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 Bosskelot wrote:
GW decided to make terrain rules vitally important to 9th's design and balance and then in the Ork and Admech books decided to make a load ofcheap, spammable, ultra-lethal units that completely ignore them.

It is what is known as a "whoopsie."

Sorry, you mistyped: Terrain RULE. Obscuring. The only one orks/admech can ignore, but luckily, the only one that matters even one little tiny bit.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Voss wrote:

 Blackie wrote:

Voss wrote:
The 'competitive play' 'counter' posts are utterly asinine.

This (the lethality) is _just_ as much a problem in 'casual play.'

It was also largely NOT a problem in older editions. There were glaring exceptions (particularly for certain factions/models), but everyone was able to recognize them.

It is absolutely a design problem that 90% lethality is even achievable, no matter how you play. No matter how many supposed 'TFGs' you exile from your local store meta, its still a massive problem for the game.

I disagree. Even in 3rd a SM/AM list that was tailored against orks could table the greenskins within a couple of turns.

'Within a couple turns' is an entirely different metric. Tabling halfway through a game isn't great, but its a world of difference to multiple instances of single-shooting phase wins. Which is what people are actually talking about, no matter how often people jump in to insist that this particular instance doesn't matter because reasons.

Nah actually I think tablings turn 4 being super common is a problem if you want the game to be a 5-turn game.

current lethality levels would be fine, if they were PEAK lethality levels - as in, something you might achieve at a difficult to get to range, with no cover, no obscurement, etc. The problem is that it's super super freaking easy to be getting army-wide shots off with 33% or better points returns, which means games are decided in a single, or two, critical turns.

 the_scotsman wrote:

 Bosskelot wrote:
GW decided to make terrain rules vitally important to 9th's design and balance and then in the Ork and Admech books decided to make a load ofcheap, spammable, ultra-lethal units that completely ignore them.

It is what is known as a "whoopsie."

Sorry, you mistyped: Terrain RULE. Obscuring. The only one orks/admech can ignore, but luckily, the only one that matters even one little tiny bit.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Voss wrote:

 Blackie wrote:

Voss wrote:
The 'competitive play' 'counter' posts are utterly asinine.

This (the lethality) is _just_ as much a problem in 'casual play.'

It was also largely NOT a problem in older editions. There were glaring exceptions (particularly for certain factions/models), but everyone was able to recognize them.

It is absolutely a design problem that 90% lethality is even achievable, no matter how you play. No matter how many supposed 'TFGs' you exile from your local store meta, its still a massive problem for the game.

I disagree. Even in 3rd a SM/AM list that was tailored against orks could table the greenskins within a couple of turns.

'Within a couple turns' is an entirely different metric. Tabling halfway through a game isn't great, but its a world of difference to multiple instances of single-shooting phase wins. Which is what people are actually talking about, no matter how often people jump in to insist that this particular instance doesn't matter because reasons.

Nah actually I think tablings turn 4 being super common is a problem if you want the game to be a 5-turn game.

current lethality levels would be fine, if they were PEAK lethality levels - as in, something you might achieve at a difficult to get to range, with no cover, no obscurement, etc. The problem is that it's super super freaking easy to be getting army-wide shots off with 33% or better points returns, which means games are decided in a single, or two, critical turns.

Indeed. The problem could be attributed to the the lack of "Degrade" mechanics in 40k.

There's basically no way to degrade an enemy's shooting effectiveness.

-1 to-hit doesn't stack, so any given source of -1 doesn't matter. Good reflexes? Nah, it was the dense terrain. Did the enemy heavy weapon team do a quadruple backflip and 720 noscope their lascannon off of a 6' high ledge through a dense forest? Well, you used SMOKESCREEN so it's literally identical to them aiming carefully from a superior vantage point. around the forest.

+1 to saves is basically irrelevant in a game where your basic infantry weapons reach -2 fairly reliably.

The only shooting degrade that matters is Obscuring because it turns shooting off COMPLETELY. Which is super binary and easily played around.

Hey, who knows....maybe the new Speed Freeks army of renown will make the buggy list even more killy than the freebooterz one!

Voss wrote:

 Blackie wrote:

Voss wrote:
The 'competitive play' 'counter' posts are utterly asinine.

This (the lethality) is _just_ as much a problem in 'casual play.'

It was also largely NOT a problem in older editions. There were glaring exceptions (particularly for certain factions/models), but everyone was able to recognize them.

It is absolutely a design problem that 90% lethality is even achievable, no matter how you play. No matter how many supposed 'TFGs' you exile from your local store meta, its still a massive problem for the game.

I disagree. Even in 3rd a SM/AM list that was tailored against orks could table the greenskins within a couple of turns.

'Within a couple turns' is an entirely different metric. Tabling halfway through a game isn't great, but its a world of difference to multiple instances of single-shooting phase wins. Which is what people are actually talking about, no matter how often people jump in to insist that this particular instance doesn't matter because reasons.

Not really. Even in older editions a game could have been decided after one or two shooting phases when tailored lists and bad rolls were involved. In 3rd an army that could spam anti tank shots, anti infantry blasts and templates had the potential to table an optimized ork army in no time, and in 3rd due to many problems in models' availability (half of the ork roster had no official model and lots of necessary upgrades, starting with the nobz and special weapons in the regular infantry squads, had to be bought separately in blisters) it was extremely hard to field actual optimized ork lists while other armies could do it easily.

I don't really see a significant difference if a game is decided in one or two turns to be honest. Conceding in turn two means only one turn of actual play for the losing player. The vast majority of the games I play lasts 4-5 turns.

 the_scotsman wrote:
Nah actually I think tablings turn 4 being super common is a problem if you want the game to be a 5-turn game.

current lethality levels would be fine, if they were PEAK lethality levels - as in, something you might achieve at a difficult to get to range, with no cover, no obscurement, etc. The problem is that it's super super freaking easy to be getting army-wide shots off with 33% or better points returns, which means games are decided in a single, or two, critical turns.

Depends on the design really. If one (or both) armies are meant to be really dead by turn 5, the curve almost surely means you will get them completely dead by turn 4 a substantial amount of time.

The problem we've got is armies which on average dice expect to do about 60-70%~ of their points worth of damage if they get to attack. Which is unsurprisingly producing outcomes where they get collectively lucky and spike up to hit 90%. It doesn't matter whether its Ad Mech/Ork shooting, or all the turn 2 charges from DE. Its bad for the game.

I think GW's concern (if they think about such matters) is that if damage was much weaker - and everyone ran less glasshammer lists, and it was more about bringing bodies onto objectives, where possible skulking behind (non-GW) terrain for defensive bonuses to deny LOS - games could take a long time, as nothing dies.

Sure, but GW is very obviously throwing terrain at the wall in a desperate bid to get tournament games to look like games instead of coin flips. The only game-functional terrain that GW actually sells right now is the sector imperialis stuff, and everything else basically is worthless and doesn't show up on their terrain table setups anyway - surely that indicates a problem.

Personally, I expect some kind of durability-oriented mid edition rule change with the upcoming CA much like we had in mid-8th when it became clear that turn 1 deep strike and no limitation on unit spam was just not working.

Maybe then we'll get a few scant months of games feeling like games before the inevitable Space Marines 4.0: Youve Heard of Chapter Tactics, Youve Heard of Doctrines, Youve Heard of Super-Doctrines, Now Get Ready for Super Duper Ultra Codex Primarch Tier Super Saiyan Space Marines! Once per game space marines can choose 1 battle round where stratagems are not limited to one use per phase AND the cost of all stratagems is 0, to reflect the space marines super superior tactical prowess!

Also coming soon, at an unspecified date: the new CSM codex to make them not W1!

 the_scotsman wrote:
Sure, but GW is very obviously throwing terrain at the wall in a desperate bid to get tournament games to look like games instead of coin flips. The only game-functional terrain that GW actually sells right now is the sector imperialis stuff, and everything else basically is worthless and doesn't show up on their terrain table setups anyway - surely that indicates a problem.

Personally, I expect some kind of durability-oriented mid edition rule change with the upcoming CA much like we had in mid-8th when it became clear that turn 1 deep strike and no limitation on unit spam was just not working.

