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 AnomanderRake wrote:

 Jidmah wrote:
I was regularly tabled in turn one or two in 7th, even before all the supplement and formation nonsense started. Absolutely nothing in 9th is as far apart as the top codices in 7th were from the bottom ones...

Imagine, for the moment, that my subjective experience of seeing people get tabled on turn 1-3 all the time in 8th-9th and your subjective experience of seeing people getting tabled on turn 1-3 all the time in 7th are both based on actual practical experience and are well-tested.

That suggests to me that 8th/9th are just as bad as 7th from a balance standpoint, only different Codexes are at the unrecoverable bottom of the heap this time. Which doesn't say much for the basic ideal form of a tabletop wargame, in which we all get to bring models we like, throw down, and have a good time.

Except there are thousands of recorded game which easily prove your claims wrong.

 Jidmah wrote:

 AnomanderRake wrote:

 Jidmah wrote:
I was regularly tabled in turn one or two in 7th, even before all the supplement and formation nonsense started. Absolutely nothing in 9th is as far apart as the top codices in 7th were from the bottom ones...

Imagine, for the moment, that my subjective experience of seeing people get tabled on turn 1-3 all the time in 8th-9th and your subjective experience of seeing people getting tabled on turn 1-3 all the time in 7th are both based on actual practical experience and are well-tested.

That suggests to me that 8th/9th are just as bad as 7th from a balance standpoint, only different Codexes are at the unrecoverable bottom of the heap this time. Which doesn't say much for the basic ideal form of a tabletop wargame, in which we all get to bring models we like, throw down, and have a good time.

Except there are thousands of recorded game which easily prove your claims wrong.

Thousands of recorded tournament games played by competitive people. The tournament balance of 9th is fine. The pick-up game balance is garbage.

To be a tournament player I have to a) play spam lists, b) only play the Codexes that aren't garbage, c) buy models based on their rules, d) play unfluffy, bizarre, and counterintuitive things to maximize the impact of my stratagems, and e) buy a new army every six months because my last one got nerfed into unplayability in a tournament setting or someone else came out that hard-counters me into not working anymore or GW rewrote the missions and my army can no longer play. If you're prepared to do all of those things 9e is great. If you're not 9e is terrible.

If you are getting tabled within two turns and people with dozens of games on record aren't, despite losing every single game they have recorded, you are either actively working towards losing that fast or making up stuff.

"Competitive gamers ruin the game" is just a mantra repeated by players who do not want to put effort into the game but still expect to win regularly by pure luck.

No edition has ever allowed you to just toss random crap on the table and win games.

Generally speaking I have to agree. I doubt 9th is as bad as could be said. There has always been what works with a tournament and what is fun to actually play. Most tournament lists are very crap looking, but win. I say most as I've seen from high placing yet very cool looking lists over the years.

Where I'd say I dislike 40k is the models losing flavor to then place it into a stratagem, I think that kinda sucks. Thought it sucked in 8th, still think it sucks now. Feels less like quality model rules and more like death to " Gotcha " moments. Probably just me being old but I'd be more happy to less or no strats and more interesting model rules.

 AnomanderRake wrote:
To be a tournament player I have to a) play spam lists

Yeah, this can easily be proven wrong by looking at winning lists. This might have been the case in 7th and parts of 8th, but not in 9th.

b) only play the Codexes that aren't garbage

Well, in a balanced environment that competitive players strive for, that would be none. Currently roughly 2-3 codices can be considered "garbage", I doubt that you will find any edition where you had a "garbage tier" as small as this.
Oh, and this is also easily proven wrong by data. All codices are played in great number, the least played one is chaos knights - a fairly powerful codex, judging from its win rates.
It's also worth noting that pretty much every other codex has already placed in the top 3 of a major event more than once.

c) buy models based on their rules

I'm fairly sure that no one who had Thrakka in September bought him because of his rules

d) play unfluffy, bizarre, and counterintuitive things to maximize the impact of my stratagems

Please do point out unfluffy, bizarre and counterintuitive thing that is currently run in tournaments?
Is it slanesh daemons racing across the battlefield at unreal speeds and tearing up anything they can?
Is Thrakka leading a horde of skarboyz into battle?
Harlequins just playing everything in their codex?
Heck, the marine lists don't even have enough in common to ask a snarky question about them

e) buy a new army every six months because my last one got nerfed into unplayability in a tournament setting or someone else came out that hard-counters me into not working anymore or GW rewrote the missions and my army can no longer play.

Ah, there we have it. Your army can still play it just can't win as often as it did. The nerfs GW has swung around during 8th had little, if any, impact on casual gaming unless you happened to play Grey Knights.
And that is the whole truth behind that hatred for competitive gaming. You want to win, you bought into cheese and spammed it, and when the wheel moved on you got left out in the rain.

Many codices have a wide array of viable units slightly below the "I want to win a tournament" tier today, unlike in the past. You will have no problems building a decent army out of a decent collection if you know what you are doing.

If you're prepared to do all of those things 9e is great. If you're not 9e is terrible.

