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I am not sure what bloat is suppose to be. But everyone knew that when the DE and later books came out w40k stopped being the game the early sm books were suppose to represent. And it only got crazier with each release after DE, because the new batch of books were being tested vs unnerfed DE's, so had to have according rules. But even there we found power creep, or army top switch caused by seson rules. Necron players in early or mid 9th were not happy people, even with errata and changes. But then suddenly they were one of the top 3-4 armies.

The only real power can be seen from armies that had bad secondaries, but still were doing great. To catch up to those, some marines needed bonus rules, extra few hundred free points, change to doctrines and better secondaries. And it still didn't help the really bad marines.

Last weekend before the update:

London Open: 148 Players (Top 16 listed)
1: Dark Angels
2: IG
3: Demons
4: Space Elves
5: Dark Angels
6: Iron Hands
7: Iron Hands
8: Knights Renegade
9: Space Marines
10: World Eaters
11: Black Templars
12: Eldar
13: Dark Angels
14: Custards
15: World Eaters
16: Dark Angels

(Space Marines took 50% of the top 16)

40k Major 2023 Bedlam In The ‘Burgh: 74 players (Top 8)
1: Eldar
2: IG
3: Dark Angels
4: Knights
5: Eldar
6: World Eaters
7: Dark Angels
8: Tau

The Icebreaker GT 2023 - Renegade Wargaming: 55 Players (top 8)
1ark Angels
2: custards
3: Knights
4: Black Templars
5: Eldar
6: Necrons
7: IG
8: Nidz

Last Of The Summer Winehammer: 48 Players (Top 4)
1: GSC
2: Iron Hands
3: Orkz
4: GSC

ForgeFire Open: 40 players (top 4)
1: Orkz
2: Iron Warriors
3: IG
4: Space Marines

2023 St. Louis Annual Last-minute Tournament: 33 Players (Top 4)
1: GSC
2: Necrons
3: Black Templars
4: Demons

Nemesis 40k Spring 2023: 32 Players
1: Iron Hands
2: Necrons
3: Orkz
4: Black Legion

ICE HAMMER ITC GT III: 27 Players (Top 4)
1: Iron Hands
2: Ad Mech
3: World Eaters
4: IG

Clash Of The Titans XVI: 50 Players (top 8)
1: IG
2: IG
3: Custards
4: Thousand Sons
5: IG
6: Knights
7: Space Dwarves
8: Demons


What is that? 25 out of 60 spots? Not bad and definitely in the realm of "Needs a nerf".

As i'm writing this I realized I hadn't updated the page for this last weekend so lets see what those results are

***NOTE*** This is likely the last weekend before the updates take effect since tournament organizers usually don't like changing stuff this late in the day before a tournament.

Grand Clash 2023: 47 Players (Top 4)
1: Iron Hands
2: Dark Angels
3: IG
4: Knights

War Calls 2023: 43 Players (Top 4)
1: GSC
2: Demons
3: Orkz
4: Knights

Mayhem GT: 113 Players (Top 16)
1: Demons
2: Dark Angels
3: Death Guard (Wow been a minute)
4: IG
5: Iron Hands
6: Orkz
7: Space Marines
8: World Eaters
9: Dark Angels
10: Iron Hands
11: Space Marines
12: Space Marines
13: Space Dwarves
14: GSC
15: Demons
16: Dark Angels

Out of the Furnace IV: 44 Players (Top 4)
1: Space Furries
2: Dark Angels
3: IG
4: IG

Frontier Open: 40 Players (Top 4)
1: Black Legion
2: Eldar
3: Ad Mech
4: Orkz

Sunken City: 34 Players (Top 4)
1: Tau
2: Blood Angels
3: Iron Hands
4: Orkz

Battle for the Bay: 33 Players (Top 4)
1: Necrons
2: Custards
3: Grey Knights
4: Orkz

Cross Swords War: 30 Players (Top 4)
1: Dark Eldar
2: Space Furries
3: Nidz
4: Blood Angels

2D6 Dwar of Var: 30 Players (Top 4)
1: IG
2: Eldar
3: Tau
4: Chaos Knights

Rataclysm: 88 Players (Top 8)
1: Demons
2: GSC
3: Nidz
4: Sisters
5: Tau
6: IG
7: Knights
8: Chaos Space Marines.

Valleycon: 30 Players (Top 4)
1: Space Marines
2: Grey Knights
3: Dark Angels
4: Black Legion

So 20 out of 60. So all told for the last 2 weekends Space Marines pulled out 45 Top placings out of a possible 120, giving them a placing percentage of 37.4% or a better than 1/3rd chance to place...that is insanely good. I think the nerf was well warranted. Lets see how the DA meta and IH shakes up after these nerfs though.

