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The gents over at Goonhammer have released a new meta watch article that brings with it a new way of ranking the factions in 40k, feel free to check that out here and see if it matches your experiences and expectations. I'm still reading it myself so I may edit this post if I see anything especially spicy.

Started reading the article; may finish... But also might not bother. I feel like "meta-analysis" is useful, and people should definitely keep doing it. But for me, this game is, and always has been about cinematic storytelling, and win/lose means very little to me.

Achieving a battlefield objective that allows the story to proceed need not be connected to "winning." Certainly, some missions are designed that way- all the old Planet Strike scenarios were like that- you had to succeed at claiming a beach head before you could advance on an enemy position, and the way to do that was to "win" the beach head game.

I tend to like games where you don't have to win to secure objectives important to the narrative. After all, the idea of losing a battle but winning the war is such a commonly understood concept that it has become proverbial. It should happen on the table too.

Of course, tournaments have to have one winner and many losers, so there is that. One of the reason I generally choose not to play in tournaments.

PenitentJake wrote:
But for me, this game is, and always has been about cinematic storytelling, and win/lose means very little to me.

I started the game because of the cinema of it all. I play very competitively, but I am retained partly by that mental battle that Warhammer evokes so easily. I would say this is true for those of us who started as kids. For the people who started in their 20s to get into the competitive scene only - probably not.

As for the article - still way too early for most of this, but I found this data particularly interesting. There's a lot of games where secondaries are getting scored badly - whether by a bad choice or by bad outcome on the table is unknown, but this does speak to the ease of those secondaries. It would nice to see the mean score.

Having read it I'll post a few things that caught my eye.

First, let's talk about the army rankings. They used a new system called Glicko which is supposed to improve on the old ranking methods. The average army is rated at 1,500 and I think it's safe to consider any army that's ended up with 20 points on either side of that mark can be considered balanced while anything above or below that needs tweaks. Take the data for DG with some salt as it hasn't had time to generate enough results for their ranking to be as accurate as the others.

Too Good:
Harlequins (1,580)
Custodes (1,560)
Sisters of Battle (1,560)
Necrons (1,540)
Slaanesh (1,540)
Chaos Daemons (1,540)
White Scars (1,535) [Borderline]
Space Wolves (1,530) [Borderline]
Blood Angels (1,530) [Borderline]

Average:
Orks (1,520)
Death Guard (1,520)
Dark Angels (1,510)
Black Templar (1,510)
Salamanders (1,510)
Imperial Fists (1,505)
Imperium (1,505)
Ad Mech (1,505)
Iron Hands (1,495)
Raven Guard (1,495)
Tyranids (1,495)
Aeldari (1,495)
Space Marines (1,490)
Chaos (1,490)

Too Bad:
Ultramarines (1,480) [Borderline]
Nurgle (1,480) [Borderline]
Deathwatch (1,480) [Borderline]
Chaos Marines (1,465)
Imperial Knights (1,465)
Chaos Knights (1,460)
Dark Eldar (1,450)
Craft World Eldar (1,445)
Thousand Sons (1,420)
Imperial Guard (1,420)
Grey Knights (1,420)
Genestealer Cults (1,400)

My numbers are approximations so I suggest looking at the graph in the article for a better picture.

By the raw numbers, it's clear that many factions lacking a 9th edition codex are in a bad spot right now. However, the good news is that most of the armies fall into the middle of the balance chart; if you're willing to count the factions as marked as borderline as balanced.

The other topic of interest is that the first turn advantage is still alive and kicking. This is objectively bad news but the silver lining is that there is room for the changes made to have an impact on balance. It remains to be seen if those theoretical wins can actually happen and if that causes a meta adjustment.

Just to follow up on the secondarys avarage score dang is oath of moment broken.

It's the highest avarage score when taken, the next highest being Titan Hunter even then it's. 5 less on avarage.