There is no need to do "all those things" because that's not how the real world works. No one but the top few percent of the competitive scene does that. Most people like their army, just go over to the "why did you start your army" thread and see for yourself. Even more people simply can't afford or have the time to regularly buy and paint new armies.

Look, you clearly don't even know how tournament games work these days, so how about you stop talking about things you don't understand?
Irrational hatred for tournament players is nothing but you blindly believing old GW's lies who were trying to push the blame for their own failures onto players. It just happens that competitive gaming magnifies the problems a game has, because shoddy balance and badly written rules can be used as tools to win games.
A well written game can handle both casual garage gaming and tournaments. And 9th does that better than any edition ever has.

 Jidmah wrote:
If you are getting tabled within two turns and people with dozens of games on record aren't, despite losing every single game they have recorded, you are either actively working towards losing that fast or making up stuff...

I'm not getting tabled within two turns by actively working towards doing that. I'm getting tabled within two turns and tabling other people within two turns using the same list.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Jidmah wrote:
...Look, you clearly don't even know how tournament games work these days, so how about you stop talking about things you don't understand?
Irrational hatred for tournament players is nothing but you blindly believing old GW's lies who were trying to push the blame for their own failures onto players. It just happens that competitive gaming magnifies the problems a game has, because shoddy balance and badly written rules can be used as tools to win games.
A well written game can handle both casual garage gaming and tournaments. And 9th does that better than any edition ever has.

I do not have the time or the interest to go do an exhaustive analysis of what wins tournaments. I do have the time and the interest to go buy minis I like, bring them to a game store, attempt to play a pick-up game, get tabled in two turns, ask a more experienced player to critique my list or gameplay, get told repeatedly "yeah, all these models are garbage, you need to go spend hundreds of dollars on a netlist or you can't play", quit in a huff, and then spend time having arguments with people like you who are convinced that since they're doing fine everyone else is either lying or incompetent because there's no conceivable way someone else might honestly like an edition you didn't like better than the current one.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Jidmah wrote:
...Ah, there we have it. Your army can still play it just can't win as often as it did. The nerfs GW has swung around during 8th had little, if any, impact on casual gaming unless you happened to play Grey Knights.
And that is the whole truth behind that hatred for competitive gaming. You want to win, you bought into cheese and spammed it, and when the wheel moved on you got left out in the rain.

Many codices have a wide array of viable units slightly below the "I want to win a tournament" tier today, unlike in the past. You will have no problems building a decent army out of a decent collection if you know what you are doing...

I do not buy flavour-of-the-month cheese armies. I have never bought an army because it was cheese. I have never bought an army when it was cheese.

The problem with your assertion here is that whether or not there are a lot of viable units in the Codex has nothing to do with whether a given collection of minis is any good. I have a huge Alpha Legion army of infantry, Terminators, vehicles, Raptors, and 30k units. I do not have any Possessed, Daemon Engines, Plaguebearers, Daemon Princes, or any of the $40 single character blisters which have the support stack or stratagem interaction to not be crap. If I want to play 9e and not get tabled in two turns I need to shelve nearly the whole thing and go buy a bunch of new models, which is what I'm complaining about here.

If your definition of "a decent collection" is "maximum field allowance of every single unit in the Codex", then sure.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Jidmah wrote:

d) play unfluffy, bizarre, and counterintuitive things to maximize the impact of my stratagems

Please do point out unfluffy, bizarre and counterintuitive thing that is currently run in tournaments?
Is it slanesh daemons racing across the battlefield at unreal speeds and tearing up anything they can?
Is Thrakka leading a horde of skarboyz into battle?
Harlequins just playing everything in their codex?
Heck, the marine lists don't even have enough in common to ask a snarky question about them ...

Yet again: I DO NOT CARE what's run in tournaments. I care whether I run into something like the White Scars Infiltrators who had multiple to-wound bonuses (this was before the to-wound bonus stacking nerf), exploding attacks, all the rerolls, AP -lots, and D2 who get to kill a Knight by stabbing it with knives because my opponent went through and stacked four different character auras and a couple of stratagems into a stupid combo that lets them do something ridiculous.

Can you provide that lists that are doing this? I'm quite curious.

This has not been mine, or my local areas experience in 9th at all. Getting tabled on turn 2 is not something that is happening. I'd double check that you are using the correct amount of terrain and following the rules for the terrain. The new terrain rules are pretty explicitly designed to blunt alpha strikes and prevent this sort of situation from occurring.

 Sasori wrote:
Can you provide that lists that are doing this? I'm quite curious.

This has not been mine, or my local areas experience in 9th at all. Getting tabled on turn 2 is not something that is happening. I'd double check that you are using the correct amount of terrain and following the rules for the terrain. The new terrain rules are pretty explicitly designed to blunt alpha strikes and prevent this sort of situation from occurring.

