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https://www.warhammer-community.com/2020/10/08/metawatch-warhammer-40000-1-a-brave-new-world/?utm_source=Facebook&utm_medium=Facebook&utm_campaign=40K&utm_content=40kmetawatch0802020&fbclid=IwAR1l82-wB5ncPIFGPqs63uCDHb_GwTMyreHXEG6d89FA421ZHKp1fE_8eaQ

WHC has started a new series of articles, focused on competitive play, with its first guest: Nick Nanavati himself !

great, just what the world needs....

Racerguy180 wrote:
great, just what the world needs....

Well it's written by ITC "Super stars" so I thought this place would be all over it, even if it does contradict the first turn bias theory.

I was wrong,He is from FLG.

 FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
Didn't he get "accused" of cheating by one of the GT organizers over "Plasma gate" or am I thinking of something else. His name looks super familiar for some reason...

He's well known for winning an LVO and being the first "professional" Warhammer player. He also not only has his own tactics platform but guests stared on essentially every 40k podcast at some point. I've never heard a rumor of him cheating.

Oh no, I remember, he's always on Vanguard Tactics and FLG videos. Sorry!

Dudeface wrote:

Racerguy180 wrote:
great, just what the world needs....

Well it's written by ITC "Super stars" so I thought this place would be all over it, even if it does contradict the first turn bias theory.

That's not quite what he said though, it's about trying to say yes but it's not a mission design and codex design issue.

You also notice he is playing one of the widely considered better factions that doesn't actually have a significant amount of variance in win ratio in relation to going first.

Design a list to go second, not a new concept for most competitive players, but is basically an admission that player with top of round had an advantage.

Take a list that can retake objectives, and exactly how do you do that with codex's with lackluster or non exsistant Melee threats?

The perennial add more obscuring terrain is also an admission that lethality is broken. It also is about as blatant as we are probably going to be getting that GW has designed 9th to make LoW unplayable competitively.

Also they specifically admit that Eldar, Drukari, Tau and both knights codex's effectively dont work in 9th edition by omitting them from the list of codex's that can do well at events.

First-turn advantage is a thing. Nick's perspective is that people just don't know how to play...but he also hasn't played at any actual events yet, where the 58% going-first win rate has been replicated over more than 3000 games now.

"The players are just bad, there wouldn't be any first turn advantage if people knew what they were doing" is a point of view, but it's not a data-based point of view. It isn't susceptible to data-based proof one way or the other - except maybe if you could show that first-turn advantage disappears among the best players. But it doesn't. So to the extent that the data says anything, it suggests that "git gud" is not a fix.

But even if it was just a "gid gud" issue, it's not a great game design to set up your game in such a way that it will have a pronounced first-turn bias for average players.

This article made my heart sink - not because of what Nick said, but because of how Mike Brandt was clearly teeing someone up who would say what he wanted, that his new missions are great and it's the player base's fault that there's a pronounced first-turn bias in the real world, and that if people would just get better at doing what he wants, they'd realize how great the missions are. It's that same top-down "take this and make it work, and if you don't, it's your own fault" approach to mission design that GW has always been guilty of in the past, not the more player-focused, open-to-input approach we were hoping we'd get when they went and hired someone from the community.

Also, that player card with bar ratings for various "skills" is ridiculous, absurd nonsense that is frankly embarrassing. Players aren't widgets, you can't rate them on a power bar with any sort of objective rigor, it's just nonsense. You can say someone is better at this than that, but to assign an effective numeric value to it is a joke.

Can this series be purged with fire now, before it contaminates anything else?

I´ll be closely following this series on the competitive scene with collaboration between GW itself and high tier players. The inclusion of the former meaning no meaningful criticism of GW design will ever be included in the series, making it pointless.

I had a lot of hope for the article, but I didn't find a lot of substance to it. Instead, it felt like an advertising article. "Buy terrain, buy any army" was all I got out from it. Nick is a smart guy, and I'm sure he said a LOT more than what was shown here, because there's very little useful information here on ways to actual get into the meta.

Dudeface wrote:

Racerguy180 wrote:
great, just what the world needs....

Well it's written by ITC "Super stars" so I thought this place would be all over it, even if it does contradict the first turn bias theory.

That's an odd take. I see a lot more of 'it can't ever be a tournament game, competitive play doesn't matter and so on and so forth.'


Which makes it really odd that GW has spent the last couple of editions buying all the 'internet famous' tournament people to be their yes men and generally shill for them. This is just more of that.
It isn't particularly interesting, but GW apparently really wants customers to see this 'outside' validation from the competitive scene.

