Comp/No Comp

[McNathanson]

I'm a big fan of comp. Not because it ... improves the play experience (it doesn't).

 

OH YES IT DOES!! :P

 

[Romes]

I'm a big fan of comp. Not because I think it balances the game (it doesn't), nor makes it more fair (it doesn't), nor improves the play experience (it doesn't). I like comp for the simple fact that it changes up the meta. Players have to think outside the box, and as a result you see a different variety of lists, builds, and playstyles on the field.

 

Though again...they are not BETTER lists, just DIFFERENT. The sort of janky filth you'll see at Swedish tournaments is no less obnoxious than the stuff you'll see at uncomped tournaments, and by-and-large there will always be armies that the comp pack leaves in the dust. It just might be a different set of armies than in another format.

 

Thus I'm a big fan of comped events, so long as not ALL of the events use the same comp pack. A bit of variety is the sweet spot for me. Enough tournaments with one pack to make it worthwhile buying, modelling, and painting the additional models. However enough differently comped events out there so that you're not bringing and facing the same build over and over again.

 

I'm glad you like comp for the build diversity it provides, through whatever mechanism, but I want to challenge you on your statements about balance.

 

The language here on balance appears to me (maybe i'm misreading) to be exactly the mentality I was explaining earlier. Your personal experiences in paragraph 2 do not provide sufficient evidence to support your claim in paragraph one, for all the reasons discussed in my previous post. The paragraph one claim seems, to me, to be unsupported. 

 

You' appear to be making a fairly blanket statement, that 3rd party attempts to balance the game cannot succeed, and I think you really need to examine where you're coming from with that, and why.

 

Do you mean that comp cannot contribute to a MORE balanced game, or that it cannot make the game perfectly balanced? I think most people would agree it doesn't get you from 0 to 100, but there is value in the distance from 0 to 50.

 

 Do you believe that "janky swedish filth" in a banded swedish event is as powerful as uncomped hard lists can be? Or is it also a harder list than your comfortable playing against, but to a lesser extent?

 

 

 

*EDIT: I should add that I totally agree with your third paragraph, I also would rather attend a variety of event types under different comps and even no comp, then have every event have the same comp set.

[McNathanson]

@NTK: Seattle historically has only run uncomped events so I am not sure your logic works.  Only recently have there been tournaments here run with Swedish comp.  For Portland area your logic may very well be spot on tho. 

 

Definitely hard to tease apart the "whys" and "hows" of a local meta... I was pretty deeply versed in the PDX area for several years but have since become much more insular and detached from the gaming scene (aka had baby and stuff) so I really can't claim to know even our own.

 

That said, part of what I like about Swedish (or any other better-than-GW's army rating system) is that it's the same from Seattle to LA to NYC... I remember the disappointment I felt when, after years of helping mold our local scene, I went to a national GT and had only one close game.  I took 3rd overall because I lost my final game, which was an AWESOME game that came down to a turn 6 mega-combat, but sadly the previous 4 were just lop-sided wins for me, including one game against a disgusting army with a bad general who claimed his list was considered "soft" in the Seattle area.

 

I came away thinking, "Shoot, the odds of coming to a totally new crowd and finding armies with similar power level and similar player skill are just too small."  My local game night and my local RTTs provided MUCH better, more challenging and more evenly matched games by far.

All of which is to say, the more we can do to create good matchups out of the gate at a tournament, the better, IMO.  That's why I don't see Swedish as a "restriction" system (does anyone really find that they can't get their list over 0 points?!) but as a handicapping system which is exactly how people create good contests out of unequal opponents!

[ClassicFlava]

NtK: that is a great point. Another reason I prefer Swedish

[fluger]

I came away thinking, "Shoot, the odds of coming to a totally new crowd and finding armies with similar power level and similar player skill are just too small."  My local game night and my local RTTs provided MUCH better, more challenging and more evenly matched games by far.

All of which is to say, the more we can do to create good matchups out of the gate at a tournament, the better, IMO.  

 

And thus, OFCC was born.  

[McNathanson]

I think that subjective comp (what ofcc has done in the past) is by far the worst format, and I have been a captain and part of the rating committee.  It just ends in people getting upset that their list got rejected and others getting upset when they come up against a bad matchup and then complain about the other list. 

