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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. 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.

Good points.

I'm not saying list building doesn't matter, or that flyers / indirect shooting / terrain aren't powerful. I am saying destroying 90% of an opponent's army turn 1 is not a widespread problem or an indicator of poor game design.

WRT list building, AdMech and Drukhari seem to be dominating tournaments right now. If choosing this Ork list pre-determines the outcome of games, why don't results reflect that fact? Why are we not seeing Ork Speedfreak lists at the top of every tournament? Competitive players tend to emulate success.

Voss wrote:

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.

I'm not saying 40k is the wargaming equivalent of poker. 40k is a much more complex game with very different dynamics.

I am saying outcome distribution matters for this argument, and anecdotal reactions to single games don't mean much. Show me something that suggests a significant number of games result in one side destroying 90% of an opponents army turn 1 and I'm happy to explore it with you.

40k has it's problems, but pre-determined outcomes isn't one of them. Issues with the game tend to be much more mundane and get dealt with via FAQs / new Codexes / new editions / creativity within the player base.

A very important thing regarding meta lists and why you aren't always seeing them all over the place is that they aren't always that easy to get or to play.

For example Orks werent allowed to use their new rules or models until they were officially released at quite a few tournaments so despite the codex being out in that special box players couldn't use it at events for some time.

A lot of the best units are new units or units that most ork players didn't have from earlier so they have to get the rules, then buy the models and then paint up the models. Supply and shipping times have been a bit problematic lately so not everyone have been able to buy the new goodies or get them delivered in time.

If they can even afford the new list since an ork player with thousands of points of models might still need to buy models for hundreds of euros/dollar to get the meta list. 9 buggies and 4 planes is about 500euros. Some of the other new models that are top tier like the Killrig and boss on squigosaur costs about 90 and 36 euro each. If you don't even have any orks to begin with it will be even more expensive. The list in the OP costs something like 7-800 euro.

The above alone is enough to lower the amount of players playing the new ork lists. Then you also run the risk of this particular list being nerfed quite hard and all your money and time spent building/painting goes wasted.

Why armies like marines when they are good becomes so annoying is because lots of people already have them and don't really mind getting a few more marines if they lack the one or two units that are currently meta. You spend 100 euros on 1-2 boxes and raid your bitbox for the right special weapons and play with the new best supplement and suddenly you went from a bottom tier army to a top tier one without too much effort. Drukhari and Ad-mech is in some ways much the same. Lots of undercosted things that are good that many people already have or don't mind buying more off so even if it gets slightly nerfed later they dont mind too much. But for non speedfreak ork players the new top lists could as well have been another faction entirely and if it gets nerfed too hard they are left with nothing of their investment.

GK have like 5 data sheets so if you played GK you probably already were 80% on the way to the meta lists. If not you now have 50% of a "complete" GK army so unless they nerf the whole army to the ground some stuff will still be playable for GK.

Without knowing what percentage of Ork players are running Speedwaaagh variants universal considerations of the Ork win rate are meaningless. If someone brings their greentide list and gets stomped it doesn't tell us anything about the relative power of Ork flyers and buggies.

With factions like DE you don't have this issue, because everything is at the top of the power curve. GK as said have almost no units - if NDKs and Interceptors (and to a degree basic Strike squads) are powerful, the faction is powerful.

Over time competitive Ork players are likely to evolve their collections into the best units - and you will see a convergence on what works. Arguably I think you can see this in Goonhammer's Glicko score - with Orks showing a steady rise, compared with other factions enjoying a one-off explosive jump with the new codex and then becoming stable. The win rate in bigger tournaments also seems to be higher than the faction as a whole.

At the other end you have factions which don't seem to have a viable competitive build - and are therefore abandoned by the best players. Friends don't let friends play Necrons, unless its for fun.

Arguably this is why basing balance purely on win percentage can be misleading - even if it tends to be a good guide.

Double post.

Klickor wrote:
A very important thing regarding meta lists and why you aren't always seeing them all over the place is that they aren't always that easy to get or to play.

For example Orks werent allowed to use their new rules or models until they were officially released at quite a few tournaments so despite the codex being out in that special box players couldn't use it at events for some time.

A lot of the best units are new units or units that most ork players didn't have from earlier so they have to get the rules, then buy the models and then paint up the models. Supply and shipping times have been a bit problematic lately so not everyone have been able to buy the new goodies or get them delivered in time.

