Actual Army Ranks based on Tourny Results

[Irisado]

What it tells is how well each of these armies do in thousands of tournaments across the world.

It doesn't though, that's just it.  All it tells is that based on skewed data, with multiple variables which are not taken into account, the following armies are ranked thus.  It is very hard to draw any firm conclusions for this, because the reliability and validity of such data is quite weak.

With it being based on so many different tournaments it deals with things like some having silly rules or not the right amount of terrain.

Does it?  How many of these tournaments use the recommended amount of terrain, balanced scenarios, representative points values, and recommended board sizes?  Is all this information provided?

If the information it not provided, then we simply cannot have confidence in it, i.e. it is not reliable because we cannot replicate the conditions it is applied to.  Their own website explains very little about how tournament scores are calculated, so I am very sceptical about the utility of this ranking.

People not taking certain armies also helps us to see which armies are the most powerful, at the end of the day if an army is terrible and has little to no chance of winning a tournament, competative players wont take them. If it was viable somebody would have come up with an effective build and it would be used.

Just looking at the list, any competative player can see that it goes pretty much as expected [obviously with changes to come due to 6th not having been out too long and Daemons getting a boost].

The first of these two points is correlation not causation though.  You could be right, but because other factors cannot be ruled out, then you cannot definitively say that A causes B.  People could avoid playing certain armies because they don't find them interesting, the start-up costs are higher, the way in which the army works doesn't suit their style of play, or they don't want to paint in the style required for a particular army.

The second point itself is also open to question because the term 'competitive' is open to interpretation.  I'm what you would call a casual gamer.  I play with my friends either at Warhammer World, or at my house.  We could, however, play a very competitive game, in that we want to win, yet we won't go to extremes by tailoring our lists to win by spamming the so called internet 'optimum choices'.  Competitive means different things to different people, so I think that it's important to be clearer about what you mean by competitive.

Some people, me included just like numbers/scores/ranks and this is the best we get with 40K.

That's fair enough.  My only concern is that others don't get sucked into believing that these lists are the be all and end all of wargaming, or get sucked into thinking that they accurately represent the state of play across the whole world, because, as I've alluded to above, there are too many variables which are not taken into account for this to be the case.

This list has a lot to do with how many people play certain armies and the evironment does help decide. If like say Grey Knights lose every game, but the army is well painted and the player hve high sportmanship scores he can still win the tournment. Hince why even bother playing.

You raise a salient point here, and this ties in with my earlier comments in this post.  Tournament organisers can employ a whole raft of different ways to score a list, and it's not clearly explained by Rankings HQ how they deal with such rules.  Painting scores could be one of those factors, but there are others too.

The system is too opaque to have confidence in it in my view.

[Arguleon-veq]

'It doesn't though, that's just it.  All it tells is that based on skewed data, with multiple variables which are not taken into account, the following armies are ranked thus.  It is very hard to draw any firm conclusions for this, because the reliability and validity of such data is quite weak.'

It doesnt tell us how these armies are doing in thousands of tournaments across the world? Thats exactly what it does. You may still not agree that these armies are the best etc but these ARE results from thousands of tournaments. So it is telling us how these armies are doing at THESE tournaments. You can actually find out exactly the rule set for each tournament as each one on there is advertised but you obviously cant check terrain for every one. That doesnt matter, ive already said that you may not agree with what is best or not but this list does show how each army is doing at thousand of tournaments.

With Fantasy there are a great many comp systems which skew the results heavily, 40k is for the most part uncomped. There are thousands of tournaments so obviously some will have funny rules but for the most part 40k is usually just played using standard rules.

''Does it?  How many of these tournaments use the recommended amount of terrain, balanced scenarios, representative points values, and recommended board sizes?  Is all this information provided?

If the information it not provided, then we simply cannot have confidence in it, i.e. it is not reliable because we cannot replicate the conditions it is applied to.  Their own website explains very little about how tournament scores are calculated, so I am very sceptical about the utility of this ranking.''

The info isnt provided on the rankings site no but it is on the sites that advertise the individual tournaments. At the end of the day, you get most tournaments doing it properly, you obviously have some odd ones but with so many it generally does balance out, as with everything else.

Plus the tournament scene for 40K is pretty self regulating [in the UK at least and the UK army rankings match the worldwide ones]. If there is a tournament going on that is playing things totally wrong or people putting in dodgey results people find out about it and these results are then only counted as none ranking tournaments.

There are quite a few serious tournament gamers in this country and its a pretty tight nit group, im not one myself as I can only get to ones that are local to me and usually cant get time off work for big 2 dayers but I know a lot of people that travel the country playing at pretty much any tournament going. Its these veteran tournament players that keep things pretty much even, if terrain isnt up to scratch at a certain tournament, the tournament community lends a hand and gives advice or bigger tournament hosts will lend them terrain for their next event. The same applies to rules packs etc although as I have said 40K is usually just played straight out the rulebook.

