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Augustus wrote:Modest of you sir.

I am not sure I agree about that 42 to 49, that's a diff of 7 right? Wasn't that a massacre condition for S3? A diff of 7 kp?

Assuming equal performance doesn't that mean you were handicapped by enough KP to make a massacre with comparable performances and luck?

I'd say that's a pretty big diff.

I completely agree. When the difference in a massacre is less than 25% of your army, and the max possible between the two of your is that same amount, that's still a huge handicap. Look at it this way: In order to massacre scenario 1, you had to have at least 4 more objectives than your opponent. Look at how hard that is. I'm not sure we had any Massacres that weren't a tabling for scenario 1. I was close, but just out of range when the time came. Now, look at the KP mission. That's two Rhinos and a scout squad.

dietrich wrote:If GW US is changing the scenarios around this much, in particular the victory conditions, isn't that basically their way of saying the game developers don't know what they're doing? If Mech IG is the best army build evah, then doesn't that mean the dev team really messed up?

Maybe, but that's also assuming that the dev team sits around and considers every single build from every single angle. Now, compare their manpower to the rest of the 40K fanbase. Someone is going to find something better, more often than not, I'd wager. It wasn't a reaction to the IG codex in general, I would say, rather what players have insisted on bringing out of it. I'm not sure the dev team can be blamed for that. Perhaps they don't look at every codex through the eyes of a WAAC player. Perhaps they should. So, if you're intent on blaming someone, there's plenty of places to point your fingers, including tournament structure, GW writers, fellow gamers, etc., etc.

Augustus wrote:Modest of you sir.

I am not sure I agree about that 42 to 49, that's a diff of 7 right? Wasn't that a massacre condition for S3? A diff of 7 kp?

Assuming equal performance doesn't that mean you were handicapped by enough KP to make a massacre with comparable performances and luck?

I'd say that's a pretty big diff.

It's about 20%, so yeah it's a big difference, but something that is very doable. Less difficult than a 'normal' kp mission with my 25 KP sisters vs a 15 kp Marine list.


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daedalus wrote:
I completely agree. When the difference in a massacre is less than 25% of your army, and the max possible between the two of your is that same amount, that's still a huge handicap. Look at it this way: In order to massacre scenario 1, you had to have at least 4 more objectives than your opponent. Look at how hard that is. I'm not sure we had any Massacres that weren't a tabling for scenario 1. I was close, but just out of range when the time came. Now, look at the KP mission. That's two Rhinos and a scout squad.

Fair enough, it was just a 3 unit difference to make a massacre in S3, but what was the KP levels for Massacre/Win/etc on a 'Normal KP' from last year?

As for Scenario 1, we had 2 or 3 Massacres without Tabling at our location. I handily had 4 objectives at the end of mine.

Augustus wrote:Just know I'm trying to build a point about the irony of the missions and the hardboy, not criticize you.

What is a hard army? Isn't it one that wins across all missions? Well, here are some missions: if your army is hard, you'll win. Otherwise, it's not a hard army.

*shrug*

Now, if your complaint is "these missions reward different builds than the ones in the main rulebook," then simply say that. No reason to try and construct a different point.

dietrich wrote:If GW US is changing the scenarios around this much, in particular the victory conditions, isn't that basically their way of saying the game developers don't know what they're doing? If Mech IG is the best army build evah, then doesn't that mean the dev team really messed up?

I don't think the US Trade Sales department is trying to pass judgment on the game developers. I think it was simply the two things that every tournament organizer must consider: 1) "How do I get separation between players, such that I can identify the top three, when we're only playing 3 games?"; and 2) "Are people bored with the out-of-the-book missions?"

Janthkin wrote:I don't think the US Trade Sales department is trying to pass judgment on the game developers. I think it was simply the two things that every tournament organizer must consider: 1) "How do I get separation between players, such that I can identify the top three, when we're only playing 3 games?"; and 2) "Are people bored with the out-of-the-book missions?"

This.

Even if they screwed it up, I doubt there was a nefarious 'screw mech' plan. I think the intention that Janthkin outlines was there, but the execution may have been flawed.

Or people may just be mad because they got owned on S3.

Janthkin wrote:I don't think the US Trade Sales department is trying to pass judgment on the game developers. I think it was simply the two things that every tournament organizer must consider: 1) "How do I get separation between players, such that I can identify the top three, when we're only playing 3 games?"; and 2) "Are people bored with the out-of-the-book missions?"

I don't know if it was an attempt to pass judgement, but clearly the US Team thought, "hey, mech and fast stuff are too good." If it was a revision to KP scoring based on FOC, then it would hit everyone more or less the same. But, it was clearly designed to hit mech (except for walkers) and other fast-movers where it hurts. If point costs were properly balanced, then the game takes care of itself.

And, honestly, I think GW's dev team does a mediocre job. It could be worse, but there's stronger game systems out there. They don't play test the extreme army builds, they playtest battlebox forces. And they should have realized that people would tire of basically 9 scenarios and developed more. And not Battlemissions (which, I do like, but doesn't attempt to be balanced anymore than APOC or planetstrike), actual balanced tournament ready missions.

Please note his other implicit point- there is no or very little reason to suspect the US Trade Sales team has any motive to criticize or counteract the actions of the Development Studio back in the UK. The more likely explanation for S3 is just to encourage people to buy some new stuff to tweak their army to make it better-suited to that mission. Ard Boys is about selling product, after all.

I agree that it seems a bit odd that they haven’t provided more tournament missions, but if you’ve been playing at least a few years, it makes more sense.

Tournament missions aren’t actually all that hard to design. In 3rd ed and 4th ed it was standard and expected for a tournament to use a variety of missions, only a fraction of which were the book missions. I think in 01 or 02 there were something like a dozen Rogue Trader Tournament missions, which included three or four from the main rulebook. This has historically been a part of the charm and draw of a tournament- that you’re playing something new and different without having to come up with it yourself.

What is literally impossible to do is design a tournament mission which no one complains about. If you’re conservative and careful in your design, you can make good ones pretty easily, but that does limit how interesting you can make them. And you will NEVER come up with one which will fail to draw fire if posted on the internet.

Adepticon has, imho, done a good job of balancing new tournie missions. Sure, any mission can draw flak, and the ones in the rulebook do too. But, there's some that are a low smolder, and some that are a forestfire.

The guys that do Origins 40k posted a mission. Basically the opposite quarter deployment, and you're trying to get a package off the enemy deployment zone. But, since models carry the package, you can start it in a vehicle. Or, if you're Eldar, a fast skimmer with star engines, and get it off the board on Turn 1 without a shot being fired at you. That's not well balanced, and adding a mission later that punishes eldar vehicles doesn't make up for it.

dietrich wrote:...not Battlemissions (which, I do like, but doesn't attempt to be balanced anymore than APOC or planetstrike), actual balanced tournament ready missions.

I played the chaos mission neverending battle(?) I forget the name, the chaos mission where it's KP with (dead) infantry units coming back on the board.

I think it was a lot more balanced than 3xKP for the fast.

Why not use the missions book for event scenarios? I think that makes a lot of sense, and even encourages people to buy that book at the venues that host the events...


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Mannahnin wrote:What is literally impossible to do is design a tournament mission which no one complains about.

Truer words were never spoken, that's also totally hilarious!

Ha ha ha, very sig -able as well.

I love Battle Missions and think it was the best $25 on 40k I've spent in a long time, but it is definitely not balanced.

My friend and I played the defend the center of the board mission. He was Codex marines; I was SW. He got defender. Guess how that went.

Augustus wrote:

Danny Internets wrote:The problem is that it made people question the basic army structure by changing the fundamental victory conditions of the game. It's kind of like changing the rules of baseball to make it so you can only score via homeruns a week before the World Series and then saying "Well, we gave you plenty of notice to rebuild your team." I wouldn't have minded it as much if it didn't create auto-loss scenarios, such as horde Orks versus mech IG or DE.

Dannhy Internets hit on a similar point in his thread as well. While this might be a good concept and I see where you are going...

Monster Rain wrote:Actually, I think it's a better test of a player's skill to mess with the Status Quo of list building. It separates the tacticians from the people that get their "win button" armies off of the internet.

What skill is there really in playing a 3:1 handicap S3 KP game?

What you need to bear in mind is that ‘ard Boyz is not the World Series. It’s one of many events, and is the direct descendent of GW’s old Gladiator tournaments. The Gladiator tournaments were no-sports, no-painting, no-whining, and also specifically advertised as having difficult and unbalanced scenarios. There were often ones that screwed armies. The idea was that when you hit a mission that screwed yours, you fought uphill, and if you really were THAT much of a badass, you’d find a way to win anyway.

By comparison with the old GW Gladiators, the Adepticon Gladiator and the Ard Boys are exemplars of balance and design restraint.

Bear in mind also that Ard Boyz has always also been a Trade Sales promotion, designed to get people to buy more stuff. 2500pts, no painting required, no comp, but WYSIWYG mandatory?

That is GW saying directly: “Give us money to buy the big, bad, nasty army you can’t normally play at your store. You don’t need to worry about painting it or about what your friends would think if you fielded this army at your normal weekly gaming night.”

Scenario 3 really isn’t Trade Sales saying “The UK Studio unbalanced the game, we should re-balance it! That’s the ticket!” It’s them saying “Look at all the mech armies out there. Let’s give people an incentive to buy some more infantry.”



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Augustus wrote:Automatically Appended Next Post:

Mannahnin wrote:What is literally impossible to do is design a tournament mission which no one complains about.

Truer words were never spoken, that's also totally hilarious!

Ha ha ha, very sig -able as well.

Thank you, sir. You are a scholar and a gentleman.

Centurian99 wrote:

Honestly, I don't understand what the whole leafblower thing is all about. Two showed up at my qualifier, both got owned. Neither placed. Not really all that popular here in the midwest, or so I understand.

Well, player skill and practice play a part in a good army. No matter how good the list, if you dont know its ins and outs before bellying up to the table, your probably not going to do as well as someone with has a lesser list on paper, but is extremely polished with that list.

Mannahnin wrote:
By comparison with the old GW Gladiators, the Adepticon Gladiator and the Ard Boys are exemplars of balance and design restraint.

I remember the overnight Gladiator I went to... The missions were crazy and you got rerolls for chugging 'beverages'. Started late, ended sometime in the morning. You had to fight through sleep, buzz and crazy arse missions to be 'ard.

I would love to see the bitching now for 'You get free rerolls just for chugging drinks! But I have a low tolerance. That completely changes the dynamics of the game. waaah. '

Of course that would just put Dash further ahead since he'll drink even without rerolls.

While I'm still not thrilled with how Mission 3 was constructed, the most interesting thing about it's structure seems to be how easy it was to score a "Massacre" victory in any mech-on-mech match up. (And how hard such a result must have been for a horde-on-horde matchup.) Personally, my Round 3 massacre put me within 2 Battle Points of third place, which is honestly a ridiculous outcome given how disappointing my performance was in Rounds 1 and 2.

Good observation. I had about the worst possible matchup in R3, and I was fighting my hardest just to avoid the massacre.

pretre wrote:The missions were crazy and you got rerolls for chugging 'beverages'.

Hmm... Given how defensive GW is about 40k being a "beer and pretzel war game" this actually makes a certain amount of sense. Perhaps this is what people mean when they talk about playing based on the designer's intent.

Augustus wrote:What skill is there really in playing a 3:1 handicap S3 KP game?

The skill and experience to recognizing that S1 & 2 favored mech.

The skill of realizing that you'll likely face a similar high kp army if you did well in those first two scenarios.

The skill of being at a 3:1 disadvantage and still winning because you tabled your opponent and got the massacre.

