Torrent of Fire

[Frosty the Pirate]

So, a new resource for TO's has just come into play, Torrent of Fire, it provides a tournament match making system for TO's. But the coolest part is what's under the hood.

After you've completed your tournament, the data goes into a data mining system, and it becomes part of a worldwide data set about 40k games.

This allows crazy amounts of reporting and polling you can't do otherwise, you'll see some of the data extracted into reports under the following article:

www.torrentoffire.com/2309/lets-go-data-mining-do-you-need-to-buy-the-latest-book

I find this really cool, cus one of my day jobs is working as a professional data miner, and I can tell you for sure this is a tip of the iceberg.

Now, granted they seem to have this idea they can charge $9 bucks a month for access to premium articles that "give you secrets" to winning more 40k games, which I think is really a load of crap. But the free articles are fairly good on my initial browse through, but it's definitely aimed at the competitive/tournament crowd.

Thoughts anyone?

[Jack Shrapnel]

very interesting data... I like how we're actually seeing balanced performance over the majority of armies, and evidence to support that some armies inflated power level (eldar/tau) is due in part to the "bottom feeding" to inflate numbers.

locally - we don't want to pay an extra fee to be TOF enabled (at least I don't) as the only benefits are a matching software program for the tourney - which we already have, and we'd have to pay a fee for every tournament back to TOF... I also find their marketing to try and sell "insider info" to subscribers to be particularly lothesome... I guess everyone needs to make a buck, but seriously? actually telling people that the data they are mining is going to yield some results to give you an edge that they'll only sell you, while they want you to pay to contribute to this data (ie: you pay them to give them data that they sell to others?)seems pretty low...

but I'm all for interesting statistical analysis, and it was a good read.

[Frosty the Pirate]

Been reading some comments over at 3++, most of the 3++ community is disgusted by the marketing, specially since it's the polar opposite of the direction GW is going with 40k.

I've read through a few articles now, and a couple of the author's sound like they really have no idea what they are talking about. While there's very few in-depth tactical blogs about 40k, their articles are very short, and don't really offer advice that anyone familiar with tournament grade 40k wouldn't already know or do. (One article is literally a single paragraph that basically says "If you play FMC Deamons, you want to hide behind LOS blocking terrain on turn 1! So smart!")

It's sad to see such a nice concept executed so poorly, I do hope now that the spotlight is on them, and they are getting some feedback that they change their tune and don't just faceplant into the dirt.