Maybe then we'll get a few scant months of games feeling like games before the inevitable Space Marines 4.0: Youve Heard of Chapter Tactics, Youve Heard of Doctrines, Youve Heard of Super-Doctrines, Now Get Ready for Super Duper Ultra Codex Primarch Tier Super Saiyan Space Marines! Once per game space marines can choose 1 battle round where stratagems are not limited to one use per phase AND the cost of all stratagems is 0, to reflect the space marines super superior tactical prowess!

Also coming soon, at an unspecified date: the new CSM codex to make them not W1!

I don’t even want a new chaos space marine codex anymore. I want a new index edition...

macluvin wrote:

 the_scotsman wrote:
Sure, but GW is very obviously throwing terrain at the wall in a desperate bid to get tournament games to look like games instead of coin flips. The only game-functional terrain that GW actually sells right now is the sector imperialis stuff, and everything else basically is worthless and doesn't show up on their terrain table setups anyway - surely that indicates a problem.

Personally, I expect some kind of durability-oriented mid edition rule change with the upcoming CA much like we had in mid-8th when it became clear that turn 1 deep strike and no limitation on unit spam was just not working.

Maybe then we'll get a few scant months of games feeling like games before the inevitable Space Marines 4.0: Youve Heard of Chapter Tactics, Youve Heard of Doctrines, Youve Heard of Super-Doctrines, Now Get Ready for Super Duper Ultra Codex Primarch Tier Super Saiyan Space Marines! Once per game space marines can choose 1 battle round where stratagems are not limited to one use per phase AND the cost of all stratagems is 0, to reflect the space marines super superior tactical prowess!

Also coming soon, at an unspecified date: the new CSM codex to make them not W1!

I don’t even want a new chaos space marine codex anymore. I want a new index edition...

Same, with the upcoming Tau codex in January.
I'm hopefully going to have 6 months of fun with the FOTM Tau list until CA drops and nerfs it, then I'm going to wait for 10th to reset everything.

 the_scotsman wrote:
Personally, I expect some kind of durability-oriented mid edition rule change with the upcoming CA much like we had in mid-8th when it became clear that turn 1 deep strike and no limitation on unit spam was just not working.

Be interesting to see what they come up with.
Unclear why they got rid of prepared positions - even if it wouldn't have helped in this case.

Knowing GW, it would be something like:

Concealed Positions: All units with fewer than 18 wounds cannot be targeted in the first battle round unless they move.

Tyel wrote:
Depends on the design really. If one (or both) armies are meant to be really dead by turn 5, the curve almost surely means you will get them completely dead by turn 4 a substantial amount of time.

Is that a healthy expectation, though?

If each side reduces the other by 25% each turn, then you get a curve like this:

End of turn 1- 75% remaining
End of turn 2- 56% remaining
End of turn 3- 42% remaining
End of turn 4- 32% remaining
End of turn 5- 24% remaining

Is that really so bad, ending the game with less than a quarter of either army left on the board? Of course this assumes both sides are damaging each other equivalently; if one side takes no casualties then they table their opponent at the end of turn 4.

But here's the relevant thing: Not every unit can fight optimally and at full effectiveness every turn.

Suppose on any given turn, half of your army can fight at full effectiveness, a quarter can fight at half effectiveness (some weapons out of range, suboptimal targets, cover, etc), and a quarter can't fight at all (not in melee, no LOS, advancing instead of fighting, performing actions, etc). That means overall, at any given time your army is operating at 62.5% efficiency.

In order to inflict 25% army casualties at that efficiency, each unit needs to have a typical return of 40% its cost when fighting at full effectiveness. That's already a pretty high casualty rate; if I manage bring my whole army to bear at optimal efficiency, I can kill nearly half of yours in one turn.

But to have tabling on turn 2 or 3 as a fairly common occurrence- meaning, something that happens even when you can't bring your whole army to bear at once- you need a level of lethality way beyond this. 60%? 80%? 1800pts dead in one turn is 90% returns for the whole army.

I don't think there's anything wrong with armies not wiping each other out by turn 5 on the regular. Very high lethality really just is not sustainable in a pure IGOUGO system.

 catbarf wrote:
But here's the relevant thing: Not every unit can fight optimally and at full effectiveness every turn.

