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Plague bearers are still really good.

If mental gymnastics was a real sport we'd have a whole lot of medalists from dakka alone..

Martel732 wrote:
Plague bearers are still really good.

While that is probably true it has nothing to do with the Caledonian Uprising results. Not one plague bearer in any of the top lists.

Bharring wrote:
Heavy Infantry was infantry that fought in formation. Light infantry was infantry that didn't. Light infantry tends to have lighter kit, but that's not actually part of the definition. So some schlub with a spear in a battleline would be heavy infantry, whereas a Seal in body armor toting full combat kit would be light infantry - despite which one is carrying heavier kit.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light_infantry

That said, with modern warfare being so anti-heavy-formation, the old "Light Infantry" vs "Heavy Infantry" dichotomy isn't useful. So terms change.

Even with modern standards, the line infantry is more appropriately termed as "medium infantry" today. Even in the American Civil War they tended to fight more as skirmishers than formations. It is simply too easy to get a lot of people killed if you maintained a serious formation that didn't include skirmishing. But one of the reasons it had stopped in the Americas by the Civil War. It became far more effective with the bolt action rifle (to say nothing of the repeating rifles coming in WWII) which didn't require people to fire in volleys to be as effective.

Bharring wrote:

American troops have been less armored than the Imperial Guard for most of their existence, even going back to the Colonial period. Even before that, it was more a mark of the Spanish conquistadors which were still in the Pike & Shot era to wear any armor with their firearms.

With the advent of kevlar and "dragon" armor, there is consideration in bringing back such a role, though, to say nothing of the development of exo-frames for powered armor.

Agreed with each point. Our difference in views seems to be entirely about terms.

My argument was that "heavy infantry" - meaning infantry that fought in tight/heavy formations en masse - often wanted to fight in open fields. So the time periods you'd see the most open-field engagements would be the time periods where heavy infantry (or cavalry) was the norm. That said, even in those periods much of the fighting was done in places where terrain had an impact.

Formation fighting required terrain to be open enough to maneuver, but tight enough to minimize/hide flanking. The two reasons for formation fighting was so to keep your men from being pushed out of the way or to provide sufficient depth to discourage cavalry. It became more and more foolish the better ranges, accuracy, and deadliness of weaponry went up.

Formations don't work against field artillery very well. They also don't work well when one can shoot fast enough with a weight of fire that even cavalry will fall apart on the arrival. This is really noticeable when look at how such things worked in Warhammer Fantasy. Skirmishing also worked a lot better in 40K when the templates were in effect as opposed to the random number of shots.

The holidays are over, normal service is resumed...

Goldensprue Cup GT
Alexander Fennell – RG
Jared Friedman – IH
Tony Phillips – RG
Patrick McAneeny – White Scars

Caldeonian Uprising
Anthony Chew – TSons/Demons
James Mackenzie – GSC/Nids
Mani Cheema – CSM/Demons/DG
Markus Hinson – IF

Critical Hit Gaming Lounge
Devin Swann – BA/IF
Ridvan ‘Skari’ Martinez – DE
Derek Deraiche – RG
Val Heffelfinger – RG

New Year’s Knockout GT
Dan Sammons – IH
Scott Thompson – IH
Tim Royers – IF
Nathan Martin – IH

That last one is top fething kek. 3/4 IH, 4/4 Marines.

I've been a devout ITC defender but looking at the variate of lists at the Caldeonian Uprising and the WH GT (only 2 events so huge grain of salt) makes me want to push for more tournies to use the CA 2019 missions.

Especially compared to 11/12 SM lists at the ITC over the weekend.

I've always felt the pressure to build to minimize the number of secondaries your list gives up squashes list variety in the ITC but I'm not sure how to punish armies with fearless obsec troops which do really well at GW events...

 grouchoben wrote:
The holidays are over, normal service is resumed...

