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 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 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?

I’ve been reading this entire thread and I’m addressing how people are talking about the lethality. I think that if your entire glass cannon army is parked in a bad spot in front of a gun line, it should die very very fast.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 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.

Good question.

Hard to articulate a positive response, simpler to say 'it's not happening frequently between skilled players so that's part of the design (even if it's not intentional.)' If it wasn't a design characteristic, we'd see more games where someone is losing 1,800 points first turn.

But it is an interesting question. If I had to give a list of specific constraints: deployment, movement, shooting, wounds, toughness and saves. There are limits on each which affect the aggressor and defender, the aggressor would generally need to be able to cause wounds in excess of 90% the total wounds available to the defender. For a pair of specific lists, the probability of achieving this specific outcome - 90% wounds in the first turn - would be a fairly simple visualization.

Thinking about my Grey Knights, Deathwatch, Chaos Knights, Chaos Deamons, Chaos Space Marines and Death Guard armies - the odds of destroying 90% of any opponent's army first turn would be very low for most, impossible for others. Like with the Grey Knights, they literally don't have the shooting to cause anything more than a few wounds at > 24". My Chaos Knights might have a chance against a forward deployed elite army if they rolled all 6s.

On the other hand, the odds of losing 90% of my army first turn would be very low for most, impossible for others. Just the fact that I put some units in reserve each game would stop this from happening.

So I'm not sure a bullet point list could precisely answer your question. It is possible to create a meaningful visualization of the probability of specific outcomes occurring, and possibly to model some lists that demonstrate how unlikely this would be.

gungo wrote:
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.

You are myopically obsessed with Speedwaaagh. The thread is about the game's lethality being too high.

"Uh my Speedwaaagh list got one-shoot by Ad Mech so its fine" isn't actually you know, fine.

 techsoldaten wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 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.

Good question.

Hard to articulate a positive response, simpler to say 'it's not happening frequently between skilled players so that's part of the design (even if it's not intentional.)' If it wasn't a design characteristic, we'd see more games where someone is losing 1,800 points first turn.

But it is an interesting question. If I had to give a list of specific constraints: deployment, movement, shooting, wounds, toughness and saves. There are limits on each which affect the aggressor and defender, the aggressor would generally need to be able to cause wounds in excess of 90% the total wounds available to the defender. For a pair of specific lists, the probability of achieving this specific outcome - 90% wounds in the first turn - would be a fairly simple visualization.

Thinking about my Grey Knights, Deathwatch, Chaos Knights, Chaos Deamons, Chaos Space Marines and Death Guard armies - the odds of destroying 90% of any opponent's army first turn would be very low for most, impossible for others. Like with the Grey Knights, they literally don't have the shooting to cause anything more than a few wounds at > 24". My Chaos Knights might have a chance against a forward deployed elite army if they rolled all 6s.

On the other hand, the odds of losing 90% of my army first turn would be very low for most, impossible for others. Just the fact that I put some units in reserve each game would stop this from happening.

So I'm not sure a bullet point list could precisely answer your question. It is possible to create a meaningful visualization of the probability of specific outcomes occurring, and possibly to model some lists that demonstrate how unlikely this would be.

First of all, how much of an opponent's army do you consider surviving the first turn to be "optimal"? Should an army kill 1000 points? 500? 1500? What is "good game design" as a general rule?

I suppose we should agree on that before you say "well, against these armies, you can only kill 50% in one turn, so that's totally acceptable and fine"

Tyel wrote:

gungo wrote:
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.

You are myopically obsessed with Speedwaaagh. The thread is about the game's lethality being too high.

"Uh my Speedwaaagh list got one-shoot by Ad Mech so its fine" isn't actually you know, fine.

I mean I literally replied to a post of you mentioning “admech/speedwaagh lethality” not the games lethality.
Stay focused you are all over the place and don’t even know what you are posting half the time. Is this already the third time you been called out for your inability to remember what you posted.

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.

^this.

If your opponent destoys 50% of your units (50% of your units that they decide are the greatest threat to them) then the game is over just as surely, if not as comedically/spectacularly as if they actually pull out the single turn near-tabling shown here.

