 Hello everybody if it's Wednesday, it's Warhammer and that must mean it's time for another episode of Warhammer Weekly Joining me as always is my co-host Tom. What's up, buddy? How you doing mute that you did Tom? We're good. Hello friends Pro as always Tom, I mean, I've only been doing this what six years. Yeah, it's gonna be seven soon. Yeah, um I I You know one of my dreams Tom this has nothing to do with anything or with the show I just want to say this real fast one of my dreams is to do a Supercut like I want to go watch every episode and pull clips and do an entire episode. That's just supercuts Okay, and of course it's a lot of editing. It's a lot of editing. That's that's what stopped me Tom Why don't you have your headphones because I can hear myself at it going? Yeah, but you're really loud because my headphones died today at work. Um Sorry Okay, I mean I could go get headphones if if we need you we might need to yes, I'd rather that than not echo But today we're going to be talking about meta the meta of aos as it rests right now It's a fairly stable meta. So we're going to break into it talk about it see what it's like And uh first of course the news and while I do the news Tom is going to go get his headphones. So he doesn't echo. Well, this is my only job Don't take this for me. Okay. Well, then go and I won't talk Okay So, uh, no rumor engine because of aldar and 40k stuff um Right Correct. Uh, we can talk about the new rat ogre, which is not really a rat ogre. It's the new orc orc-y Orc-y orc, right? No, there's a rat ogre. There's a real rat ogre Really? Where's it from blood bowl? Let me miss us. It's yeah, it's blood bowl But it's just it's on the screen now for everybody. It's it's not really But it's not But it is because yes, he's crushing like a tiny football in his hand But like other than that other than this tiny floppy football That's barely in his fist, which by the way would be completely easy to replace with any big fist but anyways, uh It's Like it's just a rat ogre. It's just a rat ogre wearing armor. It it's just a rat ogre I mean that is a rat ogre. He's still he's stitched up pretty heavily though. Yeah, sure. A lot of them have stitches like that That's actually pretty standard It shows you how many rat ogres I've painted. I've painted a lot of them I love rat ogres. They're one of my favorite units in the scaven army. Uh, but here we are Um, but yeah, he's just other than the tiny football in his sorry in his right hand He's a rat ogre. So we got a new rat ogre sculpt Let's talk about the other scaven paintings, which are the christmas orcs or the christmas orc the the brute Uh, dude, I love this guy. I saw him and I was like, oh, I'm totally buying him Uh, yeah, and new scaven models. So we get a new scaven rat and uh new scaven head There's no less than three new scaven models on this on this orc the dead scaven in the dirt that he has crushed the giant rat chasing the the Little tiny goblin knoblar, whatever he is. It's not laying whatever and the rat ogre head, which Admittedly does not look good. But yes There's more scaven models in this in this than goblins. So there we go It's amazing. It's just amazing um, and then uh, yeah, I like it, uh, this is gonna have a limited ordering window for those that don't know You can get pick it up live. I think the week after christmas and then starting. I think it was january 3rd. You can order it um For like made to order So nice. Yeah, they're pretty sweet I'm a fan. Yeah, I don't know what I need with another Brute, but you do you do is the answer. Yeah, like you always you just need more. It's fine Sure I don't know what I'd do to do with a single brute Besides turning into another foot war boss a thing of which I already have many More than you could ever reasonably use details details uh, other big news uh adept con events got announced, um, the the the actual signups are on the 11th. Um a week earlier the stuff will go Uh into like it'll be viewable so that you can actually a week or two earlier Like didn't they say the december 27th 28th. Yeah, December 28th is the preview. Yeah two weeks, uh You can do You can actually look at the catalog and get an idea. Um, obviously there's going to be a ton of sweet events. There's the four person like teams doubles event on Thursday friday And then the championship is going to be saturday sunday. I'm i'm looking for if they still have the same event lineup this year I don't know that it's going to be like that this year I'm not sure what because it was going to change if you remember in 2020 before everything got canceled Right, so what I just quoted you of the doubles all that was announced by domus on twitter Okay, got it. Um, I haven't heard about championships on but that was that was thursday friday By domus on twitter. I haven't heard anything about championships, but I would assume that it's saturday sunday I guess we'll see though Yeah, I'm excited. Uh as well. They announced golden demon uh for adept con. It'll be the first time in the states in over 10 years That's pretty exciting. Uh, and there'll be forge world Orders, um, if you want forge world stuff order by february and have it delivered and like they'll deliver it at the con for you if you want Yeah, I can't wait to get back to adept con honestly and uh, so Tom you're coming up this weekend along with a couple of other boys. It's it's vini con 2021 part two the Revengining first blood this time. It's for real and Tom's going to be actually painting something probably for the first time in a long time this weekend. That's the goal Uh, I'm going to be building is the answer While sam and john and I work on golden demon projects and talk a golden demon a lot There's going to be a lot of that discussion. I just want to warn you in advance I'm going to be painting sheet ghosts and building and painting sheet ghosts is what I'm probably going to be working on Nothing wrong because my order my lrl order got delayed. So Well, there we go Such is the nature of the world delays delays delays Yep, so I have some uh, some I I've locked in my night haunt list. I got it. I cracked the code Um wizards galore folks. That's the answer here. That's the secret get get out more casters More casters and night haunt that's I figured it out Um, so I'm going to do uh that and then I'm I the plan is to do I'm signed up for the event in columbus Um And the week before havoc. So I'll have two back-to-back weeks of warhammer in february. So I'm pretty stoked about that Indeed, uh, I am as well. Uh, I why yeah, so I both events. Yes same thing looking forward to it Um, so it's going to be a great time there in february for um columbus, uh the columbus tournament and then holy wars and then adepticon the next month So it's going to be it's going to be a jam-packed february march Although as usual I can't play in the tournaments because I'm teaching so right But that also means that I have to paint two armies for the beginning of february not just one Better get working Yeah, so hence the night haunt because that needs to happen and I have most of those models Tom have you heard about our lord and savior the sons of behemoth? You know, there's only four models to get painting for that army very easy But they're giants and they're really big She goes our airbrush and contrast paint. So I mean, I guess I don't know man I saw some there was a I don't remember who it was. So I apologize to the player who did it But there was a giant army that he started the day before at nashkon and on the judging sheet It said I painted this in the 24 hours before the tournament. Please be nice And they looked really nice because he had just done like he had like hard He had used some airbrush and then painted and hard base coated everything and then went mad with the streaking grime And it was and then he just did a little dry brushing on top and it was like it was great It looked really nice. They were uh for for what it was very impressed for a 24 hour previous paint job So it could be done tom. I'm just saying the magic of streaking grime Uh, I'm I neither of those armies are streaking grime for me But the the knight haunt is air brushing and like it's only like 20 chain drafts and like 10 Mirrormore banshee or not mirrormore 10. What are they called? Dreadside heritans and then a couple handful heroes. So it should be easy and quick So I'm not too stressed about it Okay Yeah, so and then we have the other big news is the nergal tome dropping on pre-order this saturday done done done Um, I am excited for man reads book. That means that that is eminent man reads book and uh I'm I'm excited for no nergal stuff. I'm hope I'm hopeful I am as well. Uh, we'll do our nergal show next week because I'm sure we'll have all the information we need so So it'll be nergal next week Uh, as as we we bring him. I'm gonna miss nergal. Well, not necessarily. You can just come back if you're available So yeah, I'm gonna do that. I want to talk to you about that before the show if you're available next week Then we're gonna do the three of us. Well, I'll just do nergal together. Yes. Yeah, yeah, totally. Yeah Yes, I am here. I want to talk nergal. Here's my first aos army. So yes, totally Right on Okay, so look for look for nergal next week. Uh Any other news? I think that's everything, right? That's everything pretty quiet week overall You talk I'm gonna go see if I can find those headphones. That's right. Well, you go get some headphones. Tom. Well, I do the pick of the week Okay So let's talk some pick of the week everybody. Well, tom gets headphones and is responsible He should have done that beforehand, but hey, here we are uh so the um My pick of the week is going to be for two in two teams individuals Whatever first the honest wargamer and the honest wargamer stats team who we're going to rely on heavily today As we review a lot of this meta information to Uh, aos shorts dan who we has also gave gives great information and has an aos shorts events calendar Where you can track all the events like the events we're talking about going to in february and march He has a big site. I have linked all of those down in the description And I'll say it right now and I'll say it again later um If you're