Goldensprue Cup GT
Alexander Fennell – RG
Jared Friedman – IH
Tony Phillips – RG
Patrick McAneeny – White Scars

Caldeonian Uprising
Anthony Chew – TSons/Demons
James Mackenzie – GSC/Nids
Mani Cheema – CSM/Demons/DG
Markus Hinson – IF

Critical Hit Gaming Lounge
Devin Swann – BA/IF
Ridvan ‘Skari’ Martinez – DE
Derek Deraiche – RG
Val Heffelfinger – RG

New Year’s Knockout GT
Dan Sammons – IH
Scott Thompson – IH
Tim Royers – IF
Nathan Martin – IH

And which ones of these are ITC and which ones are real 40K?

 grouchoben wrote:
The holidays are over, normal service is resumed...

Goldensprue Cup GT
Alexander Fennell – RG
Jared Friedman – IH
Tony Phillips – RG
Patrick McAneeny – White Scars

Caldeonian Uprising
Anthony Chew – TSons/Demons
James Mackenzie – GSC/Nids
Mani Cheema – CSM/Demons/DG
Markus Hinson – IF

Critical Hit Gaming Lounge
Devin Swann – BA/IF
Ridvan ‘Skari’ Martinez – DE
Derek Deraiche – RG
Val Heffelfinger – RG

New Year’s Knockout GT
Dan Sammons – IH
Scott Thompson – IH
Tim Royers – IF
Nathan Martin – IH

This cant be right! No OP CWE Eldar in any of the top!?
Nope this data must be incorrect... Xenomcer said so.

 Crimson wrote:

 grouchoben wrote:
The holidays are over, normal service is resumed...

Goldensprue Cup GT
Alexander Fennell – RG
Jared Friedman – IH
Tony Phillips – RG
Patrick McAneeny – White Scars

Caldeonian Uprising
Anthony Chew – TSons/Demons
James Mackenzie – GSC/Nids
Mani Cheema – CSM/Demons/DG
Markus Hinson – IF

Critical Hit Gaming Lounge
Devin Swann – BA/IF
Ridvan ‘Skari’ Martinez – DE
Derek Deraiche – RG
Val Heffelfinger – RG

New Year’s Knockout GT
Dan Sammons – IH
Scott Thompson – IH
Tim Royers – IF
Nathan Martin – IH

And which ones of these are ITC and which ones are real 40K?

Just when I'm trying to be more open-minded... GW's missions are not any more "real". Their terrain and treatment of fearless hordes are real issues.

Martel732 wrote:

Just when I'm trying to be more open-minded... GW's missions are not any more "real".

They literally are. They're the official missions by the publisher of the game instead of someone's houserules. I really don't get how this completely obvious concept can be so bloody difficult to understand.

Their terrain and treatment of fearless hordes are real issues.

Quality had nothing to do with this.

But I don't care about the publisher of the game. They have 25 years of ineptitude to dig out of with me. Their opinion and officialness long since quit mattering to me. I'm looking for best game experience. To me, GW is just another set of houserules. They said it themselves, they are a model company, not a game company. And it shows.

Martel732 wrote:
But I don't care about the publisher of the game. They have 25 years of ineptitude to dig out of with me. Their opinion and officialness long since quit mattering to me. I'm looking for best game experience.

I don't care that you don't care. And I was merely asking which were which.

And so, an empasse. But if the ITC skews too heavy, I'll end up in your camp on the merits. Not the "officialness". Because GW is a bunch of know nothings.

happy_inquisitor wrote:

 Nitro Zeus wrote:
why are people looking at the results of one single WHW tier list with like no big names in attendance, as though its some indisputable tier list? Are we really at this level of stupid today?

And there we have it "no big names". As if that mattered.

It is a different tournament circuit, not surprisingly it has some different players.

Not all players are different but playing the GW tournaments does take away from playing ITC tournaments. The Tau player in 2nd place there is the 5th ranked Tau player in the ITC. He is the top ranked UK Tau player even though he does not focus on ITC events - e.g. he was playing in the GT final rather than trying to grab more ITC points at Caledonian Uprising.

There is a tendency for only players on certain tournament and podcast circuits to be considered "big names" - I am not convinced this precludes other players from being just as good.

I think the point of comparison was between the different balance we see in ITC and the GW mission packs. So the culmination of a whole year of tournaments with only good capable players permitted to enter may not be the single biggest tournament but it is certainly interesting data worthy of discussion. Comparing that with the ITC results of the same weekend shows a very different balance of top armies.

