Is the 15 unit limit a good design choice?

I'm a little late to this thread and haven't read most of this, But here's my 2 cents.

CB has stated that some profiles are virtually never played because its 2 points more than another that effectively does the same thing. Paying an extra 2 points for +1 ARM on a doctor is not worth it most of the time. The only time people will upgrade is if the list is 298. At 297 people add helper bots. This gives the design team a massive hurdle designing new profiles since they either need to make profiles more efficient or useless. By putting this limit on the game, the design team has some elbow room because cheaper profiles don't automatically win.

The model cap basically opens up a lot of things. Haqq if known for its LIs, and the 30-35 point profiles are basically never used just because they have so many cheaper profiles that do the same thing. While this does scrap some lists, it does make the unused profiles a lot more interesting. I would guess it's less than 10% of the lists played (across all factions). I'm a little sad that some of my favorite lists are being hit, but this will add longevity to the game. They hit a saturation point in the number of profiles available in the current meta. This change opens up new possibilities.

Creating new sectorals every couple months is not viable long term. If people need to buy a new sectoral every time they want to play something new the cost gets a bit much. By having room to add new profiles to existing sectoral, existing players will still be kept engaged. They need to be able to offer products at a lower price point. Also the cost to develop a sectoral is probably a lot higher that adding a new profile to to existing sectoral. In the last 2 years they added so many and most player are at a point were they have more sectorals than they can play regularly.

They may lose a couple people in the short term because of this, but existing player with existing models don't bring in money. They are actively trying to bring in new players with simplified rules, and finding ways to keep existing player interested with multiple smaller products. Tags have always been a rarity in in my local meta. This change gives CB a chance to offer another playable product at a higher price point without having to design a new sectoral.

TLDR: CB was at the design limit of what they had, this adds longevity to the game.

 

I don't have the experience to make any sweeping judgements, but I'll tell you what immediately went through my head when I saw the 15 order limit news.

One of the last three tournament games I played before lockdown I was up against a competitive player who was out to win the thing, nice guy though. He popped his stuff down on the table, looked at me playing Tunguska and went 'I'm sorry' and then laid out two full groups, camo spam vanilla Ariadna list, Chasseurs, ambush camo, the works. Was he a nice guy? Yup. Did I ever feel like I was winning despite some decent luck? No. The stuff I killed was so cheap he just shrugged it off, loads of camo to detect and gallons of orders to push pieces. He rolled all three of his games. Yes, I had sensor.

That game immediately leapt into my head when I saw that news. I'm not sure if the 15 order limit would even help with that game? I think the game becomes a bit.. odd pushing over 15-ish orders, because you can just piece trade then do it again and again and still have a viable pool late game?

I think CB must have some data showing that two groups (or more) is more potent, so good for them changing it up, because it sucks being on the receiving end.

Just my 2p.

EDIT:- Extra info and upon thinking about it, my first ever tournament game was against a two groups Haqq list, bikes, Gazi, Daylami etc. Urgh. Yup, this game needs a change.

 

Thats fun considering that the meta winners of most of the recents big events (at least on spain) are usually CA, Shasvastii, tohaa and Aleph (and aleph means Achilles + posthumans + Dart on 10-12 orders)

Really the spam isn't the most competitive style on ITS, at least on big events. I never see people even playing usarf, caledonia and company on a top spot on tournements or on ITS page.

Okay CB want less minis and more elite. Cap the combat groups, but you are killing some play styles of some factions. And or we finish with avreworked haqquislam + reworked Ariadna less diferent but competitivr. Or the game lost two factions on a ITS level.

 

That data exists and can be checked on this forum, surprisingly for you, aleph, varuna, SSO, shasvastii, tohaa and spiral are on top, with a superior win rate compared to order abundant factions.

Haqqislam is at the low 40% so it looses more than wins.

So no, this can be about many things but balance is not one of them.