That implies it's just a matter of time until Ork Speedfreak lists dominate all tournaments.

Okay. Let's wait a few months and see if that prediction holds.

As far as I know, there have not been interruptions in selling or shipping these models.

Klickor wrote:
If they can even afford the new list since an ork player with thousands of points of models might still need to buy models for hundreds of euros/dollar to get the meta list. 9 buggies and 4 planes is about 500euros. Some of the other new models that are top tier like the Killrig and boss on squigosaur costs about 90 and 36 euro each. If you don't even have any orks to begin with it will be even more expensive. The list in the OP costs something like 7-800 euro.

Maybe it's true that not everyone can afford the newest and the shiniest, but top players play the most competitive lists.

Look at Nick Navanti, he cycles through multiple factions depending on which one produces the best outcomes given the current ruleset. He doesn't put a lot of effort into painting his models, there's a few videos where he states this.

So I'm not sure what holds for players generally can also be applied to top competitive players. If there was a list that could regularly remove 90% of your opponents army turn one, I think top competitive players would be finding a way to get the models for that army.

Klickor wrote:
The above alone is enough to lower the amount of players playing the new ork lists. Then you also run the risk of this particular list being nerfed quite hard and all your money and time spent building/painting goes wasted.

The argument isn't about the number of people playing Orks. It's about whether the game regularly allows you to destroy 90% of your opponent's army turn one, which would be a serious design flaw.

I don't see evidence that's happening. Ork armies are the fifth most played in tournaments. Surely more than a couple armies would be built around speed freaks.

https://www.40kstats.com/faction-breakdown-report

If the criticisms in this thread are valid, they would be reflected in the W/L record. Orks win about 56% of match ups, which is nothing special. Just under half the factions have won more than 50% of their games.

Klickor wrote:
Why armies like marines when they are good becomes so annoying is because lots of people already have them and don't really mind getting a few more marines if they lack the one or two units that are currently meta. You spend 100 euros on 1-2 boxes and raid your bitbox for the right special weapons and play with the new best supplement and suddenly you went from a bottom tier army to a top tier one without too much effort. Drukhari and Ad-mech is in some ways much the same. Lots of undercosted things that are good that many people already have or don't mind buying more off so even if it gets slightly nerfed later they dont mind too much. But for non speedfreak ork players the new top lists could as well have been another faction entirely and if it gets nerfed too hard they are left with nothing of their investment.

GK have like 5 data sheets so if you played GK you probably already were 80% on the way to the meta lists. If not you now have 50% of a "complete" GK army so unless they nerf the whole army to the ground some stuff will still be playable for GK.

Not sure about the assertion Space Marine armies could be made top tier through simple upgrades.

The only Space Marine factions who have won more than 50% of their games are Iron Hands, Black Templars, Grey Knights and Deathwatch. Space Wolves, Dark Angels, Blood Angels, Ultramarines, White Scars, Raven Guard, Imperial Fists, etc have all had a harder time.

Are those players just not able to afford a couple boxes to improve their competitiveness? There's probably other factors driving these outcomes.

I agree about Grey Knights, I have every model I need to run any list I want.

But the same is not true for Deathwatch, a lot has changed from previous editions. Heavy Intercessors are the most expensive infantry models available from GW, Dreadnought Castles are pretty expensive, the top lists I've see that do involve Veterans tend to be frag-cannon heavy - 20 of them. You get one with a 5 man Veteran kit.

So I don't see a direct relationship between cost of models and outcomes on the tabletop. Sure, Orks got a lot of new stuff, and it's expensive. And sure, Admech and Drukhari players might have a lot of the models they need from previous editions.

But are the only winning factions the ones that have not received a recent model refresh? Nah. Orks and Sisters wish to contest that point.

People also want some fun which I have already seen more than one good player use as an explanation over using Drukhari over AM for example. AM is insanely strong but it is also stressful to play compared to Drukhari so unless the winrate difference isnt too big they rather play the more relaxed and fun army.

The ork list doesnt seem to be that fun to play with or against so even if they are slightly stronger than the other top meta lists it might not be enough for players to swap over.

In europe the artillery trukk is out of stock and even though I haven't heard orks in particular have had shipping difficulties I know lots of wargame related products beind delayed here and there so not unlikely that some players haven't gotten theirs as fast as they would had in pre covid, pre brexit times. The latest release for MESBG in the US is temporarily lacking one of the faction dice sets while in Europe we had no troubles ordering it.