Then Bring it down and Abhore the witch both called out as problematic secondarys. Also Abhore avarages less points on avarage when taken than all necron and the highest of codwx marine and Blood anges and Space wolfs codex specific ones.

I'm... suspect on applying "Glicko" or ELO to factions. I'd prefer to just see a big table of faction by faction win percentages and then some totals.

This would I think show what you want to show - and be a bit less arbitrary than "Harlequins are a 1580 faction, that's mad overpowered, Tau are a 1420 faction and they suck". Which just leaves me going "....what?"

But on the whole a good article. Sort of demonstrating with stats why the turn 5 changes are so marginal. It's making a difference to games where the player going second is about 15 points behind - but rather strangely that's about it. I'd have thought you'd see greater advantage the closer it was. But maybe they just don't have enough games to work with.

Tyel wrote:
I'm... suspect on applying "Glicko" or ELO to factions. I'd prefer to just see a big table of faction by faction win percentages and then some totals.

This would I think show what you want to show - and be a bit less arbitrary than "Harlequins are a 1580 faction, that's mad overpowered, Tau are a 1420 faction and they suck". Which just leaves me going "....what?"

This uses more secret sauce than just raw games played and win percentages in the hopes of being more accurate. Of course, as with advanced stats used in many sports, people often distrust anything that's not just raw stats. In this case, you can still have the data you want from 40k Stats so you can easily compare them to Glicko stats.

Tyel wrote:
I'm... suspect on applying "Glicko" or ELO to factions. I'd prefer to just see a big table of faction by faction win percentages and then some totals.

Maybe. I do like the directionality it shows like with DG. It will be interesting to watch as codexes come out and time marches on.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Ice_can wrote:
Just to follow up on the secondarys avarage score dang is oathnof moment broken.

Easy to score, but far from the automatically capped secondary it is made out to be. The Necron secondaries are not far behind.

 Canadian 5th wrote:

Tyel wrote:
I'm... suspect on applying "Glicko" or ELO to factions. I'd prefer to just see a big table of faction by faction win percentages and then some totals.

This would I think show what you want to show - and be a bit less arbitrary than "Harlequins are a 1580 faction, that's mad overpowered, Tau are a 1420 faction and they suck". Which just leaves me going "....what?"

This uses more secret sauce than just raw games played and win percentages in the hopes of being more accurate. Of course, as with advanced stats used in many sports, people often distrust anything that's not just raw stats. In this case, you can still have the data you want from 40k Stats so you can easily compare them to Glicko stats.

The issue I can see with Glicko is that it doesn't necessarily represent the actual level of the army it covers the avarage.

Like they said Choas knights loose early then wipe the lower with the lower brackets.

They would need to add some sort of additional bearing on the scores for positioning in the tournament.
At the moment take the choas knights if they beat say marines or Harlequines they get a massive boost in score despite the fact that army is nowhere near representative of that factions capabilities in the hands of a skilled player or with a better list.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Daedalus81 wrote:

Tyel wrote:
I'm... suspect on applying "Glicko" or ELO to factions. I'd prefer to just see a big table of faction by faction win percentages and then some totals.

Maybe. I do like the directionality it shows like with DG. It will be interesting to watch as codexes come out and time marches on.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Ice_can wrote:
Just to follow up on the secondarys avarage score dang is oathnof moment broken.

Easy to score, but far from the automatically capped secondary it is made out to be. The Necron secondaries are not far behind.

.8 of a point higher avarage score than necorons when taken win or loose that's a very high differential. Its .5 higher avarage than Titan Killer and that's considered unbalanced.

Ice_can wrote:
The issue I can see with Glicko is that it doesn't necessarily represent the actual level of the army it covers the avarage.

Like they said Choas knights loose early then wipe the lower with the lower brackets.

They would need to add some sort of additional bearing on the scores for positioning in the tournament.
At the moment take the choas knights if they beat say marines or Harlequines they get a massive boost in score despite the fact that army is nowhere near representative of that factions capabilities in the hands of a skilled player or with a better list.

