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Andykp wrote:

 VladimirHerzog wrote:

Andykp wrote:
Just brushing over the mall Indy company comment, ok…..

Its a joke used to sarcastically describe big companies, mostly in gaming, when it comes to them not being able to do simple QoL changes and fixes. What Karol said made sense (at least that one sentence)

Ahhhhh….

Gen x apologises.

Ah, Karol + being (intentionally) funny - much like GW writing good rules, something seen so rarely its easy to miss/mistake.

 the_scotsman wrote:


I'd say this is more of an "infantry is categorically pretty gak because GW bent themselves into little pretzels trying to create Tank Edition" than a "max squads are bad."

Many factions that do run infantry run max squads - its basically what you do if you want to run a buffing character, you slap them into a maxed squad. GSC are doing it the most successfully rn, the winning list is pretty much all maxed acolyte and maxed neophyte squads.

And a lot of factions like Sisters Admech and Drukhari their units and buffing character units are gak precisely because they cant bring anything below min squad size.

What can you attach your 85pt drukhari archon to? Why, a 110pt kabalite warrior 10 man squad of course. Nearly doubling the cost of the squad to get rr wounds on 10 guys...nice.

If GSC could split their squads in half they would, and the army would be even more annoying and even more powerful as it is. Plus that is a broken army, that some designer was allowed to go full faction fantasy, without thinking about the game impact. If someone would let my dudes gets powerful offensive units and then respawn, even keeping the points cost. Well then my dudes would be kind of a like custodes, who do exactly that.

SoB , from your example, would love to run half size squads instead of being locked in to 5 man ones. 10man tacticals are horrible. Votan squads and any other army that has or will have an army mechanic based around their own stuff being dead, wants to play MSU. Button pushers, heavy weapon teams, objective grabbers etc People don't run maxed out allarus squads. What we get to see is cheap 2 man squads, And that is custodes with actualy good synergies for big units. 10 man model unit is not a minimal squad. Not even for technicaly non elite armies.

There are very few moments where big squads are something wanted. Tyfus and pox walkers is such an example. But no one in their right mind is going to run 10 Plague marines. 10 csm or 10 GK anything.

 the_scotsman wrote:
TBH after a couple test games I'm kinda unimpressed by Oaths.

For example, my last game: My opponent did manage to kill his oaths target turn 1, and turn 2, yes.

BUT, what he had to shoot at the targets (My Heldrake turn 1, and my already-damaged Defiler turn 2) was a las-pred, a ballistus dreadnought, a plasma redemptor, and a invictor warsuit.

Looking objectively at his capabilities, he was pretty likely to kill those units just fine without the re-rolls, and all the re-rolls did for him was, turn 1 he got to point the invictor at my Defiler instead of at the Heldrake because he killed it already (Managing to do 4 wounds to it, which ultimately didnt matter much at all) and then turn 2 he killed the defiler and made use of I think...one single extra re-roll to do so? Like he might have rerolled 1 single hit die on the las pred that he would not have ordinarily gotten to reroll.

How did he kill your Helldrake on turn 1?
It's an aircraft so it's forced to start in reserve, thus not entering play until T2.

ccs wrote:

 the_scotsman wrote:
TBH after a couple test games I'm kinda unimpressed by Oaths.

For example, my last game: My opponent did manage to kill his oaths target turn 1, and turn 2, yes.

BUT, what he had to shoot at the targets (My Heldrake turn 1, and my already-damaged Defiler turn 2) was a las-pred, a ballistus dreadnought, a plasma redemptor, and a invictor warsuit.

Looking objectively at his capabilities, he was pretty likely to kill those units just fine without the re-rolls, and all the re-rolls did for him was, turn 1 he got to point the invictor at my Defiler instead of at the Heldrake because he killed it already (Managing to do 4 wounds to it, which ultimately didnt matter much at all) and then turn 2 he killed the defiler and made use of I think...one single extra re-roll to do so? Like he might have rerolled 1 single hit die on the las pred that he would not have ordinarily gotten to reroll.

How did he kill your Helldrake on turn 1?
It's an aircraft so it's forced to start in reserve, thus not entering play until T2.

Could’ve been in hover. Loses all aircraft rules so could be on from then 1.

Andykp wrote:


Could’ve been in hover. Loses all aircraft rules so could be on from then 1.

100% should be , starting a heldrake in deepstrike would be one hell of a meme lol

Andykp wrote:

ccs wrote:

 the_scotsman wrote:
TBH after a couple test games I'm kinda unimpressed by Oaths.

For example, my last game: My opponent did manage to kill his oaths target turn 1, and turn 2, yes.

