The Negative Space – Army Selection at this Year’s Masters

Greetings, friends.   This is the first in a series of articles that will explore various biases and preconceptions within the Kings of War game and among the wider community.  In each article I will try to take an opinion and see what the data tells us about what’s really going on.  If you’ve read my previous article on sports scores, you know what to expect. If not, go look it up.  It deserves a Pulitzer for the in-depth analysis and hard-hitting conclusions…um…anyway, you get the idea. 

So come with me as we explore, The Negative Space.  <insert Rod Serling voice here>

With the US Masters coming up, I wanted to explore the topic of army selection among this year’s contestants.  Most notably, the skew of the “meta” toward a few select armies, leaving everyone else out in the cold.  Recently I was on my back deck with my hetero-lifemate (and perpetual masters player) Cory Walizer discussing our upcoming trip to Seattle with my wife.  At one point I may have raised my glass of bourbon in the air and said something along the lines of, “Half the field this year will be made up of just five armies.  Five!” I gesticulated wildly with my empty bourbon glass for emphasis.  “In a game with over two dozen armies and hundreds of units, we’ll be playing the same cookie-cutter lists over and over again!  In a game with infinite choices the meta has pushed everyone to take the same stuff.”  Cory nodded sagely in agreement and mumbled something about Gladestalkers and Nightstalkers and other assorted stalkers of things ruining the game.  My wife asked me if these other armies are so good, then why didn’t I pull my elves out of storage and take them?  “Because I love playing dwarfs,” I replied, as if that was answer in and of itself.  I puffed my chest out stubbornly and went on, “I’m not going to chase the meta and take a popular army like all these other guys!  Anyway, hardly anyone takes dwarfs, so I’ll be able to take the moral high ground when I go 3-3 again this year.”  I then went on to say it was a shame because the game used to be so balanced and everything was better in the good old days of 2020 and 2021.            

So there’s the rub.  If the people attending Masters have their pulse on the most efficient units and the most powerful armies, then obviously their army selection must reflect the state of the game, right?  I mean, these are the brightest minds within the Kings of War Community!  The riders of the latest optimization waves and the heralds of what’s to come!!  If there is a skew in army selection then it’s obviously a raging failure of the RC to balance things correctly, right?  We’ve never seen this type of bias and obvious skew in the past.  Right?!?

Well, not so fast.  Let’s take a look at the data and see what it says. 

First, let’s talk about army selection.  It is true that only five armies make up half the field this year.  Nightstalkers (8), Ogres (7), Forces of Nature (6), Twilight Kin (6), and 6 people playing…Dwarfs?  <Mike looks around uncomfortably>.  Hmmm…so much for taking the moral high ground.  Anyway, moving on.  Looking at the latest Clash of Kings pack it’s not surprising that Twilight Kin went from Zero to Hero with the addition of some much needed buffs to gladestalkers and other unit tweaks.  This has caused even two Sylvan Kin players to appear from the glades this year.  Same thing for Forces of Nature, (I’m looking at you Gladewalker druid and your greater air elementals).  The Nightstalkers and Ogres are big winners in Northern Kings scoring with loads of scoring units, and having universal Stealthy helps against all that glade stalking.  So why so many dwarfs this year?  Dwarfs are a good counter to both no-pierce shooting with their defense 6, and to things with stealthy because Dogs can smell you, and always hit on 4’s. 

So we have half the field playing 5 armies, and with good reason.  But is that so different from the past few years?  Is this really unique?  Sortof.

So, here is a graph showing the army selection for this year’s Masters:

Notice the skew to the left, and how 8 of the existing armies aren’t represented, and 5 of them only have one player each.  This looks bad.  Now, let’s compare this to the 2021 spread.