Suppose on any given turn, half of your army can fight at full effectiveness, a quarter can fight at half effectiveness (some weapons out of range, suboptimal targets, cover, etc), and a quarter can't fight at all (not in melee, no LOS, advancing instead of fighting, performing actions, etc). That means overall, at any given time your army is operating at 62.5% efficiency.

In order to inflict 25% army casualties at that efficiency, each unit needs to have a typical return of 40% its cost when fighting at full effectiveness. That's already a pretty high casualty rate; if I manage bring my whole army to bear at optimal efficiency, I can kill nearly half of yours in one turn.

But to have tabling on turn 2 or 3 as a fairly common occurrence- meaning, something that happens even when you can't bring your whole army to bear at once- you need a level of lethality way beyond this. 60%? 80%? 1800pts dead in one turn is 90% returns for the whole army.

I don't think there's anything wrong with armies not wiping each other out by turn 5 on the regular. Very high lethality really just is not sustainable in a pure IGOUGO system.

Well all things being equal - and I realise they aren't, a 40% return would see people more or less tabled in 3 turns.

2000 vs 2000.
Player 1 kills 800 points. The 1200 hits back for 480.
1520 vs 1200.
Player 1 kill a further 608 points. The remaining 592 points hits back to kill 236.
1284 vs 592.
Player 1 attacks, leaving player 2 with just 78 points. Its not a tabling technically - but its close.

If we adopt 25% then at the end of turn 5 however, player 1 has 995 points left, and player 2 still has 200.

In practice obviously we need something to stop this happening, or all games would purely be a function of going first - but as you can see, tablings become relatively expected as you turn that dial.

Well, the point of Catbarf's post is that you want a unit to be at 40% when it is operating at max capability, then you want a bunch of degrades to reduce it to appx. 25% when averaged across the whole army.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
Well, the point of Catbarf's post is that you want a unit to be at 40% when it is operating at max capability, then you want a bunch of degrades to reduce it to appx. 25% when averaged across the whole army.

Which 40k...kind of comes close to, but not quite.

By my estimation, if you could make Cover and Dense modifiers a little bit easier to achieve, and then maybe add in one more (I'd love a Long Range penalty) then you might be able to be in a good place.

The problem is, I feel like GW toned down the spiky lethality from a lot of strat combos and then as a pat on their own back added in a third layer of army-wide rules (Doctrines and doctrine-alikes) that were also primarily based on increasing lethality and also amped up the consistent damage a lot of units put out.

And where that resulted is where previously in the 8th ed you had 'most units deal about 25% points returns, but one unit can put out THREE HUNDRED PERCENT points return' you now have 'everything can dish out 50-60% points returns"

For those curious, I've created a thread with a tweaked terrain system replacing the current 'oodles of different keywords' with a more unified system that would ideally make more terrain pieces more useful. its over in Proposed Rules.

 the_scotsman wrote:
so, in your opinion, understanding that the opposing player went for an all-out offensive strategy in an attempt to reach his opponent, do you think it is good game design for it to be possible to remove effectively an entire 2,000 point army in a single turn? Is this healthy for a competitive game? What should be the maximum amount of units it should be possible to remove in one turn if, say, you were to line up a 2000pt army against another 2000pt army in the open and allow them all to open fire?

This game is evidence of great game design. Outcome distribution matters.

In Poker, a Royal Flush beats everything. The odds of a royal flush are about 1 in 2.5 million. The odds of a high card hand - where you win because neither you or a single opponent have a suit of any kind, but you do have a better card - is about 17%. That means the distribution of crap outcomes is about 1 in 5 hands, while there's this very remote chance of blowing everyone out of the water that might happen once in your entire life. It's part of what makes Poker fun to play.

In this game, the Ork player got something like a Royal Flush. Nearly every Drukhari unit was positioned for a perfect counterattack, the Ork player rolled above average, deployment made a big difference, etc. This didn't look that much like some top table match up, it looked like a sacrifice.

