gjnoronh

I know the history Joe from the old Warhammer.org forum and agree generally with you. I think you called it 'Funners' vs something else in the past? However, I think there is also something to be said in a never perfectly balanced rules set for extra respect for the person taking the smaller gun and winning vs the biggest gun and winning. Or taking a list that ticks the visual and thematic boxes but may not be competitive at all particularly in a game system where the lore and story telling and visual aspects are such an important part of making a pleasurable and immersive experience. It's also the case that some complaints may be founded in some cases. There is some kind of behavior that is "WAAC and TFG" including providing a belligerent, rules lawyering, or cheating type experience. That's not because of someone's choice of a tougher list vs a softer list. That's more due generic behavioral stuff about abusing the competitive system as far as it will go. It's very rare in the AoS scene thankfully. That behavior 'costs' the opponents, tournament organizers, and the AOS scene quite a bit as it turns of people from playing the system in general or going to events. Fear of being exposed to that behavior is the most common reason I hear for folks not coming to events. What are the 'costs' potentially from an opponents perspective ignoring behavioral issues? Would a quickly commissioned poorly painted hard as nails list be a cost from an opponents perspective. I think possibly. Same list lovingly painted and converted with a visually immersive theme - that might feel like not a 'cost' I think. I guess the "WAAC" label really begs the question what are 'the costs' who is paying them?

I'm assuming that was in response to me. If not my apologies. There is nothing wrong with 'hard' lists particularly in a setting where both participants know what to expect. Would you have fun "competing" if every game was a series of arguments with a verbally abusive guy who didn't know their rules. Irrespective if you 'competed at a high level event' I'd argue that game would probably not be a lot of fun. Would you have fun 'competing' if you _always_ lost? Say the Magic situation where your opponents have access to far far better cards then you you may be at a premier event against great players but would you enjoy the experience. Maybe maybe not. I'm definitely not calling you out for wanting to play competitively, or wanting to win. I just wonder if the word 'competing' is the right term. There are situations I've been in 'competition' (and non competition) that fundamentally weren't fun including finals at the top table of tournaments. I think that may be true for most people in those settings. There may be some people who value 'competing' against an unpleasant opponent but I think that's fairly rare. On the same note we're aware on this forum that there are people who have suggested they should subvert event rules, use weighted dice or dice tricks or practice rules lawyering to win events. That's probably more finding 'winning is fun' then it is a enjoying ' competing' at least as most people would define 'competing.' Note that sentiment is probably okay as well (who doesn't like to win!) but it's really not enjoying 'competing.' I love a close fought and intellectually stimulating game with hard or soft lists, I don't know that I particularly enjoy a mismatched game whether I was winning or losing.

I think people play games with toy soldiers to have fun. Competition may add some excitement to playing with toy soldiers and is a great excuse to meet new people and play some games. But fundamentally this is a hobby we do for entertainment - because it's fun. If it's not fun i don't really understand why anyone would do this particular hobby. The racing engineer crafting parts is most likely doing it for a job, a job where winning and losing may be the difference in them having a job or not in the future. That's intrinsically a very different situation then someone spending money on toy soldiers they can build and paint and play games with. The motivation to push your own limits to do better may be universal and absolutely a part of a hobby. But if the only reason you are playing with toy soldiers is to compete and not to have fun it might be worth carefully considering what gives a player joy in life. Worth a read https://slate.com/human-interest/2019/02/hobbies-hustle-era-leisure-time-coins.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/29/opinion/sunday/in-praise-of-mediocrity.html