As has been pointed out to you repeatedly, you can't just say "Faction X took Y% of the Top z spots! They're OP!" without the context of what percentage of entrants they make up.

Especially with your track record of rolling other Factions into that Y figure.

37.4% sounds like a lot, but if - and I acknowledge I'm pulling a number out of thin air here - 50% of players were playing forces from Codex : Space Marines (including its sub-factions), then they underperformed.

Your use of "Custards" and "Space Furries" further undermines your credibility.

 Dysartes wrote:
Your use of "Custards" and "Space Furries" further undermines your credibility.

Seconded. Please don't.

 Dysartes wrote:
As has been pointed out to you repeatedly, you can't just say "Faction X took Y% of the Top z spots! They're OP!" without the context of what percentage of entrants they make up.

Especially with your track record of rolling other Factions into that Y figure.

37.4% sounds like a lot, but if - and I acknowledge I'm pulling a number out of thin air here - 50% of players were playing forces from Codex : Space Marines (including its sub-factions), then they underperformed.

Your use of "Custards" and "Space Furries" further undermines your credibility.

A quick check on Meta Monday shows SM play percentage at 29%. If you include GK in the calculation it goes up to 31%, but I'm not sure if Semper is counting them as SM. Of note, the most recent data, which is almost all from tournaments using the dataslate, seems to indicate quite a wide variety of armies doing well. SM seem to be winning quite a lot fewer events, but they still appear fairly regularly in the top placings.

SemperMortis wrote:
Last weekend before the update:

London Open: 148 Players (Top 16 listed)
8/16 = problem

40k Major 2023 Bedlam In The ‘Burgh: 74 2/8 - Renegade Wargaming: 55 Players (top 8)
2/8 = ok

Last Of The Summer Winehammer: 48 Players (Top 4)
1/4 = ok

ForgeFire Open: 40 players (top 4)
1/4 = ok

2023 St. Louis Annual Last-minute Tournament: 33 Players (Top 4)
1/4 = ok

Nemesis 40k Spring 2023: 32 Players
1/4 = ok

ICE HAMMER ITC GT III: 27 Players (Top 4)
1/4 = ok

Clash Of The Titans XVI: 50 Players (top 8)
0/8 = ok

What is that? 25 out of 60 spots? Not bad and definitely in the realm of "Needs a nerf".

That is 15 out of 52 spots. Worthy of note that over half of them were from one event, which if removed from the sample take it to 7/36

Grand Clash 2023: 47 Players (Top 4)
2/4 = problem

War Calls 2023: 43 Players (Top 4)
0/4 = ok

Mayhem GT: 113 Players (Top 16)
8/16 = problem

Out of the Furnace IV: 44 Players (Top 4)
2/4 = problem

Frontier Open: 40 Players (Top 4)
0/4 = ok

Sunken City: 34 Players (Top 4)
2/4 = problem

Battle for the Bay: 33 Players (Top 4)
0/4 = ok

Cross Swords War: 30 Players (Top 4)
2/4 = problem

2D6 Dwar of Var: 30 Players (Top 4)
0/4 = ok

Rataclysm: 88 Players (Top 8)
0/8 = ok

Valleycon: 30 Players (Top 4)
2/4 = problem

So 20 out of 60.
18 out of 62, Im still limiting this to codex space marines. Again worthy of note one event accounts for nearly half of those placements and once removed becomes 10/46

So all told for the last 2 weekends Space Marines pulled out 45 Top placings out of a possible 120, giving them a placing percentage of 37.4%.

Codex space marines pulled 33 out of 114 top spots, which is 28.9%, which seems entirely reasonable given the ratio of the field they take. They also overperform notably in the larger events which suggests that theyre attracting both higher skill players and/or have the ability to place higher due to an imbalance

Notes/corrections in red

may I humbly suggest that trying to balance a game or decide what is/is not OP based on torunament results is missing out what is meant to be an important point about torunaments

the skill of the players.

you can have a unit that is actually underwhelming in the hands of normal players but that has a bit of a trick that a highly skilled player can use, in a torunamnet setting, to good advantage.

should such a unit be nerfed? should the faction as a whole be nerfed?

conversely you can have actually reasonably good units that for a range of reasons, likely due to synergies across the army, are not highly represented at tournaments, not in the higher scoring armies anyway. should such be buffed?

balanced based purely on tournaments is probably a mistake, though I can see the attraction as its an easy way to generate stats, but what percentage of games played, with the caveat of games played where the players really care about balance, are played at tournaments v games played elsewhere?

its borderline fattening a pig by weighing it by having a focus on available stats instead of looking at the outcomes in a wider range of game types, which is likely more useful if quite a bit harder to do.

not saying don't look at tournament stats, but keep in mind raw placements are not everything and even with tournament stats you need to consider more.

e.g. what armies were being used and specifically what were they fighting against

leopard wrote:
may I humbly suggest that trying to balance a game or decide what is/is not OP based on torunament results is missing out what is meant to be an important point about torunaments

the skill of the players.

you can have a unit that is actually underwhelming in the hands of normal players but that has a bit of a trick that a highly skilled player can use, in a torunamnet setting, to good advantage.

should such a unit be nerfed? should the faction as a whole be nerfed?