BUT, what he had to shoot at the targets (My Heldrake turn 1, and my already-damaged Defiler turn 2) was a las-pred, a ballistus dreadnought, a plasma redemptor, and a invictor warsuit.

Looking objectively at his capabilities, he was pretty likely to kill those units just fine without the re-rolls, and all the re-rolls did for him was, turn 1 he got to point the invictor at my Defiler instead of at the Heldrake because he killed it already (Managing to do 4 wounds to it, which ultimately didnt matter much at all) and then turn 2 he killed the defiler and made use of I think...one single extra re-roll to do so? Like he might have rerolled 1 single hit die on the las pred that he would not have ordinarily gotten to reroll.

How did he kill your Helldrake on turn 1?
It's an aircraft so it's forced to start in reserve, thus not entering play until T2.

Could’ve been in hover. Loses all aircraft rules so could be on from then 1.

That's right, it does have Hover, doesn't it.

have actually run 10 man plague marine units, not willingly, done before the change to allow seven man ones and then after when I was too lazy to change the list

weirdly they worked, sort of, going to ten meant it took more firepower to shift them obviously, so the enemies first volley into each left both units functional instead of flat out dead. the second volley killed them of course but lead to more overkill and they both lasted long enough to charge things so that second volley came a few turns later

still not exactly "effective" but a slide side outcome when facing someone who didn't have enough units to drop both in one turn and didn't have the position to focus and drop one entirely

Karol wrote:

 the_scotsman wrote:


I'd say this is more of an "infantry is categorically pretty gak because GW bent themselves into little pretzels trying to create Tank Edition" than a "max squads are bad."

Many factions that do run infantry run max squads - its basically what you do if you want to run a buffing character, you slap them into a maxed squad. GSC are doing it the most successfully rn, the winning list is pretty much all maxed acolyte and maxed neophyte squads.

And a lot of factions like Sisters Admech and Drukhari their units and buffing character units are gak precisely because they cant bring anything below min squad size.

What can you attach your 85pt drukhari archon to? Why, a 110pt kabalite warrior 10 man squad of course. Nearly doubling the cost of the squad to get rr wounds on 10 guys...nice.

If GSC could split their squads in half they would, and the army would be even more annoying and even more powerful as it is. Plus that is a broken army, that some designer was allowed to go full faction fantasy, without thinking about the game impact. If someone would let my dudes gets powerful offensive units and then respawn, even keeping the points cost. Well then my dudes would be kind of a like custodes, who do exactly that.

SoB , from your example, would love to run half size squads instead of being locked in to 5 man ones. 10man tacticals are horrible. Votan squads and any other army that has or will have an army mechanic based around their own stuff being dead, wants to play MSU. Button pushers, heavy weapon teams, objective grabbers etc People don't run maxed out allarus squads. What we get to see is cheap 2 man squads, And that is custodes with actualy good synergies for big units. 10 man model unit is not a minimal squad. Not even for technicaly non elite armies.

There are very few moments where big squads are something wanted. Tyfus and pox walkers is such an example. But no one in their right mind is going to run 10 Plague marines. 10 csm or 10 GK anything.

Dawg they literally can split their squads in half from the competitive configuration and they choose not to.

You can run acolytes at 5 man, and neophytes at 10 man. People run them as 10 and 20, because, like I just said, you can spread buffs.

This is the consistent problem you have with dealing with strong armies is you just sort of decree that a thing is magically and incontrovertibly broken in every way and unless they are quadrupled in point cost every unit in the book then the game is biased and bad. You don't know *how* ANYTHING is strong, you just see winrate number be high and lose your mind.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

ccs wrote:

 the_scotsman wrote:
TBH after a couple test games I'm kinda unimpressed by Oaths.

For example, my last game: My opponent did manage to kill his oaths target turn 1, and turn 2, yes.

BUT, what he had to shoot at the targets (My Heldrake turn 1, and my already-damaged Defiler turn 2) was a las-pred, a ballistus dreadnought, a plasma redemptor, and a invictor warsuit.

Looking objectively at his capabilities, he was pretty likely to kill those units just fine without the re-rolls, and all the re-rolls did for him was, turn 1 he got to point the invictor at my Defiler instead of at the Heldrake because he killed it already (Managing to do 4 wounds to it, which ultimately didnt matter much at all) and then turn 2 he killed the defiler and made use of I think...one single extra re-roll to do so? Like he might have rerolled 1 single hit die on the las pred that he would not have ordinarily gotten to reroll.

How did he kill your Helldrake on turn 1?
It's an aircraft so it's forced to start in reserve, thus not entering play until T2.

