whispersofblood

The over all dmg potential of the faction is quite low. Rerolls will smooth out your output but it it's just smoothing out a low output who cares. I feel like S2D are built for a game that doesn't actually exist on the tournament circuit. It might be fine in a close group though I suppose. There is a highly abusive Tzeentch cabalist build, but even that is based on the power of Horrors.

Here is the thing about balance. I think AoS is pretty balanced in a group of about 4-5 players. Generally there isn't much doubling up of factions and you are buying models to a) that you like and b) help you win against maybe 4 other people. But on the competitive scene the game is dominated by personalities and army builds that want to win the game in 3 or less turns. Because competitive games are stressful and over a weekend generally the players that play the fewest battle rounds are at an advantage in game 4 and 5. These means we see a lot of front loaded damage army builds. Which makes a lot of factions basically unplayable. Nurgle defensively are very good, in a small play group they might even be the "that guy" faction. But competitive AoS is so focused on highly concentrated maximum levels of dmg that Nurgle struggles. So now we have a problem, where the preferences of competitive players are driving the design space since a stalwart factions has to be N=maximum output tough or they don't function. And, as we have seen the competitive scene literally mentally cannot handle any faction that doesn't play the maximum combat dmg in 2 turns strategy. Tbh I was kind of hoping the OBR were so tough on the defence that you couldn't play mac aggro anymore affectively and they probably are in casual play but in tournament play they seems to be really ok in that regard.

Keep in mind they match the mark of the hero you select. Do Bel'lakor himself doesn't summon.

More 1 drop armies in T-6 days. So there is that to look forward to.

I think in someways you are talking to me @Vakarian. I don't have an issue really with the data set, its what's available. I have a larger issue with what people are saying while using the data set. For instance what does the changes that allow one unit to score multiple objectives do for each army? Currently that is huge bonus for DoT, larger than any of the top 5 I would say. It we undo that change what does that do to DoT win percentage? A change that is completely outside any faction. The big one is that we measure all wins exactly the same for the data, but almost no two major events give out wins the same, and even in the core rules a major victory is by an inch or a mile.

Nope totally forgot its lore of fate, totally pulled it from memory.

Fyi Arcane suggestion is a thing, and is a great spell for the changeling.

I'm not, here is why. Those are decent inferences, and probably not incorrect. But, there is a difference in the actions you take when you have are being conclusive and when you have a conclusion. Lets do a cross section of the players who have finished in the top 10 more than once in 2019. How many of those players have any entries for a faction outside the top 5? If you don't think that is going to skew your dataset I'm not sure what to say. I would say player flows can add anywhere between 5-9% to winrate, based on admittedly in my head arithmetic. But, how useful is the dataset when half of the people behind the representative dataset, are suddenly the players contributing to the downward pressure on the statistic? The real question is who is doing this analysis? Secondary, even based on their loose approximation of the "meta" the meta is so fluid any snap shot is out of date in what 4-6 weeks from the point of initial collection? How long do you think it takes for the 4-1 crowd to come up with successful DoT strategies? 1 week? 2 weeks if it requires building and painting the correct units? How would we figure out if this has happened since the stats get buried behind a year of junk stats. TBH there are enough events that the stats should basically be bookmarked 2-3 weeks after a books launch, and not just grandfathered in. Its like tracking the price of coal, after the whole world has switched to oil as the main fuel and tracking its growth while its a tertiary resource and saying its not meeting forecasts. And, then we enter the world of army strength based on meta participation rates. In a HoS dominated world, OBR were an immensely powerful debutante. The durability surpassed the ability of HoS to make it up in speed and precision. But, DoT dismantle OBR, fairly easily in fact, and HoS have a much better time with DoT than OBR. If OBR are out of the meta, HoS will do better. How do we measure these flows, and are these flows even have anything to do with balance or just the nature of drastic strategies? If we are going to take these stats seriously they need significantly more depth, we need to figure out archetypes, and measure variance from the archetype so we can rule out erroneous data. Far from paralysis, I'm just asking basic questions I would expect any Jr. policy adviser to have answers prepared for at a meeting.

When it comes to data analysis volume is not depth. Especially in a data set that is constantly changing. Data from the summer is essentially useless beyond the most rudimentary conclusions. In my line of work using data as shown by THG would be laughable, these data sets need to be heavily curated, especially given that specific players are showing up multiple times in numerous data sets disproportionately. The British data set is dominated by probably less than 30 players, and British data dominates the data set, the Aus/NewZ meta is similarly dominated and disproportionate. There is this high school math belief that aggregation averages out, it is incorrect. That only works as well as the strength of your data collection and robustness of the curation method. As is the current method would increase the representation of any skews in the data, skewing the results to be inline with the preferences of maybe 100 individuals globally. So you end up with problems like factions which appear to be good, get picked up by good players, which gives good results, which confirms the original assumption. Especially as a good player doesn't expect to go less than 4-1, which is already an 80% winrate. That's before you get into the context of the event, realm spells, artefacts. An event that uses realm spells and rotates realms, is a vastly different beast from an event that plays the whole event in Aqshy with realm spells, to an event with no realms at all. And, that's before we even get started on the assumption that the stats represent the "best build" without ever actually measuring the occasions any variation of what could be considered the best build shows up. Or even an estimation of what the "best build" would be as an archetype. The lack of rigor combined with the hyperbolic level of usage literally does my head in. For these reasons and more I would heavily recommend people do not use TWG stats as anything more than an inference.