 

Spiral and Varuna are factions that tend to have 16+ orders, though, and for Aleph, SSO, Shasvasti and Combined anything below 12 orders seem to be fairly uncommon in the top performing 33%

 

You can also check the average amount of orders by mode. Those armies are not high.

 

By mode? CA, Shas, Aleph and OSS all get spammier in Tactical Window.

 

My point of view is that N4 is meant to limit the number of things that translate into bad game experience. It is clear from what rules got changed or removed completely.
Just to name few things: Crits as was were clearly a bad game experience resulting in shitty moments. Lack of movement pre-measurement resulting in not being able to fulfill a certain simple plan (like moving into cover, or hiding behind total cover). Forgetting rules hidden within rules was clearly a bad game experience and left a bad taste after a lost game, when someone suddenly appeared to tell how things work. Opponent jumping down a REM to engineer and get a victory point. Impetuous troops jumping down to their doom cuz reasons. etc. etc...
You might not consider all of these to bring a faul taste, neither do I, but these were some of the things widely known for arousing emotions and slowly pushing people out of the game.

Now: Coming to an event and facing a list of 32 Caledonia dudesmen, a huge camo spam, 8 kuang-shi fueled killer group, cheap AF HFT grunts standing just outside one's depzone, or simply an efficient list of 20 orders full of threats and superior to one's 13-15 when one is unable to field threats and hit even close to that mark. This, for many, is clearly a negative game experience.

The story I'm about to say is based on real life events: When I moved to the city I live in now I jumped straight into Infinity community life. As it happened this meta was very different from previous one I used to play in. This one was dominated by a single guy, who fielded 32 Caledonians list and stomped over almost everyone to a point where most people stopped coming to events, stopped caring, stopped playing. The ones left were successful veteran players, real deal end game level. It's great some people were able to handle the Caledonians, but this single style of play shaped entire community and pushed people out. Up to this day we have real problems to re-establish the community. Old players are reluctant to come back, because stuff like the Caledonian spam is possible. Many players here consider coming to an event to be auto loose and thus no go.

Again - I don't have to agree some of the mentioned things are a bad game experience, but I bet most people will.

So, when I read comments about how USARF was meant to be played because some random list from CB was 17 orders... look at Corregidor 300pts. Army Pack... go through all that salt in the forums... I seriously think people should take a step back and look at a wider picture. How some stuff was intended to be played is no more. New edition, new set of rules, rules redesigned, points costs changed, new sectorials coming, 15 orders cap and all that to repair damage done by how previously some stuff happened to be played. (and in some cases stuff that happened not to be played at all).

 

And herein lies the problem:
Vanilla.

Not picking on you specifically, but vanilla is a blight on this game and I will never be swayed otherwise. Those kinds of lists require pulling from all the available Sectorials. It's not helped that in Ariadna those units tend to have high AVA in their respective Sectorials. It's the epitome of what some people here try to pretend 40k has as a thing.

Here's another question that needs to be asked then:
how big was the community before people left?

I mean this in the nicest way possible as someone who's grown/attempted to grow a few game communities in the past(Starship Troopers from Mongoose was my first real try doing so in my teens...it was okay until supply chain issues started becoming a real problem)--if the community was small to start with? That game is done unless the individual in question who was causing problems leaves and a big to do is made about it. My local WHFB/AoS community almost collapsed simply because of two individuals who played a lot, were commonly seen playing, and were very vocal about how they played. It turned a lot of people off.

Thankfully, they just kind of slinked off and after that became known we started having a healthy community.

The 'salt' over the 300 point army pack for Corregidor mainly consisted of the fact that it wasn't even a legal list to begin with. They literally had to create a new profile(Mobile Brigada Shotgun Lieutenant) in order for it to be legal.

Look, I get it. It's a list from "awhile ago". But it speaks volumes about the designer intentions that they choose to set it up that way. Remember that the 300 point army packs after Tohaa and Combined? They were set up specifically not to include the starter sets. Corregidor had basically one other set that could qualify in that regard: the Alguaciles. Which are all SWC.