As others said, Hover. TBH with the amount of firepower he had I probably should have started it in reserve just to get a turn of shooting out of it, but my side of deployment had an absolutely friggin' huge piece of ruins cover, so I thought "aha, I can stick the heldrake behind that in Hover and have it be out of LOS"

But then he rolled first turn and pulled the whole bit of "ohhh I can move all my units wayyy off to the edge of the board and so then my ballistus dread can see 1mm of your wing tip and my las-pred can see between his legs to see the same 1mm of wing tip and my plasma dread can see even though he's 2-3 inches further off to the side but the gun sticks out..." and it was a choice between derailing the game with a big complainy argument or just moving on because I felt like I was probably going to be just fine without it.

I’m just pleased I remember a rule!

Dawg they literally can split their squads in half from the competitive configuration and they choose not to.

You can run acolytes at 5 man, and neophytes at 10 man. People run them as 10 and 20, because, like I just said, you can spread buffs.

This is the consistent problem you have with dealing with strong armies is you just sort of decree that a thing is magically and incontrovertibly broken in every way and unless they are quadrupled in point cost every unit in the book then the game is biased and bad. You don't know *how* ANYTHING is strong, you just see winrate number be high and lose your mind.

Aside for eldar, and maybe GSC this edition, but that is because of free points in GW games always creating problems, I never ask for big nerfs to good armies. It is nice that custodes and knight players can enjoy their armies. My problem is with the fact that GW way of fixing things is never to fix the armies that are bad. They "fix" eldar and what happens? They are still top 1-2 army. They fix indirect fire and this somehow kills GK purgators (who cost more then desolators for fewer and worse guns, and worse indirect), but indirect is just as annoying as it was before the change.

You want to tell me that an army which can respawns itself and has a +70% win rates is not "magicaly all powerful". Ah and I don't just look at win rates. I look at win rates, I look how good or bad factions do against each other. I look what is the difference in win rates between fresh GT players and people who are not. Look at the win rates of non fresh GSC players they are beating eldar in win rates. Or how small gap in win rate there is between veteran and non veteran players of some armies (eldar for example).

But okey. Lets say I am wrong. Lets say the top isn't as good as the stats show. Is the bottom tier also not as bad, as I think it is? And even lets ignore me. I ain't a tournament player, I think over 3 editions I won fewer then 10 games. But if good GK players, people that scored high in past editions, make reviews of their GT games and we get to hear 'I played vs Knights, I haven't shot even one time, played the mission, lost". "Played eldar, got tabled turn 2" etc Are they wrong. And I use the "They" because there is more then just one or two people like that. Are votan or Mechanicus players just people who don't want to get "gud"? somehow noob eldars can get above 50% win rates, but noob marines (with the supposed OP OotM and desolators" are lower then 40, and it takes the veteran sm players to get the whole army over 40% win rate(barely if we take the last tournament data we have).


It is not magic that makes eldar or GSC too powerful, comparing to other armies. It is ignoring core mechanics, being under costed (be it in raw points or by getting free points through respawning) etc But hey we don't need to hear this from me. Just got on reddit or YT, and read what non GSC or Eldar players, good skilled veterans playing other armies say about playing vs those two armies. Comparing to them the knights or custodes are just noob stomper. And I really don't how people sometimes mention all four of those armies as in need to "nerf". Custodes without their first strike, are just a very bad melee army(although still better then GK, who cost the same). Knights with points hike or the FNP nerf would just fold (or drop to the level chaos knights are on). etc.

I played my first game of 10th on Saturday. My 'Nids vs Dark Angels. Oath of Moment was used every turn, mostly on my Haruspexes, and it certainly had an impact.

In did not, however, dominate the game and result in a unit being removed every single time it was used.

Having said that, my objections to Oath of Moment remain the same as they were prior to seeing it in action: It should not be the defining rule for Marines. It should be the Detachment rule, and Doctrines should be the defining rule for Marines in general.

Oaths of Moment have no precedent in the fluff beyond their creation for the Horus Heresy series. They have simply been ported over to 40k and made to retconned as being something important. Doctrines, on the other hand, are a direct result of the Codex Astartes, something that has been central to Marines for as long as I can remember (like ATSKNF, something central to Marines that isn't even in the rules anymore). And Combat Squads should come back, but that's a separate issue.

I don't want Oath of Moment to be removed. I just want it shifted in prominent/importance. It should not be central to Marine identity.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
I played my first game of 10th on Saturday. My 'Nids vs Dark Angels. Oath of Moment was used every turn, mostly on my Haruspexes, and it certainly had an impact.