Phew, testy about a result (not results) from unknowns not being considered at the same level of competitive representation as proven top end players, aren't we? I am Australian mate, I don't have sort of country or ITC preference here, the point isn't that all Euro's are bad or anything, you don't need to get this salty about pointing out the obvious fact that I don't think many people here recognise any of those names, meaning we have no real way of knowing if these were worth players to be basing any sort of balance statement around

There's worlds of difference between the best players in the game, and the average tournament competitor. Xenomancer graciously pointing out that Sean Nayden has 46 back to back tournament wins with units the meta considers 'junk' being a good example of this. Or are you one of those genius's who thinks 40k takes no skill and you're already at the top of your game lol? When I score 20 goals in a game at the local soccer circuit, they don't put that in the hall of fame, even though it's possible some of the players I play against go on to be world cup competitors. The reason people put more stake into a stacked event like NOVA with the biggest names in the world, and less into your 20 man RTT with names nobody has recognised, is because we know that one of those events has the very best players in the world and thus the best competition, while the unknown one could have absolutely anybody. And even if a bunch of the best players were there, unless the people they competed against were also the best, this would totally skew the results as well. Hence why "I don't think we should take any one tournament as an indisputable measure of balance right now, especially when we don't really know anything about any of the competitors involved" would seem like a pretty rational statement.

This all feels like common sense. But I guess common sense goes out the window when you perceive a non-existent threat to a very fragile ego.

happy_inquisitor wrote:

 Nitro Zeus wrote:

Bharring wrote:

 Nitro Zeus wrote:
why are people looking at the results of one single WHW tier list with like no big names in attendance, as though its some indisputable tier list? Are we really at this level of stupid today?

Because it confirms our biases. If it opposed them, it'd just be an outlier.

Yeah, this feels extremely transparent.

Sigh.

To my knowledge 2 large events last weekend did not use the ITC missions. The GW GT final and the Caledonian Uprising (which used a blend of Maelstrom/Eternal War from CA19)

The top lists at those two events were pretty balanced.

By contrast, the top lists at the other 3 events were 11/12 marines across the top 4 in each.

But you just carry on dismissing anything you don't like as "outlier" if you really like.

I... don't like? What part of this don't I like? The two main arguments I made so far, that I'd prefer we dropped ITC missions and swapped to CA missions, and that BA are strong in both mission sets, are BOTH 'supported' by that result.

Nope, if this was based off personal bias, I'd be all in on your absurdity. Quite certain that, unlike yourself, I'm able to step away from personal bias, and I just think it's donkey-levels of conscious stupidity to take one single event and over-analyse the results like you guys are doing, as though it's representative of literally anything other than just ONE EVENT. We see massive swings all the time event to event. It's silly enough to take a proper fleshed out statistic at face value of what is and isn't good (as this thread well demonstrates), let alone one single event lol. You guys are treating this 30 player tourney at Warhammer World of all places, as though it's a hard tier list for how every faction performs on the GW missions. It's just absurdity. When I made my post that you quoted, the results Caledonian uprising literally had not been mentioned in this thread or even released, so don't you dare mention that after the fact as though it has any bearing here, that's beyond disingenuous, its outright dishonest. I'm not saying that the results are wrong, or right, I'm saying put a seconds thought into how intelligent this thought process that GW WHW 2020 placings = GW mission tier list just is.

Sigh. Interacting with 40k players is like a case-study in cognitive dissonance sometimes. You want to be right because it supports your pre-existing beliefs, and thus you'll trumpet absolutely all the evidence that supports it no matter how flimsy, and completely ignore or rage against any information or any sort of rational thought that might disclude you that from treating that as concrete fact, even when it's coming from someone who agrees with the underlying premise that CA missions are the better design. HOW we form our opinions matters mate, and when we support it with nonsense conclusions, it's not a very convincing argument to anybody who would disagree.

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
Most influential battles is not the same as most battles. They could be the most influential because one side was forced to take out an enemy stronghold (or fail doing so). In a sense, they could be counted as the most important for the very reason that they were uncommon pushes through defenses (Stalingrad, D-day, Guadalcanal). I agree with you entirely, but the supporting argument has some holes.