This is kind of factored in because when we look at tournament results, we are looking for repeated success.
So if one player takes a seemingly underperforming faction to victory - or uses units deemed to be "bad" - that doesn't really mean anything. Its safe to say they played very well - but maybe their opponents made mistakes on the day. Maybe they were very lucky on dice (while their opponents were very unlucky etc). If you see this happen regularly, its a sign of an open/balanced meta.

By contrast, if your top spots are disproportionately made up of lists drawn from 3-4 factions, running the same 3-4 units, there's probably an imbalance here.

======
The argument that tournament wins should be proportionate to play rate is reasonable - but it ignores that the play rate is warped by imbalance.
I.E. lets go back the bad-old days of late 8th, when Marine 2.0 dominance was at its height. Marines were winning seemingly every tournament (apart from a brief mania with Tau as a counter), and I think in the worst cases there were tournaments with near 50% of lists drawn from Codex: SM. (30-40% was more common but still ridiculous). In that case the logic reverses. Yes, its reasonable that since everyone is playing Marines, that Marines are taking all the places. But everyone is playing Marines because everyone knows they are better than everyone else.

Basically it becomes a question of "should" 29% of the field be Codex: Space Marines. Which is sort of hard to know I guess.

There’s also the relative popularity of different forces in general.

Space Marines have traditionally been a fairly forgiving army to play. The units are pretty tough, pretty reliable, and don’t require a great deal of experience to perform well.

Knight armies, on the surface, look super strong because they’re comprised of honking big model with honking big guns. But, they don’t perform well if you lose sight of Objectives and what your opponent is up to. So whilst far from an “expert” army, they’re trickier to use than you might first think.

Dark Eldar can be a Glass Hammer. Comfortably able to dish it out, but it takes skill to weather any return fire etc.

GW, more than us, will also know historical sales figures. They don’t share it with anyone, as it’s not in their annual reports. But they will know production demands etc. That’s an interesting piece of the puzzle when it comes to interpreting the more public data from Tournaments.

For instance, let’s say, to pick an army at random, that SoB just aren’t being seen in Tournaments. GW would have the records to see if that’s broadly matched by a downturn in sales. Because if sales aren’t suffering, or even increased, there may be another reason they’re not turning up in Tournaments, and not necessarily one you can errata, FAQ or new Codex your way out of.

you also need to be aware with tournaments that some skew the rules in various ways, usually with good intentions but it can impact results

not entirely the same but an extreme example of which would the the WHFB events that only used one scenario, banned all sorts of units and limited others, crippled some of the game rules etc to the point they were more or less playing a different game

have also noted people at events play differently to more casual games

as noted its not the start and finish of it, just something to keep in mind

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
For instance, let’s say, to pick an army at random, that SoB just aren’t being seen in Tournaments. GW would have the records to see if that’s broadly matched by a downturn in sales. Because if sales aren’t suffering, or even increased, there may be another reason they’re not turning up in Tournaments, and not necessarily one you can errata, FAQ or new Codex your way out of.

Well.. isn't that reason likely to be the idea (real or imagined) that said faction just isn't very good now?
I mean look at say Tyranids before and after the nerfs that came with Arks of Omen. Its not as if there were any fewer Tyranid models in circulation - but the number of people running them went down.

Some people will play a faction rain or shine. Others will swap over to other armies. Or just not play as much/at all.

you can also get an army that is quite powerful, but for a range of other reasons people don't take it to events so much - had that with Strelkovy in Flames of War, could be dangerous especially as few tournament lists could handle them since you seldom saw them

they were rare as they were a pig to paint and carry, on pure event stats they should have been given a buff, they didn't need it

Tyel wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
For instance, let’s say, to pick an army at random, that SoB just aren’t being seen in Tournaments. GW would have the records to see if that’s broadly matched by a downturn in sales. Because if sales aren’t suffering, or even increased, there may be another reason they’re not turning up in Tournaments, and not necessarily one you can errata, FAQ or new Codex your way out of.

