Are really orcs that bad in tourneys?

[Joemanji]

I'll give you Undead, which are an awesome tournament team, but not WE or Lizards, just too crunchy, especially the Lizards which you can end up with trying to ball handle with AG1 Saurus's very easily. I just never see them win tournaments anywhere, not at the last 2 Chaos Cups or any other tournament I have been to in the USA.

I would point you to the NAF stats which clearly list Lizardmen as third behind WEs and Undead.

[Nuffle_Hate_Me]

As I said I have not been to a tournament yet that had WE do very well, they just get crushed with Tackle/MB/PO/Claw combos or fouls. I think both are very dependent on the rules and skills available, unless you can take 4 + block Saurus's (most in the USA don't allow this) and WE greatly benefit from allowing for Stat increases (Most in the US don't allow or only MA/AV). I don't see them doing very well with teams loaded with Tackle/MB/PO/Claw/DP.

[Joemanji]

This is a thread about tournaments. I provided data from 54,000 tournament games. Do your feelings amount to that large a sample size? It is nice that you have an opinion and all, but I guess you can prove anything with facts.

[Nuffle_Hate_Me]

What I saw that you provided was data from one large tournament, the NAFC 2013. So no I didn't see that.

I'll close with this:

- A particular team excelling in tournaments is heavily dependent on the tournament rules (Build, Skills, Weather, what teams it cripples, etc.)
- Since the rules are allowed to very widely for any NAF tournament, looking at a large group of tournaments to determine the best races is Apples and Oranges to me unless they all used the exact same rules, which they don't
- I see Orcs as a great team to play in tournaments, especially with novice or intermediate coaches, regardless of the rules because of the starting skills available.
- There are about 6-8 team in the hands of expert coaches are very devastating in tournaments (Although in the hand of an expert almost any team can be) like Undead, Dwarfs, Chaos Dwarfs, Norse, Amazons, Dark Elfs, Skaven, and I'll even give you WE, I just don't see Lizards as that great in tournaments unless the rules fit them well.

[Smeborg]

In the UK Orcs are not looked on in a very good light by the top coaches. Almost all of us have abandoned them as a seriously competitive race, and there is always discussion on whether they make the 8 races we take to Eurobowl. That said, they are clearly not a bad team.

One problem I find with them is that they have no plan B. If stuff goes wrong, as it often will in a dice-related game, Orcs struggle to get back into contention. A 1/9 pickup, a bad Blitz!, a 1/81 Black Orc block etc. is often cataclismic. They can't chase a game in the way the truly great teams (Wood Elves, Undead, Lizardmen) can. Sure, they have a solid plan A, and if things go well are often better at bullying their way to victory than other teams. But in a 6 game tournament things will go wrong 2/3 times, and I often find I draw or lose those games. Whereas with Undead or Wood Elves I can more often overcome one turn of bad luck and scrape a win.

My main problem with Orcs is their inflexibility. I call them a solid 7/10 team : they give you 7/10 performance almost regardless of how you play them, but it is very hard to squeeze those extra points out into world class performance. Whereas Undead/WEs/Lizardmen etc are much more responsive to the way they are coached : a 10/10 coach can get 10/10 performance from them if he does everything correctly.

joe - I venture to suggest that there is another factor working in favour of the top tournament teams (the likes of Undead, WE, Lizzies etc.). This is that they perform excellently in nearly all tournament formats, whereas the same cannot be said of most ofher teams, which tend to perform better or worse according to format.

All the best.

[Joemanji]

Yep, indeed.

[Gaixo]

That's interesting, because most American coaches seem to contend that the opposite is true. The prevailing opinion (at least in my admittedly limited experience, though it was also expressed by Matt above) is that lizards aren't very good in tournaments where skill duplication is banned, or in which there are few skills in general.

I've never played as or against them, so I'm obviously not especially well-informed, but they always seem to finish rather low in the (again, admittedly limited number of) tournaments of that type that I've been to.

