The Most Dominant Factions of the U.S. Masters: A Stats-Based Analysis

Guest Writer Trevor Stiles brings us a deep dive into some of the faction numbers at the U.S. Masters. Strap in as he discusses sabermetrics, Fibonacci Win Score, and Average Win Percentage to put the rest of us, stat folks, to shame.

The dust hasn’t settled on the battlefields of the US Masters, and already people are sifting through the data to find their next edge. Thanks to Dash28 and Mike Adkins, we have the round-by-round results available to parse. I’ve taken the time to drop them into a database and will give some quick hits on what we see. 

Heading into the Masters, lots of conversation on Fanatics centered around Elves/Twilight Kin, Nightstalkers, and Ogres. Did those armies deliver as promised? There are a few ways to look at that, but we can start with the record by faction:

It’s easy enough to pick out the top factions (Nightstalkers, Twilight Kin) and those at the bottom (Salamandars, Trident Realm, Brothermark). What gets trickier is comparing winning percentages across variable numbers of games. For example, is it more impressive that the Ogres won 21 games (while losing 19 and drawing 2), or that the Elves won 83% (5 of 6)? How do you compare the Free Dwarves going 3-0 vs the Goblins going 7-4-1? 

There’s a statistical measure introduced by the father of sabermetrics, Bill James, called the Fibonacci Win Score. It is calculated by multiplying the number of wins by the winning percentage and attempts to weight both the frequency of wins and their gross amount. If we rank by Fibonacci score, we get the following ranking: 

Think of it as a way of answering the question, “Which factions were most dominant at US Masters?” Here, the Nightstalkers are the clear leader, with Twilight Kin, Ogres, and the Forces of Nature forming a solid tier 2. Based on what I saw from afar, that list feels right to me. 

A third way to parse this data is to look at the average tournament points scored by a faction. Here is that table:

The Free Dwarves are at the top but note that’s based on a limited sample size of three games. Similarly, only one person played The Herd, so their average is perhaps somewhat misleading as well. 

With three different ways of evaluating factions—and a lot of overlap in the results—what should we make of this? Here are a few takeaways:

1. The Nightstalkers owned the Masters. They had the most wins, one of the highest winning percentages, by far the highest Fibonacci score, and one of the highest average tournament scores. This comes as no surprise to anyone, as the Nightstalkers have cheap unlocks, are a hard counter to shooting, and can play a variety of different styles. Multiple top players took the Nightstalkers, and they were on table 1 in round 6, which was a surprise to no one. 
2. As expected, Elves performed. The Twilight Kin went 21-14-1 (16.6 avg), the OG Elves went 5-1 (17.3 avg), and the Sylvan Kin went 6-6 (15.9 average). The latest COK brought shooting back into the meta, and the elves have lived up to the hype. 
3. Ogres and Forces of Nature underperformed. Despite the hype, neither faction ultimately delivered on the table. Ogres (21-19-2 with 16.0 avg) and the Forces of Nature (19-17 with 16.4 avg) were fine but seemingly effectively countered by what everyone else brought to the table. They played decidedly average. 
4. The Brothermark (5-13 with 12.0 avg), Varangur (6-12 with 13.4 avg), and Undead (8-15-1 with 12.8 avg) aren’t very good, and they each got enough reps to prove that. Many were surprised to see three Brothermark armies and no OOTGL armies at Masters, and in retrospect, people were probably correct to view the Brothermark as the red-headed stepchild of the former Brotherhood. The Undead continue to be a popular faction, but I suspect one of their biggest strengths—surge—is somewhat negated by experienced play. Varangur were a dark horse, as the more alpha strike version of Northern Alliance (which no one chose to bring to Masters). Lords on Frostfang are great, but it doesn’t appear that they’re good enough to turn the tide against the shooting/anti-shooting meta. 
5. What’s the story on Empire of Dust? Despite being conceptually fairly similar to Undead with heavy surge, EoD performed reasonably well (6-6 with 17.8 avg). Any ideas why they performed so much better than their non-sand counterparts? Player-specific or something deeper?

I’ll continue to parse the data and should have a cross-tab soon to show how each faction performed against every other—as match-ups really matter. While you’re awaiting that data, however, with another COK looming in the coming months, you should do what you can to paint your Nightstalkers quickly and get them on the table before they get nerfed back to join everyone else. 

And if you’re interested in a single table showing all of this info, here you go: one final table with all info, with heat map highlights* to quickly find what you need: