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Hi all

This is somewhat interetsing article.
The last one seemed like basicaly a big product placement.

https://www.warhammer-community.com/2020/11/19/metawatch-warhammer-40000-episode-2-data-gods-of-war/

Makes for some interesting reading and is chock full of data.
A lot more meat on the bones in this one me thinks. Really suprising GW is actualy doing this...

Salamanders + Quins top dogs - Not surprising as that's pretty much what we've learned from the last discussion about stats.

Tbh im surprised to see orks and daemons doing so well. But then also not.
Seems the Skew is well and truly real and amped up to 11... You either gear up to kill marines, or gear up to kill a lot of daemons/boys.

Also a random ynnari with 62% win rate... XD

What are peoples thoughts?

I liked this article a lot. First of all, it made me proud to be a Canadian. We've got a relatively small population, so it's great to see a fellow Canuck get a slice of the Emperor's glory.

I really liked the info on Sisters- Bloody Rose as the top sub-faction doesn't surprise me. I did expect us to have a bit of a bigger slice of the market share than we do.

I was surprised about Quins- not because I ever doubted their prowess, but because their dex contains such a small number of units, I didn't figure that they would hold as much interest as they do.

I am not a tourney guy at all- I play what I like and I build slowly using the Crusade system and campaign play to grow armies organically. Despite that, I really enjoyed this article.

The only reason I'm questioning tournament data at the moment is because, during COVID era, I don't know who's really trying to attend these things.

That said, I already called Harlequins being awesome. However Salamanders are still trash so I don't know how people are doing anything with them.

I don't mean to sound salty, but the amount of apologism in the piece diminishes its usefulness. I mean, saying that GSC are unpopular because they're too new for people to have built and painted their armies yet is transparently fishing for excuses- the data's interesting, but the analysis is worthless because it's framed through a pro-corporate lens.

Yeah. GSC excuse is weak (not least because there was a lot more GSC already before they were nerfed into the ground, lol). If anything, the first (perhaps initially reasonable) nerfs did happen after GSC armies showed up in quite significant numbers at events like the 2019 NOVA (where GW rules writer traditionally hang around to get input to their FAQs, etc..).

But it's kinda understandable they wont bash GW for obviously dropping the ball on GSC and invalidating so many people's armies they bought early/mid-2019 for no apparent reason. At least the article is on there, which is neat to see and not something you'd have seen in the past.

I wonder if they will finally use this data to adjust balancing.

How would they do that? They can't play with points till IA book which will come out next year, and any rewriting of codex would require them to mess up with multiple factions. And I am talking strickt marine stuff here.

How does one fix something like harlequins to not have 60% win rate without making them tau 2.0, is hard to imagine.

They could of course change or do something to mitigate the huge boon to going first. But again I don't expect that anywhere sooner then the spring FAQ, and with the books for terrain etc they have been doing in 9th, maybe the spring FAQ is going to be no more, and the fix to the whole problem is going to be an extra book people are going to have to buy.

 catbarf wrote:
I don't mean to sound salty, but the amount of apologism in the piece diminishes its usefulness. I mean, saying that GSC are unpopular because they're too new for people to have built and painted their armies yet is transparently fishing for excuses- the data's interesting, but the analysis is worthless because it's framed through a pro-corporate lens.

Pretty much my thoughts. The excuses made for factions being under represented was very poor and unsurprising giving that GSC aren't in a good spot.

 Tyranid Horde wrote:

 catbarf wrote:
I don't mean to sound salty, but the amount of apologism in the piece diminishes its usefulness. I mean, saying that GSC are unpopular because they're too new for people to have built and painted their armies yet is transparently fishing for excuses- the data's interesting, but the analysis is worthless because it's framed through a pro-corporate lens.

Pretty much my thoughts. The excuses made for factions being under represented was very poor and unsurprising giving that GSC aren't in a good spot.

it's also nonsense as an excuse considering that we have more then double the ammount of Sororitas with a full re launch then GSC. in ther own dataset no less.