interested in deeper dives on any of the stats we're going to go into because we're going to cover this Talk about it at a fairly high level But if there's if you want to yourself take a deeper dive into these various elements Look at especially stuff like how individual armies are performing with a lot of really great segmented stats Go hit up the honest wargamer And shorts has a bunch of great stuff on his website as well Both of those are linked down in the description Uh, so do hit those up go check that stuff out. Um, I linked both For rob. I linked his twitch. I linked the Uh, the actual videos The stats video in particular where he does a deep dive where if you want to see how your army performed If you're a beast of chaos player and you're like, hey, how are those beasts doing? You can see it at a high level, but I want to get into the specifics. I love them beasts I'm all beasts all the time. What's the story? What are people playing? How are they doing? Well, guess what? There you go. You can uh, you can find all of that information Okay, uh, let's see a lot of people in the chat excited about nergal Hey, let me tell you what if you're excited about nergal and the nergal show next week or just nergal in general Don't forget to hit like and subscribe and all of that stuff. Do those things hit those buttons It's it's good stuff Uh, tom is still not back with his headphone Of course. He isn't I knew he would take longer than I would take. Why wouldn't he? Uh, so that's fine We'll just keep going What i'm gonna say is Uh Dan said cheers now to go update the site. Yes, exactly Uh So what i'm gonna say here while we're waiting on tom to get back and hook up his headphones is uh I'm going to be launching a new survey Here soon. Uh, it'll come out in between this week and the Next show probably if I can get everything set up and reviewed Uh, if not, it'll come out right after the next show and I'll talk about it there. Um, but we're going to do a big survey uh on uh What I want to call it on perception of the game right now So we want to do what we want to do here right before the december FAQ and the game has been Let's face it stable ish Because of the nature of not getting new books and stuff like that So, uh, we're going to be doing that survey when it goes live Do please share it around do please fill it out Watch to follow me on twitter the twitter's up there in the corner. There it is right there Uh, and I'll announce it there. I'll talk about it on the show next week Once I launch it, it'll be open for two weeks and then we're going to do a show on it in the new year Okay, so all right Tom you're back and I can I can stop vamping Uh You're doing great. Thank you. All right. So, uh, what's your pick of the week tom? I you already did pick of the week. I did moved on Okay, you don't you don't have one. That's what you say. I've got it. No. No, we moved on. I missed it. I'm sorry Um, maybe maybe I'll get it next week when when I'm here for for the pick of the week I agree. All right. Moving on Uh, it's fine. I had two so I covered both of us. I know I know you're dependable as always tom as always Let's talk hobby time tom. Did you paint anything this week? This this generally means no this should be a real easy question It's been a it's been a long week. Let me just say that. Uh, I worked on putting together some models So, uh, all right, that's something building is something Luminous have really long spears Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm I like like I knew that like I knew it in my soul and I'd seen the model before It's the difference between knowing the desert's hot and walking in the desert for a few hours without water Yes, indeed. Indeed. Yep Yeah That's fine. I as well did a lot of assembling And uh, but I also finished up some painting Uh, I got uh, got a bunch of stuff done actually Um working on some future videos and now I just got this guy ready to go. Look at that tom. What is that guy? You recognize him? I do. Yeah, that's right. I'm gonna paint up this little spoiled pox scrivener guy Why are you painting nergal? Uh, because I'm gonna paint it for tom for for not you tom other tom He was uh, he knows nergal is coming and you know, he has part of an army But he doesn't have a lot of the that stuff So I picked that up for him and I wanted to do it as like a christmas thing for him because he's like You painted a million models for one of our other club mates and you've never painted anything for me. I was like Oh, he's right, but of course like he is a good painter, right? Like he paints himself He just doesn't have much time anymore and his uh paint desk is in disrepair thanks to his kids So I was like, okay, so I'll do this for him. It's all good. I know all about that Yeah, yeah, exactly. He can't keep a stable painting area because his his young one likes to Destroy everything. This is why I don't have children. So there you go Um, so I'm gonna do that for him and he's a funny little dude Uh, you know, and it's it's cute. It's christmas time. You're supposed to do things for people And what what better to give somebody for christmas than nergal, right? It's Old grandfather nergal. He's he brings the joy. He brings the gifts. It's the gift that keeps on giving He knows or he asked me he's like if you paint anything I want one of these things. I was like, all right, so that's fine. It's okay. I'm saying it here in case you watch the show I don't mind. It's fine. He can know You're like A 32 mil model, right? Yeah, he didn't ask for like a great unclean one. Yeah, exactly Just just like not even like a unit of 10. He's like, no, I'll just take this 32 mil guy and you're like Done I think this guy's on a 40 actually, but still I take your beating Yeah, because his scroll is real big. You know what? It's not, uh, 10 plague bearers on 32s No, it's not. Uh, it's not although plague bears are fantastically simple models. So All right, so that's my hobby time I've also been working a whole lot on something else, which nobody's gonna know about until next year. So there you go But I've been working a lot on it Uh Get ready for that this weekend, Tom. Okay So, uh Hey, man. Look that was fast. We blew right through that And look, I say we just get right into it. Let's talk about man 20 minutes Tyler suck it Take that Tyler 20 minutes. We're flying through this All right, let's talk about the meta overview Uh Arcus said I know vince doesn't play video games, but he should check out the new slinnest trailer for total war. I watched it It was okay That's my answer. I'm sorry the total war like animations don't really like get me very much I apologize the actual game Well, it's just some of it's the game some of it's just animations and it's it just doesn't grab me Makes sense. So um But you know, there's rumors that a new warhammer mmo is being made. So That's a that's a rumor. I'm interested in I don't know how to even respond to that There will there will never be another age of reckoning, but you know and all that it was You can't go back. There might be an age of sigmar though. Sure. That's a that's a that's a I mean, that's a deadhead sticker on a catalac right there. You just don't look back right there. Okay All right, so let's get into the meta overview. By the way, if you're watching and you haven't yet Don't forget hit that like button do all those things press buttons. It's fun. Okay, so tom. We're gonna talk about the meta we're gonna look at How armies are performing and we're gonna try to do a little bit of data synthesis here try to figure out why Okay, we're gonna give our opinions now It's kind of the popular thing to do, right? It is the popular thing to do As it says down at the bottom of the screen brought to you by the honest wargamer team and aos shorts because other people Did a lot of hard work to collect this data and then I stole it to talk about it So thanks other people for doing work. We're lazy and we appreciate your hard work We do and that's that's my summaries page here Which is to say all stats occur to the honest wargamer the awesome honest wargamer stats team Which is warhammer rob ziggie and Somebody else because I can never remember all three people. So I apologize. I get I get it. I forget a different person every time But the the awesome stats team and aos short stand Um, and all their links are in the description. You should go visit them. You should sub to them You should support them and all the hard work they do. Thank you windows. I'm good right now. Shut up um so the uh So all those links are down there do go check them out because it's their hard work That is allowing all of this to us to do this discussion and You know, I'm grateful that they're that they're putting so much work into collecting this data This isn't something we ever had before and I loved seeing I don't know if you saw it tom, but somebody asked rob honest wargamer rob about I guess they asked the warcom team You know, what do you think about the You know these kind of stats being collected. Are they too competitive focused? Is it useful to you as a distraction? and sam The designer The warhammer designer. Yeah, Sam Pearson responded back. We think it's super helpful We really like this data. We find it very valuable. You know, it's an important part of our overall understanding of the game Yeah, and you know and rob said hey if you need any data reach out So I think they're going to try to to share some data there, which is great Um, so I think it can only help Sam's a great designer. He is he is um Oh, I we didn't mention that the the slaves of darkness are getting their tom's or not slaves starting Sorry, the soul of light grave lords are getting their tom's celestial and white dwarf I didn't mention it because I hate all white dwarf expansion articles and find them all to be utter terrible trash Uh short answer for you there, sammy. Sorry. We're going to give a bunch of uh Of right battle regiments that nobody likes um and by nobody I mean anyone that's not soul flight And uh, yeah, that's yeah, exactly It's going to be like core battalions that are either useless or too good Because any new core battalions are bad grand strategies that are either bad or too good and battle