# Adepticon 2012 breakdown:



## elmir (Apr 14, 2011)

So, with adepticon over, I saw this interesting tidbit on BoLS: 

http://www.belloflostsouls.net/2012/04/40k-meta-what-weve-become.html

It includes the breakdown of the armies used at the adepticon tournament for 40k:










3 armies represented over 50% of all armies being used. Most disturbing is the 0% for tyranids as all 5th edition codexes seem to have a decent showing, with GKs being king obviously... 

Any thoughts?


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## Zion (May 31, 2011)

I posted this on another board but please keep in mind I'm painting in VERY broad and general strokes. 

A majority of players who hop between books for a stronger army do so without learning how to play better. In a desperate attempt to find an easy to use winning combination they jump from book to book to try and find the newest way to win. For a number of them it isn't about being better than their opponent it's about breaking the game. They don't play because they want to try have a good game with their opponent, they want to feel superior to them and grind them into a fine powder. They aren't pitting their abilities against their opponent using their models they're instead pitting the GAME against their opponent and using it as the leverage they need to win. In the past they've been rules lawyers, cheaters, assholes and many other things. These days they're army hoppers who just want some push button solution to playing well. It's the current breed of WAAC player. They just happen to be playing Grey Knights, Space Wolves and Blood Angels right now (mostly the first) since they have the highest levels of perceived power and the best chance of winning.

It's all a fallacy to ascribe so much of the winning power to the army alone as any army can win (as my current signature helps show as I record every game my Sisters play there so they can stand as living proof of the abilities of the army, even with a weak codex) with a good player who knows how to tackle the missions rather than one who just wants to grind their opponent's army to dust to win.

That's not to say these armies don't do well in the right hands, but I feel people get too caught up in the "power levels" of an army. Either way I'm sticking to my underdog army. I have more fun beating my opponent by outplaying them, not by abusing the game to try and gain an advantage.


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## Rems (Jun 20, 2011)

Grey Knights, Space Wolves, Imperial Gaurd and Blood Angels the most represented, how surprising. 

Pretty much par the course. 

Still it's nice to see a smattering of non marine armies in there. 

I think the Grey Knight dominance is a matter of both the strength of the book and 'new army syndrome' with bandwagoneers jumping on the latest, most powerful codex until the next (marine one?) comes out.

The Space Wolves Codex has certainly stood the test of time now though. It's placed highly and been well represented in most tournies (all?) since it's release.


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## humakt (Jan 2, 2008)

To be honest, its probably because Grey Knights and Space Wolves are the most broken under the current rule set. Once 6th edition comes out I'm sure Grey Knight dominance will receed. Yes I know both armies need to be used right and they can be beaten with the right amount tactical use etc etc, but I feel less skill is required to get the best of these 2 armies. Long fangs dominate any battlefeild they are placed on and getting close to a grey knight squad in close combat in pretty much the end of any unit it faces (probably why nids are missing from the list).

But GW must be laughing all the way to the bank. How people have got into Grey Knights since the codex came out? They must have dropped a shed load of money on complete new armies. Even when the new SM codex arrives they wont make as much money as people will use old armies and just adapt them to fit. 

I did once think of making a Grey Knight army, but I just couldn't bring myself to join such a big bandwaggon.


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## chromedog (Oct 31, 2007)

I play GK, but apart from a couple of NDKs, my army is entirely made up from my 3rd ed DH army. All (bar the two monkeys) of the henchmen are from my DH army. All of my GK have halberds where modelled (even when swords are a better option). I haven't played it much since the current codex was released - not because it's overpowered, but mainly due to the lack of interest in 40k in my area.