I also wonder if the stats are actually removing mirror matches.

This was a much better article than the first one. I think the thing we're missing from these is GW's response to them. Are they actually listening to this feedback and acting on it? It's all very well presenting the data but it'd be much more interesting to get GW themselves to expand on it and whether they see any of the trends as worrying and, if so, what they plan to do about it.

I'm not holding my breath...

I think its a good article - although a bit dated, because its basically "the meta before the new codexes".

Really I think this will always sort of be the issue. GW clearly do look at these sort of things for balancing - but as a result they always resolve the problems of 6-9 months ago. Which may have subsequently been resolved due to new releases.

As for how to nerf Quins? Just a points increase will do. Troupes go up 1 point, jetbikes 3 points, starweavers 10 points etc. You'd end up with 100-150 or so fewer points on the table and consequently perform worse. Similar argument for Slaanesh Daemons and Custodes.

I am just worried that the extra 100-150pts just breaks the optimised lists, and non optimised elite armies fall apart real fast. But I ain't no game designer, maybe a point hike would work.

Wonder what they will do to the other side of the spectrum, because being nerfed after a few months of good times is a rich persons problem. But what are they going to do with tau, if the book isn't like just around the corner, would a drastic point drop work for them? Or would it turn them in to very shoty orks or tyranid swarms, and all non tau players get sad.

Tau are a non-functional army right now, just switching around points is not going to cut it.

Aside from points, you could balance out a lot of Marines, Custodes and (to a lesser degree) Harlequin bikes by adding ways to score secondaries for 3+ wounds elite infantry / bikes type models.

It's IMO one of the most obvious omissions in the GT missions that there is this "blind spot" of secondaries between "Thin Their Ranks" to take against horde armies and "Bring em Down" to take against vehicle / monster mash armies. Of course people will just flock to that blind spot for armies (even if new coherence/blast rules and new core rules wouldn't be there to place extra pressure on hordes / vehicle armies).


Simply making things like horde armies and/or vehicle / monster-mash armies not relatively disadvantaged in the secondaries as well as new mechanics like blast or core would potentially allow the meta to be a bit more flexible and give people the opportunity to develop alternative list concepts that Harlequins or elite-Infantry Marine/Custodes lists find harder to deal with.

PenitentJake wrote:
I really liked the info on Sisters- Bloody Rose as the top sub-faction doesn't surprise me. I did expect us to have a bit of a bigger slice of the market share than we do.

Right at the start of 9th there were early winners running sisters and marines with the sisters as an expendable early glass cannon. The sample list blowing 3CP to avoid taking battle sisters gives a pretty similar vibe.

Market share seems pretty good though for a limited year old niche army in a pandemic with high costs (and no starter set). Previous years you'd be lucky to see more than one sisters list in the top 100 of a big event.

Sunny Side Up wrote:
Aside from points, you could balance out a lot of Marines, Custodes and (to a lesser degree) Harlequin bikes by adding ways to score secondaries for 3+ wounds elite infantry / bikes type models.

It's IMO one of the most obvious omissions in the GT missions that there is this "blind spot" of secondaries between "Thin Their Ranks" to take against horde armies and "Bring em Down" to take against vehicle / monster mash armies. Of course people will just flock to that blind spot for armies (even if new coherence/blast rules and new core rules wouldn't be there to place extra pressure on hordes / vehicle armies).


Simply making things like horde armies and/or vehicle / monster-mash armies not relatively disadvantaged in the secondaries as well as new mechanics like blast or core would potentially allow the meta to be a bit more flexible and give people the opportunity to develop alternative list concepts that Harlequins or elite-Infantry Marine/Custodes lists find harder to deal with.

I for one love your idea of more secondaries targeting units like bikes or elite infantry. ATM only certain unit types get "punished" when taken in relatively high number of units, which is just strange.

Biasn wrote:
I wonder if they will finally use this data to adjust balancing.

Only in sense what to make next imbalance. Balance is bad for profits. Changing imbalance good. Gw uses rules just to drive sales

Having 3X as many Harlequin armies being played than Craftworlds is just bonkers to me.

