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I mean, thats a good distribution of a ton of subfactions for whats typical in 40k. I'm sure, most other factions won't have that kind of subfaction distribution.

Of course, thats because for most armies, 1 faction rules and the rest sucks, but...

Ice_can wrote:

BrianDavion wrote:

Ice_can wrote:

 Canadian 5th wrote:

the_scotsman 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.

Yeah and "marines are underrepresented because they're 39% of armies but only 33% of lists!"

Um...no. The actual distinction rules-wise in what marine forces bring to the tables is so slim that typically just the best one is brought to the table and everyone plays "red iron hands" or "blue blood angels" or whatever.

Looking at the provided stats from the article as well as the more detailed stats on their site doesn't seem to line up with your assertion. Can you back this statement up with any facts or is this just an anecdote about what you see at your FLGS?

Salamanders 51 lists
Blacktemplars 8 lists
Whitescars 48 lists
Ultramarines 50 lists
Imperial Fists 21 lists
Spacewolfs 43 lists
Ironhands 32 lists
Dark Angles 34 lists
Raven guard 16 lists
Blood Angles 51 lists
Crimsonfists 1 list

Funny that at the end of 8th raven guard where showing up way more than they do in the 9th edition showings, same with Imperial Fists and obviously well what happend to all the ironhands armies?

except that if his assertation was right wouldn't we ONLY see one or two subfactions. there are by that count, 355 marine armies in play. yet the army most played makes up only about ~1/7th of that (thereare 11 total armies) by and large, aside from a few outliers, it would seem the spread is, reasonably even, MUCH MUCH more even I suspect then you'd find if you broke down any other army by subfaction.

You always get a certain amount of people going for best in faction or they may not have another army or whatever other reason like the fluffbunny, yes you even get tournament going fluff bunnies.
Who will play that faction be it unplayable trash and going 2-3 is an achievement, that doesn't mean balance that's just the diehards keeping numbers in certain factions ticking over.

How do you see 51 salamanders lists and 16 ravenguard lists and say that looks evenly distributed?

Salamanders 51
Whitescars 48
Ultramarines 50
Top 3 supliments have 149 lists

Imperial fists 21
Ironhands 32
Raven Guard 16
Bottom 3 performing supliments have 69 lists

That clearly shows marine players chasing subfactions its over a 2:1 ratio.

sure and I won't deny people chase the meta (let''s be honest a lot of those marine players likely also played eldar asltioc fliers when they where the top list, played "castellian soup" etc meta chasers are gonna chase) but the idea that all marine players meta chase more then everyone else I honestly find doubtful. thing is marine subfactions are the only ones we have any data on, so we can't exactly prove if Marine players meta chase more so then say tyranid players etc.
personally I suspect the supplement rules actually mean that you see more subfaction varity from marine players simply because with more depth to the rules it's more likely even the weaker subfactions will have something going for them.

I think the issue is you've got 3 sorts of players who go to tournaments.

1. Play to win types. "I think this build is among the best builds in 40k right now, and I'm hoping to go 4-0". They are not going "well I think say White Scars is way better than Imperial Fists, but I love yellow so Fists it is". These players are usually the most interested in the game as a game, will switch armies fairly regularly and are most likely to go 4-0.

2. Fluffbunny types. Can be good, can be bad, but are more likely to go "I'm an Imperial Fist Player. I have a beautifully painted Imperial Fists army. Sure another faction, perhaps other units would be better - but I have this so I'm using it." They may do well in tournaments, but are less likely to go 4-0 because statistically they are running softer things - and may have less interest in the game as a game anyway.

3. Pejoratively, weaker/social players. Its always seemingly a surprise to the internet, but perhaps half the people attending most tournaments don't play competitively, or have much interest in "winning". They may (or may not) realise their army isn't great - but turn up anyway for fun. They are there for the social side and will fill out the not inconsiderable ranks of players who rather than going 4-0, will go 0-4, or 1-3 etc. I'd argue there is usually a Marine tendency amongst these players because GW are pushing Marines *all the time* - but there can also be a tendency towards whatever the current top faction is, because someone said "play X, its solid".

For talking about the competitive meta, we generally only talk about group one - defined by those going 4-0 in tournaments - because they are the group who *usually* know the game and are trying to win it. The evolution of this group will generally be a good mirror for how the underlying power/movement/stats of the game are working out.

Put another way, players doing a lot of winning will tend to switch to the better factions, which in turn disproportionately shifts their win rate up. Meanwhile factions that are *bad* are perhaps disproportionately bad, because the "good players" will abandon them in pursuit of victory. There's less "I'm a Tau Player, I'm going to be the best Tau player there ever was". Just go buy a Harlequins/Custodes/Slaanesh Daemons army.