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## Ratvan (Jun 20, 2011)

It'd be interesting to see how the armies above finished place wise, I don't really follow tournaments and the like but statistics are a bit of a geek fix for me


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## Zion (May 31, 2011)

I ended up using math to make a point in another forum regarding Grey Knights and the perception that they're overpowered (since the person was using Adepticon numbers, that's what I used to explain the flaw in their logic) I figured I'd just share the whole thing here:



> Well since we keep going back to these Adepticon numbers, let's look at *everything* that made the top 16: 48.4 players (all numbers are based on a sample size of 220 and worked in reverse from the percentages that BoLS has (which can't show any armies that had only 1 or two players because they would be LESS than 1% of the sample size, so it's not that NO Tyranids or Sisters of Battle players showed up, it's that AT MOST two showed up for either army) played Grey Knights. Of that 8 made the finals that's pretty close 1/6th (or about 16%) of the entire number of Grey Knights armies that attended. Not really that big of a percentage of the tournament is it?
> 
> Now of the other books that made the top 16 we have Necrons, Eldar, Space Wolves, Chaos Daemons, Dark Angels, Orks, Imperial Guard. Let's go ahead and break those down and see how they did on a statistical level as well, just to see if Grey Knights really did that much better:
> 
> ...


That's right, on a whole, Grey Knights performed at Adepticon at the same level as such *powerful* codexes as......Eldar, Dark Angels and Chaos Daemons. 

Can we stop claiming they're overpowered now?



Ratvan said:


> It'd be interesting to see how the armies above finished place wise, I don't really follow tournaments and the like but statistics are a bit of a geek fix for me


From the Adepticon website (which is how I determined how many armies of a given codex made it to the finals):



> *Game 5 (Sunday Round 1)*
> Alexander Fennell (Necrons – Winner) vs. Tim Gorham (Grey Knights)
> Tony Grippando (Grey Knights) vs. Reece Robbins (Eldar – Winner)
> Mike Mutscheller (Space Wolves) vs. Nick Nanavati (Grey Knights – Winner)
> ...


EDIT: For those who wonder why I'm declaring that all those percentages prove that Grey Knights aren't overpowered, it's that when you look at the total number of armies that showed up for a given codex compared to the number that made the final 16 the Grey Knights did not show a statistical deviation significant enough to prove that they were for sure that the codex is the reason they play so well. An equal percentage of Eldar, Dark Angels and Chaos Daemons also made the top 16 and the internet claims these books are horrible and shouldn't be played.

I think what this shows is that the quality of the player is a significant factor to these standings and there are too many individual factors to try and account for in a given game to just blame the codex for winning or losing any given game.


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## Orochi (Jan 28, 2009)

Congrats Brad Chester; you army hopping, Ward-anus licking bastard.

OR

Congrats Brad Chester on your well played, clever tactics and Paladin/Draigo-less army.


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## Zion (May 31, 2011)

Orochi said:


> Congrats Brad Chester; you army hopping, Ward-anus licking bastard.
> 
> OR
> 
> Congrats Brad Chester on your well played, clever tactics and Paladin/Draigo-less army.


From what I hear it was an army without a single Paladin. No idea what he actually brought though.


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## Aramoro (Oct 7, 2009)

The thing you have not considered in your statistics is the reason for preference, the reason being, they are simply better choices. Half of the top 16 were Grey Knights which indicates a problem with the game. What that indicates is not only where Grey Knights very popular, they delivered as well. 

What we can't see from these numbers are things like, is Bill Kim just an exceptional Chaos Daemons player. Did he go 4-0 whilst his 5 Daemon buddies all scrubbed out 0-4. That gives them a win rate of 16%, but if it spread like 4-0, 3-1, 3-1, 2-2, 2-2, 1-3 in results then that's a 62.5% win rate, much more impressive. That's what you need to look at, not only who made the last 16, but how the faction did as a whole. Where Grey Knights not only the most popular but did they manage a win rate over 50%.


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## Zion (May 31, 2011)

Aramoro said:


> The thing you have not considered in your statistics is the reason for preference, the reason being, they are simply better choices. Half of the top 16 were Grey Knights which indicates a problem with the game. What that indicates is not only where Grey Knights very popular, they delivered as well.


Actually, believe it or not I did. And I actually ascribe this to the community as a whole pushing the idea that to play well you need to play Grey Knights. And as a whole, I'd say that while Grey Knights where half the finals they also made up the highest percentage of the total number of armies around and thus would likely make up the largest number of armies in the top 16.