 

For the record, the first few years we ran the OFCC, we had numerous people, from competitive to fluff-bunny, report that the combination of the rating system and the matching software made for one of the best experiences they've had at a large tournament.  I don't know what happened in later years so can't comment, but I think that if the rating system was being used without matching software, it would have been very difficult to utilize the ratings properly.  The point was to use army rating and win/loss record to create the best matchups possible.  Pretty tough to do without a computer to model ladders, tune the weighting of the various parameters, etc.  So if the rating system was kept around but the matching software dropped, I wouldn't be surprised if the matchups suffered as a result.  It's a complex thing especially when we didn't have restricted team sizes.  Ah, it's a fun and creative problem solving exercise anyway!

[Fixxer]

GW doesn't design their games to be bullet-proof, fully balanced games. They have NO intention of REALLY balancing out army books or even units within army books.  They NEVER have.  That's not a true knock on GW, it's on people trying to make Fantasy or 40k into Magic The Gathering.  Yes, the best players generally win regularly because they are better and yes they do it with good lists that aren't just cookie-cutter netlists.  Most good generals understand their own limitations and skills and build lists that suit THEM not the meta.  

 

But that's not my point, my point is that if you're tying to apply THAT article to this game, it breaks down immediately because this isn't a fighting game on XBOX.  

 

No, its not a fighting game, but it is VERY similar. And scrubs are more prevalent in WHFB than fighting games, I think its a valuable article to read if you play any game competitively. 

 

How are fighting games balanced? Some characters are better than others and the metas can change as the player pool develops the strategies necessary to compete with those characters. Some players prefer to play lesser characters due to the unfamiliarity with them, its a matter of choice and personal style/preference. They also develop over time as new characters can be added, mods, patches. This is the same as new releases in WH, updated army books. I mean, you can disregard the article because you dont see GW games as competitively designed but why do we choose to have tournaments?

 

99% of people I play want to win, therefor this article is valid because it recognized self sabotage in list building and attitude towards actually playing the game. People wont do things that are out of the narrative at times, like the amount of crap Romes received for falling back with some SkullCrushers against Oncebittens Brets. Romes won the game because of that choice, it saved him points and drew in the bret player for a flank charge with his lord. Now most people boo'd him saying "Skull crushers dont run", but that is not how you win at this game. You make the best decision at the time and dont let the narrative decide your strategy, I see that quite often. 

 

Good discussion. Always. 

[fluger]

For the record, the first few years we ran the OFCC, we had numerous people, from competitive to fluff-bunny, report that the combination of the rating system and the matching software made for one of the best experiences they've had at a large tournament. 

 

I'll vouch for that.  For various reasons, I've only gone to one Fantasy OFCC (2008), but have been to a BUNCH of 40k OFCCs.  Up until last year's OFCC, I hadn't had the same experience in terms of 5 close games as I did at that first OFCC I went to.  

[godswearhats]

While I agree that Warhammer does not lend itself to high-level play, I would venture that no-one who reads this forum plays Warhammer at the highest level it can be played (myself included) - there might be one or two.

[fluger]

responses inline

 

No, its not a fighting game, but it is VERY similar. And scrubs are more prevalent in WHFB than fighting games, I think its a valuable article to read if you play any game competitively. 

 

I agree to a point, "scrubs" as defined by this article are more common in GW games, that is true...however...

 

How are fighting games balanced? Some characters are better than others and the metas can change as the player pool develops the strategies necessary to compete with those characters. Some players prefer to play lesser characters due to the unfamiliarity with them, its a matter of choice and personal style/preference. They also develop over time as new characters can be added, mods, patches. This is the same as new releases in WH, updated army books. I mean, you can disregard the article because you dont see GW games as competitively designed but why do we choose to have tournaments?

 

The big difference between fighting games and tabletop miniature games should be obvious.  One is a virtual representation, the other is a tactile representation.  I don't have to drop hours and hours and hours into making my sprite on Virtua Fighter playable.  There's also a nearly endless amount of personalization involved in creating a table top army.  People put their life and soul into these armies in a way that a video game never forces them to.  Finally, actually PLAYING a fighting game is about the easiest thing to do.  You could rattle off maybe 100 matches in the time it takes to set up a game of Fantasy.  Tabletop games really require a lot more concession to the other player's aesthetics because both players can play a much more limited amount than in a video game.  If I know that my opponent hates playing against Ken/Ryu and I can only play ONE game with them, wouldn't it be better to choose Blanka?  As to why do we choose to play tournaments?  It's because its the easiest way to guarantee getting in a bunch of games in a short amount of time.  

