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So to summarize your two points.

I provided actual analytical data from two separate sets of tournaments. You two have provided...opinion.

Since you want to say that my analysis is wrong, please, go ahead and provide some statistical evidence of your own beyond "big # of marine players therefore they should win x% of the time."

and before you post again Canadian you should probably read the thread since I did in fact post 2 other competing factions, GSC and Custards, I also did analysis on IG and Orkz in the other comparison.

So of the 5 factions looked at Marines had by far the most inexperienced players, which almost always translates to "bad" while just as often Experienced almost always translates to good, with 1 very notable Marine exception who only ever seems to finish mid pack at best.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 alextroy wrote:
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.

and to specifically harp on this point. % of players playing a specific faction is a useless stat. The better stat as always is % of TOP Placings. And your comment is literally that, top placing. Because in all the tournaments i've looked at its been experienced Marine players placing against Experienced players of other factions. Especially in the larger GTs where the new/bad players get taken out in the first 3-4 rounds while the professionals go to the finals. And in that sense Marines have been heavily over-represented.

SemperMortis wrote:
Since you want to say that my analysis is wrong, please, go ahead and provide some statistical evidence of your own beyond "big # of marine players therefore they should win x% of the time."

and before you post again Canadian you should probably read the thread since I did in fact post 2 other competing factions, GSC and Custards, I also did analysis on IG and Orkz in the other comparison.

So of the 5 factions looked at Marines had by far the most inexperienced players, which almost always translates to "bad" while just as often Experienced almost always translates to good, with 1 very notable Marine exception who only ever seems to finish mid pack at best.

You've still proved absolutely nothing because your sample size is too small and you excluded a vast majority of factions from your analysis. Merely looking at the total player count as has been done many times in this very thread is a better indicator than your lack of sample size which is biased in which factions it tests and by the events it chooses to cover.

 Canadian 5th wrote:

SemperMortis wrote:
Since you want to say that my analysis is wrong, please, go ahead and provide some statistical evidence of your own beyond "big # of marine players therefore they should win x% of the time."

and before you post again Canadian you should probably read the thread since I did in fact post 2 other competing factions, GSC and Custards, I also did analysis on IG and Orkz in the other comparison.

So of the 5 factions looked at Marines had by far the most inexperienced players, which almost always translates to "bad" while just as often Experienced almost always translates to good, with 1 very notable Marine exception who only ever seems to finish mid pack at best.

You've still proved absolutely nothing because your sample size is too small and you excluded a vast majority of factions from your analysis. Merely looking at the total player count as has been done many times in this very thread is a better indicator than your lack of sample size which is biased in which factions it tests and by the events it chooses to cover.

So to again summarize your point: "You didn't provide enough examples of me being wrong"

Here is the thing, I had a hypothesis, it was that Marines would be OP with the previous update. To substantiate my hypothesis, once data became available I showed Marines dominating tournaments. Maybe not as badly as DE did to start the edition, but still very much dominating. There win rates stayed relatively average though thanks to their significantly higher % of newer players dragging their average down. I substantiated that point by providing 4 other factions breakdowns showing that Marines had a ridiculously high "new" player ratio when compared to those other factions.

Your entire disagreement is that I haven't broken down EVERY SINGLE FACTION for EVERY SINGLE TOURNAMENT. Yeah, and I won't be doing that because its a massive time/effort that i'm not willing to put in, just like scientists won't analyze every single event to prove a point but rather take a substantial sample size, in that regard, as of this moment we have 6-8 tournaments reviewed, including 100+ player tournament, all sample sizes show my hypothesis correct and your opinion wrong. So just like in science, prove me wrong. Stating "You didn't do every single tournament" or similar nonsense isn't a counter argument, its a borderline tantrum that the facts aren't aligning with your preconceived notion.

Based on this thread, my prediction about 40k going forward is it will be full of arguments about the nature of data / significance of sample size, implicit assertions of the superiority of anecdotes, and casual dismissal of anything that does not agree with one's own point of view.

Might as well just roll dice to decide who's right here.

SemperMortis wrote:
So to again summarize your point: "You didn't provide enough examples of me being wrong"

No, you didn't do enough to prove your hypothesis correct. You have to actually prove the point you're making and you haven't done so while shouting down any critique of your methodology such as questions about per faction player count and how you were defining factions within your data set. You're the one who claims that player experience matters and that marines as a faction have the most new players at events yet you fail to establish the validity of your claim.