Aramoro said:


> What we can't see from these numbers are things like, is Bill Kim just an exceptional Chaos Daemons player. Did he go 4-0 whilst his 5 Daemon buddies all scrubbed out 0-4. That gives them a win rate of 16%, but if it spread like 4-0, 3-1, 3-1, 2-2, 2-2, 1-3 in results then that's a 62.5% win rate, much more impressive. That's what you need to look at, not only who made the last 16, but how the faction did as a whole. Where Grey Knights not only the most popular but did they manage a win rate over 50%.


I know, but I was countering an argument that because Grey Knights significantly outperformed every other army just because they got 8 armies into the final 16, but if you look at the breakdown they got the same percentage of their army into the final 16 as three other "worse" armies. I was trying to prove a point that the Grey Knights didn't bring a statistically significant amount into the finals compared to the other armies.

I'd love to go more in depth but that's going to require a lot more information that is available. If anyone has it, feel free to hit me up. I'd really like to see exactly how all the armies did at this event.


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## elmir (Apr 14, 2011)

There is a different between 1/6 compared to 8/48 in statistics however.

Six cases will always be described as a too small sample to make any conclusions. 48 can be more meaningfull.

50% of the armies in the final 16 are GKs with the base being 22% of the total armies shows that the army itself performs better then expected. 

It's sad to say, but in this current 5th edition, Greyknights are kings of the hill... You'd almost have to overanalyse small samples to provide any hint of a counterarguement that the GKs aren't the clearcut "best performers" at the high level (top 16). 

I myself play greyknights as an old demonhunterplayer. It saddens me that there are people who created this bandwagon in an attempt to get better results in tournaments. It looks like people did (almost 1/4 of the armies present were GKs!!) and succeeded in doing insaneley well (Exactly HALF of the top scoring armies being GKs). 

Anybody can see this is wrong and I am hoping 6th edition will bring my army back down again. It's already becoming annoying that people don't like facing me because I use GKs (and I'm pretty sure that will take a couple of months before people change their minds about this too).


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## Sethis (Jun 4, 2009)

Just ban Draigo and Coteaz. Codex fixed. k:


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## Zion (May 31, 2011)

elmir said:


> There is a different between 1/6 compared to 8/48 in statistics however.
> 
> Six cases will always be described as a too small sample to make any conclusions. 48 can be more meaningfull.


Right, but when the argument is that Adepticon is an acceptable sample of all 40k players as a whole despite representing around 220+/20,000+ of the total players (lowball estimate on my part) world wide who play, well then I only have the data available to work with.

EDIT: Additionally, seeing as my data was limited to the information from one event of roughly 220 people that the information, while limited is still significant enough to be noted. More would be better, but this wasn't a blind study, just an analysis of something that took place outside of a controlled setting.



elmir said:


> 50% of the armies in the final 16 are GKs with the base being 22% of the total armies shows that the army itself performs better then expected.


Or it shows that we have 8 armies that got exceptionally lucky, or good mash-ups, or we have 8 players who are really good who happened to build armies using the Grey Knights codex. This is exactly why I broke down the numbers like I did, because people keep referring to 48 armies as proof that the entire hobby is this way. It's like claiming people win more often when they roll dice with their left hand, it's a correlative relationship, not a cause and effect one.



elmir said:


> It's sad to say, but in this current 5th edition, Greyknights are kings of the hill... You'd almost have to overanalyse small samples to provide any hint of a counterarguement that the GKs aren't the clearcut "best performers" at the high level (top 16).


Again, that's buying into a mindset that people won BECAUSE they play Grey Knights. You discount player ability, experiance, luck, strategy, and even who made the most mistakes out of the equation when you do that.



elmir said:


> I myself play grey knights as an old demon hunter player. It saddens me that there are people who created this bandwagon in an attempt to get better results in tournaments. It looks like people did (almost 1/4 of the armies present were GKs!!) and succeeded in doing insaneley well (Exactly HALF of the top scoring armies being GKs).