There is also the fact that only the 30 highest scores are actually counted for army rankings. This means that small obscure tournaments wont count for this as smaller tournaments are worth less points, tournaments including more of the top 16 players are worth more points etc. So the top scores for each army will only be earned at big established tournaments where obviously the tables, terrain, rules etc are all up to scratch [which is what gets a tournament big in the first place, building up players each time as word gets around how good a specific tournament is].

''People could avoid playing certain armies because they don't find them interesting, the start-up costs are higher, the way in which the army works doesn't suit their style of play, or they don't want to paint in the style required for a particular army.''

These are not the type of players that attend serious competative tournaments. Im like this about start up costs, painting and style which is why I usually only attend small local tournies.

''That's fair enough.  My only concern is that others don't get sucked into believing that these lists are the be all and end all of wargaming, or get sucked into thinking that they accurately represent the state of play across the whole world, because, as I've alluded to above, there are too many variables which are not taken into account for this to be the case.''

Ive already said that its nowhere near perfect but as a whole it does pretty accurately show each armies power level. This is by far the best we have even though there are problems with it. The only way we will ever have a more accurate way of measuring army power levels is if GW takes complete control of it [which they should as there is huge money to be made in it and they are really missing out, it would also help them to balance their own game and tighten up the rules]. So if they took it over and ran it like Wizards run MtG then we would have a better system but untill they do, this is the best we have and as ive said, if you know the game you can immediatly tell its pretty accurate and thousands of results trump peoples opinions regardless of wether some of the results arent using the perfect rule set or ideal terrain.

''but if 60 people are playing Tau and 4 people play Grey Knights due to volume Tau will look like it is a better army than Grey Knights. Even if those 4 players win 4 differant tournament the 10 tau players who won due to the volume of Tau players out there would look like it is better even if Tau losses against Grey Knights every game.''

It doesnt work like this at all. Only the top 30 scores are taken. Amount of players does have an effect though, as obvioulsy more people using an army means more chance of the army getting a good score. Thats one of the problems. At the end of the day though, people are not stupid, people wanting to win gravitate towards the army with the best chance of winning.

[Chicop76]

'It doesn't though, that's just it.  All it tells is that based on skewed data, with multiple variables which are not taken into account, the following armies are ranked thus.  It is very hard to draw any firm conclusions for this, because the reliability and validity of such data is quite weak.'

It doesnt tell us how these armies are doing in thousands of tournaments across the world? Thats exactly what it does. You may still not agree that these armies are the best etc but these ARE results from thousands of tournaments. So it is telling us how these armies are doing at THESE tournaments. You can actually find out exactly the rule set for each tournament as each one on there is advertised but you obviously cant check terrain for every one. That doesnt matter, ive already said that you may not agree with what is best or not but this list does show how each army is doing at thousand of tournaments.

With Fantasy there are a great many comp systems which skew the results heavily, 40k is for the most part uncomped. There are thousands of tournaments so obviously some will have funny rules but for the most part 40k is usually just played using standard rules.

''Does it?  How many of these tournaments use the recommended amount of terrain, balanced scenarios, representative points values, and recommended board sizes?  Is all this information provided?

If the information it not provided, then we simply cannot have confidence in it, i.e. it is not reliable because we cannot replicate the conditions it is applied to.  Their own website explains very little about how tournament scores are calculated, so I am very sceptical about the utility of this ranking.''

The info isnt provided on the rankings site no but it is on the sites that advertise the individual tournaments. At the end of the day, you get most tournaments doing it properly, you obviously have some odd ones but with so many it generally does balance out, as with everything else.

Plus the tournament scene for 40K is pretty self regulating [in the UK at least and the UK army rankings match the worldwide ones]. If there is a tournament going on that is playing things totally wrong or people putting in dodgey results people find out about it and these results are then only counted as none ranking tournaments.

There are quite a few serious tournament gamers in this country and its a pretty tight nit group, im not one myself as I can only get to ones that are local to me and usually cant get time off work for big 2 dayers but I know a lot of people that travel the country playing at pretty much any tournament going. Its these veteran tournament players that keep things pretty much even, if terrain isnt up to scratch at a certain tournament, the tournament community lends a hand and gives advice or bigger tournament hosts will lend them terrain for their next event. The same applies to rules packs etc although as I have said 40K is usually just played straight out the rulebook.

There is also the fact that only the 30 highest scores are actually counted for army rankings. This means that small obscure tournaments wont count for this as smaller tournaments are worth less points, tournaments including more of the top 16 players are worth more points etc. So the top scores for each army will only be earned at big established tournaments where obviously the tables, terrain, rules etc are all up to scratch [which is what gets a tournament big in the first place, building up players each time as word gets around how good a specific tournament is].