Thus I will argue that, by player count at events, Marines have been shown to fall exactly in line with where we would expect them and thus Semper is wrong in his prediction that marines would be OP.

We all agree that evidence provided shows Space Marines to be both popular and very effective. As a whole, the over-perform their participation rate in podium finishes. This is about 1/3 your initial prediction. Remember this?

SemperMortis wrote:
Based on the new updates I honestly predict SM to start running away with tournaments when these changes are implemented. I just don't see how a faction can't dominate the meta when they are allowed to take almost every upgrade for free.

A Devastator squad equipped with 4 Lascannons just went from 155pts (Cherub) to 115pts and you can give the Sgt free upgrades as well
A Sternguard Vet squad equipped with Combi-Meltas and 2 Heavy meltas and Sgt with PF just went from 165pts to 100pts
A Aggressor Squad with Boltstorm/grenade launcher just went from 135pts to 90pts.

And those are just some of the ridiculous levels of power increase I'm talking about. With the insane amount of points reductions that Marines got, they can now take about 20% more units, and those new units will be fully kitted out with free upgrades.

Ironically, in a rare twist, with these ridiculous levels of points drops across the board for Marines; Several units which hadn't been playable before are now going to be OP and a few others will go from collecting dust to competitive. I just fear they went too far in the points cuts and drastically overvalued how much AoC was really worth.

As noted, evidence provided has only shown that Space Marine over perform their participation rate. Your initial argument for your prediction being right was lots of podium finishes. However, analysis of faction participation and finish rates shows them to be one of many factions overperforming, which is not exactly surprising. However, their win rates have not been stellar. They are not 8.5 Iron Hands, even a Noob can win with this, powerful. Simply put, they are not OP.

Your argument that experienced Space Marine players are doing well has been unsupported due to poor methodology. You haven't shown any evidence that experienced Space Marine player are doing better than any experienced player. It is not a shocking result that experienced players do well nor that they choose a strong faction to help them do so.

As for your argument that free wargear is the reason Space Marine would do well. I've recall no evidence of that being the case. Rather it was a combination of strong codex, overall aggressive points values, strong secondaries, and abuse of Doctrines that seem to have made them do so well.

You are free to criticize the naysayers, but you need to put up decent proof if you expect everyone to agree with you.

If we go by Meta Monday's figures (https://40kmetamonday.wordpress.com/), DA and IH had 57% win rates through the first half of Arks. Making them the best two factions by win% along with GSC (while GSC had a bit over half the players).

You can I guess cling to "57% isn't 64%, get on my level of OP scrub", but it feels like nitpicking.

DA have now been nerfed and seem to be dropping off (51% win rates last 2 weekends) but IH have had a 56% and 58% win rate, so seemingly just go marching on.

Tyel wrote:
If we go by Meta Monday's figures (https://40kmetamonday.wordpress.com/), DA and IH had 57% win rates through the first half of Arks. Making them the best two factions by win% along with GSC (while GSC had a bit over half the players).

You can I guess cling to "57% isn't 64%, get on my level of OP scrub", but it feels like nitpicking.

DA have now been nerfed and seem to be dropping off (51% win rates last 2 weekends) but IH have had a 56% and 58% win rate, so seemingly just go marching on.

People are saying that a range between 45 and 55% is ideal and you're calling a 57% win-rate over a relatively short sample window OP...

Tyel wrote:
If we go by Meta Monday's figures (https://40kmetamonday.wordpress.com/), DA and IH had 57% win rates through the first half of Arks. Making them the best two factions by win% along with GSC (while GSC had a bit over half the players).

You can I guess cling to "57% isn't 64%, get on my level of OP scrub", but it feels like nitpicking.

DA have now been nerfed and seem to be dropping off (51% win rates last 2 weekends) but IH have had a 56% and 58% win rate, so seemingly just go marching on.

I mean if we're going to start generalising white scars also landed a 69% win rate last week, but beyond that the premise of the thread is that "marines will be running away/dominating the meta" which is both slightly subjective and in my opinion inaccurate. What we actually get is "DA & IH are/were a bit OP" given that the happy window reaches up to 55%, leaving them a whopping 2-3% too good.