Correlation not cause and effect. Unless you can prove the ONLY reason those 8 books got there is because they're so strong then it can't be a cause and effect relationship. Too much information is left out of these games to know why people won, and even how many games people won with any army. Again, that's why I was pointing out that from the other armies that showed up Grey Knights didn't exceed the percentage of armies that came to the ones that made the top 16. Yes 1/2 of the armies where Grey Knights, but if they were so good than MORE than 16% of the Grey Knights present should have made the finals. 



elmir said:


> Anybody can see this is wrong and I am hoping 6th edition will bring my army back down again. It's already becoming annoying that people don't like facing me because I use GKs (and I'm pretty sure that will take a couple of months before people change their minds about this too).


I think that honestly people are getting to caught up in the hype of the army and not looking at the problems of playing a small army. The hobby goes through this cycle regularly *COUGH*NOBBIKERS*COUGH* and this too shall go away when people stop trying to ascribe so much of the outcome of the game based on which book a player brings and gives credit to the other factors that affect the outcome of a game.

EDIT:


Sethis said:


> Just ban Draigo and Coteaz. Codex fixed.


With that mindset you may as well ban all special characters. Yes even all of the Space Marine ones that make the armies fluffy (Vulkan He'stan). This is how comp starts, and that's a mess we don't need to be promoting because it just makes the game more confusing, limited and frustrating than it needs to be.


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## Aramoro (Oct 7, 2009)

Sethis said:


> Just ban Draigo and Coteaz. Codex fixed. k:


If Coteaz really causing that many problems in Tourney settings? Especially with 'I've Been Expecting You' nerf'd hard you're getting the Henchmen which are ace but I don't see him as broken at all. No more than Logan.


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## elmir (Apr 14, 2011)

Allow me to make another analysis here: 
Based on % of the total attending players numbers, you would expect the following number of players in the final 16 (that is, if the same numbers of the base trickle though to the distribution of players in the final 16)
VS
Actual number of players in the final 16% using this army.

*Armies actually present in the finals:*

necrons: Expected number of players in finals: 1.28 VS Actual number of players: 1
Grey knights: Expected number players in finals: 3.52 VS Actual number of players: 8
eldar: Expected number of players in finals: 0.48 VS Actual number of players: 1
Space wolves: Expected number of players in finals: 2.56 VS actual number of players: 2
daemons : Expected number of players in finals: 0.48 VS actual number of players: 1
dark angels: Expected number of players: 0.48 VS actual number of players: 1
orks: Expected number of players: 0.64 VS actual number of players: 1
Imperial guard: Expected number of players: 1.76 VS actual number of players: 1

*Now for the big losers:*

Expected number of Blood Angel players: 1.44
Expected number of Space Marine players: 1.12
Expected number of Dark Eldar players: 0.96
Expected number of Chaos marine players: 0.64
Expected number of Black Templar players: 0.32
Expected number of Tau players: 0.32



Now for the big question: wich number sticks out like a sore thumb? 

I'm not saying that many individual factors won't play a role, but as tournaments go that have enough numbers to even come close to a meaningfull analysis, adepticon would be it. And these numbers are FUBAR...

The armies you summed up in your arguments are that are doing insanely well (Eldar, Chaos Daemons and Dark Angles) do so because 0.48 players is ofcourse not possible and will have to be rounded up to make 1 person (making them twice as "effective" as you'd expect). 

They performed more then twice as good as you'd expect* because their numbers are so insignificant!* Grey knights didn't perform more then twice as well as you'd expect because their numbers are insignificant... They performed really well because they are about the easiest army to pick up and do well with. They OWNED this year's adepticon if you look at the numbers correctly.

*EDIT*


CONCLUSION of these numbers: Grey knights didn't perform well because of a "rounding error" in the final 16... They actually did significantly better then expected.


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## Zion (May 31, 2011)

elmir said:


> They performed more then twice as good as you'd expect* because their numbers are so insignificant!* Grey knights didn't perform more then twice as well as you'd expect because their numbers are insignificant... They performed really well because they are about the easiest army to pick up and do well with. They OWNED this year's adepticon if you look at the numbers correctly.


Actually they preformed twice as good as I expected because of the age of the codexes and the number of 5th edition books that are out and in theory *should *have done better. 