tactics that are bad or too good Thank you because there is no other setting because there's only supposed to be the core ones And yet we keep introducing these and it keeps being toxic poison. We're just slowly drip feed it into our veins There we go. Here we go. All right, so anyway back to this Tom let's jump in with the first slide. Let's talk about the big overview. This is the uh win rate Uh by faction okay So This is where we draw what we call the sinister six from The sinister six being so we've talked before about the fat middle, right Our initial goal back when things were wild back at the beginning of of second edition Was to push towards a fat middle to push to 40 to 60 percent, right? Yep Because we were way outside that those bounds right right, but we've tightened it. We've tightened it. Yeah, which is good But now we still we we don't have anybody over 60 right now, which is amazing but Uh, we need to but we still have some people falling out the bottom's end And just getting beaten up like crazy And now we need to aim for the actual middle not the fat middle the actual middle Right, right Which is 45 to 55 which is how most Most competitive type games try to balance themselves, right? Yep So I do want to acknowledge the progress right we used to be way outside of the 40 to 60 rate Do you remember tom back when there was armies with yeah with win rates in the teens? Remember that? Yeah. Yeah, do you remember? Uh, I think slinnash hit almost 80 percent at one point. Yeah. Yeah Yeah, we had we had things in the high 70s things in the teens and 20s like crazy You know It was um, we're not there anymore. We're not there anymore We're we're in a good spot Better spot better spot. There you go. There you go. I'll definitely agree with better I I think maybe good, but we can move from good to to great. That's what I'll say, right How about those iron jaws only at uh at 50? Well, this is since the beginning of 3.0. We'll talk about that in just a second Uh, believe me. We're gonna we're gonna see them iron jaws all right So here's the three questions tom. I want to keep in mind today ready Okay So first I want to say this is based on 65 tournaments and 6,767 game results I use all the high level stats that are all based on those numbers Okay, yep And That's a good amount of games At the high level where we've probably reached statistical significance Probably probably The segmented data when you look down into the individual armies and start doing like especially matchup data You fall below statistical significance like that Okay, because you only have so you have such a small number of matches Individual players random results things will pollute the data and you're not getting cleanliness, right? So Rob's data can do that and I love that he can show those matchups But we need to and there's nothing wrong with it, but we need to understand that the more drilled in we go The less confidence. Yeah, we should have a lower confidence factor in the data, right? When we when we do data analytics, we talk in confidence factors Right And the confidence factor on these on these results the upper results is pretty high Right, this this couldn't be an accidentally random effectively, right? We should have weeded out the noise at this point Not necessarily. I mean what we don't have here is we don't know how many times for example A big walk was played Sure, sure my my point being is that yes, you're right. There is a count separately I have there's these all these have a pretty good number of matches by the way Like I did I did dig through how much each of these have and there's a couple of them that are pretty low right But for the most part I think all of these have reached some Level where we can like okay, none of these have been played like three times Is my right these all represent I think, you know, we have more than a hundred results matches with all of these Right, which again is low, but it's some of these have a lot like a lot hundreds and hundreds Sure Okay, it's it is in equitously distributed Yeah, we're looking at you serif on So yes, but your point is like your point is well taken It shouldn't be um It shouldn't be taken as bible truth that these are all this exact percentage Right right what we should understand this to be is a rough map because you're absolutely right There could be if you you know more games played stuff like that There there is still a little bit in there right our confidence factor still isn't a hundred percent or something like that Something nonsensical of course This is our best approximation based on the amount of data we have And what I'm saying is I think we're probably reaching the point where plus or minus a few percentage points. This is correct Sure, right Yeah, and I mean just from a field standpoint um, like the sinister six that feels right Yeah, those are the Maybe legion of chaos ascendant is the only one that i'm like well So uh And i'm trying to keep up with the comments at the same time. I I say all this um the The sinister six part of the reason we may be having things cap at about 60 percent is because they're all very good at killing each other right, right, right um The the nature of each of these and when you when you one of the things rob's data does show really well And we'll talk about the top tier the middle tier in the bottom tier later on But one of the things he does show is that You can see actually how good these armies are against the top tier Who has win rates against that stuff? and uh And that's pretty interesting Uh, because they do hunt each other often and some of them are better against the top than others Like there's clearly gatekeeping happening Right, like seraphon is stopping suns from going higher Yep, right because they can bring down The giants easily and coalesced thunder lizard is a really strong counter to the damage to the giant's damage Yeah, it is right. Yeah. So yeah, so you have you do have some interesting rock paper scissors happening up at the top right yep Other thing we should say Is that this is all data since 3.0 started and as you already asked how about that iron jaws number Something might have happened with iron jaws since the launch of 3.0 Right, maybe Maybe Maybe Like they got a book and got real strong right Yep, so One of the things that's important to understand is that the nature of the aos meta is pretty ephemeral Right between the balance data slate. We're expecting between books coming out and disruption in the meta We don't want to get too married to any of these percentages because armies will go up and down over time their win rates will vary quite a bit And you know weekend to weekend month to month, right quarter to quarter Yeah, like all those knight-hon armies that just started showing up Exactly um And so these things, you know, when you average them out you kind of lose Those those valleys and those high points, right those peaks. Yeah and so You know those things mean that we also have to look at trending over time and stuff like that Which is a little more i'm going to get into a little bit of that today But um, you know, we're not going to get into all of it. Okay, so all right Cool When we talk about why we think armies are like this we're going to enter in the world of opinion We cannot talk about causation. We can talk about some correlation here and there There's not enough data and there's not enough information for us to talk about hard causation But we're going to take our best guess Do some punditry effectively, right on why we think these things are like this Moral wound shooting. Well, this is the we're going to frame this this way tom. Here we go. You're ready Okay, when we talk about an army being really good We're really bad like really high or really low In this Okay, I'm we're going to ask this question. Is it A skew or a unit pushing them up keeping them alive? Whatever they could they could be in the middle because of this Right. Yep, but is it a skew or a unit pushing them up? Is it their overall design being really strong or really weak? Right, like in other words, there's no really good units or not really bad units Just to be the book taken as a whole their design is just super strong or super weak Right. Okay. Is it like a self-contained problem or self-contained strength? Yeah, it's just like the really the only way to fix it would be to literally throw the book in the garbage and start over Right because the design from the bottom up is rotten Okay Yep, or is it points? Right is the army across the board too cheap classic example of Uh, all three of these let's just give a classic quick example of all three of these. Okay Yep The skew or unit wait, I don't want to talk current meta. I'll talk past right The skew or unit or something like that right like a single skew build All right, uh loom enough Well, yes, but that's current right. I wanted to go older than that So I was going to talk about uh, what was our what was our storm cast setting up liberators and combat nonsense? Oh, uh, the, uh Uh vanguard wing. Thank you. Yeah that that's a great example of a skew right one unit one broken Battalion type of setup or whatever it was Or like a zinge change us sure zinge change us great example, right? Single unit single rule single battalion carrying the whole thing. Yeah Yep overall strong design Right when you look at that that's probably like classic Slaves of darkness or something like that or design in the meta Points would be like scaven when they first launched With their new book right where everything was very very cheap and it went into a meta Where it was very very scary right Okay, yep all right, so Tom here we go Let's talk about the sinister six sons of badmout legions of cast senate disciples of zinge lumeneth realm lords daughters of kane and seraphon All arguably at the absolute top of where we would want win at or above where we want win rates to be frankly all trending high All very powerful armies Right like if you've ever faced these you know just prima facie these these armies are quite powerful Right, and they they've held a steady place here by the way in the top six as I looked at this over time Okay Tom sons of badmout skew design points Why is it at the top