 

At some point in the past Silesia was one of the largest Infinity communities in Poland. When I got here it was already in decline with about 20 players. As a side note: I also helped create few successful communities in the past and got right into doing so here. Created an online list of players, contacted all local (voivodeship) stores to give people vouchers and leaflets, established local warcor e-mail, organized play and made it easier for people to get a demo. Contacted oldies, asked to try again. Some people showed up but after a while got bumped off by the same issue.

Salt over Corregidor box was a mixed bag. In one hand illegal list (yup, was funny), in the other - a very bad list compared to other 300pts. boxes. Either way, as mentioned before - whatever CB's intention towards some armies was, it is no more. Now it is the best moment to take things into the direction CB chooses, based on previous experience and market's expectations. Personally I get why some people are upset. I too would be if it was my army that, in my opinion, got significantly nerfed. Still I respect Corvus Belli for having balls to make a hard cut, when necessary. Look at Steamforged Games for example. They tried to make everyone happy and landed in a place where the only thing to do was to kill the entire game or let themselves bleed to death trying to bring new balanced and neither "OP", nor "trash tier" stuff into the game, all the while facing previous balance mistakes.
All that being said - personally I never considered Caledonia and/or Haqq spam to be anything other than annoyance. I'm used to play high order count Nomads and field cheap trade-offs. Still I'm willing to give this new rule a try and seriously look forward to see how meta shifts and what new crazy stuff is going to pop up in place of old monsters. I'm also sure there will be a free-for-all'ish ITS extra for more spam-friendly communities to build events upon.

 

Bluntly, CB didn't make "a hard cut". A hard cut would be rebuilding the whole Link Team system from the ground up and doing something about order efficiency that way. All they did was put in a band-aid fix at this point.


Anyways like I said, Corregidor was a bad box because they chose to go the route of "We're not including the starter set!" for it. Not like anyone really expected them to, seeing as how the scale thing was a bugbear even then.

Remember that Corregidor:
-Never received a Wildcat box
-Never received Geckos as anything other than a two pack
-Had a horribly scaled range between pre-Icestorm and post-Icestorm products

I was genuinely shocked they included the Tomcat box rather than just the Doctor(who, at the time, was still selling through the stock of duo blisters with the Zondcat).
I was not shocked that there were shill articles like this that popped up.

I want to say it was before the LT change, which makes that such a goofy thing to write and feel proud of.

The box was so clearly a "sell excess crap" ploy that it was just bleh. It was a huge missed opportunity for them to course-correct and fix the CJC starter scale issues and release an army pack of NEW items rather than stuff people already owned at that point.

 

people dont have fun playing against heavy spam list...

I dont have fun seeing how Achilles, Swiss Guard, Sphinx, Cutter, *insert your inmortal spearhead here* spent all of their orders killing people and start my turn with nothing to do except surrender because i dont have anything that can stop the enemy or push buttons

 

I completely agree on what you wrote about the Corregidor box.

 

I've been poring over the forums but my memory's always been glitchy, so:

Do we actually have any ITS data based not on faction, but on specific list matchups by relative list size? Meaning, is there any data released that would support a statement like "While Ariadna and Haqq in general do not have a universally high win rate, any list they/their sectorials bring that includes X or more troopers will reliably steamroll opponents with 15 or fewer troopers regardless of faction" or something similar? Or even "When one list is greater than 1.5 times the trooper count of its opponent, its odds of winning will be very high."

I ask because the numbers I see so far have basically been aggregate, averaged faction numbers, with some filtering for player win rate and whether the event used one of the trooper cap extras. I don't think I've seen any numbers that reach the point of analyzing the different list types within a faction and whether their win rates are skewed by list size, or that show win rates at various differences of list size. Presuming that not everyone who plays Ariadna or Haqq will choose to run large spammy lists, it stands to reason that with detailed win rates by list size you could break down how much of the faction's overall win rate is influenced by list size.