When I mentioned marines I was more talking about 8th marines 2.0 with supplements. Not current marines. You had over just a few weeks marine participation going from single digits % to over 1/3 of the field in my area. You could just take any old marine army and buy just a few units and swap some equipment and play the chapter that best suited your army and go stomp most of the field. Like 10-20% of the investment needed compared to speed waagh lists and your marine army was suddenly better than any non marine army in the game. For orks you are mostly just getting shared top spots. So ofc you wont see too many orks compared to other armies even if they might be a problem.

Sisters players have bought a lot of models lately but they don't really run the risk of the whole identity of their list being nerfed. What is good in sisters is mostly what you would have bought anyway as a sister player. Maybe you would have bought one unit less of repentia if they werent so good but overall sisters are not really one dimensional skew lists and the core what is played today will most likely be played tomorrow. You can't really be sure of that with buggie lists. A good example is the Death Korps cavalry we saw a lot of at some australia events a couple of months ago. They were probably all recasts from china so relative to a normal 40k list it wasn't so expensive for them. They were(maybe even still are) great units but they are insanely expensive if buying legit and you would be crazy to pay MSRP for those even if a top meta chaser for something that might only work for a little time. Hence you didn't see them that much despite being great.

Klickor wrote:
People also want some fun which I have already seen more than one good player use as an explanation over using Drukhari over AM for example. AM is insanely strong but it is also stressful to play compared to Drukhari so unless the winrate difference isnt too big they rather play the more relaxed and fun army.

The ork list doesnt seem to be that fun to play with or against so even if they are slightly stronger than the other top meta lists it might not be enough for players to swap over.

In europe the artillery trukk is out of stock and even though I haven't heard orks in particular have had shipping difficulties I know lots of wargame related products beind delayed here and there so not unlikely that some players haven't gotten theirs as fast as they would had in pre covid, pre brexit times. The latest release for MESBG in the US is temporarily lacking one of the faction dice sets while in Europe we had no troubles ordering it.

Sure. This is on my radar now, genuinely looking forward to seeing how Orks perform going forward.

I guess there could be a supply chain issue stopping adoption of new units. But you'd agree that's a bottleneck that gets resolved with time, right?

Klickor wrote:
When I mentioned marines I was more talking about 8th marines 2.0 with supplements. Not current marines. You had over just a few weeks marine participation going from single digits % to over 1/3 of the field in my area. You could just take any old marine army and buy just a few units and swap some equipment and play the chapter that best suited your army and go stomp most of the field. Like 10-20% of the investment needed compared to speed waagh lists and your marine army was suddenly better than any non marine army in the game. For orks you are mostly just getting shared top spots. So ofc you wont see too many orks compared to other armies even if they might be a problem.

Yeah, that did happen. NuMarines battered my Bloodletter Bomb list, everybody suddenly had a couple units that could prevent charges from deep strike. Made me switch to Daemon Primarchs.

But I don't agree cost is the driver for top competitive players. Could be wrong, but they always seem to have a way to get the models.

Remember, this is a discussion about obliterating your opponent in turn 1. Can't believe they would ignore a list that can do that regularly.

Klickor wrote:
Sisters players have bought a lot of models lately but they don't really run the risk of the whole identity of their list being nerfed. What is good in sisters is mostly what you would have bought anyway as a sister player. Maybe you would have bought one unit less of repentia if they werent so good but overall sisters are not really one dimensional skew lists and the core what is played today will most likely be played tomorrow. You can't really be sure of that with buggie lists. A good example is the Death Korps cavalry we saw a lot of at some australia events a couple of months ago. They were probably all recasts from china so relative to a normal 40k list it wasn't so expensive for them. They were(maybe even still are) great units but they are insanely expensive if buying legit and you would be crazy to pay MSRP for those even if a top meta chaser for something that might only work for a little time. Hence you didn't see them that much despite being great.

Eh... will have to take your word for it. Would be surprised to learn cost is a deterrent for putting together a winning list.

So is it fair to sum up that no one in the thread thinks 40k is not lethal enough and that we all agree with various caveats that lethality is too high?

The_Real_Chris wrote:
So is it fair to sum up that no one in the thread thinks 40k is not lethal enough and that we all agree with various caveats that lethality is too high?

Some of us simply think complaints about lethality are overblown.

Well how many games you end with no real forces left at the turn 5? Ideally close to zero.

