10th edition tournament results - it doesn't look good

[Scribe]

Woo boy, they really slapped Knights down.

 

Its absolutely amazing to me that they missed so bad on Eldar that even now after how many adjustments, they are top dog.

[Helias_Tancred]

The GW group that handles game issues and balance deserves a round of applause for getting to this versus where it was originally. 

 

 

[Karhedron]

20 minutes ago, Scribe said:

Woo boy, they really slapped Knights down.

 

Yeah, Knights got hit by multiple nerfs AND prices hikes. I bit too much in my opinion but now that they are in the range, I don't expect GW to change too much until their Codex drops.

 

20 minutes ago, Scribe said:

Its absolutely amazing to me that they missed so bad on Eldar that even now after how many adjustments, they are top dog.

 

Eldar are supposed to be a glass cannon army. The initial Index was too much cannon and not enough glass (and I say that as an Eldar player since 1st edition). I love my Eldar and I like them to work well but people at my club don't enjoy facing them anymore.

[Scribe]

13 minutes ago, Karhedron said:

Eldar are supposed to be a glass cannon army. The initial Index was too much cannon and not enough glass (and I say that as an Eldar player since 1st edition). I love my Eldar and I like them to work well but people at my club don't enjoy facing them anymore.

 

Yeah and I get that, I have no problem with the vision behind them but "dont enjoy facing them anymore." has been an Eldar thing many times over the decades it feels like. :D

[Indy Techwisp]

Have TSons dropped in win% since last metawatch?
It feels like they have, but I can't remember the exact % we were at last time.

[Karhedron]

Thousand Sons were at 51% last month. I  think this is probably just statistical fluctuation rather than anything fundamental changing.

[crimsondave]

Considering where we started, that’s impressive in a relatively short span of time.  It's only fair to give credit when it’s due.

[sairence]

The comments on Eldar are definitely on point. They've had to adjust a lot and, while still very strong, are much more back in the high skill box, where you can't really afford mistakes. Some more tweaks and they're probably good balance wise.

 

The main issue is really that they are absolutely no fun to play against, at all, because their game plan usually revoles around "I don't interact with you and will punish you if you try to interact with me"

[phandaal]

1 hour ago, Scribe said:

 

Yeah and I get that, I have no problem with the vision behind them but "dont enjoy facing them anymore." has been an Eldar thing many times over the decades it feels like. :D

 

You have to wonder when GW will solve their Eldar problem. Seems like almost every edition it is "oopsies, we did the thing again!"

[Rain]

Eldar often come off as if their rules were written by a faction fanboy. “They have the best tech, and the best psykers, and they can see the future,  and…and…and…”

[phandaal]

3 hours ago, Rain said:

Eldar often come off as if their rules were written by a faction fanboy. “They have the best tech, and the best psykers, and they can see the future,  and…and…and…”

 

"They go soooo fast and their lasers are all like pshewwwww and then they use mind bullets like pshowwww and then they flip out of the way like cha-CHOW and you're all like noooooooo!"

[Indy Techwisp]

15 hours ago, phandaal said:

18 hours ago, Rain said:

Eldar often come off as if their rules were written by a faction fanboy. “They have the best tech, and the best psykers, and they can see the future,  and…and…and…”

"They go soooo fast and their lasers are all like pshewwwww and then they use mind bullets like pshowwww and then they flip out of the way like cha-CHOW and you're all like noooooooo!"

 

Hey, having the best Psykers is our thing and we got punished with point hikes for going full HeroHammer with them.

[Cenobite Terminator]

On 11/23/2023 at 1:29 PM, Rain said:

Eldar often come off as if their rules were written by a faction fanboy. “They have the best tech, and the best psykers, and they can see the future,  and…and…and…”

This was definitely a problem when Phil Kelly wrote the codex.

Edited November 24, 2023 by milddead

[TheArtilleryman]

21 hours ago, phandaal said:

 

"They go soooo fast and their lasers are all like pshewwwww and then they use mind bullets like pshowwww and then they flip out of the way like cha-CHOW and you're all like noooooooo!"

