Hi All,
We are continuing our crawl through the Crusade Survey completed earlier this year. In today’s article we will focus on the Xenos players and their feelings towards the system.
To kick things off, we have a pretty good spread of armies. I think I routinely underestimate how many Necron players there are. They were the largest segment, followed closely by the Tau, and then Orks, and Nids.
Perceived Army Power
This split is quite intriguing as it shows that many players feel their armies are under-powered. The Tau are perfectly balanced (as you would expect), but they have a similar % of those feeling unhappy as the GSC nids and CWE. It is interesting to see that certain groups (CWE and Necrons especially), are a lot unhappier this year compared to last.
I get the Necrons discontent as they had an early book and didn’t get much support. Still, I was thinking the White Dwarf update may have helped a bit. For the CWE they have decent rules but are gimmicky and not terribly easy to use. Other than that I am not sure where the discontent comes from.
Ability to Understand Army Rules
As with the Imperium players the results here are pretty good. I find it a little humorous that 2/3 of the armies with planet-takeover mechanics have lower ratings in understanding. I am a little surprised at how well the Tyranids scored given they have several mechanics to juggle. I feel bad for the Orks and the Necrons as you can pick out the simplified rulesets just by looking at them.
Campaign Satisfaction
It’s a little striking to see how much happier the Xenos players were compared to the Imperium ones. The xenos players only had 3 somewhat dissatisfied players, although this may be due to individual differences and personalities. For the factions listed, 44% had a majority of players indicate they were very satisfied with their last campaign compared to 37% for the Imperium. Once again we are dealing with small number here, but the Necron rating is still surprising. My hat goes off to you GMs out there!
Takeaways:
The main takeaway here is: hug your local Necron narrative player. Other than that, things look pretty good. Average satisfaction for Xenos players has stayed stable at 3.4/4 for both 2022 and 2023. As with the Imperium players, the perception of under-powered doesn’t have to be the kiss of death Finding ways to shake up missions and provide avenues of opportunity through a narrative are key to player happiness!
And remember, Frontline Gaming sells gaming products at a discount, every day in their webcart!
