I’ve once again emerged from my darkest of dungeons to discuss the Kings of War metagame and give hopefully just a pinch of insight into what is going on out there. If you have no idea what I’m talking about I direct you to my first article on the subject from back in May where I give a more complete introduction and cover the beginning of the Clash of Kings 2019 season. What you really need to know is that this article is first and foremost 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. Also, I promise the rest of the article will be more entertaining than that last sentence.
The Method
I took a look at all 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, how that changed over time, and what the performance was. This analysis is based on the following GTs:
- Lonewolf GT 2019
- Adepticon Clash of Kings 2019
- Vanguard GT 2019
- Another Four Foot Snake Thing
- Unplugged GT 2019
- Discover GT 2019
- Orctown GT 2019
- Mountaineer GT 2019
- King Beyond the Wall 2019
- Lady of the Lake 2019
- Keystone GT 2019
- Tale of
ThreeOne Kingdom 2019 - South West Clash 2019
- Bug Eater GT 2019
- Axe Grinder GT 2019
- Bayou Battles GT 2019
*I define major GT as a two day, 20+ players and 5+ games event. I missed Shiloh Slaughter in my analysis because I didn’t know about it. Entirely my fault.
This dataset covers 16 tournaments played under Clash of Kings 19 rules and 350+ unique players, so getting to be a pretty useful pile of info. But what does all this matter with 3rd edition coming? Who cares what has been played when that will all change in a few months? First of all, there is still a lot of Kings of War to be played before 3rd hits. There are major GTs still on the calendar in most regions and we’re in a glorious sunset period for the edition. Second, all of this information will be incredibly useful as we track the changes that will happen when 3rd hits. It is vitally important to know the shape of the metagame under COK19 to see how the new edition shakes things up. And finally, because it’s just fun to look through this nonsense and if you’re reading this, you’re probably as obsessed with Kings of War as I am and need something to pass the time before the next set of leaks about the new edition.
It should go without saying but I’ll repeat it here. The biggest factor in army performance at a Kings of War event is the person playing it. Good pilots are needed for all of these armies and list performance is driven by good generals.
What Armies Are Showing Up at Grand Tournaments?
So here we have the total numbers for armies brought to major GTs so far under Clash of Kings 19 rules, and wow people like to play Elves, Undead, and Dwarfs. The most popular army, Elves, represent about 9% of the field, which is above what the average should be, but isn’t too bad. Overall, we see a pretty good distribution across the armies and that makes me feel pretty warm and fuzzy inside about the variety of armies you’d see at a GT. The top 4 armies account for 31% of the total armies brought to GTs which is down from the 37% it was in May, a sign of a reasonably healthy and balanced metagame. While there are some standout popular armies, there aren’t two or three armies that everyone is taking and filling events with mirror matches.
At the bottom of the popularity charts are League of Rhordia and the Brotherhood. The hard-charging knights of the Brotherhood aren’t a great fit in the land of Pannithor, as they’re essentially a list made to let folks use very specific figures from a very specific other game. They kind of end up being just another human faction that is outshone by the ridiculously powerful Basileans and the incredibly flexible Kingdoms of Men armies from the main book, and not a lot of folks are bringing them out to play. This is a shame as they do have some great units (I’m looking at you Forsaken Beasts) and the ranks and ranks of knights usually look awesome on the table.
Rhordia is another strange army and while they’re undoubtedly powerful in the right hands (Tom Robinson scares me), they’re just not very common at Grand Tournaments. Another mostly copied army from that other game, they have a lack of real unifying direction. We usually think of them as the Halfling army, but successful lists in the past use very few (sometimes no) Halfling units. If you look at their human contingent, it lacks personality and falls into the same trap Brotherhood is in just being another ported over human army. Whatever the reasons these aren’t getting played, I’d love to see a few more people running those two armies at events.
The biggest mover in popularity since May was undoubtedly Nightstalkers. After only 2 appearances at the first 5 major GTs of the year, they’ve gone up to 21 now. They’re not yet getting a lot of podium finishes, but their numbers are growing so expect to see even more of them in 3rd Edition.
What Armies Are Doing Well at Grand Tournaments?
After looking at what armies are being brought to Grand Tournaments, the next important thing is to look at what armies are finishing in the top spots by battle. And it looks like those damn Elves are sitting haughtily on top of the pile again.
When I first looked at this chart and realized I’d need to both examine and then write about Elven armies in Kings of War, I must admit I threw up a little in my mouth. This is totally normal right? Everyone hates Elves, except maybe those that play them, and I bet even they feel a bit guilty about it. This is just how things are right? But I took a moment to examine my own dislike of those pointy eared freaks and see what it really is about. At first I assumed it was because I was just sick of how generic Elven lists were. I was tired of seeing the same filthy lists of Kindred Archers, Drakon Riders and Dragon Lords at the top tables taking home the trophies. But I did a quick bit of analysis around high performing armies (Elves, Basilea, Empire of Dust, Ratkin, Abyssals) and the spread of units used in their podium finishing lists.
