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nekooni wrote:

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.

It's impossible to say as they're likely to be ensuring the happy path behaviour first, then running out of time, you can't automate 40k.

Dudeface wrote:

nekooni wrote:

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.

It's impossible to say as they're likely to be ensuring the happy path behaviour first, then running out of time, you can't automate 40k.

Run out of time how? Do you think the indexes were finished less than 2 months before release? Aren't there printed materials for the starter thing?

Dudeface wrote:

nekooni wrote:

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.

It's impossible to say as they're likely to be ensuring the happy path behaviour first, then running out of time, you can't automate 40k.

Yes you can. You can't automate every detail, but you can run 'basic math checks' thousands of times to see what baseline outcomes are. That's dead simple. Accounting for cover (on a percentage of shots to simulate how much cover an 'average' board should have is barely any more difficult, and that can be adjusted up and down for different expectations, so they can actually determine what amount of cover should be the average)

If they aren't at least doing that for every matchup, they're not even putting a token effort in.

vict0988 wrote:

Dudeface wrote:

nekooni wrote:

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.

It's impossible to say as they're likely to be ensuring the happy path behaviour first, then running out of time, you can't automate 40k.

Run out of time how? Do you think the indexes were finished less than 2 months before release? Aren't there printed materials for the starter thing?

We know that the profiles in the build guide for Leviathan has very different stats to those of the index, so somewhere between that being printed and the release the indexes were at least heavily revised if not written. Given they also have to print the cards for said Index it means the gap likely wasn't very big. So If we assume a team of 6 peeps or so plays 2 games a day for a full working week over a month to playtest that's 300 games, so just enough to get past 10 per faction and it's assuming they don't have anything else to do and there are iterations floating in and out. it also doesn't necessarily account for the missions used, the army size (as they promote 3 sizes still including combat patrol).

Voss wrote:

Dudeface wrote:

nekooni wrote:

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.

It's impossible to say as they're likely to be ensuring the happy path behaviour first, then running out of time, you can't automate 40k.

Yes you can. You can't automate every detail, but you can run 'basic math checks' thousands of times to see what baseline outcomes are. That's dead simple. Accounting for cover (on a percentage of shots to simulate how much cover an 'average' board should have is barely any more difficult, and that can be adjusted up and down for different expectations, so they can actually determine what amount of cover should be the average)

If they aren't at least doing that for every matchup, they're not even putting a token effort in.

Define "every match up" though, are you suggesting they sit and maths out say chaos legionnaires into every available profile with every possible combination of buffs or attached characters, with every possible combination of buffs/debuffs on the target with and without cover for both squad sizes and all variants of squad loadout?

That's a lot of data that doesn't necessarily tell you a right lot due to the sheer volume of crud that comes out. Nevermind trying to do that for every unit in the game. That's a hefty chunk of development time spent even just analysing the output.

How do you come to 300 games being 10 for each faction?

Why does every list need to be played in every mission? Playtesting isn't about finding out that Eldar have a 10% higher win rate in mission #3.

 vict0988 wrote:
How do you come to 300 games being 10 for each faction?

Why does every list need to be played in every mission? Playtesting isn't about finding out that Eldar have a 10% higher win rate in mission #3.

What is it then? I'd argue that playtesting should find things like an army is oddly good at a specific mission.

What would you consider playtesting to be for?

Edit: also ~26 factions is 260, so as I said "just over 10 per faction".

Dudeface wrote:


Define "every match up" though, are you suggesting they sit and maths out say chaos legionnaires into every available profile with every possible combination of buffs or attached characters, with every possible combination of buffs/debuffs on the target with and without cover for both squad sizes and all variants of squad loadout?

That's a lot of data that doesn't necessarily tell you a right lot due to the sheer volume of crud that comes out. Nevermind trying to do that for every unit in the game. That's a hefty chunk of development time spent even just analysing the output.

Even if you did simple, naive all-versus-all testing, yes, you could automate that. There aren't so many configs that they would overwhelm modern compute infrastructure even at smaller scale. Especially with 10e where GW has stripped out so many of the interactions that were part of the game previously, you could do that. But you shouldn't have to do that, even; somebody paid by GW to do this should have enough understanding of the game to categorize and group test cases in a way that catches most scenarios that you'd encounter IRL. Of course it wouldn't catch everything, but again, it would catch the obvious stuff that GW is not catching today.