In did not, however, dominate the game and result in a unit being removed every single time it was used.

Having said that, my objections to Oath of Moment remain the same as they were prior to seeing it in action: It should not be the defining rule for Marines. It should be the Detachment rule, and Doctrines should be the defining rule for Marines in general.

Oaths of Moment have no precedent in the fluff beyond their creation for the Horus Heresy series. They have simply been ported over to 40k and made to retconned as being something important. Doctrines, on the other hand, are a direct result of the Codex Astartes, something that has been central to Marines for as long as I can remember (like ATSKNF, something central to Marines that isn't even in the rules anymore). And Combat Squads should come back, but that's a separate issue.

I don't want Oath of Moment to be removed. I just want it shifted in prominent/importance. It should not be central to Marine identity.

If they wanted the effect, they should have called it "Angels of Death."

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
I played my first game of 10th on Saturday. My 'Nids vs Dark Angels. Oath of Moment was used every turn, mostly on my Haruspexes, and it certainly had an impact.

In did not, however, dominate the game and result in a unit being removed every single time it was used.

Having said that, my objections to Oath of Moment remain the same as they were prior to seeing it in action: It should not be the defining rule for Marines. It should be the Detachment rule, and Doctrines should be the defining rule for Marines in general.

Oaths of Moment have no precedent in the fluff beyond their creation for the Horus Heresy series. They have simply been ported over to 40k and made to retconned as being something important. Doctrines, on the other hand, are a direct result of the Codex Astartes, something that has been central to Marines for as long as I can remember (like ATSKNF, something central to Marines that isn't even in the rules anymore). And Combat Squads should come back, but that's a separate issue.

I don't want Oath of Moment to be removed. I just want it shifted in prominent/importance. It should not be central to Marine identity.

Honestly I found doctrines to be the more interesting rule and actually have a larger game impact than Oath for both players, so 100% agree regardless of names of rules etc.

I think Oaths of the Moment did exist in the lore in the past. Ranulf swore that he and his Wolf Guard would hold the pass against the orks for a day, and he held it for longer. Brother Tycho promised to hold the breach in the Tempestora Hive and he and his Death Company did that. Although he did think that the salamander chaplain was Dorn, while telling him "One last time Dorn my brother, for The Emperor". The ultramarine captin that suffered a lose against the necrons, took an oath that the necrons would be purged, and he did. Captin Leantos promised to returned the stolen BA relic to his chapter and in the end, not directly, he did. Vorth Mordrak took an oath to hunt down Huron Blackheart, after he orbital bombed his battle brothers, so strong that it ended up with him being able to summon the manifestation of his terminator clad fallen in to the real world.

OoM would be better if it reflected such acts, not a "kill that thing" but related to the on table objectives, say a bonus to assault or fire on units holding one, or a bonus to units defending one

instead of a generic "kill that!" have a range of things such as killing a key character or doing "something" like advancing or holding ground with some bonus to assist in doing so, and perhaps a restriction such as losing VP for failing to do so - such that Oaths are made for things that are practical to actually do

Well in the end, game mechanic wise, it boils down to this. At the point cost in order to be efficient an elite "marine like army" needs extrem good rules and full re-rolls on everything to function. You get something like custodes then. Strike first on every squad, they have 3 of those, and every model is a small hero.

Now lore wise it would be great if Tim had an army of 20 marines+ hero and fought toe to toe with an army of 300 guardsman. But here comes the real life to mess it up. GW wants to sell more marines, because there is more marine players, then any other players. And the ork or IG player may not want to buy 500 models to start playing. That is why every edition marines seem to be the way they are now. An army propped by one rule or unit. sometimes one GW missed. That goes worse and worse, everytime GW puts out new codex. So that at the end of the edition, GW has to throw something to the marine players, because their armies are horribly unfun to play with, and there are degrees to which GW can make its main buyer base unhappy.

And for GW re-rolls or stacking rules is how they fix stuff, besides playing around with points.

Ah and GW already did the "kill specific" thing type of an oath. They are called space wolf sagas, and if you look at SW playing with a gladius detachment, more then with their own, and still being one of the lower win rate marines, I think it tells you a lot about how good such a rule is.

Karol wrote:
Well in the end, game mechanic wise, it boils down to this. At the point cost in order to be efficient an elite "marine like army" needs extrem good rules and full re-rolls on everything to function. You get something like custodes then. Strike first on every squad, they have 3 of those, and every model is a small hero.

