Ep.46 Most Competitive Nations in Bolt Action - WTC & WOW Results Analysis | Tabletop Tommies Bolt Action Podcast

In a standard deviation from our regular topics, we analyse the numbers and results from our most recent competitive tournaments (Beachhead, World Team Championship and World Open War) to try and answer the question: which are the most competitive nations in Bolt Action?

 

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Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Music.

(00:08):
Welcome to Tabletop Tommies. I'm Jonny and I'm Phil and in today's episode we're
going to be looking at the most and least competitive nations to play in bold action.
We're going to be reviewing some of the tournaments we've been to and looking
at some of the data from them, some of our opinions on what is currently the
most and least competitive nation to play.
Jumping in, the most recent competitive tournament we went to was Beachhead.

(00:32):
We haven't really done a review of that so do you Do you want to give a brief
summary of Beachhead for anyone who's interested for next year, Bill?
So Beachhead is, it sort of kicks off the calendar in the UK,
certainly on the South Coast, in terms of two-day events.
So it was a two-day event in Bournemouth as part of the Beachhead show run by Michael Smith.
And Alex Bundock was also TOing this year with Michael.

(00:54):
44 players, which was fantastic. I think it's the biggest, the highest number
they've ever had at Beachhead.
It's competitive, but also thematic. so so
you could take a generic platoon you could also take theater
lists if you wanted to there was a theme which was last stand you
were encouraged to go with that theme and i
think on the whole quite a lot of people did yeah my buffalo certainly took

(01:15):
a last stand yeah yeah some more than others on this
podcast yeah and there were some big names there as well it was the week after
wtc and we had a nice spread of yeah some of those sort of tournament players
that you you see a lot in the uk a lot of people obviously locally to the south
coast south of england as well yeah yeah and it was a lot of fun wasn't it i'm
i've got to say a huge shout out to,

(01:37):
mike and alex because they ran a very smooth
tournament yeah i mean say it was 44 players
you know it was it was fantastic it was brilliantly well run
over the two days bit of an effort on behalf of the
community in terms of bringing tables and helping and so
on get get it set up but once it was up and
running it was fantastic yeah yeah

(01:57):
i had a lot of fun looking at the data for beachhead though
in context of this episode one of
the things i did notice is of the 44 players 10 of them took brits and 14 took
germans yeah and then all the other nations it's between one and four per nation
so actually that tells me two things first of all brits and germans are sort

(02:18):
of the go-to sort of competitive and thematic choice i would say for for tournaments in the UK,
but also when you have these sort of broader restrictions.
It encourages people to bring a whole range of nations because we saw,
I think it was about 12 different nations represented across the 44 countries.
Players yeah we have big you know shout out to

(02:39):
to harry who brought his danes which was amazing and he
he posted that on facebook beforehand so we all got a chance to look at his
his display board and the models which is brilliant but
yeah fair play for for bringing the danes they didn't finish bottom they were
you know solidly at the top of the bottom third if that makes sense yeah i think
29 34 which i mean all things considered that's a good result for a danish army

(03:03):
yeah we We had partisans represented.
We had a genuine New Zealand platoon, a British platoon, but genuinely geared
towards New Zealand in that sense.
There's quite a few Italian lists, Chinese.
And we mentioned Germany and Britain. And then a smattering of US, Japan, Hungary.
Yeah. It was a good representation, good spread. Yeah, good spread.

(03:26):
The problem from our perspective looking at it is because it's sort of generic and theatres,
that makes it a little bit more difficult to analyze in
terms of what is the most competitive and then additionally
because most of the nations only had ones to four really i think the only two
we can look at in comparison to each other are probably the brits and the germans

(03:48):
because they had enough players that sort of the the final rankings were less
dependent on sort of one to two players ability to play that nation that said.
And i think we saw this a little bit at the english nationals
as well last year where there was the opportunity
to take both theater selectors and generic routines there

(04:10):
are certain german theater selectors that are very
very good looking here at the western desert
theater selectors and the schutzens for example and i
know from the english nationals that the german or the
players who took germany as a nation who did well took
western desert themed lists lists and we saw
exactly the same at beachhead other than the

(04:33):
person who came first who did take a german list but it wasn't a western
desert list but the other german lists that are
in the top you know 10 12 15 the three you know that finished beyond the top
player were all western desert themed ones because you get the schutzen in this
in these cases it was the ones where you can take the extra mg kubel wagons

(04:53):
as part of your armed car choices so you get quite a decent dice count and all that kind of stuff.
So I think with Germany, and it's not to take away from anybody who played Germany
and did well at Beachhead,
there's certain theatre selectors with Germany when you start looking at the
Western Desert that do well, particularly when you can't replicate it in a generic
platoon because, for example, of the Schützen squad or the multiple armoured

(05:15):
cars you can take in that single slot selection.
But looking at the actual overall results, the British players finished with
an average placing of 19.3, and the Germans finished with an average placing of 21.5.
So on average, the Germans were about two places behind.
So I think we've demonstrated something there that was obvious to most players

(05:39):
that Britain is a slightly stronger nation than Germany in the game of bolt action.
On this weekend in February on the south coast in the UK.
Okay yeah well i think it's something that you could
probably demonstrate in most tournaments i think if you've got a big enough sample
yeah more than 20 players let's say your brits generally
will finish higher than the germans yeah no that i think that's a fair fair

(06:00):
conclusion yeah yeah yeah sort of shout outs to individual nations paul wickens
brought his chinese and finished sixth which shows sort of chinese are capable
of getting in the top 10 obviously we got someone who plays them quite a lot
there and there's and plays the game quite a lot so yeah got a good play overall Overall,
but that shows they're capable of getting in the top 10.
The other one that's probably worth shouting out is the partisans who are.

(06:25):
A top quarter finish and a top half finish now
actually i don't know if that is worth shouting out i think it is
and and talking to the player beforehand he was
looking forward to beachhead because there wasn't a restriction on dice
so this player took his partisans to warfare
where there was a dice cap restriction and the partisans
work well when you can maximize your

(06:46):
dice count in order to be able to do what you need to do
in that moment maybe more so than than other
other nations so in in this instance because there
wasn't that dice cap the player who took them was was you
know looking forward to the fact that he could get it towards 18 19
20 or so dice the the reason i
was thinking it wasn't worth highlighting specifically is the

(07:08):
two partisan nations finished 12th and 24th so it's it
doesn't really tell us much other than what i
was thinking is it shows that they can finish in the top half yeah which
means with a little bit of growth maybe the top 10
finish is possible there the other
notable thing is there were only two soviet players yeah
which is notable in itself because actually the soviets are

(07:29):
generally considered quite a strong nation yeah and they both finished in the
bottom half so 27th and 40th which is interesting and it might be a trend we
see at other competitive tournaments yeah and we only had three japanese nation
japanese players as well only
one of which finished in the top half one finished bang on one halfway,
one was in the top 10, and then one was below.