 

99% of people I play want to win, therefor this article is valid because it recognized self sabotage in list building and attitude towards actually playing the game. People wont do things that are out of the narrative at times, like the amount of crap Romes received for falling back with some SkullCrushers against Oncebittens Brets. Romes won the game because of that choice, it saved him points and drew in the bret player for a flank charge with his lord. Now most people boo'd him saying "Skull crushers dont run", but that is not how you win at this game. You make the best decision at the time and dont let the narrative decide your strategy, I see that quite often. 

 

You don't have to explain this to me, I get it, I played 40k Orks that sat back and shot instead of running up like idiots, because, while unfluffy, it was WAY stronger.  I'm all about competitive play.  HOWEVER, I recognize the deficiencies of the medium as a truly tactical game (dice mostly, or you could do what the Shellers did and play games and only use averages!) and understand the social and personal aesthetic aspects of the hobby that color how we make lists and play them.  Finally, and most crucially to my initial post, GW themselves views these games as narrative-driven chances to act out fun battles with friends.  When the very designers of the game have clearly and repeatedly stated (and shown!) that they don't care about balancing out things, then we shouldn't expect this game to be anything but what it is:  somewhere between D&D and chess.  I don't mind people trying their best to win or min-maxing armies and the like, but that's just as viable as someone who just REALLY likes a [big bad swear word]ty unit and wants to field a bunch of them because they like them.  GW games are a Rorschach and a blank slate, use the medium however you want to play how you want, but don't denigrate how others want to play it because there's really no "right" way to play a game like this.  

 

Good discussion. Always. 

 

Agreed.

[Don't Panic]

Ehh, I don't really think the comp VS anti-comp argument breaks down into thinking GW does a good job with the competitive scene VS people thinking they need external help as you are suggesting Jim.  In fact I've always found it hard, especially in the WHFB crowd, to find anyone who believes in the former.  To me the comp VS anti-comp argument tends to be more about control over the meta.  This isn't to say that they want the same units to be what is best all the time, but that the same types of lists tend to be the ones that are incentivized.  Swedish, for example, in general loves lists that are mixed bags and avoid going too far into one direction.  This means that all-comers lists tend to be much higher in their comp than RPS affairs which most competitive players will tell you is the best way to build lists anyway.  Anti-comp people tend to like the challenge that new builds come and believe strongly in self comping.  The biggest issue with this approach is GW's meta shifts are often very harsh (from infantry to monstrous cav to elves in this edition) and therefore do little to preserve previous meta's lists.  To be fair this isn't just a problem with GW as much as it is with gaming in general.

 

I was one of the guest hosts on the latest Dimensional Cascade talking about comp and, if I remember correctly, I probably came off as very anti-comp because of who I was arguing with.  I'm not actually anti-comp, but I don't think it's the savior it is often touted to be.  I like playing in comped events because they let me build different lists from non-comped ones, but I don't think they should be the majority of events because they can quickly stagnate.  There's also the larger issue that comp tends to avoid certain parts of the game because they're "too powerful" which I feel is a huge mistake.  If you're telling me that there's a comp value for Banner of the World Dragon, but that it's impossible to comp the End Times then I wonder about your intentions.  

 

Edit for Dontpanic:  I think you're the only person I've seen listing dwarfs with TK and BoC.  Just a little aside that, while they have very few competitive builds open to them, dwarfs are not often considered a low tier army.

Kremmet, dwarfs are middle tier(its in the sentence silly, get some reading glasses!). i could list all the rest of middle tier armies but im far to lazy with a computer for that...

 

as for comp systems: as much as i like swedish for what it does, i wish the metric was more than based off a system in a small meta of the world.  3rd party does not equal unbiased so i dont know where people are getting that.  you cant tell me reading the comp points that there seems to be a bit of bias or lack of knowledge of some armies.  i think a more universal thought through comp would probably fix those problems.  thats what ETC tries to do but its just not updated regularly(isnt it once a year?).  so trade offs.. perfect world: comp system that includes as many knowledgable people from different metas and updates regularly.  is that possible?  probably not... so is swedish the second best thing?  probably... OR we could just make our own comp based on 'merican(leave canada out! hehe jk include them) ideas.  hoping masters peeps can do that someday and rally everyone behind a system, as long as 9th doesnt make everyone rage quit :P (sorry just had to throw that in for kicks)

[McNathanson]

DP, I think just to prove a point I'm going to rage-PLAY 9th edition.  Khorne only, all the time, death metal, screaming my moves and throwing dice no matter what the rolls turn up to be. 

