SurNet League Feedback Thread

[Hi I'm Derek]

Since it seems timely what with the decisions being made about the next tournament in the other thread, I figure we might as well start pulling in feedback about the league in case any of it pertains to the tournament- especially if any of the rules end up being carried forward.

Please use this an opportunity to be constructive, you aren't going to hurt our feelings if you did not like any particular aspect of your league experience. If you have criticisms or concerns that you do not wish to air openly on the forum please feel free to message me or Mike directly (I will even post anonymous feedback here if you want!)

I will break it into sections to help people remember all the different elements they might have an opinion on but you can just dump it in whatever format you want:

1. The Battlepack - How do you feel about the rules we used? Consider all the elements, including rulings on core battalions, faction battle tactics, the priority roll, the grand strategies... wordings were sufficiently clear? Usability of the layout? Were there choices or rulings you specifically liked or did not like?

2. The Missions - Were you happy with the selection of missions? How they were implemented? Any issues with usability or wordings? 

3. Administration - Do you have any comments about how the League was administered? Did you enjoy assigned matchups? Did you have significant difficulty finding games with your assigned players? Would you change anything about how this was organized in the future? Was the simplification of victory tracking sufficient, or would something more granular have been preferrable? Did you feel like matchups were assigned fairly? Any notes on how faction identities were handled throughout?

3. Scheduling - How did you find the pace? Was it about the right length, or should it be longer/shorter? 

4. Other Notes - What else ya got? Happy with the prizes being a full raffle, or requiring games to enter? Want to give a shout-out to your most memorable moment or favourite opponent? Thoughts on modeling/painting requirements? 

[Jack Shrapnel]

I'm a pretty casual AOS player but here's my two cents:

1. I liked the battlepack. It was clear and concise, quite easy to follow. I was happy there was no priority roll as I absolutely hate that rule personally as it's not balanced at all to have a player get two turns in a row. No matter how GW likes to try and push it. A couple more battle tactics available would have been nice for more options.

2. I liked all the missions other than that one where the single objective blows up in a random direction into two objectives. Didn't feel balanced... mosh pit in the middle then randomly someone wins?

3. Administration of the league was great. Having the chart with the game results was great and having it simple in format was helpful. I like assigned matchups as it gives us the chance to play with a wide variety of people and against a bunch of different armies.

4. Pace seemed good. Gave enough time to get your game in but didn't drag on too long.

5. I thought it was quite successful. Prizes being a raffle is my preferred method (as you probably already know lol) as it encourages people to keep playing even if they lost (or in my case lost a LOT). I mean I would have participated even with no prizes at all because it's just fun to play games. Was very generous of surenet to donate prizes for a league. Thanks!

[Hi I'm Derek]

I'll throw in my thoughts under this post so as not to contaminate the thread opener. I recommend reading this after you post your own feedback because I don't want to lead anyone. Then, if you like, feel free to respond. This is ideally a discussion thread!

So my "feedback" is not following the guide because:

A) providing feedback to myself is odd
B) I am not likely to be involved personally in any future leagues

Things we have been thinking about which are visible on our end as organizers:

-Scheduling was a significant challenge. There was a lot of admin load trying to get everyone matched up and playing their games. Hopefully people found assigned games to be worthwhile, if people are lukewarm about the product, probably wouldn't do it again.

-40k club champs are something you have to plan around. Where the league bumped up against that event obviously it ended up back seated, something that should probably be planned around in future.

-The biggest issue was list balance, and the sense of 'fairness' players took away from their games. Unfortunately as the league progressed there were a number of lists that a sizable chunk of players specifically asked to avoid playing. This is a pain point because it's so hard to fix, Sigmar doesn't really support the idea of fluffy or mixed lists because the allegiance traits often want you to build a homogenous skew list, and the best skew lists are often extremely unpleasant to face. I don't really have a solution but it's something we're thinking about as a source of NPE. Historically for 40k Shannon has reserved the right to arbitrarily disallow lists that are too competitive from casual events, but we didn't really want to have to do list vetting, and even knowing what lists are overperformers in Sigmar is a heck of a lot harder than in 40k.

