You've actually played with that army?

BTS is really easy against it.  A single lost assault is going to break a lot of those Monoliths... 2-3 are going to arrive broken... enemy is going to go first and, either go on overwatch, or break/destroy a couple more... every turn.

Hell, I may do a battle report using such an army!

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"EPIC: Total War" Lead Developer

Now living in Boston... any EPIC players want to meet up?

Okay, I don't get this at all... you feel playing playtest games is a good thing... but *reporting* them is a waste of time or even harmful?!

Could you explain this to me, because, honestly, I'm quite confused by it.

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"EPIC: Total War" Lead Developer

Now living in Boston... any EPIC players want to meet up?

Not a full game, just some test scenarios.

You'd probably drop one mono to pimp up one phalanx to be BTS. Which stsys off board till turn 3.

They mostly teleport into a small triangle of objectives in the opposing half, and the phalanxes keep marshalling. Frankly they don't really need to even kill much to win. Anything coming near will be wiped out in a mega engagement, and so that's 2 points sown up. Several monos stay in reserve to land on home objectives in the last turn, and if broken the phalanxes sync through them to contest.

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http://www.troublemakergames.co.uk/
Epic: Hive Development Thread

I feel that drawing conclusions based on a small number of reported games risks allowing statistical anomolies to become accepted as the norm.

Your popcorn tests are the perfect example, you posted a couple of reports in which the popcorn didn't work well, so everyone immediately decided the popcorn wasn't a problem. In reality it was, and remains a problem, but because people drew conclusions from battle reports rather than intuition, number crunching and experience, the problem was ignored from then on.

I tried to bring it up several times, but was told "no, the popcorn isn't broken, the battle reports prove it."

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http://www.troublemakergames.co.uk/
Epic: Hive Development Thread

Battle reports can only be useful if presented in enormous numbers, and the statistics compiled. using a single battle report as evidence is like coming up with an election prediction by polling a single person.

"So, based on our latest poll, John McCain will win 100% of the vore."

Average experience over multiple polls allows a much closer aproximation; hence battle reports are useless unless presented in the thousands.

Drawing conclusions from the report of one or two games is daft, the margin of error is just too large.

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http://www.troublemakergames.co.uk/
Epic: Hive Development Thread

Actually, just because it breaks all game, that doesn't mean it's useless, but it shouldn't be ignored entirely. Pylons for example are balanced by usually spending most of the game broken.

I contend that an opinion based on dozens of games is more worthwhile than an opinion based on a few reported games. Unless someone is willing to set up and manage a game result statistic system for all games we will continue to be stuck with "X isn't broken because of battle report Y".

Something like the army win percentage ratings that was done for UK tournaments would be a lot more useful than battle reports.

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http://www.troublemakergames.co.uk/
Epic: Hive Development Thread

Well, this may have been said, but the type/version of rules/Lists is obviously the biggest factor of the BatReps' worth or validity ... Plus the style/tactical expertist/skill of the players is going to effect how the game/battle/Report will playout ... And terrain on the table will have some effect too. IMO ...

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Legion 4 "Cry Havoc, and let slip the Dogs of War !" ... "People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf."

Yes it is possible to draw faulty conclusions from individual battle reports which present objective data but offer a skewed picture due to the context. Thats a problem with the person interpreting the report, not the report itself.

I would contend that the fact that there are a limited number of reports doesn't change the fact that opinions based on evidence that can't be interpreted objectively cannot be given equal weight to battle reports.

Humans are fallible creatures. Human opinion includes failings of memory, twists of perspective, and emotional content. There are reasons why courts ask for fact not opinion from witnesses, and why scientific theories are based on evidence, after all.

I see no reason why the process of balancing lists should not proceed in a logical, rational manner. For that, reliable data is needed. The human mind is not as reliable as raw data.

Honestly even a record of the lists, two sentences describing the course of the game and the results would be more useful than bare opinion.

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They are free, yes, but not entirely free; for they have a master, and that master is Law.

So, if you posted up your three games a week, even in bare-bones details, we'd have a nice chunk of data to analyze and discuss...  

Providing no data is as bad as providing sparse data.

To me, the answer to you assertion that battle reports are a waste of time is simply this: do more of them.

