Review of my 2012-2013 Gaming Year

For those of you who used to read my blog over the years back at B&C, I used to benchmark the start of the gaming year at August 15+/-, coinciding with what had been the HardBoyz tournament prelims. The following is my W/D/L record for the past three years - And for all of these games I've played Space Marines (3rd Company Ultramarines), rarely with allies, rarely in a team game with a partner.

2012-2013 Record for Third Company: 21 wins 3 Draws 17 Losses
2011-2012 Record for Third Company: 18 Wins 7 Draws 15 Losses
2010-2011 Record for Third Company: 35 Wins 10 Draws 30 Losses

I decided to Normalize each year to get a measure of improvement, giving a win 3 quality points, a draw as 2 quality points, and a loss as 1 quality point. The game year averages then become:

2012-2013 QPs = 2.097
2011-2012 QPs = 2.075
2010-2011 QPs = 2.066

The first thing that really sticks out is that I'm average (a solid "2"). Pretty much on average every game could have been a win or loss. Anyone reading my reports could come up with the same conclusion. Most of my games can hinge over a single deciding point or dice results, which is for me, pretty cool. Another way to normalize the data is as percentages:

2012-2013 = 51% W; 7% D; 41% L
2011-2012 = 45% W; 18% D; 38% L
2010-2011 = 47% W; 13% D; 40% L

Weird.

In the past year I could both measureably increase my chance of winning and increase my chance of losing at the same time...curse you mathematics! Of course I attribute this to 6th edition changes which make it more difficult to get draws.

But note...fogging up the results above is that my local gaming group seems to enjoy game scenarios (particularly on our 3-game monthly "tournament days") as written by another local blogger, and they deviate from the basic constructs of the Big Rule Book, and may or may not be "fair" to all codex army types.

My game play statistics span the change from 5th Edition to 6th, with a codex designed for 5th and not yet replaced with it's 6th edition version. If anything the data seems to show I'm holding my own against all the codex changes other armies have been enjoying.

What might be interesting is to see next year's statistics and see if anything changed with the introduction of the new Space Marine codex next month, and how it should have been designed to be "more fair" or so to keep up with 6th edition changes to game play. With the game purportedly designed to revolve around the generic Space Marine as a the standard, it should be interesting to see what changes might occur. And that leads to where we are probably headed.

Change.

Change is coming!

One of the rumored Ultramarine chapter traits (essentially an improvement to bolter drill) is that all rolls to hit of a "1" on a bolter (regardless of ammo type) can be rerolled...How many times have my dice just totally left me on the field? I am so looking forward to rerolling 1's. Who really knows what other tweaks will be in the new codex? Squads with more special weapons? Rules for flyers? Little tiny changes to stat lines? Who knows! Regardless, I'm holding off on model purchases until Christmas...

Now for a few more tidbits:

I was away on vacation the past 2 weeks in Ireland. It was very fun, the only real low point was dropping in at the Games Workshop Dublin store, only to find out it closed at 6 PM on Fridays in a very busy shopping/tourist area. I got there around 6:05 (after the Jamison Distillery Tour and Tasting). Talk about lost sales...in the short 5 minutes I hovered about the store looking at the dioramas in the window, while a drone/servitor in a bright blue t-shirt vacummed the floor, at least one person per minute also wanted to go into the store...The drone opened the door long enough to ask me what I wanted....said I could always come back the following Thursday...when they are open till 10 PM...

My Mortis Contemptor and 3rd Company maries may have had 3 or 4 games without me...apparently Ripped Dragon borrowed them while I was away? Well, they did OK...Ripped loves the Contemptor now, he used in in a practise game to mow down some hordes...

One of my favorite things is to listen to the 11th Company podcast...I recommend it! They just completed 2 weeks of evaluating the Dark Angels codex...and they had alot of food for thought on list building. One of the leaders of that podcast group provided ideas for large foot-slogging marine lists...Hmmmm....