(07:52):
So I did think we would see some more. US wasn't massively well-represented
either at Beachhead, to be fair.
No, it wasn't. And I think it's probably because with the selectors being open,
people wanted to lean into that.
And the US have a lot of selectors, but most of them are quite generic.
And so there's not a lot of sort of, there's not a lot of inspirational selectors

(08:16):
with like weird quirky rules added to the fact that if you are leaning into the last dance theme,
the u.s just because they joined
later in the war and sort of the war turns there's
probably less last stance with the u.s so if you are leaning into the theme
i mean there's still some yeah but you're probably thinking more pacific than

(08:37):
anywhere else yeah yeah okay final thing of no from beachhead before we move
on was there were three italian players but they all finished near the bottom of the table,
which isn't something we saw at the other competitive tournaments we've been to recently.
Especially because now with the old case blue rules, they're a bit of a formidable

(08:59):
fighting force at times.
Now, I didn't see the list...
In their entirety and exactly but i do know that of
those three italian players they certainly all weren't rocking
the case blue theater selectors so they
were having to play with the theater selector the national rules
relevant to the theater selector they took and the

(09:20):
three players as well knowing the names they're not the most experienced
tournament players in the uk yeah and again
this is where only having a few players can really
skew the data because if you only have two or
three players and they all lean into the theme or they all
sort of come from the same club or they all have a similar level experience they're
all going to get a very similar result and so probably not

(09:42):
a lot to take away from that i just thought it was really interesting shall we
move on to a couple of tournaments that are all out competitive bring your worst
and see what nations did the best at them yeah so before we get into it just
a quick big thank you to spurly from the juggernauts for sending us the info and the data for wtc.

(10:03):
Juggernauts did a series of episodes after the wtc on on debriefing and one
of which was all about their stats and data episodes so do have a look at that
as well and then the other big shout out is to russell wright the organizer
and to for wow who also sent us the data from that so
we've we got hold of the full breakdown of results for both wow last year
and wtc this year which is definitely helped in terms of

(10:23):
looking at some of what we're going to talk about in the next next
however many minutes indeed and before we
go into it if you are interested in playing for wow team
england this year in october do check
out the qualifiers event page on facebook or you
can email us directly and we'll give you all the information you need if you're interested
in an international teams tournament so

(10:45):
i guess before we jump into the data the for
anyone who hasn't been to both tournaments it's probably
worth highlighting the similarities and differences because obviously
that'll affect the day as we go through it i
think i'll talk through the format of wow
and then if you talk through the format of wtc hopefully that'll highlight the

(11:05):
similarities and differences so wow is a three-person team event it's six games
over the two days the way the rounds work is you're in a group of four teams
day one each team plays plays every other team, so there's your three games.
The winner of that group goes through to the first group on day two.

(11:25):
The second-placed team in that group goes to group two. And so basically on
the second day, there's three further games.
Where you play three further teams, and then the winner of each group wins their group.
And so if you win your group day one and you win your group day two,
you basically, you win, you win it all. You win this whole round.

(11:45):
You're the champion of champions.
Whereas if you come second and then win your group day two, you win the sort
of the group two trophy, as it were.
So it's really nice because everyone's got something to play for on the second day.
And it's also quite nice because you know exactly who you're going to play beforehand.
The lists are pre-published. And so it gives you the opportunity
to do a bit of sort of theory hammer
where you think who's going to be best against this one who's

(12:08):
going to be best against this one because at this one the captains place
down lists and then pair up against so the tables are all different as well
so captain a let's say puts down a list on a table captain b then chooses who
plays that and so captain b doesn't get to choose which table but they get to
choose the opponent for that list basically and then vice versa you swap until all three

(12:32):
pairings are done and so you've got an interesting thing here where
the captains get to sort of put a finger on the scales
on both the pairings and the tables that
are suitable to their players and so if you've got loads
of trucks let's say you can throw that truck list onto a road table and vice
versa if it's a table with loads of trees that are going to get in the way of

(12:53):
the trucks you can put a foot slogging japanese army on that table which is
one of the things that we we found ourselves doing sometimes we were playing
the tables rather than the opponents i found.
Yeah and and you know it's a valid tactic because you
had that ability to you know
either decide if you're going to put your list down first on the table you want
but you have no say over who you're going to play or do you hold that list back

(13:16):
let the opponent's captain put their list down then you decide right the list
i want i'm holding back that's the list i'm going to put down against that that
will not just be revealed so yeah exactly and because of that there's a little bit more of a.
If you are doing the ultimate competitive list you probably
want someone who's a bit of an all-comer list where they
can take on any nation basically on any table because you might want to throw

(13:40):
them down first so that they can take the hit of the opponent getting to choose
and then you get to choose your next parent ideally for you and then obviously
if you choose the next parent you've We've also kind of chosen the last parent
because obviously there's only one list left each.
And in that we also submitted four lists.
And then one of the lists gets dropped, basically, the first time you play.

(14:03):
The three armies you choose are the three lists that go through for the rest of the weekend.
And so that is something that we see at WTC as well, isn't it?
Yeah, and no repetition nation. So across your three players,
you can only have one nation being represented once.
Exactly, yeah. So what about WTC? How does that compare?
So similar, so teams of four, again, only one nation per player across the team of four.

(14:26):
You submit five lists in advance they get published
in advance and then on on the day on the morning before
your first game you lock down your four lists you weren't
playing in a pooled environment so unlike
previous years at WTC for this year you knew
who your first round opponent was that the draw for the first round had been done in
advance and then after that it was then Swiss although the

(14:48):
organizers did prevent you playing another team
from the same country you you were from until it mattered you
know to round five round six was when you started to see some
of those blue on blues for one of the better phrase so in
in that sense you had you had a bit of prep that you
could do for the first round but then you were kind of
like in the lap of the gods almost for

(15:11):
rounds two onwards in terms of the pairings so
unlike in previous years at the WTC for this year you
put your first list face down and then the opponent's captain
put a list face down to to play it and then
you repeated for the second third and fourth matchups like previous
years of the WTC in that round you're all
playing along on the same table so you've got we

(15:33):
had you know there was nine sets of tables and then within each set
there were four identical tables so everybody in that round is playing in in
that on the same table when those two countries are playing off in that round
yeah and the same tables thing is quite interesting that you you're not going.
To choose your opponent or the table which means really it is sort of truly
random because the teams are.

