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And according to that graph, BA is a stronger army than C:SM, despite the fact that the army is SM -1.
Surely this isn't a graph people take seriously?

It also doesn't adjust for number of players relative to other factions. The more players of a faction you have, the more wins and losses you'll have. That means factions with high turnout and low turnout have skewed results.

You would need close to identical turnouts, or simply enough in each category, for the graph to have any meaning. It also doesn't account for players who bring suboptimal lists, like a Tau list with no interceptor or a Tyranid list that's spamming genestealers.

Ooh, drop it with that "SM-1".
Do SM have Death Company?
Do they have Heavy Flamer-Tactical Marines?
Do they get +1S/Init. on the charge?
Where are their Furioso's?

C:SM have gravstars. BA do not. I don't think much else needs to be said for the competitive scene. I'd even say that BA are SW -2 as well.

Martel732 wrote:
C:SM have gravstars. BA do not. I don't think much else needs to be said for the competitive scene. I'd even say that BA are SW -2 as well.

Ooh, drop it with that "SW-2".
Do SM have Death Company?
Do they have Heavy Flamer-Tactical Marines?
Do they get +1S/Init. on the charge?
Where are their Furioso's?

 Grey Templar wrote:
It also doesn't adjust for number of players relative to other factions. The more players of a faction you have, the more wins and losses you'll have. That means factions with high turnout and low turnout have skewed results.

You would need close to identical turnouts, or simply enough in each category, for the graph to have any meaning. It also doesn't account for players who bring suboptimal lists, like a Tau list with no interceptor or a Tyranid list that's spamming genestealers.

To be honest, if you are bringing a suboptimal list to a tournament... Why? Surely the point in entering a tournament is to win.

Also, Dark Eldar and Grey Knights only had 9 victories but they're really high up so it doesn't skew it that much.

Actually that few victories mean's they are highly susceptible to being skewed.

The difference between 1 win and 1 loss is much larger, meaning that some minor variable could drastically alter the results. Say there was one crucial game where a bunch of saves were made that on average shouldn't have been and that is the tipping point in the game.

You need a large sample size to adjust for outliers like the above.

 Zewrath wrote:
Surely this isn't a graph people take seriously?

People will take any graph seriously as long as it supports their argument.

They'll also call any army that just beat them "cheesy."

The ToF stats show how armies (read: factions as primary detachments) are doing in the US tournament scene (read: some of the US tournament scene). And that's it. Player skill is not accounted for (e.g., Space Marines are very popular, so could their numbers be pulled down by noobs getting stomped? Don't know, and the stats don't show it) and neither is whether or not the primary detachment is the driver of the list or not (e.g., if you take Khan, two Scout units and 1600 points of Guard, and win all your games, you'll pull up the numbers of SM, even if you basically have a Guard army). ToF is useful if you want to know more about the tournament meta, but not so much for anything else.

You do know that this is Warhammer and there cannot be a large enough sample size to be reliable as it is a niche game. Take Eldar, Tau and Tyranid's wins. They are low numbers but are high due to where the results are coming from.

Whilst 9 is low it is better than 8

So you admit you cannot have a large enough sample size, thus your assertion that this is proof that Tau and Eldar aren't OP is false and you admit it as such.

There is more relevant data available on ToF though, this one I don't even know why it was posted.

I mean who the f* cares about stats over January 2015.

They have stats for most of 6th and all of seventh and those are somewhat relevant, and the only real information we have about balance.

No, I just don't see how they are always complained about when they didn't do the best there.

As far as I know, Torrent of Fire is one of the few places to get 40k statistics so it is as good evidence as we are going to get.

The graph is more reliable than asking random guys on the internet what their views are (since they will have their biases).


Automatically Appended Next Post:

morgoth wrote:
There is more relevant data available on ToF though, this one I don't even know why it was posted.

I mean who the f* cares about stats over January 2015.

They have stats for most of 6th and all of seventh and those are somewhat relevant, and the only real information we have about balance.

Well January has only just passeso it is the most up-to-date data. 6th ed data is out of date now so that cannot be used.

SGTPozy wrote:
Well January has only just passeso it is the most up-to-date data. 6th ed data is out of date now so that cannot be used.

The problem is the sample size, January is too small of a sample size and doesn't have that many GTs now does it ?

morgoth wrote:

SGTPozy wrote:
Well January has only just passeso it is the most up-to-date data. 6th ed data is out of date now so that cannot be used.

The problem is the sample size, January is too small of a sample size and doesn't have that many GTs now does it ?

Whilst true, at least January provides current data (unlike your proposed use of 6th edition data).

Kangodo wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
C:SM have gravstars. BA do not. I don't think much else needs to be said for the competitive scene. I'd even say that BA are SW -2 as well.

Ooh, drop it with that "SW-2".
Do SM have Death Company?
Do they have Heavy Flamer-Tactical Marines?
Do they get +1S/Init. on the charge?
Where are their Furioso's?

Does anyone actually fear any of those options? It's just like 5th: spoiling assault the BA, and they fold up like a cheap tent.

Martel732 wrote:

Kangodo wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
C:SM have gravstars. BA do not. I don't think much else needs to be said for the competitive scene. I'd even say that BA are SW -2 as well.

Ooh, drop it with that "SW-2".
Do SM have Death Company?
Do they have Heavy Flamer-Tactical Marines?
Do they get +1S/Init. on the charge?
Where are their Furioso's?

Does anyone actually fear any of those options? It's just like 5th: spoiling assault the BA, and they fold up like a cheap tent.

We'll have to wait for a statistics-update, wouldn't we?