And if you widen out to this criteria - "do we see games where either battle round 1 or battle round 2, one of the players loses 50% or more of their army in one single turn?" - then you're looking at probably roughly a third of current competitive matches.

And the reasons why, as Tech actually points out in his most recent post, is basically because what damage your army is capable of doing to the opposing army in 40k is primarily down to strategy-layer interactions:

-the maximum range of the weapons you've chosen
-the stats of the weapons you've chosen
-the defensive stats of the units your opponent has chosen.

where you and your opponent deploy prior to the beginning of the game is definitely the second most critical factor, and actual, during the play of the game decision making is tertiary at best - occasionally you might reserve a unit rather than bringing it in turn 2. Occasionally you may decide 'you know what, this unit is moving back instead of forward and will camp out out of LOS rather than continuing to fight.

but there is very, VERY little about the potential damage output of your unit that is dependent on on-the-table factors that aren't simply declarable ("my unit will now do twice as much damage because I say so, Stratagem Go!") or determined pre-game in the strategy layer and deployment.

whether this is good game design or bad game design at the end of the day, is a matter of opinion I suppose. Personally, given that Tech already mentioned Candyland (a game whose outcome is determined prior to the beginning of the game by shuffling a deck, and which has no on the table decisions made by the players) one can suppose that they are of the opinion that at least some of the outcome of a game should be determined by factors other than the pregame strategy layer and deployment.

But the problem is, 40k's current game design space is quite flat. Most decisions amount to complete no-brainers: if I move here, I do zero damage. if I move here, I do my maximum damage. Gee whillackers, what should I pick. Terrain is incredibly binary, and targeting is incredibly permissive - i'm sometimes, but fairly rarely in a situation where I can choose for example between doing slightly more damage in an advantageous position but being exposed vs doing slightly less damage in a safer position.

I want rules that allow for more variation between peak damage and typical damage that rely on the state of the board, the positioning of my models, and the positioning of the terrain, and less rules that allow for variation based on declarative and strategy layer factors (for example: the difference in damage output between an assault intercessor squad of the Ultramarines chapter and an assault intercessor from the Black Templars chapter with a particular vow declared is 3x. that seems far too high to me, as much as I love having my subfaction be unique from someone else's.)

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 techsoldaten wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 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.

Good question.

Hard to articulate a positive response, simpler to say 'it's not happening frequently between skilled players so that's part of the design (even if it's not intentional.)' If it wasn't a design characteristic, we'd see more games where someone is losing 1,800 points first turn.

But it is an interesting question. If I had to give a list of specific constraints: deployment, movement, shooting, wounds, toughness and saves. There are limits on each which affect the aggressor and defender, the aggressor would generally need to be able to cause wounds in excess of 90% the total wounds available to the defender. For a pair of specific lists, the probability of achieving this specific outcome - 90% wounds in the first turn - would be a fairly simple visualization.

Thinking about my Grey Knights, Deathwatch, Chaos Knights, Chaos Deamons, Chaos Space Marines and Death Guard armies - the odds of destroying 90% of any opponent's army first turn would be very low for most, impossible for others. Like with the Grey Knights, they literally don't have the shooting to cause anything more than a few wounds at > 24". My Chaos Knights might have a chance against a forward deployed elite army if they rolled all 6s.

On the other hand, the odds of losing 90% of my army first turn would be very low for most, impossible for others. Just the fact that I put some units in reserve each game would stop this from happening.

So I'm not sure a bullet point list could precisely answer your question. It is possible to create a meaningful visualization of the probability of specific outcomes occurring, and possibly to model some lists that demonstrate how unlikely this would be.

First of all, how much of an opponent's army do you consider surviving the first turn to be "optimal"? Should an army kill 1000 points? 500? 1500? What is "good game design" as a general rule?

I suppose we should agree on that before you say "well, against these armies, you can only kill 50% in one turn, so that's totally acceptable and fine"

There is no such "optimal".
There are games which open slowly and you get almost no one death in the first round, then explode in turns 2 and 3 causing massive casualties well over the 25% value. There is nothing wrong with those games.
There are games which open with a crippling alpha strike taking out a good chunk of the opponent's list, which get answered in tone and then the killy factors quickly runs out and the game drags to a turn 5 of stragglers battling over points. These games are also fine.
There are games which have a quite constant attrition from turn 1 to turn 5 where a player in the ends gets tabled. Still a fine game.