(15:56):
Moving up and down in terms of if you win your game you
move up the rankings if you lose you go down it means that
your team and the team you're playing are generally paired
based on similar ability yes but
within that team obviously there's an array of abilities there's an
array of armies and you're getting quite
a nice random element here to test

(16:18):
people's ability to play the game when they can't put their
finger on the scales yeah the the fact that you couldn't you
know through your captain you couldn't choose the table
you're playing on because they're all the same or you couldn't choose
your opponent by putting down your your list
after the opponent's captain has chosen theirs you
were having to be flexible enough to be able to take on whatever was put in

(16:40):
front of you which yeah depending on how you did over the weekend for some people
worked very well and for others maybe not as well because there was some you
know pairings and matchups which which heavily went one way rather than the other.
Yeah, and I think actually the way you build your list, if it is going to be
truly random, probably should be slightly different in hindsight,

(17:01):
where you should be building a sort of an all-comers list rather than a very specific niche list.
I think it's worth saying, before we start talking about some of the data,
WoW was single generic reinforced platoon, 1,100 points.
WTC was double generic, Although there were some units not allowed,
or put it the other way, it was double generic, and there was a list of stuff that you could take.

(17:26):
And that was 1000 points. And that does matter, because certain nations do better
with the option to take two platoons rather than one.
And there are some nations that are perfectly decent as a single platoon at
1000 points rather than being a double platoon at 1000 points.
Yeah. And there are some that are a bit of a surprise that I thought would do

(17:47):
well, dual platoon 1000 and actually did worse than I expected.
Okay. And there's one nation in particular that WTC didn't seem to do as well
as most people were expecting.
Should we jump into some data now then? Yeah, go for it.
What we did was we took, because you've got all these players playing within teams.

(18:08):
The final players placing is
a bit of an interesting thing because because you're kind of
you might be capped in your placing or you might end up
first because you are the best in your team and so your team are always playing
the bottom teams and so you're always getting an
easy game compared to your usual level you'd be
playing at and so you might over perform and

(18:29):
so what we did instead of looking at the placings
of the individuals is we ranked each nation
within its team and so basically each
nation gets a ranking between one and four depending on
whether it was the best in the team or the worst in
the team yeah and then we basically averaged that ranking
across the nations to work out because let's

(18:50):
say for example the brits are the very best nation you
could always play in bolt action they would have an average placing of
one in their team because they basically the person.
Who brought the brits would be winning the most games effectively
if that hypothesis was the case ignoring player
ability ability dice temperature time of
day your middle name and so on exactly and

(19:13):
what's quite nice at the wtc is because you've got is
it 18 teams of four yeah yeah because you've got 18
teams of four so that's 36 72 players
so that's 72 players playing six games
each so 432 games are being played that's a lot of games yeah and then also
that random element it should be slightly less biased data which means that

(19:37):
actually although as much as anything can be sort of unbiased and.
Obviously we're not statisticians here and this isn't
going to be a math podcast but just because of the number it does give a little
bit more credence to this data than so like i don't know say you're playing
a 10 person tournament with three games yeah like you could get lucky and come

(20:00):
first just because you keep rolling a six in summary,
With 72 players playing six games over the weekend, the data set is a lot bigger
and therefore more significant and more robust than your 10-person,
three-game, single-day event.
So, Phil, all of that said…,

(20:21):
On average, which nation came highest in their team?
I mean, surely it's going to be Brits and Soviets, because they are the two
strongest nations after all. Well, maybe it's Japanese.
And Japanese, yeah. Yeah. So was it? No.
So, interestingly, when you took all of the nations played across the four players,

(20:42):
across the 16 teams, the German came out as the strongest nation.
Yeah, they just pipped the Brits at the post, though, didn't they?
So their average was 2.125 so
one being the best you could get four being the worst brits
got 2.143 but that
when we actually did that you know did the data look to that my flippant

(21:03):
response earlier of well clearly it's gonna be the brits and the soviets we were
hang on a moment actually the germans did very very
well as a as a nation in bolt action on
that weekend in granada surprisingly so and diving
down to sort of like the individual results results the brits
mainly finished second in their team yes so of of
the teams of the 14 teams that we've

(21:25):
got data for here three brits finished first in their team eight finished second
and then you had one third two second sorry two two last where and the germans
actually have a very similar sort of layout but because there's less of them
in second they just skew towards so of the eight eight German players we've got here.
Two of them finished first, four of them finished second, and then one won for the last two places.

(21:49):
And so very similar sort of set of results where they weren't guaranteed to
be best in their team, but they were guaranteed to finish in the top two.
Well, not guaranteed, but they had a very strong chance of finishing in the
top two in their team, which goes to show that actually they're both very competent forces.
But because we see the competitive players has played germany

(22:12):
slightly less it does make you wonder
if the germans could actually be even better if some
of those more competitive players picked up the mantle and
really pushed on on with the germans yeah potentially yeah yeah equally it may
be the inverse where we've got some british players who aren't usually british
players and have adopted the brits for the competitive environment because they

(22:34):
know that they're a really good competitive nation choice yeah and And so, but equally though,
because they're so close, it shows you that actually there's probably less in
it than you would imagine.
Yeah, certainly you are. You know, if you listen to the noise and the chatter
out there, and you know, you sort of.
Put someone straw straw poll kind of thing put someone on the spot people are

(22:55):
going to turn around and go brits soviets and then it's
like well japanese maybe us maybe you know italians rising stars you don't hear
germany being being mentioned you know in that in that same breath as the first
sort of three four nations we just mentioned so no and i think also not being
able to choose your opponent here has probably helped quite a bit and because

(23:16):
if you do get paired Germans against Brits,
the Germans aren't planning to get close to you, Gokers.
You've got the same tricks. You've got the same sort of big-dacker tank.
Here, the Brits were allowed a multi-launcher. The Germans have the same option.
You're playing very similar nations against each other, and really the only
disadvantage for the Germans is the fact they haven't got the free unit.