(0% is hard to get seeing dice roll are involved. If you roll 100 1's to save rolls in a row hard to keep army alive)

 techsoldaten wrote:

The_Real_Chris wrote:
So is it fair to sum up that no one in the thread thinks 40k is not lethal enough and that we all agree with various caveats that lethality is too high?

Some of us simply think complaints about lethality are overblown.

So you think 40k lethality is fine and not too high? I only ask as most people seem to be agreeing to some degree or another and its becoming harder to work out what the actual bones of contention are (beyond people commenting on worse case match ups vs best case scenarios and saying the latter though are a bit lethal).

 techsoldaten wrote:

 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.

I won't, because you don't give a gak. You decided before asking your initial setup what you believe, and the fact that you switch from 'Probably very remote, greater than 1 in 2.5 million' to 'yeah well ok this second example is cherry picking' when no, in fact, pointing out that a thing happens twice in a very short period of time (that we know of) is kind of all the proof you need to dispel "1 in 2.5 million" because there have been a WHOOOOLE lot fewer than 2.5 million competitive 40k games played in the past month.

I answered your question with all the proof your hyperbolic statement required to disprove. You're not allowed to settle back in your armchair and play Internet Logic Lord Checkmate Atheists when your initial claim was "prove it's happening more than 1 in 2.5 million games." One additional example (at the top tables of a large, Games Workshop officially sponsored event) is PLENTY to bring up as a counter-example.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 techsoldaten wrote:

I'm not saying list building doesn't matter, or that flyers / indirect shooting / terrain aren't powerful. I am saying destroying 90% of an opponent's army turn 1 is not a widespread problem or an indicator of poor game design.

Damn, this is impressive, it's moving faster than I can keep up! we're already to "90% casualties in a single turn is good game design actually"

how do you feel about the fact that sean, who was actually in the thread commenting on this earlier, mentioned that if his ork opponent had gone first, he would have just done exactly what he did in his previous game vs drukhari and removed roughly 1000pts of models top of 1? Is that also good game design, one player starting their first turn with half their models?

 techsoldaten wrote:

Klickor wrote:
People also want some fun which I have already seen more than one good player use as an explanation over using Drukhari over AM for example. AM is insanely strong but it is also stressful to play compared to Drukhari so unless the winrate difference isnt too big they rather play the more relaxed and fun army.

The ork list doesnt seem to be that fun to play with or against so even if they are slightly stronger than the other top meta lists it might not be enough for players to swap over.

In europe the artillery trukk is out of stock and even though I haven't heard orks in particular have had shipping difficulties I know lots of wargame related products beind delayed here and there so not unlikely that some players haven't gotten theirs as fast as they would had in pre covid, pre brexit times. The latest release for MESBG in the US is temporarily lacking one of the faction dice sets while in Europe we had no troubles ordering it.

Sure. This is on my radar now, genuinely looking forward to seeing how Orks perform going forward.

I guess there could be a supply chain issue stopping adoption of new units. But you'd agree that's a bottleneck that gets resolved with time, right?

Klickor wrote:
When I mentioned marines I was more talking about 8th marines 2.0 with supplements. Not current marines. You had over just a few weeks marine participation going from single digits % to over 1/3 of the field in my area. You could just take any old marine army and buy just a few units and swap some equipment and play the chapter that best suited your army and go stomp most of the field. Like 10-20% of the investment needed compared to speed waagh lists and your marine army was suddenly better than any non marine army in the game. For orks you are mostly just getting shared top spots. So ofc you wont see too many orks compared to other armies even if they might be a problem.

Yeah, that did happen. NuMarines battered my Bloodletter Bomb list, everybody suddenly had a couple units that could prevent charges from deep strike. Made me switch to Daemon Primarchs.

But I don't agree cost is the driver for top competitive players. Could be wrong, but they always seem to have a way to get the models.

Remember, this is a discussion about obliterating your opponent in turn 1. Can't believe they would ignore a list that can do that regularly.

Klickor wrote:
Sisters players have bought a lot of models lately but they don't really run the risk of the whole identity of their list being nerfed. What is good in sisters is mostly what you would have bought anyway as a sister player. Maybe you would have bought one unit less of repentia if they werent so good but overall sisters are not really one dimensional skew lists and the core what is played today will most likely be played tomorrow. You can't really be sure of that with buggie lists. A good example is the Death Korps cavalry we saw a lot of at some australia events a couple of months ago. They were probably all recasts from china so relative to a normal 40k list it wasn't so expensive for them. They were(maybe even still are) great units but they are insanely expensive if buying legit and you would be crazy to pay MSRP for those even if a top meta chaser for something that might only work for a little time. Hence you didn't see them that much despite being great.