Anyway, for Tau.

I think its again sort of fighting over semantics. You can argue its bad for the game - but if the aim is to bring Tau up towards a 50% win rate, boosting their shooting/board presence by making them cheaper will do that. They would remain limited on the objective pressure game - but moar stuff is moar.

In the same way, Harlequins seem almost custom built to play 9th's objectives. But if they had 150 points less on every table, they'd perform worse.

It would be better for Tau, and maybe Guard, to have a re-write - but in terms of just pushing those win rates up (and for other factions, pushing them down) I don't think its strictly necessary.

BrianDavion wrote:
sure and I won't deny people chase the meta (let''s be honest a lot of those marine players likely also played eldar asltioc fliers when they where the top list, played "castellian soup" etc meta chasers are gonna chase) but the idea that all marine players meta chase more then everyone else I honestly find doubtful. thing is marine subfactions are the only ones we have any data on, so we can't exactly prove if Marine players meta chase more so then say tyranid players etc.
personally I suspect the supplement rules actually mean that you see more subfaction varity from marine players simply because with more depth to the rules it's more likely even the weaker subfactions will have something going for them.

From the data accumulated over the course of 8th, it should be possible to determine how many people keep jumping armies and how many people "only" jump chapters. Not that I'm willing to do this work, but maybe someone is.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
@Tyel: I think you are missing the guy who try to as good as they can with the models they own/have painted. This seems like a fairly large chunk of players in events to me.

I'm in the "I'll try to do the best I can with the things I have and like" group. And most of my friends are also.

There's also the "I like to challenge myself" type. The sort of person who hears people claim "Imperial Fists (frex) are weak this edition" and decides to build an Imperial Fists list just to see how well they can do with a supposedly 'bad' faction/subfaction. These people might even be objectively better players than your standard 'Play to Win' type.

 Jidmah wrote:
@Tyel: I think you are missing the guy who try to as good as they can with the models they own/have painted. This seems like a fairly large chunk of players in events to me.

Fair point. I should probably have said "tendencies" rather than types. Or perhaps "motivations".

I think "people who try to do the best they can with what they've got" is probably a nicer way of describing the people I've lumped into group 3. I think its fair to say that's where the vast majority of 40k players are - its where I am for sure.

But they probably know that if they really wanted to win, they could optimise their list a bit more - or swap factions entirely. They could practice against top tier lists in tournament conditions with the aim of improving their knowledge of the game. But that seems a bit obsessive - since *winning* is not the core reason as to why they play.

Ice_can wrote:

 Canadian 5th wrote:

the_scotsman 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.

Yeah and "marines are underrepresented because they're 39% of armies but only 33% of lists!"

Um...no. The actual distinction rules-wise in what marine forces bring to the tables is so slim that typically just the best one is brought to the table and everyone plays "red iron hands" or "blue blood angels" or whatever.

Looking at the provided stats from the article as well as the more detailed stats on their site doesn't seem to line up with your assertion. Can you back this statement up with any facts or is this just an anecdote about what you see at your FLGS?

Salamanders 51 lists
Blacktemplars 8 lists
Whitescars 48 lists
Ultramarines 50 lists
Imperial Fists 21 lists
Spacewolfs 43 lists
Ironhands 32 lists
Dark Angles 34 lists
Raven guard 16 lists
Blood Angles 51 lists
Crimsonfists 1 list

Funny that at the end of 8th raven guard where showing up way more than they do in the 9th edition showings, same with Imperial Fists and obviously well what happend to all the ironhands armies?

Scotsman's assertion is that the distinction between Marine chapters rules-wise is so slim that people will largely only bring the best one.

Yet here you are proving that there are several different chapters who are being played a lot right now.

No, scotsman is wrong my friend. Blood Angel's play very differently to Ultramarines.

Tyel wrote:
But they probably know that if they really wanted to win, they could optimise their list a bit more - or swap factions entirely. They could practice against top tier lists in tournament conditions with the aim of improving their knowledge of the game. But that seems a bit obsessive - since *winning* is not the core reason as to why they play.

Nope, those are totally not the people I'm talking about at all. Swapping armies and optimizing lists are massively dependent on two major resources - time and money. Your will to win can't create either out of thin air.
These people are being as competitive as they possibly can, within their possibilities. Unless you are attending a mega-event like LVO, those people even have a good chance of winning even GT, there were multiple occasions were unorthodox unit choices of tournament winners were explained with "well, I don't have any <optimal choice>".