In competitive Kings of War, players often spend more time plotting how to crush their opponents than considering how much of their own force they’ll lose in the process. But what if the key to winning isn’t just about how much damage you deal, but how well you plan for what you’ll inevitably lose?
This article, part of our ongoing By The Numbers series, dives into complete player data from the 2025 U.S. Masters to answer a deceptively important question:
How much of your army should you expect to lose in a typical game — and what should that mean for how you build and play your list?
The answer: more than most players realize. We usually focus on how much damage we can deal but understanding how much you’ll lose is just as important. If you know what to expect, you can build lists and make decisions that maximize scoring even as your army gets ground down.
The Hidden Cost of Victory
We all love a clean win where your army rolls the table, but those are rare. More often, you’ll walk away from a game with a battered force, and that’s completely normal.
Across the 64 players at the 2025 U.S. Masters, the average attrition inflicted per game was about 1,290 points. In any game of Kings of War, every point of attrition scored is mirrored by attrition suffered on the other side. That means the average player also lost about 1,290 points of their own army — more than half.
This wasn’t just the case in losing games. Many top scorers, including players finishing in the top 10, regularly gave up 1,200 or more points per round. Survivability, it turns out, is less about keeping everything alive and more about losing the right things at the right time.
Rethinking Survivability
The takeaway is simple but profound: you need a plan to win in the final turns when you army only has 1,000 to 1,100 points still on the board. If you’re routinely losing over 1,000 points per game, your list and tactics should assume you’re fighting from a position of partial collapse. The question isn’t how do I avoid losing anything, but rather: “Can I still win when only 40% of my army is left on the table?”
You may build your list on the idea of everything working in unison. But when your front-line collapses and your uber-hammer unit gets wavered and picked apart, the game doesn’t end — it gets decided. Players who still have scoring units and a plan to win the scenario with a diminished army at that stage are the ones who come out ahead.
Planning for partial survival is not defeatist, it’s realistic. And it’s what the best players at Masters did, whether consciously or not.
Strategic Takeaways for the Competitive Player
What does all this mean for the rest of us?
First, accept that heavy losses are part of a normal, even winning, game. The goal is not to avoid losing units, but to lose better: to trade up, to keep scoring units online, and to ensure your army’s late-game presence matches the mission demands. If you expect to lose half your army, plan your trades. Don’t hoard units; use them to gain advantage before they’re inevitably removed.
Second, design lists that are resilient even in pieces. Avoid putting all your scenario scoring or threat projection in just a few units. Spread those functions across your force. Design a list where the loss of 2–3 units doesn’t cripple your scoring. Include multiple hammers, multiple scorers, and units that will survive to capture those late-game objectives or zones.
If you’re relying on one unit to win the game for you, the odds are against you, especially when you’re likely to lose over half your army anyway, and that one unit has the biggest target on its back anyways.
Don’t overvalue survivability, focus on winning the mission. You’re going to lose stuff. Build your list with multiple ways to score, knowing that some units will die. Redundant scoring threats win tournaments.
And finally, build with the endgame in mind. By Turn 5, your force will be bloodied. The best armies aren’t the ones that start strong. They’re the ones that still can win the scenario when there are only a few units left on each side. Think like a general ordering a retreat. Not everything will survive, but it should fall back in the right order.
Closing Thought: Expect to Bleed, Plan to Win
The 2025 Masters made one thing clear: even the most successful players couldn’t avoid heavy losses. On average, more than half their army was gone by game’s end, and that’s okay. What separates top players isn’t how much they keep. It’s how well they trade and score when the dust settles.
Your list doesn’t need to avoid collapse. It just needs to collapse in the right way. Let weak flanks crumble to hold the center. Let bait units die so your hammers punch. The best lists bleed strategically. Don’t fear the losses. Use them. Build for the bloodbath. And then win anyway.