[fluger]

OR we could just make our own comp based on 'merican(leave canada out! hehe jk include them) ideas.  hoping masters peeps can do that someday and rally everyone behind a system, as long as 9th doesnt make everyone rage quit :P (sorry just had to throw that in for kicks)

 

Make Cascadia Comp a thing.

[Kremmet]

Kremmet, dwarfs are middle tier(its in the sentence silly, get some reading glasses!). i could list all the rest of middle tier armies but im far to lazy with a computer for that...

 

I view everything through Ricky Bobby lenses:  if you're not top tier you're low tier  .

 

Now back to the show!

[thatdave]

DP, I think just to prove a point I'm going to rage-PLAY 9th edition.  Khorne only, all the time, death metal, screaming my moves and throwing dice no matter what the rolls turn up to be. 

 

You and me both!

[Don't Panic]

I view everything through Ricky Bobby lenses:  if you're not top tier you're low tier  .

 

Now back to the show!

ricky, i was 'not low' as heck when i said that.  you could be middle-top, middle, middle-low... heck you could be 'well at least we aren't dogs of war' tier!

[Sylvos]

In the beginning there was no need for composition on army structure.

 

Thus heralded The First Age of Gaming...

 

Then Herohammer was released... 

Herohammer marked the first grand exodus of Fantasy players to other game systems.

 

Thus Warmachine and Hordes were born and ushered in the Time of the Cog.

 

Then the Dawn of the Sixth emerged.  The Age of Return began...

 

Then Breaking of the World ... the advent of 'Ard Boyz... where players were encouraged to engage in the path of [Clown] to win a free army.

 

Thus began the first Storm of Chaos...

 

And in the ruins of hope and shattered dreams, the first OFCC was born...

 

A time where narrative overwrote tournaments and the Games Workshop took an active roll in engaing it's playerbase...

 

Sixth edition slowly melted into 7th edition Fantasy and 4th edition shifted to 5th edition of 40k...

 

Then entered the Second Breaking of the World...

 

8th Edition Fantasy was born which heralded the 2nd Great Exodus to other games...

6th Edition 40k released which heralded yet another Great Exodus...

 

These were dark times....

 

8th Edition was soon realized as the Great Edition and so heralded the Golden Age of Gaming...

 

But they were all of them deceived...

 

The Ard Boyz had died, Games Workshop had retreated to it's white castle in the distance and the depravity of mankind sunk its claws into the games...

 

Broken combos born of poorly balanced books ran rampant like a plague through the gaming groups...

 

Filth poured from the gaping mouths of irreverent douche bags who used the internet as their podium to spew their bile and foolishness...

 

Some tried to fight this overpowering wave of filth with their shields of Composition.  A last ditch effort to impose order and balance to the world before it became overrun with broken filth and win at all cost players...

 

Fools, all of them.  You can not defeat evil by putting it in a cage...

 

You must embrace the darkness and become one with it.

 

You must lower yourself into the pit and from the hellish darkness that is the mind of a filth gamer, reach down and grasp it's waggling tongue and tear it from the gaping mouth of madness.

 

You must stare into the oblivion and allow the slow caress of rage touch your mind.  To give spark to the dry kindling of your anger and allow it to take hold...

 

Let that spark turn into a burning ember, let the powers of hate flow through you giving wind to your thoughts.  Fan the flames of anger until it roars into a tower inferno of rage!

 

Let the flames of your rage burn the filth from your skin as you stand a burning beacon of fair play in the shrinking pit of douche bag darkness.  

 

Let the blades of incandescent rage coalesce into your hands as you bring the battle to those derangd filth mongers

 

Show them that they bleed much like any man and their blood flows like a fine wine.  Delicious and red..

 

You do not need comp to be your shield for you are the Juggernaut of Ordo, your actions shall ring louder than the hammerstrikes of a thousand forges.

 

Composition is the crutch upon which a true general is hobbled.  Composition is the true darkness that threatens to extinguish the flame of wargaming...

 

Be not afraid..

 

For there are worse things that go bump in the night....

 

The End Times have come, shattering all composition conventions and showing all the errors of their ways....

 

You fools tried to contain it... did you learn nothing from your mistakes? 

 

9th edition dawns...

 

Shall we witness the Grand Return or the Final Exodus?

 

I know not but know this...

 

Comp sucks.

[McNathanson]

In that case, I'm just glad that you caved to peer pressure and made OFCC comped this year 

[KJTW]

I've been listening to a few Warhammer podcasts lately, specifically Dimensional Cascade and Garagehammer, and hosts on both of those shows have been mentioning how "anti-comp" they are. I'm just wondering why? Comp seems like the greatest thing to me... I won't go into why! Not trying to start a debate, just curious.