First-turn advantage is a thing. Nick's perspective is that people just don't know how to play...but he also hasn't played at any actual events yet, where the 58% going-first win rate has been replicated over more than 3000 games now.

Not only that, but I'd also point out that the trend has been for that first-turn win percentage to increase steadily as more data comes out. IDK why this is so unbelievably controversial for some people. Just a cursory reading of the missions themselves demonstrates a distinct advantage to going first. When the tourney data also backs this up - why is it so hard to believe? Why is the answer always "You're using wrong tactics, adapt to 9th, get gud" etc? IDK - There are portions of Dakka I'll never understand.

not because of what Nick said, but because of how Mike Brandt was clearly teeing someone up who would say what he wanted, that his new missions are great and it's the player base's fault that there's a pronounced first-turn bias in the real world, and that if people would just get better at doing what he wants, they'd realize how great the missions are. It's that same top-down "take this and make it work, and if you don't, it's your own fault" approach to mission design that GW has always been guilty of in the past, not the more player-focused, open-to-input approach we were hoping we'd get when they went and hired someone from the community.

It's especially disappointing for me because the missions are generally pretty good, and I think the first turn win thing could easily be solved by simply changing when objectives are scored. A one or two sentence FAQ could do it for most missions, but it seems like they'd rather just keep banging that drum of "all factions are viable and don't worry about 1st or 2nd turn". I can only hope they're just waiting for more data but are planning on adjusting once more comes in.

The biggest issue I have with the whole thing is that when the missions came out, a lot of the major podcasts/play testers/personalities, etc were highly critical of the scoring - stating things like "there's a reason Adepticon doesn't do it this way anymore, etc". Now, a few months later, we have data backing up the concerns, and some of us have played enough to SEE the actual problem in real life, but those same people seem to be mum on the subject. Everything is fine. Nothing to see here. Kind of ... sad really. They knew there was potential for a issue, the issue has been confirmed, but now they're silent? I guess that's what you get for signing that NDA ...

I try not to blame the community, people respond in predictable ways that aren't going to change just because of criticism. Particularly when the reason they got into the hobby in the first place was, well, because they liked it. When people have a financial interest, that just makes it all the more predictable and understandable that they don't go out on a limb to criticize the goose that laid their golden egg.

The buck stops with GW, as it always does, despite the best efforts of a large percentage of the community to argue otherwise. When things don't work, it's not the fault of playtesters or community members or anybody else IMO, it's GW's fault.

P.S. Just a FYI to anyone in the thread who wasn't aware, Nick Nanavati in particular has never participated in GW's playtesting program, because he (100% rightly) objects to the way they rely on unpaid labor to run the program, rather than paying people for their time the way they would in any other industry.

Out of curiosity, when would we need to score objectives to make it more equitable ? I'm no pro player.

yukishiro1 wrote:
I try not to blame the community, people respond in predictable ways that aren't going to change just because of criticism. Particularly when the reason they got into the hobby in the first place was, well, because they liked it. When people have a financial interest, that just makes it all the more predictable and understandable that they don't go out on a limb to criticize the goose that laid their golden egg.

The buck stops with GW, as it always does, despite the best efforts of a large percentage of the community to argue otherwise. When things don't work, it's not the fault of playtesters or community members or anybody else IMO, it's GW's fault.

P.S. Just a FYI to anyone in the thread who wasn't aware, Nick Nanavati in particular has never participated in GW's playtesting program, because he (100% rightly) objects to the way they rely on unpaid labor to run the program, rather than paying people for their time the way they would in any other industry.

I dislike that sentiment. Are video game public beta testers expecting to get paid? Often many pay to have the beta test experience.

Likewise if GW said "here's all the 9th ed codex in a zip folder, they're drafts, try them and see what you all think" you'd magically never touch them out of principal?

He's also saying, in that case, he won't volunteer his well educated services to make something he makes money off and is passionate about better, because nobody will pay him. That invalidates literally any balance complaints he could ever produce.

 Aaranis wrote:
Out of curiosity, when would we need to score objectives to make it more equitable ? I'm no pro player.

It's not an exactly know thing as changing when you score also tend sto have knock on consequences.

One of the things is you deploy then roll for going first, some people believe moving the roll to before deployment would be a better solution.
You know just how hard you need to mitigate without punishing slow armies if they go first.

The other answer is just based on what used to work in previous formats which is at the end of the round or start of the round.