(23:36):
Yeah, and when they don't have an out-and-out assault unit in the way that the
Brits do, obviously the Japanese do,
you can have, you know, you know tasty fanatics in
italians you can you can have some pretty tasty soviet
assault units and so on so they don't have a sort of like an out and
out assault unit like other nations do to be fair but i
think that's helpful if you're british germans face off because i think

(23:58):
you don't want to be yeah exactly challenge them in close
quarters is the last thing you want to be doing really and so yeah and so
the fact that you haven't wasted points on a close quarters unit yeah means
you've spent the points on more long range stuff which means your
gorkas have a harder of time getting in yeah i know my highly
scientific survey of me of the
two british players or the two players playing brits brits

(24:19):
that i played in both games neither neither me or my opponent wanted to get
in close and have a gherka off you know because that's the last last thing you
want to do absolutely so it's just a great way to allow chance to decide the
game isn't it yeah but i mean you mentioned the soviets so surely the soviets must be third then no.
No fourth no fourth

(24:41):
well go on then who is your third choice if
you're building your team yeah it's purely on this
one event yeah this one set of announcements snapshot from
granada in february and you've got all your players are generic players they
don't have any preference yeah they can pick up whatever army they want yeah
yeah so who should my third choice be i'm going to take brits germans yeah usa

(25:02):
usa usa nice usa and that makes sense to me because Because with me saying before,
there might be some Brits players who've just picked up the Brits.
And I don't mean this by any disrespect to players of USA because I am a player of USA.
But they are probably one of the easiest nations to pick up and play well quickly

(25:22):
because they're very forgiving.
Because if you misposition that squad, not a problem just firing,
maneuver them back into where they're supposed to be.
And you've got the other sort of quirks. Say you put something in reserve that actually you think,
that was a risky decision it doesn't matter you don't get
your minus one exactly just you've got a few rules
that are just a lot of the u.s national characteristics and

(25:43):
sort of choices are very sort of forgiving choices rather
than truly offensive and so it means you can sort
of hold your own even if you're not that experienced playing them
so this episode has become the easiest nation to play in
bolt action rather than the most competitive nation you heard it
here here first the two aren't mutually exclusive are they no
so yeah usa absolutely solid choice

(26:04):
and i think if you know if you're going to an
event where you've got a three person four person event as a
team you are going to think about you you don't want four nations or and four
players who are going to absolutely go and try and smash it every single round
and therefore run the risk of actually coming up short there does need to be

(26:25):
an element of some solid dependability and so on.
Us lists generally speaking are not you know
they're not all all flash are they you know they're they're fairly
solid they're fairly fairly reliable dependable they
don't do anything particularly well other than
you know fire and maneuver and they've got
they've got a decent amount of choices for units not a huge

(26:48):
amount you you can take some things that have not massively over-costed but
there's no standout unit in in the u.s roster where they're you know whereas
there is in you know if the brits for example and or you've got a national characteristic
like fanatics for the japanese which is very very powerful u.s doesn't have that necessarily,
the thing that makes them a good counter as well in the same way the

(27:09):
germans are a good counter is they do have a lot of
the same tricks and so they can take that stewart as
well and actually they can one up your british stewart by being recce and so
they can rush around the corner at the end of a turn and then if they don't
get the first dice they can rush back and then they've still got the multi-launcher
option and it is just a bit like what we're saying about the Germans it's probably
their infantry choices where you have to be a little bit more.

(27:33):
Thoughtful or imaginative might be a better word or just accept that you have a restricted.
Roster to choose from unlike you
know other nations where you know soviets for example where if
you can imagine it you can probably take it as an infantry unit and there's
some permutation out there that you can do so yeah the u.s
ones tend to be good at a single thing so where's your good at

(27:56):
both holding objectives and pushing into someone's face
the u.s ones tend to have like one quirk
that they're good at so they can have a stubborn unit but it's
not especially good in close quarters they can have a shooter unit but
it's not that survivable they can have and so
like the rangers for example are great at rushing forward but they
don't have a lot of combat ability and so that might not

(28:18):
be the best decision for them and so there is a level
of sort of building on the u.s where you can take them from
your sort of your safe pair of hands to a more
more risky force but with sort of those elements
that you have to know how to play properly what i
thought was interesting when you look at where the u.s players finished in
their team over the six games so

(28:40):
there were 13 we don't have the data for the french
team so this is out of 15 rather than 16 but there
were 13 out of 15 teams who took usa lists
and they finished finished 4-3-3-3 so a
nice even spread from first to fourth you compare that
to the brits where there were 14 out of 15 players playing
playing british and they finished three in first place eight

(29:02):
in second place one and two germany was
was two in first four in second and one and one so with
the usa it was a you know it was a 4-3-3-3 split.
Across first to fourth for those 13 players.
That took took the us to granada and they weren't that far behind the brits
off the back of that data so the brits are finishing on average 2.14 and the

(29:25):
the americans are finishing 2.38 so yeah in terms of places they're still in
that second placing generally in your list on average.
From there though so i'm saying that if i'm going to a four-person tournament
i'm going to bring brits i'm going to bring germans i'm going to bring usa it's
got to be i mean you've ruled out the soviets so i'm guessing it's got to be
the japanese then so i think this is the point where And it's sort of down to, obviously,

(29:49):
it's always down to, but I think you absolutely have a bit of a free reign.
When you get into a four-person event, and if you look at some of the individuals
who did well in terms of their overall placings and the nations they took, and.
You look at who that fourth or what that fourth country was in each team.

(30:10):
You've got Italy doing very well. You've got Poland doing very well.
You've got Chinese doing decent amounts of work. You've got French doing well.
Netherlands doing phenomenally well. The one that, you know,
Netherlands player, shout out to Felix, and recently put on Facebook a link
to Reddit where he'd written up his Dutch adventure, which is really, really interesting.
Thing so there are some really strong performances from

(30:33):
nations that you know are only appearing in
ones and twos but the players are comfortable playing them
and doing well at them yeah so this comes back to what we're saying at beachhead
where because you're only sort of one to three of each of these nations it's
going to come down to the individual players rather than the nation in terms
of how well they do so italy for example we had one player come second in the

(30:55):
team and two players come third in the team which gives them a nice sort of
two and two thirds finish effectively but if
we tie all those minus together so if you
put all the minors including italy together in
a big pot there's 10 players there which is
more than the germans there was only eight german players and
they actually finished with an average of 2.5 yeah so we've got sort of brits

(31:21):
2.15 germans 2.125 us 2.38 and then if you've got a good player of a minor nation
yes that might be a good one especially if we do see a return to.
Captain's pairing more of a pairing yeah yeah
you can use that as your sort of it's a

(31:41):
bit of a wild card isn't it yeah your loose cannon list where they might know
how to play it they might not it might catch someone off guard so choosing your
fourth if your fourth player plays a minor nation reasonably well that might
be a good shout but if you don't want to choose a minor.

(32:02):
Then who should you pick instead again based on one weekend in granada in early
february are you going to pick japan yeah so eight players like with germans
yeah but an overall finish at 2.6 so a little bit behind but i mean still in
that second slot generally on average yeah Yeah.
What's funny, though, is none of them actually finished in the second slot.

