Yes–but counterpoint: by the end of 3.5, attendance/engagement was slowing down and the constant drumbeat on Fanatics, Countercharge, etc was that no one wanted to start anything until 4E was released. So the community put a lot of pressure on Mantic to release quickly rather than delaying.
Mantic was caught between a rock and a hard place: if they keep it under wraps, people complain it wasn’t playtested. If they widen the pool for playtesting, there are lots of leaks and the community disengages because they know something is coming. There’s no easy way to please a large and varied group of people like this. There was definitely opportunity for improvement, but I don’t think delaying the release another 6-9 months for further playtesting was really a viable option,either.
Mantic is a company of gamers building for gamers. They work hard to incorporate community feedback and playtesting.. We’re quick to criticize their mistakes (and some, like obvious rules errors that should have been caught in editing) are deserving of the criticism. But Fanatics is full of people who melt down over fairly minor stuff and just come off as entitled.
I’m longterm optimistic on the game. I hope the next few books get us closer to where we need to be
I doubt players increased with 4th edition release here (in Germany). You almost never find any Mantic products in hobby stores and even online there are only few selling it. The 2nd edition partner shop (even being involved in the translated version) put everything on sale couple of months ago and didn’t restock .
So it’s difficult to get in contact with it.
But I could tell you that there are plenty of players not liking the changes they made, especially in building an army and shooting. And I know more people that quit than people coming back or having started.
So far there are just 2 communities left which organize tournaments - mine and one just doing Ambush (which is not KoW, if you ask me. KoW is cool because of leading an army to war, not 3 or 4 units).
(I) Salamanders - Quadruple komodons good! But lancer regs and ghekko regs are really points efficient too (I was dabbling with them the other day and impressed compared to other knights / trash units), and ceremonial guard backed up by rally and the lizard orders are up there amongst the most competent anvils. Guessing the plan to straddle multiple scoring zones was in effect as well (a rule I do not like but at least it rewards that heavy infantry base somehow). Ylatar is my go to brawler warlord for the faction too.
(III) Goblins - So much variety! Apart from the rabble core but hey, goblins gotta goblin. Genuinely impressed by the lack of skew. Maybe I’d call it a Goblin Good Stuff list? But in a world of spam, I have to give it to Cyle for the toolbox approach. I’ve also never seen Groany this edition!
(IV) Xirkaali - Spearwardens good! Gokluu, also good! It’s honestly really sad to me how spammy Xirk are on the tabletop … but it’s a weird faction whose synergies are both lopsided (very pro-dog) and also funnel you towards different skews. Anyway, I’m working on Xirk myself and finding it hard to escape spam city. Wildfang troops are also a unit I keep wrestling with (and currently defaulting to the reg size as the speed doesn’t read “I’m getting a flank” to me given how fast the rest of the army is). Surprised to not see 2+ lion cav but I do think the ground dragons are great, and pushing the spear dogs to Nv 18 is also nice. Creates an army that wants to grind as well as alpha, which I can’t say for my version of the army …
I really enjoy this analysis of the event and it also appears to highlight the problem that we noticed when the army composition rules were unveiled. Killpower across armies has been drastically reduced to the point that it is much more efficient to flood the board with bodies that your opponent cannot hope to destroy.
As Andy’s list shows, with such a low expected damage output per turn, you don’t need to kill everything. You just need to live through sticky, grindy combats and be able to put your damage dealers in the right place at the right time without paying through the nose for them. The Komodons in the list are able to sit back and hose enemy units from range, ignoring cover, and with 36” range rarely needing to move so they’re usually hitting on 4s with Pierce (1).
In the Rats’ case, I’d have to watch the games but I would expect that spammable Plague Pots have a big thing to do with their success. Being able to hand out that order all across your army every turn takes everything that the Rats do well and tuning it to a point that most armies CANNOT deal with it unless they are piloted by exceptional players.