Can't give you specifics, Battlescribe doesn't store things after the army book gets updated. I haven't played my Deathwatch under the new Codex because I'm still not convinced they're any better than just playing with no Chapter Tactics. The terrain rules don't help my Custodes, I don't have the Terminators or Sentinel Guard to play the netlists, and the Coronuses I use to avoid getting alpha-striked have 18W and can be seen through anything. My Mechanicum/Knights and Eldar are screwed by the fact that I've got a lot of FW models that GW isn't interested in supporting or seeing used, so if I want to play either of them I do have to go buy a new army. My CSM are infantry/mechanized and don't have the Cult units/Daemon Engines/Daemons/characters GW is interested in supporting since they're Alpha Legion, and last time I tried to put them on the table my opponent had a Russ with a relic battlecannon that got to delete a unit a turn if I poked an antenna out of cover anywhere.

We're using the right amount of terrain, but the damage creep means the instant any model I own enters line of sight it dies, so it doesn't help much.

Secondary point here: I've got five armies, in the 5,000pts+ range, and all of them are so crap I need to go buy a new one if I want to have any chance of not just getting steamrolled in 9e. I'm aware I have a larger proportion of FW units than is average, but have I magically found the secret formula for picking all the worst books/worst units in every book? Or is the range of usable minis actually really narrow?

 AnomanderRake wrote:

 Jidmah wrote:
If you are getting tabled within two turns and people with dozens of games on record aren't, despite losing every single game they have recorded, you are either actively working towards losing that fast or making up stuff...

I'm not getting tabled within two turns by actively working towards doing that. I'm getting tabled within two turns and tabling other people within two turns using the same list.

Yeah, no. Sorry, but I'm going to call BS on that. You are playing Alpha Legion infantry, which is extremely difficult to get rid of, let alone in two turns.
It's also weird that you can't provide lists for this, both because battlescribe doesn't toss out lists between data updates and there hasn't been a data update to begin with. At the very least you should be able to write a rough list from memory that can both table and be tabled within two turns.

I do not have the time or the interest to go do an exhaustive analysis of what wins tournaments. I do have the time and the interest to go buy minis I like, bring them to a game store, attempt to play a pick-up game, get tabled in two turns, ask a more experienced player to critique my list or gameplay, get told repeatedly "yeah, all these models are garbage, you need to go spend hundreds of dollars on a netlist or you can't play", quit in a huff, and then spend time having arguments with people like you who are convinced that since they're doing fine everyone else is either lying or incompetent because there's no conceivable way someone else might honestly like an edition you didn't like better than the current one.

You have weird interests.
This isn't about liking. Your story simply doesn't match up. That is not how the game works.
The only reason why I can see you getting tabled in two turns with an army that is as durable as alpha legion infantry is because there is indeed an extreme gap in player skill or because rules are being played wrong. In either case you would be having the same issues in any edition.
One of my regular opponents is an all-infantry everyone-looks-like-alpharius player and the only way I'm even remotely getting close to tabling him in the first two turns is when he makes grave playing mistakes and brings a weak list. You need none of the things you listed to do well with alpha legion.

The worst part is that you apparently believe this TFG telling you that all your models suck, and then blame it on GW and competitive players. I suggest trying to look at the general operating the army to this kind of disaster first.

If your definition of "a decent collection" is "maximum field allowance of every single unit in the Codex", then sure.

You don't need 3 of everything to build an army that doesn't suck. For most jobs, there are two or three units that can do them, for codices like CSM, orks or eldar there are even more. Don't have three predators? Bring a predator, a helbrute and a vindicator instead.
You don't have enough anti-tank units to kill a single LRBT? You don't have a decent collection.

I also would like to point out that with 9th the hammer of sunderance is no longer legal for tournament play. And yes, that relic cannon was a major PITA.

Yet again: I DO NOT CARE what's run in tournaments.

So, why are you running your mouth about people playing in tournaments then? If you don't care, keep quiet.

I care whether I run into something like the White Scars Infiltrators who had multiple to-wound bonuses (this was before the to-wound bonus stacking nerf), exploding attacks, all the rerolls, AP -lots, and D2 who get to kill a Knight by stabbing it with knives because my opponent went through and stacked four different character auras and a couple of stratagems into a stupid combo that lets them do something ridiculous.

Exactly my point. That was 8th. This thread is about 9th.

If playing with what you want was never a good idea, and GW put focus on tournament play since 3ed , then it is more then 20 years focusing on on the gaming aspect on the game. You can't say that w40k isn't focused on it, if GW has focused on it for that long. Or rather you can, but if you do you are wrong.

Play with what you want is only a thing in w40k, when it comes with a ton of "ifs" . You can do it if your opponent play specific lists and armies, only if you play specific factions and builds, only if the core rule set doesn't invalidate your army etc etc.

So, why are you running your mouth about people playing in tournaments then? If you don't care, keep quiet.

That is a thing I don't get also. I know why I am interested in getting a good set of rules, but it goes over my head, why people who claim to play in casual bring what you want enviroments, call out of deep going army nerfs or out right bans of units. I just can't get it, how someone who claims to play only with his friends at home in one thread, asks for powerful rules for his faction in another, and calls out of squating of armies in ain't liking , and playing, in the third.

If someone is so casual, and so painting or converting focused, why does he care what is good and what is bad? if their friends are so good, then why not follow an advice those casual players give others, make your friends let you have +1W or +1T or ever else you want. If it is suppose to work as an advice for people playing in unfriendly places, why shouldn't it work in friendly ones?