(32:25):
No, it was either first or, yeah, third.
Or third and fourth, yeah. Or more often fourth, yeah, yeah.
So, which does sort of leave the elephant in the room, which is the Soviets.
And I get, you know, elephant in the room, maybe it's a strong phrase to use, but over the weekend…,
When you look at the data, they really did do very well as a nation in bolt action.

(32:46):
You had two players who finished first in their countries, their teams, with Soviets.
You had one who finished second out of the four. And then the rest were in third and fourth place.
And that really surprised me. And if you look down, if you look on the Juggernauts
episode, and you look down the individual player rankings, and they shared it

(33:06):
on Facebook as well, you're not seeing Soviets.
It's you know it's really not many at all appearing in the top 20 of player performances.
No and it's an interesting one because the sort
of the subjective reasoning that we gave
for well that i gave for the germans and the us being strong that they can also
play the same tricks as the brits the soviets can play a lot of those tricks

(33:30):
as well like they've got access to those stewards they've got access to multi-launchers
access to pretty much anything they want they They don't have the multi-launcher that isn't the M30.
As an artillery piece, yes. As an artillery piece. And you're not going to take
a Katyusha, I don't think, unless you're really leaning into that sort of high-risk
list because you're going to take a Stuart, aren't you?

(33:51):
And so maybe that means you can't split your enemy up as much because you haven't
got the consistent multi-launching.
I think it's probably one that's less forgiving to play.
And I think if you can't choose your opponent and you're having to come up against
like random luck of the draw points, I do wonder if the Soviets don't.

(34:13):
Do well in that environment yeah no
it's an interesting thought i mean i don't play soviets no
yet and so space
and so i don't really i
can't really give any analysis on how we play against
specific nations i have played against them quite a bit and yeah
they've got enough toys and especially because they can

(34:33):
really game the dice count yes yeah
along with you know japan pan being another another good
example you are going to see high dice counts for
soviets and japanese if you build them in certain ways yeah
yeah and and with it only being a thousand getting the free.
Unit is like a 10 boost almost yeah
yeah and so that's quite nice yeah i mean

(34:54):
i was going to say any nation can can get a high dice
count but generally speaking at a competitive event
you don't see high dice count brits because you're taking
gurkhas which are expensive but you are going
to see high dice count say japanese and and soviet
lists because you are taking cheaper cheaper units because
of lower experience values and i

(35:15):
do wonder before we look at the wow date i do
wonder if the dual platoon versus single platoon is a
factor because as you say anyone can
take high dice counts yeah a dual platoon yes when
it's single platoon it's much more difficult to take a high dice count
list where most of your dice are effective fighting units
yeah without sticking in a

(35:35):
load of cheap transports and all that kind of stuff and we'll see
this with the wow won't you you know yeah as soon as
you can start taking three for one choices in one slot you can
start pumping up the numbers in terms of your dice count yeah because really
when you play something like the us let's say a single platoon once you get
to about 16 dice for most people they've taken all of the sort of the offensive

(35:59):
stuff they want and at that point they They start and fill points.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Whereas if you've got Japanese or Soviets where your anti-tank
slot is three useful units...
You can easily get to 20 before you start to think about film points.
Overall, reflections on what the data was suggesting from WTC?
Bearing in mind all the caveats.

(36:20):
Yeah, well, I think from the rough outline we saw from Beachhead,
followed by the more specific data from WTC, I'd say Brits, for me, are an auto-include.
Germans, I'd say now are almost an auto-include. I think the only time I wouldn't
bring Germans at a team event is if I didn't have a single player who played them.
And then i probably wouldn't take the risk of bringing them

(36:42):
okay but if i knew someone who played them fairly frequently i'd ask
them to bring the germans then i'm thinking us as
my third choice and my fourth choice is either japan
or a strong minor what about
you so no soviets i don't think so
i mean i'm not ruling them out but if we just
go from this alone yeah from these from beachhead

(37:03):
and wtc it's very hard to
justify bringing the soviets yeah no it's a
fair point for me what i really enjoyed
looking at when the when we got hold of the data and was
the the slightly more exotic nations
doing well as individuals and also
doing well within their teams you know so you're you.

(37:26):
Know tophus poles you know best best player english player
on england and one right up there in terms of his second overall
joshua from usa3 in terms
of his six wins with his japanese cory from
usa2 with his french list which was awesome you played him
and i was on the table next to you and as much
as i was focusing on my game i was also enjoying watching what was going on next

(37:47):
because it was a really cool list it seemed like a really fun fun game
as well so it was really interesting to see these you
know these more exotic as i termed of
nations doing well at such a competitive level
both as individuals but then also doing well within their teams because all
those people we just mentioned were the best best placed person in that team
yeah i think those two that you've highlighted at the end there the polish england

(38:11):
team toffers list the cavalry polish and the cavalry french list that i played cory's list they were.
Good examples of that list that is a little bit peculiar.
And so you got a good chance of catching someone off guard with it.
And interestingly on the Polish, the only other player of Poland came fourth in their team.

(38:34):
And so I think that probably is a bit of a warning.
It's sort of a warning asterisk there at the end that yes, take a minor,
but be aware that if you build it not quite right to the tournament or the player
isn't that familiar with it.
Or it just doesn't go well on the day. Yeah.
Then it could go the other way. It can go the other way, yeah.

(38:56):
And so this is why I think the minors are going to have to be very specific
to each team rather than a universal piece of advice that this is the minor
nation you should take to every tournament.
Yeah. I think what is really pleasing is there's very few teams across the 16.
Where it's, for example, Britain, Germany, Soviet, USA.
Yeah. Yeah, we are seeing, you know, one, sometimes two of the nations picked

(39:22):
being Italy, France, Poland, China, Japan, Netherlands, Romania, etc.
Rather than that sort of solid four, you know, of Britain, Germany, Soviet, USA.
Brilliant. Shall we move into the World Up Mordor and see if that is similar then? Yeah.
So interestingly, because there's only three choices here, we actually do see less variety.

(39:44):
Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. I think also because the other thing that led to that
is a WTC, you've got a lot of duplicate teams.
So like England brought three teams, Denmark brought two teams,
Sweden brought two teams, et cetera.
It means your second team might be bringing more of a fun selection.
Yeah. True. Whereas we had more limited numbers of teams.

(40:07):
Yeah, there was a greater spread of countries represented across the 16 teams.
There were five countries that brought two teams.
Yeah, and importantly, no one brought a third team. Because often the third
team is often sort of the people who are most recently into the game and are
coming for the fun of it, bringing the fun that's just inspired them recently.

