if a unit is discontinued? Say empire, brettonia, and we archers. Simply write a story about how they became obsolete in terms of fighting style, but nonetheless integrate them into an existing category. Either a catch it all for old stuff, or make them quirky versions of a new one. This is what people are doing anyway, I think it was @Double Misfire who wrote a wonderful guide about it. I would have been delighted to collect pages for such a book. Imagine a book with 10+ years of lore over some unit, telling its ups and downs over decades in the setting. If you are going to a tourney, pull out the latest pages. Otherwise, show off to the younglings and bring your relic that tells the story of demtygryph knights. Or perhaps what happened to some old fighting styles, no longer as prevalent, but still used in some remote locations...

Yes, make it a thing!

I am a grognard. I fell in love with the hobby many years ago, I felt grumpy when GW killed WHFB, loved wargames over board games and dream of running a months long campaign of Mordheim. However, putting aside my taste for tradition, old things, and dusty stuff, I want to share with you this idea for an alternative to the current rule books (codex, battletome). Over the years, GW has put out a lot of army books for each faction, often radically changing how they played, looked, and their background between editions. The vast majority of times this was completely dependent on the whims of the studio and the designers at a time, and rarely it offered any reason for the changes included. I has always bugged me, and, given that they charge a hefty amount for the books, it seems that it bugs others as well. This got me thinking, what would be a good way to create a rule book that offered continuity across editions, was lore consistent, allowed players to retain old units? This is how I thought about the Living Lorebook, a modular design for a rule book that grows with the setting. What if you could just add pages to your book, instead of tearing them apart? If the points increase for a certain type unit, say cavalry, it may be because there is a shortage of horses due to an event in the setting. Write a story about it! Link it to a black book novel! And then add a page to be placed in that unit's section reflecting the change. Those events could also be reflected in the model range through the inclusion of backwards compatible upgrade packs for models, as well as event specific special sculpts. For instance, a special standard bearer or champion. Similar ideas could be used to keep old models around. Nowadays, old units are retired and moved to legends, where they just go to die. Instead, create a category for such units in the Living Lorebook! For instance, old empire and bretonnia cavalry regiments could be assembled into a more general category of "Freeguild Militia cavalry", the model differences reflecting the traditions behind each unit, and the equipment being kept across generations, precious remnants of the Old World. A new battletome would bring new flavor, new stories, new options, without just burning the old ones. I feel I would be far more likely to collect such additions. Make them truly expandable, with physical books that allow us to add pages. Old pages would be desired! Do limited releases of those. Old players could show new players truly old yellow paper editions of the tome, and tell stories of how the world came to be. Am I day dreaming too much?