What are the odds of this kind of outcome occurring in any game of 40k? Probably very remote, greater than 1 in 2.5 million. And it takes specific decisions from your opponent for it to occur. ​

If you want to argue this is happening more frequently and provide examples, be my guest. Otherwise, someone had a great game.

 techsoldaten wrote:

 the_scotsman wrote:
so, in your opinion, understanding that the opposing player went for an all-out offensive strategy in an attempt to reach his opponent, do you think it is good game design for it to be possible to remove effectively an entire 2,000 point army in a single turn? Is this healthy for a competitive game? What should be the maximum amount of units it should be possible to remove in one turn if, say, you were to line up a 2000pt army against another 2000pt army in the open and allow them all to open fire?

This game is evidence of great game design. Outcome distribution matters.

In Poker, a Royal Flush beats everything. The odds of a royal flush are about 1 in 2.5 million. The odds of a high card hand - where you win because neither you or a single opponent have a suit of any kind, but you do have a better card - is about 17%. That means the distribution of crap outcomes is about 1 in 5 hands, while there's this very remote chance of blowing everyone out of the water that might happen once in your entire life. It's part of what makes Poker fun to play.

In this game, the Ork player got something like a Royal Flush. Nearly every Drukhari unit was positioned for a perfect counterattack, the Ork player rolled above average, deployment made a big difference, etc. This didn't look that much like some top table match up, it looked like a sacrifice.

What are the odds of this kind of outcome occurring in any game of 40k? Probably very remote, greater than 1 in 2.5 million. And it takes specific decisions from your opponent for it to occur. ​

If you want to argue this is happening more frequently and provide examples, be my guest. Otherwise, someone had a great game.

It is. The last time something similar to this occurred was actually on a recent stream from the GW official GT they had, where a Black Templar army (with a contemporary competitive setup, I might add) got very nearly tabled in a single turn by an admech skew list.

The reason why this is notable and why I brought it up is not because this is some kind of crazy freak occurrence (like the oft- reposted meme image of the guy insta-tabling his opponents null deploy army using Kroot) but because the norm from the game has shifted from the 'turn 5 tablings routine, turn 4 tablings uncommon, turn 3 tablings unusual' state of 8th to 'turn 3 tablings routine, turn 2 tablings uncommon, turn 1 tablings unusual' state of 9th, and people are rightfully pointing out that it is actually crap game design, as it places a much greater importance on stupid, fiddly micro-positioning errors (See the recent huge post in General where a new player tried to play a 500pt teaching game and his largest unit ended up wiped in a single shot because one gun barrel was poking out from behind Obscuring terrain) and makes it essentially impossible to tell compelling narratives with the game beyond the riveting tale of how that one time sgt. skippy and his squad of heroic space marines leapt out from behind the building they were cowering behind (as every space marine does always), shot and instantly blew something up, and then got immediately vaporized by return fire.

Its interesting to try and calculate just how many games of 40k would have to be played to have two tournaments effectively decided turn 1 a few months apart.

Realistically its not one in a million, its not even one in a hundred.

The main issue is that a couple of broken rules interactions end up tearing the meta, as always, but now balance patches happen only twice a year (if at all).
If GW were more aggressive and acted quickly in fixing these kind of combos (we are talking about flyer spam in general and few overtuned factions, ie AdMech Drukhari Orks and arguably GK), the end result would be much more bearable.
During 8th ed there were similar issues but erratas and balance patches were much more frequent. Instead now we get 6-12 months of stale meta where a couple of builds dominate and make the game much more boring for everyone else.

Imho we would all be happier if the FOTM builds were toned down and the other units in those codices were buffed, in order to have a better internal balance.
I think Ork players would be happier if they were able to run Ork Boyz en masse, GK players their terminators, and so on. Or at least if they were not facing an obvious choice when list building.

My worst ever wargaming experience was going to a game store for my first ever non club 'pick up game' with a stranger during 8e wfb. I had a fully painted night goblin army, he had some partially assembled and half primed daemons. He basically tabled my army on turn 2 with a wizard on a disc firing an irresistable force vortex right down my battle line that killed everything that failed an I test. I basically spent more time unpacking and repacking my army into foam than I did playing. I never played wfb again after that and never bothered with pick up games either. I'm too busy to waste my time with that quality of experience.

