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GW was worth 4 billion last time I checked.

As to how to fix it: the first step to fixing a problem is admitting you have a problem. Instead of teeing up people to insist that everything's fine, GW should say "yeah, we see the 58% win rate for going first, and we agree with the community that this isn't acceptable. We're internally testing right now to find the best way to correct this imbalance, and we'll keep you updated."

In terms of what to actually do, one obvious option would be to allow a last set of scoring primary at the very end of the game. This alone might completely fix the issue, as it'd mean the player going 2nd has the ability to control last-turn primary scoring for both players.

Other things you could do - ditch alternate deployment and have the defender deploy second; keep alternate deployment but allow the person going second to redeploy X units right before the game starts, including placing them into strategic reserves if desired; implement a "fog of war" rule that limits shooting on player one's first turn by preventing shooting on T1 except if you're within X" of the target (could try X" = 18" as a starter here); have the player going second nominate one unit that is hidden and counts as in obscuring terrain even if it isn't for the first turn...we could go on and on here, there's a million ways to reduce first-turn bias. If GW recognizes it's a problem, fixing it is not going to be that difficult. It just requires sustained testing.

Racerguy180 wrote:

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.

If you do something and people like watching, you can draw spectators. Spectators who enjoy your content can sometimes be leveraged for income as they are in basically every popular game that gets played from football to nascar to chess. If people figure out a way to draw spectators enough that you can and do make a significant amount of your living off of playing warhammer, then you're a pro warhammer player. Same way as you would be a professional athlete or a professional racecar driver, or professional youtuber.

It's just commerce. He creates something people enjoy consuming so they pay him for it.

It's you attaching context to it and getting butthurt about it.

My numbers were showing like 100 million. Four billion is half of EA's total assets and no way is GW that big.

which is true, but still pretty lame

Aow40k streams pretty excellent content for free twice a week. It's by far the best competitive stream content out there. I don't pay for any of the paid stuff, but I have no problem with them trying to make a go out of it, and I wish them luck.

yukishiro1 wrote:
GW was worth 4 billion last time I checked.

As to how to fix it: the first step to fixing a problem is admitting you have a problem. Instead of teeing up people to insist that everything's fine, GW should say "yeah, we see the 58% win rate for going first, and we agree with the community that this isn't acceptable. We're internally testing right now to find the best way to correct this imbalance, and we'll keep you updated."

In terms of what to actually do, one obvious option would be to allow a last set of scoring primary at the very end of the game. This alone might completely fix the issue, as it'd mean the player going 2nd has the ability to control last-turn primary scoring for both players.

Other things you could do - ditch alternate deployment and have the defender deploy second; keep alternate deployment but allow the person going second to redeploy X units right before the game starts, including placing them into strategic reserves if desired; implement a "fog of war" rule that limits shooting on player one's first turn by preventing shooting on T1 except if you're within X" of the target (could try X" = 18" as a starter here); have the player going second nominate one unit that is hidden and counts as in obscuring terrain even if it isn't for the first turn...we could go on and on here, there's a million ways to reduce first-turn bias. If GW recognizes it's a problem, fixing it is not going to be that difficult. It just requires sustained testing.

Wait, since when is 58% really that unnacceptable? Chess is like 54% FTA, is 40k supposed to be more balanced than CHESS?

I'm not necessarily arguing against any of your other points, just 58% isn't that bad. It's IMPROVABLE, not UNACCEPTABLE.

 Void__Dragon wrote:
My numbers were showing like 100 million. Four billion is half of EA's total assets and no way is GW that big.

https://www.marketwatch.com/investing/stock/gmwkf

Market cap: 4.44 billion.

Market cap is the generally used measure of a listed company's value.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

ERJAK wrote:


Wait, since when is 58% really that unnacceptable? Chess is like 54% FTA, is 40k supposed to be more balanced than CHESS?

I'm not necessarily arguing against any of your other points, just 58% isn't that bad. It's IMPROVABLE, not UNACCEPTABLE.

54% and 58% are hugely different, but yes, one of Chess' big problems has always been the advantage from going first. If chess didn't have a first-turn advantage, competitive chess would look completely different to what it does look like. A large percentage of chess theory - maybe even the majority - is about how to break white's advantage when playing black.

ITC 2020 had first-turn advantage around 52%. That's where the game ought to be. If some random people in the community can get to 52%, GW should be able to at least match that.

A game with a 58% win rate for going first is not really a game you can call competitive. Anything above ~55% is veering into non-competitive territory. 58% is bad for a competitive game.