-By the end I was ultimately not very happy with the battlepack play (yes, even though I wrote it). I agree with others that the priority roll is too fundamental to matched gameplay and some core features of Sigmar to neatly snip it out. No priority creates a series of undesirable knock-on effects and a new bucket of losers who for the most part are already losers under the matched play framework. HOWEVER, the priority roll can suck an egg for real - some older players from 2.0 might remember I have previously argued for it based on some very persuasive arguments by comp-focused players, but I'm now firmly in the opposite camp. Clearly it's a sacred cow for the design team but it's actively poisoning AoS. No matter how necessary it might be to competitive play under the current edition, it's anathema to what I see as the game's core draw as a lighter, simpler alternative to denser miniature wargames. Like someone took the worst elements of AA and IGYG and mashed them together.

With all that said, I currently have so many issues with matched play (and 3.0 in general) that I am probably parting ways with it. For those interested, I am intending to write up some bolt-on rules which will allow me to run a narrative campaign (less the parts of the game that annoy me) in 2024 for my friends. I'm currently imagining them as more like open play/tempest of war than any kind of matched play battlepack. I will likely post those on here at some point to see what the public thinks. If it's something that would interest enough people I'll expand that to a Nexus-wide campaign.

In the end, despite my issues with the game, I had a lot of fun and got to hang out with a lot of great people. I specifically want to thank Mike for putting together that big ol' prize pool out of pocket purely out of enthusiasm for the game and the community. Just a cracking guy, I think you'll all agree! If you feel compelled to pay him back ask him for a quote sometime, I'm sure he would appreciate it 

[Hi I'm Derek]

Mar 2, 2023 15:42:06 GMT -5 Jack Shrapnel said:

I'm a pretty casual AOS player but here's my two cents:

1. I liked the battlepack. It was clear and concise, quite easy to follow. I was happy there was no priority roll as I absolutely hate that rule personally as it's not balanced at all to have a player get two turns in a row. No matter how GW likes to try and push it. A couple more battle tactics available would have been nice for more options.

2. I liked all the missions other than that one where the single objective blows up in a random direction into two objectives. Didn't feel balanced... mosh pit in the middle then randomly someone wins?

3. Administration of the league was great. Having the chart with the game results was great and having it simple in format was helpful. I like assigned matchups as it gives us the chance to play with a wide variety of people and against a bunch of different armies.

4. Pace seemed good. Gave enough time to get your game in but didn't drag on too long.

5. I thought it was quite successful. Prizes being a raffle is my preferred method (as you probably already know lol) as it encourages people to keep playing even if they lost (or in my case lost a LOT). I mean I would have participated even with no prizes at all because it's just fun to play games. Was very generous of surenet to donate prizes for a league. Thanks!

lol I actually have no idea what I was thinking when I picked realmstone cache. I think I hadn't gotten enough sleep that day XD

Edit: wait I REMEMBER. I was going to put in The Relocation Orb as a gag, but then I balked at the last moment and had to pick another one and someone had recently asked me for a mosh pit style mission so... there you go, the mystery of probably the most questionable mission include

[distractedcarnifex]

Well, most leagues seem to run out of steam but this one was quite successful!

The Battlepack had some oddities that took some time to discover but I thought it was good overall. I was initially in favour of 2 CPs for the player going second, but after being on both sides I figure go with something like the player going 2nd gets an extra CP in the first turn only. This could mitigate an "alpha strike" while not skewing the game? I go back and forth on the priority roll. Removing it did seem to bring people out and avoid too many "feels bad" moments, but I did that some outcomes were predictable after one turn based on no priority. Still, I figure we've ripped off the bandaid and there is no going back now?

I liked the missions which had a wide variety, but we should watch for ones that have the player going second dictating objectives since there is no priority?

The administration was fantastic. You were obviously doing a lot of work behind the scenes to make this happen and it was certainly appreciated!

The schedule was good - two weeks allow for busy folks to get a game in without having too long between rounds.

All in all I salute the work you put into this and would gladly sign up again!

[kurdz]

1. The Battlepack - I think the battle pack was fine. Everything was clear and to the point. Essentially using a Contest of Generals with some house rules to open the floor to more players. This is a good thing. I only got a few games of Season 1 in, and the overall consensus seemed to be the have's and have not's were overly exaggerated, which made for unnecessary power dynamics. Definitely not fun for casual games. Core rules and fundamentals were preserved.

