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Made in gb
Longtime Dakkanaut





I see a lot of talk on this form about which army is currently the best army beaded on the current trikes and FAQs for the army put out by GW. The talk tends to confidently state that x army is boosted and x army has been nerfed and that these rankings are indicative that one army will pretty much always beat all other armies.

I think these facts are often taken from tournament results.

However there is always a group of people that will counter the pint that x army is the best and that actually during a given period it has been struggling.

Is this not evidence that an armies performance is largely down to the player and the dice? And such conversations about x army it too powerful is really just a sub conscious desire for better rules for your own army to make it easier to win
   
Made in gb
Longtime Dakkanaut




Part of the problem is the stats usually track faction performance but what actually matters is the specific list. Some of the Eldar armies in 8th were good examples of this. The stats told us Aeldari armies were pretty good but when you dig into what was actually performing well you quite often saw things like armies spamming 30 Shining Spears or 8 aircraft. Your average gamer at the local club does not own that range of models so their performance with it is likely nowhere near what the stats say it should be. In contrast, when 8.5 SM were so fundamentally broken pretty much any SM army you saw was better than anything someone else could put together, with the exception of some of the very top-tier tournament armies for other factions.

A lot of the skills that differentiate good players from bad ones is the ability to put together a good army list, usually taken from whatever subset of factions is at the top. As we've seen from a couple of recent tournaments in the US, the ability to switch from one army to a completely different one also affects how well you do competitively. Most players don't have access to any army list they want at any given time and by the time they've put together a meta-competitive list the meta has moved on. You'll note that the best players simply don't use bad factions. You're not going to find any of the top players using whatever is towards the bottom of the tier list unless they can uncover some sort of previously unseen combo or strategy and even then it's often tied to new material for that army.
   
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Witch Hunter in the Shadows





mrFickle wrote:
Is this not evidence that an armies performance is largely down to the player and the dice?
A bit of both.

The power gap between armies can be vast. In 7th for instance you could build a marine list that matched a sisters list model for model, gun for gun, but at T4 with game-long rerolls, army wide obsec, and a large enough discount that you could also take a fully armed knight on top. And it would have been considered a weak marine list.

But then there are players who still would have found a way to have lost with it to the mirror-sisters army, or just rolled too many 1s at the wrong time.


mrFickle wrote:
And such conversations about x army it too powerful is really just a sub conscious desire for better rules for your own army to make it easier to win
Not so subconcious most of the time.
   
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Decrepit Dakkanaut




UK

A.T. wrote:
mrFickle wrote:



And such conversations about x army it too powerful is really just a sub conscious desire for better rules for your own army to make it easier to win
Not so subconcious most of the time.



I've seen people openly argue that having imbalance so that there is one army that wins easily because its overpowered is a good thing for the game and the health of the game at large. Even though they totally fail to realise that if that becomes the case then all the competitive people often shift to that army, so that easy win goes away because everyone is bringing the easy win at the same time. Thus they end up with the level playing field, just with 1 army combo dominating it.




The big problem with army strength is that we focus on win/loss stats, both at the general army level and at the specific army combo level. What almost all the stats generally overlook is who wins and the style/nature of play and skill of play. Almost all the online debate focuses on the numbers not the players. Furthermore they overlook the nature of terrain setup as well. There are some armies that will shine on certain terrain setups and fail on others. A gun-line is going to have a super easy time if the terrain is setup to favour big open areas in the middle where the gun-line can sit back and shoot without obstruction.


There are a lot of factors that come into play, but the community has a huge blind side to the actual player, setup and game side of it. We have an almost hyper focus on the numbers, whilst ignoring the whole other part of the game itself. Partly because the numbers are much easier to work with as they are clear, easy to categorise and fixed elements that are universal. Whilst the rest are very flexible and the lack of any strong community discussion on them means we lack the vocabulary and descriptive language and conventions to make it easier to have higher level discussion the world over.



As for if there ever is a "best army"; almost all wargames (barring those that use mirror stats like chess) will have some degree of imbalance in the system. How much or how little depends on the quality of rules and sometimes the timescale you view at. Eg I'd wager even games like Starcraft and Starcraft 2 have imbalances, but that regular balance sweeps juggle them around a bit, shifting which force is out in front. So viewed overall there's balance, even if when viewed within one single version there might be imbalance. The issue with GW games has always been that their imbalances are often big. The kind of things that are easily noticed and can be big deciders, creating situations of near auto win/loss for some army combos.