Looks like your last few words got lost somewhere in all the essays that came after. Probobly myself included.

[King Mekhet]

I'm glad you like comp for the build diversity it provides, through whatever mechanism, but I want to challenge you on your statements about balance.

 

The language here on balance appears to me (maybe i'm misreading) to be exactly the mentality I was explaining earlier. Your personal experiences in paragraph 2 do not provide sufficient evidence to support your claim in paragraph one, for all the reasons discussed in my previous post. The paragraph one claim seems, to me, to be unsupported. 

 

You' appear to be making a fairly blanket statement, that 3rd party attempts to balance the game cannot succeed, and I think you really need to examine where you're coming from with that, and why.

 

Do you mean that comp cannot contribute to a MORE balanced game, or that it cannot make the game perfectly balanced? I think most people would agree it doesn't get you from 0 to 100, but there is value in the distance from 0 to 50.

 

 Do you believe that "janky swedish filth" in a banded swedish event is as powerful as uncomped hard lists can be? Or is it also a harder list than your comfortable playing against, but to a lesser extent?

 

 

 

*EDIT: I should add that I totally agree with your third paragraph, I also would rather attend a variety of event types under different comps and even no comp, then have every event have the same comp set.

 

 

Okay, I'll bite.

 

No third-party comp pack is going to truly "fix" the game, if that's even something that is possible to do. The WHFB meta is a complex ecosystem, and like a real world ecosystem any changes you make will result in consequences you couldn't have foreseen. Comp cannons down too hard and suddenly monsters (and ridden monsters) become exponentially more powerful. Hammering unit sizes (like Swedish and ETC do) makes people just jam their units full of characters instead.

 

Will a "janky Swedish filth" list beat out uncomped list in a straight fight? Of course not. But in the context of a Swedish event, I would argue that the janky filth is every bit as unbalancing as the uncomped filth is.

 

Again, this is just a meta thing. When you know people will be bringing the filth you make build choices with that in mind. Enough people bring counters and suddenly those lists get pushed off the top tables, and other builds rise into ascendence. However if you knock out those apex predators (like you do in ETC) then people don't have to waste space in their lists bringing answers to those filthy lists and can bring other stuff...things that might make their list even nastier than it was before.

 

Player comp can help with that, but it's also kind of a crap shoot. Quite frankly, most players out there aren't familiar enough with the other armies out there to be good judges of how nasty they are. It could be that they drew a bad matchup. It could be that their opponents' dice were just really hot (making things seem a lot meaner than they are with average rolls). It could also be that they were just outplayed, and are misperceiving that as a filthy list. Other people get off easy because they made some obvious concession to "fluff" jammed into an otherwise a half-step away from pure filth.

 

 

 

 

This is why I'm in favour of comp simply for the variety reason. Having different events running different combinations of comped and uncomped makes them interesting. It makes you learn a new style of play and grow as a player. However what it will NOT do is level the playing field. Best you can hope for is to switch it up a bit.

[McNathanson]

Maybe I'm not understanding your point, but it reads to me like you're saying exactly what Romes said you were saying, which is essentially, "3rd party comp systems have issues like XYZ" and then leaping from there to, "Therefore, they don't make the game more balanced."  Clearly Swedish isn't perfect.  Neither are golf handicaps or any other handicapping system.  But I would argue that it's fairly irrefutable that a good one will *help* make the game *more* balanced.  

 

I mean, think of it this way:

 

- There are ten lists at a tournament, all at 2500 points and 25% core, etc. (i.e. GW Comp "equal" in power).

- Five lists have a Swedish Comp score of 15 or better.  Two have a score of less than 5.

 

Are you suggesting that it wouldn't be in all likelihood more evenly matched if you paired the two lists with under-5 scores in the first round, rather than randomly assigning first round matchups?  Of course player skill, dice, flaws in the Comp system exist.  But I think it's pretty clear that it would be more likely to be more evenly matched if you matched those two, than if you matched things up randomly.

 

It sounds above like, due to the issues you mentioned, you're saying the fairness of the matchups wouldn't be any better at all... I don't get it.

[King Mekhet]

Maybe I'm not understanding your point, but it reads to me like you're saying exactly what Romes said you were saying, which is essentially, "3rd party comp systems have issues like XYZ" and then leaping from there to, "Therefore, they don't make the game more balanced."  Clearly Swedish isn't perfect.  Neither are golf handicaps or any other handicapping system.  But I would argue that it's fairly irrefutable that a good one will *help* make the game *more* balanced.  