 AnomanderRake wrote:

Yet again: I DO NOT CARE what's run in tournaments.

Then don't make posts about what's run in them my man.

And maybe stop deluding yourself into thinking that editions before ninth and eighth didn't have terrible dogshit units that if you took against units that weren't terrible and dogshit would put you at a disadvantage.

Karol wrote:

So, why are you running your mouth about people playing in tournaments then? If you don't care, keep quiet.

That is a thing I don't get also. I know why I am interested in getting a good set of rules, but it goes over my head, why people who claim to play in casual bring what you want enviroments, call out of deep going army nerfs or out right bans of units. I just can't get it, how someone who claims to play only with his friends at home in one thread, asks for powerful rules for his faction in another, and calls out of squating of armies in ain't liking , and playing, in the third.

If someone is so casual, and so painting or converting focused, why does he care what is good and what is bad? if their friends are so good, then why not follow an advice those casual players give others, make your friends let you have +1W or +1T or ever else you want. If it is suppose to work as an advice for people playing in unfriendly places, why shouldn't it work in friendly ones?

Simple: Because they still want to win those friendly casual games.

Poor OP. “Is 9th fun?” they ask, unknowingly waking the Salt Demons.

“It’s not a game!”
“In making my own ruleset!”
“God tournament minmaxers suck!”
“It’s impossible to use 9th for pickup games!”

All this and other straight up bad takes and side spats to boot. Yep, there’s that salt I was on about. Honestly people, what did any of the above actually add to the thread and the OP’s question? Some of you have fought these fights to thread lock before. Why again?

 Jidmah wrote:
...The worst part is that you apparently believe this TFG telling you that all your models suck, and then blame it on GW and competitive players. I suggest trying to look at the general operating the army to this kind of disaster first...

You're sitting here telling me that tournament winrates prove me wrong and that a given Codex is capable of having fun in 9th because there is a netlist that works. What makes you any different?

If your definition of "a decent collection" is "maximum field allowance of every single unit in the Codex", then sure.

You don't need 3 of everything to build an army that doesn't suck. For most jobs, there are two or three units that can do them, for codices like CSM, orks or eldar there are even more. Don't have three predators? Bring a predator, a helbrute and a vindicator instead.
You don't have enough anti-tank units to kill a single LRBT? You don't have a decent collection.

When it's a Tallarn tank commander using the new LOS-block terrain to casually walk into LOS, fire, and out of LOS without giving you a chance to interact with him it doesn't matter how much firepower you brought.

 AnomanderRake wrote:

 Jidmah wrote:
...The worst part is that you apparently believe this TFG telling you that all your models suck, and then blame it on GW and competitive players. I suggest trying to look at the general operating the army to this kind of disaster first...

You're sitting here telling me that tournament winrates prove me wrong and that a given Codex is capable of having fun in 9th because there is a netlist that works. What makes you any different?

Since you clearly don't get subtle hints: The difference is that he told you that you lose because you haven't bought a netlist, while I told you that you simply suck at the game and would lose even if you had the netlist.

When it's a Tallarn tank commander using the new LOS-block terrain to casually walk into LOS, fire, and out of LOS without giving you a chance to interact with him it doesn't matter how much firepower you brought.

Then you move and shoot it anyways. If it goes over 5" it loses grinding advance, and all you need to do is see one piece of hull past the ruin in able to shoot it. Or you have a mobile unit tie it down, you do have raptors, don't you? You know, do tactics, don't rely on list writing and dice to carry you to a win.

I'm not talking about tournaments. I'm trying to talk about pick-up games. You're the one who keeps telling me that I'm talking out my ass because of the tournament winrates.

To be a tournament player I have to a) play spam lists, b) only play the Codexes that aren't garbage, c) buy models based on their rules, d) play unfluffy, bizarre, and counterintuitive things to maximize the impact of my stratagems, and e) buy a new army every six months because my last one got nerfed into unplayability in a tournament setting or someone else came out that hard-counters me into not working anymore or GW rewrote the missions and my army can no longer play. If you're prepared to do all of those things 9e is great. If you're not 9e is terrible.

You keep making up arguments to claim that tournaments are something completely different from pick-up games. They are not. A good portion of the people going to tournaments do so with armies which are no different from those you face when you walk into stores, and these are part of the data that proves you wrong.

And...9th doesn't have stupid combos that rely on stacking two or three stratagems and a couple of character buffs to turn knives into efficient AT weapons?

Not any that I'm aware of, considering how stacking these kind of things was a problem that was specifically addressed by both 9th edition's core rules and the new Codex: Space Marines.

I'm trying to talk about pick-up games. You lot keep trying to drag us back to tournament winrates.

What makes you think that tournament and practice games are different from pick-up games? This is a serious question.

Editions before 8th and 9th absolutely had terrible dogshit units that weren't worth taking. You'll notice in my signature I'm not advocating going back and playing unmodified 7th, I'm rewriting a mix of 4th-7th rules to fix some of the problems with it. The problem I have here is with people who claim that 8th/9th are a massive improvement when in my experience they're just as bad as 7th for exactly the same reasons.