of the list? Uh you Okay, why so? um well I know I guess I can't say skew. I guess it would be designed that would be my argument. It's completely designed, right? Yeah, because it's a combination of the objective holding rules Because we're specifically in a meta that's a low body meta Um, and so just the actual design itself Um gives them an edge over everybody Um, just natively like if we were back in like You know hashtag horde armies. Yeah hashtag horde meta Hashtag horde meta like if we were back there these giants would have been like Like you're 30 year on there. That's great. You know, I'm gonna push 60s Skaven onto this objective and just take it from your giant and just let you chop it rats forever You know like but that's not the world we're in right now Um, where most objectives are being held by you know five to ten million Um, so I think that it's a design problem, but I think it's also a combination of that and the um Uh, I think that there's uh There's some problems. There's a confluence of things that are all leading it to where it is So for example, we have the um the amulet of destiny Yep, sure like the efficiency of amulet of destiny on one of those giants is just asinine um, and then Uh, realistically the army is a dps check. Yep And some armies just simply can't put out that kind of the damage That's needed to actually remove giants in enough time to take to kill a giant around. Yeah, right Right, like that's what you have to do. You have to remove a giant every round starting around too Okay, I agree with all that. I think that's exactly right. I think it's just design And I've said before I think the base design of the sun's a bad map book is flawed They started from a faulty premise in giving them the mightier makes right here And and every bad decision in that book flow flowed from that, right? Now, uh, the next one is legion Legion of the first prince rob is obsessed with calling this loka. It's not loka anymore It's now just the legion of the first prince. I don't know why he still calls it legion of gas ascendant It's now legion of the first prince. It's loft loft Yes, loft Yes, correct Sure skew designer points Let's keep him at the top I don't know. I don't even know why it's up there Can I can I uh, can I make can I offer a supposition? Yeah, my supposition? This is my opinion purely of what holds them here Okay loft Is the only blue deck in the meta right now. Oh, okay. I could see that. Okay And the like design wise it's quite sparse that is to say like it is actually design allowing a skew So it's a little bit of cheating. I'm going to say here The design is you can pile all these different demons together and give them all a word safe basically, right? What it allows is the terrible trio to enter into the The discussion The terrible trio of the sinister six the terrible trio being bellicor Kyros and the corn demon prince right and When you can just say no To so many different things like many melee armies just instantly fail and die to this army because they can't ever charge Right, like you actually land the long bomb charge You need when you're under blood slate ground and kyros just goes. Nope. That was a one year old Right, right bellicor shuts your unit down for a round. So it doesn't even get to function. They just never get in right Exactly and everything is tough and they're just they just gum up the works with the little stuff They also summon quite efficiently. Yeah, right So it's just gum in the works and then Just pure and then pure control Yeah, yeah, I mean, it's it's like they win with crappy Units and three big control elements, right Which is just it's it's the most pure blue deck. I've ever seen right They've got they've got counterspell and mana drain and I don't know. Let's say mana leak or something I don't know you pick your poison, right? Sure. Sure. They will force a will. Thank you. Perfect. They've got all Yes, that's a great example. They've got all three of those in their hand all the time basically Right and then everything else is just win rate or is just win drakes reaction Sure, right, but the two one flyer will get there or whatever if he can or the two two flyer will get there Or win drakes if there's nothing if if the if the opponent can't resolve anything, right, right, right Um, and I do agree that Legion of the first prince can still be it's funny what but kills it but it you know, it is a very Uh, it can be a knife edge thing like if somebody can blow through your as as classic like All right, if with control what often killed control was people who could just Burn through it fast like who could outstrip them All right, like sly or something like that that could just plow through them before they could get their control in in place Yeah, right get their handful. Yeah. Yeah, exactly Uh, it said we checked off the magic reference real quick. Yes. That's your that's your bingo spot right there. So Uh, that's what we do here Okay disciples of zinch Why is this still here? What's keeping this here? pink cores So is it skew is that the thing or is it design? I mean anytime you have an army that cheats it's going to be strong Sure, and Uh, I mean, I think that there are some skew elements that are still just really strong Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm um Yeah, that's what I would say Uh, because I mean, well, we're talking almost all demons Right, like we don't have many archion zinchi mortal stuff performing, right? Uh, I mean after they changed archion. It's not as common. No, but it's still mostly in host arcanum Which is why I'm gonna argue for design Caleb's in the chat with the the lord of change himself and he said zinch baby no pinks required Like he's famously done quite well with a list with, you know, basically no pinks, right? Right and not that he hasn't played pinks. He plays zinch a lot. He's played many versions of it, but uh, I've only played A lot of those Like I'm gonna argue that zinch because of the nature of its design. It has been pretty reflexive Yeah, because it cheats for a living It's resilient in that there's always something it can exploit Right. It was archion for a while or it was change host for a while And then it was archion for a while or it was flamers, right? And then and now it's maybe it wasn't is pinks archers, yeah, sure it like like there's just There's something it's going to be able to explore exploit because it is a book that Oh, it was cogs for a hot minute, right ramping up to eight million casts Yep, the cogs castle. Sure the cogs castle But ultimately the strong design of like the destiny dice the agendas And the potent casting creating this like 18 inch kill box Around the army and empowering that to happen Almost consistently throughout the history of it. You know started depending on what you're using Especially in the way the hands of like host arcanum Where you're getting three free auto dispels Right and a free unit Yep, it's just it and you're sitting on and you're sitting on destiny dice as well. So yes, you have three auto dispels and You can pick your you know dispel. Oh, and if you have a lot of change they're going to match their dice Yada, yada, yada, right and it's you know, I think the telling part of this is how little archion we've seen recently Like archion got his His eye of ed sheer and nerfed and all of a sudden he just stopped showing up in zinch lists overnight weird And it didn't really matter that much zinch has gone down a little but when we we're going to look at their trend over time and it hasn't been You know huge Like they end up being resilient. They just throughout the history of this book because its premise is I cheat Right, it's just consistently always been at the top Yep, yep, I would agree with that That's why I argue That's why I argue it's it's design right because once if if some current thing gets whack-a-mold It'll be something else, right? Who knows maybe post the data slate Uh It'll be zangor Maybe we'll go back to zangor It could happen tom don't don't get my hopes up I wanted an all zangor army like and I was going to build one And then I was waiting for the new book and they dropped the new book and I'm just like I'm selling all those Hey, I'm just saying Hope tom the bird the bird boys. They could be back anytime. It'd be very easy Because the bird boys are only bad because of points. So like that's that's it Yeah, but we we've literally been saying that for four years. They're only bad points haven't been efficient for four years But at any rate, sure. All right lumeneth realm lords skew design points Let's keep it. Oh, okay. All right. Okay. Um Tell me why it's so design Uh, because I mean like it's design that leads to skew Um, and what I mean by that is like there's two standout shenanigans there and it's your sentinels And it's your um your foxes Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Um those two things base because of the design of those units They lead to certain play styles that shall we say are not fun. Um, or that are super efficient um And so I think that that's ultimately where the problem is combined with all the tools Right like, um There's just a lot of very efficient tools spread throughout the army and it's like what six sub factions Eight sub factions now Is this better big f a e c like tell me if the sound is better I was leaning back a little far away from my mic and it's very sensitive to that kind of thing. Sorry I'll try to stay right in this zone. Hopefully that's better everybody. I apologize if I get too quiet And like sentinels. Yes, they're really good, but like let's not forget that foxes took some events, right? and foxes were like Fox force five, right? Sure like it was a thing it was a thing and um And one of the challenges there is that like they don't they don't play the same game that everybody else does So there is some design like in the design of l or l is cheating And what I mean by that is that like oh archers, but you don't need line of sight Archers, but it all does mortal wounds and you get to reroll and immortal wound on five um and uh Archers at 30 inch range. It's like a combination of all of these things Uh just really push it over the top or a bunch of foxes that which are like