Are you saying the data you have available shows that all Infinity factions are perfectly balanced in head to head match ups as your post I quoted seems to suggest? Because the data I believe we've been shown is about Infinity overall win rates in the systems current meta. The data would be much more complicated presentation then what we've seen so far to show us two players of equal skill with equally well selected forces would always have an equal win rate irrespective of faction chosen. For example Blood Bowl has the most complicated in depth data analysis and deepest data sets for miniatures I'm aware of here's an example of how you could look at head to head match ups between different teams and different skill levels (the <150 number indicates a player with a low win rate with that team, the >200 is someone with a very high win rate with that team that's the ELO system used by chess) It's worth noting how win rates in any given match up change at different levels of player skill - that gets at the question of what level player are we trying to balance for. There is also a pull down for different formats (which in the AoS world would be different scenarios almost) which pulls separate and possibly quite different results. The data set in this analysis is only one of three large data sets out there for the system and because of some differences in game play I would expect the results to differ somewhat (NAF data is all swiss pairings tournament based as opposed to random matchups or matchups based on similar 'team strength' in the progressive growth system that is Blood Bowl league play.) https://public.tableau.com/profile/mike.sann0638.davies#!/vizhome/NAFMatchupChecker/Matchup It's a much more complicated data analysis then a simple table of win rates which we saw earlier in the thread. For example for blood bowl a simple win loss table looks like this and is more similar to the structure of the Infinity data set we saw earlier: (note Blood Bowl's design philosophy is to intentionally have some teams be harder to play then others as well as the intrinisicRock Paper Scissors match up issues): https://member.thenaf.net/index.php?module=NAF&type=statistics There are game systems where the factions aren't too dissimilar including miniature games I discussed in my previous posts that's absolutely a fun way to design games. It is the case that for similar large scale army games that was poorly received by some sections of of largely one time warhammer players. Doesn't mean it's bad design philosophy - just wasn't well enough received. I don't know Infinity well enough to know if the factions are fairly similar in strengths and weaknesses if they are it's easier to get to your stated goal of a 50% head to head win rate for any faction vs faction matchup that's the checkers example. But it's clear AoS factions are very different from each other in strengths that's much harder to balance head to head win rates - often the internet consensus best build for a faction is the most RPS type (FEC is a good example.) In a system with an RPS underpinning could tweak to get the overall win rates to be similar to each other in a specific or evolving meta but head to head is very hard. In other words you can get an RPS system to have a 50% win rate per faction (if it's exactly 1/3rd rocks, 1/3rd paper and 1/3rd scissors) but it's a lot harder for the that type of system to have a 50% win rate for every match up.

Read the other thread if we are trying to define balance long discussion there. Checkers is head to head perfect balance with no army differences, Chess has only very slight differences with a detectable variance in win rates (White has first move) and something like Rock Paper Scissors has huge 'faction' differences but presumably equivalent win rates for all factions across a large enough data set. Warhammer is intentionally built with a bit of a Rock Paper Scissors type system and that's not unusual in this type of design model with widely different factions with very different strengths and weaknesses. Some of those are hard counters to other factions. That's fairly common in many miniature systems GW or otherwise. This is an oversimplification but for example : an army reliant on heroes does poorly against an army that can snipe the heroes fairly easily. An army with with a few behemoths does worse against an army with an ability to put out a lot of mortal wounds to a limited number of targets. Warhammer is designed with a lot of between faction differences and internal to a faction a lot of flexibility in how you build an army. The internet may have determined the conensus optimal build for each faction (rightly or wrongly) but there is room to go counter to type or to build more of an all comers force vs one more specialized to win certain match ups (and likely lose others.) There are systems where the per faction special rules or design differences are minimal (Battletech at 3025 tech levels) but most larger scale miniature games tend to push that way. One of the complaints about early 9th Age and KoW 2.0 was the fact the factions felt very similar and to some players 'boring.' Because of the RPS design nature of Warhammer - you won't easily get a consistent 50% win rates for any two factions against each other. At best you get a 50% win rate against the total field of 'the meta.' But that meta keeps shifting with each book - the optimal army list for even a long since released Battle tome may be different now then it was 1 year ago because of that ongoing shifting of the potential pool of opponents. Shooting got better when Slaanesh were released however as it tend to be a fairly hard counter. The more Slaanesh there was in 'the meta' the better shooting was - Cities with a lot of shooting was about the end of Slaanesh's dominance (roughly speaking. )