Now lore wise it would be great if Tim had an army of 20 marines+ hero and fought toe to toe with an army of 300 guardsman. But here comes the real life to mess it up. GW wants to sell more marines, because there is more marine players, then any other players. And the ork or IG player may not want to buy 500 models to start playing. That is why every edition marines seem to be the way they are now. An army propped by one rule or unit. sometimes one GW missed. That goes worse and worse, everytime GW puts out new codex. So that at the end of the edition, GW has to throw something to the marine players, because their armies are horribly unfun to play with, and there are degrees to which GW can make its main buyer base unhappy.

And for GW re-rolls or stacking rules is how they fix stuff, besides playing around with points.

Ah and GW already did the "kill specific" thing type of an oath. They are called space wolf sagas, and if you look at SW playing with a gladius detachment, more then with their own, and still being one of the lower win rate marines, I think it tells you a lot about how good such a rule is.

Sort of...
OOM doesn't give full rerolls on everything. You have to get the stuff in position to take advantage of it on the target you want to eliminate. And it would probably help if we took a step back and looked at the plateaus different options provide: Adding a pip of effectiveness on WS/BS etc is 16%. Rerolls have a somewhat more variable improvement - from 25% to about 8%. Adding an extra attack etc is a huge boost. OOM is a RELATIVELY minor boost to Marines - adding hits etc from Bolter Drill, Biologis, Lieutenants, Azrael etc are likely a stronger boost.

Extra attack is generally 20-100% boost.

Full reroll 1 stat 1/6 to 5/6 boost.

Breton 811116 11579501 wrote:

Sort of...
OOM doesn't give full rerolls on everything. You have to get the stuff in position to take advantage of it on the target you want to eliminate. And it would probably help if we took a step back and looked at the plateaus different options provide: Adding a pip of effectiveness on WS/BS etc is 16%. Rerolls have a somewhat more variable improvement - from 25% to about 8%. Adding an extra attack etc is a huge boost. OOM is a RELATIVELY minor boost to Marines - adding hits etc from Bolter Drill, Biologis, Lieutenants, Azrael etc are likely a stronger boost.

I don't think OotM is the problem, although getting hit by a unit of 6 longfang with a iron priest with servitors with melta guns isn't fun, and neither is being hit by desolators. But everything else, is just meh. Marines don't have enough extra rules procing DW etc to make the re-rolls realy change games and they definitly don't have eldar style rules, where re-rolls do huge things, or even the more limited custodes style re-rolls. In general I think, GW is doing their usual rules floping thing. People said they disliked auras, that there were problems with characters and how to make them survive. And they give us halfbacked stuff, especialy for some armies. I do think that the fact that GW knows that marines are their core army, combined with the want to sell maximum potential models to various marine players means we get the problems with marines jumping from being criminaly underpowered to desolator style metas of end 9th. IMO an unfixable thing, especialy if on top of that there are other non marine armies in the mix and lore, and faction fantasy etc.

Now what I think marine armies should feel, is the way custodes feel now. They shouldn't be just mooks that die from what ever the basic weapon for the edition is, because in the end all good basic weapons somehow end up really good at killing marines. But to balance it, to give it points for multiple marine armies, including chaos and fringe stuff like GK and custodes (I know they are not marines in lore), that is a task that would require a team of 2-3 people pere codex working and testing with a 4-5 play test team for months to get working. And someone would have to invent a rule/game mechanic etc that would would let marines, feel like marines within the core rules of an edition. All of this is fantasy though, because GW wants to reset rules, and entice constant buying (nothing wrong with that by the way). They would just have to have designers work and work well all the time, same with playtest teams. That is on the level of me thinking one day I may win in a lotto.

From what I expect from 10th is for the marine codex to be a meh side grade, and the real fun marines arriving with the 2.0 wave. With maybe some odd build poping up, if GW misses some sort of interaction or over buffs a new units synergy with new detachment rules or something similar.

Karol wrote:

...that is a task that would require a team of 2-3 people pere codex working and testing with a 4-5 play test team for months to get working...

I'm picking this out of the block of text to highlight something I think many often do not realize.

A team of 6 people playtesting an average of two complete 2k point matches in a workday across a period of 26 weeks (one week for each faction, lasting half a year) would result in fewer total games played than a single mildly busy GT weekend in the tournament scene. Imagine trying to compete with that while you're actively making tweaks to the game in that 6 month period.

A lot of people like to beat the drum "more playtesting! more playtesting!" and then toss out numbers like Karol did here as a legitimate solution. This is not a solution. This won't scale nearly as well as you think it would. The amount of data they glean from this suggestion is functionally worthless compared to the speed at which the 40k tournament scene identifies winners and losers just through sheer weight of matches played.