I'm sorry, but with you failing to understand why massive amounts of data are relevant to analyzing the state of a game, I'd say the chances are rather slim that your variant is going to better than any of the things GW does.

 Jidmah wrote:

 AnomanderRake wrote:

 Jidmah wrote:
...The worst part is that you apparently believe this TFG telling you that all your models suck, and then blame it on GW and competitive players. I suggest trying to look at the general operating the army to this kind of disaster first...

You're sitting here telling me that tournament winrates prove me wrong and that a given Codex is capable of having fun in 9th because there is a netlist that works. What makes you any different?

Since you clearly don't get subtle hints: The difference is that he told you that you lose because you haven't bought a netlist, while I told you that you simply suck at the game and would lose even if you had the netlist.

Great! That make you feel better?

I'm not talking about tournaments. I'm trying to talk about pick-up games. You're the one who keeps telling me that I'm talking out my ass because of the tournament winrates.

To be a tournament player I have to a) play spam lists, b) only play the Codexes that aren't garbage, c) buy models based on their rules, d) play unfluffy, bizarre, and counterintuitive things to maximize the impact of my stratagems, and e) buy a new army every six months because my last one got nerfed into unplayability in a tournament setting or someone else came out that hard-counters me into not working anymore or GW rewrote the missions and my army can no longer play. If you're prepared to do all of those things 9e is great. If you're not 9e is terrible.

You keep making up arguments to claim that tournaments are something completely different from pick-up games. They are not. A good portion of the people going to tournaments do so with armies which are no different from those you face when you walk into stores, and these are part of the data that proves you wrong.

I'm trying to talk about pick-up games. You lot keep trying to drag us back to tournament winrates.

What makes you think that tournament and practice games are different from pick-up games? This is a serious question.

That is exactly the problem. 9th is trying to be about tournaments. If I use minis I like that don't happen to be good enough to feature in the copy-paste netlist then I get to be tabled in two turns and walk away from the table thinking "what was the point of that, then?"

Editions before 8th and 9th absolutely had terrible dogshit units that weren't worth taking. You'll notice in my signature I'm not advocating going back and playing unmodified 7th, I'm rewriting a mix of 4th-7th rules to fix some of the problems with it. The problem I have here is with people who claim that 8th/9th are a massive improvement when in my experience they're just as bad as 7th for exactly the same reasons.

I'm sorry, but with you failing to understand why massive amounts of data are relevant to analyzing the state of a game, I'd say the chances are rather slim that your variant is going to better than any of the things GW does.

I understand perfectly why massive amounts of data are relevant to analyzing the state of the game. I dispute your claim that tournament winrate data is the only data that matters, and that I cannot possibly not be having fun because the tournament winrates prove that this is the bestest 40k ever. If you don't want to play the copy-paste netlists, or the combo-driven cardgame, or the king-of-the-hill knockoff-Steamroller scenarios, the tournament winrates are not relevant.

Competitive players have ruined 9th edition. 9th edition isn't letting me table opponents with minimal effort and competitive players playtested it. Bad!


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 AnomanderRake wrote:

I understand perfectly why massive amounts of data are relevant to analyzing the state of the game. I dispute your claim that tournament winrate data is the only data that matters, and that I cannot possibly not be having fun because the tournament winrates prove that this is the bestest 40k ever. If you don't want to play the copy-paste netlists, or the combo-driven cardgame, or the king-of-the-hill knockoff-Steamroller scenarios, the tournament winrates are not relevant.

Perhaps you should have a discussion with the dudes you play against, and try to get a nice casual game going on that isn't full of your average space marine army.
Something like this: "Hey look, I know I'm playing Alpha Legion CSM and knights but I'm after a nice casual game, I swears it, please don't place spacemarines or necrons. Or if you are don't touch them in melee with your filthy kniveses. Thanks!"

 Eonfuzz wrote:

 AnomanderRake wrote:

I understand perfectly why massive amounts of data are relevant to analyzing the state of the game. I dispute your claim that tournament winrate data is the only data that matters, and that I cannot possibly not be having fun because the tournament winrates prove that this is the bestest 40k ever. If you don't want to play the copy-paste netlists, or the combo-driven cardgame, or the king-of-the-hill knockoff-Steamroller scenarios, the tournament winrates are not relevant.

Perhaps you should have a discussion with the dudes you play against, and try to get a nice casual game going on that isn't full of your average space marine army.
Something like this: "Hey look, I know I'm playing Alpha Legion CSM and knights but I'm after a nice casual game, I swears it, please don't place spacemarines or necrons. Or if you are don't touch them in melee with your filthy kniveses. Thanks!"

Doesn't work. What one player thinks is a soft noncompetitive non-tournament-netlist can and will still table another soft noncompetitive non-tournament-netlist in 2-3 turns because the statlines are so badly out of whack that playing the game like a tournament player is the only way to make it work.

This is not through any malice or attempts to cheese the soft-noncompetitive-non-tournament-netlist paradigm, this is by accident.

Yeah, what Eonfuzz said. You failed to provide any reasoning about why the data doesn't matter, you can't provide any of your lists which regularly table people and get tabled in turn 2, and you keep referring to netlists run by tournament players without actually being able to provide any or knowing anything about tournaments. We're done here.