While it is true that every Elven list that got on a podium (and I had access to the list for) included Kindred Archers and Drakon Riders, what this analysis really shows is that not only are Elves actually exhibiting varied unit types in their best lists, but the real criminal is Ratkin whose winning lists are currently using the smallest portion of their available options out of the top performing armies. Those damn dirty Ratkin.
So why are Elves so frustrating? I believe it might have something to do with their unique combination of speed, shooting power, hitting power, and defensive vulnerability. Elven armies compete in all phases of the game and are pretty damn good at them. They’re extremely quick and with a great flying large cavalry unit and solid other choices (including vanguarding units), they play the movement phase well, can create a number of tricky angles, and bring heavy board control. Elven shooting is rightly feared, with even a single horde of Kindred Archers (with requisite Heart Seeking Chant) able to bring pain in the shooting phase, and a pseudo gun line can quickly be created by combining chariots, breath attacks, and chariot-mounted characters to cloak the entire battlefield under a shadow of missile fire. When it comes time to mix it up in melee, Elves boast some great attacking options with Dragons and Drakon Riders. At the same time, while they’re strong in each of these phases, due to their high cost and sometimes lower armor, they naturally avoid combat until it is heavily tilted in their favor. They’re able to use vanguard units and flyers to limit your options, bring targeted deadly shooting to force actions, and then hold back maneuverable hard hitting counter attackers to punish the risky moves you’re forced to make.
No wonder we hate Elves. Also, they have perfect hair, just another reason.
Looking through the top-placing Elf lists, they all use Drakon Riders, Kindred Archers, and a Standard Bearer, so paint those first if you’re starting a force. After that you can opt for a more static build using Kindred Tallspears and maybe Palace Guard all backed up by the Green Lady like Jon Mcready opted for. Joey Greek brought an interesting vanguard and speed-based build utilizing Forest Shamblers, a Forest Warden, a Tree Herder, and lots of Stormwind Cavalry in addition to the archers and flying lizard core. Keith Randall opted for a filthy second unit of Kindred Archers (some folks use Sea Guard in this role) and tooled up wizards with legendary spells to aid in the shooting, making a very painful looking list for Axe Grinder GT. Overall, Elves excel when they combine their three main strengths and the variance in these lists show there are multiple ways to get there.
Abyssals are another army doing quite ugly things at tournaments and also show a couple different pathways to successful lists. Aaron Chapman’s alpha strike list which ran rampant at Bayou Battles challenges Basilea for the best “Wait, how many units am I losing turn 2” award as it does massive damage on the charge and gets right down to business. It brings an abundance of flying and pathfinder to delete what it wants before a counter attack can happen. Lady of the Lake saw two different Abyssal lists place near the top with Bill Harvat bringing a hard charging cavalry based list (with some infantry support) and Mark Rupp bringing a throwback army without the new COK19 cavalry goodness (but two formations) featuring an Efreet, lots of Succubi, and freaking Molochs (he made them work). Tom Robinson brought a lot of painful shooting for a 1995 pt list to South West Clash backed up by Hellequins which very much are the new hotness, appearing in 4 out of the 5 podium Abyssal lists. All of this shows that Abyssals are also a flexible army right now with multiple paths to victory (as long as you take Tortured Souls, which appeared in 100% of podium Abyssal armies).
The next piece of data I look at is how the non-podium places are shaking out. I consider being in the top 25% to be “Doing Well” at a tournament and I think it is a useful way to look at the overall Grand Tournament scene. Honestly, with the spread of points usually being so close, anyone up in that top 25% is often only a piece of bad luck or a single missed opportunity away from getting podium, so I like to look at that whole grouping.
A big surprise since my May analysis is Dwarfs have jumped up the chart, which is especially hard for Dwarfs with the short legs and all that. They only had one top 25% finish in the beginning of the year and are now boasting multiple podium finishes and are in the upper tier of armies “Doing Well”. Good job stunties! So what happened? Well one lazy conclusion is that Alex Chaves, after a quick jaunt over to play nasty Basilea in the beginning of the year, went back to playing Dwarfs, and put in strong results at Mountaineer, Keystone, and Orctown. The lists are a pretty popular and pretty damn effective update of the classic “Brocks and Rocks” strategy with at least two units of each and then a strong shooting contingent of Sharpshooters and Organ Guns. A Steel Behemoth (or sometimes Gollochs Fury) and the always flexible Berserker Brock Lord rounds out the core of the list. Depending on the point values, different components can be bolted on including Stone Priests for Surge and Martyr’s Prayer and Flame Priests (sometimes a Teleport target to speed bump elite builds) with various legendary spells, but the lists he runs are pretty consistent. We’ll need to see how it performs at TNT as part of the “King on Large Beef” he has in the first round with Billy Capgun. It is a super solid archetype that has served Dwarf generals well through pretty much all of 2nd Edition KOW.