 Jidmah wrote:
Tau are a non-functional army right now, just switching around points is not going to cut it.

False. Anything made sufficiently cheap is playable.

Sunny Side Up wrote:
Aside from points, you could balance out a lot of Marines, Custodes and (to a lesser degree) Harlequin bikes by adding ways to score secondaries for 3+ wounds elite infantry / bikes type models.

It's IMO one of the most obvious omissions in the GT missions that there is this "blind spot" of secondaries between "Thin Their Ranks" to take against horde armies and "Bring em Down" to take against vehicle / monster mash armies. Of course people will just flock to that blind spot for armies (even if new coherence/blast rules and new core rules wouldn't be there to place extra pressure on hordes / vehicle armies).


Simply making things like horde armies and/or vehicle / monster-mash armies not relatively disadvantaged in the secondaries as well as new mechanics like blast or core would potentially allow the meta to be a bit more flexible and give people the opportunity to develop alternative list concepts that Harlequins or elite-Infantry Marine/Custodes lists find harder to deal with.

This.
the main problem with the top contenders is that its hard to score against them. Giving an anti-elite secondary would probably impact the overall meta more than just changing pts .


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 Oaka wrote:
Having 3X as many Harlequin armies being played than Craftworlds is just bonkers to me.

Thats because competitive craftworld right now is the most boring its ever been. Spam starcannons with Expert crafters to kill marines. ZZZZZZZZZZZZ

SecondTime wrote:

 Jidmah wrote:
Tau are a non-functional army right now, just switching around points is not going to cut it.

False. Anything made sufficiently cheap is playable.

Yeah, no. At some point even the crappiest units will have an insane wounds to cost ratio and start curb-stomping anyone else, but that doesn't mean the army is functional.

For example, there is no points value you could attach to burna boyz to make them playable unless you make them so cheap that they suddenly are good at capturing objectives, blocking area and other tasks that require nothing outside taking up board space.

 Jidmah wrote:

SecondTime wrote:

 Jidmah wrote:
Tau are a non-functional army right now, just switching around points is not going to cut it.

False. Anything made sufficiently cheap is playable.

Yeah, no. At some point even the crappiest units will have an insane wounds to cost ratio and start curb-stomping anyone else, but that doesn't mean the army is functional.

For example, there is no points value you could attach to burna boyz to make them playable unless you make them so cheap that they suddenly are good at capturing objectives, blocking area and other tasks that require nothing outside taking up board space.

"start curb-stomping anyone else, but that doesn't mean the army is functional."

That's exactly what functional means. It's just also absurd.

I feel like there is probably a specific point value that will work for burna boyz that works, but its hard to find. For the guardsmen effect to really take hold, you have to get really cheap.

No, that correct term for that is "broken".

Burnas are 2 points more than boyz now, and they would remain unplayed even if they were the same amount of points as boyz despite having extra gear, because they aren't troops.

You can't fix something with points that doesn't work in the first place, as points only change how efficient something is.

Sunny Side Up wrote:
Aside from points, you could balance out a lot of Marines, Custodes and (to a lesser degree) Harlequin bikes by adding ways to score secondaries for 3+ wounds elite infantry / bikes type models.

Simply making things like horde armies and/or vehicle / monster-mash armies not relatively disadvantaged in the secondaries as well as new mechanics like blast or core would potentially allow the meta to be a bit more flexible and give people the opportunity to develop alternative list concepts that Harlequins or elite-Infantry Marine/Custodes lists find harder to deal with.

That doesn't sound much like balancing specialy for those marine forces which aren't claiming high win %. Against GK an anti "elite" meq secondary would mean that the GK opponent would always get max secondaries. That is not good design.

I think there is a difference between "Burnas" - as a unit that doesn't really have a clear role/advantage due to rather stupid rules over basic Boyz, and so will only become playable if its explicitly undercosted against such alternatives - and the whole Tau faction.