Well.. isn't that reason likely to be the idea (real or imagined) that said faction just isn't very good now?
I mean look at say Tyranids before and after the nerfs that came with Arks of Omen. Its not as if there were any fewer Tyranid models in circulation - but the number of people running them went down.

Some people will play a faction rain or shine. Others will swap over to other armies. Or just not play as much/at all.

Who knows! But if sales are up, and it’s just tournament visibility that’s down, there’s probably less need to go in and tinker. Because tournaments are useful windows onto the health of the game, but not the only one.

To run with your Nid example as the counter point? There, GW will know what tweaks they applied, be able to notice reduced tournament visibility, then compare that to sales. If visibility and sales are down, either for the faction or specific units? That’s something quite different to everything still selling as, or better, than expected.

 Dysartes wrote:
As has been pointed out to you repeatedly, you can't just say "Faction X took Y% of the Top z spots! They're OP!" without the context of what percentage of entrants they make up.

Especially with your track record of rolling other Factions into that Y figure.

37.4% sounds like a lot, but if - and I acknowledge I'm pulling a number out of thin air here - 50% of players were playing forces from Codex : Space Marines (including its sub-factions), then they underperformed.

Your use of "Custards" and "Space Furries" further undermines your credibility.

(Don't Care )

percentage of entrants is a useless stat on its own. I already ran the numbers for you in previous posts/previous weeks. Space Marines generally average 15-25% of the player base in these tournaments, but they also have a significantly larger percentage of "New" and "Inexperienced" Players which drags down their win rates noticeably and in terms of "Player percentage" means that using that stat is misleading since a new player realistically doesn't stand a chance at winning events.

I won't do the bigger breakdown i've done before but i'll do the most recent tournament on 40kstats and use that as a microcosm of the numbers using the last two years of ITC results as a metric.
# of tournaments as Marines:
1-3 Tournaments = New
4-5 Tournaments = Newish
5+ = Experienced

Space Marines:

Francois Lalonde: Experienced
Jeremy Atkinson: Experienced
Dominique Carette: Experienced
Patrick Rousseau: Experienced
Christophe Jorge: New
Gabriel Nadeau: New (First Tournament)
Jean-Phillippe Lavergne: New (First Tournament)
Erin Brandson: Experienced (But terrible at tournaments! Highest placing out of 9 Tournaments was 11th out of 22, averaged closer to 28th with most tournaments being high 20s to low 30s for # of players)
Guillaume Laliberte: New (First Tournament)
Maxime Tremblay: New (First Tournament)

So this tournament, Grand Clash 2023; had 10 Marine players out of 46 (21%) who played (1 no show). 4 of them were Experienced and relatively good, 1 was experienced and utterly terrible and 5 were NEW with 4 of the "new" players playing their first ever tournament in 2 years. So if you exclude the newbies who had no shot at winning, and exclude the guy whose best showing ever was finishing middle of the pack you are left with 4 players. 2 of whom finished top 4 (1st and 2nd) 1 who finished 5th and 1 who finished 17th. So 21% of the tournament (including 5 new players) walked away with 2 top 4 spots and 3 top 5 spots. At the best that is 50% placing which is too high at worst its 60% of the top 5 which is ridiculously too much .

Actually this is fun lets do another one.

War Calls 2023:

Matthew Kelly: New
Callum Bailey: New
Derek Ingley: New
Richard Truong: New
John Edward: New
Brett Carroll: New
Michael Roberts: New

7 Players out of 43. All New, go figure not one of them placed. If you only use player percentage than statistically 1 of the Marine players should have finished in at least the top 10..but they didn't because they were all new.

I'm skipping the next most recent because its 113 players and I'll jump to the next one

Out of the Furnace IV: 44 Players

Ed Watts: Experienced
Jay Seebarun: Experienced
Josh Clark: Newish (4GP)
Matteo Cirone: New
Taff Jones: New
Craig Breslin: New
Rhys Smith: New
Simon Thomas: New
Liam Keane: New
Christopher Hogancamp: New
Stewart Chamberlain: New

Hey look at that, 11 out of 44 players were Marines, so they should have had 25% of the top 4 if we use player percentage as a metric! Looks like they took 50% again (1st and 2nd Place)....and this will blow your mind...it was the 2 experienced players! Oh, and it looks like Josh Clark the (Newish) player finished the next highest and one of his 2 losses was to....Ed Watts, the guy who won the event. All the other Marine players didn't do very well...probably because THEY WERE NEW!