Lore accurate 

[Emperor Ming]

Not sure how they are going to address faction internal balance,

 

Without a big points shake up (watch the vid) 

[Dark Shepherd]

On 11/23/2023 at 4:08 PM, Karhedron said:

Given that all but two of the factions are now in the 45-55% winrate range, my hunch (and hope) is that they will go for the light-touch approach going forwards. The impression I get is that they are looking to fine tune things rather than upset the apple cart.

Meta balance is benefitting massively from the slow codex rollout IMO

 

Hopefully it continues and copes with increase in codex releases in Spring

[Rhavien]

They even wrote it in the article that they want to address internal balance. I wonder how they will approach this. Faction win rate is relatively easy data compared to individual army list composition. And as codizies drop it will get even more complicated as the individual detachments favor different units. Noone would've taken flamestorm aggressors before the detachment and with it immolation protocols have dropped. 

[Dont-Be-Haten]

7 hours ago, Dark Shepherd said:

Meta balance is benefitting massively from the slow codex rollout IMO

 

Hopefully it continues and copes with increase in codex releases in Spring

I agree. It's much easier to patch free .pdfs than completely invalidating $50 codex books. But giving out free points is a stop gap, and still hasn't done much outside of giving you more mid-tier rules units to compensate for better rules. 

 

If you were to play the armies head to head without all the live scoring and random objective secondaries, the meta would be less diverse. Look at crusade, and you'll see a lot of imbalance still exists.

 

While I'm glad we have a more evened tournament scene: there is still a lot more work to done.

[Indy Techwisp]

18 hours ago, Emperor Ming said:

Not sure how they are going to address faction internal balance,

 

Without a big points shake up (watch the vid) 

 

Can't wait for all our Rubrics, Scarabs and Sorcerers to go up by 50% because they still can't comprehend why no-one takes Tzaangors

[Evil Eye]

On 11/23/2023 at 4:21 PM, Eilio Tiberius said:

The GW group that handles game issues and balance deserves a round of applause for getting to this versus where it was originally. 

 

 

And  a smack round the face for pushing it out in that state to begin with and invalidating the contents of Codices shortly after their release to "fix" the problem.

[Helias_Tancred]

1 hour ago, Evil Eye said:

And  a smack round the face for pushing it out in that state to begin with and invalidating the contents of Codices shortly after their release to "fix" the problem.

 

A more polished product could have been released, certainly. 

[Karhedron]

48 minutes ago, Eilio Tiberius said:

A more polished product could have been released, certainly. 

 

Could it though?

 

Quote

In the last 60 days, the team has analysed data from some 200,000 games featuring 36,000 players

 

200,000 games is a heck of a lot. Assume 3 hours per game and that is nearly 1 million player-hours of gaming time. Here in the UK minimum wage is around £11 per hour so getting that kind of data out of their playtesters would have cost GW around £11 million! 40K now has something like 20 factions (if you count chapters like Space Wolves as their own faction) and each faction may have multiple build styles. I think GW should have spotted some of the more obviously broken units and rules before 10th went out of the door but I also acknowledge that they probably needed this level of playtesting and there was no feasible way to get prior to 10th launching.

[Scribe]

8 minutes ago, Karhedron said:

Could it though?

 

Yeah, they could have.

 

Would it have had the benefit of 10's of thousands of games of playtesting? Not at all.

 

Does it take a PHD in game design to realize some of the choices made were rushed and/or flawed? No.

 

If the answer really is "They cannot do better because the game is too complex." then they have a base level, foundational flaw in the game.

[Interrogator Stobz]

All they had to do was math hammer some of the many obvious issues. 

They were obvious to everyone on the web day one.

They could easily have done much better.

[Helias_Tancred]

4 hours ago, Karhedron said:

 

Could it though?

 

 

200,000 games is a heck of a lot. Assume 3 hours per game and that is nearly 1 million player-hours of gaming time. Here in the UK minimum wage is around £11 per hour so getting that kind of data out of their playtesters would have cost GW around £11 million! 40K now has something like 20 factions (if you count chapters like Space Wolves as their own faction) and each faction may have multiple build styles. I think GW should have spotted some of the more obviously broken units and rules before 10th went out of the door but I also acknowledge that they probably needed this level of playtesting and there was no feasible way to get prior to 10th launching.

 

You make a good point however there were several factions that had neon glowing signs that screamed broken prior to release. I definitely think Eldar and Custodes screamed for an adjustment prior to going live that even the most overworked department should have recognized.