Results from the Mantic Invitational tourney, and how the game is shaping up

[Llew]

Jake Thornton has written some good and (as Mantic has mentioned) very frank blog posts about his experience at the tournament.  The overall impression I get is that some pretty serious balance issues have crept into KoW.  This is a shame, as the rules are supposed to be printed for the first time and released shortly.  (Hopefully, this happened in time for them to stop the presses and do some corrections but we'll see.)

Apparently the Master of Death for the Twilight Kin is incredibly powerful, and featured strongly in the winning armies.  Since I didn't have all the rules for that army yet, I haven't really analyzed it.  It'll be interesting to see more feedback on how it actually was used in game, and how the rules combined to make it so deadly.  There may be simple fixes with a rules tweak or two, or they may just be badly messed up.  It remains to be seen.

The one rule that *didn't* surprise me to hear of causing a problem was Vanguard though.  Being able to advance cavalry basically into charge position, meaning that you take at most 1 turn of fire, and often none, just seems to be an obvious problem that I'm surprised wasn't caught.

[mattjgilbert]

Perhaps not enough playtesting was done. Mantic are still small after all.

Playtesting... that's what we are here for Nightsword are you listening?

[gaarew]

I don't really see the issue with Vanguard.  It's a 50/50 chance you get the first turn, and if you don't, well, you've just put a very tasty lunch down right in front of my entire army.   


But yes, a few things cropped up over the weekend.

[scarletsquig]

Well, that's what the tournament was for, I guess, highlighting some of the biggest errors.

Think a beta might have been useful before getting the rules printed, certainly stuff like the Twilight Kin Dark Master immediately stood out to me as being broken, and that was just a casual observation when I was writing the battlescribe file.

Not sure if I'd agree with the nerfing of vanguard mid-tournament... IMO, if you make a list for a tourney, the rules should be fixed in place until it's over. If that means 6 massacres for the vanguard lists, then so be it.

In the end all it seemed to do was fix the #1 overpowered army build, and allow the #2 overpowered army build (dark master spam) to win instead, with the human army coming 4th and just missing out on a prize.

[mattjgilbert]

If the tournament was to playtest the lists that should have been done before they were printed.

[Cyporiean]

Perhaps not enough playtesting was done. Mantic are still small after all.

Playtesting... that's what we are here for Nightsword are you listening?

There can never been enough playtesting.

[neldoreth]

Seriously, how long could it take to print 10,000 copies of the rules anyway? I'm sure they fixed the lists before they printed them!

Actually, I'm being goofy there. I hope they did, but if not, I imagine they'll ship an update along with the printed book?

n.

[Cyporiean]

Seriously, how long could it take to print 10,000 copies of the rules anyway? I'm sure they fixed the lists before they printed them!

Actually, I'm being goofy there. I hope they did, but if not, I imagine they'll ship an update along with the printed book?

n.

It takes 2 weeks to print up 100 copies of Brushfire whenever I need a restock.

[gaarew]

Actually, I'm being goofy there. I hope they did, but if not, I imagine they'll ship an update along with the printed book?

Just consider it part of the plan.  We've had the rules beta, this is the army list beta.