Eh... will have to take your word for it. Would be surprised to learn cost is a deterrent for putting together a winning list.

In the long run the supply issues would be gone but then the meta will also have changed and it isn't that far now until the next chapter approved that will change mostly everything once again.

This game is already expensive and people play the game mostly for fun. Almost no one ever breaks even in money on an event even if they were to win it so shelling out 500-1000 euros/dollars and dozens if not hundreds of hours painting/practicing just to get 1% better chance to win is something not even most top meta chasers would do. They probably already heave a good Drukhari or Ad-mech list by now so what they get out after spending that money is barely anything. Time better spent practicing and perfecting their current lists more and save that money for a plane ticket to the next event instead. If Orks were released as first army of this year instead after Drukhari, Ad-mech and Sisters you would probably have seen almost everyone at the top jump over to Orks because the gap between Orks and the other armies at the time would have been massive. Lots of people would be willing to pay 500-1000$+ to get 10-20% extra win chance against the field. But if you do the jump now its 1/10th the advantage.

It is quite easy to swap armies or borrow what is needed if the top army uses lots of older or popular units. You can easily borrow from all your friends collections or buy it cheap used. But for more rare armies or newer armies it isnt as easy. Harlequins placed rather well for most of 8th and was even top army for first 6months of this edition yet very few people played them. They are quite skill intensive to paint well so lots of people feel daunted even buying them so you don't see a lot of spare Harlequins laying around making the effort to put together a complete and painted Harlequin list much more of an effort than an Astra militarum list or a SM list. If Greentide were as good as speed waagh right now you would probably see a much larger Ork attendance and win % compared to now because anyone who played orks in 8th or even 9th up to this codex release had that list and could play it from the start with 0 additional investment.

The_Real_Chris wrote:

 techsoldaten wrote:

The_Real_Chris wrote:
So is it fair to sum up that no one in the thread thinks 40k is not lethal enough and that we all agree with various caveats that lethality is too high?

Some of us simply think complaints about lethality are overblown.

So you think 40k lethality is fine and not too high? I only ask as most people seem to be agreeing to some degree or another and its becoming harder to work out what the actual bones of contention are (beyond people commenting on worse case match ups vs best case scenarios and saying the latter though are a bit lethal).

Not sure I would say it's fine, just that it's not the problem being portrayed in this thread.

 the_scotsman wrote:
I won't, because you don't give a gak. You decided before asking your initial setup what you believe, and the fact that you switch from 'Probably very remote, greater than 1 in 2.5 million' to 'yeah well ok this second example is cherry picking' when no, in fact, pointing out that a thing happens twice in a very short period of time (that we know of) is kind of all the proof you need to dispel "1 in 2.5 million" because there have been a WHOOOOLE lot fewer than 2.5 million competitive 40k games played in the past month.

I answered your question with all the proof your hyperbolic statement required to disprove. You're not allowed to settle back in your armchair and play Internet Logic Lord Checkmate Atheists when your initial claim was "prove it's happening more than 1 in 2.5 million games." One additional example (at the top tables of a large, Games Workshop officially sponsored event) is PLENTY to bring up as a counter-example.

I've been clear about the significance of outcome probability. Just because something can happen doesn't mean it happens often.

We differ on the significance of an exceptional outcome, I happen to think it doesn't make a difference if you're tabled turn 1 or turn 5. Hard counters are a thing, the Drukhari player ran into one and it ended quickly.

You haven't demonstrated turn one devastation is a widespread phenomenon and now you're just calling people names. Perhaps you are letting your emotions get the best of you here, there's better ways to make your point.

 the_scotsman wrote:

 techsoldaten wrote:

I'm not saying list building doesn't matter, or that flyers / indirect shooting / terrain aren't powerful. I am saying destroying 90% of an opponent's army turn 1 is not a widespread problem or an indicator of poor game design.

Damn, this is impressive, it's moving faster than I can keep up! we're already to "90% casualties in a single turn is good game design actually"

how do you feel about the fact that sean, who was actually in the thread commenting on this earlier, mentioned that if his ork opponent had gone first, he would have just done exactly what he did in his previous game vs drukhari and removed roughly 1000pts of models top of 1? Is that also good game design, one player starting their first turn with half their models?