There is no amount of kills which deems the game too lethal or not enough lethal. When 2 glass armies clash it will be lethal, when 2 bricks clash it will not be lethal. 40K has so many factions that you can't avoid those matchups.

As I said, there was nothing wrong with orks cleaning a whole army in 1 turn. What was wrong in that game was the "Kill me before I kill you" ultra binary gameplay that emerged. That was no game, it was dice rolling.

Spoletta wrote:
There is no such "optimal".
There are games which open slowly and you get almost no one death in the first round, then explode in turns 2 and 3 causing massive casualties well over the 25% value. There is nothing wrong with those games.

Yes there is, if you're trying to compare a narrative. If each involved army just vaporizes in the first eighteen seconds of an engagement (not counting turn 1's nonengagement as engagement), then it's incredibly difficult to tell a narrative.

It'd be like trying to tell a compelling narrative of two nuclear weapons detonating. "They impacted into each other and there was a bright flash and flurry of dice rolling, and then everyone died". This may be balanced, but it is unsatisfying.

Spoletta wrote:
There are games which open with a crippling alpha strike taking out a good chunk of the opponent's list, which get answered in tone and then the killy factors quickly runs out and the game drags to a turn 5 of stragglers battling over points. These games are also fine.

If the game gets to turn 5 I'd be surprised, since the reply from the defender is going to be anemic if they're down >25% of their most exquisite capability.

Spoletta wrote:
There are games which have a quite constant attrition from turn 1 to turn 5 where a player in the ends gets tabled. Still a fine game.

This type of game is the most narratively meaningful.

Spoletta wrote:
There is no amount of kills which deems the game too lethal or not enough lethal. When 2 glass armies clash it will be lethal, when 2 bricks clash it will not be lethal. 40K has so many factions that you can't avoid those matchups.

As I said, there was nothing wrong with orks cleaning a whole army in 1 turn. What was wrong in that game was the "Kill me before I kill you" ultra binary gameplay that emerged. That was no game, it was dice rolling.

What makes you think 2 glass armies clashing will have more emergent gameplay than what we saw in an IGOUGO system?

The ONLY type of game worth playing right now is a glass cannon versus durability skew - anything else will be "a gazillion dice rolls for no effect" (two durabiltiy lists against each other) or "everyone vaporizes in the blink of a diceroll and whomever wins the game of chicken will likely win the game, dramatically and without much engagement"

getting tired of these "he put himself in the perfect spot so its fine" arguments.

Here is the same army in the semi final also fighting Drukhari. Drukhari hides his army behind terrain. Orks go first.
https://youtu.be/TWq3w6HaeX8?t=1160
(stream gets cut because of technical problems)

This is the start of turn the Ork turn 2
https://youtu.be/5SD2OVJbcKg?t=270

Note the lack of most of the Drukhari army. The game is done, Ork player has solidly won.

This isn't 'oh it only works in very special circumstances' and 1 in 35 million.
Sean made a risky play because the result of not making the risky play is know, and surprise its "lose the game" aswell.

Sean made a risky play because he couldn’t get his assault only army into assault not because of the ork codex. Because the ork player set up terrain and then abused flyer bases so that Sean could never get into assault turn 1.

The ork player used terrain, flyer bases and the board edge to funnel the majority of his army into an unassailable Congo line. So Sean first turn was always going to be him sitting there with a finger in his bum because of ganky flyer base rules and the fact Sean couldn’t even take out a single flyer first turn to make a hole big enough to get his army into assault.

Had flyer base rules not been utter gak sean could have charged and killed 3 buggies, piled into 3 more and effectively removed at least 6 of 9 buggies.

I'm honestly starting to think those defending this are those that get a kick out of tabling their opponent as quickly as possible, and denying thier opponent an enjoyable game/experience.

Basically, selfish sods.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 techsoldaten wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 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.

Good question.

Hard to articulate a positive response, simpler to say 'it's not happening frequently between skilled players so that's part of the design (even if it's not intentional.)' If it wasn't a design characteristic, we'd see more games where someone is losing 1,800 points first turn.

