We live in a golden age of connectivity, as it relates to miniature wargaming; on any day, at any time, I can simply open my computer or unlock my phone and immerse myself in the hobby.
Video battle reports, painted miniatures, rule debates, memes (so many memes), army lists, tourney results and strategy discussions are at my fingertips 24/7, and I love it. What this wealth of information and activity also creates is a more developed and interesting opportunity for the metagame (meta for short) and I’d like to take a few moments to dive into that here.
First, it is important to define what I mean when I talk about the meta, as for many, it is a dirty word that gets equated to internet loudmouths. For me, the metagame is all of those Kings of War decisions you’re making outside of the confines of the tabletop, which usually just means army selection and list design.
Where to move units, how to deploy, what to shoot and whether you want to risk that dodgy charge on the Soul Reavers (just do it), is all just the ‘game’ of Kings of War. The ‘metagame’ is whether you want to bring League of Rhordia, or Varangur, to the next tournament or club night; and what units you’re putting in the army. So an examination of the metagame would first and foremost be an examination primarily of what armies are being used, how they’re performing, and the characteristics of those lists that could be driving that performance. Damn that sounds pretty dry typing it out like that.
This is just a longer way of saying I’m going to be talking shit about lists and such. Enjoy.
The Method
I took a look at the major Grand Tournaments I could find* and grabbed results (and lists where possible) from each to start understanding what types of armies people were bringing. This analysis is based on the following GT’s
- Lonewolf GT 2019
- Adepticon Clash of Kings 2019
- Vanguard GT 2019
- Another Four Foot Snake Thing
- Unplugged GT 2019
*I missed Shiloh Slaughter in my analysis because I didn’t know about it. Entirely my fault. I’ll try and get results/lists for future versions of this and update if it changes conclusions.
All together this represents roughly 225 players over the five tournaments, so still a reasonably small dataset, but something fun to play around with so let’s get started.
What Armies are Showing Up at Grand Tournaments?
People freaking love bringing stumpy Dwarves to these events! They lead the pack with 25 entrants (11% of the field) followed by Undead (10%) and Elves/Varangur (8%). Undead, Elves, and Varangur have been traditional powerhouses in the KOW scene and have survived various game rebalances (nerfs) to still have great representation. Dwarves were considered by some to be underpowered a while back, but a Masters win, some formation love, and new rules have meant they were very well represented in 2018; going into 2019 are all over the damn place.
Propping up the bottom in terms of popularity are Night Stalkers, with only two people bringing them to major GT’s so far this year. This paucity of representation might be connected to the army lacking a recognized miniature range until recently. Folks don’t just have Night Stalker armies sitting around on some shelf they can just dust off and use.
You also have to do a real project, find the right miniatures ,and put an army together. I expect to see the number grow as Mantic releases more of their range (and some of those models look so good), so we’ll keep an eye on what shows up over the summer GT’s as it is a really fun (and potentially powerful) list.
Other unpopular armies were League of Rhordia (2%), Brotherhood (2%), and surprisingly Twilight Kin (2%). We actually saw the same number of Twilight Kin players at US Masters as we did over the next five major GT’s combined. Do people just feel dirty playing them after seeing what they did at Masters? I know they’re just a PDF list but wow.
Most of the rest of the field is a pretty even sprinkling and as far as I can tell no army isn’t being played at major GT’s right now which is a sign of health and balance for Kings of War as a whole. The fact the top four most popular armies are accounting for ~37% isn’t the best, as I’m getting a little sick of fighting those armies, but things aren’t too bad overall.
What Armies are Doing Well at Grand Tournaments?
One of the important ideas behind doing this article is to get past just what list won a tourney, and into a more nuanced view of performance. I thought it was useful to both look at what lists took the top spots, but also any of the lists that finished near the top, since often it is just one bad matchup or even dice roll that can determine placements in tight fields.
I defined “doing well” for this analysis as being in the top 25% of the tournament in battle. I thought about performance as a sort of modified bell curve with the top 25% doing well, the middle 50% doing okay, and the bottom 25% not doing well. Simple and arbitrary? Probably! But it helps to have some simple definitions to give structure to the whole thing. It’s all relative of course, as a player getting 17th in battle at Lonewolf might have been expecting to finish bottom half so they had a great result personally, but still don’t make my cut for “doing well.” Don’t be offended, my categorization literally means nothing for you and celebrate that result buddy, you earned it whoever you are.
Also, remember army performance in Kings of War has way more to do with the pilot than the list. Good players usually finish well and this isn’t a game where just picking the right army will win you tourneys without the skill to back it up.
Undead top the pile but as we know from earlier, a whole lot of folks bring that army to tournaments. What this chart shows us regardless is that you’ll see a lot of Undead, Ratkin, Elves, Basilea and Trident Realm at and around the top tables. Undead, Ratkin and Elves feel consistent with 2018 expectations, and were popular armies at Masters that performed well, but Basilea and Trident Realm are the standouts here. We’ll talk more about Basilea specifically later, as their stats get even more impressive, but Trident Realm is having a little moment right now as well. No longer just the Jeff Swann special (although he does account for like 40% of their top placements), we’re seeing competitive builds from both the U.S. and U.K. doing well.
What I find fascinating is how different the successful Trident Realm lists are, which each bringing their own flavor and specific tools to the battlefield.