57% win rate is a rounding error in an internal balance revision which would be needed to fix the gak wargear balance. Should armies with bad external balance be nerfed? Yeah, is it worth being mad about a 57% win rate? Absolutely not.

Dudeface wrote:
"DA & IH are/were a bit OP" given that the happy window reaches up to 55%, leaving them a whopping 2-3% too good.

The target should be bringing them down 7%, it's not that 55% win rate is ideal, it's just okay.

Dudeface wrote:
I mean if we're going to start generalising white scars also landed a 69% win rate last week, but beyond that the premise of the thread is that "marines will be running away/dominating the meta" which is both slightly subjective and in my opinion inaccurate. What we actually get is "DA & IH are/were a bit OP" given that the happy window reaches up to 55%, leaving them a whopping 2-3% too good.

Yes, this week there were 3 White Scars players who played 16 games and won 11 of them. (69% win rate)
Whereas last week there were 5 White Scars players, who played 26 games and won 9 of them. (35% win rate).

Its a good example of what Semper has talked about. That's a tiny player base, and therefore the results are going to be incredibly skewed by which players showed up that weekend.

I don't know what your criteria is for "running away/dominating the meta", but having the best win% tends to be how I'd qualify dominance. Also, of the 172 Tournaments considered by Meta Monday up to this weekend, Marines won 55 of them. That's just under a third. Again, that's how I'd qualify dominance.

The meta as a whole is not as toxic as when you had a 65%+ win rate faction - as was successively the case through the first half of 2022. I don't have all the data, but his "year" is possibly shaping up to arguably be the most balanced 40k has ever had in terms of faction viability. But that doesn't change Marines being the best right now. Just as Tyranids were the best in Nephilim, except even then Tyranids only won 19% of the tournaments.

Tyel wrote:

Dudeface wrote:
I mean if we're going to start generalising white scars also landed a 69% win rate last week, but beyond that the premise of the thread is that "marines will be running away/dominating the meta" which is both slightly subjective and in my opinion inaccurate. What we actually get is "DA & IH are/were a bit OP" given that the happy window reaches up to 55%, leaving them a whopping 2-3% too good.

Yes, this week there were 3 White Scars players who played 16 games and won 11 of them. (69% win rate)
Whereas last week there were 5 White Scars players, who played 26 games and won 9 of them. (35% win rate).

Its a good example of what Semper has talked about. That's a tiny player base, and therefore the results are going to be incredibly skewed by which players showed up that weekend.

I don't know what your criteria is for "running away/dominating the meta", but having the best win% tends to be how I'd qualify dominance. Also, of the 172 Tournaments considered by Meta Monday up to this weekend, Marines won 55 of them. That's just under a third. Again, that's how I'd qualify dominance.

The meta as a whole is not as toxic as when you had a 65%+ win rate faction - as was successively the case through the first half of 2022. I don't have all the data, but his "year" is possibly shaping up to arguably be the most balanced 40k has ever had in terms of faction viability. But that doesn't change Marines being the best right now. Just as Tyranids were the best in Nephilim, except even then Tyranids only won 19% of the tournaments.

It's just down to tolerances at that point, they make up 21% of players, in a fully balanced world you'd expect 21% win rate but they have as of the mid way report 28% of the tournament wins. So yes they are marginally too good, I wouldn't call that dominating though, there's a good spread of other factions landing wins. It just feels like the consensus is that DA/IH are OP overall rather than the whole of space marines, there are good spreads of factions hitting the podium and even winning events however, so I still refute that space marines as whole are able to be classed as dominating when they land 7% or so more than their participation rate would suggest.

The issue then was the "lolz noobz" card was played and whilst Semper has done some work, the total number of ITC tournaments played isn't always a representation of player skill in the first place, although the trend is true an experienced tourney goer will be better due to understanding format/pace. But to have this as useful data you need to be able to prove that bad players do better than they should with the faction because they're so OP and dominant that they can punch beyond their weight class, or alternatively if the very top end elite players are all swapping to the perceived top faction, that also would lend credit. As is stands all Semper has done is check ITC wins for Marines, which just showed that experience pays off and offers nothing in context of their win rate compared to other factions.

TL;DR who cares it's all irrelevant soon and this is the best they've done in a while, pull IH in and they'll be laughing as it burns.