But it is an interesting question. If I had to give a list of specific constraints: deployment, movement, shooting, wounds, toughness and saves. There are limits on each which affect the aggressor and defender, the aggressor would generally need to be able to cause wounds in excess of 90% the total wounds available to the defender. For a pair of specific lists, the probability of achieving this specific outcome - 90% wounds in the first turn - would be a fairly simple visualization.

Thinking about my Grey Knights, Deathwatch, Chaos Knights, Chaos Deamons, Chaos Space Marines and Death Guard armies - the odds of destroying 90% of any opponent's army first turn would be very low for most, impossible for others. Like with the Grey Knights, they literally don't have the shooting to cause anything more than a few wounds at > 24". My Chaos Knights might have a chance against a forward deployed elite army if they rolled all 6s.

On the other hand, the odds of losing 90% of my army first turn would be very low for most, impossible for others. Just the fact that I put some units in reserve each game would stop this from happening.

So I'm not sure a bullet point list could precisely answer your question. It is possible to create a meaningful visualization of the probability of specific outcomes occurring, and possibly to model some lists that demonstrate how unlikely this would be.

First of all, how much of an opponent's army do you consider surviving the first turn to be "optimal"? Should an army kill 1000 points? 500? 1500? What is "good game design" as a general rule?

I suppose we should agree on that before you say "well, against these armies, you can only kill 50% in one turn, so that's totally acceptable and fine"

Honestly, I don't think that question matters. First turn casualties aren't a useful heuristic for game design. Outcomes are, especially with regards to frequency.

Look at the armies I play. With the exception of Deathwatch and some variations of CSM, they're mid-range melee oriented. It's not uncommon for me to lose a big chunk of my army before I get a chance to fight back.

Some examples from 8th edition:

- With my Daemon Primarchs, I would regularly lose Mortarion and a Sicaran first turn. That was more than 900 points. I could still win games with Magnus, Ahriman, some Sorcerers and a unit of Plaguebearers.

- With my Black Legion gunline, I could lose 16 lascannons and still table an opponent with 3 Scorpius Whirlwind tanks parked behind a building getting rerolls from Abaddon. Opponents would overestimate the importance of lascannons and underestimate the importance of getting line of sight on the Scorpius tanks.

- With my Bloodletter Bomb, I could lose everything but a unit of Cultists hiding in ruins before Daemons started to arrive. They would chew through a screen turn 2 and 60 more would come in turn 3 to table an opponent by the end of the game.

The thing that's lost with your question: trying to measure quality of game design based on points ignores what's useful. Points roughly measure parity between lists at the start of the game, they can't account for meatshields, ablative wounds, etc. Those units are there to soak up fire, losing them early means they got the job done.

So I disagree. What matters is outcomes.

I disagree that what matters is outcomes, because the narrative of the game (i.e. the collaborative storytelling with your opponent) is what matters.

Otherwise, you could say a Coin Flip is the perfect game design, because in terms of outcome it's 100% balanced.

Competitive coinflipping!

 stonehorse wrote:
I'm honestly starting to think those defending this are those that get a kick out of tabling their opponent as quickly as possible, and denying thier opponent an enjoyable game/experience.

Basically, selfish sods.

Declaring your opponent gakky/evil/stupid/etc is the surest way to just ignore any argument being made.

It's pretty obvious that 40k players really, really value strategy layer decision making. Figuring out army lists and making battle plans prior to the start of the game is something that people obviously like and it's obvious that GW is leaning hard into what gets them positive reviews. It allows people to think about the game in their idle time - say, painting miniatures, posting online, reading rules previews to get hyped, etc.

Part of the level of lethality the game has is GW wanting to allow players to execute the battle plan and the killer list they've made and to avoid the negative player experience of trying something, and that thing not working.

Both of these are legitimate things that people are allowed to enjoy. The problem I have personally is not that their enjoyment is meanspirited or illegitimate, it's that it removes the enjoyment that I get from the game when I like the style of wargame where the players sit down and use the rules as a "let's see what happens" because it makes "what happens" very much just a decided beforehand outcome a lot of the time, and it makes using the miniatures to tell a story really quite difficult.