Racerguy180 wrote:
which is true, but still pretty lame

I mean, I think people who voluntarily watch soccer have to be unbalanced in some way to deal with a sport where nothing happens for 1.5 hours and then just when you think you're finally free they randomly add more time on the end like they're really just trying to break your spirit. I don't begrudge them what makes them happy though, I just smile and nod.

It would be nice if the gigantic massive picture stretching the page was spoilered.

This series will be as good as any other catalogue/advertisement. They get the competitive names in to convince the naive that, "No, no, guys THIS and THIS unit are totally awesome, you can trust me I'm a Competitive(tm) tournament player!" who will toe the party line that GW give him in order to keep both parties sweet. I'm sure some people will be suckered into making stuff from it, but it's not like GW pays these people anything beyond the promise of maybe some exposure and free kits to review (positively) for them.

It's like when they hire millionaire celebs to advertise cheap-end supermarket-sold shampoo and they pretend they actually use the stuff they're being told to shill.

yukishiro1 wrote:

 Void__Dragon wrote:
My numbers were showing like 100 million. Four billion is half of EA's total assets and no way is GW that big.

https://www.marketwatch.com/investing/stock/gmwkf

Market cap: 4.44 billion.

Market cap is the generally used measure of a listed company's value.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

ERJAK wrote:


Wait, since when is 58% really that unnacceptable? Chess is like 54% FTA, is 40k supposed to be more balanced than CHESS?

I'm not necessarily arguing against any of your other points, just 58% isn't that bad. It's IMPROVABLE, not UNACCEPTABLE.

54% and 58% are hugely different, but yes, one of Chess' big problems has always been the advantage from going first. If chess didn't have a first-turn advantage, competitive chess would look completely different to what it does look like. A large percentage of chess theory - maybe even the majority - is about how to break white's advantage when playing black.

ITC 2020 had first-turn advantage around 52%. That's where the game ought to be. If some random people in the community can get to 52%, GW should be able to at least match that.

Isn't that incredibly biased though? ITC 2020 was essentially a solved format(with years of minor tweaks behind it) with an absolutely massive pool games to draw from. The current format is both young and still in flux and,,,yunno...Rona. Pretty much all current results aren't necessarily representative of the actuality of the game in the long term.

I doubt it's quite where ITC 2020 was and there are some clear places where it can be improved on (allowing the go second player to counter deploy would be a start) but with how shaky any and all of our current data is, I would be incredibly reluctant to make sweeping changes.

 Void__Dragon wrote:

 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.

He could be wrong, he’s not infallible. Neither are the stats. That’s why dismissing his viewpoint because of stats is silly.

I saw a good write up about someone explaining the win rate discrepancy as he saw it today

I'm also on the side that while First turn is strong, it's not gamebreakingly strong inherently. I think a considerable amount of the emphasis on first turn is just coming from how people are deciding to play the game at the start.

If you deploy super aggressively, you can make the most of first turn, but often usually means you will also get wrecked if you dont win first turn.

If you deploy conservative in expectation of your opponent going first, and they deploy super aggressive and take first turn, you can often punish them extremely and swing the game in your own favor by going second as they expose themselves trying to get on objectives and midboard with minimal ability to punish your conservative deployment. You can also force their reserves in before your own reserves which can be extremely valuable.

The problem comes if you deploy conservatively and expect to go second and then get forced into turn 1, its a little more difficult of a position.

TL;DR i suspect the over emphasis on turn 1 being too good is from people leaning into hyper-aggressive turn 1 focused deployment and positioning and putting themselves in make-or-break positioning based on a contested die roll.

This might also be wrong it’s one persons opinion. But please stop letting stats blind you to the possibility that what Nick says here might be none of the things you described and may just be accurate

There was no rule of the universe that GW had to ignore everything ITC had learned and come up with its own new thing deliberately not learning from ITC's process.

It would only be incredibly biased if GW was operating in a parallel universe to ITC and we were comparing year 1 of GW to year 10 or whatever of ITC.

I wouldn't make "sweeping" changes. As I said above, the most important thing GW can do is just tell people they see the data, acknowledge that a 58% win rate isn't acceptable, and that they are working on testing tweaks to bring it down, aiming for no more than a 52% advantage. Instead, they've done the opposite here, and tried to imply there is no problem and people just need to git gud.

yukishiro1 wrote:
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.

Honestly they reminded me of the old stats you used to get on Transformer toys.

 Nitro Zeus wrote:

 Void__Dragon wrote:

 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.