Nathan Clevenger is another seasoned Dwarf player that put up results in the second half of the year doing well at Discover GT and winning Axe Grinder GT. The 2500 pt list he brought to Axe Grinder shows how much of a better player he is than me. I would look at this list with regiments of Ironclad and Ironguard, Earth Elemental hordes, etc… as just a big bag of anvils without hammers. There are a whole lot of chaff and multipurpose flexible units (signature three Berserker Brock Lords are amazing) but the only thing that really hits hard is the one Regiment of Berserker Brock Riders. The whole army seems light on threats and I’d probably be desperately trying to add more punch, but obviously for him, it worked like magic. When you more closely examine it, there is just a whole lot of small footprint, tough little units that with careful positioning and use of chaff (which he has a lot of) can make a very difficult game for a lot of lists. In objective based scenarios and with good planning, this thing would just be hard to shift. Well done Nathan taking a lot of separate elements and making it work.
One other Dwarf list I wanted to highlight is Eric Winters from Bayou Battles who just brought a big old stack of Dwarf infantry. We’ve got a Bulwarker horde. We’ve got Ironclad regiments. We’ve got a freaking Shieldbreaker horde with sharpness! All of this slow and unwieldy infantry is backed up by three regiments of Berserker Brock riders (using that big Bayou points limit) and a whole lot of other support and chaff. It warms my cold dead and grumpy heart to see a Shieldbreaker horde at the top end of a major GT.
What Armies Are Overachieving at Kings of War Grand Tournaments?
Finally I wanted to look at what armies are overachieving or underachieving compared to their total number of entrants. Elves are placing well in a lot of tourneys but as we saw in the first chart they’re also bringing the most entrants overall so we would expect them to place well. We quickly normalized the data by number of entrants with each army and this gave us a percentage of folks finishing in the top 25%, and hitting the podium.
Basilea and Ratkin are still over performing with podium finishes and top 25% finishes but I talked about them last time so I’ll skip past. Another standout performer for podium finishes compared to number of entrants is Empire of Dust. What I found most interesting when I looked into the lists was the high variability again in unit choices that successful lists have. My lazy brain version of a successful list is just Mummies and Bone Giants, but a closer examination shows multiple routes to victory and some previously ignored/maligned units rising to the top.
Both Jon Vanase and Dan King piloted the new and improved Enslaved Guardians to strong finishes but had almost no overlap of units beyond that one. Jon brought one of the simplest to list armies I’ve ever seen containing just five unit types. It actually looks extremely fun to play with compact surge targets everywhere you look on the field and just enough shooting to force people into situations they don’t want to be in. Dan King snuck Mortibris and Apaphys into a 1995 list and included Bone Dragons for flying surge shenanigans. At this smaller point value, I’m sure there were armies just not equipped to deal with that much pain in such a small package. Matt Carmack brings out an entirely different archetype based around a shedload of Chariots and Worm Riders to make a faster build with a lot more light shooting options. From my vantage point I see at least three separate but viable archetypes within the army: a Shobik-based monster mash style, chariot-based style, and finally the monstrous infantry type. The variability in these lists at the top and their lack of a single recognizable core block of units (like Ratkin or Basilea) make it an interesting army that probably still has room for creative list design during the twilight of 2nd Edition and shows the health of the game overall.
So that wraps up my analysis of the Clash of Kings 2019 Grand Tournament season so far. We’ve still got some big events coming up with TNT, Crossroads, and Alamo to name a few, so hopefully you can gain some insight from all this rubbish and better know what’s out there in the meta as a whole.
If there is interest I can plan to continue tracking lists and results as well as doing these analysis based articles through the end of 2nd Edition and into 3rd. If you enjoy it, please share the article with your gaming buddies and feel free to ask any questions, tell me how wrong I am, point out something I missed, or just hate on vicious Elohi together.
Random Thoughts
- There are an average of two Krudgers on Ancient Winged Slashers in every high performing Orc list under Clash of Kings 2019. The only Orc podium (Best General Lady of the Lake Travis Timm) used 3. #crutch
- Salamanders still can’t get a podium finish but had some top 25% finishes.
- Congrats to Mike Austin and Billy Henninger for breaking the Dojo lock on high performing Twilight Kin lists. Does this secretly mean those two dudes are actually more evil than I thought?
- Corey Reynolds has only used a total of 9 different units in order to win two GTs. Efficient.
- Goblins are also doing really well but this article is too long already and I didn’t want Jake to yell at me.
- Podium-finishing Abyssal lists were split down the middle on Tortured Souls being hordes vs. regiments with 3 of each represented. No single list had both sizes. The debate continues.