In fact, the codexes who did WORSE than expected tell me we don't have the full picture. Like what kind of Grey Knights armies did well? Were there game types the won more often? What enemies did the win most against, and which did they lose against? When you look at the numbers correctly you should note there *isn't enough data to form a realistic conclusion*. Sure Grey Knights did well, but can you tell me that the data says why they did well? Because as far as I'm reading we've got 8 good players that happened to use the Grey Knights (were any of these armies "count-as" or anything that breaks the standard mold for what is considered a "good" army?).

The point I was trying to make with the data is that *in a given population (namely what people actually brought)* Grey Knights didn't get a significant percentage MORE of population into the final 16. Now is that percentage a significant number of the final 16? Yes. 8/16 is a significant amount of armies to be using the same codex, but I've yet to see a break down of the kinds of armies these were, a tournament history for any players or any sort of data that shows that a significant percentage of Grey Knights players of low experience consistently outperformed the more veteran players. 

And THAT is the information we really need to see. We need to see that the codex was a contributing factor in the improved performance for a number of players. And 22% of the armies doesn't show me that (it just shows me that a lot of people played Grey Knight armies), nor does the 50% of the final players (since that could be for a NUMBER of reasons that people keep discarding to support their hypothesis of "Grey Knights are teh borked!") because we can't be sure of the quality of the players or the kinds of lists that were used to really determine if Grey Knights really factor THAT much into the ability of the player to win more often, more consistently and against players who are more experienced and generally better players.

As I keep reiterating: the reason I broke down the numbers the way I did is because I was dealing with someone who insisted that Adepticon represents the hobby as a whole, and that person believed that numbers could be used out of context to support their argument. At the very least my numbers support my argument better than the idea that 22% of the armies present immediately means that Grey Knights were so broken that you had to have them to compete.

And as I mentioned before, yes the sample sizes were small but this is an analysis of something that was not done in a controlled environment. I have no control over the number of people who brought what, I was just making a point that Grey Knights as a whole didn't manage to get a greater percentage of their armies into the finals than anyone else. And it's true, they got the same percentage as three of the "worst" codexes ever. Yes that means they still had more armies present in the end (which significantly increases the odds they would have an army place first).

And when dealing with numbers and rounding you round DOWN if it's less than .5 and up if it's .5 or higher, so some of those armies should have brought more people to the finals, and others shouldn't have made it at all based on that logic (assuming all generals, deployments, army lists, dice rolls and everything else to be equal that the percentage at the end of the event then that would be true, but that's the kind of numbers you'd set up if you were placing odds for betting or determining their chances of winning in a perfect environment, not looking at what actually happened).


EDIT:


elmir said:


> *EDIT*
> CONCLUSION of these numbers: Grey knights didn't perform well because of a "rounding error" in the final 16... They actually did significantly better then expected.


Again, more than to be expected, but not so much that I can agree that it's soley because of the codex. Grey Knights got twice the EXPECTED number to the finals, but in the end they still didn't exceed the same PERCENTAGE of their TOTAL number than other armies which shows there is more information that is missing that people keep omitting and ascribing to "the codex being so broken".


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## mynameisgrax (Sep 25, 2009)

(For my 1000th post, I'll be typing naked. Enjoy.)




Zion said:


> Orks had 8 players, of which 1 made it to the finals (or 1/8 or 1.25%)


You moved a decimal place there. 1/8 is 12.5%, not 1.25%. The Orks actually had a pretty good showing, compared with how many people used them. 

Anyway, you bring up some interesting points, although I believe Elmir has some very good ones as well. What I really like, overall, is using statistics to better understand how the armies are matching up against each other.

One thing is beyond question (as pointed out by Elmir): the Grey Knights are doing a LOT better than they should be. It's not enough to say they're popular, as they're winning twice as often as they should be, given how many players are using them.

It's interesting how poorly the other marines are faring though, compared to how many people use them. Aside from Space Wolves and Dark Angels, none of the regular Space Marines, Blood Angels, Black Templar or Chaos Marines made it to the finals.

I do think it's relevant that at least 1 player from each of several underplayed armies made it to the finals (Orks, Chaos Daemons, Dark Angels, and Eldar), but this has far less to do with the armies than with the players using them. 