So I reckon this silly level of lethality may spell problems for player retention. Dunno if that will bother GW if enough new blood comes in, by all reports they're doing very well.

 Da Boss wrote:
So I reckon this silly level of lethality may spell problems for player retention.

Apparently not that much, if GW still has you as a customer.

Fair, yeah. Though that experience ended my warhammer fantasy purchases for nearly a decade, and my 40k purchases dried up soon after for a similar amount of time. I've recently come back to GW miniatures with the start collecting sets which are reasonably good value, but I'm not playing GW games and remain pretty unlikely to do so based on what I see here. But yeah, I am still a customer, but those experiences impacted in what way and caused a significant and protracted drop in my custom, and contributed to me no longer being a player of their games at all.

 techsoldaten wrote:

 the_scotsman wrote:
so, in your opinion, understanding that the opposing player went for an all-out offensive strategy in an attempt to reach his opponent, do you think it is good game design for it to be possible to remove effectively an entire 2,000 point army in a single turn? Is this healthy for a competitive game? What should be the maximum amount of units it should be possible to remove in one turn if, say, you were to line up a 2000pt army against another 2000pt army in the open and allow them all to open fire?

This game is evidence of great game design. Outcome distribution matters.

In Poker, a Royal Flush beats everything. The odds of a royal flush are about 1 in 2.5 million. The odds of a high card hand - where you win because neither you or a single opponent have a suit of any kind, but you do have a better card - is about 17%. That means the distribution of crap outcomes is about 1 in 5 hands, while there's this very remote chance of blowing everyone out of the water that might happen once in your entire life. It's part of what makes Poker fun to play.

In this game, the Ork player got something like a Royal Flush. Nearly every Drukhari unit was positioned for a perfect counterattack, the Ork player rolled above average, deployment made a big difference, etc. This didn't look that much like some top table match up, it looked like a sacrifice.

What are the odds of this kind of outcome occurring in any game of 40k? Probably very remote, greater than 1 in 2.5 million. And it takes specific decisions from your opponent for it to occur. ​

If you want to argue this is happening more frequently and provide examples, be my guest. Otherwise, someone had a great game.

You call it greater then 1 in 2.5 million. I call it 'the same thing happened in the semi finals where he effectively tabled a Drukhari in 2 turns, rather then 1 because that opponent didn't take the big turn 1 gamble that Sean did". And who knows in how many other games he did the same that weren't streamed.

Here are the two words that would fix this crap.

Alternative activations.

Simple. 40k has ramped up the level of leathel ranged attacks, reduced tactical options (no more pinning, no more units fleeing, just kill). Rapid Fire weapons lost what made them a balance (stationary 2 shots at 12" or once at max range, move 1 shot at 12"). Heavy Weapons are now able to move and shoot.

Oh and the table got smaller...

Best stick to 3rd edition using the lists in the back.

Tyel wrote:
Well all things being equal - and I realise they aren't, a 40% return would see people more or less tabled in 3 turns.

2000 vs 2000.
Player 1 kills 800 points. The 1200 hits back for 480.
1520 vs 1200.
Player 1 kill a further 608 points. The remaining 592 points hits back to kill 236.
1284 vs 592.
Player 1 attacks, leaving player 2 with just 78 points. Its not a tabling technically - but its close.

If we adopt 25% then at the end of turn 5 however, player 1 has 995 points left, and player 2 still has 200.

In practice obviously we need something to stop this happening, or all games would purely be a function of going first - but as you can see, tablings become relatively expected as you turn that dial.

Right. That 'something' is the contingencies that prevent an army from operating to its full potential every turn- things like range, suboptimal targets, blocked LOS, not being in melee, etc- so that we hopefully don't see armies ever getting 40% returns on Turn 1, but something more reasonable.

In the rare event that a player does get everything aligned, a 40% return in one go is pretty crippling, but it's still a far cry from the 90% in the OP.

My point was that even with 40% optimal return- pretty high by the standards of most wargames- having a tabling by the end of turn 5 is unlikely. The much more likely outcome is two armies down to a fraction of their original strength but still slugging it out. As long as the game is 5 turns, I don't think they should design around expecting one side or the other to be tabled. It's just too much damage for a pure IGOUGO game.