This looks better, with a more even distribution.  Only 8 of the armies have zero or one player each, and there are a bunch of armies with two or more players.  The top half of the field is made up of 7 armies, as opposed to 5 in 2022.  This feels more reasonable.  Interestingly Forces of Nature, Twilight Kin and Sylvan Kin all had no players last year.  Apparently, No-nerf ™ Clash of Kings did its job.  Let’s go back to the 2020 Masters, which was the first one after 3^rd edition was released.

Ah, so there’s the skew I was complaining about.  Half the field is made up of 6 armies.  And look at those undead numbers!  Still lots of Nightstalkers, mostly to counter the boogeyman of war engine shooting.  But only four armies weren’t represented.  (Poor ratkin slaves…always bad, no matter what year it is.)

So, what does this tell us?  I would say that first, skew has always been with us.  In a game where the balance is so tight, competitive players will gravitate toward armies that give them whatever small advantages they can get.  And for people that follow the “meta” they can craft armies that counter those efficient armies.  Second, the skew that we’re seeing this year among the top armies has been seen before.  Yes, things seemed more even in 2021, but the 2020 army mix, which came right after another major rules upheaval, seems really familiar.  History doesn’t repeat, but it echoes. 

In my mind the real issue is the larger number of armies that have little to no representation.  As our chief editor Brinton mentioned recently on Counter-charge, there are always people that will take their army because it’s “what they play”, or because it looks awesome, or for theme reasons.  But there seems to be less of that this year.  Are people more willing to “chase the meta” to be competitive?  Maybe, but to be fair, even 64 players is a pretty small sample size.  One or two people pulling their elves out of storage can really shift the numbers.  I’ll reserve judgement for now.

So, let’s take a look at my second assertion.  “All of these twilight kin lists are gonna look exactly the same!  Cookie cutter non-sense!”  Now, I have to confess that as a former warhammer fantasy player I may have dark elf PTSD.  I would roll up to a table, see that my opponent was playing dark elves, and could recite everything that was in his list, give or take 100 points.  And I definitely brought my bias with me this time.  Let me explain.

I looked at all of the units taken between all of the Twilight Kin lists at the Masters, and tried to find which units were taken across a majority of the lists.  For purposes of this analysis units are considered the same if they have the same unit type, regardless of magic item or option loadout.  Based on my bias, I assumed that 1800 points of stuff would be the same between at least 5 of the 6 lists.  But nope.  Not even close.  Among these lists 4 of the 6 players (which I’ll refer to as the “standard” list) took the same 1,245 points of stuff, as follows:

But 5 of the 6 players (which I’ll call the “super-standard” list) only had 500 points the same.  (I’ve marked those units above with SS).  And only the Summoner Crone was taken across all six lists.  That’s right, gladestalkers weren’t taken across all lists.  What?!? 

The breakdown for the other lists looked like this:

So, what does that tell us?  Mostly, that my biases are dead wrong.  Just because someone is taking a particular army doesn’t necessarily mean it will look exactly the same as everyone else.  Yes, around half the points of each army are taken by a slim majority of those players, but it’s not the vast majority of the points, nor is it the vast majority of players.  The internal balance of these lists is not as skewed as my biases were telling me.  There are multiple viable build options within each army list, and that is a testament to the balance of the game as a whole.  If anything, my dwarves are the most uniform across all players, which speaks to the anti-meta slant of the army. 

In conclusion, are competitive players just a bunch of clones, forced into “optimum builds” by a short-sighted and bumbling RC?  Hardly.  Are there some armies that have seen a giant jump in popularity due to the latest Clash of Kings pack?  Undoubtedly!  Just look at Twilight and Sylvan Kin this year compared to the last five years.  Is this what we want as a community?  An annual rules update that yes, creates some winners, but evens out the playing field over time, and gives multiple viable builds to each faction?  I would think that yes, yes we do.  So I eat my words, after drinking my bourbon.  It isn’t all doom and gloom.  Now, I just have to hope that everyone else gets nerfed with the next Clash of Kings…but leave my dwarfs alone 😉