 Gene St. Ealer wrote:

Dudeface wrote:


Define "every match up" though, are you suggesting they sit and maths out say chaos legionnaires into every available profile with every possible combination of buffs or attached characters, with every possible combination of buffs/debuffs on the target with and without cover for both squad sizes and all variants of squad loadout?

That's a lot of data that doesn't necessarily tell you a right lot due to the sheer volume of crud that comes out. Nevermind trying to do that for every unit in the game. That's a hefty chunk of development time spent even just analysing the output.

Even if you did simple, naive all-versus-all testing, yes, you could automate that. There aren't so many configs that they would overwhelm modern compute infrastructure even at smaller scale. Especially with 10e where GW has stripped out so many of the interactions that were part of the game previously, you could do that. But you shouldn't have to do that, even; somebody paid by GW to do this should have enough understanding of the game to categorize and group test cases in a way that catches most scenarios that you'd encounter IRL. Of course it wouldn't catch everything, but again, it would catch the obvious stuff that GW is not catching today.

I wrote a simple application, this takes one unit and lets it fire at another, do this 100,000 times and plot the statistical results of unsaved wounds caused.

writing this took a few hours, it doesn't have all the interactions of special rules (e.g. devastating hits) yet, but it will have them added, this is not complex and it runs in less time that it takes it to draw the chart for the outputs, this on a decade old machine. the hard bit is loading the unit profiles but given GW likely already have them electronically it would be even easier.

yup its only unit v unit, but its a simple way to see effectiveness in a range of tactical situations, different ranges, firer moving/stationary, target moving/stationary, in cover, out of cover.

I'm doing it out of curiosity but take that and come up with an average "cost per unsaved wound" across all known target types - or by target types in broad groups (horde, infantry, light armour etc) wouldn't be that hard to add once the profiles are grouped accordingly - plot that cost and you will see the outliers pretty quickly

yes it doesn't account for how the player uses them tactically, but then the points cost likely shouldn't even try to do that

and note once you have all units it becomes easier to then say "what about 2v2 encounters? start adding what characters can do - likely needs a basic scripting engine adding at that point

Dudeface wrote:

 vict0988 wrote:
How do you come to 300 games being 10 for each faction?

Why does every list need to be played in every mission? Playtesting isn't about finding out that Eldar have a 10% higher win rate in mission #3.

What is it then? I'd argue that playtesting should find things like an army is oddly good at a specific mission.

What would you consider playtesting to be for?

Edit: also ~26 factions is 260, so as I said "just over 10 per faction".

I agree that 300 games is too little to thoroughly test 40k, I don't think both players testing a list at the same time would be problematic assuming each list gets 3 tries. So it's 23 games per faction or 7 lists per faction if you have 300 games.

Finding out that Eldar are good at mission #3 needs hundreds of games featuring Eldar, prior to that all you can really do is guess, I want GW to move away from all the guessing. You get hundreds of games worth of win rate data from tournaments, that's the kinds of things you want to fix after. Eldar are good at mission #3 is not a catastrophe, terrible internal and external balance is a catastrophe, so that's what foundational mathhammer and a thorough competitive playtest battery has to find. The fix is easy to external and internal balance problems, points adjustments. The fix for Eldar win disproportionately often in mission #3 is not easy, if you are writing a 4th-edition style mission set then Eldar winning some missions more than others is a goal from my understanding of what people like about these sorts of missions or if you have a anti-set of missions which are just a bunch of random tables.

Dudeface wrote:

 vict0988 wrote:
How do you come to 300 games being 10 for each faction?

Why does every list need to be played in every mission? Playtesting isn't about finding out that Eldar have a 10% higher win rate in mission #3.

What is it then? I'd argue that playtesting should find things like an army is oddly good at a specific mission.

What would you consider playtesting to be for?

Edit: also ~26 factions is 260, so as I said "just over 10 per faction".

It'd be good if GW could get their playtesting to the level of identifying trends in specific missions. At the moment playtesting should absolutely catch massive outliers like the current situation with Eldar, or Nids in 9th or SM 2.0 in 8th edition. There are some things that should simply be evident almost without putting models on the table. The fact GW continues to screw even these up is a problem. We also have testimony from ex-playtesters and it seems like whatever GW call playtesting, really isn't that at all. They seem to not allow playtesters to design their own lists and don't know how to deal with feedback appropriately.

It's pretty obvious that any amount of playtesting GW do prior to a Codex released will be dwarfed several times over by the number of games played around the world just on release weekend. That shouldn't be an excuse to let the really obvious things slip through.