In short: players that play the 'lesser used' armies, tend to use them a lot, and they usually get very good with them (or at least as good as you can). 

That said, this doesn't mean their armies are competitive. It just means that those players really know their shit.


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## Aramoro (Oct 7, 2009)

For how well the least popular armies do you can look to the Meta game to see why. If you want to do well then you must be able to beat Grey Knights, that means you can probably beat all Marine armies well. But being able to beat Grey Knights easily comes at a cost that you might not do so well against Orks say. So you build your list which has a strong match up against MeQ but is weak to Orks which is totally fine as it's unlikely you'll ever play one.


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## Zion (May 31, 2011)

mynameisgrax said:


> You moved a decimal place there. 1/8 is 12.5%, not 1.25%. The Orks actually had a pretty good showing, compared with how many people used them.


So I did. Thanks!



mynameisgrax said:


> Anyway, you bring up some interesting points, although I believe Elmir has some very good ones as well. What I really like, overall, is using statistics to better understand how the armies are matching up against each other.


Agreed, that's why I started looking into it.



mynameisgrax said:


> One thing is beyond question (as pointed out by Elmir): the Grey Knights are doing a LOT better than they should be. It's not enough to say they're popular, as they're winning twice as often as they should be, given how many players are using them.


Based on raw numbers alone we're actually finding they did better than we EXPECTED them to based on total numbers, but when you step back and look at it using the codex to as the answer to X you realize that there are a number of variables that aren't being accounted for that people assume are insignificant enough to consider.



mynameisgrax said:


> It's interesting how poorly the other marines are faring though, compared to how many people use them. Aside from Space Wolves and Dark Angels, none of the regular Space Marines, Blood Angels, Black Templar or Chaos Marines made it to the finals.


I agree, based on expectations of "codex strength" and "tier levels" these books should do better. And that's why I think these assumptions are wrong, they aren't being met in a real setting.



mynameisgrax said:


> I do think it's relevant that at least 1 player from each of several underplayed armies made it to the finals (Orks, Chaos Daemons, Dark Angels, and Eldar), but this has far less to do with the armies than with the players using them.


Also agreed, and that's been part of my point for a while. GOOD PLAYERS MATTER. People just want to talk about how awesome a book is and ignore any other reason why someone might win. It's cheap, lame and frankly a petty excuse for why someone loses. Or wins.



mynameisgrax said:


> In short: players that play the 'lesser used' armies, tend to use them a lot, and they usually get very good with them (or at least as good as you can).
> 
> That said, this doesn't mean their armies are competitive. It just means that those players really know their shit.


I've made this point in the thread that prompted me to dig deeper into the numbers as well. Well most of it. If the book can be played its competitive on some level because it can still show up and compete. It'll have a harder time against books with stronger internal balance, or more options but it doesn't mean it's out of the running. To abuse a dictionary for a moment:



> *com·pet·i·tive/kəmˈpetətiv/*
> 
> Adjective:
> Of, relating to, or characterized by competition.
> Having or displaying a strong desire to be more successful than others: "she had a competitive streak".


Do these books show up to compete? Are they run by players who intend to win? Then they're still "competitive". Are they as strong as other books? Probably not, but it doesn't mean they can't bring it.


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## Sethis (Jun 4, 2009)

Aramoro said:


> If Coteaz really causing that many problems in Tourney settings? Especially with 'I've Been Expecting You' nerf'd hard you're getting the Henchmen which are ace but I don't see him as broken at all. No more than Logan.


Well he shows up in what seems to be 90% of all tournament lists, because for 100pts, he gives the "Elite and few in number" Grey Knight army 12pt scoring units in 50pt metal boxes. If your super-elite army can spend 248pts on it's Troop choices in a 2000pt game (4 Razors w/Acolytes) then it leaves you huge amounts of points spare for other, better things than Strike Squads. He also gives you access to 15pt models that are better in combat than Purifiers (point for point), allowing the rest of your army to concentrate on shooting (and you can add meltas to that if you think you need to), i.e. piling on the Psycannons/Riflemen.

Also, a Sanctuary platform in a list that doesn't take a Libby is very nice bonus (lost track of how many times that's fucked me over). IBEY is just a little bit of situational icing on the cake.