So again, Win/loss and Player percentage are silly stats on their own because neither stat takes into account player experience which usually translates to Player skill (All experienced Marine players did well except 1). An army's power shouldn't be based on Win/loss or player percentage, it should be more nuanced, but if you are going to run just 1 stat to look at, it should be % of top placements as an indicator of an army's competitive strength.

Those are highly biased statistics you are using there. If you are going to exclude new players from the Space Marine statistics, your information is garbage if you don’t also exclude new players from all your counts.

 alextroy wrote:
Those are highly biased statistics you are using there. If you are going to exclude new players from the Space Marine statistics, your information is garbage if you don’t also exclude new players from all your counts.

...you mean like i did in previous posts?

Ok, Out of the Furnace: GSC

Nicholas Willingale: Experienced
Travis Whittaker: Newish

War Calls:
Jördÿŋ Berresford: Newish


Grand Clash:
Jack Morris: Experienced

4 total players, none new, the 2 "Newish" were on the cusp of being Experienced.

Custards
Grand Clash:
Mike Emery: New (Meta Player 20+ Tournies)
Charles Meunier: New


War Calls:
Kevin Fontana: New
Jason Jennings: New
Jonathan Vittiglia: Newish

Out of the Furnace:
Liam Callebout: New (Meta player 12+Tournies)
Christopher Scriven: Newish

2 Newish, 3 New and 2 New but meta players with 30+ tournaments between the two of them.

I've broken this down before but the point stands. Marines are the "Newbie" army. They are in literally every starter box set GW has sold since...I can't remember the last time a starter box didn't contain at least 1 type of Marine. So, with that in mind, Marines are over represented at tournaments, but the plurality if not the majority of whom are new players. Heck, in the 3 tournaments I listed there were 28 Marine Players, 7 were experienced, 1 was Newish and 20 were NEW.

Oh, and the 3 tournaments I grabbed...talk about diversity, Grand Clash was in Quebec, Canada. War Calls was in Australia and Out of the Furnace was in the UK, I hit 3 continents completely by accident

I'm not really sure what your point is any more? That experienced players are better? That marines are mostly anew players army? These aren't new insights and tbh very obvious. It has nothing to do with marines win rates really beyond showing they're an army that experienced players can do well with but can also lose big, which sounds balanced.

Dudeface wrote:
I'm not really sure what your point is any more?

Semper probably should do his new/experienced breakdown for every player in a tournament, so we can see faction breakdown by experienced players. But I can recognise that's quite a bit of work. And would probably still leave people here going "so what?"

The problem is whether it gives you much information. Lets say Marines were very overpowered. Lets say 50% of "experienced players aiming to win a tournament" ran Marines on the back of that. If they got about 50% of the top spots, you could say its balanced - 50% pros, 50% top spots. But this ignores the fact that 50% of the pros are playing Marines because it isn't balanced. In fact Marines are overpowered, hence they are securing this disproportionate level of play from people who are taking the tournament seriously. Various other factions would likely see almost no play by experienced players at all. Which would explain them getting no spots at the top. But the reason they aren't seeing play is because they are bad.

As an example, we saw how DE win rates collapsed in 2022. This was partly due to some moderate rules changes, combined with the greater strength of the newer 2022 codexes. But it was probably more to do with a significant number of "pro's" who had been running them all 2021 (and were tending to go 4-1 or better etc in big tournaments, so propping up the win%) switched to other factions. I think some analysis claimed DE lost 10% of their win rate from this swing. But its hard to know for sure, because we don't have the counter example where those players were forced to stick with DE.

In much the same way its hard to know how "bad" say Imperial Fists really are, if there isn't a dedicated pool of top players trying to make them work. A "new" Iron Hands player who has just started is likely to do badly. But they are just serving to moderate that Iron Hands win%. By contrast if they are new IF player, there's no pros with an 80% win rate to uplift the subfaction. Are Thousand Sons a 30% win rate faction (as per last weekend?) or did the "good" Thousand Sons players just not show up (or ran other factions instead etc)?

Tyel wrote:

Dudeface wrote:
I'm not really sure what your point is any more?

Semper probably should do his new/experienced breakdown for every player in a tournament, so we can see faction breakdown by experienced players. But I can recognise that's quite a bit of work. And would probably still leave people here going "so what?"

The problem is whether it gives you much information. Lets say Marines were very overpowered. Lets say 50% of "experienced players aiming to win a tournament" ran Marines on the back of that. If they got about 50% of the top spots, you could say its balanced - 50% pros, 50% top spots. But this ignores the fact that 50% of the pros are playing Marines because it isn't balanced. In fact Marines are overpowered, hence they are securing this disproportionate level of play from people who are taking the tournament seriously. Various other factions would likely see almost no play by experienced players at all. Which would explain them getting no spots at the top. But the reason they aren't seeing play is because they are bad.