''People could avoid playing certain armies because they don't find them interesting, the start-up costs are higher, the way in which the army works doesn't suit their style of play, or they don't want to paint in the style required for a particular army.''

These are not the type of players that attend serious competative tournaments. Im like this about start up costs, painting and style which is why I usually only attend small local tournies.

''That's fair enough.  My only concern is that others don't get sucked into believing that these lists are the be all and end all of wargaming, or get sucked into thinking that they accurately represent the state of play across the whole world, because, as I've alluded to above, there are too many variables which are not taken into account for this to be the case.''

Ive already said that its nowhere near perfect but as a whole it does pretty accurately show each armies power level. This is by far the best we have even though there are problems with it. The only way we will ever have a more accurate way of measuring army power levels is if GW takes complete control of it [which they should as there is huge money to be made in it and they are really missing out, it would also help them to balance their own game and tighten up the rules]. So if they took it over and ran it like Wizards run MtG then we would have a better system but untill they do, this is the best we have and as ive said, if you know the game you can immediatly tell its pretty accurate and thousands of results trump peoples opinions regardless of wether some of the results arent using the perfect rule set or ideal terrain.

I see where Irisado is going with their point. It is the same issue that came up in my Marketing cmlass. Polls are a very good example of this. Depending on the sample you can make a poll do whatever you want. The sampling that you are going by only cover people who play tournaments, and win the most due to what ever is the wining criteria.

To do a true poll you have to randomly sample thousands of people. The more you sample the less chance of error. You also have to go by random locations etc. If I sample from a heavy Republican state I may get heavy Republican ideals. It is almost impossible to do a good poll due to like say if you call they the random person have to answer and do the poll, if they do not answer it increases the error of your poll.

The logic for doing the tournament scene is sound, but it is by no means an acurate representation of what army is the best. Several factors come into account like how many play that army. If there is 100 daemon players in the world and thousands of other players. It would be much harder for a daemon army to win. Even if they do win they would have to compete against the heavy average of other armies. Like orcs for example could had won 100 tournaments and Daemons won only 10. If you go by those results Orcs is a much better army. If you went by win/loss ratio and found that Orcs win 30% of the time to Daemons 60% of the time than that would change the original logic. Orcs will win more due to them having more players play them, but the ratio is important if Daemons win more due to ratio.

An example would be like this:
Orcs win 100 tounaments vs Daemons 10

However counting the amount of time Orc won or lost in the same tournaments vs Daemons you get something like this.

Orc win 1,000 games out of 5,000 games and Daemons win 100 out of 200.
Orcs win 20% of the tim vs Daemons 50% of the time.
Meaning that in this case Daemons is better than the Orcs.

Player skill makes a differance as well. I done the ole switch armies and won most of my games by doing so. Some armies is easier to play tha others, but skill and luck does make a differance in out come.

The only way to get a true sampling is to take all 14 armies and have the most powerful list from all 14. Have 14 players who learn all 14 armies like the back of their hand. Tha have them play about 1,000 games against each other with all 14 armies rotating each army a fair amout of times, so 14,000 times would be a good number of total games. Keep track of how many win/ loss for each army, and by games end give us the win/ loss ratio of each army.

Another problem is army builds. Grey Knights for exampl can build several differant ways. If people make crap builds for that army as a general rule, but the winning army is a perticular build than that is going to effect that armies performance. Daemons is a very good example of this.

[Arguleon-veq]

Oh I totally agree that how many people are taking certain armies will effect their results. Im just saying that this is the closest thing we have at the minute to seeing which army is actually best. Plus I will say again that people are smart enough to take powerful armies when they want to win a tournament.

Plus the actual army ranks on the rankings sites arent what they are designed for, its designed for player ranks. The army ranks are just something extra for people interested in that kind of thing. The player ranks are much more balanced and the army ranks are not what the system was designed for.

I just like numbers/stats/ranks and this is the best we have for 40K at the min even if its nowhere near perfect it is still undoubtedly the closest we have to a proper army ranking.

Daemons have already climbed a few places thanks to their newer rules.

[Irisado]

It doesnt tell us how these armies are doing in thousands of tournaments across the world? Thats exactly what it does. You may still not agree that these armies are the best etc but these ARE results from thousands of tournaments. So it is telling us how these armies are doing at THESE tournaments. You can actually find out exactly the rule set for each tournament as each one on there is advertised but you obviously cant check terrain for every one. That doesnt matter, ive already said that you may not agree with what is best or not but this list does show how each army is doing at thousand of tournaments.

Could you please link me to the section of the website which confirms the sample size by actually listing the raw data?  If they don't provide that we cannot have confidence in the analysis.

