captPiett wrote:
I fail to see how this is a "conservative few" overruling the wishes of the "majority." Now that it's in the AC's hands, the onus is on them to either accept EUK lists in playtesting their lists, or look like a development-stifling stickler for insisting on NetEA only. Which AC who wants public support and approval (official and otherwise) to happen is going to choose the latter - Especially in the sometimes hostile interweb environment of taccom? Few to none, in my estimation. I think you've won.
So let me get this straight: 1) a fairly rigorous process for playtesting is established that tries to control for different NetEA metas while getting a sufficient number of games to instill confidence in approved lists. 2) people get impatient about lack of playtests, and instead of playtesting more 3) gripe about the lack of crossover testing with EUK which has long established itself as a separate testing regime //for a reason// 4) with the help of a poll and a bunch of people talking about "silly" and "stupid" restrictions and wanting to use lists that they "feel like" using, the net-ERC is pressured to make a significant and questionable concession, so that 5) now we test for balance against against a set of lists that share many similarities but also //many important differences//, including the overall goal in balancing and construction (i.e. EUK is optimized for balanced tournament play in the UK meta). All I've seen is unsubstantiated opinions and whining. For those that hold systematic processes as important, this sequence of events is very disappointing. Good job, guys.
As I've said in a bunch of different places, the amount of effort required to coordinate a NetEA-only test is negligible. It could be accomplished with the same level of effort as writing many of the posts above; I think I could've built 4-5 different lists for playtests while typing this long-winded post.
So if you're only playing 25% of your games using EUK lists, how is netea-only testing slowing development? How much of that "majority" in the poll actually playtest anyway? Should we now expect 3-4 lists get approval in quick succession because of this change? I'm going to guess not...
I'm going to be testing against NetEA lists for the IF in future as I have been doing already as it keeps the peace and doesn't lead to grumpiness when people feel they have wasted their time playing a game and writing it up only to have it dismissed
However I do think the rigor of playtesting is being rather overstated here, local meta, playstyle, player skill/experience and terrain conventions all have MASSIVELY more effect on a game than stuff like tactical marines costing 25 points more/less.... also I don't think any of my local group would use any of the EUK lists that were developed in total isolation from the NetEA equivalent
of much greater concern to me are oversights that we have an AMTL list which has been granted approved status despite not being batrepped (or even possibly playtested?) against Tau.... there is literally no data on it at all... and while they're not a 'core' list, do tend to show up fairly regularly....
if we were being genuinely scientific about this, we'd have to fix terrain conventions one way or another, insist a list is playtested against a
minimum of every race with an approved list, at 3000, 4000 and 5000 point levels, ideally swapping armies at the end of the game and playing again on the same table to back out the player skill element, you'd want tests done on tables with light, medium and heavy terrain layouts, ideally a few of each, and you'd also need to test balanced all-comers lists as well as going heavy on a particular aspect to break the list.... but then all of a sudden you're looking at needing dozens and dozens of games before a list can even be considered for approval, which would slow it down again... the ERC has been pragmatic here and set what they clearly feel are
attainable goals, they've compromised massively on pretty much every aspect of variability you could think of, and whether the opposing list is NetEA/EUK/Epic-FR or GW is probably one of the least important variables in the equation
But as I said before, and you stated, it's not a huge effort to write a NetEA list for a game and I and my regular opponents will only use NetEA lists going forward where possible