As an example, we saw how DE win rates collapsed in 2022. This was partly due to some moderate rules changes, combined with the greater strength of the newer 2022 codexes. But it was probably more to do with a significant number of "pro's" who had been running them all 2021 (and were tending to go 4-1 or better etc in big tournaments, so propping up the win%) switched to other factions. I think some analysis claimed DE lost 10% of their win rate from this swing. But its hard to know for sure, because we don't have the counter example where those players were forced to stick with DE.

In much the same way its hard to know how "bad" say Imperial Fists really are, if there isn't a dedicated pool of top players trying to make them work. A "new" Iron Hands player who has just started is likely to do badly. But they are just serving to moderate that Iron Hands win%. By contrast if they are new IF player, there's no pros with an 80% win rate to uplift the subfaction. Are Thousand Sons a 30% win rate faction (as per last weekend?) or did the "good" Thousand Sons players just not show up (or ran other factions instead etc)?

Wouldn't it be easier to just survey people that got a top 4 at a GT?

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
There’s also the relative popularity of different forces in general.

Space Marines have traditionally been a fairly forgiving army to play. The units are pretty tough, pretty reliable, and don’t require a great deal of experience to perform well.

From what I have seen and expirianced in 8&9th ed, and heard about prior editions, the majority of marines are extremly fragile armies, that have other codex build around being either more point efficient then them or kill them easily, and sometimes both of those things at the same time.

A DE army is not harder, or at least it wasn't when its codex came out, then marines. they had great resiliance, aggresive point costs and the codex and GW litteraly saying people how to play the army efficiently, so even a person who never goes online to check lists would end up with one that kind of a looks like what an optimal lists look like. With marines there is no such thing. Marine win rates were buffed up by stuff like +2sv on fast moving units combined with AoC, DW termintors being what terminators other marines wish they would be or IH high synergies with vehicles and heavy weapons. And till GW gave marines a plethora points of free gear, it became better for some marines. But in the end it is DA and IH that we see. Everything else didn't get better, and armies that were good or okey, like WS and BA, dropped in how efficient they are. And that is with substential point drops.

In much the same way its hard to know how "bad" say Imperial Fists really are, if there isn't a dedicated pool of top players trying to make them work. A "new" Iron Hands player who has just started is likely to do badly. But they are just serving to moderate that Iron Hands win%.

But will the metaphorical IH noob do just as bad as the IF noob? Of course not. Not only doesn't he lack the problem of no winning lists for IH, nor does he have to find out how the army is suppose to be played on his own, because there is a ton of guides, coaching etc. Picking IF automaticly puts a player at a marine minus position. Focus on bolters at a time where bolters are bad, is one thing. WE rules are kind of a meh, but their secondaries are super good and they can get carried by a respawning Angron. IF have nothing like that, and outside of tournament play this will go even worse, because there is, and probably was, no clear way of playing IF that someone at GW set down and played those 50-100 games chisled out to work.

That is one of the problems with GW design. They do "cool" stuff and then are suprised people take infinite number of attack witches or 9 voidweavers. Or that all DA armies are 3 bricks of DW terminators with addons.

Dudeface wrote:
I'm not really sure what your point is any more? That experienced players are better? That marines are mostly anew players army? These aren't new insights and tbh very obvious. It has nothing to do with marines win rates really beyond showing they're an army that experienced players can do well with but can also lose big, which sounds balanced.

TLDR Summary:
Semper: New update means Marines are going to be OP
Multiple People: No
Semper: Here's tournament results showing Marines winning a large # of top 4 spots
Multiple People: Yeah but win/loss rate!
Semper: This is why Win/Loss rate isn't a good measurement
Multiple People: Yeah but participation rate!
Semper: Here is why participation rate is also not a good measurement.
Multiple People: *Sticks fingers in ears and screams* "YOU'RE WRONG!"
Games Workshop: *Nerfs Space Marines, specifically problematic chapters like Dark Angels
Semper: See, even GW realized it
Multiple People: *INCOHERENT SCREECHING

If you're going to sit there and ask what the point was of breaking down the new player ratio of Marine players, that is because you are either not reading the thread or choosing to be obtuse. Those providing counter points keep trying to bring in Win/Loss ratio and Player Participation ratio as reasons for Marine success, I have provided analytical insight as to why those stats aren't a good measurement, key amongst that analytical information is the fact that most Marine players, more than any other faction that i've looked into so far, are new or newish and as such don't have as much experience; a point which you agree to as basically being common sense at this point, but for some reason people choose to disagree.