If you care about educating yourself about what 9th actual state and problems are, I suggest you give this a read: https://www.goonhammer.com/the-october-2020-40k-meta-review/
Pay extra attention to the part where they are describing the nature and origin of their data. There even is a follow-up to that article if you want to know more.

 Eonfuzz wrote:
Competitive players have ruined 9th edition. 9th edition isn't letting me table opponents with minimal effort and competitive players playtested it. Bad!...

Don't misunderstand here: If you are a tournament player and don't mind prioritizing rules over models or playing the same king-of-the-hill knockoff Steamroller scenarios over and over again 9th is great and probably is the best edition ever. The breadth of stuff at the top tournament tables is as great as it's ever been, and the stratagem card-combo game makes for a much more engaging competitive environment than earlier editions.

If, however, you want to play nonstandard/narrative missions, use minis you like instead of the ones with the best rules, do any homebrewing, or just sort of throw models down on the table and have a good time without worrying too much about it, 9th is as bad as the game has ever been.

I don't blame tournament players for "ruining" 9th. I do blame Jidmah for being an ass about people who might want to play the game differently than he does, but what matters is that 9th could be great or it could be terrible depending on how you want to play. There's more to the hobby than the competitive tournament mindset, and if you like other stuff more than the competitive tournament mindset you might want to consider not trying to play 9th.

 AnomanderRake wrote:

 Eonfuzz wrote:

 AnomanderRake wrote:

I understand perfectly why massive amounts of data are relevant to analyzing the state of the game. I dispute your claim that tournament winrate data is the only data that matters, and that I cannot possibly not be having fun because the tournament winrates prove that this is the bestest 40k ever. If you don't want to play the copy-paste netlists, or the combo-driven cardgame, or the king-of-the-hill knockoff-Steamroller scenarios, the tournament winrates are not relevant.

Perhaps you should have a discussion with the dudes you play against, and try to get a nice casual game going on that isn't full of your average space marine army.
Something like this: "Hey look, I know I'm playing Alpha Legion CSM and knights but I'm after a nice casual game, I swears it, please don't place spacemarines or necrons. Or if you are don't touch them in melee with your filthy kniveses. Thanks!"

Doesn't work. What one player thinks is a soft noncompetitive non-tournament-netlist can and will still table another soft noncompetitive non-tournament-netlist in 2-3 turns because the statlines are so badly out of whack that playing the game like a tournament player is the only way to make it work.

This is not through any malice or attempts to cheese the soft-noncompetitive-non-tournament-netlist paradigm, this is by accident.

Sounds like you're gatekeeping casual games. Take a step back and reconsider how *you* play.
Just like you want to play with your collection, they want to play with theirs. And who here is god enough to say anyone's fun is wrong.

Honestly, the way you're referencing net lists and tournament lists and non-casual lists it really comes across as if you've drunk too much of the Dakka forum coolaid. Not everything that's good is a netlist. Don't forget that GW has actively attempted to make collecting the space marine card game be simple and easy.


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 AnomanderRake wrote:

 Eonfuzz wrote:
Competitive players have ruined 9th edition. 9th edition isn't letting me table opponents with minimal effort and competitive players playtested it. Bad!...

Don't misunderstand here: If you are a tournament player and don't mind prioritizing rules over models or playing the same king-of-the-hill knockoff Steamroller scenarios over and over again 9th is great and probably is the best edition ever. The breadth of stuff at the top tournament tables is as great as it's ever been, and the stratagem card-combo game makes for a much more engaging competitive environment than earlier editions.

If, however, you want to play nonstandard/narrative missions, use minis you like instead of the ones with the best rules, do any homebrewing, or just sort of throw models down on the table and have a good time without worrying too much about it, 9th is as bad as the game has ever been.

I don't blame tournament players for "ruining" 9th. I do blame Jidmah for being an ass about people who might want to play the game differently than he does, but what matters is that 9th could be great or it could be terrible depending on how you want to play. There's more to the hobby than the competitive tournament mindset, and if you like other stuff more than the competitive tournament mindset you might want to consider not trying to play 9th.

If you want to do nonstandard / narrative in the first place why even worry about rules? Why even play a "board game". Go do an RPG instead, something like Dark Heresy or that other space marine one.
Without rules you're basically just mashing models together and making pew pew sounds. With rules you can't exactly maintain a narrative or nonstandard play.

Warhammer is not the game you're looking for.

 Jidmah wrote:
Yeah, what Eonfuzz said. You failed to provide any reasoning about why the data doesn't matter, you can't provide any of your lists which regularly table people and get tabled in turn 2, and you keep referring to netlists run by tournament players without actually being able to provide any or knowing anything about tournaments. We're done here.

If you care about educating yourself about what 9th actual state and problems are, I suggest you give this a read: https://www.goonhammer.com/the-october-2020-40k-meta-review/
Pay extra attention to the part where they are describing the nature and origin of their data. There even is a follow-up to that article if you want to know more.

The state of the tournament meta. The state of people playing the most competitive things in the game against the most competitive things in the game in controlled knockoff-Steamroller scenarios.

