No language barrier. I don't believe me showing a nice guy attitude is of any use here. I am trying to stir up constructive change to a very morose state of affairs, and sometimes being a bitch about things is just plain more efficient.

But then, I am not a community leader.

You are, however, and probably the best one we have. Kudos for that. Your list development processes and motivational skills are by far the most developed of all the ACs, and your achievements speak for themselves.

ACs should definitely use your methods as reference more.

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"War is not about who is right, but about who is left". - B. Russell

And sometimes it just makes people disregard any good points you might have made...

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The Wargaming Trader
NetEA Death Guard Army Champion

Perhaps. I'll let events speak for themselves.

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"War is not about who is right, but about who is left". - B. Russell

...

Dude, you're taking shots of toy soldiers fighting fictional battles, not shooting a Pulitzer. Open up the aperture and dial up the ISO, or just use a flash. Save the fancy shots and editing for EpiComp, we'll forgive you some graininess in a rep.

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Dave

Blog

NetEA Tournament Pack Website

Squats 2019-10-17

Yeah, if you have a problem with flash in a dark space try a diffuser or even a rizla gummed over the flash to take the edge off.

Wow what a thread!
Here's a whole ass-load of thoughts on the major points brought up.



It's a good place / goal to aim for. It is not holy scripture, we don't get arrested by the hobby police if we break it, nor does god kill a kitten. I think this is a case by case issue. I mean, if we have a small tweak to a done list at the end and get only 8 playtests I'm sure the AC can bring it up for a vote. It's a guideline-not a rule.



Some of the above is very true. Also take a strong look at what's happened on the last 20 or so months:
-we had a few key figures here drop out
-we encountered the otterman heresy. that was a huge demotivator. just look at posts and visits over time. marked drop off
-GW pulled the plug

All of the above had some serious morale inflicting results. Let's just say a few of our formations were broken We're now just in the rally phase!

There's good energy back again so let's move forward.


I'd be up for a 2.0 but only once there's a fair set of lists and 80% suplements off the table and called done. That addresses the concerns of LoM on done==death.


I actually really like this one specificly. Also your concrete examples in the same post are good. I don't have the $$$ to hand out minis but I totally get your concept there.



You know I personally dislike a ton of pics in an actual testing battle report (a narrative one or for kicks is different). Honestly I can't make out what I am seeing in half of them. I wasn't there for the battle itself so a huge amount of context is missing. I'd rather see a picture made in Paint in 10 minutes with colored/labled boxes that looks like an crappy old avalon hill board game (I love AV for the record. No flames please ). I'm looking at the report to understand tactics and strategy and how the formations were leveraged, why so, and always with the greater understanding of the battle in toto. What I see half the time is some really awesome looking armies and boards I don't have a clue as to what was going through their mind. I'm not dissing anyones reports mind you. Just that sometimes I think with all the awesome modeling we're doing here that we're getting caught up in the "epicness of my battle" for a report a bit much. Trust me, e've got some pretty BAD ASS reports to (S2M, Onyx, Capt Piet especially come to mind). Hell, I don't even pull out my armies for the most part when I'm testing right now as I'm playing with paper proxies so I can do weird min/max tests and off the wall builds. I'm not here to make a White Dwarf action report. They need that to look sexy to sell more stuff.

tl;dr;

Take pictures for your own memory. Use a note pad and a scaner to post a report if it's too much to make some big production out of it. I'm interested in WHY not how your battle looked.


I'm with you. I started using the memo recorder feature of my phone. I take dictation. It with quick pictures of the table to help assist the memory almost always brings everything back. I can say what went down in a few seconds. Give it a whirl.


LoM, do take that to heart. You've got good input to give. Unfortunately you've been one half of the side of a running argument that makes people tune you out. Keep pushing but structuring the way in which it happens slightly differently will give you more forward motion. Knowing when to fight and when to let something lie for a bit helps too
Personally you've got some out there ideas but I keep telling you to put some funky lists up because you might have something. It's going to be good anyways as we don't need to stagnate in no more development, right?