Slipspace wrote:

Dudeface wrote:

 vict0988 wrote:
How do you come to 300 games being 10 for each faction?

Why does every list need to be played in every mission? Playtesting isn't about finding out that Eldar have a 10% higher win rate in mission #3.

What is it then? I'd argue that playtesting should find things like an army is oddly good at a specific mission.

What would you consider playtesting to be for?

Edit: also ~26 factions is 260, so as I said "just over 10 per faction".

It'd be good if GW could get their playtesting to the level of identifying trends in specific missions. At the moment playtesting should absolutely catch massive outliers like the current situation with Eldar, or Nids in 9th or SM 2.0 in 8th edition. There are some things that should simply be evident almost without putting models on the table. The fact GW continues to screw even these up is a problem. We also have testimony from ex-playtesters and it seems like whatever GW call playtesting, really isn't that at all. They seem to not allow playtesters to design their own lists and don't know how to deal with feedback appropriately.

It's pretty obvious that any amount of playtesting GW do prior to a Codex released will be dwarfed several times over by the number of games played around the world just on release weekend. That shouldn't be an excuse to let the really obvious things slip through.

I agree it's not an excuse and it's clearly mismanaged their side, but I often think there's a habit on the internet of hand waving "just have a handful of guys and test it" like it's easy to get all those internal and external balances tested in the obviously short time frames they have. Obviously to solve it fully, their management and release process needs to change, they need more people, time and better direction, but as it stands they're evidently not too bothered.

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

IF they actually wanted balance though it would take up whopping one player to catch up most of balance issues...

After all players can spot broken combo's in first reading of codex. Somehow I doubt just being GW designer makes you incapable of same if they wanted.

Broken combo's and how powerful codex is is determined within minutes of codex leaking.

One playtester thus could point out same info in about same time.

But thing is...GW doesn't WANT broken units to be hard to spot. The thing about marketing ploys is if they are hard to spot they lose the point. When marketing department says "make these units to sell" game designers can't make it hard to spot.

Hell I know if I'm working against direct order from my boss I can't hold to job forever. Doubt GW is much different. Boss says, you follow.

By the Emperor! Not that old broken on purpose to sell models chestnut again. The Game Designers may be bad at locating and removing broken combos, but all the evidence regarding model availability is all you need to know they are not putting in broken datasheets to sell models.

I my mind, the rules team lacks the people who can see the broken combos and explain them in a way to convince them to fix them pre-publication. It doesn't take a genius to look at the release version of Codex Aeldari and realize they have a Mortal Wound producing engine in the faction and model rules. Either nobody saw it or they couldn't convince the boss it needed fixing.

I just got my ass kicked by Orks turn 1 because I FORGOT Oath of Moment.

Is it a crutch? Sure. But Marines aren't at the top 10 of win rates even still.

nekooni wrote:


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.

So what are you suggesting? "Be effective playtesters" was an assumed part of my suggestion.

 Nightlord1987 wrote:
I just got my ass kicked by Orks turn 1 because I FORGOT Oath of Moment.

Is it a crutch? Sure. But Marines aren't at the top 10 of win rates even still.

Do you think crutches are good? Do you think Oaths is a good crutch for Space Marines to have?

 Nightlord1987 wrote:
I just got my ass kicked by Orks turn 1 because I FORGOT Oath of Moment.

Is it a crutch? Sure. But Marines aren't at the top 10 of win rates even still.

If you got your ass kicked turn 1 by orks, the sole reason is that you have made absolutely devastatingly terrible decisions during your first movement phase.

No amount of re-rolls would have saved you.

 skeleton wrote:
After reading a lot of posts how deathly the eldar are, i have to say marines and there oath are even worse.
We played with a lot of terrein so plenty of cover and places to hide.
And the marine player deleted one unit a time with his oath and did damge to the rest of my army.
Reroll all hits and all wounds for the hole army at the chosen target is to strong.
and every turn he can put it on a unit that is a danger for his force and kills it.
Last night i played WE agains dark angels.

my list His list

2x10man beserker unit 2x full squad intersessors 2x grenadelauncher
1x10man jachals 1x 5 reivers
1x5 terminators 1x 3 inceptor with assault bolters
1x Kharn 1x 3 centurion devestators(lascannon and missles)
1x master of exicutions 1x primaris dreathnouth (plasmablaster )
1 landraider 1x primaris dreathnouth (twin lascannon, misslelauncher.
1x librarian(gave a unit 4+ inv save)

in the end i did win the game, but only had 1 terminator, 2 jackhals, 4 beserkers and the master of executions left.
the unit beserkers and the two jachals only survived becaus i hide them on a objective so scoring some points every round.

he had left 2 dreathnoughts, and his centurion devestators.

i scored the full points from the last turn because he diddnt have the movement to shoot on my hidden units.