This tells me nothing about anyone who chooses to play lists/minis that aren't good enough to take to a tournament or who play any other scenarios, which tells me nothing about the state of casual gameplay.

As I said the state of tournaments is great and if you like that kind of standardized meta-conscious gameplay 9th is fabulous. Everyone I know who's a tournament player loves it. All the old Warmachine folks are having a great time. If you don't want to play the standardized meta-conscious tournament approach to the game, by, say, trying to play Crusade, or trying to set up narrative missions, or just sort of throw minis down on the table and attempt to have a good time, my experience of 9th is that it's terrible. You can continue to throw tournament statistics at me but if you can't find a dataset that isn't based solely on people playing the tournament missions in tournaments I don't know how you have any more standing to judge the state of casual play than I have to judge the state of competitive play.

 AnomanderRake wrote:
I don't blame tournament players for "ruining" 9th. I do blame Jidmah for being an ass about people who might want to play the game differently than he does, but what matters is that 9th could be great or it could be terrible depending on how you want to play. There's more to the hobby than the competitive tournament mindset, and if you like other stuff more than the competitive tournament mindset you might want to consider not trying to play 9th.

It's hilarious that you make assumptions about how I play games.

I'm "being an ass" because you are spreading baseless and badly informed opinions that do not match observed reality, and I'm calling you out on that.
There are plenty of people in this thread, for example Mezmorki, that give good reasons why they prefer playing an older edition, and that's fine.
You, however, are the one yelling about how 9th is terrible for anyone but tournament players with absolutely nothing of substance to back that up.


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 AnomanderRake wrote:
The state of the tournament meta.

Congratulations, you have failed at reading as much as the first section, despite me explicitly pointing it out. Now stop talking about things you are unable to understand.

 Eonfuzz wrote:

 AnomanderRake wrote:

 Eonfuzz wrote:

 AnomanderRake wrote:

I understand perfectly why massive amounts of data are relevant to analyzing the state of the game. I dispute your claim that tournament winrate data is the only data that matters, and that I cannot possibly not be having fun because the tournament winrates prove that this is the bestest 40k ever. If you don't want to play the copy-paste netlists, or the combo-driven cardgame, or the king-of-the-hill knockoff-Steamroller scenarios, the tournament winrates are not relevant.

Perhaps you should have a discussion with the dudes you play against, and try to get a nice casual game going on that isn't full of your average space marine army.
Something like this: "Hey look, I know I'm playing Alpha Legion CSM and knights but I'm after a nice casual game, I swears it, please don't place spacemarines or necrons. Or if you are don't touch them in melee with your filthy kniveses. Thanks!"

Doesn't work. What one player thinks is a soft noncompetitive non-tournament-netlist can and will still table another soft noncompetitive non-tournament-netlist in 2-3 turns because the statlines are so badly out of whack that playing the game like a tournament player is the only way to make it work.

This is not through any malice or attempts to cheese the soft-noncompetitive-non-tournament-netlist paradigm, this is by accident.

Sounds like you're gatekeeping casual games. Take a step back and reconsider how *you* play.
Just like you want to play with your collection, they want to play with theirs. And who here is god enough to say anyone's fun is wrong.

Honestly, the way you're referencing net lists and tournament lists and non-casual lists it really comes across as if you've drunk too much of the Dakka forum coolaid. Not everything that's good is a netlist. Don't forget that GW has actively attempted to make collecting the space marine card game be simple and easy.

I think the objective measure of fun is close games. Nobody likes getting stomped, nobody likes rolling over someone without any challenge. We want games that come down to the wire in the last turn or two, not games that are decided during list-building or in the first turn or two and then we're all left thinking "what was the point of putting models on the table?"

I'd love to be able to bring minis I like, and have the other guy bring minis he likes, and then sit down and roll dice and have a close game, but because of how the skewed damage/durability balance is and because of how wildly unevenly the card-game has been distributed across armies I don't see that happening. I see games ending in two or three turns because someone's too killed to continue or because someone's got an insurmountable lead in the mission. I'm not attempting to gatekeep casual games, I'm pointing out that because of the way 9th is written we can totally still play casual games, they're just going to be one-sided stomps.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

 AnomanderRake wrote:

 Eonfuzz wrote:
Competitive players have ruined 9th edition. 9th edition isn't letting me table opponents with minimal effort and competitive players playtested it. Bad!...

Don't misunderstand here: If you are a tournament player and don't mind prioritizing rules over models or playing the same king-of-the-hill knockoff Steamroller scenarios over and over again 9th is great and probably is the best edition ever. The breadth of stuff at the top tournament tables is as great as it's ever been, and the stratagem card-combo game makes for a much more engaging competitive environment than earlier editions.

If, however, you want to play nonstandard/narrative missions, use minis you like instead of the ones with the best rules, do any homebrewing, or just sort of throw models down on the table and have a good time without worrying too much about it, 9th is as bad as the game has ever been.

I don't blame tournament players for "ruining" 9th. I do blame Jidmah for being an ass about people who might want to play the game differently than he does, but what matters is that 9th could be great or it could be terrible depending on how you want to play. There's more to the hobby than the competitive tournament mindset, and if you like other stuff more than the competitive tournament mindset you might want to consider not trying to play 9th.