Vakarian I'd suggest your first and second paragraphs really don't make sense when taken together. If their focus isn't tournament gamers (and I agree with that assumption) and we know (as you have asserted above) the tournament results data set isn't particularly relevant for that focus, and that _no_ data set is going to be particularly helpful for that focus how do we get to a conclusion of use the data to make the game better. Is the most useful data from their standpoint sales? They could balance the game based on what kits are selling well and not selling well and possibly get to the answers that matter to them most. I understand and agree "perfect is the enemy of the good." But are we applying it correctly? Do we have 'good' now in Warhammer , is shooting for 'perfect' going to get in that way? I think if we ignore another maxim early programming and math modeling GIGO (Garbage in Garbage out) you might indeed have 'shooting for perfect get in the way of good' Will an analysis focusing on tournament results potentially make the game better for top of the GT balance and worse for the core sales focus of basement gamers? Does that meet GW or the player base's needs (very few members of the player base are serious tournament goers.) I'm not arguing we can't shoot for better balance - i'm saying math (no matter how intricate) based on faulty underlying data sets won't get you there any faster then a gestalt of the data. Could an experienced tournament player give you their sense of what's good and what's bad that would match the results of a 10,000 tournament game simple win loss analysis ? Almost certainly. Would either player impression or data set review pick up on 'this book has synergies or value in the emerging meta the majority of the players haven't recognized?' Probably not but the experienced tournament player would be much more likely to identify that then a highly lumped retrospective data set. Would either sources of balance analysis give you the best data to guide balance choices that would make the game better for the average player? Possibly not.

Note it's not a sample size and P value type issue - that's really the least concern. It's depth and breadth of data and consensus on the underlying assumptions to do good quality of math you really want. What's the right assumption of player skill for determining balance? Should we balance for the average player (where the vast majority of the games are played and very very few get into any data set), the average GT level tournament player (significantly higher skill then the average player), or the top of the largest GTs tournament player (very very small group of players/games but the results that get the most internet commenting player attention.) What level player are you balancing for? Some books (Idoneth for example) perform much better in a very skilled players hands then an average players hands. Other books (I won't name one) might be 'easier cars to drive' so a good player vs an average player will have a smaller win rate differential.

I'm willing to bet you are right as well What I'm saying is you don't have enough data in the available data set to have math get you there in an objective fashion. Your gut instinct is probably at least as right as math using a poor quality data set with missing core elements. Read the other thread - lots of discussion of the math and what we'd need to do good quality math. For example I'm willing to bet most games of AoS internationally aren't playing with the full rules as written in terms of mysterious terrain and GW specific terrain war scrolls. It's also probably the case that a good chunk of tournaments don't use them in full either. I'd also guess Ghyran as a Realm of Battle shows up less often at tournaments then it should if we were really randomly determining the Realm of Battle. The playtesters however are playing with those intended core rules. (and GW has said in their guidance of TO's for tournaments balance works better if we do use the rules as written.) Should we balance the game with the rules most convenient for TO's to use that avoid meta shifting random elements or should we balance the game and armies as intended? The rules writers are likely playtesting against armies that aren't released yet do we balance based on what won the last tournament or the meta as it will exist until AoS 3.0? Slaanesh, and Ossiarch looked pretty unbeatable until the next army book came out.

MOM!!! Great stuff man. I wonder if there is a way to use it for an in store campaign. I've got Slaves to Darkness my original copy around the house someplace.

Yeah I think win rates in tournament games may help in determining what needs a boost. I think it's probably not the win rates that matter most to them as most games are played out side of a tournament environment and factors we've mentioned skew bad win rates further down and good rates further up. Check out when you can the following thread it's on points and balance but it applies to trying to understand big picture win loss rates and balance We know from other GW games factions that newbies tend to select tend to have a lower win rate - it's hard to separate that out as noise vs signal even in a more comprehensive data set . Blood Bowl has the most comprehensive data set I'm aware of for miniature games and even with data base information on player skill level it still can't capture everything to make universal statements across all tournaments on faction balance and 'sweet spot' for tweaking. i.e. see for example the work of this guy who just does some data crunching with one of the four potentially available data sets for the game. https://public.tableau.com/profile/mike.sann0638.davies#!/