Don't have feelings about it either way.

My thoughts about the video you posted is that the Drukhari player was very aggressive in his first move and left himself exposed. He paid a steep price. Were I playing that army, knowing that Orks are very strong against Drukhari right now, I probably would have put a few units in reserve and focused on defending against the Speed Waagh without getting tabled. If he was playing against my current army (Deathwatch), the game would have been a lot tougher for the Orks.

The point being: both players made choices that lead to this outcome. Other choices could have lead to different outcomes. If this is happening frequently, it might mean Orks and / or Drukhari need to be FAQed. But an interfactional imbalance is not evidence of general poor game design, it might be evidence something needs to be tweaked.

Wow, this is like being on a religious or political debate forum with all the gymnastics going on to willfully deny obvious truths.

I know it's sometimes a bit taboo to suggest people are religiously or cultishly devoted to GW but damn...

Just for those reading along, we've gone from

"An army losing a huge number of its models such that the game is effectively over turn 1 is a 1 in 2.5 million chance, astronomical"

to

"An army losing a huge number of its models such that the game is effectively over turn 1 is a 1 in 135,000 chance, like being struck by lightning."

to

"An army losing a huge number of its models such that the game is effectively over turn 1 is fine, its the same as an army being tabled turn 5, there's no problem in game design there."

to

"You need to demonstrate that armies losing a huge number of models turn 1 is a Widespread Phenomenon"

I'm not really in the business of pretending that I'm some perfectly logical, emotionally detached internet lord - everyone is primarily driven by emotion, and we're talking about how we'd like to see a company design a fairly childish, cartoonish game here. I'm pretty much 100% consistent that the reason I hate the level of lethality in 40k is because it feels wrong, and doesn't actually reflect the way that the 40k universe is supposed to feel (being an epic story about heroic, larger-than-life characters and units engaging in big cinematic battles).

I'll put the example out there again from earlier in the thread: If you designed a star wars game, and every jedi model would instantly kill basically anything they touched in close combat including another jedi, but they had basically zero armor and died the second you shot at them with anything, that *could* be worked into a balanced game design, but you'd have made an almost undeniably gakky Star Wars game that would not allow people to recreate battle scenes that felt like Star Wars.

That wouldn't make for a very fun Star Wars game. I'm also surprise anyone who has played 9th thinks that lethality isn't an issue in 9th.

 the_scotsman wrote:
Just for those reading along, we've gone from

"An army losing a huge number of its models such that the game is effectively over turn 1 is a 1 in 2.5 million chance, astronomical"

to

"An army losing a huge number of its models such that the game is effectively over turn 1 is a 1 in 135,000 chance, like being struck by lightning."

to

"An army losing a huge number of its models such that the game is effectively over turn 1 is fine, its the same as an army being tabled turn 5, there's no problem in game design there."

to

"You need to demonstrate that armies losing a huge number of models turn 1 is a Widespread Phenomenon"

I'm not really in the business of pretending that I'm some perfectly logical, emotionally detached internet lord - everyone is primarily driven by emotion, and we're talking about how we'd like to see a company design a fairly childish, cartoonish game here. I'm pretty much 100% consistent that the reason I hate the level of lethality in 40k is because it feels wrong, and doesn't actually reflect the way that the 40k universe is supposed to feel (being an epic story about heroic, larger-than-life characters and units engaging in big cinematic battles).

I'll put the example out there again from earlier in the thread: If you designed a star wars game, and every jedi model would instantly kill basically anything they touched in close combat including another jedi, but they had basically zero armor and died the second you shot at them with anything, that *could* be worked into a balanced game design, but you'd have made an almost undeniably gakky Star Wars game that would not allow people to recreate battle scenes that felt like Star Wars.

No, we have not. You are misquoting me to make your bellyaching seem like legitimate criticism.

I did not make any claims about the odds of a specific event occurring in a 40k game. I did say extraordinary events happen rarely and challenged you to provide examples to prove this is happening frequently. You mentioned another game without providing comparative details other than your impressions of the list, which means nothing.

Orks mostly lose to Drukhari in 9th edition competitive games. This is a fact anyone can look up for themselves.