OOM is a bit of a lazy hand wavium rule imo, that said its not overly op, if anything it makes the player shortsighted and focus on one unit rather than the bigger picture whats happening on the battlefield, and as you've found they ignore objectives, sit back and ultimately lose the match.

maybe because i've always played horde armies, but you dangle something interesting for the enemy to focus on, meanwhile you sweep up objectives and bring everything up into engagement range for a feast, im quite used to having units obliterated without doing any damage back, but then the sole reason i have them in my list is for distractions...

i've never stuck all my points into one unit, regardless of army, thats a silly tactic, give yourself many options and many targets.

Wolfboy wrote:


OOM is a bit of a lazy hand wavium rule imo, that said its not overly op, if anything it makes the player shortsighted and focus on one unit rather than the bigger picture whats happening on the battlefield, and as you've found they ignore objectives, sit back and ultimately lose the match.

maybe because i've always played horde armies, but you dangle something interesting for the enemy to focus on, meanwhile you sweep up objectives and bring everything up into engagement range for a feast, im quite used to having units obliterated without doing any damage back, but then the sole reason i have them in my list is for distractions...

i've never stuck all my points into one unit, regardless of army, thats a silly tactic, give yourself many options and many targets.

I wasn't that impressed when OOM came out. A lot of folks were ooh'ing and aah'ing over Bobby G giving a sort of second OOM target per turn, but even then I wasn't sold on that being the best of his "Here's Three, Pick One". I think OOM is actually for your secondary target. Something you want to kill but probably can't quite squeak it out with your secondary units.

 vict0988 wrote:

Do you think crutches are good? Do you think Oaths is a good crutch for Space Marines to have?

You go tell someone that needs them to walk, that he should dump his and walk like a normal person. Especialy when some other armies, in real life sense, are running around in exo suits. Marines without OOM are just bad, there is a reason why all the BA/SW/etc are being played as an ultramarines detachment. And even then those armies do not that well. Even by skewed GW standards.

All special rules are crutches in a sense. Try to play Tyranids without Synapse or Tau without FTGG as examples. Admittedly, the more powerful the special rule the weaker the datasheet needs to be and vice-versa.

Eldar are the exception and arguably that's part of the reason Eldar are so broken.

Karol wrote:

 vict0988 wrote:

Do you think crutches are good? Do you think Oaths is a good crutch for Space Marines to have?

You go tell someone that needs them to walk, that he should dump his and walk like a normal person. Especialy when some other armies, in real life sense, are running around in exo suits. Marines without OOM are just bad, there is a reason why all the BA/SW/etc are being played as an ultramarines detachment. And even then those armies do not that well. Even by skewed GW standards.

Yall know if you play them as BA/SW/DW/whtaver you still get oath, right? The detachment benefits have nothing to do with oath.

And CSM and Thousand Sons are all performing middle of the road, just like SM.

SM show as an artificially lower winrate because you are actively limiting your unit choices for no reason by not declaring yourself "officially" Space Wolves/Blood Angels/Deathwatch/Dark Angels. Every competitive player is going to do that because its literally just "more unit choices, for a cost of nothing, it's free." If you think "well maybe 1 sanguinary guard squad in my army would be good" then your data goes in as "blood angels".

So all the competitive loyalist marine players' data is currently going in as BA/DA/SW/DW and SM is lowered by a disprorportionate number of more casual players.

It's the same reason why during all of 8th/9th when we were reporting the different marine subfactions as separate factions for no reason, when all the comp players would switch from say Iron Hands to White Scars, the winrate of that subfaction would suddenly shoot up 10 points, and then the winrate of all other subfactions would go down. Because Casual Jimmy who always plays Iron Hands no matter what is now suddenly the only one youre looking at.

If you separated out "Harlequins" as their own faction rn theyd probably have a super super low winrate and if you separated "Aeldari" from "Ynnari" it would seem like playing as Ynnari gives you HUGE INSANE advantages because Ynnari would be like 72% wr vs Aeldari at 60 or something. But that's just because if you bring either Yvraine or Yncarne in your list your whole army "officially" becomes Ynnari despite using all the same rules.

yes, but synergy between something like stalwart or oaths is practicaly zero. That is why it is better to play marines out of the ultramarine detachment.