> With that mindset you may as well ban all special characters. Yes even all of the Space Marine ones that make the armies fluffy (Vulkan He'stan). This is how comp starts, and that's a mess we don't need to be promoting because it just makes the game more confusing, limited and frustrating than it needs to be.


Not really. My view is that if something is taken in a massively overwhelming majority in competitive lists compared to other, similar units, then it needs to be reviewed and fixed via alteration of the rules or adjusting of points. Except GW never do such a thing because they assume that not everyone has access to a computer (yeah, right). Here are some examples:

Coteaz vs Inquisitors
Long Fangs vs Any other HS slot
Fire Dragons vs Any other Elites choices
Vendettas vs Valkyries
Hive Guard vs Any other Elites choice

The same can be said about the terribly shit units that no-one ever takes. They're just as broken as the good units, just in a bad way.

If, given half a dozen similar units, one of them is obviously always the best choice, it's a badly designed unit. It's not about special characters or comp, it's about fixing mistakes made during the design phase.

It's my opinion that Grey Knights can build very solid (not OP, just in line with everyone else) lists using neither Draigo nor Coteaz. If neither of those two characters had been printed, I believe that GKs would slot neatly into the established power level of 5th Edition, and we would have seen the normal small upswing in numbers that always follows a release. However since release, Grey Knight numbers have risen and risen and risen, and show no sign of dropping, despite a Necron release and it now being a full calender year since they came out. That indicates to me that the GK codex is considered to be extremely powerful, and the fact that one or both of the aforementioned special characters are included in almost every single list implies that they are the best choices in the best book in 5th (and are a significant part of why it is in fact the best book).


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## Suijin (Aug 11, 2011)

Some of the love I would for a GK army (if I had one) would be the flexibility of play it offers. The grand master's grand stategy or whatever allows you to tailor your list based on what you are facing. Then there is the deep striking options of several units, Librarian powers, teleport units, warp quake, psycannons being multi-purpose, rad grenades, psychotroke grenades, etc. This gives you an insane amount of good options for building the army, so you can make it more how you personally want/play.

That's not to say certain units aren't point efficient, kill point efficient, etc. like purifiers, paladins, henchmen. It is the whole thing all together.

The plus side is that the recent codex releases all seem to be tending toward these multi-purpose builds being possible within a codex. I will admit that GK players may have gotten lucky with a couple of better overall options though.

I need to agree with Elmir's analysis more though than Zion's. If 22% GK entered and 50% made it to finals then there is an issue.


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## Zion (May 31, 2011)

Suijin said:


> I need to agree with Elmir's analysis more though than Zion's. If 22% GK entered and 50% made it to finals then there is an issue.


My analysis came out as a counterpoint to that same viewpoint. It's drawing a conclusion from a very limited scope of data (which is what I keep seeing, so I did it back as a way to prove my point, if it's not right to draw conclusions like mine from a limited batch of data due to small sample sizes, non-standardized conditions and everything else, then it's wrong to draw ANY conclusions from this data other than what we can specifically see and verify (x went in, y came out. Z is unaccounted for. 

I shared it here because I did find it interesting though. I rather think that assuming people win because they play X cheapens them as a player because you're not giving them any of the dues they deserve. For all we know we had 8 players who played VERY well and just happened to use Grey Knights. There is too much not accounted for (like match ups, missions, player ability, experience, list comp, ect) that we can't see that I feel plays an important in determining why someone won that we can't see by looking at two numbers.

Also "Of the 22% of the 220 armies entered (48), and of 50% of 16 armies in the finals (8) made it to the finals where Grey Knights". It's important to properly contextualize these numbers rather to keep tossing them around like the mean something. These are significant numbers but only when you provide the right context. 

Either way this looks more like correlative evidence rather than cause and effect. To claim that Grey Knights are the sole cause of that many GK armies being in the finals is like claiming that the reason we have those armies is that all the players who won only roll left handed. YES they made it to the finals, but we're ignoring HOW and WHY in favor of a lame answer that instead says that anyone who plays the codex only wins because of the codex and not because of any ability of their own (or even luck).