I think GW was going for the "If everyone is super, then no one will be super" concept. But somehow, it ended up with the situation where certain armies became super OP while most of the rest of the armies just have little chance at all against those few dominant army builds.

Tyel wrote:
Its interesting to try and calculate just how many games of 40k would have to be played to have two tournaments effectively decided turn 1 a few months apart.

Realistically its not one in a million, its not even one in a hundred.

Well, no, that's not how statistics work. But the poker comparison is nonsense, since 40k isn't drawing from a fixed deck of 52 cards. Instead people are building to roll hundreds of dice each round (with rerolls and modifiers), and push the envelope further and further towards 'statistically likely,' if not setting the needle directly to 'expected average outcome.'
That's where the lethality problem comes in. As you pour more-and-more dice in (and simultaneously, by the way, raise point cost per model slightly, so there are fewer models on a smaller battlefield), with the 'best' armies you're just pre-gaming likely outcomes.

If weapon profiles were dialed back (specifically # of shots, as well as # of melee attacks on unit profiles), there wouldn't be half as many problems. When you can throw 100 dice for a single unit (and do this multiple times), you've reached the realm of utterly crap game design.

 the_scotsman wrote:

 techsoldaten wrote:

 the_scotsman wrote:
so, in your opinion, understanding that the opposing player went for an all-out offensive strategy in an attempt to reach his opponent, do you think it is good game design for it to be possible to remove effectively an entire 2,000 point army in a single turn? Is this healthy for a competitive game? What should be the maximum amount of units it should be possible to remove in one turn if, say, you were to line up a 2000pt army against another 2000pt army in the open and allow them all to open fire?

This game is evidence of great game design. Outcome distribution matters.

In Poker, a Royal Flush beats everything. The odds of a royal flush are about 1 in 2.5 million. The odds of a high card hand - where you win because neither you or a single opponent have a suit of any kind, but you do have a better card - is about 17%. That means the distribution of crap outcomes is about 1 in 5 hands, while there's this very remote chance of blowing everyone out of the water that might happen once in your entire life. It's part of what makes Poker fun to play.

In this game, the Ork player got something like a Royal Flush. Nearly every Drukhari unit was positioned for a perfect counterattack, the Ork player rolled above average, deployment made a big difference, etc. This didn't look that much like some top table match up, it looked like a sacrifice.

What are the odds of this kind of outcome occurring in any game of 40k? Probably very remote, greater than 1 in 2.5 million. And it takes specific decisions from your opponent for it to occur. ​

If you want to argue this is happening more frequently and provide examples, be my guest. Otherwise, someone had a great game.

It is. The last time something similar to this occurred was actually on a recent stream from the GW official GT they had, where a Black Templar army (with a contemporary competitive setup, I might add) got very nearly tabled in a single turn by an admech skew list.

The reason why this is notable and why I brought it up is not because this is some kind of crazy freak occurrence (like the oft- reposted meme image of the guy insta-tabling his opponents null deploy army using Kroot) but because the norm from the game has shifted from the 'turn 5 tablings routine, turn 4 tablings uncommon, turn 3 tablings unusual' state of 8th to 'turn 3 tablings routine, turn 2 tablings uncommon, turn 1 tablings unusual' state of 9th, and people are rightfully pointing out that it is actually crap game design, as it places a much greater importance on stupid, fiddly micro-positioning errors (See the recent huge post in General where a new player tried to play a 500pt teaching game and his largest unit ended up wiped in a single shot because one gun barrel was poking out from behind Obscuring terrain) and makes it essentially impossible to tell compelling narratives with the game beyond the riveting tale of how that one time sgt. skippy and his squad of heroic space marines leapt out from behind the building they were cowering behind (as every space marine does always), shot and instantly blew something up, and then got immediately vaporized by return fire.

Ugh.

Apples to apples, please, and no cherry picking. If you're going to quote points lost, do it for both games. If you're going to point to the competitive strength of players, do so in each example. And if you're saying it happens frequently, please point to more than 2 games. If the sample you are concerned about is is 2 out of all the competitive games played, GW has still designed a great game.