PLAYER 1 TURN
PLAYER 2 TURN
SCORE
PLAYER 1 TURN
PLAYER 2 TURN
SCORE
Esentially it can be the end of player 2's turn or at the start of player 1's command phase. The issue with the second option is it makes turn 5 worthless. But I'm not sure if GW intends it to be a wash out turn.

I did say that this edition of 40K was "Tournament Edition".

*deep breath*

..... hahahahahahahaha!

In the new edition, you’re often better off using a variety of relatively inexpensive, flexible units which can function autonomously. All the new Indomitus units, such as Bladeguard Veterans, Outriders, and Eradicators, fit this unit style perfectly.

Wow. What a huge coincidence that the models they just released happen to perfectly fit the new style of play? I'm shocked I tell you. Shocked. This is my shocked face.

yukishiro1 wrote:
First-turn advantage is a thing. Nick's perspective is that people just don't know how to play...but he also hasn't played at any actual events yet, where the 58% going-first win rate has been replicated over more than 3000 games now.

"The players are just bad, there wouldn't be any first turn advantage if people knew what they were doing" is a point of view, but it's not a data-based point of view. It isn't susceptible to data-based proof one way or the other - except maybe if you could show that first-turn advantage disappears among the best players. But it doesn't. So to the extent that the data says anything, it suggests that "git gud" is not a fix.

But even if it was just a "gid gud" issue, it's not a great game design to set up your game in such a way that it will have a pronounced first-turn bias for average players.

This article made my heart sink - not because of what Nick said, but because of how Mike Brandt was clearly teeing someone up who would say what he wanted, that his new missions are great and it's the player base's fault that there's a pronounced first-turn bias in the real world, and that if people would just get better at doing what he wants, they'd realize how great the missions are. It's that same top-down "take this and make it work, and if you don't, it's your own fault" approach to mission design that GW has always been guilty of in the past, not the more player-focused, open-to-input approach we were hoping we'd get when they went and hired someone from the community.

Also, that player card with bar ratings for various "skills" is ridiculous, absurd nonsense that is frankly embarrassing. Players aren't widgets, you can't rate them on a power bar with any sort of objective rigor, it's just nonsense. You can say someone is better at this than that, but to assign an effective numeric value to it is a joke.

Iunno, might just be because Nick's by far the most aggressive self promoting "pro" 40ker out there. He has literally translated this into half a dozen different monetized ventures where he talks about how great he is at the game and if you want to be any good, pay him hundreds of dollars to teach you.

40k Pro, what is that supposed to mean, like a golf pro @ the local course? cuz if that's the case it really doesn't mean much....unless they're Tiger or Chi Chi Rodriguez.


Also 40k Pro is quite possibly the most gakiest statement out there....I'm just waiting for GW to pull a Pro Necromunda Player out a their ass.

Racerguy180 wrote:
40k Pro, what is that supposed to mean, like a golf pro @ the local course? cuz if that's the case it really doesn't mean much....unless they're Tiger or Chi Chi Rodriguez.


Also 40k Pro is quite possibly the most gakiest statement out there....I'm just waiting for GW to pull a Pro Necromunda Player out a their ass.

GW didn't invent Nick Nanavati. The man made his own PR and marketing. And. I mean, it worked. People do pay him a silly amount of money to be told how to git gud at warhammer.

There’s numerous reasons why the first turn advantage may not be as strong as the statistic represents. You’d be silly to ignore Nick’s opinion based on “the stats” it doesn’t matter if the data size is 3000 or 3 million, the stats ignore a human element and how we approach the game / our knowledge of it.

The ratings system looks just like they pulled it out of a DotA2 player card...

They obviously did, and it's a joke, because 40k doesn't keep track of any of the metrics necessary to make those ratings have any validity.




Automatically Appended Next Post:

Dudeface wrote:


I dislike that sentiment. Are video game public beta testers expecting to get paid? Often many pay to have the beta test experience.

Likewise if GW said "here's all the 9th ed codex in a zip folder, they're drafts, try them and see what you all think" you'd magically never touch them out of principal?

He's also saying, in that case, he won't volunteer his well educated services to make something he makes money off and is passionate about better, because nobody will pay him. That invalidates literally any balance complaints he could ever produce.

GW doesn't do public beta tests. And yes, smart, competent gaming companies do pay their alpha testers, because they know that if you don't pay, you can't expect professional results.

Video game public betas are just an advertising thing. The game is already effectively done. They don't even usually bother to go through the fiction of asking peoples' impressions for public betas, because the game's already done. At most it's a stress test sort of thing.

