How would you define competitive?

[Xenith]

Thoughtful answers, all.

 

There's a few things we need to pick apart:

 

The army: Does the army have the tools needed to get the mission goals done (hold objectives, perform action, move quickly, kill stuff) at a reasonable cost?

 

The unit: Is the unit costed appropriately for its abilities? Are they capable of dising out or receiving proportionally more or less damage than other units in the army, or units in other armies, for a similar point cost? 

 

The player: This is the key factor. Are they playing to win? Do they know enough of the game to know all the tricks their army can pull, and all/most of their opponents? Do they have the initiative and daring to capitalise on mistakes?

 

In my experience and gut, the player is the most important factor in these. A good, or competitive player can take bad/suboptimal/uncompetitive units/armies and win against others. I think you'll see this more often than low skill players winning with super optimal armies. This isn't 5th edition where the missions are killing stuff only, then hop onto objectives. 

 

That said, I think the OP is looking for a discrete set of numbers for armies that are more likely to win. In a competetive environment, a <50% win rate is not competitive. Balanced, or average, is not competitive, otherwise average joes would be inthe olympics. Similarly, you cannot measure an armies win rate in a competitive environment until the competition is over, so it's a bit of a chicken and egg scenario.

 

If you wanted me to put a number on it, In a competitive environment, armies with a >55% win global rate as they go into a tournament are probably competitive. This also leads to data bias as the most skilled players (the main factor in win/loss stats) will jump to armies with a slightly raised %W/L stat...inflating it further. 

 

If you really want to define whether an army is balanced, I think you need a series of games with fixed players and fixed lists, which are archetypes of that army (based onfluff, lore etc), then every faction archetype plays each other. If one armies core unit choices vastly outperform others, then time to balance things. 

[BLACK BLΠFLY]

There is lots of factors to take into account and not everyone is traveling to 10 or more GTs in a year. Are you mainly a garage gamer or do you like to attend local tournies a lot? A lot of my favorite games were played in a home drinking some beers and having a good time. If you can find a like minded crowd you are going to be happy more likely than not.