move back to 12 inches Okay, stop your movement and then my movement phase move back at the end of the phase move back 12 inches And it's so it's like it's just a perennial like it's a design problem. Okay My argument is this I actually think it's skew and I'll say why because I think it is archers teclists and foxes And I think it's the only thing keeping them where they are I think it's the only thing making the army viable right that tells me it skew right there right right Well, here's what I'll say let's do a thought experiment nerf those three units into the ground I'm not saying I want this. Okay. I'm just saying let's let's pretend Okay, the army drops to 40 percent right The army drops to 40 overnight Yep, because they're like because the other units are too expensive and they actually don't do the things that you need them to do I don't know if it rock it all the way down to 40 But it fall it fall a lot No, it would like it if they didn't because the only because they are a overwhelmingly expensive army I know this because I'm building it. Absolutely like and so for like the bodies that you get Like for example, if teclists couldn't pass out a ward save If you know, then the wardens are truly dead in the water like 145 points for 10 wounds. No, thank you Yeah, I like believe me. I understand like splash mortals will melt them off the table. Sure. Um And so I uh, I mean slenesh pays the same price for 10 day minutes, but sure Right And you know how successful that's it's terrible. You understand you're used a little better But um, no, I that's we both agree like what exactly percentage they would land at who knows It's all thought experiment, right? But they would drop like a rock That's the that's the reality, right? It is that's why I'm saying it skew Because those three units being what they are being able to be You know deliver ranged mortals control the game in a very specific way This is the only other like lumeneth is a white blue deck Right, right, right. No, just keep these magic references going. It is literally a white blue deck That doesn't do very much damage at all. Um, it has quite a bit of control quite a bit of survivability Um, some uh, hinky treks and uh, it's infuriating to play Yeah Yeah, so that's my point if you if you nerfed those three units into the ground And didn't compensate the army in some way it would just start losing like crazy Yeah, right. Yeah, and I think that right there tells me it's skew That's I mean, I mean it's got a convoluted crazy design with a lot of a lot of insane stuff happening But it's gonna all amount to nothing if you don't still if you have no way to actually like, you know Do the work to win You'll do a lot for nothing. It was all sound and fury signifying nothing, right? Yeah, that's what's gonna happen. Yeah Yeah, like I hear that you're saying it's skew. I think that like I think it's a combination of skew and design I don't think I don't think it's just skew because it's because they're not just trotting out only it like the armies aren't only sentinels Sure. No, I understand. There's other stuff in there. The armies are only foxes, right? But it's that a handful of units are probably too efficient for what they're doing um, and Yeah, yep. Yeah, all right. Daughters of cane Uh, what is it? Why are they why are they up at the top? Why have they been at the top tom for four and a half years? Uh, I mean I have some internal thoughts as to why that is skew designer points. What's holding them there right now? Uh design Yeah Yeah, it's it's marathi. It's marathi plus teleports plus bow snakes. Yes Like the easy answer would be skew and because bow snakes are super dominant. Don't get me wrong Okay, like they are they're way too dominant. They're way too good. They're super skewy unit. They show up in everything But I would argue if we properly Costed bow snakes and got rid of the double shot. I think daughters would fall It would it rightly should like all of these should fall. I think that's an important thing to realize right when we talk about nerfing these top armies They're going to have to fall They must lose more. They must become weaker right like yeah that's That's what's got to happen right Like I'm sorry dock players, but your book has to get worse in some way and like it's just They have a pretty deep bench though is what I would say Yes, and that's why I don't think they would fall like lumenath because in the same experiment That's what I'm saying like let's say let nerf bow snakes out of existence. Okay. I think the army Sure, it's like delete 300 points for five of them now or whatever. Okay, just like impossible Right may make the unit non viable. Guess what that army still shows up and we'll take some five votes Yeah, I think it will still occasionally win and my Answer is I think it would fall to probably more like a 50 percent or somewhere in that range like it would fall Down into the middle like right where we'd want it in the in the middle pretty safely I think it is that it's that single unit skew that's posting it up But I think there's a firm design underneath it Because there is good internal balance in the book other than this one stupid unit empowered by this one stupid command ability That shouldn't exist and and that's what's actually tipping it from the middle to the fat middle right? That's what's knocking it up Yeah, right and and and those like all of those armies are simply relying on that trick Yeah, it's become the dominant choice like, you know, like hit more bow snakes Right Right. Yeah, they sometimes they're not even using morathe anymore. They're just literally Get subbing out morathe for tons more bow snakes Yeah, I I don't Yeah So, you know because you can get a lot turns out for morathe like if you just trade morathe for bow snakes You get a ton of them. I can't imagine Okay, last one seraphon skew design points what's keeping it in the in the sinister six While you think i'm going to answer nick ars question vince ventrilla. Why do you hate fire slayers? Because they are ugly samey baby naked dwarves With an aesthetic. I find deeply unpleasing That also have an awful awful play style from top to bottom That is an that is the thief of joy to play against And they have a sparse composition for actual like army stuff. They have three real units and then 15 heroes Um now that being said I do like the magma dross. Those look cool Those are cool Um, I mean, so what I would say is this, uh, I think that it's a design issue. Okay, uh, regarding, um seraphon, um, and uh And not in a bad way I think that the design is some of the design is good, right? um I just think that it's super efficient against some of the the the big stuff in the list Or big stuff in the meta. So for example, we talk giants. Obviously coalesce is super efficient um The reason why A star born is is it star born? That's the teleporting ones star born or the teleporting ones coalesce The star wars are like anytime you get teleporting and shooting really good sure And that's what star born are right like that's what star born does well Is is mobility shooting? um So like mobility slash deep strike shooting, uh I mean, that's it's there. It's just literally chaos trick um So I that's all design issues Like I guess you could say that their points, you know, they could jack the points up to be unusable But ultimately like you're doing that because of design Yeah, seraphon is an interesting case because it is to me It's here and it's at this point. It does have a few units that are obviously too good Yep sally's being at the top of that list sally's but they'll but they've been there for a while And they nerfed them on points once and it still didn't do anything right right like it's a design issue I agree. It's a design of like mobility plus Yeah, ultimately Ultimately, I agree that the book is so and I think This is exactly what current said. It's so layered. It's so thick with different potential synergies You know, you've seen the rise of coalesced and thunder lizards Coming in strong again having a very good answer to a lot of multi damage to a higher, you know multi damage meta Um having a lot of power projection in range damage being able to excel Like, you know, that is to say when we look at the overall design, it also pairs very well into the existing meta Right having monsters that can do ranged damage and pick up battle tactics and bonus points At range is incredibly powerful Right, um, they just have a lot of things going for them Totally, uh, I would agree. I think seraphon is one of the tougher books to sort of if you were interested in bringing it down some It's actually an interesting challenge to do so It's a zinge problem, right? Right, because there's just there's so much flexibility in that book and it's a combination of abilities and war scrolls and And all of those things that bring about the efficiency Yeah, and so like you could like and so maybe the right answer by the way is Points, yeah to compensate by moving things up some because I mean arguably sally's are still she's still too cheap Um, you know, there are some things that might be still even slight like I think you solve multi-layer problems like that with the blunt instrument of points You just move everything up five percent or ten percent, you know, like you just inch it up a little bit And then suddenly like that extra unit doesn't fit, right? Especially when so much of the army is getting its power not not all Not universally, but a lot of the army pulls its power from synergy as well Yep, right. Yep And so, you know, it's always hard to point highly highly highly synergistic synergistic armies because The unit on its own out without buffs is garbage at the unit with all the buffs is like insane off the charts Amazing ridiculous, right and like finding the line between the two is really hard often. Yeah, right Yep Okay All right. Now we're going to skip the middle one two skip a few 99 100 And I want to go down to the the bottom of this tom. Okay Uh, and we're going to talk about we're going to talk about the the the six at the bottom Okay, okay Yep That so we start with night haunt Yep Oh night haunt hit me tom. Why is this down at 40 percent? You like this army? You're