SM show as an artificially lower winrate because you are actively limiting your unit choices for no reason by not declaring yourself "officially" Space Wolves/Blood Angels/Deathwatch/Dark Angels. Every competitive player is going to do that because its literally just "more unit choices, for a cost of nothing, it's free." If you think "well maybe 1 sanguinary guard squad in my army would be good" then your data goes in as "blood angels".

Ah yes of course. Those stupid DG players why aren't they playing their army as csm or 1ksons. Almost as if people that picked BA want to play an army with BA models and BA feel, and they want that army to be good. And competitive players aren't picking marines. Also comparing csm(47% win rate) and 1ksons (53% win rate) to 43% win rate marines is a bit stratch. In the later case it is the same difference you have between imperial and chaos knights. Do you want to tell me that both the armies, using the same type of models (same way csm and sm use marines) are the same?

If you separated out "Harlequins" as their own faction rn theyd probably have a super super low winrate and if you separated "Aeldari" from "Ynnari" it would seem like playing as Ynnari gives you HUGE INSANE advantages because Ynnari would be like 72% wr vs Aeldari at 60 or something. But that's just because if you bring either Yvraine or Yncarne in your list your whole army "officially" becomes Ynnari despite using all the same rules.

And if you take GSC, but only take players who are not playing at their first GT, their win rates beat out eldar. Inari and eldar in general are insane, because someone at the design team has this idea fix in this mind to make them not just good, not just powerful, but also undercosted. And each edition when they get a new rule set, seems to be all about how many times do we have to nerf crazy unit X in eldar to balance the game. in 8th Dark Reapers were "nerfed" like 8 or 9 times. And they only were stopped from being run, when GW killed Inari with a WD codex. Eldar are one of the factions that have the smallest difference in win/lose rates between veteran and noob players, by the way. The only other group of armies that have similar stats are bottom tier armies. It doesn't really matter how well someone can play Votan, almost if the rules were an important part of actualy being able to play the game.

What makes something a crutch is when you suggest removing or redesigning it for game design or fluff reasons and people say you can't touch it because the faction doesn't work without it. If you suggest changing Eldar fate dice or AdMech gak rain then you don't get the same response.

Karol wrote:

 vict0988 wrote:

Do you think crutches are good? Do you think Oaths is a good crutch for Space Marines to have?

You go tell someone that needs them to walk, that he should dump his and walk like a normal person. Especialy when some other armies, in real life sense, are running around in exo suits. Marines without OOM are just bad, there is a reason why all the BA/SW/etc are being played as an ultramarines detachment. And even then those armies do not that well. Even by skewed GW standards.

That's exactly what's done with physical therapy Now do you want Space Marines to be 70% win rate for 3 months because all their units have to be buffed by 20% in preparation for a nerf to Oaths that comes 3 months later? No, you change both at the same time. You get feedback from playtesters and competitive players on whether your planned points reductions make up for the planned nerf to Oaths to put SM in a healthy position in the meta.

Breton wrote:

Wolfboy wrote:


OOM is a bit of a lazy hand wavium rule imo, that said its not overly op, if anything it makes the player shortsighted and focus on one unit rather than the bigger picture whats happening on the battlefield, and as you've found they ignore objectives, sit back and ultimately lose the match.

maybe because i've always played horde armies, but you dangle something interesting for the enemy to focus on, meanwhile you sweep up objectives and bring everything up into engagement range for a feast, im quite used to having units obliterated without doing any damage back, but then the sole reason i have them in my list is for distractions...

i've never stuck all my points into one unit, regardless of army, thats a silly tactic, give yourself many options and many targets.

I wasn't that impressed when OOM came out. A lot of folks were ooh'ing and aah'ing over Bobby G giving a sort of second OOM target per turn, but even then I wasn't sold on that being the best of his "Here's Three, Pick One". I think OOM is actually for your secondary target. Something you want to kill but probably can't quite squeak it out with your secondary units.

people wont use it that way though, with the amount of twin linked lascannons and other hard hitting firepower with re-roll buffs from secondary / tertiary rules, OOM isn't really making much difference especially when you compare it with oddball rules like Rad-Bombardment for adeptus mechanicus, auto battle shock or D3 mortal wounds on 3+ for every unit before you even move hmmmm.... then the fall out gift for battle rounds 2,3,4,5... YAY!

im not saying for any minute that adaptus mechanicus are any good, but that rule is mind-blowingly dumb.

im sure theres other oddball rules but that was one i came across and was like eh? you joking right? but for some reason everyone is hung up on OOM...?!?