1st turn priority/static turn order. I, by no means, have figured out what the right answer is for my army/playstyle with list building and battalions. With the dice roll that was used, I didn't have to think about it at all - if I had 6 characters, did I take the right ones to fill 2x warlord battalions? Yes? Perfect, more items, or spells or prayers and 2 free CPs during the game. Whereas when playing with the deployment drops determining 1st turn choice, I feel I put more consideration into those choices. Do I want to dictate the start of the game, and lean into a certain playstyle (offensive or defensive) or does it not matter and can I afford to react to the opponents decision for the benefit of an extra item.

Priority roll - is it necessary for the game? Probably not. Are there cost benefits for choosing to go first or second in a battle round - yes. Sometimes it's only the difference of how many CPs you'll have available, but other times there can be in game impacts based on the mission. It's a tough one - can it create some feel bad situations - yes. Can they be played and accounted for - sometimes yes. I definitely found myself playing differently knowing what the turn priority was going to be vs rolling off at the start of a round. Not a better or worse thing - just different

All that to finish with saying, in the end if all things are equal, then everyone should, on ballance, have a good time. Some games might be quick, or some games might drag out to the bitter end. I may be willing to play in a game of uncertainty, but if that uncertainty means less players, than I am certain I will still have fun without uncertain rule elements.

2. The Missions - I enjoyed them all, it was a good spread. I think the ones selected were diverse enough to ensure it wasn't a game of kill your opponent every time. Wording was clear.

3. Administration - I can imagine how much you guys put into this on the back end. The fact that it seems to have come off with minimal "missed games" speaks volumes to the interest of the community, but also your ability to keep the interest alive. Info seemed to get pushed out efficiently. The tiered matchup worked fine from my perspective. I haven't had the chance of playing everyone in the community here and I got to play against a few new faces.

3. Scheduling - time length was good and allowed for schedules to be deconflicted. Calling the extra time over Christmas was the right decision I feel. I don't remember if it ever happened, but if all games were completed in the first week, was there consideration to simply starting the next cycle? The score chart was clutch.

4. Other Notes - A prize pool is simply a cherry on top, I think. Above and beyond for the community. Raffle is fine I think. Not knowing the size/scope - I would consider a random draw, one name/number per person where each "winner" gets the choice - then your name is out of the hat. Fun league, fun choice, no chance of someone scooping up multiple prizes (even as unlikely as it is - it could happen at tournaments with the raffle system if you have a lucky day). Mid to large prize pool size would make sense for that kind of format, so may not make much sense. Paint - while I think it's great facing off against painted models, it's not necessary. If an escalation type league was being considered, that's a different story, but anyone who agrees to that kind of set up understands (and is hopefully able) to commit to something like that.

Thank you guys for putting in the effort and time. I really appreciated the steady games and a good reason to play.

[dave]

1. The Battlepack
I think the battlepack was great for a new-player friendly league, aiming to get more people rolling dice. Everything was quite clear and I was happy to play with all of the rules. There might be differing opinions when it comes to everyone's preferred vision for AoS, but I think this was the right choice in this scenario. Straightforward, with an aim toward balance.

That said, I think my initial misgivings around player 2 getting an extra CP every round were justified. Most games I didn't actually want to go first anyway, so the extra command point made it feel like I was winning (or losing) twice over on that first dice roll.


2. The Missions
The missions worked well. I actually had fun with all of them. I'll have to side with the majority when it comes to realmstone cache though. The random placement part is fine. Both players know where the objectives might end up, but it's still up to chance. Sounds fair to me. I'm just not a fan of missions that encourage dog piling in the middle of the board right off the hop. Personal preference there. If some do enjoy that, then it's good we had one. On the other hand, I really enjoyed the vice. Starting spread out, and narrowing as the game goes on felt better.


3. Administration

Admin was excellent. Well organized, and easy communication. Assigned matchups are the way to go. I've played in a league where people were just expected to find their own games. It sucked. Most people ended up playing their friends and people they already knew. Or just dropped.

Coordinating with my opponents was easy. As was keeping track of the battlepack updates and scoreboard. That's mostly due to the great tool we have in this forum though, I suppose. So, thanks to you too Shannon, ha. Tracking W/L/D was enough for me.