Edit: I accidentally a word above

Lemondish wrote:

Karol wrote:

...that is a task that would require a team of 2-3 people pere codex working and testing with a 4-5 play test team for months to get working...

I'm picking this out of the block of text to highlight something I think many often do not realize.

A team of 6 people playtesting an average of two complete 2k point matches in a workday across a period of 26 weeks (one week for each faction, lasting half a year) would result in fewer total games played than a single mildly busy GT weekend in the tournament scene. Imagine trying to compete with that while you're actively making tweaks to the game in that 6 month period.

A lot of people like to beat the drum "more playtesting! more playtesting!" and then toss out numbers like Karol did here as a legitimate solution. This is not a solution. This won't scale nearly as well as you think it would. The amount of data they glean from this suggestion is functionally worthless compared to the speed at which the 40k tournament scene identifies winners and losers just through sheer weight of matches played.

Edit: I accidentally a word above

Yup, agree entirely. It also boldly assumes they don't have other games that need testing, or is it now 4-5 teams of 6 people? It quickly gets out of hand and expensive for very little return of worth.

Indeed.

Play testing is always going to be limited. Even if you’ve a couple of hundred folks involved doing quite intensive gaming, their in-game hours is nowt compared to the game taking place upon release.

As I’ve said before, and you feel how you like about it, that 40K has anything resembling game balance is in itself a small miracle due to the sheer number of variables in play.

Balance is math and missions, not magic.

Lemondish wrote:

Karol wrote:

...that is a task that would require a team of 2-3 people pere codex working and testing with a 4-5 play test team for months to get working...

I'm picking this out of the block of text to highlight something I think many often do not realize.

A team of 6 people playtesting an average of two complete 2k point matches in a workday across a period of 26 weeks (one week for each faction, lasting half a year) would result in fewer total games played than a single mildly busy GT weekend in the tournament scene. Imagine trying to compete with that while you're actively making tweaks to the game in that 6 month period.

A lot of people like to beat the drum "more playtesting! more playtesting!" and then toss out numbers like Karol did here as a legitimate solution. This is not a solution. This won't scale nearly as well as you think it would. The amount of data they glean from this suggestion is functionally worthless compared to the speed at which the 40k tournament scene identifies winners and losers just through sheer weight of matches played.

Edit: I accidentally a word above

Stop defending GW's gak releases and expecting the competitive scene to start from 0 with an entirely unbalanced game that needs to be balanced from nothing. Tournaments aren't playtests, it's a different thing and you can't compare the two 1-1, stuff like Eldar being out of wack did not need hundreds of tournament games to show up. Playtesters also don't need to be paid, so the financial burden is total gak as well, is it bad for a huge company to take advantage of their fans and influencers to get free testing? Yeah, but let's ignore that since it's better than the alternative of an untested game that has to be fixed based on tournament results after 18 months halfway to the start of the next edition.

3 test games each with 200 different lists is 300 playtests. 6 months using 20 free playtesters that play an average of 5 games a month gets the necessary playtesting for 40k to be shipped in a decent state done. Would there still be problems that weren't caught by mathhammer or those 200 lists being used more or less randomly against one of those other 200 lists? Yes. But they would be the same kinds of problems we have when the game is as well balanced as it's ever been and a couple of pts and rules revisions would iron out everything and make the game truly balanced and not just in the every faction has a 45-55% win rate way. Those 200 lists should be minor variations of the same milk toast White Dwarf battle report lists, they should be built to exploit synergies and spam each kind of unit in a list to get the truest possible measure of where the factions are.

Lemondish wrote:

Karol wrote:

...that is a task that would require a team of 2-3 people pere codex working and testing with a 4-5 play test team for months to get working...

I'm picking this out of the block of text to highlight something I think many often do not realize.

A team of 6 people playtesting an average of two complete 2k point matches in a workday across a period of 26 weeks (one week for each faction, lasting half a year) would result in fewer total games played than a single mildly busy GT weekend in the tournament scene. Imagine trying to compete with that while you're actively making tweaks to the game in that 6 month period.

A lot of people like to beat the drum "more playtesting! more playtesting!" and then toss out numbers like Karol did here as a legitimate solution. This is not a solution. This won't scale nearly as well as you think it would. The amount of data they glean from this suggestion is functionally worthless compared to the speed at which the 40k tournament scene identifies winners and losers just through sheer weight of matches played.

Edit: I accidentally a word above

Well, it works because there's diminishing returns on playtesting anyway. 10th was clearly not playtested enough; if the community can find the broken combos within 24 hours of release and make degenerate wraithknight lists etc then they didn't playtest enough, full stop. There reaches a point where it's not worth it, however.