 

I mean, think of it this way:

 

- There are ten lists at a tournament, all at 2500 points and 25% core, etc. (i.e. GW Comp "equal" in power).

- Five lists have a Swedish Comp score of 15 or better.  Two have a score of less than 5.

 

Are you suggesting that it wouldn't be in all likelihood more evenly matched if you paired the two lists with under-5 scores in the first round, rather than randomly assigning first round matchups?  Of course player skill, dice, flaws in the Comp system exist.  But I think it's pretty clear that it would be more likely to be more evenly matched if you matched those two, than if you matched things up randomly.

 

It sounds above like, due to the issues you mentioned, you're saying the fairness of the matchups wouldn't be any better at all... I don't get it.

 

Swedish certainly lowers the bar in terms of the level of competitiveness you see in the lists. However, what I'm saying it does *not* do is create a level playing field. People can still make lists under Swedish that are orders of magnitude more powerful than their comp score suggests, purely through massaging their choices to game the comp system.

 

A Swedish list is built to play *in* a Swedish environment, thus if you take it outside that system it is of course going to struggle. However what I'm saying is that pairing two lists of similar Swedish scores isn't necessarily going to guarantee an even matchup.

 

 

Moreover, even under a comp pack like Swedish you are STILL going to get runaway builds in terms of power level compared to the meta. The pack knocks out certain "apex predators" in terms of powerful unit choices, which can cause a resurgence of certain choices that were - because of those "apex predators" - previously uncompetitive, but which are now tremendously more powerful. The pack also forces certain types of weird builds (like character-heavy infantry blocks) that you wouldn't see outside this pack, and which make other strange choices that counter those weird builds much more competitive as well.

 

Not to mention that more complex comp systems like Swedish *really* reward players who are good at list writing. The "13" that a strong player builds versus a "13" that a less experienced player builds are going to be drastically different...I would say worse than in an uncomped environment. You bring in a huge host of additional factors that the less experienced player won't see, and which just serves to widen the gap between them.

 

 

The TL;DR is that under any comp pack, given enough time, people will find all the holes and build lists that are substantially more powerful than the rest of the field. Same as in uncomped. The difference is that these builds are not the same ones as in uncomped, or under a different comp pack, which makes it interesting. 

 

 

 

 

EDIT: One other point is judged comp. I think it gets around a lot of the issues that hard comp systems like ETC or Swedish have, wherein a player can meticulously game the comp system to create lists that are harder than they should be. However judged comp has its own issues.

 

First of all, judges are not perfect. They have imperfect knowledge of each armies' abilities. They have biases. They are also working off a much more limited set of experiences than a system like Swedish, which is based off of input from a very substantial community and fine-tuned over a long period of time.

 

Second is the bias towards "obvious" filth versus "hidden" filth, being synergies and battlefield utility. People will perceive a list where you've just jammed a bunch of mean choices into an army at a higher level than an army with a bunch of moderate choices that all compliment each other very well. Now it may be that the latter style is more fun to play (and thus rewarding it in comp points could achieve your comp's objective). However come to the tabletop the synergy build could thrash the "power" build nine times out of ten...despite being comped "softer." Is that balance?

 

Third and final point is meta. People who play in the region holding the GT will know what other people play, and are influenced in what is "hard" and what is "soft" based on the builds they've faced before and the people running them. However, get someone from outside that system running something in a very different style and suddenly it's a very different beast. I used to think that Ogres were a brainless "push it forward" army...until I saw the shooty ogre gunline in action. Or that  dwarfs without warmachines were soft as chips until they're vanguarded into my half of the board turn 1 and I'm facing down a hundred stubborn S6 dwarfs about to charge me next turn. Whelp. Until you've faced those things you just don't know, and thus it's hard to judge their comp fairly and evently.

 

Not to mention that if you end up on the bad end of a "rock-meets-scissors" matchup you're invariably going to think that list was harder, even if that was your fault for building a list that was really vulnerable to that particular playstyle. Is it fair to get punished just because you beat someone?

[Swan-of-War]

The Swan-of-War Shuffle broke Warhammer back in 7th and no one's ever really recovered.

[Kremmet]

The Swan-of-War Shuffle broke Warhammer back in 7th and no one's ever really recovered.

The best part of that move is I don't remember ever getting it to, or seeing it, be truly worth the effort.