(40:30):
And so because of that we see less variety in
in the nations and so we had brits germany japanese
soviets us and we had one player bring
hungary yeah and i expect saying
this now in early march when we get to october and we see that to the nations
that represented you're going to see italy you're absolutely going to see italy

(40:52):
appearing what it appears instead of will be really interesting in in terms
of across those you know there's the three three nations that are going to appear
more frequently from last year.
Which one's going to drop? Or is it going to be, you know, some people will
stop taking Brits, some will stop taking Germans, some will stop taking USA,
Japan, in order for Italians to appear.
But you are going to see Italians, absolutely.

(41:12):
Yeah, I don't think they're going to be a mainstay, though. I don't think they're
going to be in everyone's team.
I think what they're going to be is they're going to be, if someone's just gotten
into Italians now, and they play them for the next six months,
let's say, and they're feeling confident with them,
They're going to go in. Or if someone like Owen, who went to the WTC,
who always plays Italians, that kind of player will bring Italians. Yes.

(41:35):
But I wouldn't... I would put a bet on half at most having Italians.
Yeah, I don't think it's going to be the major third choice,
but I think you're going to see more than zero, which is what we saw previously.
So it is worth pointing out, though, that Case Blue hadn't been released when WoW occurred.

(41:55):
It was released the week after wow and obviously at
the point of submission which was about a month or so before the actual
event case blue was was merely
a you know a date in the horizon for a
publisher and a marketing person rather than a something
to get your sweaty hands on and start bringing your your lovely
new italians with your new nationalists exactly and

(42:17):
so with the armies of national characteristics there
are very few players going to bring italians seriously to a
international competitive tournament so jumping in
we did the exact same thing average
placing in team because again you've got people jumping around groups it's the
best way to do it and this one it's even hard to say where a player placed because

(42:38):
say you were in the third team in group one is that better than the first team
in group two or vice versa on day two yeah yeah yeah and And so that gets all quite muddy.
And so the average placing in team, so who's the auto-included then, Phil?
Who's the team, who's the nation who on average came top of their team?

(43:00):
With 13 teams taking this nation, which I thought was interesting.
That's why I paused unnecessarily long there because it wasn't 16.
With 13 teams taking this nation, it was the Brits.
Across the three players, seven
of those British players finished first in their
team four finished second and two finished third so their yeah their score if

(43:24):
you like was 1.61 1.62 yeah which means on average they're finishing first possibly
second basically yeah so yeah you're gonna take brits to a team event yeah okay
that's that's nice and clear.
What's interesting is back on top
that's the only interesting thing there because i don't think anyone surprised surprised
that the brits are good yeah but they're back

(43:46):
on top compared to wtc yeah yeah yeah
and so second choice then it must be
germans then based on wtc so you
you saw a decent amount of germans across the 16 teams
so there were eight eight players playing germany across the 16 teams but it's
the soviets there were 12 people who took soviets they finished five in first

(44:07):
place five in second place two in in third place and their score was 1.75 so
So more second place than first place, but still very, very solid.
Yeah, so that is very different to the WTC finish.
Which i don't know what to take away from that maybe the
as i said earlier the fingers on the scales or the
maybe it's the single platoon it's certainly

(44:29):
a big difference which means that soviets might be back on the menu maybe well
let's see how far behind was the next so quite a you know quite a significant
way behind you know half the score was germany 2.25 with eight players so So
decent representation.
50% of the teams took a German list.
You had two finishing first, two finishing second, and four finishing third.

(44:52):
So tended to be the lower of the three for each team.
Yeah, most of those Germans are finishing last in their team.
Well, half those Germans are finishing last in their team.
Yeah, yeah. And so not looking very convincing on this one.
Yeah. But again, down to the single platoon, you have increased the points slightly to 1,100 this time.

(45:14):
Yeah. And I don't know, I mean, what effect might that have had on the Germans
compared to the dual platoon single?
I think Germans, I would actually personally would have thought the Germans
would do well at a higher points cost as a single platoon.
Because German units can cost a lot more than the equivalent in other nations,

(45:34):
not the equivalent, but in the options you get in other nations.
By restricting it to a single platoon rather than dual you're not going to go
up against two dacca tanks and two armored cars for example so the germans can
maybe afford to spend a bit more points on the units that they've got available
to them knowing that they're not going to come up against duplicates because

(45:56):
it's only a single platoon format.
Yeah i mean what the germans don't do well is the
msu style the minimum yeah yeah multiple
small units multiple units yeah the multiple
small units lists and so i do wonder
because when you've got single what you
end up doing with the germans is you may end up having to
spend points upgrading squads who are already reasonably

(46:19):
effective yeah the points you're spending doesn't make
them significantly more effective and so those points
really aren't efficiently spent whereas if
you are soviet and you can spend those points on
an extra unit another bomb dog or something yeah that extra
order dice has a lot of extra value yes and so
i do wonder if that's part of it

(46:41):
there yeah but moving on from there us
surely at this point no japan six
players with japan only just us to be fair not that
far behind germany and not really that that far in front
of usa and then usa with with eight players but
again with japan and usa they tended to

(47:01):
finish well the the highest the highest frequency was
third out of three places they certainly you know there was one person who was
the best in their team with japan and there was one person who was best in their
team with usa yeah so it's interesting this really throws a spanner in the works
in terms of of who you're picking for your top three or four teams, three or four nations.

(47:23):
I mean, the thing that I think is fairly conclusive is the Brits are an order of include either way.
Every point's limit. Which is a pain to me to admit, yes. All restrictions.
We've successfully proved that the Brits are a good nation in ball action. The sky is blue.
Yeah. Grass is green. Yeah, yeah. All the rest of it.

(47:45):
It second choice who we going for then and
does it matter if it's a three or four man team when we're saying these
choices i think it does matter and
i think there are certain combos of
three nations that i wouldn't pick so not
necessarily saying there's a combo i absolutely would pick but
i think there are certain combos that i wouldn't pick i know

(48:08):
when when you me and alan talked about
our lists beforehand we did apply
a little bit of logic to our selections it wasn't just
three people going away and picking the
team you know picking the list that they they were
the most comfortable with we did have a think about well we do need to
be able to cope with certain builds you know and

(48:28):
across the three of us who's going to take on this
particular build for example if we get the choice to i think
with wow the way it was set up this year for wow
it did encourage you as a team to think about not just which nation you were
playing but also the kind of builds across the three lists that you were putting
together because across the three of us we can all play more than one nation

(48:51):
at a reasonable level so if we needed to pivot to a different nation we could have done.
Even if we ended up certainly for at least two of the three of us playing the
nation that we're the most comfortable or play the most frequently. Yeah.
So I haven't said all that. Yeah. So I didn't answer your question at all.
Which three have you had? So say you've got the reinforced generic player. Yep.