He could be wrong, he’s not infallible. Neither are the stats. That’s why dismissing his viewpoint because of stats is silly.

I saw a good write up about someone explaining the win rate discrepancy as he saw it today

I'm also on the side that while First turn is strong, it's not gamebreakingly strong inherently. I think a considerable amount of the emphasis on first turn is just coming from how people are deciding to play the game at the start.

If you deploy super aggressively, you can make the most of first turn, but often usually means you will also get wrecked if you dont win first turn.

If you deploy conservative in expectation of your opponent going first, and they deploy super aggressive and take first turn, you can often punish them extremely and swing the game in your own favor by going second as they expose themselves trying to get on objectives and midboard with minimal ability to punish your conservative deployment. You can also force their reserves in before your own reserves which can be extremely valuable.

The problem comes if you deploy conservatively and expect to go second and then get forced into turn 1, its a little more difficult of a position.

TL;DR i suspect the over emphasis on turn 1 being too good is from people leaning into hyper-aggressive turn 1 focused deployment and positioning and putting themselves in make-or-break positioning based on a contested die roll.

This might also be wrong it’s one persons opinion. But please stop letting stats blind you to the possibility that what Nick says here might be none of the things you described and may just be accurate

There being scenarios where going first might not be the play doesn't imply there isn't largely a turn 1 advantage. And that write-up doesn't even talk about the fact that the turn 1 player has five turns where they can blunt your ability to score, whereas the turn 2 player largely just has four.

The difference between stats and Nanavatti's opinion is that for the former I can see how they're formed. I was able to read how the stats were compiled. I have no idea how Nick's opinion was formed and bluntly neither do you. Furthermore, given that many of the stats outright contradict his notion that it is a matter of player skill that negates first turn advantage it is much easier to dismiss his opinion.

The stats might have some problems that can be corrected on but to be frank Nick's opinion and reasoning for it don't do that and are in fact largely shown to be false by the stats already in place my man. The stats also give us a look into his mindset where we see that the faction he's been practicing with is statistically the best able to handle going second.

I'll put it another way: neither the stats nor Nick's opinion are perfect, but by any reasonable assessment of all the facts available the stats are more perfect than Nick's opinion.

 Arbitrator wrote:
This series will be as good as any other catalogue/advertisement. They get the competitive names in to convince the naive that, "No, no, guys THIS and THIS unit are totally awesome, you can trust me I'm a Competitive(tm) tournament player!" who will toe the party line that GW give him in order to keep both parties sweet. I'm sure some people will be suckered into making stuff from it, but it's not like GW pays these people anything beyond the promise of maybe some exposure and free kits to review (positively) for them.

It's like when they hire millionaire celebs to advertise cheap-end supermarket-sold shampoo and they pretend they actually use the stuff they're being told to shill.

People in general are capable of pattern recognition, if nothing else. If Nick starts spouting that every unit under the sun is 'great' and 'competitive' and then they aren't and see nothing but fringe play, they lose credibility. This has already happened with Reece; who I would argue is doing it out of enthusiasm more than deceit, but that doesn't change the fact that basically no one takes his unit recommendations seriously anymore unless he's recapping an actual competitive event he went to.

Yes, these kinds of articles are going to continue GW's relentless positivity (as has been their advertising strategy since forever) but that doesn't necessarily make them wrong. They can be positive AND correct. In the article he obviously mentions a whole number of units when they ask about what the 'best' stuff is right now and he calls out a number of chaos units that have all seen a significant amount of success on the tournament circuit, IG mechspam which is just about the most effective tactic IG have at the moment, inspecific Admech and Sisters praise(which could have been used to push expensive new kits considering that both factions best units are brand new and pricey as all hell but wasn't), and references to a coupe of Xenos factions that have had lists top events in the past few weeks. These are things he'd need to talk about to accurately answer the question no matter WHO was asking.

Exposure is worth dick-all, especially from WHC. People check WHC once a day at most to see if any information about the new releases pop up. Most of the big Warhammer content creators get many more eyes on them as ever fall on any non-release based WHC article. It's actually them slumming it in a lot of cases to do WHC content.

Almost everyone who has a good quality youtube channel is already fairly well off. Do you really think the type of people who have the time and money to either devote enough resources to make high quality content OR take a risk on making 40k their primary income stream while ALSO being able to afford the overhead required of an even medium quality production youtube channel give one wet fart about a handful of free kits? The TTT guy works at google for feths sake, they could gift him an entire 2000 point painted Necron army and it wouldn't really be that big of deal to him.