I've gone out of my way to publicy support testing some ideas for you (BL especially), provided you get me your list. Do it, as BatReps speak way louder than opinions.

Now all that being said, this is a pretty awesome group of people all over the world to associate with. Glad we're all here.

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He's a lawyer and a super-villian. That's like having a shark with a bazooka!

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Just a few things to address some comments in this thread:

On "Approved = dead". I really don't think there's any risk of running out of lists to develop. There are far too many needing testing as it is, and GW updates armies faster than we can approve "current GW edition" lists for them. And besides, I don't understand why keeping an approved list as it is should be a BAD thing? Why do you always want to be changing things? Just because space marines are approved doesn't mean people don't play them (it also doesn't mean they don't get changed). If enough people want a radically different/more modern/chapter-specifc marine list, it can appear alongside the codex list. In fact, personally I think it is a very useful design principle to fix each list in a context (e.g. steel legion during the 3rd war for Armageddon) and/or in time (e.g. based on 3rd edition). If GW changes the army, do a new list to represent it.

Also, keep in mind that once a list has been approved it can't be "de-approved". Sure you can create a new version of the list that includes big changes and therefore will have a status of developmental, but there will always be a version of that list that has been Approved. I had suggested this process be formalised and thus made a little more clear, i.e. that the compendium can always include the "most balanced" version of the list, with another version in the tier below undergoing testing on the forums.

For example, as time progresses and changes are made to a list:
Codex marines 1.3 (In development)
Codex marines 1.4 (In development)
Codex marines 1.4 (Approved) <- in compendium
Codex marines 1.5 (In development)
Codex marines 1.6 (In development) <- current playtest version, on forum

The downside is that people aren't very good with the concept of versioning e.g. changing units and republishing with the same version, not including a version, or even not having a written copy of the list at all. I think the system that is generally used for approved lists is a bit haphazard. It doesn't necessarily involve actually producing a list document, only a forum topic with a list of proposed changes, 5 pages of discussion and then a post from the AC saying "OK, please test formation X at Y points for Z units".

I keep meaning to further develop my plan for a tool for automatically generating new lists and tracking their versions, but I don't find the time. The idea is that the AC could tweak a unit, formation, rule etc on a web application, and it automatically generates a new version (with PDF). ERC members could edit the status of a version of a list, and compendia could be generated automatically too (or source files for them at least, with no chance for copy-paste errors). You could also have units shared between lists, which can warn you if you are making a stats change that impacts another list, giving you the chance to carry forward the change across all lists or fork a new unit. Army builders, battle results trackers etc would be logical addons once you have the structured list data.

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Kyrt's Battle Result Tracker (forum post is here)
Kyrt's trade list

OK that was more than a few things :/

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Kyrt's Battle Result Tracker (forum post is here)
Kyrt's trade list

Correct me if I am wrong, the playtests do not require pictures. When we wrote the guidelines, there were no specifics attached to how the batreps were to be presented. Now I do believe pictures make them more appealing, easier to understand, and lend more credence to the information, but it isn't set in stone.

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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.

For the record, GW was wrong in many ways. Out of a huge amount of specific names they thought they had under license and fought for, they were recently largely browbeaten.

You have no reason to be too scared of GW licensing anymore.

Edit: The defendant was defended pro bono, because the claimant was the big bad GW.

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"War is not about who is right, but about who is left". - B. Russell

I believe you're referring to the ChapterHouse verdict. It is true it did not go brilliantly for GW, and as a result we are now seeing some more minis see the light than we might not have otherwise.

What remains to be seen, though, is whether the C&D letters really do stop. Half the ones they sent before the CH verdict had a flimsy basis, that was not in question, but it didn't stop them being bullies. The idea being that nobody would have the funds or inclination to stand up to a big company, with lawyers sending out lots of letters. Larger mini producers now may well be more prepared to stand up and fight following the case, but I suspect if GW continued to send those letters, most are still going to cave in.