building this army to play this army. You think it's competitive Like I I think it is I think it is a competitive I mean and like I was reaffirmed by the fact that bill suzer took it not too long ago and did fairly well And we've had recently two events 5o with night haunt and so I think that ultimately night haunt Is a victim of dice. So it's a I think it's a design issue. Let me just say that Because I think it's a combination of its strategic or key abilities are completely dice dependent mainly the The double pylon on charge when you roll a 10 plus And 10 is a fairly hard number to roll and you can't modify that anymore with battalions like he used to So that's a part of a problem. I think that it suffers actually with from there's some bad design in there Like I'll go out and say this The issue of all of the buffs in the army are wholly within 12 and On like by definition you have like so you have an army that's deep striking at nine inches, right? Sure And then Around those nine inch heroes you have a bubble of bonuses But if everybody's coming up at nine and they charge You have a very like small edge That you like that of contact and then you if you pile out of it, you're not wholly within 12 and everybody loses the buff And so you actually end up running into a problem where The buffs don't actually function because you end up piling out of if you actually get into combat You pile out of out of the buffs. I understand Yeah, and so you just you run into this issue of like you can't actually keep any of your buffs Or like, you know heaven forbid like you go in in the charge phase actually double, you know, get your pile in there Right, you're now out of range of the wholly within 12 to get the bonus attack from your night of your night of shrouds on ethereal state And so it's just a combination of A bunch of different Things all plying against you, right that said there's a lot of mobility There's a lot of tricks in the army and that can win you games Yeah, I think I agree with you fundamentally I think this is a design one and especially how the design pairs with the current meta, right? Like they can't use all out defense You know stuff like that, right? It's hard. They they can't they can't play the save stacking game To keep their heroes alive with it. Everybody else can right like no you got your heroes got a four up your heroes got a four Up, that's what it is. Right. It's a four up. Yeah, that's a good call They don't get to be they don't get to be a part of the save stacking game, right? They have no resilient heroes, right like I've talked about this before Yep, they have no real heroes over eight wounds. Yeah Um, is there another army in the game that's like that? Probably not Right like everybody has like a monster sure or something. Uh or something, right? Uh, and so I mean I guess your other Uh Your other choice in that same situation would be Coradron overlords, but they play a very different game Yeah, they're playing a different game and so Um, like they also have a bunch of weak heroes like their boats aren't heroes, right, right? They also have a bunch of weak heroes But everything in their army shoots so they don't have to risk as much to to deliver themselves And their heroes and like most of their buffs aren't concentric on their heroes You know like that's part of the problem of night haunt is that your heroes have to be close to give the buffs But if the heroes are close to give the buffs, they're also within threat of dying to At least shooting If not melee and there's that none of them are high wounds, right? And they can't play the save stacking game So there's just a combination of those things and then on top of all of that Like their death save requires a hero to be holy them to be holy within uh, 12 of a hero, right? And so like they don't even get the the resiliency that the other deaths get And so it's a combination of a bunch of different small factors design factors that all Um that all really hurt night haunt um I think that uh Like I've I spent a lot of time building lists. I don't know that points are the issue I always obviously like whenever you build a list you always wish there are five or ten more points or whatever um, but So I don't generally have that problem with night haunt. Um I will say I do have a problem with having a reliable hammer The the army really struggles with having a hammer and uh, and so Yeah, like so it's just again, it's a bunch of these small things that like it's not bad. It's just Like there are holes Yeah, well, I want to pick on two things that I think are common among the sad six the sucky six The sullen six. I don't know night haunts gave in heat knights bone splitters beasts and gloomspite All of them lack All of them have a hammer problem Yeah, every one of them Okay, like current new new bone splitters Basically trash hammers now because of the way they nerfed the I mean it's barely an army anymore, but the way they nerfed The big stab is right night haunt have a classic hammer problem Skaven absolutely have a hammer problem outside of the only the only potential hammer you have Is in the silly storm fiend build which is which is a bad build That just doesn't actually work because it's made of paper And it relies on casting a spell from a non, you know, a non bonus caster basically, right, right? Um, he knights hits like a feather Honest answer like there's no there's no hammers left in slanesh anymore um, you know the the keeper of secrets is The the closest thing to hammer we have is is sigbel Okay Yeah, because he's going to be way more effective than anything a keeper's secret says I mean the keepers are so They were always nude armed unless they spiked off But to make this real for everybody a keeper's average damage is seven and a half against a four up save. Wow That's nothing. That's nothing Right, you know fulminators are like 20 Yeah, okay. I mean it's not even close um Beasts same problem, right like they have a bunch of units most of them don't hit very hard Even their bestigores lack, you know real damage punch and gets same thing now You know gets can sometimes get around that like some trolls can hit pretty hard But then when you go to that then if you lean into some of your Quote-unquote hammers and gets then you have a lot of other challenges Right, you like you could go heavy spear mortal wound You know like the whole gets Like power groups, but again, it takes like four units to make one unit of spear is effective Yes, and then the is gludos to hammer not really no he has slightly higher damage his gludos his average damage against a four up save Uh Nine and a half maybe 10 trying to remember felt man. It's somewhere around there. He's more of an anvil Like he doesn't do a lot of damage nothing in that army does damage. Anyways, yeah And on top of that, like I think that there's probably another hidden issue here of Um of coherency. Yes, so there's two things to say. There's another commonality here night haunt Skaven bone splitters Uh Beasts and gloom spite all to he nights is the only one that's exempted from this All to some degree suffer from two two challenges coherency and reinforcements Yes, yeah, okay because yeah because you like all of them want to be these are all armies that relied on having A lot of stuff like a lot of bodies in big units and with four reinforcement points They just can't actually build their army anymore like for the most part night haunt Eh depends on what you were going for you can still, you know get Close like you're not as bad off, but especially if you're trying to do goblin heavy kids Yeah, right you have to lean into msu on night haunt like there's not any really other way around it um And but on top of that. Yes, you don't have enough reinforcement points, but also coherency is a really big issue like when you have um 32 mil bases in a one inch reach as a lot of these armies do that's exactly right 32 at 32 Mill bases on a one inch reach or cav Like hex rates by definition go in seven across With two sideways in the back and then one one reinforcing those two Like that's how you have to go in with hex rates on a 10 man block Sure, otherwise the the unit falls apart like it can't actually get into combat and so Even if you reinforce it 30% of your unit can't actually fight Yeah And so like and by the way, that's not equitous That's all of that is my point is trying to grab at these like core problems lack of a hammer Hit hard by reinforcements coherency challenges, right all these armies down here to some degree got hit with Those things right some much more than others, right, right and The the funny part is is that these I think Like fundamentally there's a lot of design as it meets the new addition rules here and it just shows how Poorly it worked for these armies, right like we put this new rule in place Yep, and all of a sudden like there were going to be winners and losers Right and these are the lies. These are losers, right, right? I mean, it's that straightforward Um And you know, we've talked about ways to fix this in past shows. I'm not going to get into it But like there is simply a there is a consistent problem going down this list now A couple exceptions I will say so we don't have to blow through these individually like bones like everything also has its own Story to tell I think those are the roll-up issues But like to me Skaven actually has a points problem in the wrong direction Like things are too expensive in the book right now They got you know consistently moved up and up and up and up right right through many many iterations And now as the ground shifted underneath them, they suddenly are now way too expensive for what you can buy They also have the reinforcement issue But Skaven I think are still could be a viable army, but you just don't get enough for for what you should be getting Okay, right. I would agree with that Their monsters are like ridiculously overcosted for what their monster is going to accomplish right now Their monsters hit like feathers and they cost, you know middle 300 points like as though that's a thing Um heat knights is just straight trash design from top to bottom. So whatever that's fine Um pain they like pain. Yeah, exactly. I mean, it's just