40K: Las Vegas Open By the Numbers

Hey everyone, Reecius here from Frontline Gaming with the results of the LVO 2014 Warhammer 40K Championships exit poll and the data is really interesting – to say the least!

It was a blast! We had a great time and the event was a success. We are already planning next year!

As we always do for our events, we sent out an exit poll to the attendees of each individual event to get their feedback on what they liked and didn’t like. I really enjoy looking at this data as I feel it helps us to stay on top of what our community wants in an event and helps us to make informed decisions going forward. We are still getting results from other games and will post those results on FLG once we have a chance to collect and compile all of the data.

You all may remember that we ran a similar poll of our attendees going into the LVO after the crazy changes in December of Escalation, Stronghold Assault, Formations and Data Slates and used that information to shape what we would do. Many other events have had to make quick choices faced with all the upheaval, too. I thought this would be a great opportunity to see how opinions have changed.

So, without further ado, let’s jump right into it!

This is the most important question for us as the entire purpose of the event is to have fun.

I call that a big win! Almost everyone said they had fun (only 1 person said they didn’t) and the vast majority said they had a great time! Awesome.

This is a good way to see if we can expect growth and how much next year.

Right on! Another big win and we are stoked to see people happy to spread the good word about the LVO!

We decided to not go with the currently common and quite grueling, 4 games per day schedule in tournaments in favor of a more laid back approach that is conducive to being in Vegas. Start time of Noon every day, 3 rounds Friday, 2 Rounds Saturday, 3 round finals on Sunday for those who qualify.

So again, and not surprisingly, most folks like playing less games and having more free time. We had a number of folks that wanted to jump up to a third round on Saturday and I think that is a good idea as it allows us to scale up above 256 players and it means you can lose a game and still make the finals which helps to keep people engaged. 

This one I was fairly certain I knew where it would land. Previously with our last poll leading up to the LVO after all the craziness of December was a landslide against allowing this stuff. However, 2 months and change later, let’s see what people said:

Almost a 100% flip flop on the result. We have a huge change here, and folks are totally open to allowing Character Data Slates going forward. This honestly doesn’t surprise me, and I personally am fine with this. We will be allowing these at the BAO.

I was very curious to see how this one would fall. Last time we polled, Formations got massively voted down. 

Very, very interesting. It seems that people have opened up to allowing a lot more stuff into the game like Formations. Not the above graph shows that the largest number of votes was against Formations, however, I simplified it into positive, neutral and negative votes to get a better idea of the overall feeling on the topic. 

Here we see a majority vote in favor of Formations. Very interesting. Again, a huge change. Now, how to handle this is an entirely different question. Of those who voted in favor of Formations, most of them wanted restrictions. I did not specify what shape that would take, but, limiting some of the more powerful Formations, or having them count as allies are some of the ideas we are batting around. Some armies like Space Wolves and Tyranids really benefit from Formations while some of them, such as the Tau Formation, are just straight up stupid. We’re going to bat around some ideas on this one before making a decision. 

This one surprised me the most by a mile. Last vote it was over 90% no on Lords of War. Again, what a difference 2 months and change makes. 

We see that most folks voted no out of the 4 choices. But as above, I reduced it down to positive, neutral and negative votes to get the following graph. 

By a slim margin, there are more folks in favor of using Lords of War than against. This really shocked me, to be honest, I did not expect it at all. What this means to me, is that folks are really starting to embrace the crazy that is 6th ed 40K. 

However, what to do with this information is an entirely different ball of wax. I like using Super Heavies personally, but am STRONGLY of the opinion that D weapons do not belong in the game. Yes, they kill the obnoxious Deathstars that are so prevalent in the game right now, but bear in mind that you are letting in a new Daemon to kill the old one! Lords of War very well could become the next “Deathstars.” 

We have discussed a lot of options but even some of the non D weapon Super Heavies are so incredibly powerful, that it can easily disrupt a game. On the other hand, some are pretty mild, honestly, and fun to play with and against.

So, we’re batting around a lot of ideas on how to handle this data. We could do nothing, have a separate event that allows LoW, or throw caution to the wind and let them into normal tournament play with restrictions (as of the positive votes, most of them wanted some limitations). A 1 day, 2K double FoC, NHB style tournament would be a lot of fun though, like Adepticon’s Gladiator! We will be discussing this a lot over at FLG’s forums, so feel free to jump in the conversation if you plan on going to any of our events and want to make your voice heard. 

This is a question we have gotten a lot over the years. We figured hell, the game is opening up like crazy, what about this, too?

Once again, a progressive vote wins the day by a good margin. Seems folks want to use their Armored Company (which would be AWESOME to see!) and Corsairs! Cool, I like variety but, we need to play-test these before giving them the final thumbs up of approval. The community is open to them, though.

This one was near and dear to my heart as I positively HATE 2+ reroll saves as for me, that is the one rule above all others that makes the game less fun to play. No unit, under any circumstances, should potentially be invincible for the entire game. I could live with it if it were a once per game effect like a Feat in Warmachine, but all game? That is just flat-out not fun.

Well, there you go. Proof in the pudding. Most everyone wanted to keep the nerf, and the minority wanted to go back to the BRB rules, of which I wonder how many were Screamerstar and Seercouncil players? =) I joke of course, and bear in mind, a Seercouncil List still won the event, even with the nerf.

What this tells me, and what most of us already knew, is that players sense that the game is a bit out of whack right now and that the community is willing to accept changes to things that are deemed really too far out there. We will be keeping this change going forward and will be hoping that if we do get some type of rules update soon as rumored, that this will be addressed and we won’t have to house rule it any more. 

This is the question that many tournament players fear: the slippery slope of going from TO to amateur game designer. Trust me when I say that no one here at FLG wants to change rules. We hate doing it as it causes so much drama. Here’s what the community feels about it:

Suspicions confirmed. Players want balance in their game. I believe the key is to do things slowly and only when absolutely necessary. I think one of the reasons FoB got so much flak for their proposed rules changes was because is was too much too soon. Going slowly and erring on the side of caution is the prudent choice in this course I believe and establishing trust with your players is key. If they feel that you will only make changes when there is no reasonable alternative and for their increased enjoyment of the tournament experience, you can make slow progress.

That said, do we have plans to make any other rules changes? Not right now. But it is good to know that the door is open and any other TOs out there, if you see something in your local meta that really is disrupting things, have the confidence to do what you think is the right thing for your gaming scene. A vocal minority may rail against you for doing it, but as here, you may see that a majority of folks very well may support your decisions.

This question meant a lot to me as we worked INSANE hours to make as much terrain as we possibly could. I also have to give a huge shout out to Steve “the Architect” for helping us make the very cool buildings that players saw all over the tables at the LVO.

Hell yeah! The hard work was worth it. We got a GREAT response on this and that is awesome. What we plan to do now is go through the terrain one table at a time and fine tune each one to make sure it has a really good amount of coverage and that it also has a unique look to make it stand out.

We always ask this question to make sure we continue to deliver the best tournament missions we can as these are hugely important to making a fun and fair experience.

Just what I like to see! We have consistently gotten great feedback on our missions and so I wasn’t surprised to see this but still very happy to see it.

The missions are a hit and I really feel they do a great job at providing multiple paths to victories to get around bad match-ups. 

So there you have it. Some very interesting data in there and a lot of food for thought for how we will shape future events that we run. We still haven’t decided exactly how we will apply this information but it is super useful.