Jeff Swann brings his core of Depth Horrors, a hard hitting unit of Wyrmriders and then seven units loosely classified as monsters (50x50mm or 50x100mm bases, combat focused etc…) to create a very flexible but hard hitting battle line. I imagine playing against this list is roughly akin to being molested by an octopus, with a new avenue of attack coming at all times from where you least expect it.
Dustin Howard also brings a monster heavy list, with a lot of speed from two Wyrmrider hordes, three Knuckers and Nak-Ushi and a Wyrmrider Centurion. Unlike Jeff he pairs all this speed with a more rigid center trading flexibility for resilience with two hordes of Gigas.
Over in the U.K. Ian Sturgess combines his Gigas King Crab formation with three regiments of Thuul for cheap-ish unit strength and board presence, adds a dash of Water Elementals and a Shroud of the Saint healer to keep the Gigas in the fight.
Ed Herzig leaves most (not all) of the monstrous infantry at home, but brings a very annoying center line of Naiad Ensnarers tooled up with the Brew of Strength and some Heartpiercers. Also, he brought a cute little combo potential with a Siren, Eckter and a teleport spell so expect some unit to get pulled/pushed way out of formation. What this variation in units between these lists clearly shows is there is a lot viable combinations within the Trident Realm list, and there isn’t a single archetype you should expect to face. This is a healthy sign for the game.
What Armies are Overachieving?
So we know what armies are placing well, but I wanted to look at who is actually doing better than expected. Sure Undead have a lot of folks placing in the top 25%, but they’re also bringing a ton of entrants in the first place, so by pure numbers had a better chance of having more bros ending up with good finishes.
We quickly normalized the data (a suggestion from Mike Adkins) by number of entrants with each army and this gave us a percentage of folks finishing in the top 25%, and hitting the podium. This view gives us some standout performers, Basilea and Ratkin. Almost 60% of the Basilean armies that entered major GT’s so far this year did well in those events, with 29% finishing on the podium. That is a pretty incredible performance for an army no one even bothered bringing to U.S. Masters under the COK 2018 pack.
Unlike Trident Realm, what makes a successful Basilea list right now isn’t that varied. All four lists in the top 25% use the Retribution of the Heavens formation (the one that makes good Elohi even better with Vicious), and three out of the four also used the Holy Lancers formation (the one that makes their good knights even better).
With two hordes of buffed up Elohi and two regiments of buffed up knights, as well as the mandatory fast characters that come with those units, these formations essentially dictate an alpha strike style list. They move fast, can engage your entire battle line on turn two, and are an absolute bastard to play against.
Basilea might be the best alpha strike in the game right now (although I think Abyssals and Varangur still want to contest that crown). Props to Alex Chaves for bringing the Elder Dragon with Aegis of Elohi to make people face a -/20 flyer with Iron Resolve (2), a frankly terrible experience to deal with. I also enjoy Tom Annis having a War-Wizard with the Lute of Insatiable Darkness. Obviously this wizard skipped Bane Chant 101 at wizard college during freshman year as he was too busy smoking pot, drinking cheap beer and learning an instrument to try and impress girls.
Another stand out performer so far in 2019 is Ratkin. This, is what is known in journalism as burying the damn lead. Ratkin have won both Lonewolf GT and Unplugged GT and a healthy 50% of their entrants at GT’s have finished in the top. Even more impressive is that 25% of the Ratkin armies showing up at major GT’s this year won the damn things thanks to Corey Reynolds and Nick Mikelonis.
Both of their tourney winning lists are similar in the broad strokes. A lot of cheap unit strength and nerve with Tunnel Slaves, a core battle line of some Shock Troop/ Blight and a fast hard hitting allied element. Nick opted for hordes of Tortured Souls while Corey went with Mounted Sons of Korgaan (because we don’t have to face them enough in all the Varangur lists, now we have to face them in Ratkin too) to give that high movement punch that sometimes Ratkin are missing. To round out the lists Corey brought in a heavy shooting contingent with Clawshots and Weapon Teams, while Nick just brought a lot more meat with two more hordes of Shock Troops. Both of these are absolutely beastly lists, and if they didn’t require so many damn painted rats, I would assume would be copied all over the scene.
Special mention to Michael Percy, bringing an entirely different take on Ratkin with Nightmares, a whole bunch of Scurriers and a flying Assassin and still finishing well at Lonewolf GT.
What Armies are Underachieving?
Dwarves, Abyssal Dwarves and League of Rhordia are down at the bottom of the performance chart. I’m starting to think Kings of War hates short people. Dwarves especially are having a rough go at the beginning of this year considering they’re the most popular army being brought to GT’s, but really aren’t getting anywhere near podium positions. It will be interesting to see if some new list archetype from the stunties can break them out of this funk, or if just a really good pilot can guide one of the current lists to a top finish.
Stray Observations:
- The only top 25% finishes so far for Twilight Kin has been from Dojo club in Texas. Does the player’s heart need to be as dark as the army’s heart to play them well?
- Out of the lists provided (so ignoring Adepticon), all the Empire of Dust armies had the Mummy’s Revenge formation except Matt Carmack (who podium’d)
- Of the lists provided (sorry Adepticon) there were 12 units of Soul Reaver Infantry and 9 units of Soul Reaver Cavalry and 9 Ilona’s total in the lists…that is a lot of Vampires running (riding) around!
- Kingdoms of Men has 25% of it’s entrants in the top 25% and no podiums which is an incredibly vanilla result. This seems fitting for the most vanilla of armies.