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

Game design refers to the underlying mechanics that lead to specific outcomes. If the game is as "poorly designed" as you claim, we should be seeing Orks steamroll Drukhari on a regular basis - since there's no way to keep up with losing 1000+ points of your army to the almighty Speed Waagh first turn.

But we don't, because that is only happening in your imagination. That sad, lonely place, where basic math has never visited.

 techsoldaten wrote:

Game design refers to the underlying mechanics that lead to specific outcomes.

No, it doesn't. Thanks for playing.

 techsoldaten wrote:

 the_scotsman wrote:
Just for those reading along, we've gone from

"An army losing a huge number of its models such that the game is effectively over turn 1 is a 1 in 2.5 million chance, astronomical"

to

"An army losing a huge number of its models such that the game is effectively over turn 1 is a 1 in 135,000 chance, like being struck by lightning."

to

"An army losing a huge number of its models such that the game is effectively over turn 1 is fine, its the same as an army being tabled turn 5, there's no problem in game design there."

to

"You need to demonstrate that armies losing a huge number of models turn 1 is a Widespread Phenomenon"

No, we have not. You are misquoting me to make your bellyaching seem like legitimate criticism.

I did not make any claims about the odds of a specific event occurring in a 40k game. I did say extraordinary events happen rarely and challenged you to provide examples to prove this is happening frequently. You mentioned another game without providing comparative details other than your impressions of the list, which means nothing.

Direct quotes I'm referring to, for the curious, in case you're interested in deciding for yourself whether I am misquoting or accurately summarizing claims made:

 techsoldaten wrote:


"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."

to

"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."

to

"I'm not saying list building doesn't matter, or that flyers / indirect shooting / terrain aren't powerful. I am saying destroying 90% of an opponent's army turn 1 is not a widespread problem or an indicator of poor game design."

to

"I've been clear about the significance of outcome probability. Just because something can happen doesn't mean it happens often.

We differ on the significance of an exceptional outcome, I happen to think it doesn't make a difference if you're tabled turn 1 or turn 5. Hard counters are a thing, the Drukhari player ran into one and it ended quickly.

You haven't demonstrated turn one devastation is a widespread phenomenon and now you're just calling people names. Perhaps you are letting your emotions get the best of you here, there's better ways to make your point."

It really seemed to me like a VERY SPECIFIC claim about the odds of an occurrence like this happening was initially made, which then got walked back by a factor of...let's see, 18.5x, to the much safer motte and bailey route of "it's just rare, OK, you now have to prove it's common and I decide what Common means and even if it is common i've repeatedly reserved the right to just say that It's Good Actually anyway."


Automatically Appended Next Post:
in fact, this statement "Hard counters are a thing, the drukhari player ran into one and it ended rather quickly" was largely the point of the thread.

In my opinion, the ability to set up one's army such that a counter hard enough to remove what is for all intents and purposes the ENTIRE opposing army in the space of one single turn, during which time the opponent's ability to respond is severely limited to the possibility of a couple of 3" moves, a couple of defensive stratagems and a couple of close combat attacks dictated almost entirely by the opponent, is not in fact, "great game design."

the existence of hard-counters of that magnitude, where nothing done on the tabletop matters at all, and we're not dealing with crazy above-average or below-average rolling (last I checked, a 2000pt ork list rolls a LOT of dice, so i'd be really surprised to hear about any instances of mega-ultra-yahtzee occurring on the ork player's part) is in fact, an indicator of somewhat poor game design.

 techsoldaten wrote:
I did not make any claims about the odds of a specific event occurring in a 40k game.

Yes you absolutely did, when you asserted that a player losing virtually their entire army on turn 1 is an astronomically rare event and therefore evidence of good game design. Your entire argument about it actually being a good thing hinges on the assertion that it's a rare event.

Now you're expecting everyone else to prove to you that something that has happened multiple times within a very small pool of games is actually common and not a one-in-several-million outlier.

 the_scotsman wrote:
It really seemed to me like a VERY SPECIFIC claim about the odds of an occurrence like this happening was initially made, which then got walked back by a factor of...let's see, 18.5x, to the much safer motte and bailey route of "it's just rare, OK, you now have to prove it's common and I decide what Common means and even if it is common i've repeatedly reserved the right to just say that It's Good Actually anyway."

Wow. You got me, forgot about that previous comment.

I did make a claim that losing 90% of your army to an opponent on turn 1 is very rare. That was a guess, I put the odds about those of a royal flush, dependent on the actions of your opponent. Could be wrong, but would not put them above those of dying from a lightning strike.

