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That'd make warhammer incredibly unique as generally speaking Timmy's won't show up to competitive high level tournaments (at least not in significant numbers) simply because getting crushed most of the time ain't much fun, no matter how much you like that army. Competitive high level tournaments are precisely the enviroment that attracts Spike's and chases away Timmy's. Timmy's tend to gravitate towards lower levels of play as at least they'l score some occasional wins (or at least don't unceremoniously get crushed so they can actually attempt to figure out something that resembles effective). Don't get me wrong there'l be those who'l insist on playing a certain way, but 1) they'l be rare, and 2) unless they're terribly masochistic they'l usually at least stick with stuff that vaguely works, and no matter how much you want to prove this army is worth playing, at a certain point you'l have to admit defeat...

Either warhammer has a weird variant of Timmy which for whatever reason doesn't care that they constantly get unceremoniously crushed. Or warhammer somehow manages to create armies that despite having a 80%+ loss-rate manage to have increadibly close games, thus keeping the promise of victory alive if Timmy could only figure out how to pull off this one thing (and even then, there are limits to losing too many times in a row)

That, or warhammer has a weirdly large population of Timmy's and few Spike's in it's competitive scene, so despite Spike having an 80% winrate the Timmy's are in the 40-60% area since they mostly just end up playing other Timmy's and come across relativly few Spike's that table them in half a turn.

I mean, it's possible, but seems very unlikely and I've never seen it happen anywhere else.

 

If timmy beats Spike all the time then how did we end up with a winrate of 80% for Spike and a winrate of 20% for Timmy?

Yes, others might be stronger, but seraphon ain't running around with a mere 20% win-rate either. Which is the point. If an average Timmy can get in some decent matches with his favorite army, doesn't suffer many crushing defeats and can manage a 30-40% winrate it remains interesting. If he constantly gets tabled and only really wins if he comes up against another Timmy (or against a Spike he massivly outclasses) it won't be fun for long.

 

Fair enough, still shouldn't happen if they go to tournaments of appropriate level (with the exception of certain formats I guess) but that's a different matter. Also, fairly certain that somewhere along the way winrates of individual players & armies as a whole got mixed up in here. Ah well.

It helps that it's one of the few games where wiping the floor with an enemy to the point they won't be able to score any points is relativly difficult due to how battleplans are set up as long as both players are halfway capable. Even something silly like the pure skink handler list posted on here a while back is probably going to score some points in most scenario's even when facing proper opponents.

The amount of dice involved probably also helps. It helps average things out, so you're less likely to utterly crush an opponent in one go due to every single one of his save's failing. But it also means there's enough chances to try and actually wound an opponent that you at least have the potential of hurting it. Something like 10 Skinks isnn't likely to kill anything, but the potential of 10 wounds does mean occasionally they will. And needlessly overextending does mean sooner or later that'l happen.

 

I think we converted him @LizardWizard lol

 

I think warhammer (or AoS at least) might be quite unique in this aspect then, quite a lot less focus on the competitive side and far more friendly towards the Timmy's than other games. While enabling the Spike's a lot less. Or at least, I don't think I've ever played a game where the Spike's didn't utterly dominate the scene once you went into the more competitive side of things. Which usually ended up spiraling, since Spike's dominate the game gets tailored to their wishes, causing them to become even more dominant, and so on. There'l Always be some others left, but the Spike's nearly Always seem to be the dominant group.

Also, what's WAC and MT?

Converted, nah fairly certain at this point we're simply talking about a (slightly) different aspect than what we started with.

 

AOS is singular in the variety of ways in which a "win" can occur. MAGIC has basically 2. reduce opponents life total to zero, or reduce their deck to zero called "milling" after the card "mill stone" which was one of the first ways in which to provide this win method. and the VAST majority of decks revolve around reducing life total to 0. so effectively one way (at the competitive level) which allows players to build for that method. but when you play AOS you have to build somewhat balanced list for the variety of battleplans and method for building victory points. because even the most alpha killy army can get screwed in battle plans like places of power if you get one point, nuke their wizards/artifacts while they decimate your army, and then they are incapable of scoring any more points....

 

Varied objectives, which you don't necesarly know before playing do help with that yeah.

 

Also the amount of time and effort to get an army tournament ready discourages changing armies every balance change. So unless you have unlimited money or free time to get the army bought, built and painted it's much easier to stick it out with 1 or 2 factions.

Unlike magic where you literally just buy the cards online and boom ready to go.(of course certain magic cards can be stupid expensive)

Warhammer is a special breed of competition. Some people spend years or even decades collecting and painting their army. Magic decks come and go. I've always said warhammer is a long haul hobby.

It's important to remember a lot of people find it outrageous to spend $30-$60 on tiny plastic miniatures and we buy them by the bucketload. So I would say Warhammer is clearly not about winning but the hobby as a whole.

 

@LizardWizard I know you're still theory-crafting, but noticed you dropped the Razordons completely from your Fangs of Sotek list in favour of buffing spells and 10 skinks. What's the reasoning?

Also, how crucial is the Skink Starpriest in Fangs of Sotek, is he mostly just there to give the Saurus Spears -1 to hit?

Thanks so much!

 

I actually would like to point something out here. You could theoretically equip a sunblood with a sword of judgment. With a potential for over 5 attacks that’s a pretty solid option on that many attacks. Or I could be totally wrong, only testing would conclude the idea.

Either way two solid lists, and I would love to see them used in a battle

 

The Eternal Starhost list has an error (Starpriest Spell)

Any thoughts on leaving some points left over to try to get a triumph instead of filling it with an Endless Spell? Especially when only running one wizard?

 

Actually the use of the palisade seems pretty potent. The fact that the guards need to brace to get off their attacks mean they will be on the defensive, so debuffing enemy units has a lot of potential. With Melee heavy armies that can only charge and attack, this means that their incoming attacks will be next to useless, and the counter attack form the guard will be much more formidable.