The odds don't need to be 1 in 2.5 million for it to matter, as long as it's better than the odds of dying in a lightning strike (1 in ~138k) it's still just good play. It's not Candyland, where the outcome of each game is determined by the shuffle of the cards before anyone moves. It's a very complex game where outcomes are influenced by unit selection, placement on the board, use of special rules and fundamental mechanics. Any sophisticated player is going to use the rules to their advantage, and this will naturally lead to certain matchups where one player finds themselves at a serious disadvantage early on.

I often play skew lists. In 8th, it was Black Legion gunlines loaded up with lascannons, then Bloodletter Bombs, then Daemon Primarchs supported by a Nurgle detachment. Way back in 5th, it was spawn rush - 35 spawn supported by a Chaos Lord and 2 squads of CSM. These lists work great, they're designed to exploit an aspect of the game opponents don't commonly defend against. There are times I remove half an opponent's army in the first turn.

But then someone comes up with a hard counter. Or a FAQ drops and nerfs some key units. Or a new Codex drops that makes the skew meaningless. Or a new edition comes along and I need to rethink the game entirely.

At worst, imbalances have a limited shelf life. 40k is always a work in progress and people like Mike Brandt are looking out for serious problems reflected in tournament results. Saying outcomes are predetermined by the strength of individual factions - especially in terms of winning in the first round - is not supported by tournament outcomes.

https://www.40kstats.com/faction-vs-faction

You can look at how Orks have performed against Drukhari, they only win 44% of games. Admech have a 71% win rate against Black Templars, but they've only fought 7 battles total - which is too small a sample size to draw conclusions from.

If you can point to something that suggests players or equal skill levels are commonly losing 90% of their army turn 1, would love to hear it. But I haven't seen anything that suggests this is anything aside from mistakes on one side / good play on the other.

Well, it does seem like increasingly, the outcomes are decided at the list building stage rather than what you can actually do ingame. I understand your examples of the blood letter bomb and even the lascannon spam. But taking those two examples, they can be mitigated by good play. The lascannon gunline can be faced by hiding behind obscuring terrain. Devastating charges from deep strike like the blood letter bomb can be mitigated by good play in screening.

Something like super shooty flyers and super powerful out of line sight shooting cannot be mitigated by smart play or terrain.

I actually loved 9th edition the most when it first came out. The focus on primary objectives plus secondary objectives meant that trying to kill your opponent was not as important as trying to get more VP. But somehow, we have now reached a stage where the lethality is starting to be so high that they overshadow primaries and secondaries.

 techsoldaten wrote:


You can look at how Orks have performed against Drukhari, they only win 44% of games. Admech have a 71% win rate against Black Templars, but they've only fought 7 battles total - which is too small a sample size to draw conclusions from.

If you can point to something that suggests players or equal skill levels are commonly losing 90% of their army turn 1, would love to hear it. But I haven't seen anything that suggests this is anything aside from mistakes on one side / good play on the other.

Thank you.


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Eldenfirefly wrote:
Well, it does seem like increasingly, the outcomes are decided at the list building stage rather than what you can actually do ingame.

It only happens when skew lists meet each other at competitive play. Take the game from this thread, the drukhari player brought a list that was not even remotely optimized: durkhari have access to one of the most successful shooting phase in the game and he went full melee. If he had an optimized list he would have had all the tools to counter the ork list that tabled him.

If you play rock/paper/scissor 40k it's obvious that this kind of situations happens. It doesn't matter what fixes and what nerfs GW introduces, with this concept in mind it is very possible to get extremely good or bad match ups quite frequently, hence games screwed turn 1 with no possible counter play. Just stick with reasonably TAC armies and we're back at "royal flush" odds for something like that to happen.

Eldenfirefly wrote:
Well, it does seem like increasingly, the outcomes are decided at the list building stage rather than what you can actually do ingame.

And GW goes: "just as planned".

If it wasn't the GW's goal of changing what's good and bad so that the tournament meta-chasers go buy new armies constantly wouldn't work as well as it does.

It's not bug of the game but intentional feature. GW learned long time ago how to exploit the tournament players for loadsa cash.

(funny thing is players themselves don't actually want balance)