Marines were OP with that new release as proven by their tournament win/placing ratio. People brought in the aforementioned stats to try to disprove my theory. The point being though that an experienced player could have (New rules mean this isn't necessarily true anymore) taken Marines and had a very good chance to win an event with their army while other factions piloted by similarly experienced players didn't have as much of a chance. That isn't to say that other factions were similarly over powered, IG as an example.

There definitely is a point where an army is too OP that no level of experience will top it, but thankfully Marines this edition never got close to that.

But the noob argument is not true. When marines were bad, both the new marine players and the expiriance marine players were getting similar win rates.

Marines are not OP. DA and IH are just , or in case of DA were, buffed by the change to doctrines and free stuff. Other chapters like SW. RG, BA, WS, Deathwatch, IF etc got those changes too. And their win rates didn't suddenly catapult them in to 50+% win rate area, in fact we are no longer seeing armies that were considered the "good" marines eg. BAs top 8 anymore. If marines were OP, then we would be seeing something we saw at the end of 8th, with multiple different marine armies taking top spots in events.

Karol wrote:
But the noob argument is not true. When marines were bad, both the new marine players and the expiriance marine players were getting similar win rates.

Marines are not OP. DA and IH are just , or in case of DA were, buffed by the change to doctrines and free stuff.

DA weren't really buffed by the change to doctrines. It was rules on top of their rules with Deathwing on top of free wargear.

Karol wrote:
But the noob argument is not true. When marines were bad, both the new marine players and the expiriance marine players were getting similar win rates.

Marines are not OP. DA and IH are just , or in case of DA were, buffed by the change to doctrines and free stuff. Other chapters like SW. RG, BA, WS, Deathwatch, IF etc got those changes too. And their win rates didn't suddenly catapult them in to 50+% win rate area, in fact we are no longer seeing armies that were considered the "good" marines eg. BAs top 8 anymore. If marines were OP, then we would be seeing something we saw at the end of 8th, with multiple different marine armies taking top spots in events.

Except the noob argument is true, as evidenced by the numbers I just provided. When Marines AREN'T top tier, its just more pronounced since the competitive/meta players meander to a more competitive army.

Marines aren't necessarily OP right now, the evidence isn't in yet since the recent nerf so we will have to wait and see. As far as your other comment, from just last weekend you had Top 4 placings from Dark Angels, Iron Hands, Space Wolves, Blood Angels and Ultramarines. Five separate chapters placed in the top 4 in just the last weekend. Include the weekend before that and you had Black Templars placing multiple times AND a "Adeptus Astartes" list. So definitely 6 and possibly 7 in 2 weeks.

But people already showed in prior sesons that the win rates for marines, both veteran or not, were one of the closests to each other. With the two other factions being eldar and GK of all the things.

Also there is no way someone is going to tell me that noobs pick a YELLOW army to play in tournaments, and that is why IF have so bad results. The only two marine armies, I see placing in eastern europe are IH and DA. Pre changes DA being the dominant ones, and with it no longer being the case post changes. The only time other marine armies make it in to top 4, is when events are on the smaller size and it never happens, when the events are bigger.
Maybe it will change after the golden week we have now. All I do know is that the people that do dominate tournaments here, either sold or returned their borrowed DAs. But who knows maybe we play the game, so different, that the results at the top end up different too. I know the bottom is exactly the same.

Karol wrote:
But people already showed in prior sesons that the win rates for marines, both veteran or not, were one of the closests to each other. With the two other factions being eldar and GK of all the things.

Also there is no way someone is going to tell me that noobs pick a YELLOW army to play in tournaments, and that is why IF have so bad results. The only two marine armies, I see placing in eastern europe are IH and DA. Pre changes DA being the dominant ones, and with it no longer being the case post changes. The only time other marine armies make it in to top 4, is when events are on the smaller size and it never happens, when the events are bigger.
Maybe it will change after the golden week we have now. All I do know is that the people that do dominate tournaments here, either sold or returned their borrowed DAs. But who knows maybe we play the game, so different, that the results at the top end up different too. I know the bottom is exactly the same.

...Literally everything you just said is false. If people showed that the win rates for veterans and noobs was the "Closest" for Marines than please link me to that.

"Noobs pick a YELLOW army" This is called a Strawman, nobody said Noobs picked a yellow army, they pick MARINES predominantly. And the reason IF results are bad is because they are a lesser chapter compared to the standouts.

Only DA/IH Make it to the top: Umm...I just said, literally today that in just the last week of results that 5 or so DIFFERENT Marine chapters made it into the top 4.

But only in smaller Tournaments: ...seriously dude, just stop.