Heck Age of Sigmar has, in a full turn per player game, the chance of giving a player two turns in a row. In a game where we've all had that turn against us where the opponent got to wipe out a huge chunk of our models; AoS lets it happen twice. This, I think, speaks volumes about GW's overall attitude toward balance and its why we have so many chats about it that do focus on the stats, because often as not that's where the biggest stumbling block can be. GW Are better now than they were, but part of that is providing faster adjustments; they've adopted a bit of the video game "shake things up more regularly" approach, but have still not perfected proper balanced game approach. Part of it is likely attitude and style of how they approach it - bolsted by being the biggest name in the industry for near on 30 years constantly. But even when they do things like external playtesting they still send out pre-written army lists with stats only for those models in the list and ask how the game goes; they don't provide the whole story nor give playtesters the chance to use all the models. Plus my impression is it often happens late and thus making big changes isn't often on the cards, its more a quick check and then done.


One day the dream is that GW adopts some of the Magic the Gathering style and attitude toward rules. Heck even just a change in writing style would help, between armies and even within armies there are abilities that have the same effect (eg +1 attacks) which have totally different ability names. This makes the volume of things to learn greater, whilst in MTG most abilities have a single codified name that unifies them. A tap is a tap, you don't change it to a Forest Storm or an Ocean Swell purely for fluff.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2021/04/08 10:04:36


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Longtime Dakkanaut




 Overread wrote:

One day the dream is that GW adopts some of the Magic the Gathering style and attitude toward rules. Heck even just a change in writing style would help, between armies and even within armies there are abilities that have the same effect (eg +1 attacks) which have totally different ability names. This makes the volume of things to learn greater, whilst in MTG most abilities have a single codified name that unifies them. A tap is a tap, you don't change it to a Forest Storm or an Ocean Swell purely for fluff.


Um, they already do that for the games that are meant to be played like that. E.g. Underworlds. Kill Team Arena. Etc..

But if you wanna stick with the Wizards analogy, 40K isn't meant to be or written to be the MtG equivalent. It's more the D&D in the catalog.
   
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On an Express Elevator to Hell!!

Back in 2nd edition (!), Tyranids were absolutely horrible. Very small sample group (and no internet comparisons back then) but I don't think I ever saw them lose a game.

My gaming buddies and I used to voluntarily handicap in points and banned Genestealer magus + gate spell (purestrain genestealers appearing in combat in turn 1 just wasn't fair).

It may be just because I was on the receiving end however!

Honestly the only thing I can think of that felt more imbalanced was Eldar fleets in Battlefleet Gothic, which again seemed to be almost impossible to beat.

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Yes, there is, if the balance is terrible enough. The IH debacle at LVO2020 is a prime example of it. That list was objectively the best in the game at the time because it leveraged some absolutely embarrassingly broken combos that GW itself knew were broken but chose not to do anything about because <reasons>, and any other list winning would have been a huge upset.
   
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Omnipotent Necron Overlord






With the nature of releases being so spread apart. We never really have a cohesive edition anyways.

How would you define it though? There are so many ways to define it. Really it is almost impossible because everything has a counter anyways.

The best army in the game has the fewest counters is the way I would put it. Harlequins are pretty close to that now.

Blanket -1 to wound and 4++/3++ saves counter everything but mortal wounds.

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Vigo. Spain.

Theres not a single best army outside rare ocassions where one is so out of whack that it tops and tops every tournament like 8.5 Iron Hands. What you normally have is a top of 3-5 armies that are strongert that anything else.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2021/04/08 16:44:44


 Crimson Devil wrote:

Dakka does have White Knights and is also rather infamous for it's Black Knights. A new edition brings out the passionate and not all of them are good at expressing themselves in written form. There have been plenty of hysterical responses from both sides so far. So we descend into pointless bickering with neither side listening to each other. So posting here becomes more masturbation than conversation.

ERJAK wrote:
Forcing a 40k player to keep playing 7th is basically a hate crime.

