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Tokyo Nift

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  1. Honestly, the data is probably pretty straightforward but limited. We essentially can't measure the improvement of top players because they have nowhere to go. Playtesters are all averaging above 4 wins per event both before and after playtesting. This means that they're essentially not dropping games at events regardless of the circumstances, so the questions: 1) Do playtesters perform better than other players with new factions compared to their previous results with other factions? No. Non-playtesters hopping onto newly released factions are a place we can see players get a big jump in their winrate (if the new faction is very strong, e.g. Ironjawz players moving to Big Waaagh after Orruk Warclans came out). Playtesters, because there is essentially no measurable way for them to improve, stay the same (4.x win average). 2) Do playtesters perform better AGAINST new factions than other players? No, again, because they can't show measurable improvement. The factions/players they lose to are rare and the games they lose will almost always be to other top players - and player skill is a much better winrate predictor than any faction information. So really what we're asking is if there is a marginal gain to playtesters that is worth less than the 0.5 games they lose on average at an event. If there is, it would be smaller than the variance in game results due to battleplans, priority rolls, etc - so for me I would class that as statistically irrelevant, given that there is no useful way to apply that information.
  2. Nice post. I think there are a large amount of factors that run contrary to the popular opinion that playtesters are getting an unfair advantage. For context, I am a reasonably competitive AoS player who has played against England multiple times at the 6N and thus have a vested interest in all of their players being permanently banned from everything. 1) Wrt to singles events - playtesters are already picked because they've already proven themselves to be among the best players. If you're winning/nearly winning all your events - there isn't much room for an unfair advantage anyway. 2) As discussed, new books are not playtested against the current meta - see how OBR's standing changed after Tzeentch was released. 3) The top lists and strategies for new books are very often discovered by the community before the book is even released, I can't think of a single example of a playtester breaking out a new-book-list that I hadn't seen multiple times before in a WhatsApp group. 4) At the last 6N, Slaanesh had just received a new book shortly before list submission. As I'm sure people are aware that Slaanesh book was one of the most powerful books AoS has ever seen. Despite this, the England team did not have a Slaanesh list in their roster, suggesting that despite insider knowledge they had not had sufficient time to prepare a Slaanesh build for the current competitive team meta. 5) Even if we were claiming that a playtester advantage existed, we have to think of a reasonable response. It is good for the scene to have top competitive players playtesting new books, so we have to weigh up whether the advantage these players (who are already winning basically all their games anyway) would be large enough to merit a decrease in the quality of playtesting. An extreme example would be if we banned playtesters from events, we would most likely find that competitive players would give up playtesting - and playtesters would be players who didn't go to events. 6) Any advantage of playtesting a book decreases as time goes on, the longer the book is out the more it gets "solved" by the community. If we really are worried about playtester advantage, we can set up deadlines for list submission so that there aren't any last minute army releases to which only the playtesting team could react. Those are my main thoughts, I think overall the most compelling evidence is from the OP - there just isn't data to support the idea that playtesters are gaining any advantage at actual AoS events. Much love, Jp
  3. Jp here - sign me up and throw me in the grudge pool _puhlease_.
  4. Can you sign Jp Ganis and Philip McGuinness up? ❤️
  5. Can you sign Jp Ganis and Phil McGuinness up please? Thank you!
  6. There is also a warscroll for "watchtower" which is basically just a 4 sided building you can garrison inside of. But I enjoyed your story nonetheless
  7. I think, as mentioned, AoS gets a lot of its charm from its simple ruleset, I'm not sure of how to formulate a cover rule, but I do think the game would benefit from some form of cover saves. Personally, I'd like something along the lines of if a model is ~25% obscured by other models or scenery, it gets a 5+ "ward" save, but I understand there are sensible and obvious objections to this (as there most likely are to all such rules).
  8. Awesome list! and awesome strategy. Love to see this inventiveness and love to see you were rewarded by doing so well! (Only thing I'd say is Archaon's sword does specifically say it's two sixes before modifiers.)
  9. Just a note, Kurnoth Hunters are rerollable 3+ saves right? Because if they're rooted in the woods they have +1 cover from the woods themselves?
  10. Hi could you put me down for this? James Ganis EDIT: Could you also add Philip McGuinness please!
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