I'm pretty sure that one of the cool things about Glicko is that it accounts for those scenarios. Even if it doesn't factor that specific scenario it does adjust for beating weaker factions in general which ought to be better than simple stats about win rates would be.

The thing I found most interesting is that the change to the second player's 5th turn scoring really seemed to have no discernable effect on the outcome. IMHO this in indicative of some big structural problems in the way objectives are scored and the incentives the game gives one for going first - namely the firepower advantage of going first and the ability for turn 1 deepstrikers to contribute to an alpha strike and set the tempo the for entire game.

I think this highlights that problem isn't the scoring that occurs right at end of the game - but rather the many factors that contribute to broader and more inherent advantages to going first.

 Mezmorki wrote:
The thing I found most interesting is that the change to the second player's 5th turn scoring really seemed to have no discernable effect on the outcome. IMHO this in indicative of some big structural problems in the way objectives are scored and the incentives the game gives one for going first - namely the firepower advantage of going first and the ability for turn 1 deepstrikers to contribute to an alpha strike and set the tempo the for entire game.

I think this highlights that problem isn't the scoring that occurs right at end of the game - but rather the many factors that contribute to broader and more inherent advantages to going first.

Aside from getting to shoot first the player going first gets to move onto objectives uncontested and its up to player 2 to try and get him off of them.

I wonder if the first turn advantage would be as crazy if it had a mallus to the damage that could be done in that turn? Like a flat -1 to hit and wound on turn one to negate the advantage gained by getting board position and first turn charges to tie up important guns.

The only way to fix first turn advantage is to set the Primary scoring at the end of a Battle Round, there's no other way around that

 Canadian 5th wrote:
I'm pretty sure that one of the cool things about Glicko is that it accounts for those scenarios. Even if it doesn't factor that specific scenario it does adjust for beating weaker factions in general which ought to be better than simple stats about win rates would be.

I think its fair that a pure "this faction wins 48% of games" is a bit meaningless.

What I take away from the comments is that Chaos Knights get smashed by Harlequins/Custodes/Sisters/Daemons.
But in turn, they tend to Smash GSC, Tau, Thousand Sons etc.

Which is fine... but couldn't they just link the table and then we could all see that?

I mean to go with Xeno's eternal claim: "Marines are a mid-tier faction".
Well it might be that Marines have something stupid like a 60% win rate versus GSC, Tau, Thousand Sons etc - but this collapses to 40% against Harlequins, Custodes, Sisters etc. And sure, they'd lose fewer points for losing to these factions - but since those factions are unsurprisingly more popular than factions people deem to be bad, it ends up with them being "average" on Glicko.

But balance wise, a faction having a massive advantage against one set of factions and a massive disadvantage against another isn't good balance. Its 7th edition. Which should be purged with extreme prejudice.

Interesting. As what we want to know is how each faction compares to each other, I think it's a great idea to use a rating system like this one.
It can take into account how confident of the previous rating it is before calculating a new one after a match, etc. So if a faction is barely played, it's taken into account, same for the faction that are most played, so the ratings are altered accordingly (broader change when confident than when it's not).

It isn't important to know what "score" each army gets, because it's still tied to a lot of stuff we don't have data about, so I wouldn't be so fast to say "if it's over XXX it's over/under powered". But you can still see some obvious trends like harlequins and GSC.

And data about missions is always interesting to read and again help catch the obvious issues.

KurtAngle2 wrote:
The only way to fix first turn advantage is to set the Primary scoring at the end of a Battle Round, there's no other way around that

Doubtful.
You could just let the second player start with 5 VP.
Or whatever you need to tune things to a 50/50 win rate. If that's purely the aim.

KurtAngle2 wrote:
The only way to fix first turn advantage is to set the Primary scoring at the end of a Battle Round, there's no other way around that

Yeah I'm not sure why both players don't score at the same time.