 
   
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Longtime Dakkanaut




yukishiro1 wrote:
Yes, there is, if the balance is terrible enough. The IH debacle at LVO2020 is a prime example of it. That list was objectively the best in the game at the time because it leveraged some absolutely embarrassingly broken combos that GW itself knew were broken but chose not to do anything about because <reasons>, and any other list winning would have been a huge upset.


To be fair - Ravenguard Successors was equally broken, and if the dice had gone a bit differently would have won that final. (On another day Nayden's Eldar Soup might even have won).

Tournaments are a measure. Winning one is a function of player skill and dice.
But when tournament after tournament was producing:
1. Marines
2. Marines
3. Marines
4.... yeah its Marines.
You know you've got problems.

Similar story with the Castelan/Eldar Soup duopoly in 2018.

Partly this is a function of people playing them (i.e, going back to 2018, if 25%~ of people bring a knight, odds are some of them will have hot dice, whereas if just 2% of players are running Orks, they may not.) But if you assume players tend to cluster towards lists which should be mathematically superior, this probably doesn't matter that much. 40k has never had that much counter-meta play. If you are good versus "the meta" you are usually good full stop.
   
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My memory of that game is actually that the only reason it was as close as it was was because of the dice. IIRC there were multiple points in the game where just average dice would have set up Siegler up for a much smoother win.
   
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Longtime Dakkanaut





 Overread wrote:


One day the dream is that GW adopts some of the Magic the Gathering style and attitude toward rules. Heck even just a change in writing style would help, between armies and even within armies there are abilities that have the same effect (eg +1 attacks) which have totally different ability names. This makes the volume of things to learn greater, whilst in MTG most abilities have a single codified name that unifies them. A tap is a tap, you don't change it to a Forest Storm or an Ocean Swell purely for fluff.


I agree with almost everything you said Overread- essentially, stats paint an accurate enough picture to make some strong generalizations, but can't ever tell the whole story of any given game, for all of the reasons you mentioned.

But I'm not 100% sure I agree with the section I quoted. If you are playing only one army, it doesn't matter what a rule is called- there might be another army that has the same rule by a different name, but that won't matter to you, because you're only playing one army. And a healthy number of 40k players (particularly new players) do only play one army. You probably can't say that of the majority of tournament players; you probably can't say that for all Dakkanaughts either. However, it still may actually be true of the majority of 40k players, who are neither tournament players nor Dakkanaughts. And I know this echo chamber might convince us all at times that competitive Dakkanaughts are the majority of players, but I can almost guarantee that we are not anywhere near the majority.

But even for those who do play multiple armies, the brain does not relearn a rule to attach a new name to it. The brain takes the concept and attaches an additional label without having to actually do the work of memorizing the rule again. Kinda like having a friend who's always had a land line; you've had their number memorized for a decade, but then they get a cell. You may have to learn a different phone number, but you don't have to relearn anything else about your friend.

When an opponent is going through the process of working out the effect of a rule, seldom have my opponents named the rule before applying it- they don't tell me what the rule is called, they tell me what it does. Then I remember that that particular unit can do that particular thing. I never really bother attaching a name to it, because the name doesn't matter. This is why I hated USR's; the name never meant much to me, it was always the rule that mattered, so putting them all in the BRB instead of the data sheet usually meant nothing more than needing the extra book.

Now granted, we all do think differently, and I'm sure there probably are people who use a less experiential process to learn these things. And if you were learning by rote, having a name to which you can anchor a concept may help you remember it. But attaching a new label to the concept still requires far less cognitive activity than learning a new concept.

About everything else though, I'm with you.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2021/04/08 16:59:40


 
   
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Longtime Dakkanaut




But in MTG, people do say "this has first strike," not "this hits the opposing creature before the opposing creature hits back." Because there is a universal term that everyone understands that simplifies things. We actually have these in 40k already - nobody say "this unit has an ability that lets it be set up anywhere on the field from turn 2 on as long as it's more than 9" away from enemy models," they say "this unit has deep strike" because we use the legacy term and all know what it means.