On the other hand, you provided a single example of this happening. The other example you cited, 1000 points, is not 1800 points. There's a big difference between 50% and 90% of an army.

So let me say it again. You are dramatically overstating the risk of a skilled player losing 90% of their army first turn and have provided no evidence it happens frequently. A single game is an outlier, statistics contradict your claims.

It's not that it can't happen, and it's not that a player can't engage in some wild all-or-nothing offensive gambit that goes South. It's that the game is designed to make this outcome unlikely.

 techsoldaten wrote:

 the_scotsman wrote:
It really seemed to me like a VERY SPECIFIC claim about the odds of an occurrence like this happening was initially made, which then got walked back by a factor of...let's see, 18.5x, to the much safer motte and bailey route of "it's just rare, OK, you now have to prove it's common and I decide what Common means and even if it is common i've repeatedly reserved the right to just say that It's Good Actually anyway."

It's that the game is designed to make this outcome unlikely.

What, specifically, about the current 9th edition game design makes this unlikely? Back up your claims please.

I mean this argument about speedwaagh lethality (which I currently don’t think is as common or bad as the people freaking out claim) is soon to be moot. Gw is literally upgrading the speedwaagh next week. With both a boost to speedfreaks which may just be an evil Sun army of renown and blood axe codex which is already one of the best buggy klans and kommandos are already awesome. Either way I think the freebooter current iteration of speedwaagh is soon to change.
This might mean soeeedwaagh is no longer as shooty or freebooter is no longer preferred klan. It also may mean speedwaagh would actually need a bigger nerf. Either way I still think flyer rules need to change to stop the gakky assault blocking bull crap that happened at socal and the real reason Sean had novchoice and was left out on the open to get shot at.

Go to any major tournament with a decent number of games, and you'll see Ad Mech/Speedwaaagh lists obliterating people in a single turn of shooting. See what DE lists can do on turn 2 if every unit gets out the boats and charges something.

Haggling over the exact 1800 points is just being internet contrarian. If you kill 1000 points in a turn, the game is frankly over. It really doesn't matter beyond absurdity whether its 1000 or 1200, 1400, 1600, 1800.

The game can be balanced if every faction has a list that can do that - but its not very fun. Its just glorified rock paper scissors and who can go first.

Tyel wrote:
Go to any major tournament with a decent number of games, and you'll see Ad Mech/Speedwaaagh lists obliterating people in a single turn of shooting. See what DE lists can do on turn 2 if every unit gets out the boats and charges something.

Haggling over the exact 1800 points is just being internet contrarian. If you kill 1000 points in a turn, the game is frankly over. It really doesn't matter beyond absurdity whether its 1000 or 1200, 1400, 1600, 1800.

The game can be balanced if every faction has a list that can do that - but its not very fun. Its just glorified rock paper scissors and who can go first.

I mean this literally wasn’t even happening this past 2 weeks. Orks weren’t blowing up the majors. 5 majors and all we had were 1x first place, 1x 3rd place and 2x 10th place sure doesn’t look like speedwaaagh obliterating the tables. Heck it’s only 8% of the top 10 placings. Your idea of obliterating sure is extremely encompassing.

So what I’m getting is that if I make a huge tactical miscalculation in a competitive game, leaving my army of tissue paper elves standing right in the optimal range of a gun line with the optimal tools to kill me I should just be able to stand there and take it without mass casualties?

How do people keep trying to sell this as a tactical miscalculation?

Unless they mean that Nayden should've just conceded before placing models down, avoiding the whole fiasco.

Rihgu wrote:
How do people keep trying to sell this as a tactical miscalculation?

Unless they mean that Nayden should've just conceded before placing models down, avoiding the whole fiasco.

Put some stuff in reserves, then hide. Sure, squigbuggies and jets can get around cover but he could have mitigated losses for sure.

There’s also the fact that he was relying on melee to not instantly get squished for shooting. Relying on a turn 1 melee to be entirely safe is honestly kinda stupid.

 Some_Call_Me_Tim wrote:
So what I’m getting is that if I make a huge tactical miscalculation in a competitive game, leaving my army of tissue paper elves standing right in the optimal range of a gun line with the optimal tools to kill me I should just be able to stand there and take it without mass casualties?

Did you read the thread or just pop in to repeat a useless, distracting, and unhelpful question?