This 100% And these two 100% as well. The player who brings the battletome that is expected to be pretty weak to a GT is not going there to win - their list design probably doesn't max what their book could do, and they aren't practicing continuously. The folks who see Tzeentch as the next greatest thing and have access to a collection that lets them quickly switch their army to it are probably much more interested in wins and losses then the player who has played their same dispossesed army for the last 20 years. To the previous poster - how many people just starting AoS use one of the armies in the boxed starter set (i.e. Stormcast) as their introduction to tournament play. A big chunk of the Stormcast users in the data set. How many use a 100-200 model Skaven list - it's a lot less for a variety of reasons. If you want to talk about stats see the thread I linked to on the previous page - we'd want a lot more data then just Win loss by army. Blood Bowl does it better with player skill and track record built into their data base of ELO ratings. I've been doing internet discussions about Warhammer since 1995 and this gamer angst about balance has been present throughout those 26 years. I used to quote the following starting in _2001 _ really the Warhammer internet hasn't changed since then. The tech we use for discussions has changed and the list restriction terminology is different, the discussions have not. Direwolf was _the _competitive Warhammer newsgroup before the Warhammer.org forum which of course predates this forum. I used to pull it out every 3-6 months pre AoS : https://www.tapatalk.com/groups/wyrmlingx/it-39-s-official-t10212-s525.html Chill out - wait a bit and see if any of this matters in six months. Just think back over the last 5 years of AoS about each of the moments the community lost their minds about some new army breaking the games balance and then it's old news in six months. AoS isn't the best game if you think pushing toy soldiers should be a life and death matter of supreme skill. It is a great game to have fun, and using competition as an excuse to play with toy soldiers and make new friends.

That sounds like it's much easier to avoid a mismatch based on scenario by definition. Put another way you aren't going to bring a list to a game that's very good at one thing and realize the win condition is something else. On the other hand by design AoS scenario win conditions are hidden to the players at the time of list building. A list (or Battletome) good for some scenarios may not be as good for others. To some extent that encourages 'more balanced' list building. Events that publicize scenarios pre event actually allow people to take more unusual variant list. AoS list balancing is a pretty amazingly complex deal given the diversity of scenarios, mortal realms and book to book matchups as well as variant lists inside of each book. I'll note more generally despite the fact every 3-6 months something causes this kind of consternation amongst AoS fans about a book that breaks the game 1 year later it's not the same things we are talking about. It's not power creep (aside from the obvious fact some books clearly come in below the power curve) it's also the continuous rebalancing of the meta (sorry Sleboda) as the 'top dog' books changes. There is a lot of Rock Paper Scissors built into AoS by army mechanics and scenarios it makes for a very interesting and fun game. But it's almost certainly not 'balanced' in terms of equivalent win rates per army. And really that's okay. The win rates aren't the same this month with these books out as they will be in 6 months or one year with new books out. That's aside from the prespecified intentional rebalancing in GHB and point updates. Also this is an older thread on this forum but in it several of us talked about what it would take to get unit level point values right and if sophisticated fomulas for point values would get us there. It's not the conversation we're talking about here but it does touch on some of the variables that make it hard to figure out 'balance'

Nos while I generally agree with you - there is no question GW has been the most successful miniature company for decades. I think it's also fair to wonder if there are things that would help them.

Agreed for every Keeper of Secret's there's another model (i.e. Beasts of chaos with their endless spells, Troggoths etc) that gets a release and isn't particularly powerful.

I'd agree good balance helps overall. Someone who falls in love with the look/lore of army X and then realizes they are terrible will either not make the purchases if they figure that out before they get invested (money and time), or once they are invested be a bitter gamer when they realize their investment isn't competitive on the table. Because it's harder to switch factions 40k/AoS the angst is higher. Again contrast that to cheaper skirmish systems where you might paint 12 models for $35 realize they were bad and easily move on. That being said folks complaining about GW's balance - please name a company that really does better long term balance with a 20 or so factions s with widely variant faction rules. There are games with tighter rules in terms of competitive play (inside the GW world and outside) there aren't any games I am aware of where someone is managing to keep 22 or so factions balanced while maintaining differences in their faction types. Several of us have already pointed out that some stars of the competitive games world (warmachine, magic, xwing) don't achieve interfaction balance.