Valhallan42nd wrote:

Augustus wrote:What skill is there really in playing a 3:1 handicap S3 KP game?

The skill and experience to recognizing that S1 & 2 favored mech.

The skill of realizing that you'll likely face a similar high kp army if you did well in those first two scenarios.

The skill of being at a 3:1 disadvantage and still winning because you tabled your opponent and got the massacre.

Following the flow of your logic, S3 would be two 'similar high kp armies' facing off, in which case there's no 3:1 disadvantage. Two 40 KP lists fighting over a 7 KP spread would be like two 18 KP lists fighting over a 3 KP spread. It's just too small. This was the part of S3 that I really took issue with, not so much the attempt to 'comp score' the scenario.

Mannahnin wrote:Please note his other implicit point- there is no or very little reason to suspect the US Trade Sales team has any motive to criticize or counteract the actions of the Development Studio back in the UK. The more likely explanation for S3 is just to encourage people to buy some new stuff to tweak their army to make it better-suited to that mission. Ard Boys is about selling product, after all.

If this was the purpose then they would have released the missions more than a week prior to the tournament. A week is not adequate time to obtain, assemble, and properly convert any significant amount of new models for the vast majority of people. This was just comp scoring built into the missions, plain and simple. They have done this in the past, but never so flagrantly.

Valhallan42nd wrote:

Augustus wrote:What skill is there really in playing a 3:1 handicap S3 KP game?

The skill of being at a 3:1 disadvantage and still winning because you tabled your opponent and got the massacre.

Exactly. If you can be this hamstrung going into a match and win you definitely deserve to move on to the Semi-Finals.

I have participated in many competitive events in the past, and this point of view is one that, in my experience, is unique to 40k.

In wrestling, you don't pit a 140 pounder against a 172 pounder and say 'if he wins, he deserves to go to semis'.

Soccer fields aren't built on a 25 degree incline.

Lance Armstrong doesn't ride a Huffy just because he's 'just a better competitor'.

The reason that none of these things happen is because it's quite obvious that they penalize a competitor and skew the results. The playing field is intentionally made as level as possible so that the competition is as pure as possible. If somebody 'wins' because they have 3x the opportunity as the other guy, how is that not just sanctioned discrimination?

sourclams wrote: Two 40 KP lists fighting over a 7 KP spread would be like two 18 KP lists fighting over a 3 KP spread. It's just too small. This was the part of S3 that I really took issue with, not so much the attempt to 'comp score' the scenario.

Not sarcasm, just genuine interest in a hypothetical answer: What would you have preferred as a third scenario? What would you like to see for the semi's in terms of scenarios?

I would have liked to see a 2 objectives mission with Kill Points for the bonus points, personally. Two objectives to massacre is a hugely challenging scenario for R3 when skill matchups should be as equal as possible.

Having such a narrow margin of error makes for a much more universally challenging scenario that can be minimally 'metagamed' by list design.

sourclams wrote:I have participated in many competitive events in the past, and this point of view is one that, in my experience, is unique to 40k.

In wrestling, you don't pit a 140 pounder against a 172 pounder and say 'if he wins, he deserves to go to semis'.

Soccer fields aren't built on a 25 degree incline.

Lance Armstrong doesn't ride a Huffy just because he's 'just a better competitor'.

The reason that none of these things happen is because it's quite obvious that they penalize a competitor and skew the results. The playing field is intentionally made as level as possible so that the competition is as pure as possible. If somebody 'wins' because they have 3x the opportunity as the other guy, how is that not just sanctioned discrimination?

Yes that's true. That's because those are actual, physical competitions that in no way rely on dice. I think you're taking this analogy a bit too far.

Lance Armstrong also doesn't have to cross his fingers for a dice roll that decides who gets to start pedaling first!

* Edit *

Not worth getting into a discussion over KP's and VP's.

sourclams wrote:I have participated in many competitive events in the past, and this point of view is one that, in my experience, is unique to 40k.

In wrestling, you don't pit a 140 pounder against a 172 pounder and say 'if he wins, he deserves to go to semis'.

Soccer fields aren't built on a 25 degree incline.

Lance Armstrong doesn't ride a Huffy just because he's 'just a better competitor'.

The reason that none of these things happen is because it's quite obvious that they penalize a competitor and skew the results. The playing field is intentionally made as level as possible so that the competition is as pure as possible. If somebody 'wins' because they have 3x the opportunity as the other guy, how is that not just sanctioned discrimination?

As previously noted, your confusion stems from the fact that you’re looking for steak in the vegetarian restaurant.

‘Ard Boys is not, and has never been, designed to support a “pure” (ie: rigorously balanced and universally representative) competitive play environment. The facts that it is played at an unusual points size, with unusual (deliberately difficult or unbalanced) missions, make that clear.

This year (so far) and last year have shown a trend toward a more balanced set of missions overall, but that doesn’t mean that trend is deliberate or going to continue indefinitely.

FYI, remember that football games are played with the teams switching ends for half the game to make it so that if one side/direction of play is more difficult, that both teams suffer it as equally as possible. This is analogous to a tournament format in which all the major army “types” are each screwed in a mission, in that each player has their share of “running up hill” or “riding a Huffy”.



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Danny Internets wrote:

Mannahnin wrote:Please note his other implicit point- there is no or very little reason to suspect the US Trade Sales team has any motive to criticize or counteract the actions of the Development Studio back in the UK. The more likely explanation for S3 is just to encourage people to buy some new stuff to tweak their army to make it better-suited to that mission. Ard Boys is about selling product, after all.

If this was the purpose then they would have released the missions more than a week prior to the tournament. A week is not adequate time to obtain, assemble, and properly convert any significant amount of new models for the vast majority of people.

I disagree. It’s a short time to build a whole new army, but it’s easily adequate time to buy and assemble a couple of new units if you want to tweak your army and cut down on the number of 3KP vehicles in it.

This was just comp scoring built into the missions, plain and simple. They have done this in the past, but never so flagrantly.

I disagree entirely. Please feel free to present examples of other ‘Ard Boyz scenarios which you think represent attempts at Comp, though.

I disagree entirely. Please feel free to present examples of other ‘Ard Boyz scenarios which you think represent attempts at Comp, though.

I guess you didn't play last year. The first round featured a kill points mission that heavily emphasized taking troops as they were worth only 1 point each and all other FoC units were worth 2. HQs were worth a whopping 5 each.

Two years ago there were not one but two missions in the preliminaries that featured Dawn of War deployment and allowed you to deploy ALL Troop units rather than just 2.

If you don't think these scenarios heavily stack the deck in favor of Troop-heavy armies then I'm not sure we're playing the same game.

I came 9th in the final last year. I went eight wins and a draw.

The missions you’re talking about do skew the normal army design/play parameters, but I maintain that their intent is clearly just to give unusual challenges and encourage people to buy more stuff. That Comp has nothing whatsoever to do with it. It seems to me that you’re judging them inaccurately based on your existing crusade against Comp, even though that’s boxing with shadows in this case.

And two years ago they used the "modified" kill points, but in those missions you received no kill points for transports.

I took mech sister's to the one two years ago, and the one last weekend. I even tried modifying it a bit and dropped out about 10kp from the list so that it would be in the mid 50's instead of the 60's. So lets think about this two years ago I placed 5th at finals, this year didn't even place in the first round. You can say all you want about skill but when your 55kp army faces a 20kp army (with decent ranged ability), and your opponent has a modicum of skill you aren't going to massacre and you aren't going to table them.

I guess it was just convenient that you forgot about that scenario then, at least for the purposes of our discussion. In case you have also forgotten about the release of the scenarios last year, it was done many weeks prior to the first round. Testing players by forcing adaptation to unusual challenges would be conceivable if they didn't provide the scenarios with ample prior notice.