The idea that someone's opinions should be invalidated because they refused to give a company worth billions of dollars free labor is downright absurd. If anything, it's the opposite - the opinions of people willing to labor to enrich a company worth billions because the company is too cheap to pay them are the ones that should be treated with the greater skepticism.

GW isn't some charity venture. They're not doing this to make the world a better place.

 Aaranis wrote:
Out of curiosity, when would we need to score objectives to make it more equitable ? I'm no pro player.

Some options are:

Allow the going second player to score the primary mission on their first turn, so they get five chances to score to first player's four.

Allow the second player to get a "ghost" sixth turn to score the primary mission at the end of their last turn, so they get five chances to score to first player's four.

They could even give different primary points depending on going first or second. So on a five or six objective map first could have to do hold two, hold three, hold more while second could do hold one, hold two, hold more.

Change where the objectives are. My reading of the goonhammer stat article that looked at this was that the one mission that has the least first turn bias has 50% (2 of 4) of its objectives on the mid board line. This helps second player because in order for first player to hold those objectives they have to be so far forward second player can attack them and often first player has to advance rather than normal move to reach them. The worst missions (for first/second disparity) appear to be where the objectives are furthest from the mid board line (and close to your own deployment) as moving on to them is trivial for first player and they are really far away from second player making it harder for second player to push first player off.

Change the who goes first roll off to before deployment, have first player deploy then second player can fully counter deploy. Again, goonhammer's stats article seemed to back this up, as when ITC shifted to a similar system it lowered the first turn advantage.

stratigo wrote:

Racerguy180 wrote:
40k Pro, what is that supposed to mean, like a golf pro @ the local course? cuz if that's the case it really doesn't mean much....unless they're Tiger or Chi Chi Rodriguez.


Also 40k Pro is quite possibly the most bullshittiest statement out there....I'm just waiting for GW to pull a Pro Necromunda Player out a their ass.

GW didn't invent Nick Nanavati. The man made his own PR and marketing. And. I mean, it worked. People do pay him a silly amount of money to be told how to git gud at warhammer.

A fool and their money soon part ways. I guess good for him, but 40k pro isn't something one should list on their resume, unless your trying out for the Crud Creek Nosepickers new ALL-STAR 40K world tour championship team where you win all the money 40k has to offer.

Dudeface wrote:


I dislike that sentiment. Are video game public beta testers expecting to get paid? Often many pay to have the beta test experience.

Likewise if GW said "here's all the 9th ed codex in a zip folder, they're drafts, try them and see what you all think" you'd magically never touch them out of principal?

He's also saying, in that case, he won't volunteer his well educated services to make something he makes money off and is passionate about better, because nobody will pay him. That invalidates literally any balance complaints he could ever produce.

Can I get your mailing address to send my boots to you bud?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

yukishiro1 wrote:

The idea that someone's opinions should be invalidated because they refused to give a company worth billions of dollars free labor is downright absurd. If anything, it's the opposite - the opinions of people willing to labor to enrich a company worth billions because the company is too cheap to pay them are the ones that should be treated with the greater skepticism.

GW isn't worth billions tho

Racerguy180 wrote:
great, just what the world needs....

Narrative articles get nothing but people whining about how the fluff apparently used to be able to give you handjobs through the pages and Hobby articles might as well just be a blank page with a link to whatever kit they're featuring for how clearly they're just an ad.

At least with this you get to PRETEND it's actual content.

 Nitro Zeus wrote:
There’s numerous reasons why the first turn advantage may not be as strong as the statistic represents. You’d be silly to ignore Nick’s opinion based on “the stats” it doesn’t matter if the data size is 3000 or 3 million, the stats ignore a human element and how we approach the game / our knowledge of it.

He could also just be wrong, or biased because he just happens to be playing the faction that is the single best of any of them at mitigating first turn advantage.

Especially given that the data so far has suggested that not only does first turn advantage exists, it is more pronounced in later rounds as players are matched with people closer to their own skill level.

It wouldn't be anywhere near the first time a top level player at something just didn't know what he's talking about. It reminds me of when Dopa of League of Legends said "Oh no man after this latest rework Ryze is useless garbage he won't be in Worlds" only for Ryze to, guess what, dominate Worlds once more.

For info on the meta and what's hot, I always look for people with nothing attaching them to Games Workshop or their competition for as unbiased a view as possible. From what I've heard, people think Harlequinns will hit a ceiling soon, Chaos are going to be a major player, and Space Marine lists will be looking a little different as far as composition goes, but will still be the army to build to beat going into events. Orks are the big mystery to me, since they've doing decently, but don't seem to have the tools to deal with the new Marine stuff or a dedicated Chaos force.