Why so few battle reports?

[nalathani]

There's always lots of chatter on forums (including this one) with advice on which units are good, which units are bad, which brood sizes are best, which biomorphs are useless, etc. However, I see very little in the way of "proof" when it comes to most people's advice. Where's the battle reports?

To me it seems silly to take advice from a multitude of strangers who are giving conflicting information. Some advice gets repeated so often it's pretty obvious that the choice works (Bring more hive guard! Tervigons are awesome!), but other than those few there's lots of room for debate.

I've been searching for Tyranid 6e battle reports on Youtube and over at Dakka, and I find them to be incredibly helpful. You actually get to see what worked or didn't work, and more importantly, WHY it did or didn't work.

I see people complain about Flyrants being too fragile for the 300+ points they put into them. Then, in a few of the battle reports, I see people swoop their flyrant right into the middle of enemy rapid fire range, with only a 5+ cover save instead of a 4+ cover save from ruins. They get rapid fired, grounded, and then heavy weaponed to death. In the comments, they say the flyrant was too fragile. Duh! You gave it a death sentance by playing like (please do not swear).

Anyway, I digress. It's hard to take people's opinions without seeing exactly what they're doing in their own games to get those opinions in the first place.

I'm wondering why people don't post more battle reports? Halos has done an excellent job at being informative AND entertaining (thanks again Halos!). I haven't been posting them because of hardware issues. I don't have a digital camera or camcorder to make them with. I will however, be getting a new Droid phone in the next month which will allow me to do so.

What about others? Is it just not having the time to type things up? No technical know-how for editing videos? Don't want to upload a dozen images online and then put them on a forum?

Just curious! I love reading reports (especially well done video reports, but pictures and text works great too), and would like to see more "proof" of people's games and how things went.

Thanks all.

[Davor]

About telling what units are no good or what are good, people LOVE to Mathammer it out without proof. Statistics are the way to go it seems for 40K. Just like in Baseball, you can't ALWAYS go by statistics. So while mathammer will prove you right alot of times, there is a few times it will fail you.

Just like when I had a brood of devilgaunts, 75 shots and only killed one Ork in a group of 10. Yes he had a Dok as well, but I should have killed more Orks by statistics but sometimes they just are not right.

I love to see more battlereports as well. At least for me, I get too busy playing and forget to take pics. Also my memory is bad, I forget alot of stuff what happens and not use to taking notes for reports later, so that is why I don't do them anymore.

[rpricew]

In all reality... writing battle reports is a very time consuming thing. When I write one up it usually takes at least an hour. If you want to get detailed and really set the scene, it takes work to make it understandable and not confusing. A picture is worth a thousand words but even so... it's challenging to do it right.

I would like to see more Batreps also... but the reality is that for some people, it's just not their thing.

[halos]

Yesss, a shout out

The thing with Battle Reports is that they're pretty dull to just do as a thing; you're basically re-writing something which you've already experienced so unless you are in a particular mindset to write up your next battle or whatever then it's easy to see why a lot of folks won't bother.

Plus, as rpricew rightly said, they are time consuming. First you've got to play your game, which for a lot of people is easier said then done if there are no nearby flgs or decent communities and what have you. Then you've got to write it up and sort out images or video and such, depending on the size of the game that can take a good couple of hours, which really is quite the significant chunk of time for something like this.

[wisdomseyes1]

I play 40k 4 days a week. Twice a day. I have lost a total of 2 games and they were both against tau, because I was being a little bit cocky and didn't expect what the new edition had done to them.

I play to many games to write battle reports (though my games will likely slow down when school starts up again in a 2 weeks, since I'll have work and school at the same time)

I also work on an itouch here. Pretty annoying to type long posts.


If you want PROOF for what we believe is good, you should look at touranamnents results. That gives you a good idea of where units stand based on how often they show up. (example: Fatecrusher is a daemon tactic everyone knows, but last edition the only Lists that did well were the ones that ran 4 chariots of Tzeentch. Tervigons, hive guard, and trygons similarly were up near the top in tyranid play)

Math hammer and theory hammer work to an extent, but they don't always apply real factors (like shooting against something other than a marine xD )

[WestRider]

Good Battle Reports take a lot of time and effort.