Pretty irrelevant though. Whether real battles are fought on planet bowling ball or not(and remember tree in real world is actually useful cover. Tree in 40k is just decor) is irrelevant. We are talking about game here which needs to be fun and balanced. If GW makes rules where playing on planet bowl results in 2 gunlines rolling who goes first to alpha strike to win that means you can't play on planet bowling ball for meaningful game.

Martel732 wrote:
And so, an empasse. But if the ITC skews too heavy, I'll end up in your camp on the merits. Not the "officialness". Because GW is a bunch of know nothings.

They can be a top performing company world wide, but they'll cry themselves to sleep tonight because Martel believes they're "know nothings". Whilst buying and playing their game.

bananathug wrote:
Just to add a bit of contrast to the GW event here's a list of the ITC winners from last weekend:

https://old.reddit.com/r/WarhammerCompetitive/comments/eo5jvu/pandas_weekend_rundown_111112/?st=k5cpe84s&sh=78a49ca9

I count 12/16 top 4 as marines (IH/RG/IF/WS). Don't know what was going on at the Caldeonian Uprising but if we drop that outlier we get 11/12 marines in the top 4 (and that one was Skarii with DE who is a world class player).

Bad news for you Wayniac is I think I heard them say on the stream that GW is moving to 2k for their tournies. Looks like 1.75k is dead, long live 2k...

Chaos have some nasty stuff in PA and the point decreases in CA were huge for them. There is a reason so many of the top UK players suddenly started playing chaos.
Ofcourse aeldar and nids PA was ignored by them, because most of the rules are meh and CA points changes were to conservative when compared to other factions.
The heavy mechdar is countered heavily by IF and our infantry received NADA although it needed help. Avengers are the some price as chaos space marines, with less toughness and save, that is not good in the age of the criminally under coaster thunderfire cannons.

I'm just hopeful that going forward in 2020 ITC takes more of a backseat and more tournaments use CA missions.

Tournaments shouldn't exclude anything from being used, but ITC does, simply because the secondary missions are far too easy to game IMHO. Even with just 2 non ITC events, the top 4 lists were wildly more different than the rampant 100% marine top 4.

ITC needs to be gracious and step back. They are being stubborn and its effecting the meta of the game far more. While certain armies are powerful, their effectiveness is compounded with tournament rules that actively encourage them to just shoot without having to objective grab at all.

A game should not be decided on lists only. Random cards and objective bases missions mean you need to make a strong, balanced list - not some atrocious spam one.

 Nitro Zeus wrote:
Nope, if this was based off personal bias, I'd be all in on your absurdity. Quite certain that, unlike yourself, I'm able to step away from personal bias, and I just think it's donkey-levels of conscious stupidity to take one single event and over-analyse the results like you guys are doing, as though it's representative of literally anything other than just ONE EVENT. We see massive swings all the time event to event. It's silly enough to take a proper fleshed out statistic at face value of what is and isn't good (as this thread well demonstrates), let alone one single event lol. You guys are treating this 30 player tourney at Warhammer World of all places, as though it's a hard tier list for how every faction performs on the GW missions. It's just absurdity. When I made my post that you quoted, the results Caledonian uprising literally had not been mentioned in this thread or even released, so don't you dare mention that after the fact as though it has any bearing here, that's beyond disingenuous, its outright dishonest. I'm not saying that the results are wrong, or right, I'm saying put a seconds thought into how intelligent this thought process that GW WHW 2020 placings = GW mission tier list just is.

Sigh. Interacting with 40k players is like a case-study in cognitive dissonance sometimes. You want to be right because it supports your pre-existing beliefs, and thus you'll trumpet absolutely all the evidence that supports it no matter how flimsy, and completely ignore or rage against any information or any sort of rational thought that might disclude you that from treating that as concrete fact, even when it's coming from someone who agrees with the underlying premise that CA missions are the better design. HOW we form our opinions matters mate, and when we support it with nonsense conclusions, it's not a very convincing argument to anybody who would disagree.

It is not one single event though, is it? It never was one event, a lot of us have been seeing the same pattern of results not matching the ITC format stats for months now. As soon as the Caledonian Uprising results were available they got added to the conversation as additional relevant data. As were the other ITC results of the weekend which were ludicrously dominated by marine armies.