I don't know how you assigned matchups, but I enjoyed all of my games. All great opponents, and outside of Kevin running a train on me with his ogor cavalry 😀, all of my games were close matches.

"Any notes on how faction identities were handled throughout?" Not sure what this is asking. I may play Beasts, but I wasn't expecting to be allowed to piss in the corner.


3. Scheduling
I think a two week window is perfect. I wasn't always able to get a game in that first week. Longer over the holidays and in the final bracket also felt like the right choices.

4. Other Notes -
Prizes are definitely an unexpected, but appreciated bonus. Random draw is my personal favourite method of distribution. Seems fair to require sticking with the league to enter. We didn't pay an entry after all. Looks like we had a pretty good rate for finishing too.

I'm not in favour of paint requirements for this sort of thing. The entire idea is to bring in new people, and get in more games. Adding barriers to entry is counter productive. I like painted models, and I hope to have more of them myself one day. If I had ever waited to finish an army before I started playing it, I probably never would have rolled dice.

Finally, all of my opponents deserve a shout out. I enjoyed every game. Great attitudes and a good variety of armies. Thanks again Mike and Derek! Looking forward to the next event. Moooo!

[mrmanstory]

Just want to start off by saying thank you to all the guys that ran the league I had a lot of fun (and I think played all of you that were setting stuff up lol) I think it was a really good step in building the community. You all did a fantastic job!

The battlepack
I think the battlepack was awesome! I was a bit weary on straying from the "normal" way to play sigmar but all in all I think it was well executed. I also didn't find the extra cp for the person going second was a big deal. Maybe I'm not good enough to really notice that kind of stuff (or skaven doesn't really need as many cp as some armies) but I found stuff usually pretty balanced.

The missions
I thought these were good choices the only one that kinda had me put off was the same one everyone seemed to not really like much but even then I thought it was fine. Part of that could be because I got lucky and when I played that mission one went to my side and one went to my opponents so it didn't really cause any feels bads. I really liked the last one where they all slowly moved towards the centre I thought thay one was really fun.

Administration
You guys were great and easy to deal with the entire time! Even let me swap my army when I wasn't really enjoying the one I was playing which was cool. I like the way who won and lost was shown in the big graph I don't know really a better way that could've been done. All my match ups were pretty fair I was a bit nervous when I had 2 losses and then swapped armies that it wouldn't be fair to who I was playing against but everyone seemed cool with it.

Scheduling
Two weeks is the perfect amount of time to find someone to get a game in. I usually aimed to get my games in early but on weeks I couldn't it was nice to have that extra bit of time to work out a date to play.

Other notes
I'm happy with prizes being raffles I think it more pushes that it's a casual league. I also don't think there should be a painting requirement assuming we are continuing this to try and get new players joining the community. Happy with how things went and excited to see a second season of this

[Hi I'm Derek]

dave - the thing about faction identities was just because we did it sort of ad hoc. We didn't really make people pick a list, or a sub faction, and we even let people change their primary faction identity part way in. I wasn't sure if anyone cared about this.

I agree about the CP thing, it's one of those knock-on effects from removing the double turn. It's something I'd address with future 'no priority' versions of the rules for sure.

[dave]

Fair enough. In that case I was totally fine with people switching whatever. I never saw this as a competitive league, where record mattered. So whatever let people have the most fun was cool by me.

I ran the same list up until my last game, when I switched to the new battletome. I took a bit of everything and added a couple of inefficient tax units to try to steer clear of a "meta list". It was a fun list to play though. If someone else wasn't enjoying their first pick, cool, take something that's more fun.

[kurdz]

Mar 3, 2023 0:51:22 GMT -5 Hi I'm Derek said:

dave - the thing about faction identities was just because we did it sort of ad hoc. We didn't really make people pick a list, or a sub faction, and we even let people change their primary faction identity part way in. I wasn't sure if anyone cared about this.

Ah, fair concern. I think if a prize or something tangible was on the line for coming first, then maybe some more strict rules or parameters would be justified. Not an issue here. Allowing the deliberate changes were likely a good thing - no reason to force someone to continue to be unhappy.