it's whatever. It's a it's a bad book. Um Bone splitters just got railed in their last update. Yep for seemingly no reason Like this isn't a real army. Yeah, apparently Uh Beasts of chaos had just haven't gotten love for a really long time Obviously and they're suffering they and gloom spite have like some of the most intense versions Of these of the the systematic rules. Yeah, yeah, right So To me that's the story right like the roll-up story of what's happening at the bottom is where design meets the current rule set and the current meta And there's just like it's a square peg round hole. It ain't happen You're gonna end up down here in the you fall out of the bottom because it's just very very hard To to get wins perform. Yeah, right And yes, we could mess with things like I said, I do think Skaven could be salvageable by points They could be stronger, you know, um, like there's stuff we could do and I'm hoping that the that the the sullen six here I think that's what somebody said. I like sullen six. I think that's nice I think the sullen six Could see attention if they were it could see if Some improvement. Let me put it that way Some improvement Uh If they If they get proper attention to the data sleep in the upcoming balance change Yeah, I mean I hear that I don't I don't know that there's any magic bullets here though There's not a problem because because it's it's so much of the problem is how these armies impact The core 3.0 rules. I completely agree But in the balance change they could do things like say this this and this army Get double the normal number of reinforcement points Like they could do things like that Yeah, right. I I'm not saying they will I'm just saying like it's in their power. It's just a rule You can write whatever stupid rule you want Okay, it's words on a piece of paper. It isn't this isn't rocket science right, okay So that's the overall win rate Uh and our our take on them Let's uh, let's go to the next one here This one wasn't on your on your original when I sent Tom because I I did this last night after I sent it to you because that's what I always do I send every by the way, just so everybody understands behind the curtains I work real hard in the days leading up to the to the show to make a nice presentation Send it out And then no Tom doesn't do anything and then I read it again I I step away from it. I read it again the day of the show and realize there's more stuff I want to say or add and change the presentation a bunch and I don't send out a new one Right, uh, that is true. And so what ends up happening is I end up looking at it at the first time as we're going through the show Yes Okay Four plus wins this comes from our our good friend dan at a os shorts So this is tracking four plus so four or five wins And aggregating that together total games and what it represents as a all night hot Look at you that was bottom Well, they're not all the way down at the bottom. They got they got five They're doing better than heat nights flesh eaters and gloops fights. So that's nice Because this one only tracks those there are four plus. There are people who just don't appear on this list at all, right? sure sure But here it's interesting because you get a different top When you look at it, there's some some stuff's the same Right like seraphon sons lumeneth daughters disciples all up here, right? Yeah, I mean because this is based on count Right just raw number Remember, this is based on count not percentage like the last one we did was Okay, not only that not only that like orc work lands are bundled together where Bone splitters do they count as work lands because they're in the worklands book. Yes. Yes Dan has this all rolled together because the way he's he's assembling. Yeah, he's aggregating. Yeah Now we're going to look at a really fun slide in the next one tom. Okay, sure But I just want to I just want to say like the point is when you when you go by count It presents a different picture than percentage Right because there are some commonalities But there are some commonalities Right five of the six are the same in both Yep, right that says something All right, whether we're talking about just putting pure wins on the board like raw number or Win rate as as a percentage of all games played Yep five of the six armies like these five armies keep swimming to the top Yeah, right And it's funny because legion outstrips its meta percentage so much like we will Well, I think we have some meta representation later on And you'll see like legion does not have a wide presence in the meta for obvious reasons It's a weird army that doesn't even have its own book It's this strange control army, right like and it so it so overperforms its meta representation Yeah, okay. Yeah All right, so this one the what I thought was fascinating about comparing this when you look at the difference between You know just win rate as a percentage of all games played Versus count of times they've achieved this Right like seraphon have had 71 that's an insane number, right? 71 times one four plus uh runs. Yeah 71 four plus runs That's so many Right, that's that's so very many night hon have had five They have they have had five. Yes, but it is it is madness to look at the difference between the top and the bottom When you look at it by rock count Right. Yeah, it makes me want to play gloom spike Sure Go for the underdog One of the three Um, yeah, they yeah like if you if you four plus with gloom spike, you're you're you can like you will single-handedly move the needle Right. Yeah, absolutely Okay, but now let's look at a fun slide tom. So this slide is the trend of these armies Yep. Okay. They're four plus wins trend Uh since basically the beginning of october Okay, okay. So october november Up till now ish basically right into the into the first week of summer Okay So look at suns. These are these are in order by the way the top line the brown line Okay, that's suns of badminton. It hit this peak And then it started going down right Now Look at the two trend line. I'm going to jump you to the near the bottom to the green and the yellow I see them which are oryx and stormcast Huh. I wonder where they got those books. Look at how those two overlap, right? These right and notice that that that is the inflection point for suns as well That's what i'm saying. Yes. So two High dps Pretty darn destructive armies come into the meta right like oryx being more destructive than stormcast But certainly, you know fulminators and raptors and stuff like that can they do the work Right. They're a damaging army um The like these two ultra high dps, you know, uh delivery mechanisms enter the meta and then Yeah, it's just It just clicks right there sun starts falling these two start rising and they're just cannibalizing the suns Right, right those victories are yeah, which but again, it's moving most of them towards the middle It's interesting that seraphon also pivoted upwards. Yes Um, but that's probably because it's more of a mobility range army No, i'll tell you exactly why that is. Do you think it's just the multi damage? It's also the oryx and the stormcast All of whom rely both of those armies Rely on multi damage Yeah, and so colas thunder thunder lizard suddenly was like a way better bet Right When when iron jaws overnight becomes 10 of the meta Yeah, yeah, right and stormcast who were always a very popular army also clock in at 10 of the meta Like when a fifth of the meta all of a sudden shifts to an army that you like neuter Their ability to actually beat you just you have the answer the ace in the hole by default by default Yeah All right, I love this chart because I just love how How clear those four lines tell a story right like sons. We're doing great guys. This is awesome The the trend line up is since they got their battalion by the way There are their four battalions that let them, you know be even better and then all of a sudden income the high dps slash And then in in thunder lizards rising To meet and going hard colas thunder lizard to answer the storm cast an orc problem They then also start cannibalizing the gargants Right right right because side benefit. It's way more. It's way stronger against them too Right So yeah, so much of the meta you're you that you're stronger against. Yeah. Yep. Yep So the light blue line here that's like it's kind of hard to see but this one right here This is luminous and I love how unchanged this is Like yes, it moved a little it's on this like slowish trend up, but it's just It's luminous. We're just we're just kicking along boys. Just yeah, they're just like none of none of your bullshittery Changes what we're doing right? Look, we got these sentinels. We got these foxes. We got this teclis I don't know what you're here for Uh, but you know, this is what we're doing guys. So you just keep doing you We're we're we're just gonna go ahead and shoot Uh, do some five plus mortals of things we can't see call it a day move block you with cheating units. It's fine It'll be fine. Yep. It's all fine It's all fine. Um the Some other interesting ones here So blight look where it started and this is the it's on this this very unfortunate downward slope Now again, it's not I don't want to overstate it. It's not huge right in the end This is like a percent or two down. Okay, right like two percent down. I think but you know, they are like As these other things are entering the meta. They don't have a hard inflection point, but it's just like it's Kind of this steady decrease, right? Yeah Uh, and then here's your daughters by the way daughters tell a really interesting strange story Daughters went we're on this upward trajectory Right along with suns Okay And then when these armies hit whammo blammo they fall at a harder velocity down Than even the suns do Yeah, now. Why do you think that is tom? What do you think happened there? Uh, they're not resilient um All of the like and this is what hit with me when I played dock. Um at uh, nash con is Uh, if I could get into them Like other than murathi everything just exploded Um, and so I ended up shooting like A bunch of snakes off and then I just like turned towards the two blocks of 20 witch elves and just shot all the witch elves off um, and so