Also, you undermine your whole position at the end their. How is it like millionaires pretending to like cheap shampoo(who only do it for a VERY significant payday) if they're not really even getting payed? That's nonsensical and incredibly stupid.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Void__Dragon wrote:

 Nitro Zeus wrote:

 Void__Dragon wrote:

 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.

He could be wrong, he’s not infallible. Neither are the stats. That’s why dismissing his viewpoint because of stats is silly.

I saw a good write up about someone explaining the win rate discrepancy as he saw it today

I'm also on the side that while First turn is strong, it's not gamebreakingly strong inherently. I think a considerable amount of the emphasis on first turn is just coming from how people are deciding to play the game at the start.

If you deploy super aggressively, you can make the most of first turn, but often usually means you will also get wrecked if you dont win first turn.

If you deploy conservative in expectation of your opponent going first, and they deploy super aggressive and take first turn, you can often punish them extremely and swing the game in your own favor by going second as they expose themselves trying to get on objectives and midboard with minimal ability to punish your conservative deployment. You can also force their reserves in before your own reserves which can be extremely valuable.

The problem comes if you deploy conservatively and expect to go second and then get forced into turn 1, its a little more difficult of a position.

TL;DR i suspect the over emphasis on turn 1 being too good is from people leaning into hyper-aggressive turn 1 focused deployment and positioning and putting themselves in make-or-break positioning based on a contested die roll.

This might also be wrong it’s one persons opinion. But please stop letting stats blind you to the possibility that what Nick says here might be none of the things you described and may just be accurate

There being scenarios where going first might not be the play doesn't imply there isn't largely a turn 1 advantage. And that write-up doesn't even talk about the fact that the turn 1 player has five turns where they can blunt your ability to score, whereas the turn 2 player largely just has four.

The difference between stats and Nanavatti's opinion is that for the former I can see how they're formed. I was able to read how the stats were compiled. I have no idea how Nick's opinion was formed and bluntly neither do you. Furthermore, given that many of the stats outright contradict his notion that it is a matter of player skill that negates first turn advantage it is much easier to dismiss his opinion.

The stats might have some problems that can be corrected on but to be frank Nick's opinion and reasoning for it don't do that and are in fact largely shown to be false by the stats already in place my man. The stats also give us a look into his mindset where we see that the faction he's been practicing with is statistically the best able to handle going second.

I'll put it another way: neither the stats nor Nick's opinion are perfect, but by any reasonable assessment of all the facts available the stats are more perfect than Nick's opinion.

Doesn't that ultimately leave you in a position where making decisions based on either available data or 'competitive player opinion' are ultimately both too flawed to be viable?

ERJAK wrote:


Doesn't that ultimately leave you in a position where making decisions based on either available data or 'competitive player opinion' are ultimately both too flawed to be viable?

No, only too flawed to be perfect, and if you nitpick until only perfection is left you can rely on nothing to make decisions, not even your own senses.

I just read the article. YIKES, it's bad. Reads like GW wrote his responses for him. Heck, it reads like *I* could have written it if I suddenly found out I was working for GW 10 minutes ago.
Three possibilities:

1 - GW actually did write it, and he's cool with their results
2 - He's actually used to talking like that, and/or is sucking up to GW for brownie points
3 - GW will be hearing from his lawyers soon for false representation. (ok, this one's pretty unlikely)

Whatever the case - at least now I know to pay these articles absolutely *NO* attention in future.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
I did say that this edition of 40K was "Tournament Edition".

Spoiler:

Aaaaaaahahahahahahahaha....

*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.

Eradictors being relatively inexpensive compared to what, exactly?

They're not grotz, boys, guardsmen, eldar guardians or any many other inexpensive flexible unit. They're in fact an expensive inflexible unit that's SUPER GOOD at killing one type of target.

Do people even proofread this?

I guess this article is what GW looks like when they switch from "Forging a Narrative" to "Forging a Tournament".

H.B.M.C. wrote:

yukishiro1 wrote:
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.

Honestly they reminded me of the old stats you used to get on Transformer toys.

I almost spit my beer out when i read this, I'd bet the stats are just useful.

H.B.M.C. wrote:I guess this article is what GW looks like when they switch from "Forging a Narrative" to "Forging a Tournament".

Sad part is....its true.

If this is indicitive of GW trying to push 40K in the direction of becoming some weird hybrid of an E-sport, then I'm off to find other games. No thank you.



Automatically Appended Next Post:

AdmiralHalsey wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
I did say that this edition of 40K was "Tournament Edition".