But then again I believe that winning and losing has to do less with WHAT you play and more about HOW you play it. And I think some of those finalists would agree with me.


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## humakt (Jan 2, 2008)

I dont know how Adepticon works, but with 220 players how do they get the top 16 players? 

It would be more intetersting to know the top 50 armies, as this would be a better group and would account for chance losses before the top 16 were decided.


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## jaysen (Jul 7, 2011)

I'd say that GW did make a ton of cash from the Grey Knights...

However, most of that I attribute to the awesome models and pretty cool fluff. The art work for the codex cover, is also very nice. These things convince people to buy the models as much as powergaming.

A few reasons I know people don't play tyranids is because 
A. they are difficult to paint (or time consuming at least), 
B. people don't relate to being a spacing bug controlled 100% by some unknown mind hive, 
C. it's a real bummer trying play a horde army, especially when games are time limited, 
D. the good choices, just aren't that good (in relation to the top tier armies). There's no killer combos.


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## jaysen (Jul 7, 2011)

mynameisgrax said:


> (For my 1000th post, I'll be typing naked. Enjoy.)


:shok:, OMG.

To get a good statistical study, you'd need to get each player to try out all 15 armies, given the same amount of time and effort/interest, then have them matched up against every other person/army combination. Then, look at the results.

All these statistics are failing to consider the main parts of winning.... player skill and chance.


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## Six_Paths_of_Pain (Apr 20, 2012)

I like Space Wolves, not because of the Codex, but because of their style (as an army in general).


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## Zion (May 31, 2011)

jaysen said:


> :shok:, OMG.
> 
> To get a good statistical study, you'd need to get each player to try out all 15 armies, given the same amount of time and effort/interest, then have them matched up against every other person/army combination. Then, look at the results.


You'd also have to replace dice with a random number generator, and repeat the experiment at multiple point levels to get enough data points to be able to draw a legitimate conclusion.



jaysen said:


> All these statistics are failing to consider the main parts of winning.... player skill and chance.


And that's been a point I've railed on before. People like to blame codexes for everything but players are the ones who pick armies, decide to play spam and all the things that codexes get a rap for. And it's not fair to a codex that it has to take the blame honestly.


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## Suijin (Aug 11, 2011)

I was also hinting at the prospect that the army has many playstyles and good options. So many good players may pick GK for those reasons. If the army is quite powerful too then the results may indeed be indicative of what you see.


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## lockeF (Feb 18, 2011)

jaysen said:


> I'd say that GW did make a ton of cash from the Grey Knights...
> 
> However, most of that I attribute to the awesome models and pretty cool fluff. The art work for the codex cover, is also very nice. These things convince people to buy the models as much as powergaming.
> 
> ...


Don't jump to such rash conclusions, I for one do relate to being a space bug controlled 100% by some unknown hive-mind. As for the other things, tyranids being my main army, I completely agree with everything you have said. In fact, I picked up other armies to break away from the monotony of painting the little critters as well as I felt their was limited build options (as far as being competitive goes). Someone else stated that Hive Guard were purely the best elite option and I would agree with this, if I want to be competitive, I best bring my hive guard and my trygons (because although I love the fex and had 6 before some got converted, they are not typically worth it). 

As for the original post:
As for GK, I love statistics too, kinda, but in all reality if you look at the DEX, it seems bad ass. For something like 25 points I get space marines with force weapons standard. That alone to me makes the whole codex leagues better than most (I have tried and tried to think of a good way to take out GKs with my nids but come up short of anything close to a great method, especially against a good player). Yeah, GK can suffer form low numbers, I think 35 models in a 2000 point game seems about average but those models usually have 2+ and some 2++ saves, its not too big of a deal. Yeah, they are costly, and I am not saying I think the DEX is fundamentally flawed or OP, its fine how it is. I am saying though to argue the codex isn't fundamentally "good" or powerful is just ridiculous. Its a powerful codex that gives a lot of powerful builds to pick from with a lot of the models being worth taking, unlike a lot of other codexes (chaos bikers, chaos dreads, pyrovores are all things that come to mind).


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