Number of BG in the Britcon armies

[dave_r]

Exotics was won by a 12 BG army though. Early was won by a 15 and a 16 (or 15.5 if you prefer) and late was won by 12? Doesn't sound like big BG armies are running away with it to me. The biggest army I fought was 15.

Erm, looking at both sets of graphs, we are talking here about over 1000 games across several tournaments in 2 countries... and its a slam dunk result that armies with 11 or less BGs were the most likely 5 or less, and the least likely to score 20 or more. Utterly consistently, and by a huge margin for "not losing" and sort of less clearly so for "winning big", but still a pretty clear ternd.

If there is a hypothesis that "small armies are easier to beat than big ones" I'd say these graphs prove it. And "Some bloke managed to beat a trend seen consistently across 1000 games with a run of 5 or 6 games in this, that or the other competition" doesn't really cut it for me as a counter argument I'm afraid

Well? Don't take an army with 11 BG's if you want to do well!!!

The rules state that 10-15 is the norm - but they don't state what points are to be played. Clearly 11 BG's is OK at 650 points, but if you took 8 at 650 you are likely to struggle. The same is shown for 800 pts.

Did anybody take note of the tactical advice given by Phil Barker in DBM?

[peterrjohnston]

Exotics was won by a 12 BG army though. Early was won by a 15 and a 16 (or 15.5 if you prefer) and late was won by 12?

Doesn't sound like big BG armies are running away with it to me. The biggest army I fought was 15.

These are individual results and irrelevant here. We are looking at ALL the results, not personal experiences.

[dave_r]

Exotics was won by a 12 BG army though. Early was won by a 15 and a 16 (or 15.5 if you prefer) and late was won by 12?

Doesn't sound like big BG armies are running away with it to me. The biggest army I fought was 15.

These are individual results and irrelevant here. We are looking at ALL the results, not personal experiences.

But looking at ALL the armies then the average number of BG's taken was around 13.6?

I am still failing to see what the problem is? Other than Tim moaning because if he wants to take a knife to a gun fight.

[hammy]

Without an enormous amount of work, I can't back-calculate and divide 5-10s between losing draws and losses. But 0-5 is a definite loss. It's clear, and even you agree, large BG armies lose a significantly less amount of games on this definition.

How is 5 or less points a definite loss? It certainly does not mean your army was broken.

So we have, looking at all the data:
Small armies do badly.
Big armies don't lose 0-5.
This is unbalanced. And as you yourself concluded, the trend is towards larger armies (currently about 14 BG).

If you assume that armies with 10 BGs should be viable in open tournaments at 800 points and you define anything smaller than 12 BG as a small army then I can't dissagree. However looking at the Britcon data in FoG early the two really large armies (18+ BG) placed 8th and 18th. The small armies (all 12 BG as there were no 11 BG armies in FoG early) placed 6th, 13th=, 13th=, 21st, 24th, 25th, and 28th when you cionsider that there were 38 players that is not a bad spread.

The 15 and 16 BG armies placed 1st=, 1st=, 3rd, 5th, 7th, 9th, 16th=, 16th=, 29th=, 29th= and 38th. You could easily draw the conclusion from the same data that 12 BG armies are safer bets and less likely to get an extreeme result, either good or bad

[Scrumpy]

You really need to get a woman Hammy.

[hammy]

You really need to get a woman Hammy.

I have one, it is just that at the moment she is busy folding proteins (long story) and I have some data to play with, a copy of Excel and a bit of time

[peterrjohnston]

But looking at ALL the armies then the average number of BG's taken was around 13.6?

That's the average of the two averages for early and late in one competition, not really helpful I'm afraid. More interesting would be average number of BGs over time for competitions. When I get time I'll look at the Italian results for this.

However, Hammy's first analysis showed an approximate decline in the average number of BGs from the top third/quartile to the lower third/quartile (for Britcon only).

But to repeat, all of the data show
Small armies do badly
Large armies don't lose 0-5.

I am still failing to see what the problem is? Other than Tim moaning because if he wants to take a knife to a gun fight.

Gun to a knife fight, surely

[madaxeman]

Don't take an army with 11 BG's if you want to do well!!!

Dave Agrees with Me.

[hammy]

Don't take an army with 11 BG's if you want to do well!!!

Dave Agrees with Me.

[peterrjohnston]

You could easily draw the conclusion from the same data that 12 BG armies are safer bets and less likely to get an extreeme result, either good or bad

Errr, no. From your graph 12-13 BG armies have about the same percentage of 0-5s as 11 BG armies. They were fractionally the worst performing in this range. They also had one of the highest percentage of 20-25. So they are arguably the most extreme, very win or lose. Perhaps because this is what the rules were aiming for, 12-13 being the medium of the suggested number of BGs?

In the Italian results they are perhaps closer to what I was expecting the data to look like before I did the graph (I was expecting a graph of scores to start low, peak in the middle, dip, then higher for 20-25).

Can you compare the results of 12-13 BG armies when facing different sizes of armies? That would be interesting.

[peterrjohnston]

Don't take an army with 11 BG's if you want to do well!!!

Dave Agrees with Me.

Is this a first, Dave agreeing with anyone?!!!

[expendablecinc]

Personally I think it's the point Tim has mentioned. There is no friction in command and control, ie larger BG armies are no more harder to control than those with less. Lot's of BGs becomes like a sort of DBM lite.

As the rules don't have this, in theory the remaining counter-balance should be that more BGs means that individually they are more fragile. But the scoring system penalty for this isn't there.

Not sure what the answer is, to be honest.

A couple of simple solutions:
- Have skirmisher BGs count as half a BG towards the total Bg count in the army but count as normal when lost or evading. (this doesnt solve swarms of MF but the fix for this is in the army list not the rules - eg change BG size from 8-10)

or

- Cap army break limit as a function of the army size in points - eg army points divided 60.

[olivier]

Excuse me but I don't see where the problem is?
Army with more than 16 BG fight with pillow ! May be is easier not to lose but certainly you can't have an easy win against an average player. In comp the goal ( I hope ) is to have fun and play for the final victory.
When a player come with a big army, generally he lost this 2 aim. He can't win the comp (exept a great player) and bore his opponents to death
Refuse the fight with them, gave them 4 boring games at each comp and quickly they change the composition of their armies.
(at least it worked in France! )

[philqw78]

Army with more than 16 BG fight with pillow

That is brilliant

And it smells of elderberries.

Such a way with words the French.

[CLAVDIVS]

Where are the Seagulls

[philqw78]

Cantona and Python not being the best examples of French prose though.

[azrael86]

A couple of simple solutions:
- Have skirmisher BGs count as half a BG towards the total Bg count in the army but count as normal when lost or evading. (this doesnt solve swarms of MF but the fix for this is in the army list not the rules - eg change BG size from 8-10)

or

- Cap army break limit as a function of the army size in points - eg army points divided 60.

This looks like a 'fix' which will create at least as many problems as it addresses. It penalises armies with lots of skirimishers, without necessarily fixing the swarm problem which is known to be mainly a list oversight affecting at most 3 or 4 books.

A more even handed solution, (which of course won't be applied) is to charge for each unit, as happened in 6th and 7th.

[hammy]

This looks like a 'fix' which will create at least as many problems as it addresses. It penalises armies with lots of skirimishers, without necessarily fixing the swarm problem which is known to be mainly a list oversight affecting at most 3 or 4 books.

A more even handed solution, (which of course won't be applied) is to charge for each unit, as happened in 6th and 7th.

I agree that a 'fix' along those lines is not a good one.

Charging points per BG would be OK but it would have to be the same for drilled and undrilled, not like the 10 or 25 point system used in WRG 6th.
It does seem fairly clear that a decent number of BGs is a good idea if you are going to do well at an event. It also looks like lots of BGs make your army hard to break but lots of BGs does not make your army into a killer. Neither of the ral swarm lists in FoG early did that well. OK a 16 BG and 15 BG army came joint 1st but I don't consider 16 BG when about half of them are undrilled MF to be a swarm. The Bosphorans are a skirmish and punch army but they are not that bad to face.

I could perhaps categorise the armies by type and see how often for example a skirmish army is broken.

[hazelbark]

Did anybody take note of the tactical advice given by Phil Barker in DBM?

[jlopez]

Charging points per BG would be OK but it would have to be the same for drilled and undrilled, not like the 10 or 25 point system used in WRG 6th.
It does seem fairly clear that a decent number of BGs is a good idea if you are going to do well at an event. It also looks like lots of BGs make your army hard to break but lots of BGs does not make your army into a killer. Neither of the ral swarm lists in FoG early did that well. OK a 16 BG and 15 BG army came joint 1st but I don't consider 16 BG when about half of them are undrilled MF to be a swarm. The Bosphorans are a skirmish and punch army but they are not that bad to face.

I could perhaps categorise the armies by type and see how often for example a skirmish army is broken.

The issue as far as I'm concerned is that a significant number of players are being the given the means (victory conditions, army size, evades) to play not to lose. While it may be legitimate it makes for excruciatingly boring games and I for one refuse to spend 14 hours over a weekend doing not an awful lot on the tabletop. The competition I umpired last month in Montmelo was the most pathetic example of combat dodging I've seen so far and consisted mostly of draws. The organisers are considering alternatives to FOG for next year.

Julian