Slitherine

I have now got data with the number of BG for all the armies (bar one which I am chasing) in the various Britcon periods.

I am happy to try to do whatever analysis people think is sensible.

How about average score when one army has 2 more BG than it's opponent?

Here is a starter, in FoG early the average number of BG per army was 14.03, the average of the top 10 finishers was 14.9, the second set of 10 averaged 14.1, the next set of 10 13.3 and the bottom 8 13.75. The top three placed armies had 16,15,15 BGs respectively

in FoG late the average was 13.17, the top 10 had 14.2, the middle 10 13.1 and the bottom 10 12.2 the top three armies had 13,12,16 BGs

This explains why I never win the big tourneys, I never have 14.9 bgs in my army !

Interesting stats Hammy.

OK, how about this one:

Over all the Britcon periods where one army had 2 or more extra BGs than its opponent the average score was 13.3. The average score across all games was 11.4

Interestingly, where an army had 3 or more extra BGs that its opponent the average was 12.23 and if we take Graham Evans out of those stats the average for 3 or more extra BGs drops to 11.68

I think it would be better to do the basics first, rather than complex stuff. Although I don't think one competition is enough to draw any significant conclusions.

Can you do what I did for the Italian results? To remind you:

y axis is percentage of scores in the range along the x axis. Each series is for a range of army sizes.

As you wish



So if you want to win lots of games take armies with 16-17 or 12-13 BGs but not 14-15 or 18+

But Dave had 15

hammy wrote: So if you want to win lots of games take armies with 16-17 or 12-13 BGs but not 14-15 or 18+

I don't think this is what matters.

You can draw the same conclusion from your analysis as mine showed. If you don't want to lose in a competition framework (or, conversely, don't want your opponent to win), take lots of BGs. (And take 11 or less if you like losing )

From the admittedly anecdotal evidence of discussions in previous threads, players aren't complaining about winning or losing. The problem is that in a competition framework, against armies with lots of BGs it's very hard to win under the current 25-0 scoring system.

However, I'd still like to see more data, especially as, and I'm sure you know from the data you have, the very small and very large armies tend to be less common. One or two outliers can distort results. How many game results is Britcon?

I've run out of game results (IIRC it was 750). Do you have more from other meetings?

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.

Peter - there is a little friction in the CMT (and to a lesser exent CT) but no where near enough. Two suggestions, first, increase the cost of armoured, superior, drilled troops (I play Principate Roman so am not entirely talking my own book) and of shooty LH (or make them move less). Second (this was Phil's not mine) change the evade rules so that a CT is required each time you evade (with perhaps an extra +1 if you have an FC in range - my contribution). That then really places a premium on command and control and rear support.

I would largely discount the friction in the CMT and CT as that's by BG. The percentage pass/fail remains the same irrespective of the number of BGs, apart from a minor effect that they may be better quality/drilled.

And arguably a failed CMT, and definitely so for CT, is more of a penalty for smaller BG armies. Fragmented in a 10 BG army is 1 score point, 0.5 in a 20 BG army, to state the obvious...

I agree an evading penalty would be a good idea, either CT as Phil suggested, or a risk of failing to evade on a CMT, as I suggested. Not sure that would help with the scoring system though.

Peter, while I agree simplistically it seems to hurt the small armies, they are MUCH more likely to pass - less chance of being at 25% loss (very likely with a 4 base BG) and much more likely to have a general nearby should they have to take one. I think that the CT to evade will actually work better as big BGs tend not to evade.

peterrjohnston wrote:However, I'd still like to see more data, especially as, and I'm sure you know from the data you have, the very small and very large armies tend to be less common. One or two outliers can distort results. How many game results is Britcon?

I've run out of game results (IIRC it was 750). Do you have more from other meetings?

Britcon is aboutr 250 games total. 44 per round (6 25mm) and 6 rounds.

FWIW the best showing with an army of fewer than 12 BGs was Neil Howard's 3rd place in the Exotics period with 9 identical BGs of Tupi undrilled MF.

The best showing of a 12 BG army was Pete Dalby's 2nd in FoG late.

It seems there is a trend to more BGs but people still do very well thankyou with only 12 or 13.

hammy wrote: It seems there is a trend to more BGs but people still do very well thankyou with only 12 or 13.

Do you agree that when looking at all the results, as we are here, the more BGs in an army, the less games it will lose?

hammy wrote:
It seems there is a trend to more BGs but people still do very well thankyou with only 12 or 13.

It looks to me that if you look at close on 1000 games (Peters 750 and Hammys 244) and you can see a clear, consistent result that shows that the more BGs you take, the less likely you are to score <5, that's the point at which you should start to disregard the odd exception...

peterrjohnston wrote:

hammy wrote: It seems there is a trend to more BGs but people still do very well thankyou with only 12 or 13.

Do you agree that when looking at all the results, as we are here, the more BGs in an army, the less games it will lose?

It would seem to be the case that if you take a very small army it will probably not do well.

It would also look from the Britcon data at least that while large BG armies don't get less than 6 points that often if you broaden the definition of lose to be fewer than 10 points then there is very little in it.

From memory I think that all my 800 point armies to date have had 14 BGs but that is just the way things worked out. I could have had more but I don't think it would have improved the army.

Look at it another way and track the final placing of Graham Evans and his Dominate swarm. In 2008 he won, in 2009 he was 5th and this year he was 8th. I am fairly sure that there was only one year between 1999 and 2009 when Graham did not win Britcon. Has he lost the golden touch or is the swarm limited in its effectivness once the shock value of the 2008 debut was overcome?

It does look like the trend is now that 14 BG is the norm or at least the norm you should aim for which is a higher number than at the start of FoG.

hammy wrote: FWIW the best showing with an army of fewer than 12 BGs was Neil Howard's 3rd place in the Exotics period with 9 identical BGs of Tupi undrilled MF.

The best showing of a 12 BG army was Pete Dalby's 2nd in FoG late.

It seems there is a trend to more BGs but people still do very well thankyou with only 12 or 13.

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.

dave_r wrote:FWIW the best showing with an army of fewer than 12 BGs was Neil Howard's 3rd place in the Exotics period with 9 identical BGs of Tupi undrilled MF.

The best showing of a 12 BG army was Pete Dalby's 2nd in FoG late.

It seems there is a trend to more BGs but people still do very well thankyou with only 12 or 13.

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.[/quote]

FoG early 16, 15, 15
FoG late 13, 12, 16
FoG exotics 12, 14, 9
FoG 25mm 11, 11, 7

hammy wrote:It would seem to be the case that if you take a very small army it will probably not do well.

The rules suggest 10 to 15 BGs... whilst both sets of data suggest 11 or less is a not a good idea if a player wants to do well.

hammy wrote: It would also look from the Britcon data at least that while large BG armies don't get less than 6 points that often if you broaden the definition of lose to be fewer than 10 points then there is very little in it.

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.


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).

dave_r wrote: 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 to score 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 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