If I don't take notes or pictures during a Game, I'm not going to remember enough to do a decent write-up. I can remember enough to figure out where I won or lost most of the time, but not the details you need for a decent BatRep.

I don't multi-task well. If I do take notes and/or pictures, it takes enough of my attention away from the Game that I'm probably going to lose.

I suspect that, to a lesser degree (parts of my brain are not as functional as they should be ), these two points apply to most people, especially newer players who really need to focus on the Game as they play it just to keep all the Rules and such in mind.

I appreciate good BatReps when I see them, but am not really capable of putting them up myself.

[depletor [H5ed]]

Writing battle reports is extremly time consuming. Furthermore they are only really worth it with a good gaming table and fully painted armies.

But some summaries about how units performed and which combinations worked and which not should alway be possible! Just write down your and the enemies army as good as possible and maybe a short review of some critical situations.

[gigasnail]

i haven't got to play any 6th yet.

[fragile]

Writing out all the details is time consuming. Remembering all the details usually takes note taking and pictures. Doing that and playing can get complicated

[ravenousnid87]

I have read this thread from top to bottom, and pretty much all I read is people complaining about how time consuming battle reports are. I know everyone of us loves this hobby, and we all want to know how other people are doing in their games. Yes taking notes during the game can take away from the focus, but it does not take away that much. You can take side notes about what is happening during each turn, it doesn't have to be full on paragraphs. With the notes that you take during the game, anyone could write up a battle report. Also if you don't have pictures, you could write the battle report in a narrative to make it interesting. The point is if we love the hobby as much as we say we do, we should be sharing our experiences with others.

I know the next time I play a game, I will post a battle report here shortly after. It will not have pictures or anything fancy. I will write it in a narrative like I suggested, and hope it will give a entertaining picture of how my game played out.

[dirkspair]

battle reports and tourney reports take a bit of work, and it does get a bit tiresome to put in all the effort only to see that all the work nets a few comments but threads like "OMG, supa L00phole found, check this out!" get talked to death over page after page.


thetyranidhive.proboards.com/index.cgi?action=display&board=general&thread=39919&page=2#691331

[Illithid]

@ravenusnid: I like to take photos with mine and work quite a bit. I also have a life outside of the hobby which sees me train quite a bit. I find my Battle reports take 2-3 hours to write. Yes we love the hobby Ravenousnid, but most of us aren't sitting at home on our hands with nothing to do either. In essence, I may only have time to write one every few weeks. This is not complaining, just the truth of the matter.

If I go to a tournament, I will record my battles and post that (as it is more relevant to see how Nids perform in a competitive setting). But sometimes, especially if I it is my first game in 3-4 weeks, I just want to play.

Look forward to seeing you do as promised, I do like reading them.

This above post also has a point. Something that took me 2+ hours to write and added length to my game time, but then sees limited attention kind of discourages you.

[ravenousnid87]

Illithid, I do realize that people have lives outside of playing or enjoying this hobby. I used to not have all the time in the world as I do now. I was a marine that got out after my four years was done, but during that time I was in I had little to no time for this hobby . I go to school now, and really don't have to work since I collect money from other sources. Since I have the time, I will do a battle reports more often. I am working on buying a GW table, so that I can get more games in other than just playing on Tuesdays.

[labinnac]

First thank you for serving Raven, really you and your comrades in arms are much appreciated. Now to the game, battle reports are time consuming this appears to be agreed upon but it seems some people don't mind doing it. How about if you can, then do and we will discuss it together. If you can't then don't but adding into the conversation is about as helpful so go ahead and do that. Not everyone can write the battle report but we all can take a couple minutes to add to the conversation to give more substance to the report and thus help everyone.

[nalathani]

I think what I may start to do over the next year is bookmark and organize battle reports I watch online (most of which I do while at work), and post them as a response to people's questions about what works.

Like, if someone asks what brood size is best for gargoyals, give a link to a battle report where 10 gargoyles worked as a perfect screen, and another battle report where 30 gargoyles assaulted things and wrecked face, etc.

This way people can see real examples where things worked, instead of just listening to us banter back and forth.