[Hi I'm Derek]

kurdz distractedcarnifex

lol I'm dumb so I read people's feedback in reverse. Definitely agree with all that stuff regarding how different the game is without double turns or control of who goes first and all that. Dealing with that safety and predictability is one of those issues that is hard to handle when removing priority. It's also a skill gap thing, for competitive players managing that risk and uncertainty is necessary since it raises the skill ceiling a lot. But when you're not invested in learning all those techniques and just want to play casually all this stuff is invisible- all you see is that you died on a single coin flip.

It ends up being a conflict of priorities, the people I'm playing with have 40k as their comp game and I was only able to recruit them to Sigmar as a casual alternative. That's why I personally want to work on more narrative custom rules and move away from matched play, since that is where the interest in my immediate circle lies.

[kurdz]

I totally get it, and endorse that plan. I hope you're able to get a narrative campaign group off the ground. It's something I haven't had the chance to explore it with AoS. Necromunda was a great game until it became obvious that GW was stretching a single ruleset out between multiple books and even locking campaign systems behind giant box paywalls.

Anyways, this is not the tread to open up that topic.

Honestly, I would consider myself a new player as far as AoS is concerned, so i haven't had the opportunity to develop a well rounded opinion one way or another on the priority roll being good or bad and why.

In the end the game is what the players want to make it, and that's the way it should be.

[wargamer]

Thanks for running the tournament everyone. I had a great time. I think I have mentioned it before but I am coming fresh off a 10+ year break in gaming and have no AOS experience outside of this league so keep that in mind with my feedback. Looking forward to playing more.

Feedback:

1. The Battlepack - I was happy with the rules. I am normally very weary of house rules and my limited experience with removing minor things, much less core ones such as turn priority, has taught me to never do it. The game is built around these things and there are a bunch of minor knockoff effects you can't realize until you play with them. That having been said all my games were good and close and the no-priority roll seems to be working well. If it is that important to people I am ok with continuing to do it this way.

The extra command point seemed a bit much, or rather I always found myself missing it when playing 1st. Maybe giving one that can be cashed in on a turn of your choice might be a better alternative? I am not sure how much the distinction between first and last matters outside of the top of turn one and bottom of turn five. Overall good battlepack

2. The Missions - I enjoyed the missions, they all required thought and altering play style to fit. I didn't mind realmstone cache but do see the concern.

3. Administration - You guys did a great job. I liked the win/loss chart. The only change I could think of was showing opponents, or maybe opponent armies. I was curious a couple times how some factions did vs each other. Matches seemed fair.

3. Scheduling - Two weeks was good and all but one opponent was easy to co-ordinate with to get the game in. Thank you to the organizers for stepping up to make sure that final game happened. I would not change anything about this part.

4. Other Notes - I have seen a couple comments about painting. I can straight up say as a newer player with an unpainted army I would not even consider showing up if that was required. There was a time in my youth that I pulled and even kind of enjoyed all night pre-tournament painting marathons but I just don't have that kind of free time anymore. I am not saying this applies to anyone else but personally I plan to go slow and paint models I am happy with instead of models that are "done" this time around and "done" is what I would end up with if there was a painting requirement. Just picked up the colours I am planning on using so painting will happen. That having been said, if there was a painting incentive I would be fine with just ignoring it and getting a zero in that category. Painting is a part of the hobby.

I like how the prizes (thank you!) require all 6 games played but there is an effort being made to make sure players actually trying to get 6 games if they want to.

[pleaman]

Hello,

As with most of the comments above I thought the league was great.

I enjoyed all my games, everyone had a great attitude towards the whole thing and we had a lot of variety in army types.

2 weeks was ideal to arrange games and I never had any issues.

I liked the table/battlepack on the front page ofnthe discussion board and my only suggestion would be to have some form of leaderboard.

I am not a fan of this website/discussion board format from a mobile device, but I don't know what other options you'd use. Discord maybe?

Finally, on the controversial topic of priority and drops; I feel as an AoS league it's strange to step outside the priority, as it's a hallmark of AoS. It lends to different play style and strategy and I enjoy that aspect of it. Given how many people were new and learning the game, it felt off to teach a hybrid version of the rules and tactics.

Curious to know what the interest would be in a GHB season 2 priority league if that ever was a thing.

Regardless I had fun each week and would definitely participate in this format if it went again.

Thanks again to Mike and Derek. Lots of work to get this going and it was very much appreciated.