   
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Decrepit Dakkanaut




UK

yukishiro1 wrote:
But in MTG, people do say "this has first strike," not "this hits the opposing creature before the opposing creature hits back." Because there is a universal term that everyone understands that simplifies things. We actually have these in 40k already - nobody say "this unit has an ability that lets it be set up anywhere on the field from turn 2 on as long as it's more than 9" away from enemy models," they say "this unit has deep strike" because we use the legacy term and all know what it means.



Exactly. It's much faster and easier when things have a standard term.

Lets take the newest Slaanesh book for Age of Sigmar. In that there are

Blissbarb Seekers - with Flawless Accuracy - Unit can run and still shoot later in the same turn
Blissbarb Archers - with Light-footed Killers - unit can run and still shoot later in the same turn

Both are in the same book and are even variations of the same unit (one on foot one mounted) and yet the term for the same ability is different. It's flavourful yes, but you can bet that ability, which is quite standard, has a different name for every single model that uses it. So instead of just say the single unified name or seeing the unified name on the units warscroll, we have to describe each and every one.

This gets further confusing when one unit might have a very similar but not quite the same ability. With a single name convention we'd easily see that its different, but with unique names for each model it becomes much easier to overlook or miss those subtle differences.


It doesn't make the game any more or less deep, but it is a barrier to easy learning and its a fumbling block for people learning different armies and such.


Again in MTG its full of art and flavour, but at the same time the technical side is just technical. Abilities always have the same name no matter what the art or lore of the card using it is. A dragon with flanking is the same as an ork with flanking - its just flanking.


It's a really simple change in style and yet GW could do it and retain all the fluff and lore, whilst making the game easier to access for people.

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It's a really simple change in style and yet GW could do it

I think you mean 'stop not doing it,' as it was GW's standard approach until recently. {Well, mostly. It took them an embarrassingly long time to work out that 'Fleet of Foot/Claw/Wing/Whatever' could just be 'Fleet')

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Cobleskill

Just wait for the 40k Commander decks that are coming later this year. Any bets whether or not they are going to be keyworded? Or are they all going to have their own concepts that function in the exact same way?

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Racerguy180 wrote:
rules come and go, models are forever...like herpes.
 
   
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Longtime Dakkanaut





So would a better style of tournament be that army lists are drafted by the tournament hosts for balance and the players play each drafted army in turn to test their skill as players rather than their absolute to analyse the rule set and find winning algorithms
   
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Terrifying Doombull




mrFickle wrote:
So would a better style of tournament be that army lists are drafted by the tournament hosts for balance and the players play each drafted army in turn to test their skill as players rather than their absolute to analyse the rule set and find winning algorithms


Not even vaguely.
If Bob gets an 'drafted' army that's similar to what he practices with, and Steve and Jill don't, Bob will have a huge advantage. If someone else gets a relatively unfamiliar, expert-style army in a strange configuration, their chances are pretty much shot.

A drafted tournament will have huge spikes according to the biases of whoever's making the list (which can be huge depending on what they think is a 'reasonable army) and the player's own habits and preferences.

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Decrepit Dakkanaut




UK

Not to mention "hobby" is still a big part of the scene. Sure there are a lot of top pros who have no army attachment, or very little, who jump to whatever is the best of the best. But its dangerous to cater specifically to that market because you're looking at a niche of a niche. There are still many who turn up to events just for the fun; or who show off their army with pride (not just for the prizes if there are any).


I think cutting that aspect out would be a mistake of events and takes away part of the wargaming hobby.

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Noctis Labyrinthus

Yes, but there's never a true unanimous consensus for the best army.

I think right now "most" or at least "more than any other choice" people would say Sisters are the strongest army, but I'm sure a lot of people disagree with that.
   
Made in ca
Longtime Dakkanaut





 Overread wrote:


Lets take the newest Slaanesh book for Age of Sigmar. In that there are

Blissbarb Seekers - with Flawless Accuracy - Unit can run and still shoot later in the same turn
Blissbarb Archers - with Light-footed Killers - unit can run and still shoot later in the same turn

Both are in the same book and are even variations of the same unit (one on foot one mounted) and yet the term for the same ability is different. It's flavourful yes, but you can bet that ability, which is quite standard, has a different name for every single model that uses it. So instead of just say the single unified name or seeing the unified name on the units warscroll, we have to describe each and every one.