[Joemanji]

Lizardmen are obviously at their best when you can spam Block. But 2x Block, 2x Wrestle and 2x Break Tackle (for example) still works reasonably well. They are like Dark Elves (#4 in the NAF stats) in that they don't work as well without some skills on them. If in the USA you are only running tournaments with no skill duplication allowed but no restriction on stacking Cpomb (as Matt implies) then I guess Lizardmen might be neutered. But then WEs are the absolute best team under "no duplication" rules, so that makes me doubt his arguments even further.

I took Lizardmen to within moments of the NAFC final two years running under unfavourable rules (105 and one skill per game). When you can get all the Block up front they are frightening. The fragility of Skinks isn't an issue when your opponent doesn't get to see them.

[Nuffle_Hate_Me]

Interesting stats from the last NAF Championships. The Orcs has 4 top 10 finishers (15 total teams) and the WE had 2 in the top 10 (11 Total), but did win it. Lizard men 9 team entered only one in the top 25 none in the top 10. All other races listed with top 10 and 25 listed out of 156.

Race Top 25 Top 10 Total
Orc 4 4 15
Undead 4 1 21
Dwarf 4 1 10
Wood Elf 3 2 11
Skaven 2 1 16
Norse 2 12
Dark Elf 2 5
Khemri 1 1 2
Lizardman 1 9
Chaos D 1 7
Chaos Pact 1 2
Total 156

[Joemanji]

Are you really listing results from one tournament whilst ignoring the stats from all 54,000 tournament games played under the current rules?

[Nuffle_Hate_Me]

That's what someone else posted as an example, I just finally took good look at it. Its also the largest tournament in the world and attracts some of the best players in Europe. If I had the 54,000 game data I'd love to dive into that.

My whole point is that Orcs are one of the best 6-8 team for tournaments, not one of the worst. Are they the single best team, I would never say that.

[Darkson]

You can have 100k+ if you want, they're still not in the top 10, let alone top 6-8.
http://naf.talkfantasyfootball.org/tota ... tions.html
http://naf.talkfantasyfootball.org/index.html

[Joemanji]

I linked to that data in my post at the top of this page.

But to be more explicit : http://naf.talkfantasyfootball.org/lrb6.html

Undead #1, Wood Elves #2, Lizardmen #3.

My whole point is that Orcs are one of the best 6-8 team for tournaments, not one of the worst. Are they the single best team, I would never say that.

Of course Orcs are within the top 10-12 races without question, and it wouldn't be much of a stretch to suggest they could be in the 6-8 bracket. As it happens statistically they are 12th (but there is some argument that data for Humans and Orcs is skewed by them being used more frequently by rookies as they are out-of-the-box teams).

But your original comment was that you can't see WEs or Lizardmen doing very well or ever winning a tournament. Here are the stats to suggest otherwise.

[Nuffle_Hate_Me]

OK I give, but cool data and a bit surprising to me.

What it doesn't take into account is where a team places in the tournaments, (i.e. winners, top 5 or 10 etc) which would help the discussion more. But I see your point and it would probably only change the data minimally.

Orcs are also, by far, the most common team played (Not to mention come in the box and very easy to proxy) so it might be safe to assume they attract maybe the widest range of coaching skill levels in tournament play and are not generally considered a challenging team to play, like say Lizards and Woodies which might not attract the same variety of coaching skill levels, especially the more novice coaches, to the tournaments.

In the hands of a good and experience Orc coach I still say they can give any team a run for their money. I have done really well with them in tournaments.

And come on they are just fun to play, who doesn't have a little Orc in them!!!!!

[MKL]

OK I give, but cool data and a bit surprising to me.

What it doesn't take into account is where a team places in the tournaments, (i.e. winners, top 5 or 10 etc) which would help the discussion more. But I see your point and it would probably only change the data minimally.
(...)

I'm late to the fest but I want to say that:
a) interesting discussion, agree with Joemanji analysis (Orcs are strong, but cannot react easily to bad turns)
b)Nuffle_Hate_Me: in the internet everyone can bicker forever. It takes a real man to concede a point