Edit : Well it would probably help 2nd player.

Tyel wrote:

 Canadian 5th wrote:
I'm pretty sure that one of the cool things about Glicko is that it accounts for those scenarios. Even if it doesn't factor that specific scenario it does adjust for beating weaker factions in general which ought to be better than simple stats about win rates would be.

I think its fair that a pure "this faction wins 48% of games" is a bit meaningless.

What I take away from the comments is that Chaos Knights get smashed by Harlequins/Custodes/Sisters/Daemons.
But in turn, they tend to Smash GSC, Tau, Thousand Sons etc.

Which is fine... but couldn't they just link the table and then we could all see that?

I mean to go with Xeno's eternal claim: "Marines are a mid-tier faction".
Well it might be that Marines have something stupid like a 60% win rate versus GSC, Tau, Thousand Sons etc - but this collapses to 40% against Harlequins, Custodes, Sisters etc. And sure, they'd lose fewer points for losing to these factions - but since those factions are unsurprisingly more popular than factions people deem to be bad, it ends up with them being "average" on Glicko.

But balance wise, a faction having a massive advantage against one set of factions and a massive disadvantage against another isn't good balance. Its 7th edition. Which should be purged with extreme prejudice.

As I've said previously the raw stats all exist. If you want them I'd be willing to be that a quick message to the Goons would be enough to get you access to whatever sources they used.

 Canadian 5th wrote:

Ice_can wrote:
The issue I can see with Glicko is that it doesn't necessarily represent the actual level of the army it covers the avarage.

Like they said Choas knights loose early then wipe the lower with the lower brackets.

They would need to add some sort of additional bearing on the scores for positioning in the tournament.
At the moment take the choas knights if they beat say marines or Harlequines they get a massive boost in score despite the fact that army is nowhere near representative of that factions capabilities in the hands of a skilled player or with a better list.

I'm pretty sure that one of the cool things about Glicko is that it accounts for those scenarios. Even if it doesn't factor that specific scenario it does adjust for beating weaker factions in general which ought to be better than simple stats about win rates would be.

Beating up on someone with what should be a good codex in the later rounds of a tournament isn't really representative in my option.

I know I have been shocked by some of the "soft" lists I have seen in tournaments when your having a bad event when you're playing into somwthing you didn't expect or your list isn't working or you just hit the top players early.
Like the same army that was placing top 5 but just apparently random unit's or like just not the list that I would have said was representative.

The analysis on the first turn advantage is actually flawed IMO.

The 42-58% situation included those players that elected to go second. Assuming that when you did, it was because it was at your advantage, this panned the going second win rate.

For a correct analysis they should get the old data and remove all cases where the player winning the roll went second. Without those, the real winning rate of going second was around 39-0%, so jumping to 44% is quite the effect.

The structural problems with the first player having an advantage may not in fact be as much about the scoring system that it is about the structure of the game.

Units move faster and faster and the board sizes are smaller, letting people get onto objectives faster, which helps the first player.

The game is more lethal and so a player that goes first and manages to deal some serious damage on their first turn will have a force multiplier advantage over the second player the whole game. Unless the second player managers to hide and minimize losses turn 1, but that makes it even harder to be in position to take objectives. Cover doesn't work well enough to protect things or block LoS.

Turn 1 automatic entry for reserves and especially deesptrikong with no scatter is a big issue - because it compounds the above. If the second player tries to play defensively or leave units in reserve, it means potentially he first player can concentrate their entire army shooting at just a part of the second players army.

They could mitigate some of this through the mission design. Having the VP award increase based on battle round would make the early push less rewarding and give more opportunity for the second player to play a long game strategy. Requiring all VP awards to require a unit to perform an action would create choices between moar shooting vs gaining points, and give the second player a leg up if they are trying to push off objectives.