 Some_Call_Me_Tim wrote:

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.

The player this happened to has posted a few times in this thread. Read his comments, then try again.

 Dysartes wrote:

 Some_Call_Me_Tim wrote:

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.

The player this happened to has posted a few times in this thread. Read his comments, then try again.

And is also, incidentally, considered to be one of the best 40k players in the world. I'd be curious to see even one of Tim's recent GT wins.

I have an idea... Lets place more arbitrary caps on things. This time it can be how many units can be killed in a turn.

The problem to me is obvious, but I haven't seen anyone here discuss it. Everyone is obsessing over the symptoms and not the cause of the problem.

The problem is the current mission design.

There's no variation in what an army is expected to do. Every game is the same. Armies can largely play the same game every game no matter who is on the other side. Just optimize for what secondary's can most easily be exploited. These gak missions with static terrain layouts push army creation towards a cookie cutter design and makes for lazy game play because every game is rinse and repeat.

Mike Brandt = the new Matt Ward.

I don't think it's mission design. I think it's lethality.

I know this because it is a problem in Crusade as well (trust me, crusade is the mode I prefer to play).

 oni wrote:
I have an idea... Lets place more arbitrary caps on things. This time it can be how many units can be killed in a turn.

The problem to me is obvious, but I haven't seen anyone here discuss it. Everyone is obsessing over the symptoms and not the cause of the problem.

The problem is the current mission design.

There's no variation in what an army is expected to do. Every game is the same. Armies can largely play the same game every game no matter who is on the other side. Just optimize for what secondary's can most easily be exploited. These gak missions with static terrain layouts push army creation towards a cookie cutter design and makes for lazy game play because every game is rinse and repeat.

Mike Brandt = the new Matt Ward.

yeah, you can play any kind of mission you like. Put as many objectives, or movable objectives, or objectives that change during the game, or split up armies so they come onto the board at random times, or whatever you want, most of the time deviating from strict matched play with secondaries actually winds up making the game more lethal and not less.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
I disagree that what matters is outcomes, because the narrative of the game (i.e. the collaborative storytelling with your opponent) is what matters.

Otherwise, you could say a Coin Flip is the perfect game design, because in terms of outcome it's 100% balanced.

Competitive coinflipping!

Well, if storytelling is your bag and the outcomes seem 50/50, maybe it's time to look beyond 40k?

Not to sound like a pushy-pooh, but Haba sells a delightful line of tabletop games that seem right down your alley.

Unicorn Glitterluck is a great one, you get to play as a perfectly colored unicorn and travel the board collecting cloud crystals to get ready for baby Roaslee's party! Each player turn consists of a single die roll, providing that perfect balance that makes everything even steven.

Snail Sprint is one you can't miss. You and your snail buddies get to race through Mrs. Meyer's vegetable garden, rolling a single dice with each player turn to advance up walls to the winner's podiums. Every player has the same chance to win the race, it's cooperative player fun!

You'll find so much to do, it's cooperative play that everyone can enjoy.

This game works just fine when you use custom or narrative missions and "theme" based lists, ie when you're basically storytelling.
Competitive play is basically doing what GW wants it to do, create quick (and lethal) games to determine an overall winner. Get your wombo combos off and wipe the enemy off the table...job done. Tournaments are not about the game experience, they're about annihilating your foe as quickly as possible while scoring max points. Some armies just do it way better than others.
I have no way (or patience) to play innumerable games, paint the latest hotness, etc to try and "win" an event. I'm going in with my own set of goals and (story telling) expectations and hopefully find a few enjoyable opponents.

 techsoldaten wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
I disagree that what matters is outcomes, because the narrative of the game (i.e. the collaborative storytelling with your opponent) is what matters.

Otherwise, you could say a Coin Flip is the perfect game design, because in terms of outcome it's 100% balanced.

Competitive coinflipping!

Well, if storytelling is your bag and the outcomes seem 50/50, maybe it's time to look beyond 40k?

Not to sound like a pushy-pooh, but Haba sells a delightful line of tabletop games that seem right down your alley.

Unicorn Glitterluck is a great one, you get to play as a perfectly colored unicorn and travel the board collecting cloud crystals to get ready for baby Roaslee's party! Each player turn consists of a single die roll, providing that perfect balance that makes everything even steven.