And all the playtesting in the world doesn't amount to anything if you don't listen to them...

Hecaton wrote:

Lemondish wrote:

Karol wrote:

...that is a task that would require a team of 2-3 people pere codex working and testing with a 4-5 play test team for months to get working...

I'm picking this out of the block of text to highlight something I think many often do not realize.

A team of 6 people playtesting an average of two complete 2k point matches in a workday across a period of 26 weeks (one week for each faction, lasting half a year) would result in fewer total games played than a single mildly busy GT weekend in the tournament scene. Imagine trying to compete with that while you're actively making tweaks to the game in that 6 month period.

A lot of people like to beat the drum "more playtesting! more playtesting!" and then toss out numbers like Karol did here as a legitimate solution. This is not a solution. This won't scale nearly as well as you think it would. The amount of data they glean from this suggestion is functionally worthless compared to the speed at which the 40k tournament scene identifies winners and losers just through sheer weight of matches played.

Edit: I accidentally a word above

Well, it works because there's diminishing returns on playtesting anyway. 10th was clearly not playtested enough; if the community can find the broken combos within 24 hours of release and make degenerate wraithknight lists etc then they didn't playtest enough, full stop. There reaches a point where it's not worth it, however.

As a QA tester your goal is to break the thing. The parts of the community that find those broken combos are doing exactly that, and GWs testers are not. No amount of playtime can fix testers that are only trying to make sure the game is playable.

nekooni wrote:

Hecaton wrote:

Lemondish wrote:

Karol wrote:

...that is a task that would require a team of 2-3 people pere codex working and testing with a 4-5 play test team for months to get working...

I'm picking this out of the block of text to highlight something I think many often do not realize.

A team of 6 people playtesting an average of two complete 2k point matches in a workday across a period of 26 weeks (one week for each faction, lasting half a year) would result in fewer total games played than a single mildly busy GT weekend in the tournament scene. Imagine trying to compete with that while you're actively making tweaks to the game in that 6 month period.

A lot of people like to beat the drum "more playtesting! more playtesting!" and then toss out numbers like Karol did here as a legitimate solution. This is not a solution. This won't scale nearly as well as you think it would. The amount of data they glean from this suggestion is functionally worthless compared to the speed at which the 40k tournament scene identifies winners and losers just through sheer weight of matches played.

Edit: I accidentally a word above

Well, it works because there's diminishing returns on playtesting anyway. 10th was clearly not playtested enough; if the community can find the broken combos within 24 hours of release and make degenerate wraithknight lists etc then they didn't playtest enough, full stop. There reaches a point where it's not worth it, however.

As a QA tester your goal is to break the thing. The parts of the community that find those broken combos are doing exactly that, and GWs testers are not. No amount of playtime can fix testers that are only trying to make sure the game is playable.

Fun little misconception, a QA analyst or engineer is generally there to highlight and provide details of risk to stakeholders (at least in my pocket of life), the testing is primarily to ensure things work as expected as much as, if not more than it is to break things. So yes, making sure it's playable is the first thing they should do, which does actually suggest it's a lack of time.

Dudeface wrote:

nekooni wrote:

Hecaton wrote:

Lemondish wrote:

Karol wrote:

...that is a task that would require a team of 2-3 people pere codex working and testing with a 4-5 play test team for months to get working...

I'm picking this out of the block of text to highlight something I think many often do not realize.

A team of 6 people playtesting an average of two complete 2k point matches in a workday across a period of 26 weeks (one week for each faction, lasting half a year) would result in fewer total games played than a single mildly busy GT weekend in the tournament scene. Imagine trying to compete with that while you're actively making tweaks to the game in that 6 month period.

A lot of people like to beat the drum "more playtesting! more playtesting!" and then toss out numbers like Karol did here as a legitimate solution. This is not a solution. This won't scale nearly as well as you think it would. The amount of data they glean from this suggestion is functionally worthless compared to the speed at which the 40k tournament scene identifies winners and losers just through sheer weight of matches played.

Edit: I accidentally a word above

Well, it works because there's diminishing returns on playtesting anyway. 10th was clearly not playtested enough; if the community can find the broken combos within 24 hours of release and make degenerate wraithknight lists etc then they didn't playtest enough, full stop. There reaches a point where it's not worth it, however.

As a QA tester your goal is to break the thing. The parts of the community that find those broken combos are doing exactly that, and GWs testers are not. No amount of playtime can fix testers that are only trying to make sure the game is playable.