As for the GT finals. It was not a 30 player event, get your facts straight. It was an 88 player event in which only players who had previously come top 30 in a GT event were permitted to buy tickets.

It is data. In a thread about data. I am not sure why you seem to object to people wanting to add new data to a discussion about data.

 Crimson wrote:

 grouchoben wrote:
The holidays are over, normal service is resumed...

Goldensprue Cup GT
Alexander Fennell – RG
Jared Friedman – IH
Tony Phillips – RG
Patrick McAneeny – White Scars

Caldeonian Uprising
Anthony Chew – TSons/Demons
James Mackenzie – GSC/Nids
Mani Cheema – CSM/Demons/DG
Markus Hinson – IF

Critical Hit Gaming Lounge
Devin Swann – BA/IF
Ridvan ‘Skari’ Martinez – DE
Derek Deraiche – RG
Val Heffelfinger – RG

New Year’s Knockout GT
Dan Sammons – IH
Scott Thompson – IH
Tim Royers – IF
Nathan Martin – IH

And which ones of these are ITC and which ones are real 40K?

"Before you can wage war in a game of Warhammer 40,000, you must select a mission. The core rules include a single mission – Only War – which is ideal to get the action started quickly. Others can be found elsewhere in this book, in other books, or you could play a mission of your own creation." - Main rulebook.

There is no "real" mission format, you could have asked more nicely. ETC, ITC, ITC, ITC so none of them used basic CA19 missions.

Kippers' Melee had 0 top 4 Astartes, Autumn Hull had 1 in second place, those were both ITC GTs. If we look at only those two tournaments then ITC doesn't favour Astartes at all.

It's also funny how people are praising GW for creating a great CA19 set when what they've mostly done is walk back the craziness of their own design and adopt something closer to what tournament hosts have been doing, but they continue to hate other formats.

It literally was one single event that people were making balance declarations over. If past events were included in this analysis, why were none of them mentioned? This is such dishonest backpedalling, not even remotely true, and yet I'm completely unsurprised after your past efforts. Can I please see this data that you are talking about, or is it just all in your head and of course, everyone else who was doing the same thing that I referred to in my post, since obviously they were also working off the same knowledge, and silently incorporating it into their statements here?

My mistake on the size of the event. I only glanced at the top 30 or so and didn't dwell on it. That's a well sized event, for sure. But one event isn't a measure of balance. That shouldn't be a difficult concept to grasp but somehow I think you and I are on very different levels of competitive understanding.

Competitive 40k should allow any unit to take part.

ITC rules don't, because the secondary missions mean certain units are not taken. I mean, even Goonhammer states "Don't take too many Pentinent Engines as they give away gang busters too easily". The list goes on, but at the end of the day, GW are at least trying to make a competitive mission set with limiting randomness that is more tactics/decisions on the table than taking a heavily skewed list. The fact that you auto lose if tabled in ITC also irked me, as that rule completely deincentivises objective play further and its all just kill kill kill.

Until ITC drops Secondary missions, it will continue to see skew in data.

Bharring wrote:

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:

Bharring wrote:

Loading the dice isn't cheating. I could, in theory, create hundreds of loaded dice. That isn't cheating. It's using the loaded dice that's cheating. Regardless of how they became loaded.

Cheating also requires intent though, just like lying. Saying something that is not true in good faith is not lying, just as using a loaded die in good faith is not cheating.

Yes, it requires intent.

There as 6 dice in front of me. Lets say one of them is going to roll a 6, the others aren't, and I need a 6. If I pick the one that will roll a 6 without knowing it'll roll a 6, it's fair. If I pick it believing it has more than a 1/6th chance of rolling a 6, it's cheating.

It doesn't actually matter if the die is loaded. Or if I'm prescient. It only matters if I believe it is not a 1/6th chance of rolling a 6 and use it.

Well crap. Your way of thinking means that I've been cheating at games my entire life.
See, when I pick up a die? I believe it's going to roll what I need. And it often does to my friends dismay/irritation. I can do this with my dice. Their dice. A new cube right out of the case....

 Dr. Mills wrote:
Competitive 40k should allow any unit to take part.