Snail Sprint is one you can't miss. You and your snail buddies get to race through Mrs. Meyer's vegetable garden, rolling a single dice with each player turn to advance up walls to the winner's podiums. Every player has the same chance to win the race, it's cooperative player fun!

You'll find so much to do, it's cooperative play that everyone can enjoy.

Well, this is officially one of the worst posts I've ever seen on Dakka. Not THE worst but definitely up there.

 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?

Because it wasn't a miscalculation. It was making the best of a bad situation.

The issue isn't that he took a gamble and got destroyed. The issue is that he had no choice, because even in a more defensive position he would be torn apart by the sheer amount of firepower that Ork player could throw out. Play defensively and lose half your army for sure, or play aggressively and either win big or lose big.

Others have already pointed out that your suggestion happened in another game. And the Drukhari player was obliterated.

 techsoldaten wrote:
Well, if storytelling is your bag and the outcomes seem 50/50, maybe it's time to look beyond 40k?

Not to sound like a pushy-pooh, but Haba sells a delightful line of tabletop games that seem right down your alley.

Unicorn Glitterluck is a great one, you get to play as a perfectly colored unicorn and travel the board collecting cloud crystals to get ready for baby Roaslee's party! Each player turn consists of a single die roll, providing that perfect balance that makes everything even steven.

Snail Sprint is one you can't miss. You and your snail buddies get to race through Mrs. Meyer's vegetable garden, rolling a single dice with each player turn to advance up walls to the winner's podiums. Every player has the same chance to win the race, it's cooperative player fun!

You'll find so much to do, it's cooperative play that everyone can enjoy.

You're doing a crap job articulating your points in this thread, and this kind of condescension doesn't help.

 catbarf wrote:
You're doing a crap job articulating your points in this thread, and this kind of condescension doesn't help.

Thank you Catbarf. I value your opinion.

I do find it weird that people want to find narratives in tournament games. Narrative and tournament play are pretty much antithetical IMHO, you go to tournament to win, not to write a story with your opponent.

But moving on to the actual problem of the thread, IMHO the issue is that Ork (and Admech) aircraft are units with inherent no interaction and way too much firepower. You cannot hide from them, they block charges and you cannot even assault them unless you can FLY. Without them, Sean would have been able to hide and play for a longer game rather than gamble everything into a failed 1 turn charge.

 Tyran wrote:
I do find it weird that people want to find narratives in tournament games. Narrative and tournament play are pretty much antithetical IMHO, you go to tournament to win, not to write a story with your opponent.

But moving on to the actual problem of the thread, IMHO the issue is that Ork (and Admech) aircraft are units with inherent no interaction and way too much firepower. You cannot hide from them, they block charges and you cannot even assault them unless you can FLY. Without them, Sean would have been able to hide and play for a longer game rather than gamble everything into a failed 1 turn charge.

No, people want narratives in their casual games. But instead, we get the super casual narrative of every squad existing for 10 in-universe seconds while possibly deleting one other enemy squad just before heroically evaporating.

 Tyran wrote:
I do find it weird that people want to find narratives in tournament games.

40K is not designed from the ground-up as a strictly competitive tournament-focused game as the be-all and end-all. That more accurately describes something like poker or chess, where the mechanics are purely in service of the gameplay rather than attempting to 'tell a story'. 40K's tournament focus is an offshoot of a narrative-focused game that is at least attempting to tell stories within the context of its fictional universe.

Maybe people aren't going to tournaments looking to forge the narrative, but the game isn't designed strictly around tournament play, either. Unit wasn't making assertions about tournament play; he was rejecting the idea that only outcomes matter as a heuristic for game design, and that we shouldn't care about how much of an army is killed before it even gets to act. A tournament player may not care if half of his army or his opponent's is getting eliminated on turn 1, but someone who is invested in their army or the game from a narrative perspective probably does.

As far as game design heuristics go, moment-to-moment negative play experiences absolutely are a thing designers try to avoid, not just negative endgame outcomes. In a game that is supposed to be about Your Dudes, having Your Dudes get pulled off the table by the fistful before they even get to act is a pretty big NPE. As far as good game design is concerned, if you're going to spend two hours on a game, it should be fun moment-to-moment, not just balanced in the final outcome.