Mostly agree however really not sure that WM is your best thing to focus on for balance. I don't know Infinity so can't comment on it. There is a big difference between a game being designed 'for competitive play' and being balanced. Lots of games are marketed as being designed for competitive play including at least some tied to GW. Warhammer Underworlds was designed specifically for competitive play. I'd argue Blood Bowl while it's taken a middle ground approach to tournament play and home play is reasonably well designed for competitive play and specifically had it's rules set literally written by members of the tournament going community. For non traditional miniature games there is a large competitive play focus to X wing (despite a huge narrative potential alluded to in it's rules.) However whether we are talking Warmahordes, Underworlds, Blood Bowl, X wing the faction to faction or unit choice to unit choice balance is never particularly good. In Blood Bowl's case that's actually part of the design intent for the system (to create more and less challenging teams for players to select consciously from.) That's particularly a problem in the complex miniature systems we are talking about with sequential faction releases over the course of years, intentionally creating very different mechanics from faction to faction, and highly granular player driven list building. It's a lot easier to balance a game like chess where there is only one faction specific rule (white goes first), and the 'armies' are preselected by the designers to be perfectly balanced. AoS and 40K aren't designed a priori to be 'competitive' games they are designed to be fun games for the largest number of potential gamers - to make sales for the company. Really while a variety of games are marketed as 'competitive' games their actual reason for existence is sell the toys and make money. Magic has a big focus on high stakes 'competitive play' but most of it's sales are to teens who are playing for fun not to make a living (I don't know enough about magic to comment about balance-but my understanding of the release model is it's designed to be intentionally imbalanced own a better card and you are more likely to win.) A game with a smaller player base, less internet net listing and less high pressure prize stakes can have imbalance issues that don't get as recognized in the gaming community. I.E. some small kickstarter project with 400 backers is going to take longer for any balance issues to make 'the broader gamer' news.

DECKER !!! Good to see you at least virtually. Beasts are best!

GW did (does) that for Lord of the Rings battle game. I don't follow it but the previous (I think) edition had those kinds of bases for converting rounds for skirmish play to big ranked units. At least I think so -I can't find a pic on a quick google search just now.

Gotcha. Agreed that's a different argument. You could have put AoS 1st ed simplicity with or without ranks into the Old World environment and I think have a fairly successful product. Kings of War is roughly a mid point complexity product between AoS 1 and WFB. I'm not sure that the the Old World itself resonates as well with a generation that grew up on World of Warcraft/Skyrim etc as it did with my generation that grew up on Tolkien and early editions of Dungeons and Dragons. I'm curious if KoW or 9th are attracting as many teens and 20 somethings as AoS. I think the open ended over the top style of AoS may resonate more with that group.

I can't agree with the two of you. 8th fundamentally was a system that wasn't attracting new players and wasn't making sales for stores. This isn't because GW was a bad company (40K was doing very well at that time.) It's because 8th was a very difficult system to get into as a new player - and there was a whole industry of third party companies (and ebaying of 20 year old models) selling GW alternatives to veterans the sum of those two things meant local independent stores weren't making much in the way of sales. It was a feed forward cycle too stores weren't hosting demos or tournaments as it wasn't making them sales, and new players weren't entering the system in part because they weren't seeing demos or local events to go to. Note I'm not anti 8th by any means I started playing WFB in 1990 so I've seen essentially the vast majority of WFB editions, and I was a highly active player throughout most of that span. Without going through all the details again I was very active nationally and internationally in supporting 8th ed. Our club was one of the strongest 8th ed clubs in the US but we weren't seeing much in the way of new players through the latter part of 8th. While I liked 8th quite a bit it was very hard to teach to someone who didn't have years of WFB experience. Wheeling, charge nuances, line of sight rules etc. You couldn't really play until you had a strong grasp on those things. This is in sharp contrast to a gaming industry that was generally moving to simpler and easier to get into systems. The 8th core rules were a lot longer the nour 16 pages currently + additional optional items and the 8th ed core rules had a very long (and necessary) FAQ despite that.

There are guys in New York city I know who have moved to playing 'microhammer' Warhammer 8th or 9th Age using 15mm Warmaster style armies. I've never done it personally but I think it makes a ton of sense in that environment where space is at a premium. can lay out a game on a coffee table and carry it all including terrain in a back pack.

New NJ event announced

Thanks for the compliments and I get it - there are some things I'd do differently each year and I supposedly run the thing! I hear your point about immersion but I also think it's a pretty broad based hobby with lots of flavors of gamers. Some people really look at it as a chess like endeavor where aesthetics aren't important. Others have been burned by a last turn argument over who can score or not and want absolute clarity on the game state for both participants. I'm not sure what the right approach is for each of us individually - but I think when in doubt in terms of running an event you allow players who want to use a technology that maximizes game state clarity and minimize arguments to go with it. But I also think it makes sense to keep the rules pack silent about a lot of 'smaller' things that players can decide for themselves .

That's the company I was thinking of. Joe sorry to hear about that experience.

There is a Canadian company that makes them. I can't remember the name. Canhammer podcast might have a link to them.