Karol wrote:
Some dumb stuff

Competitive players are playing marines...but theyd be stupid to play them as "Adeptus Astartes." Because you literally just give up unit options to do so.

They play marines as Deathwatch, or Space Wolves, or Dark Angels, using the Adeptus Astartes detachment.

Because it costs absolutely nothing to do so.

Unless there was something particularly strong about Robute Guilliman, or Marneus Calgar, or some other such unique Adeptus Astartes character, there would be no reason for a competitive player to run their list as "Adeptus Astartes." as it happens Space Wolves and deathwatch offer the best unique units.

There is nothing so insane about Deathwatch Kill Teams that warrant an 8% jump in winrate. It's just that if you're a competitive player and you want to bring loyalist space marines, you might as well declare them as Deathwatch.


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People dont run Death Guard models as CSM (well, for the most part - I actually do have a friend who had an existing Death Guard army that continues to run them as CSM because he had a bunch of bikers, Obliterators, Havocs, etc) because theyre actually different model ranges.

95% of the loyalist range is shared between subfactions. someone with a SM army and someone with a SW army might have 3-4 different miniatures.

 the_scotsman wrote:

SM show as an artificially lower winrate because you are actively limiting your unit choices for no reason by not declaring yourself "officially" Space Wolves/Blood Angels/Deathwatch/Dark Angels. Every competitive player is going to do that because its literally just "more unit choices, for a cost of nothing, it's free." If you think "well maybe 1 sanguinary guard squad in my army would be good" then your data goes in as "blood angels".

So all the competitive loyalist marine players' data is currently going in as BA/DA/SW/DW and SM is lowered by a disprorportionate number of more casual players.

Eventually we'll be better served tracking Detachments but in terms of Gladius the same is true of declaring UM for Guilliman or other chapter specific characters.

 the_scotsman wrote:

Karol wrote:
Some dumb stuff

Competitive players are playing marines...but theyd be stupid to play them as "Adeptus Astartes." Because you literally just give up unit options to do so.

They play marines as Deathwatch, or Space Wolves, or Dark Angels, using the Adeptus Astartes detachment.

Because it costs absolutely nothing to do so.

Unless there was something particularly strong about Robute Guilliman, or Marneus Calgar, or some other such unique Adeptus Astartes character, there would be no reason for a competitive player to run their list as "Adeptus Astartes." as it happens Space Wolves and deathwatch offer the best unique units.

There is nothing so insane about Deathwatch Kill Teams that warrant an 8% jump in winrate. It's just that if you're a competitive player and you want to bring loyalist space marines, you might as well declare them as Deathwatch.




95% of the loyalist range is shared between subfactions. someone with a SM army and someone with a SW army might have 3-4 different miniatures.

Okey mr Intelligent. I just see those BA players with their 30 sang guards and DC throwing themself to play them as venguard vets. Or the DA player with his DW/RW going full outridder and co. No idea what the SW player with his TWC and wulfen is going to play them as, but it clearly something for smart people to know. And in compatitive w40k, there is no reason to run anything other then the top 5-6 armies, and that is depending on knowing the meta and how large the event is and how many tournament it is. But if someone, wants to be a compatitive WS/SW/BA/etc player they encounter certain limitations in power of their lists. Ones created by GW and not having much to do with skill. Tellin a SW player that he only has to play a "ultramarine" army, is kin to telling a chaos knight player that he just has to play imperial knights. Same with chaos marines. Now I know people dislike marines, for some reasons, to such a level that somehow all marine factions are considered to be one faction, but that ain't the case. Not historicaly, not player base wise, not rules wise and not model wise. But you know I am just dumb.

There is nothing so insane about Deathwatch Kill Teams that warrant an 8% jump in winrate. It's just that if you're a competitive player and you want to bring loyalist space marines, you might as well declare them as Deathwatch.

But you have read the rules right? No other space marine army has anything coming even close to what is the DW veteran squads. That and their special rules is what warrents the 8% jump

It has more to do with the Teleportarium strat in the Detachment than the Datasheets themselves. The Kill Teams aren't seeing a lot of play in Gladius after all.

yeah, a DW veteran squad is basically just a Sternguard squad that trades the better guns and better special rule for a 4++.

I dont think that their weird little heavy weapons are some great shakes.