Martel732 wrote:

Kangodo wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
C:SM have gravstars. BA do not. I don't think much else needs to be said for the competitive scene. I'd even say that BA are SW -2 as well.

Ooh, drop it with that "SW-2".
Do SM have Death Company?
Do they have Heavy Flamer-Tactical Marines?
Do they get +1S/Init. on the charge?
Where are their Furioso's?

Does anyone actually fear any of those options? It's just like 5th: spoiling assault the BA, and they fold up like a cheap tent.

I fear heavy flamers...

SGTPozy wrote:

morgoth wrote:

SGTPozy wrote:
Well January has only just passeso it is the most up-to-date data. 6th ed data is out of date now so that cannot be used.

The problem is the sample size, January is too small of a sample size and doesn't have that many GTs now does it ?

Whilst true, at least January provides current data (unlike your proposed use of 6th edition data).

I'm suggesting using 7th edition data

Kangodo wrote:

Martel732 wrote:

Kangodo wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
C:SM have gravstars. BA do not. I don't think much else needs to be said for the competitive scene. I'd even say that BA are SW -2 as well.

Ooh, drop it with that "SW-2".
Do SM have Death Company?
Do they have Heavy Flamer-Tactical Marines?
Do they get +1S/Init. on the charge?
Where are their Furioso's?

Does anyone actually fear any of those options? It's just like 5th: spoiling assault the BA, and they fold up like a cheap tent.

We'll have to wait for a statistics-update, wouldn't we?

Fair enough, but I can't see why any of the power codices would care about any of that stuff.

morgoth wrote:

SGTPozy wrote:

morgoth wrote:

SGTPozy wrote:
Well January has only just passeso it is the most up-to-date data. 6th ed data is out of date now so that cannot be used.

The problem is the sample size, January is too small of a sample size and doesn't have that many GTs now does it ?

Whilst true, at least January provides current data (unlike your proposed use of 6th edition data).

I'm suggesting using 7th edition data

Okay then

So four armies better (IK are just stupid as a stand alone codex... Why can't I play Codex: Warhounds or Codex: Baneblades) and 10 worse. Plus some of those 4 better are a really small sample size....

That's cheesey.

There are several problems with the dataset here, that others have touched on.

First, sample sizes are low and not uniform. To a degree that can be worked around, but the sample size as a whole isn't exactly huge, and for some of the armies the sample sizes certainly are not anything resembling statistically viable.

On top of that, these are supposedly tournament wins, meaning in theory you're only pairing the best against the best, and not necessarily the full range of any given codex.

Additionally, army diversity is huge but not accurately represented. If you're primarily seeing Eldar vs IK's, well those win rates may be fairly flat, but if you compare Eldar or IK to say, IG or DAs that win rate may be drastically imbalanced.

Finally, if you're including mirror matches, that's also going to flatten out the win/loss rate as both binomial results get counted.

Counterpoint, if you include all casual games, then it flattens even further, because now you have to include "casual" Eldar builds like Saim-Hann and Alaitoc. It is possible to make truly bad Eldar armies for casual play.

OTOH, IK just don't have the problem of crappy "casual" builds.

Your data is usually considered a little more trustworthy if you link the source (http://www.torrentoffire.com/6499/the-meta-meets-2015), rather than just throwing a graph up there. The graph itself is an incomplete picture because:

1) Even the people reporting the data say so. "This will give us a quick snapshot of the current state, but it will be a few months before we can start showing trends again with any significance. As for the current snapshot, it looks a bit like this:"
2) It doesn't include effects of allies, which later on in the article becomes very relevant in the case of Imperial Knights.
3) As other posters have pointed out, it doesn't filter out the results of an army playing itself.
4) The win % isn't weighted by which wins those were...was it over a noob in the first round or the win that won the GT? We don't know. I went to an RTT with a friend once, and both of us won all our games. However, he won the tourney and I was just under the top 25%.

Finally 40K metrics are always going to be difficult to calculate simply because of the combination of army, list, and player skill. Player quality doesn't affect whether or not an army is "OP", that's an objective (if there is such a thing in this game with the stereotypes we have) assessment of the overall potential of an army and it's units. "Cheesy" is a very subjective term that gets thrown around a lot and means absolutely nothing.

There are lies, damned lies and statistics. - Mark Twain


As others have pointed out the numbers aren't terribly meaningful.

Yeah, the OP's data is complete garbage. Tiny sample size, and nothing at all is controlled for. This is just subjectivity with a graph.

And cheese has little to do with win-loss ratios, which are pretty useless in a dice game anyways. Cheese is about how an army does something, not if it's slightly more likely to be successful in doing it.

So... Eldar "All Ranger" army justifies "Eldar All Wraithknight/Wave Serpent Army" because total army win stats average out.

It looks like you linked the results of a singular tournament or the beginning of 2015, not the statistics for whole of 7th edition, which tell a very different story.

Nice try though.

 Pyeatt wrote:
So... Eldar "All Ranger" army justifies "Eldar All Wraithknight/Wave Serpent Army" because total army win stats average out.

Why wouldn't it? I can field both. Also, Ulthwe-style Seer/Guardian. Though I prefer Aspect-heavy. Plus generic "balanced" Highlander army. And various unbound things. "Eldar" isn't synonymous with WaveWraith - it's a whole Codex with lots of options.

 Zewrath wrote:
And according to that graph, BA is a stronger army than C:SM, despite the fact that the army is SM -1.
Surely this isn't a graph people take seriously?

That's not how these graphs work entirely. It's saying it has an average win rate higher than the other, depending on the size of the sample will determine the overall accuracy of the graph. The BA data seems to come from a smaller pool. One's like the Tyranids there are more accurate.