(49:17):
Which three nations are you taking for this generic team? So obviously you're taking Britain.
Agree. I would take one of Germany, USA, and Soviets.
And I might bounce one of those to my third choice.
But I do think I want to take something like Japan or Italy as one of my three.

(49:44):
Not both Japan and Italy, but either or. because
with the new case blue rules with
italy you can do regular fanatics
with tough fighters plus the whole autocannon
situation very very well if i
had someone who was confident in playing italy and had
you know put put the hours in with the new rules and the new build and the new

(50:07):
units i do think they are a very good choice as a alternative to a japanese
list okay what i'm What would be a solid choice would be Brits and then, let's say,
USA or Soviets or Germany, two of those three.
That's a very, very solid, you know, any Brits is a yes and then two out of those other three.

(50:32):
But there's no spark there on paper.
The spark is going to come from the selection, the units and the player.
There is a spark with a Japanese list or an Italian list, I think.
Yeah i think your brits are like your anchor
they sort of ground the whole team you can put

(50:52):
them into a fight where they can play for a draw yeah oh yeah like you put them
up against the hardest opponent list because they can take the punch because
they've got all those stubborn units etc yeah they can take that punch i'm then
thinking you probably want two nations that can go out.
And like fight for the win after that or you could have another nation that's

(51:17):
really playing for the draw and then your third nation is your loose cannon
yeah but then i think tactically what you want you basically want to be playing
for the win i think if you're not playing for the win,
you're going to end up mid table so i suppose there's a mindset that you just
want to do reasonably well or are you going hell for
leather let's get the win every time and i think i
think think if you go into an international competitive tournament

(51:40):
yeah you want to be playing for the win don't you and so actually take
my brits and then my other two i think i'm going
to throw the soviets in okay i mean it's contingent on this one that how well
i know the player can play the soviets so i wouldn't just throw them throw the
soviets to someone who's never played them and say they're a good nation off

(52:01):
you go yeah but if i know someone who's playing soviets well regularly,
I'm going to tell them to bring the Soviets I think and then the third choice,
it's a tough one because the rest of them are all very close to each other really
from this choice I mean if we go back to the WCC then you would be looking at Germany but.
For me with you saying there's no spark for me the Germans don't really have

(52:23):
a spark I think they're a good.
Again I think you need the person to know how to play them for the win because
I think they're a hard one because they don't have a unique selling point,
you have to know how to play them for the win. And so that's going to be contingent on the player.
But I think if I'm just going for the generic, I'm probably going to throw in
the Japanese. I think that's my third choice.

(52:44):
Just because, again, they can play for the draw because they're all fanatics.
If you just need them to go down and hide, they could do that for six turns
all day long, couldn't they? Yeah, yeah.
And so, yeah, I'm thinking Brits, Soviets, Japanese is my three.
So I don't know what our conclusion is from all that.
And also other than Brita not all include what I

(53:05):
think it is worth pointing out and the with
the wow data Russell didn't release
individual standings and but Bo did a video on
it and he he showed he showed the
individual results but didn't give the people's names
so you did get an opportunity to see which of
the the nations that were played were you

(53:27):
know finishing at the the top and so on and so forth where i'm
going with this is is that if you look at the top 10 for wtc
and you look at the top 10 for wow for example individual players and the nations
they played it's not britain britain britain britain britain britain britain
britain yes they are a very very strong competitive nation they're not an also
win you know they may well be an auto include in a team context but they are

(53:50):
not an auto win by any accounts at all.
Well, certainly a lot of the people who finished first in their team of three
were playing Brits. That is true.
Wasn't necessarily the case in the WTC data across the team of four.
And I think, yeah, I'm making this point as someone who plays Brits a lot.

(54:11):
And it's like, oh, yeah, it's a Brits, it's an auto win. You know,
Sticks and Gurkhas and Stuarts and so on. It's not an auto win.
It's a very, very strong list. And you are going to do well at it when you know how to use it and so on.
But it's not i'll just turn up oh look that
person's got daca stewart's gherka para's right game over yeah
i think the summary for me which is basically

(54:32):
what you is very similar to what you're saying there i
think is that i think if you
choose from these top nations it's gonna which
ones which specific ones you put in will come
down to the specific players 100 yeah and so i
think it's going to be brits germans japanese soviets
usa italians as well

(54:53):
now the carcase blue those six nations depend
whether you're playing a three or four man tournament i think you're basically
going to play the three or four nations that your players are strongest at or
if they're playing a particular style with a particular nation and you've got
a particular sort of strategy where where these two players will be sort of

(55:13):
the stable players who are going to get a draw,
possibly a win, and these two players are just going to be the high-risk, high-reward players.
But ultimately, yeah, I think there's six nations to choose from,
and it's going to be very dependent on the specific players.
On the player who is turning up that weekend, yeah, definitely.
Well, that's inconclusive. Yeah, which you probably could have predicted at

(55:36):
the start of this episode, but thank you for bearing with us until this point
to conclude that it's inconclusive.
I mean, the key takeaway for me, other than that, is that Germany are better than expected.
Yes. No, I 100% actually would say that.
Both for WOW and for WTC, I was not expecting, on average, the Germans to appear

(55:56):
where they did when you look at all things considered. Well done.
Someone has made Germany great again. Well, have they made them great or they've
made them better than average?
Well, and this is the question that I had earlier. So the Brits,
I think, have plateaued. We've seen all the tricks with Brits.
Everyone's tried everything that they're going to try with Brits now.
You've settled on a fairly static build.

(56:19):
I don't think Brits as a force are going to get much better.
The Germans are a little bit in flux at the minute. And I do wonder if with
more time and experience and sort of like fiddling with your list.
The Germans may have a little bit of room to grow.
I was just going to say, thinking about the British list at both WOW and WTC,
at WTC there was one person who

(56:40):
didn't take Gurkhas and Stuarts and they did
very very well big big shout out there to
Matt from from USA USA too because he
took he took Maoris rather than Gurkhas and he had
Chaffees rather than Stuarts and but all the
other British players including myself here shamelessly took
Gurkhas and Stuarts with some form of

(57:01):
engineers or flame throwers or ppa jeeps to add
a little bit of fire into the mix there wasn't there's
not a huge variety at the top end in terms
of british competitive builds unless you go
out on a limb well even i think the the
only variety seen british lists these days in in
the competitive tournaments is the armored car choice because

(57:22):
everyone has their favorite armored car yeah and it doesn't affect the
rest of the list that heavily yeah and so it's like
do you want more order dice and you lean towards bikes do you want more armor
and you go towards something like the mormon herrington or do you want something
that's a bit counter offensive and take the ppa jeep
yeah but other than that it's a fairly established
list now yeah you get the odd lvt appearing which we

(57:44):
which we saw at the wow didn't we because you had a few more points available
it's a nice little gun truck there yeah yeah which i mean we saw that beachhead
as well we did yeah we did see that but in a very different fashion in a russian
doll fashion yeah yeah one thing I did just want to.
Sort of bring all this together playing in both events and looking at the info

(58:06):
and talking to players who were at the events but also who didn't go and asked us how it was.
I'm really excited for team events, and I would love to see more team events
that aren't just WoW or WTC and aren't sort of the most competitive players from across the world.