Bedlam in the Burgh: 74 Players, 3rd place Black Templars.
Mayhem GT: 113 Players, 7th place Ultramarines (Lost his last game to the 2nd place DA army 94/80)
London GT: 153 Players, 9th Place Adeptus Astartes, lost 1 game with 84pts. 11th Place Black Templars, lost 1 game with 85pts.
Down Under GT: 98 Players, 4th place Space Wolves
Manchester SUPER: 251 Players, 2nd Place Space Wolves, 3rd Place Adeptus Astartes

I'd say snagging multiple top 4 spots in GTs and Supers is proof you are wrong, and even then, they had multiple lists that ALMOST snagged top spots if it wasn't for an unlucky roll or two.

SemperMortis wrote:
But only in smaller Tournaments: ...seriously dude, just stop.

Bedlam in the Burgh: 74 Players, 3rd place Black Templars.
Mayhem GT: 113 Players, 7th place Ultramarines (Lost his last game to the 2nd place DA army 94/80)
London GT: 153 Players, 9th Place Adeptus Astartes, lost 1 game with 84pts. 11th Place Black Templars, lost 1 game with 85pts.
Down Under GT: 98 Players, 4th place Space Wolves
Manchester SUPER: 251 Players, 2nd Place Space Wolves, 3rd Place Adeptus Astartes

I'd say snagging multiple top 4 spots in GTs and Supers is proof you are wrong, and even then, they had multiple lists that ALMOST snagged top spots if it wasn't for an unlucky roll or two.

How many Marine players were at each event? As much as you dislike it, the sheer number of players of a given faction at an event should correlate to how many places they claim. If an event was like 35% Marines, they probably should take at least one top-4 with 2 not being all that unlikely.

 Canadian 5th wrote:

SemperMortis wrote:
But only in smaller Tournaments: ...seriously dude, just stop.

Bedlam in the Burgh: 74 Players, 3rd place Black Templars.
Mayhem GT: 113 Players, 7th place Ultramarines (Lost his last game to the 2nd place DA army 94/80)
London GT: 153 Players, 9th Place Adeptus Astartes, lost 1 game with 84pts. 11th Place Black Templars, lost 1 game with 85pts.
Down Under GT: 98 Players, 4th place Space Wolves
Manchester SUPER: 251 Players, 2nd Place Space Wolves, 3rd Place Adeptus Astartes

I'd say snagging multiple top 4 spots in GTs and Supers is proof you are wrong, and even then, they had multiple lists that ALMOST snagged top spots if it wasn't for an unlucky roll or two.

How many Marine players were at each event? As much as you dislike it, the sheer number of players of a given faction at an event should correlate to how many places they claim. If an event was like 35% Marines, they probably should take at least one top-4 with 2 not being all that unlikely.

Its utterly astounding how often this ridiculous point is brought up. If 50 noobs show up with Marine armies and 10 Ork armies show up played by Meta players and LVO winners, would you expect the top 4 to be all Marine or would you expect the top places to be dominated by the ork experienced/meta players?

Every single time someone says "but how many Marine players were there!" and I run the numbers...guess what happens? Well you don't have to guess, i've run the numbers twice on two different sets of tournaments in this very thread. The vast MAJORITY of Marine players are new, either playing their first GT ever or at most playing 1-2 before hand.

SemperMortis wrote:
Its utterly astounding how often this ridiculous point is brought up. If 50 noobs show up with Marine armies and 10 Ork armies show up played by Meta players and LVO winners, would you expect the top 4 to be all Marine or would you expect the top places to be dominated by the ork experienced/meta players?

Every single time someone says "but how many Marine players were there!" and I run the numbers...guess what happens? Well you don't have to guess, i've run the numbers twice on two different sets of tournaments in this very thread. The vast MAJORITY of Marine players are new, either playing their first GT ever or at most playing 1-2 before hand.

Twice! One two whole sets of tournaments! Somebody get this guy's findings published in the Journal of the American Statistical Association!

You need to do the work for every tournament you post because, and this may come as a shock to you, they will all have different make-ups of players. You should also run the math for the other factions as that will also be relevant.

Also, a new player doesn't equal a bad player. It would be unlikely for a new player to take a top spot with any army but a new player can be skilled and place well without having a ton of tournament experience. So you'd also need to run the numbers for each faction's average placement by the number of tournaments each player has attended before you could dismiss a faction having new players as having a large impact on their expected results.

I, for one, eagerly await your findings.

As said before, you can't pull the experienced Space Marine players and compare their performance to the entire field. That's comparing apples to oranges. You have to compare all experienced Space Marine players to all experienced players only. That is when you will see if Space Marine outperform other factions when played by experienced players. Otherwise, you are just confirming that experience matters in Tournament 40K.