Spoiler:

Aaaaaaahahahahahahahaha....

*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.

Eradictors being relatively inexpensive compared to what, exactly?

They're not grotz, boys, guardsmen, eldar guardians or any many other inexpensive flexible unit. They're in fact an expensive inflexible unit that's SUPER GOOD at killing one type of target.

Do people even proofread this?

Are people still crying about Eradicators? I watched a game between friends the other day and laughed as my Ad Mech buddy reduced the Eradicators to only hitting on a 4+ and then just shot them with lasfuns until they were all dead.

yukishiro1 wrote:


GW doesn't do public beta tests.

I disagree

The entire of 8th edition + PA seemed like mostly public beta test which continues into 9E.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

AdmiralHalsey wrote:

They're not grotz, boys, guardsmen, eldar guardians or any many other inexpensive flexible unit. They're in fact an expensive inflexible unit that's SUPER GOOD at killing one type of target.

Do people even proofread this?

You think eldar guardians are inexpensive Flexible unit... ?


Automatically Appended Next Post:
And for my part this is a big pile of cringe marketing... GW producing any kind "tactica" style stuff always cringe worthy. Not dissapointed.

Nick is a smart guy. You don't bite the hand that feeds.

 Argive wrote:

yukishiro1 wrote:


GW doesn't do public beta tests.

I disagree

The entire of 8th edition + PA seemed like mostly public beta test which continues into 9E.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

AdmiralHalsey wrote:

They're not grotz, boys, guardsmen, eldar guardians or any many other inexpensive flexible unit. They're in fact an expensive inflexible unit that's SUPER GOOD at killing one type of target.

Do people even proofread this?

You think eldar guardians are inexpensive Flexible unit... ?

Comparatively on a per model cost and target selection, they are yes.

AdmiralHalsey wrote:

 Argive wrote:

yukishiro1 wrote:


GW doesn't do public beta tests.

I disagree

The entire of 8th edition + PA seemed like mostly public beta test which continues into 9E.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

AdmiralHalsey wrote:

They're not grotz, boys, guardsmen, eldar guardians or any many other inexpensive flexible unit. They're in fact an expensive inflexible unit that's SUPER GOOD at killing one type of target.

Do people even proofread this?

You think eldar guardians are inexpensive Flexible unit... ?

Comparatively on a per model cost and target selection, they are yes.

Care to elaborate what you mean by that ?

To me 2x 12" range str4 shots with no inherent AP on a T3 1W platform at 10pts .. does not seem flexible or inexpensive.

 Aaranis wrote:
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 !

Zzz. More articles pretending competive 40k exists. Lol. All 40k is just beer & prezels.

next up, competitive underwater basket weaving.


wait, I was joking but it might have enuff "balance" for the competitive crowd.

LMFAO What is that player skill rating image? AHHAHA

I'd like to walk back my previous statement about purging this series with fire - while I'd still like to see it heavily quarantined, and anyone dealing with it wearing PPE, if this sort of article undermines that these so-called "40k pros" are the font of all knowledge, then they're doing something good.

yukishiro1 wrote:
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.

We're talking about the same NOVA guy who did a drive-by on a thread about the CA19 missions to declare them as trash, and refused to elaborate as to why this was the case, possibly because people were talking that they were suitably balanced to provide a challenge to the solved ITC/NOVA systems...

I'm hardly surprised he would do something like what you suggest - accepting fallibility seems to be an issue for him.

I am legitimately confused (though hardly a surprise there).

With tournament play growing by leaps and bounds (prior to COVID) it would seem that having a series of articles focusing on the tournament scene would make sense. While I don't see myself as a tournament player, I do go to them on occasion, and this seems like a good series of articles that could benefit players.

I understand tournament play isn't everyone's preferred way to play, but with the growth of the game, and GW wanting to push more for tournament play as being a gameplay mode that is supported by them, it would seem logical that they would do such an article. I just don't understand why there is so much negativity towards it. I am confused as to what I am missing.

Also, why do people bash on nick navigate so much? I understanding labeling yourself a Warhammer 40k pro might be a bit "big" of oneself, but his outward personality has been pretty decent to people. I don't get the hate there too. (Though I could be reading to much into it).

I'm honestly confused. A focus on competitive play seems like the best way to get as close as possible to a balanced game, and a balanced game that is fun seems to be everyone's preferred end goal. I honestly don't understand why this is a bad thing. I'm not sticking up or white knighting for GW this time, I just literally do not understand why this is such a bad thing.