You don't have to share the same values in your play experience, but it provides a starting point for where lethality ought to be for some subset of the player population rather than just the textual equivalent of a shrug.

 techsoldaten wrote:

 catbarf wrote:
You're doing a crap job articulating your points in this thread, and this kind of condescension doesn't help.

Thank you Catbarf. I value your opinion.

I mean you made the point that the problem was that the drukhari made a bad tactical decision and catbarf produced a similar situation where the drukhari player tried to be more defensive and still lost their win conditions in their army in the first turn, whereas your opinion really doesn’t have any support from evidence and is purely your preference. You are allowed to enjoy the game in its current form and I sincerely hope you do, and you may have tried to make the argument that you and others extract joy from theorycrafting and breaking the game, or like others have stated you need to make further restrictions or structural changes to the game but with these changes it is good, which isn’t really disagreeing with the contrary opinions. Instead you chose to be pretty disrespectful to players on the receiving end of this issue we are discussing and have engaged in bad faith arguments of trying to deny or mitigate the facts supporting the argument contrary to your opinion.

It would be easier to defend catbarfs comment at you had they been more tactful but I certainly don’t believe catbarf is wrong.


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 Some_Call_Me_Tim wrote:

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.

Dude made it to the finals and is considered one of the top 3 40k players in the whole world, and you’re saying he made a stupid mistake at list creation? He had to rely on turn 1 charges because the list he was fighting had so much ignore line of sight like the flyers that he would have been devastated anyways had he tried to hold out for a turn 2 charge...
The fight phase is the most interactive and engaging phase in the game. I should hope that a list based on close combat is viable in 40k.

Having more units to do more stuff longer is just more fun. Thats a fact.

A normal game of MESBG is normally, (with some scenarios exceptions) at minimun 1-2-3 turns of positioning your turns with marginal shooting. And maybe theres an extremely lethal turn after the two main forces clash, or a good cavalry charge. But even in those cases we are talking something like 15-20% at most of one army, and thats crazy. But even if that happens, it has happened after turns of you trying to out manouver your opponent.

A whole army dying in one turn is something I have not normally seen in a wargame outside extreme lists , and I'm not talking "just using a glass cannon (as if dark eldar are much more frail than 2/3 of the armies in the game lol) but "using your whole army to take this single gigantic unit".
And yeah. It can happen in Infinity too. And thats why Infinity has a problem with player captation and retention, the game is too technical and in many cases , in the wrong way.

Also all the orks players coming here to deflect this is like... one ork list can be a problem... but the problem is much bigger. Stop being so partisan.

macluvin wrote:

 techsoldaten wrote:

 catbarf wrote:
You're doing a crap job articulating your points in this thread, and this kind of condescension doesn't help.

Thank you Catbarf. I value your opinion.

I mean you made the point that the problem was that the drukhari made a bad tactical decision and catbarf produced a similar situation where the drukhari player tried to be more defensive and still lost their win conditions in their army in the first turn, whereas your opinion really doesn’t have any support from evidence and is purely your preference. You are allowed to enjoy the game in its current form and I sincerely hope you do, and you may have tried to make the argument that you and others extract joy from theorycrafting and breaking the game, or like others have stated you need to make further restrictions or structural changes to the game but with these changes it is good, which isn’t really disagreeing with the contrary opinions. Instead you chose to be pretty disrespectful to players on the receiving end of this issue we are discussing and have engaged in bad faith arguments of trying to deny or mitigate the facts supporting the argument contrary to your opinion.

It would be easier to defend catbarfs comment at you had they been more tactful but I certainly don’t believe catbarf is wrong.

Pretty sure I've been pointing to evidence throughout this thread.

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

Orks don't steamroll Drukhari. What happened in the video is an outlier compared with overall tournament outcomes, which have Drukhari winning > 60% of the time in matchups against Orks. Have not seen anything to suggest losing 90% of your army in the first turn is a common occurrence. It's reasonable to expect better performance from Orks if they are capable of reliably doing this in game.

I appreciate your commentary about my comments, Macluvin, and value your opinion.