Retooling how objectives are captures, such as making it dependent on exclusive control within an area versus just more models would make it harder for either player to control points. Etc.

 Mezmorki wrote:
The structural problems with the first player having an advantage may not in fact be as much about the scoring system that it is about the structure of the game.

Units move faster and faster and the board sizes are smaller, letting people get onto objectives faster, which helps the first player.

The game is more lethal and so a player that goes first and manages to deal some serious damage on their first turn will have a force multiplier advantage over the second player the whole game. Unless the second player managers to hide and minimize losses turn 1, but that makes it even harder to be in position to take objectives. Cover doesn't work well enough to protect things or block LoS.

Turn 1 automatic entry for reserves and especially deesptrikong with no scatter is a big issue - because it compounds the above. If the second player tries to play defensively or leave units in reserve, it means potentially he first player can concentrate their entire army shooting at just a part of the second players army.

They could mitigate some of this through the mission design. Having the VP award increase based on battle round would make the early push less rewarding and give more opportunity for the second player to play a long game strategy. Requiring all VP awards to require a unit to perform an action would create choices between moar shooting vs gaining points, and give the second player a leg up if they are trying to push off objectives.

Retooling how objectives are captures, such as making it dependent on exclusive control within an area versus just more models would make it harder for either player to control points. Etc.

If you are using the GT mission pack, which since this is tournament data would follow, you cannot have reinforcements and Strategic reserves enter first turn.

Otherwise, I agree with your analysis.

Still a bit early to make the call for 1st turn advantage after the change.

They could bring back the old "prepared positions" strat for going 2nd, so that at least if you give up 1st turn board control you don't take as much fire.

Quasistellar wrote:
Still a bit early to make the call for 1st turn advantage after the change.

They could bring back the old "prepared positions" strat for going 2nd, so that at least if you give up 1st turn board control you don't take as much fire.

This is also true.

While Anecdotal, the last two games I played the secondary VP scoring didn't make much difference for me. In one game I was pretty far ahead without it. The second one recently I was playing first turn and so far ahead it didn't matter.

Now, if the first game was closer, it could have been a huge difference since I did get 15 pts that round.

More playtesting is required, and honestly, the American meta isn't getting a lot of games in right now.

Personally I don’t think GWs ‘fix’ for first turn advantage is well thought out. Many armies don’t have enough assets in end game to make up the margin.

I would have preferred to see 2nd player allowed to score primary in turn 1 ie if they deploy units on backfield objectives they score 5/10vp unless they are destroyed. (Although sadly they do become a target for turn one shooting

LoL Abhore gives few points and is taken less often, unless you happen to play against an army that gives it up easily, then the difference between now and before the nerf is insignificant.
Still the third highest scoring secondary out there. Probably not important for tournaments, where you don't know what you will play, or when maybe you want to take a psyker of your one. But in pick up games this is still as bad as it was, and data seems to prove it.

Still, not the worse army in the game, so much better then 8th ed.

So their list shows the meta analysis of a game ravaged by a global pandemic. It's less an accurate snapshot of the meta, and more a roll of the dice. For instance, if we go by Australian GT for our Snapshot: Astartes all suck, and Necrons are best.

This list shows Necrons are currently 4th. Does anyone actually believe Necrons are currently dominating the META, or is it just there was a FLOOD of new Necrons at the start of 9th, and we expect that to drop sharply?

Also it puts BA/DA roughly 7th and 8th, behind ORKS. No, I don't see much of value in this, it's still too early, also we will continue to see Custodes be a dominant faction until they properly FAQ our point costs. Right now we are just slighly stronger DG. There is no reason to suspect we will not see a massive uptick in DG lists next snapshot.


There is something to be said that "Classically shooty" armies are way behind the "Rushdown" style lists.

There's always too much emphasis on meta in general. People should be trying to stamp out the stigma of meta, not encouraging it.

How would people do that, when some armies come with specific pre build lists and unworking gak if you try anything else?