The list may show what you say, but that in itself, as I keep saying, doesn't tell us anything about the performance of the armies, because of all the variables which I've listed earlier which are not factored into the results.  This is why I keep saying the data is neither very reliable (we cannot replicate how the data is collected and analysed, because we don't know how they conduct their analysis), nor valid.

The info isnt provided on the rankings site no but it is on the sites that advertise the individual tournaments. At the end of the day, you get most tournaments doing it properly, you obviously have some odd ones but with so many it generally does balance out, as with everything else.

Plus the tournament scene for 40K is pretty self regulating [in the UK at least and the UK army rankings match the worldwide ones]. If there is a tournament going on that is playing things totally wrong or people putting in dodgey results people find out about it and these results are then only counted as none ranking tournaments.

It's not a question of the rules not being applied properly.  It's a question of variables not being taken into account in the analysis.  As I've alluded to before, how does this analysis take player skill into account?  How does it account for terrain variance?  It can't, and this is why I don't find any results generated in this table format very compelling.  Quantitative analysis is very limited in what it can actually tell you, simply because you can pick and choose the variables you want, in order to skew the results in a certain way.

These are not the type of players that attend serious competative tournaments. Im like this about start up costs, painting and style which is why I usually only attend small local tournies.

I don't go to any tournaments at all, but either way, the question boils down to how do they define a serious competitive tournament?  That's again another set of variables to deal with.

Ive already said that its nowhere near perfect but as a whole it does pretty accurately show each armies power level. This is by far the best we have even though there are problems with it. The only way we will ever have a more accurate way of measuring army power levels is if GW takes complete control of it [which they should as there is huge money to be made in it and they are really missing out, it would also help them to balance their own game and tighten up the rules]. So if they took it over and ran it like Wizards run MtG then we would have a better system but untill they do, this is the best we have and as ive said, if you know the game you can immediatly tell its pretty accurate and thousands of results trump peoples opinions regardless of wether some of the results arent using the perfect rule set or ideal terrain.

I don't think it does accurately measure the power level of armies for the reasons which I've given above.  It may give some indication, or even correlation, but neither of these is good enough to reliably say that the armies can be ranked in this order.

I also find myself having to ask this question.  Why do we need to rank armies anyway?  Why does it matter?  Playing the game is supposed to be enjoyable, and you play because you like your army, and the game.  As a result, this all just seems so unnecessary in my opinion.

[Arguleon-veq]

You may not like army ranks and trying to see what army does best against x army etc but many people do like this kind of thing. It may be unessesary to you but if you dont like it you dont have to have anything to do with it. You seem very keen on discouraging people from enjoying the game the way they want to enjoy it.

Id actually love GW to have a results upload system even for friendly games so we could see what percentage of the time Orks win against Nids etc. Regardless of the fact that you couldnt ensure accuracy, I love that kind of thing.

So you dont need to rank armies, just like you dont need to have fluff for your army, it doesnt matter if armies have these ranks just like it doesnt matter if your army is well painted, they are just more facets of the game that you can get in to and enjoy if thats what you like or that you can just ignore if its not. I love fluff but cant stand painting but i would never comment in a painting thread asking people whats the point in them spending so much time painting their army to a really great standard. The point is that they enjoy it[ doing it, showing it, and discussing it].

[Chicop76]

You may not like army ranks and trying to see what army does best against x army etc but many people do like this kind of thing. It may be unessesary to you but if you dont like it you dont have to have anything to do with it. You seem very keen on discouraging people from enjoying the game the way they want to enjoy it.

Id actually love GW to have a results upload system even for friendly games so we could see what percentage of the time Orks win against Nids etc. Regardless of the fact that you couldnt ensure accuracy, I love that kind of thing.

So you dont need to rank armies, just like you dont need to have fluff for your army, it doesnt matter if armies have these ranks just like it doesnt matter if your army is well painted, they are just more facets of the game that you can get in to and enjoy if thats what you like or that you can just ignore if its not. I love fluff but cant stand painting but i would never comment in a painting thread asking people whats the point in them spending so much time painting their army to a really great standard. The point is that they enjoy it[ doing it, showing it, and discussing it].

She is just going into statistics. To be fair it's really hard and almost impossible to get true date. You can get a good degree of accuracy however which will help.

The only other problem I see is you do not know the criteria to win. I have played tourneys where the worst player wins due to good painted models and sportsmanship, aka losing with a fluffy army. Other tournament I played also skill is actually a factor. I think another factor is wysiwyg and the 3 paint minimium.

And I think another factor many players build anti-marine and do well against majority anti marine armies and not a true al comers list.


The info you presented does give us a clue on what may be better and what is just horrible.

[Osiris]

is there something that shows past ranking as well? itd be cool to see the power shifts (if any).

sorry for the necro. but the dead need to come to life at some point...and technically, Dec 21, 2012 was the Zombie apocalypse. ZOMBIES EVERYWHERE.