A relatively even distribution would mean the faction works at various list sizes. A tightly centered distribution (like a bell curve) would mean the faction works best at mid-range list sizes but can't compete when restricted to LI or when using spam lists. A top-heavy distribution where long lists have high win rates and short ones consistently lose would mean the faction works best at high order counts. A distribution like that last one, coupled with data showing that the long lists have very high win rates vs. other factions' more average lists, would seem like a clear indicator that those factions are outliers and that their long lists are too powerful, while their short lists are too weak to be playable.

Likewise, data showing that lists with 1.5 x the troops of the opponent (or more) consistently dominate their matches would indicate that allowing very large differences in list length makes the shorter list inherently uncompetitive despite the game's points system. Do we know if Tactical Window events tend to result in more close games?

 

Not against you, mate. Everyone has different tolerances.

But I do have a problem with this comparison, because it is a bit of an apples to oranges situation. See, with order spam you can still fuel 10-20 orders into a monstrous killing machine or link and have it rambo around the table killing stuff until it cripples your enemy. One thing doesn't stop the other from happening and vice-versa.

However, the models you mentioned are obscenely expensive. They cost anywhere from 1/4 to 1/3 of a list. By that point, these guys HAVE to be OP because otherwise you just don't have a reason for putting them on the table, and hell, most people will agree that you still don't because realistically there's not much these dudes can do that won't be done by an equivalent within their own faction for half the cost. The Cutter himself faces stiff competition from Linked Kamaus and/or the Swiss Guard on it's home faction.

If your argument is that you can only defend from these overcosted white elephant models with higher bodycount, that's blatantly untrue. All the models you mentioned have to actually walk across the table, and it becomes easy to lay mines, repeaters, etc on their way to make their life difficulty.

And it's not like Haqq and Ariadna, the factions we are saying will be the most handicapped by this decision, have a bad midfield presence. Ariadna can pay 80 points and 2 SWC and put down 8 camo tokens on the midfield, 4 of them mines. Will that Stop Achilles? Probably not. But i it makes him spend his 10 orders navigating the midfield, it's done their job for about the same price as big blondie.

 

"Presuming that not everyone who plays Ariadna or Haqq will choose to run large spammy lists"

I understand from his side that he is angry ... from my side it is this above. I'm happy what N4 will bring.

 

Well, unless you are unlucky and are the only Ariadna sectorial without mines...

but my point is...

Both playstyles (spam or Going rambo) have their haters... but only one is "banned".

 

How many here remember the good ol' days of N2, before ITS and Paradiso made 300 point games the de facto standard? We played 200 point games, with YAMS, and those games had a nice 'black ops' feel to them. That feel/sense/perception disappeared in N3, which plays much more like a battlefield skirmish game. IIRC most of our games involved less than 15 units. They played quickly, so multiple games in an evening, and they were immersive, because there was not so much to track/remember that you could not focus on the actual gameplay. I don't miss the N2 ruleset, but I do miss that sort of gameplay.

I'd like to think that the 15 unit limit is indicative that CB also intends to make the points adjustments, and profile adjustments, and rules changes, etc., so that the game can become a black ops game again. That is to say that it will be very difficult to go above 15 units in a 300 point game in the first place.

ETA: I play Haqq, and I cannot stand spammy lists.

 

I’d like to see this as an outcome too, but I think it’s orthogonal to the 15 model cap.

 

Re: link teams for a moment.

I was a bit disappointed when N4 had little to no changes for the link teams as we know them at the end of N3, which is to say hyper streamlined, optimized messes that tend to sort of wipe a lot of faction identity ("look at my super cool HI with HMG in a core team of basic infantry hitting on 16s or 17s with 5 dice brrrrt"). While personally I'd love for link teams to go to flavorful things like a sniper team duo with forward observer and sniper granting the sniper +3 BS if both can see the target, a boarding team with close range weapons that can do pseudo coordinated orders, etc. for simplicity's sake I would have rather they make 3 man teams the standard with Cores being relatively rare and reserved for elite units that are trained to operate in bigger teams in unison.