With phase one down we thought it would be great to show a rudimentary analysis and summary of the outcomes and potential design changes for Phase Two. - Paul Street

Game Sizes

In Phase One almost all games were played at the Incursion level – I found this interesting as I thought there would be more games played at the Combat Patrol level; this clearly shows that players in our group prefer larger to smaller games and the current adage that 50 PL games are the sweet spot between army building, gameplay decisions, and play time seems to hold true.  I suspect that we will find half our games in Phase 2 will be Strike Force size – although I hold out hope we will see some Combat Patrol level games also (but I am a sucker for the fast paced games of Combat Patrol).

Win Rates

Win rates in the campaign were a little lopsided in phase one – the Attackers almost won half of all games – and in the phase we had four players go undefeated:

1.      Mike Holstein (Death Guard) 2-0

2.      Justin Nolan (Adeptus Mechanicus) 2-0

3.      Carson Ownes (Sisters of Battle) 2-0

4.      Colby Joyner (Orks) 3-0

Of these players two had very close games (Mike’s Death Guard beat Bill’s Dark Angels in a game that went down to the wire – and Carson’s Sisters won a game against my Death Guard which was literally the closest game of Warhammer I have ever played).  What is more interesting is that no army with an 8th edition codex won a game . . .

1.      Pat Morton (Tyranids) 0-1

2.      Chris Rice (Eldar) 0-1

3.      Kris Snyder (Imperial Guard) 0-3

This leads me to consider that next season 8th edition books may need some kind of buff.  Potentially something like all Warlord and Relic traits do not cost requisition points, or they gain additional command points based on game size (2 for combat patrol, 3 for incursion, 4 for strike force . . . etc.).  We’ll see if, as players get more games with their armies, the wins will become more evenly distributed.

Warseers and Portents

One of my favorite created Campaign Edicts was Warseers and Portents.  The name is a reference to an old Warhammer website from the early 2000s (Portent) that had amazing rumors and was very well run.  When Portent finally shut down it was replaced by Warseer – which at first was great then turned into utter garbage (the dark days of 5th thru 7th edition 40k and 8th edition fantasy).  Anyways I thought it was cool to have a mechanic that would engage players in other games by having them predict the winners/losers and battle size.

Warseers and Portents - Phase One Results

So the participation rate for Phase One was only at 50% - I think this was due to half the players not playing around with the website much – having said that – this was an optional task players and players were not required to make a prediction.

Additionally in phase one we asked for the player to predict the battle size – in all cases every player picked Incursion.  This lead me to drop the battle size from the prediction requirement – generally whenever you see a system where everyone picks the same thing . . . you don’t really have an option there and you should remove it.

When it came to choosing winners people focused on Chris’s Eldar, my Death Guard (Paul), and Colby’s Orks for wins.  Pink is my army (Paul) and green was William Baucom’s Space Marines.  One of the predictions for Colby’s Orks winning is for phase two.

When it came to predicting the loser – almost half the predictions were me . . . really?  Dark red is Chris Rice’s Eldar – with the exception of me it seems loser predictions were spread out.  I tend to think that the lot of you were griefing me.

Finally we get to the meat; did anyone pick a winner in phase one?  The answer was surprisingly . . . no.  Here were the predictions (predictor omited to protect the innocent):

1.      Death Guard (PS) over Sisters (CO) – this battle happened twice but Sister’s won both times.

2.      Space Marines (WB) over Eldar (CR) – this battle did not occur.

3.      Eldar (CR) over Deathwatch (BF) – this battle did not occur.

4.      Orks (CJ) over Death Guard (PS) – this battle did not occur.

5.      Eldar (CR) over Death Guard (PS) – this battle did not occur.

6.      Death Guard (PS) over Dark Angels (BF) – this battle did not occur.

I was a little surprised in that we had 6 predictions and only one battle occurred . . . that got me to thinking . . . how many winner/loser combinations were possible?  Based on 11 players and two player games – the answer was actually 110 (math).

This means if you randomly picked the winner and loser your chances of picking correctly was very low (<1%).  Now of course players can also limit their picks with better information – they can pick people who live near each other and are likely to play . . . but even if you pick a combo from the smallest hub (Greensboro) there are still 20 combinations.  That means even with good information the chance of succeeding is still around 5%.  In light of low chance of success we’ll increase the reward for Portents and Warseers to 4 Warzone points in phase two – this would make it equivalent to winning an incursion level game – which I think is reasonable for making a 1/20 chance prediction.