To go a bit extreme, if Tau players effectively got a free riptide in every list, I'm sure their win percentage would go up from where it is now. Its not really functionally changing anything, its just that they'll kill more stuff and have another unit on the table, while their opponent will kill proportionately less stuff, which means across many games the Tau would do better and their opponents will do worse.

In the same way I reckon Harlequins would still play roughly the same if they were down say a Starweaver and a min-sized troupe. They would however be worse than at present and statistics over time would show this.

I agree with that line of thinking as we are currently giving our Tau player an extra 20% points in 9th edition games and the games are much better for it.

 Jidmah wrote:
No, that correct term for that is "broken".

Burnas are 2 points more than boyz now, and they would remain unplayed even if they were the same amount of points as boyz despite having extra gear, because they aren't troops.

You can't fix something with points that doesn't work in the first place, as points only change how efficient something is.

Then make them cheaper than boyz. Like how reivers were cheaper than intercessors for a bit.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Karol wrote:

Sunny Side Up wrote:
Aside from points, you could balance out a lot of Marines, Custodes and (to a lesser degree) Harlequin bikes by adding ways to score secondaries for 3+ wounds elite infantry / bikes type models.

Simply making things like horde armies and/or vehicle / monster-mash armies not relatively disadvantaged in the secondaries as well as new mechanics like blast or core would potentially allow the meta to be a bit more flexible and give people the opportunity to develop alternative list concepts that Harlequins or elite-Infantry Marine/Custodes lists find harder to deal with.

That doesn't sound much like balancing specialy for those marine forces which aren't claiming high win %. Against GK an anti "elite" meq secondary would mean that the GK opponent would always get max secondaries. That is not good design.

It was called gangbusters and it worked fine.

 Oaka wrote:
I agree with that line of thinking as we are currently giving our Tau player an extra 20% points in 9th edition games and the games are much better for it.

So basically just undo the "Balance improvements" of CA 2020 and go back to CA 2019 points for Tau.

Got to love GW'S attempts at Balance.

I question the legitimacy of the data simply because there have been no large tournaments and not enough games played. "Garage Band" 40K tournaments only reinforce local meta's. While player skill is mentioned in the article, there is no way to capture that data.

1. Should the wins be weighed? Should a win by a highly skilled player using his/her tuned army using the best units vs. a brand new player using "what looked cool to me" count the same as two inexperienced players with the same army? Should a win pre-new codex/FAQ or Errata count as much as a win after the army has been changed?

2. If I read this correctly, the only data that was actually used was from armies that went 4-0 during a tournament. If there are only 12 people in a tournament, that means playing the same people more than once, and if no one went 4-0, none of the data from the tournament was used.

3. You can make statistics say anything you want. Again, reading the fine print in the data, they used data from 8th edition as well as 9th to generate more data.

4. 40K is basically a "living" rule set. There is FAQ and Errata often enough that it skews the W/L records of armies. For example, in 8th edition, it was entirely possible to make an Eldar flying army that couldn't be shot at. Or Dark Reapers taken en masse shooting whole Space Marine Armies off the table. Or the Stormraven... all of these were nerfed after a couple months, greatly affecting army creation and post W/L records after the Nerf. This goes back to #1 above. Should a win prior to the nerf weigh as much as a win post nerf?

GW probably ate this up as proof that they have a well balanced game. 50% of the factions win about 50% of the time according to the way W/L was measured. Player skill is not taken into account. The first round of any tournament is random, meaning the most skilled players could be clubbing baby seals (new players) for that crucial first round win. And if two of the best players in the tournament face off on round one, only one of them will advance towards that 4-0 record, while the best the other one can hope for is 3-1. Not every tournament is ran the same, and the victory conditions can change from round to round. Every time a new codex or FAQ/Errata comes out, it will effect the W/L record of that army as well as how often an army is played.

If you check 40k stats instead of the GW piece, their is way more data and you can analyse it yourself.
That was mostly why He set up 40k stats, this is GW trying to give a everyone summary of the data that 40k stats collects and trying to explain what it means.