Fun little misconception, a QA analyst or engineer is generally there to highlight and provide details of risk to stakeholders (at least in my pocket of life), the testing is primarily to ensure things work as expected as much as, if not more than it is to break things. So yes, making sure it's playable is the first thing they should do, which does actually suggest it's a lack of time.

Can you find a game playtesting job description that includes concern for stakeholders? If it's insider knowledge unrelated to game development then I don't see how it's relevant. Do you think 200 playtests dedicated to trying to break the game wouldn't have a big impact or do you think it's impossible to achieve or what is your point? The release of 6th, 9th and 10th were atrocious and 8th was also pretty bad, things that could have been fixed with a mathhammer foundation and thorough playtesting (150 games not 10000), then you need earlier playtesting to see if the changed mechanics are actually fun, but that's the sort of stuff GW could be testing right now with house rules in preparation for 11th edition. Stuff like making melee idiotic or making flyers garbage, GW could have started testing those ideas at the start of 9th edition by creating two lists and having some playtesters use house rules for the game, you don't need to write a whole new rulebook and set of pts for each of those tests.

 vict0988 wrote:

Dudeface wrote:

nekooni wrote:

Hecaton wrote:

Lemondish wrote:

Karol wrote:

...that is a task that would require a team of 2-3 people pere codex working and testing with a 4-5 play test team for months to get working...

I'm picking this out of the block of text to highlight something I think many often do not realize.

A team of 6 people playtesting an average of two complete 2k point matches in a workday across a period of 26 weeks (one week for each faction, lasting half a year) would result in fewer total games played than a single mildly busy GT weekend in the tournament scene. Imagine trying to compete with that while you're actively making tweaks to the game in that 6 month period.

A lot of people like to beat the drum "more playtesting! more playtesting!" and then toss out numbers like Karol did here as a legitimate solution. This is not a solution. This won't scale nearly as well as you think it would. The amount of data they glean from this suggestion is functionally worthless compared to the speed at which the 40k tournament scene identifies winners and losers just through sheer weight of matches played.

Edit: I accidentally a word above

Well, it works because there's diminishing returns on playtesting anyway. 10th was clearly not playtested enough; if the community can find the broken combos within 24 hours of release and make degenerate wraithknight lists etc then they didn't playtest enough, full stop. There reaches a point where it's not worth it, however.

As a QA tester your goal is to break the thing. The parts of the community that find those broken combos are doing exactly that, and GWs testers are not. No amount of playtime can fix testers that are only trying to make sure the game is playable.

Fun little misconception, a QA analyst or engineer is generally there to highlight and provide details of risk to stakeholders (at least in my pocket of life), the testing is primarily to ensure things work as expected as much as, if not more than it is to break things. So yes, making sure it's playable is the first thing they should do, which does actually suggest it's a lack of time.

Can you find a game playtesting job description that includes concern for stakeholders? If it's insider knowledge unrelated to game development then I don't see how it's relevant. Do you think 200 playtests dedicated to trying to break the game wouldn't have a big impact or do you think it's impossible to achieve or what is your point? The release of 6th, 9th and 10th were atrocious and 8th was also pretty bad, things that could have been fixed with a mathhammer foundation and thorough playtesting (150 games not 10000), then you need earlier playtesting to see if the changed mechanics are actually fun, but that's the sort of stuff GW could be testing right now with house rules in preparation for 11th edition. Stuff like making melee idiotic or making flyers garbage, GW could have started testing those ideas at the start of 9th edition by creating two lists and having some playtesters use house rules for the game, you don't need to write a whole new rulebook and set of pts for each of those tests.

You won't find one that likely words it that way but it'll have a clause about reporting sources of risk or impact to the product generally. it's the difference between going "this broke, please fix it" to a designer/developer and "this release looks like it's a bag of trash and there's lots of niggling problems that don't stop it going out" or "It's technically working as expected but I'm concerned that if you do XYZ then this might cause problems down the line" type comments to a management board who have the authority to grant more time or block it.

The quality of the product is more than just "does it break".

Dudeface wrote:
The quality of the product is more than just "does it break".

That's obvious, and I never stated anything like that.
I said that your goal as the tester is to break the product - Otherwise you won't know what risks / issues there are.
Just running through good-weather test cases might ensure that functionality is in place, but it doesn't tell you what unintended "functionality" was implemented along with it, or how easy it is to derail and misuse features / the product.

Checking test cases can be (and frequently is ) automated and only requires an analyst / engineer to go through the results, but if that's all you do you're not doing good QA. You're doing the bare minimum.
GW is like that, and even fails at this basic step. More time might fix that, but it's still not able to find the unintended "features" reliably.