If you want to do nonstandard / narrative in the first place why even worry about rules? Why even play a "board game". Go do an RPG instead, something like Dark Heresy or that other space marine one.
Without rules you're basically just mashing models together and making pew pew sounds. With rules you can't exactly maintain a narrative or nonstandard play.

Warhammer is not the game you're looking for.

EXACTLY. I don't know why it's taken us so long to get back to the point here. 9e Warhammer is not the game I'm looking for. I started buying minis in 4e when it was the game I was looking for, and then GW pulled the rug out from under me and decided they'd rather be building knockoff Warmachine instead, which is why I'm rebuilding the game from back when it was the game I was looking for instead of playing 9th. If knockoff Warmachine is the game you're looking for play 9th. If it isn't, play something else. Which is the point of this whole thread.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Jidmah wrote:

 AnomanderRake wrote:
I don't blame tournament players for "ruining" 9th. I do blame Jidmah for being an ass about people who might want to play the game differently than he does, but what matters is that 9th could be great or it could be terrible depending on how you want to play. There's more to the hobby than the competitive tournament mindset, and if you like other stuff more than the competitive tournament mindset you might want to consider not trying to play 9th.

It's hilarious that you make assumptions about how I play games.

I'm "being an ass" because you are spreading baseless and badly informed opinions that do not match observed reality, and I'm calling you out on that.
There are plenty of people in this thread, for example Mezmorki, that give good reasons why they prefer playing an older edition, and that's fine.
You, however, are the one yelling about how 9th is terrible for anyone but tournament players with absolutely nothing of substance to back that up...

What do you want from me? My lack of having fun in 9th is obviously disproved by your tournament-meta statistics, there's no way according to that spreadsheet anyone could possibly not be having fun with 9th. Do you need me to quantify my fun for you? I rate my experience of having fun in 9th as -5 out of 7. Does that help?

Just for reference:

goonhammer wrote:ITC Battles app data includes a mix of tournament/event games and non-tournament games, but overall gives us data on 6,088 player-reported games of 9th edition, of which 1,093 took place at tournaments or events.

 Jidmah wrote:

Automatically Appended Next Post:

 AnomanderRake wrote:
The state of the tournament meta.

Congratulations, you have failed at reading as much as the first section, despite me explicitly pointing it out. Now stop talking about things you are unable to understand.

What did I miss? The part where they gathered data from three different tournament-reporting datasets? Does that make it less of a tournament-results report?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Jidmah wrote:
Just for reference:

goonhammer wrote:ITC Battles app data includes a mix of tournament/event games and non-tournament games, but overall gives us data on 6,088 player-reported games of 9th edition, of which 1,093 took place at tournaments or events.

If the aforementioned 5,995 non-tournament/event games aren't playing tournament netlists using the knockoff-Steamroller scenarios why are they included in a statistical analysis of the aforementioned knockoff-Steamroller scenarios? Do they define it later in the article as "tournament practice" to disguise the fact that they're corrupting their pure competitive tournament data with people who play narrative games on the record?

Because that's the default way to play 9th?

But you wouldn't know, you have thoroughly proven that you clearly have no notable experience whatsoever with this edition and are just running your mouth based on your experience with 8th.

You not knowing about crusade despite claiming to be a narrative player really says it all.

 Jidmah wrote:
Because that's the default way to play 9th?...

And if you want to play 9th the default way it's great. It's built for that. If you don't because, for instance, you bought into GW's marketing spiel about forging the narrative and crusade missions and whatnot and thought "hey, let's have a creative fun time!", it's pretty bad.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Jidmah wrote:
...You not knowing about crusade despite claiming to be a narrative player really says it all.

I know plenty about Crusade. I've tried to play Crusade. It's terrible. (Level-ups have a wildly disproportionate effect on armies with more expensive units, if you don't keep up with the tournament meta to build your Crusade roster you'll still build a list that'll get accidentally tabled a lot, and if you don't min/max for the missions you'll run into missions you can't play.)

How many games? Which army? What exactly was terrible? How much experience did your most experienced unit gather? What unit was it? What agenda was the worst one?

Or did you forget all that as well?

 Jidmah wrote:
How many games? Which army? What exactly was terrible? How much experience did your most experienced unit gather? What unit was it?

Or did you forget all that as well?

How 'bout you? Do you have a statistically-significant dataset of fully detailed battle reports proving that you can play Crusade games without getting tabled in two turns? Is it normal where you come from to write down a specific battle report of every game you ever play in case you need to win an argument on the Internet about whether your subjective experience of Warhammer is "right"? Can your battle reports prove to me that you're not an ass the way you're expecting mine to somehow overcome your preconception that I'm an idiot who doesn't know what he's doing?

(Deathwatch, largely mechanized, 3 games, 2 vs. Guard and 1 vs. Necrons, nobody was playing a tuned tournament list of any kind, spent most of the time hiding in a corner because I didn't have expendable suicide models to do the mission and anything that poked its nose into LOS died immediately.)