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"EPIC: Total War" Lead Developer

Now living in Boston... any EPIC players want to meet up?

You created this thread when we were having our little spat in the Minervan thread, when the "lying" thing came up as well.  It wasn't hard for me to draw a conclusion that I was the unmentioned offender.

As for the Tau discussion - even more reason to have batreps.  I've never scene a larger discussion-to-batrep ratio than with the Tau and that army IMO has been going nowhere for years.  No offense Cybershadow.  

Let's just try this a different way... You don't want to make batreps.  You think they are actually counter-productive.  Fine!  Don't do them.  There is nothing that requires you to make them, report them, or share them.  Tactical Command represents a minority of the Epic playing world and you can go a lifetime playing Epic without ever coming on this forum.  You can even spend the whole time on this forum discussing things other than playtesting.  Heck, you can continue to do what you are doing right now.  (I wish I knew where to find the head banging against a wall because that is the quintessential Zombocom Emoticon).

But Tactical Command is the Epic center of list development.  Like it or not this is the die-hard core of Epic fanatics who create, modify, playtest, and debate Epic Army Lists. Battle Reports are part of that culture whether you like it or not.  You can either be a part of that culture or constantly at odds with it.  You've obviously dug your heels in pretty deep and your original post appears more of a statement of "I don't think batreps are important, who is with me?!" as opposed to an open-minded question.  But I think you have your answer either way.  You don't have to like them and you certainly don't have to do them.  But you really shouldn't complain if people ask for them.

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author of Syncing Forward and other stories...

It's a dog-eat-dog world, and I've got my Milkbone underwear on.

Oh, point in fact, Hoyjn's Necron batrep was an interesting write-up.  Of course, while he was writing it up he discovered he gave himself the Tomb Complex for free.

Error #1 found.

I found that he built the list improperly with the War Engine Allocation.

Error #2 found.

Just two points of data that would never have been discovered without the batrep.  At this point I feel like I'm beating a dead horse.

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author of Syncing Forward and other stories...

It's a dog-eat-dog world, and I've got my Milkbone underwear on.

I'm joining this thread late and I'm glad I did given the unusual acrimony (unusual for TacComm, that is).

To throw in my 2 cents, I'm in favor of batreps. I think they're an essential tool for playtesting. Dave and I do batreps for most of our games and I would guess it takes maybe 15 more minutes to play while taking notes and pics. I'll be the first to admit that I'm a little apprehensive about letting the world see the mistakes I make while playing, but I'm willing to do them to support my opions or to prove them wrong. They're also important because it's difficult to recall every little detail of a game. As a side effect, they've helped me become a better player, often through readers pointing out mistakes I've made in interpretting a specific rule.

I'll agree that 100% credence shouldn't be given to batreps, but I really can't see how a well balanced list can be written without them.

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"I don't believe in destiny or the guiding hand of fate." N. Peart

Batreps also let people see how other groups/people play or set things up; you've never read a batrep and thought, "Wow, I never thought of that!" before?

When the Canadian GW HQ still supported EPIC, there were a lot of other EPIC "groups" around, other than just the one I'm in, and you'd hear all kinds of interesting things.  One of the big things in one group was how Imperial Guard Artillery was broken against anything other than Marines because "they can just destroy you in Turn 1"; I enquired about this and Orks, Eldar, or any army with infantry were just getting massacred and infantry or mech infantry were thought of as weak and ineffective.  I asked one of these guys to send me some of their army lists so I could see what they were playing with and maybe do a batrep.  I put together a fight, and sent them a batrep with pictures, and the first question in response was "Why is there terrain in your deployment zones?"  

They had thought the 15cm of edge for deployment were supposed to be "clear"... and they *never* played corners either, so, just in discussions, that had never come up, and wouldn't have even been a question I would raise as they had said they used the "proper" amount of terrain.  A single batrep changed their views on many things and changed the way they played.

I'm not saying battle reports are the only way to do things, but they are simply one of many tools used in development.  I still say, if you're playing that many games a week, why *not* do reports so we can have more data to work with?

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"EPIC: Total War" Lead Developer

Now living in Boston... any EPIC players want to meet up?