ITC rules don't, because the secondary missions mean certain units are not taken. I mean, even Goonhammer states "Don't take too many Pentinent Engines as they give away gang busters too easily". The list goes on, but at the end of the day, GW are at least trying to make a competitive mission set with limiting randomness that is more tactics/decisions on the table than taking a heavily skewed list. The fact that you auto lose if tabled in ITC also irked me, as that rule completely deincentivises objective play further and its all just kill kill kill.

Until ITC drops Secondary missions, it will continue to see skew in data.

Does choosing from a superior pool of Maelstrom missions not also skew the data in Maelstrom missions? Why should a faction's win% be determined by unique missions only that faction gets access to? It seems like you're only picking facts that support your narrative. Penitent Engines don't give away gang busters unless the unit contains more than one so I don't know why Goonhammer would state that, I don't consider 4 to be terribly few Penitent Engines. GW allows you to take a list constructed almost entirely of Penitent Engines, but I'm guessing you like to play with the house rule that you cannot take more than three copies of a unit? Or does it not count as a house rule because GW suggested tournaments use that house rule?

 vict0988 wrote:

 Dr. Mills wrote:
Competitive 40k should allow any unit to take part.

ITC rules don't, because the secondary missions mean certain units are not taken. I mean, even Goonhammer states "Don't take too many Pentinent Engines as they give away gang busters too easily". The list goes on, but at the end of the day, GW are at least trying to make a competitive mission set with limiting randomness that is more tactics/decisions on the table than taking a heavily skewed list. The fact that you auto lose if tabled in ITC also irked me, as that rule completely deincentivises objective play further and its all just kill kill kill.

Until ITC drops Secondary missions, it will continue to see skew in data.

Does choosing from a superior pool of Maelstrom missions not also skew the data in Maelstrom missions? Why should a faction's win% be determined by unique missions only that faction gets access to? It seems like you're only picking facts that support your narrative. Penitent Engines don't give away gang busters unless the unit contains more than one so I don't know why Goonhammer would state that, I don't consider 4 to be terribly few Penitent Engines. GW allows you to take a list constructed almost entirely of Penitent Engines, but I'm guessing you like to play with the house rule that you cannot take more than three copies of a unit? Or does it not count as a house rule because GW suggested tournaments use that house rule?

I feel that arguing over a factions specific maelstrom missions is more than clutching at straws here. The rule of 3 is a GW recommended rule for matched play. The same one used by ITC, which as you note are house rules.

So that's weird. I thought CWE was as OP as IH/IF and only those two are OP...where they at? I see marine lists topping with all different chapters, and basically no non-marines...

Aren't Space Marines 1 out of like 20 different codex armies at this point? Isn't taking 75% of the top tournament wins something of a teensy cause for alarm?

the_scotsman wrote:
So that's weird. I thought CWE was as OP as IH/IF and only those two are OP...where they at? I see marine lists topping with all different chapters, and basically no non-marines...

Aren't Space Marines 1 out of like 20 different codex armies at this point? Isn't taking 75% of the top tournament wins something of a teensy cause for alarm?

Depends if you consider all the other Marine chapters to be the same or different (presumably different). But the 75% thing well, that brings back the topic is this 75% win rate in ITC events, non-ITC events, or both? The latter two should make it cause for alarm, but if it's only 75% win rate in ITC events then the ITC format is the problem and not necessarily the codex itself (although I'm sure even not factoring in ITC the win rate would be above average)

Also obligatory if without the ITC secondaries hordes will dominate, where is the horde domination of the other events? The top lists posted didn't seem like they were very horde-y.

Wayniac wrote:
Also obligatory if without the ITC secondaries hordes will dominate, where is the horde domination of the other events? The top lists posted didn't seem like they were very horde-y.

Why would hordes dominate?
I mean I think hordes would be more viable - but if they became meta dominant, most armies can re-equip to blow them away.

Tyel wrote:

Wayniac wrote:
Also obligatory if without the ITC secondaries hordes will dominate, where is the horde domination of the other events? The top lists posted didn't seem like they were very horde-y.

Why would hordes dominate?
I mean I think hordes would be more viable - but if they became meta dominant, most armies can re-equip to blow them away.

That's always Martel's reasoning why ITC is superior to the CA missions: Because without it "nothing can beat hordes". Yet none of the lists saw a lot of hordes.