Statistical Threats to Metawatch
January is often a time when graduate students everywhere begin frantically cramming for various exams with words like “Qualifying”, “Comprehensive” and “Defense” in their names, which means it’s also the […]
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How Hobby Community Echo Chambers Happen
Recently, I had a discussion on Twitter (genuinely a discussion, not a fight, a small miracle for the hellish birdsite!) about the often repeated and very rarely sourced notion that […]
Balance Dataslate Hot Take: Extended Edition
It’s been awhile since I’ve talked about the competitive landscape of 40K – there’s myriad reasons for that, ranging from people doing the basic stats of tournaments well and the […]
Why I Think Two Wound Firstborn Is a Mistake (In the Long Term)
The internet is all aflutter with the now confirmed suggestion that the classic “Firstborn”, non-Primaris, power-squatting Marines of the classic 40K Space Marine range are getting some significant updates that […]
A Shifting Focus
So Variance Hammer has been pretty quiet for the past couple months, mostly due to life-related reasons that can be summed up as “The Finest of Nurgle’s Gifts” and an avalanche […]
My (Belated) Takeaways from the LVO Warhammer Panel
The Las Vegas Open was awhile ago, and the Warhammer Preview panel that was held the first night has been detailed in depth, as has the tournament itself. The results […]
Murder Your Darlings (or: Why I’ll Never Be a Serious 40K Contender)
“In fairness, ‘The Floor is Lava’ may not be the strongest competitive build.” – Val Heffelfinger, paraphrased There is a notion in writing called “Murder Your Darlings”. Basically, what it […]
The Big FAQ: The Variance Hammer Hot Take
So it’s out, a mere half-month off schedule: the first of the major FAQs that Games Workshop has promised will be on something of a “tick-tock” cycle. So what’s in […]
Number Crunching Warzone Atlanta 2017
I haven’t been doing much in the way of tournament statistics this year – first I wanted to give 8th Edition some time to stabilize, and once it had, my […]
The Curious Case of Flyers
The one true tournament build is dead. Long live the one true tournament build. Rinse. Repeat. The ink had barely dried on the new 8th Edition indexes when the competitive […]