Anyway, this thread isn't really about IP, there are many threads already for that.

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Kyrt's Battle Result Tracker (forum post is here)
Kyrt's trade list

Something that is being overlooked in this discussion is the issue of the core rules. If there's going to be a drive to approve lists, then everyone involved needs to be using the same core rules, otherwise it becomes an exercise in futility. It was mentioned earlier on that Onyx's gaming group in Australia uses different terrain rules to NetEA players in the UK, for example, and I'm sure that there are other instances of different interpretations of the core rules.

If NetEA is so flexible that players cannot even play to the same set of core rules, what chance is there of ensuring that any new lists are balanced? I just can't see how it would work. The fundamental problem with EA at the moment is that there are too many sets of rules. We have NetEA (in various guises), Epic UK, Epic Fr, and I'm sure others too. It's a nightmare in my opinion, and makes any kind of change extremely confusing and difficult to implement.

This is, of course, the downside to community based development. People will go off and do their own thing when there are differences of opinion, but given that this is way that the Epic community around the globe has chosen to go, it does seem rather odd for certain individuals to keep complaining about lack of progress on approving army lists when the community is so very diverse.

I also don't understand why we need to approve so many new army lists. There's already a wide enough range of core armies to meet much of the demand, and they've been around for years, don't need further changes for the most part, and such stability makes it easier for new players to participate.

If there are core armies which don't have an approved list, such as the aforementioned Tyranids and Squats, then it seems reasonable to work on getting them approved, but as for all the fan made lists, they are not a priority at all in my opinion.

LotM, you seem to believe that the ACs and ERC are paid games designers working for GW and should act as though this is their full time job. They're volunteers who give up their free time to try to work on their respective armies. I think that it would beneficial to think about that before making demands as to what they should and shouldn't do.

Finally, yes, writing battle reports isn't all that much fun, in my opinion at any rate, but if cases for approval or change are to be demonstrated to the community as a whole, then that's the way to go. However, even if lots of battle reports do suddenly start appearing, if a raft of different core rules are being used for the games, drawing conclusions is going to be more than a little bit awkward.

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I read your post twice Irisado, and I still didn't get your point.

Are you saying we should have more central direction towards organizing the community (rules and events) better, because we need the drive?

Or, are you saying that that you are glad that there isn't any more federation effort because division helps stagnation?

In the first case, I would agree with you, and in the second I wouldn't.

Regarding your comment on community responsibilities, I disagree that volunteering towards an effort is any justification for failure. Perhaps establishing a benchmark of what success is would be a good start, but we don't even have that. For certain 2011-2013 ain't success under any method of evaluation.

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"War is not about who is right, but about who is left". - B. Russell

Neither.

I'm saying that unless everyone who plays NetEA agrees to play to the same set of core rules, then trying to balance army lists is an almost impossible task, because what it balanced for one community will not be balanced for another, especially if it's something as fundamental as line of sight.

Ideally, it would be great if we could have everyone play to the same set of rules - i.e. no division between NetEA, Epic UK, and the rest of them. That would make life so much easier when it comes to getting people into the game. We'd simply say to all new players, here are the rules, everyone plays to these, welcome to the community. Sadly, that won't ever happen, because the community is too divided for that.



It's not a success by your method of evaluation . You can't speak for anyone but yourself and your own assessment of what constitutes success or failure .

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There is a number of people on this forum who thinks that "finishing" the development and the lists kills the game. That for keeping Epic alive it is necessary to keep updating, testing, developing on and on and on and on and on. In my opinion they are plain wrong. Actually, that's what killed Epic for me, just not finishing most of the lists once and for all (and not the fact that GW discontinued it).

The Compendium resurrected Epic for me (and the Tyranids UK version), thank goodness.

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