Honestly, if I've got a unit that I am advancing that has this power, I literally say the words, "These guys are advancing, but they have a rule where they can still shoot."

Because my opponent has a unit or strat that can do the exact same thing, they get it. That is literally the solution to every instance of the problem you described above. It's really that easy, which is why I took my original stance on the issue- not so much against USR's, just doubting how much they actually helped, given that I, and the vast majority of the people I play with use the dialogue above naturally, whether a USR exists or not.

If you had stopped there, you wouldn't have changed my mind. But you went on to say:

 Overread wrote:

This gets further confusing when one unit might have a very similar but not quite the same ability. With a single name convention we'd easily see that its different, but with unique names for each model it becomes much easier to overlook or miss those subtle differences.


This angle, I get.

You did it man! You changed somebody's mind on Dakka- like catching a fly with chopsticks! Live the dream!

Seriously though: if USRs do return, just print them on data cards the way they do bespoke rules, because really, I'm printing the datacard for every unit I bring to a game anyway, and once again, so are most of the people I play with- though some just use post it notes to tab the relevant pages of their dex. This way, everyone wins.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2021/04/09 02:17:26


 
   
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Simple answer no, longer answer yes.

That being there will be a better or best army, stat and capability wise for an edition. They will keep changing it though as they want to churn the meta and guide people to new buys. What ever fits best at the time, has best cost and greatest strength for the time will be best.

It won't stay as the same army all the time however.
   
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Longtime Dakkanaut




PenitentJake wrote:


Seriously though: if USRs do return, just print them on data cards the way they do bespoke rules, because really, I'm printing the datacard for every unit I bring to a game anyway, and once again, so are most of the people I play with- though some just use post it notes to tab the relevant pages of their dex. This way, everyone wins.


That's how most games do it. MtG, for example, prints the USR then the rules for that USR on the cards. However, if there's not enough space on the card do to that it will just use the USR keywords. It's a really effective way of reinforcing the rules in everyone's mind as you'll be reading the text for them a lot, while also maintaining consistency and aiding learning. It also means you know if there's a larger block of text the card will have some unique rule you need to pay attention to.

GW doing this in 40k would be a win-win. It's probably the biggest missed opportunity in 9th, IMO.
   
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Italy

Voss wrote:
mrFickle wrote:
So would a better style of tournament be that army lists are drafted by the tournament hosts for balance and the players play each drafted army in turn to test their skill as players rather than their absolute to analyse the rule set and find winning algorithms


Not even vaguely.
If Bob gets an 'drafted' army that's similar to what he practices with, and Steve and Jill don't, Bob will have a huge advantage. If someone else gets a relatively unfamiliar, expert-style army in a strange configuration, their chances are pretty much shot.

A drafted tournament will have huge spikes according to the biases of whoever's making the list (which can be huge depending on what they think is a 'reasonable army) and the player's own habits and preferences.


Not really. If all tournaments were like that all competitive players would not focus on one or two armies but they rather be decent with playing all of them. They wouldn't even have to buy and paint the models, just the books and proxy their games.

This solution is actually one of the best options for those who want to "prove" something by wargaming, that's a real challenge.

The only real problem is that the tournament organizers must provide lots of complete armies, and reasonably all on a similar level. Which actually means an available 100+K collection of painted models and 30ish books to lend to strangers, other than tables and terrain that they also provide; it's a massive cost for the organizers and that's why it's a pure utopia in real life.

About the best army: typically there are always 3 to 5, not just one. That is also the current state of the game. Only in a few specific periods a single faction was so oppressive and full of powerful combos to be the absolute top tier. SM 2.0 is a perfect example of that.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2021/04/09 07:43:25


 
   
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Longtime Dakkanaut





Voss wrote:
mrFickle wrote:
So would a better style of tournament be that army lists are drafted by the tournament hosts for balance and the players play each drafted army in turn to test their skill as players rather than their absolute to analyse the rule set and find winning algorithms


Not even vaguely.
If Bob gets an 'drafted' army that's similar to what he practices with, and Steve and Jill don't, Bob will have a huge advantage. If someone else gets a relatively unfamiliar, expert-style army in a strange configuration, their chances are pretty much shot.