You can't use the shrine on Hellstriders.

They do not definitively show any such thing, there isn't nearly enough information collected in that data to be able to suggest that is true. They at best imply imbalance, and at worst suggest there is something going on worth looking deeper at.

I agree with some of what you have said. But S2D Tzeentch has a huge issue as well. I'm on the fence about bringing it to Heat 2, on one hand its incredibly lame, on the other hand dropping it in GW's lap and asking them to fix it is possibly the only way to affect change. I'm definitely conflicted.

On DoT. I think we should be pretty open about how drastic the levels of strategic talent are out there. Watching nominally good players, play against changehost and setting tactical goals they have no way of achieving was pretty revealing. I would say a great number of players take strategic solutions from the internet rather than develop them in the field. Which is why any faction that doesn't play similarly to other factions is going to over achieve, like KO, Skyfire spam, HoS KoS spam, etc. DoT are an extremely powerful strategically, they dominate the board space, and if your army isn't mobile it will be taken a part, and even worse if it has point concentrations. Worse they have specific rule mechanics you need to know or your strategies can come unglued, worse yet ranged dmg as all but left the game for the most competitive factions. On the other hand some things are very effecient. Rolling 3 flamers against my rogue idol was pretty revealing. And having 27" of threat projection, with almost no retaliation at under 150 points, is possibly something new.

If you could never return models that had "split" I think that would be a good start. Via the fluff, technically the horror isn't slain it, devolves. That would probably solve the most offensive components of Horrors. The 3 shots each is a bit surprising still though. Second I think fate points should have only be generated by heroes, but I doubt that gets changed. Flamers could probably due with having fewer to hit buffs, and range dropped to 14"-12".

Yeah I have to agree Be'Lakor is a great piece, especially in a magicy, avoidance build that is probably the main way to play with S2D.

Just as an aside there is a very competitive Kraith build, but it's very different from the traditional.

Ah I hadn't remembered the FAQ fully to apply to this particular situation, since itis mechanics hadn't come up before. The combo requires charging, therefore it has to the Mawcrushers turn, meaning that the enemy could pile-in.

In fact tagging the Mawcrusher with Locus means he can't be targeted afterwards by anything.

Give him wings call it a Daemon Prince.

Its a problem with the limited language of the rules. You actually allocate dmg one at a time, not wounds. And remove models who receive dmg = their wounds characteristic. Its why Horrors are much easier to deal with then people think. IF you do 35 dmg to a unit of 10 pinks you remove 10 pinks, 20 blues, 5 brimestones. Since they are placed when the model is slain so there for the next allocation of dmg.

The only actual way to balance sub-factions is to make them actual choices vis-a-vis each other. Points are just another poor abstraction to create the illusion of a choice. You either want an orange or an apple, you don't want a fruit in abstract. So long as the attributes of each are relatively similar you can have a preference, if the £ of an apple is multiplicative of the orange, then the reality is you can only afford an apple, or nothing. And, the attributes of the orange are irrelevant. So if we want "balanced"subfactions then we need a) fewer sub-factions b) sub-factions with relatively comparable and useful rules. Now this does limit the creative freedom of the authors, but if you aren't tightly constrained you end up with some sub-factions where are only alternatively interesting in a narrative sense and provide no actual positive effect on how the army plays. Crematorians are a perfect example, I wouldn't pay any amount of points for that sub-faction. IF I thought they were cool I might use the colour scheme but like it doesn't do anything really. And if I was forced to take a sub-faction which is the only way I would even consider them, I would still in most circumstances take one of the others unless they were so expensive as to make it hard to make an army. Because you would rather over pay to get something then pay a little to get a little. TBH I think they should get rid of the idea that the fixed artefacts, and cmd traits are "negatives", they are just inherent parts of the sub-faction.

I think there is only a tiny minority of even competitive players that would play any army that is good. I would consider the competitive elements in my community some of the most competitive around. And none of us would play a faction we didn't like the feel or playstyle of an army just due to its effectiveness competitively. Case and point of the say 8 most competitive we have zero FEC armies.

The King is an excellent combat unit, and a hero for Places of (Arcane) Power. He fights about as well as his points would suggest, better than 3 morrsorr worse than 6. Doesn't have to worry about battleshock, can be pretty tanky at a 3+/5+, does repeat mw, and has high rend. He's actually a very good piece all on its own. Volturnos is the best high tide buffer, as he is most efficient, so lets you move away from 6+ man units back to a more MSU style in an Akhelian Corp (I almost always build Dhom-hain or Fuethan), letting you spread your mw output around the board, and since he buffs 3 units per CP you can turn your spare King into a a insanely powerful killing unit while spreading your dmg on Morrsarr units.

Ok, don't take this to be mean of disparaging but this needs to be nipped in the bud whenever it comes up. Your whole perspective of AoS is wrong. Because the bolded is how the game is played, why its a game, where competition actually happens. That is the interactions between the players not the models. You both have a toolbox, and you are trying to make the other player choosee between a variety of worse options or give them the chance to make the wrong choice. Lose concentration, take your eye of the prize, etc. It sounds to me like you and your partner had an amazing match, you both probably made a 5+ incorrect choices, but the one you mention is the fatal one for the scenario and decided the game. And, the game is 5 turns, never 6 so that isn't an objective assessment of anything really.

This is the nature of playing an Elf faction in any game ever devised.