(58:26):
The scope to have team events on a national level is there.
It does take a bit of organizing in terms of the venue and having enough tables and that kind of thing.
But when you get something like WoW, where you've got to think about the pairings
and the matchups and what your three lists or four lists look like,

(58:47):
or where you get something like WTC with the opposite, where it's like,
okay, it's random matchups.
You've got no idea who you're going to be playing and you need
to think about that when you build your list because you could end
up going up against something that if you lean two way too
too much one way you're going to get absolutely steamrollered if
that that one in four chance of hitting that list that you
don't want comes up i really like the team

(59:09):
format and i would love to see more of that going on at a
non-international level absolutely yeah i
i think we could do with more team formats and my
one thought on wow and wtc is
i do really like when the team has some agency in
the pairings yeah so getting to choose your
opponent i do think if at

(59:32):
wtc we'd be able to choose our pairings because we're all on the same table
that would have been just the right amount and i actually think it wow it would
be fun to do the opposite where you get to choose your table but you don't get
to choose parents yeah so the captains put the three lists on the the three
tables and then basically you're coming up against the other army that wanted
that table as well. Yeah.
So you're, you're sort of face down list on the table that you want that list to play.

(59:57):
And vice versa for the opponent's captain yeah there's a lot of
different ways of doing it which is which is yeah really exciting and
i think that would be really fun as well because you i imagine
you'd get the bluff as well where someone bluffs they're
going to put their trucks on the on the town board with lots of roads and
then it actually ends up on the different one because they
knew that you were going to put your trucks on that one and and they've

(01:00:17):
countered it with the list they've chosen for that table yeah yeah and
then we end up with both truck lists in the middle of the
woods yeah and i do
think that i don't think we need the full agency of
picking your list and picking your table no but i think
you do need one of them yeah and you know
again uh you know we talked about the differences between the

(01:00:38):
two events the fact that you knew uh wow who
you were going to play on day one because that the pools were
were pre predetermined and seeded you know
and it was actually interesting when you know they seeded it
prior to obviously prior to crates in the pools and there
were some you know it didn't didn't completely go
in line with the seeds but there was a fairly decent correlation between

(01:01:00):
pre-tournament seeding and second day
matchups there were a few few people that finished higher than expected and
so on and that was fun because that was like a classic sporting upset where
the underdog beats the team who thought they were just going to walk it it was
like the group stages of a world cup you know yeah yeah i I actually think the

(01:01:20):
group is a good way to do it.
I wouldn't like to see it at every tournament, but I think for this specific
one, it gives it a nice, unique flavor.
One thing, if you go the other way, like your Swiss pairings, like we saw at WTC,
if your team's done on Swiss pairings and then your matchups within each round
are done on Swiss within the four players per team, that would be really interesting.

(01:01:44):
Yeah, I think that would be a really good way to do it. It stops you doing that
thing where you throw your, or least experienced player under the bus against
their most experienced player, because we weren't sure who could beat them.
And then we'll just take our chances with the other three. Or like we had this
year, which was, you could play anybody, you know, you had no idea who you were
playing because it was face down pairings.

(01:02:05):
There's i guess you know in summary there's loads of different ways of slicing
it which is what makes team events was one of the reasons that i find team events really interesting,
yeah and i think three is enough so with you
saying it's difficult to run them because the number of tables etc i think
a three-person team actually creates enough choices that
it does make it feel like a real team event where you're having

(01:02:27):
to sort of think strategically as a team rather than just
as individuals whereas doubles i think sometimes less
so do you not be really interesting is if you i'm
thinking on my feet here or thinking on my chair if you
said right you've got to choose three nations and you
have to choose from this pot of nations for your first choice this

(01:02:47):
pot of nations for your second choice and this pot of nations for your
third choice yeah so you had to make some interest so
the event organizers put it together so that you had
certain nations sat in that pot one and you couldn't
take both of them so i presume reading between
the lines here you're going to seed the nations and so
the best nations are going to be in one pot so your brits soviets japanese

(01:03:10):
us let's say are pot one pot two might be germany italy finns chinese like are
you going to seed your nations or are you good or because otherwise i think
if you put if you keep those draws strong nations apart, we're just- No, no, no.
Yeah, I don't think, yeah, I am literally thinking about this as I talk.

(01:03:31):
I'm not suggesting that you put the four strongest nations in the same pot and
you can only pick one, because I think that's too restrictive,
but you might make an either-or choice.
So your choice one is either-or, and you put two traditionally,
you know, perceived strong nations together.
Go work that one out, Captain. And then you might put two or three together in your second pot.

(01:03:55):
And then you might then have anything you want from what's left in your third.
I don't know. I actually quite like the idea that you can only take one of the
top nations and then one of the... And I think if I was doing it like that,
I think the top group for me would be Brits, Soviets, Japanese, pick one.
And then it would be US, Germans, Italians, pick one.

(01:04:17):
And then the minor ones i think i'd have to look at how they've done historically
over tournaments i think that's a really interesting choice if you can only
have one of brits so if it's a japanese.
Yeah i was being a little bit cautious because
i'm thinking about players and how many armies
they've got and the availability they might have to play certain armies

(01:04:38):
and so you make it too restrictive and you start you
you've created a situation where a good player is taking
a nation they're not familiar with or as familiar with
because they've been chosen on the basis of they are a good
player but they're having to play a nation that are not as
familiar with or they may just not have access to that nation
because they haven't that army sorry because they don't own it and it's a lot

(01:05:00):
of money time and resource to buy it paint it play it get ready for that next
big event yeah but again that's part of building your team isn't it where you
are looking at who has what and who's happy to play what because we can lend
each other an arm and who plays well,
as that nation yeah so many different options whoever said bolt action was getting

(01:05:20):
stale just create a team event and muck around with the restrictions there you
go yep we'll see you there so if you're heading to a competitive tournament
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(01:05:43):
And it's ta-ta for now from me. And it's ta-ta for now from him.
Music.