A drafted tournament will have huge spikes according to the biases of whoever's making the list (which can be huge depending on what they think is a 'reasonable army) and the player's own habits and preferences.


My idea was that the tournament players would have to play each army, so let’s say a tournament was Space marines, Eldar, necrons and sisters. Each player would command each army against the other players as they roared the armies and then points would determine the winner overall. So rather than having the choice of focusing on one army you would need a broad knowledge but also the skill to command something your not familiar with.

You could just do it the 100 entrants have a one of several drafted armies selected for them and that’s the only one they play. Again it’s going to come down to a deeper knowledge of the game and skill at commanding rather than just working over one army list until you have found the winning algorithms.

Otherwise a tournament to test players skills would be to work out the most competitive army list across the whole game and then both players play army against each other.

   
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mrFickle wrote:
I see a lot of talk on this form about which army is currently the best army beaded on the current trikes and FAQs for the army put out by GW. The talk tends to confidently state that x army is boosted and x army has been nerfed and that these rankings are indicative that one army will pretty much always beat all other armies.

I think these facts are often taken from tournament results.

However there is always a group of people that will counter the pint that x army is the best and that actually during a given period it has been struggling.

Is this not evidence that an armies performance is largely down to the player and the dice?

How does a group of people not believing in a claim falsify that claim? Does people believing the earth is flat falsify the theories that support the earth being a sphere?

Some armies are strong, sometimes a majority has a bad impression of the most powerful armies, sometimes a significant minority and sometimes almost everyone understands which armies are powerful, none of this changes which armies are powerful except in a meta sense that "if people understood how good Harlequins are they would build their lists differently" or something like that.

Repeatedly performing above average compared to other players using the same faction is evidence of player skill. Attending a lot of tournaments and performing above average once and below average most of the time is evidence of dice.

And such conversations about x army it too powerful is really just a sub conscious desire for better rules for your own army to make it easier to win

Go ahead and win the next Tactical Tortoise online TTS tournament with Tau, good luck.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2021/04/09 13:49:54


 
   
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At an academic level having two people play two armies over and over again could be interesting to see what internal meta develops. Do they evolve to deploy in a certain way - and then counter deploy. Do they go after units X which causes them to be deployed more defensively, so they go after units Y etc. Basically get a real feel for the matchup and document it.

It could help GW make two "balanced armies" a bit like MTG duel decks.

But this is sort of moving away from having fun and turning into a researcher's job. I'm not sure your players would enjoy it - and I'm not sure it will prove their skill any more than just running lots of standard tournaments.
   
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You can see how that works out watching AOW40k's stream games. Four top players who did nothing but play each other for the better part of a year (now they're going to tournaments too, but they weren't for about 8 months). Not the same army every time, obviously, but you can see how they started building armies differently and approaching games differently because they knew each other so well.
   
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I can see how some people think that providing "drafted" armies and having people play that is the best way to determine the truly best player but I don't think I agree.
List building is as much a part of the hobby and game as the assembling and playing part. For some, like me, list building is actually one of the most fun parts. Some would even argue building a proper list is basically half the game nowadays since it carries so much impact on the tabletop result. So cutting it out would just curb some of the best and brightest players from showing their true skill.
   
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Just play Space Marines. Even if you go through a low year, you'll be back on top of the meta with some new release in the next year.

But seriously, a lot is taken from tournament results, aka 'netlisting', because highly competitive tournament players spend a lot more time pouring over strategy, playtesting lists, and figuring out efficiencies than the average every-man in the hobby has time for in his day-to-day. So the every-man takes a list that is said to work and uses it in his own local tournaments, and he wins, and he reports back that he had a good time, and so on it goes.

But there's also a LOT of people that look at netlists, decide there's nothing to be done, and then come online to complain about it, despite not playing that army, not having anyone in their local gaming group play that list, or even not have anyone in their local gaming group that even plays that army.

They'll add something along the lines of "I'm X job and I can just TELL by looking at it that these rules/lists are BROKEN!" and then that sort of thing gets reverberated around the internet at the speed of light and so on.

If it goes on long enough, you'll have a community trauma over something like Tau shooting lists, despite them being lower in the meta right now.
   
 
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