when you look at things, you know like Five brutes buffed getting into 20 witch elves is a unit of dead witch elves Yeah, sure. Um, who's also making them count for like nothing on objectives Right Right. And so if if if any of that can get into a unit of snakes the snakes are dead Yeah Yeah, I think it's just both of these armies have some pretty darn good answers to daughters like because yeah Of what they can do like raptors can match their shooting Yep Things like annihilators show like can drop at seven Be immune to the bow snake shooting Easily land the charge Um, I don't know if you've seen tom what like grand hammer annihilators are capable of But uh, it's a lot There was a really you you still you still sold on those shields I love the shield guys. I really do as as three units. Yeah as a as a pack of three. Yes It depends on it's completely different units Right as a pack of three shield all the way as a pack of six because the hammer boys can reach over each other Yeah, um, like I watched a fun twitch game with hey, whoa where he was playing against archaeon and a bunch of veringard And he dropped the hammer bros like he gave away first turn then dropped the hammer bros They went and deleted three veringard But like over killed him by almost 20 damage and then piled into archaeon and killed him dead just flattened him And yeah, it was a game right there like But because he's like bottom of one top of two archaeon and the veringard were dead game over it was it was It was a brutal game those suits are They're hammers like in the truest sense of the word. So, you know Oh, there you go Good to know Yeah, fear fear the hammer bros. They're coming for you Um, yeah, so the only other interesting one is disciples which kind of bounces around and and I'm not really sure why Like it goes on an upward trend here, but then back down. I you know, I'm not sure what's going on there I suspect that that has to do with When was that october? Well, they start to go up when stormcast and oryx come out But then they start to slowly trend back down in the middle of the lake toward the end of november I mean the oryx books and all that dropped earlier Um, then even this chart has it sure Well, you hit this inflection point of when people get things on the table, right? No, that's true. Yeah, keep mind It's like, you know There's a lead time. Yeah Somebody didn't magically have all that stuff painted right away, right? Like some people did but to get to get enough of it in the meta representation takes time No, that's fair. Yeah, no, it's just interesting. Uh, I think that the zinge stuff is probably Um, it's also a function of the nerf to archeon Because a lot of the zinge builds were relying heavily on him. Sure. That might be where this downward trend is coming from Right So I thought this was a really fascinating chart. Thank you a away short stand He's in the chat right now dan. You're a superstar. You're a hero. Okay Let's look at some more cool stuff tom. Here we go more stats back to honest worry and rub Uh Matches by battle plan. Oh dan made a great point. Don't forget many events ban books until the FAQ drops Oh, yeah, that's a good call. Thank you. And that's an excellent point. Uh, anyways scenarios played Uh First blood up at the top not surprising. It's the least controversial strategy Or sorry, uh, battle plan, right? It's it's super straightforward. Super straightforward. It's good Nothing wrong with it. It should should be in every tournament. It should be game one in basically every tournament Like it's a good warm-up, right Feral 4a, which I also think is a super strong scenario. I love feral 4a Um, then power struggle tectonic interference survival of the fittest the vice The only one that surprised me was more people didn't have savage gains in here But I think that's because they ruined savage gains and also because savage gains Giants break savage gains and I don't think people really like it right now for that reason. Sure. I would agree with that Um, I'm glad power numbers is down there. Yeah, the the floor at the bottom should pretty much all be there like I think apex predators power in numbers and tooth and nail And marking territory are basically just battle plan poison They're all terrible for different reasons um So like yes, none of those should be played They're all bad Like the middle set there is like okay Yeah, but the the bottom four are just their garbo scenarios Yep, where people just suddenly lose and don't know why or didn't don't even know they're they've lost Right, like that's something apex power numbers and marking territory all have in common Is that you might just be losing and not even be aware of it and you just You think you're winning you think you're winning the turn changes and somebody's like I do this and this and this you lost Oh Okay, cool neat Right, it's just it's all they're horrible scenarios Yep, okay Uh, all right win rate by tier. So here's a cool thing Uh That rob did okay. Yep Uh One of the things that that rob did was he broke up the overall armies into three tiers top tier mid tier bottom tier Okay, and that's effectively how we talked about it. So it was like the the sinister six are the top tier The mid tier is everybody rolling between like those numbers Right that 40 the sort of 45 to 55 We didn't talk about all the bottom tier like blades of corn and those other people who are 40 41 and so on and so forth Because I just I couldn't do the whole we didn't do the whole lot of wheelie did the worst of the worst There's a lot more people down at the bottom The bottom tier is all those right everybody below 45 percent And so it's a question of who's winning against That right sure. So when you look at your top tier win rate, it's a question of suns Going into only the sinister six Or zinch going into only the sinister six or so on and so forth. Okay. Yep uh and Rerolling ones jack said I played against a sons of bevin army where the opponent burned five of the six six objectives on the top of two Whatever mission that was can take a walk. It's not exact words. He used but That jack was power in numbers because that is the one that allows you to burn all of the objectives feral foray Does not it only allows you to burn one objective, which is better, right, right? You don't just suddenly lose Like like that situation right there okay So of course notably into the top tier this leads to the cannibalization Uh idea right in the top tier Uh By the way, the bone split is is a great example like bone split has shown up so high Is a great example of a data irregularity tom what you're talking about when you start segmenting this Because there actually is that when you cut it like this, there's a very low number of games where the bone spliters have played the top tier And so because they accidentally squeak data slightly higher than average number of wins Right, like the uh, yeah the underlying data there is not as robust as we would want it So there is still when you can start cutting like this. You do get you get oddities in the data. Yep But when you but a lot of these have especially like amongst the top highly played armies and the pretz problem Like bone splitters has a very low meta representation. So it's tough, right? um and Uh, but it leads to them cannibalizing each other because only three of these into the top tier actually go over 50 percent Sun's disciples and seraphon Yep Right Everybody else Is having a lower win rate against the top tier Yep, right So that's what tells me that like what's keeping us under like it's 60% and under right now What's keeping us in the fat middle? Yep is uh Is the The top cannibalizing each other and killing everything Right, but the fact that there's such a thick Uh bulkhead Right Stuff up here Um, there's a 31 gap in between the bottom being beast of chaos At 21 percent. I mean beast just struggles against the top for obvious reasons Yeah, right Uh, and the top which is sun's disciples and seraphon all at 52 When you look at mid tier Okay, you've got almost the same spread 32 percent, but it moves up right because Uh against that so when we're talking in the mid tier look who the new sudden king is Against the mid tier tom The left All right the legion of the first prince Whose control strat is so strong against those mid tier armies once they're not being bothered By their other top tier competitors who have answers for their shenanigans Right, right. They just suddenly start beating the heck out of people. By the way, this is this is going to get worse in a second Okay Yep, and then obviously sun's blumeneth daughters disciples seraphon If you look at the mid tier Right where look who the six are that are in the mid tier Yep, it's the sensor six. Yep, and they're all hitting win rates of 55 percent or higher. All right. Yep Um, so they're just making they're just pushing a lot of headway here right Um, yeah, so I thought this was a really interesting breakdown anything else stand out to you on this one No, it just it's interesting to me that like, uh Daughters actually struggles against the top other top tier armies. Yep. Um And actually has as good of a win rate as ko. Yep Which I thought was just so Fascinating, but ko so is ko in general Uh performs almost as well against the top tier armies as the mid tier armies Yep Yeah, which by the way actually doesn't surprise me too much Because and I think it does one thing It does one thing, but it does it pretty well and it's actually a pretty decent army To face a lot of what's in the top tier like a lot of what loft Wants to do ko is like I don't care You're gonna stop charging in movement cool story, right like I teleport and shoot I don't know what you thought this was but this is a different game. Bang bang Shot me down, right? Right. Suns they can lift up a giant if they need to right they can put enough heat into it um lumeneth Yeah, they're perfectly happy to shoot elves, right? They just can't get shot down themselves But yes, if they get like in the right build they can shoot up elves Daughters you just told the story, right? They can exploit the fragility of daughters and hit the units they need to hit Disciples they have a they have a better kill box than disciples do Yep, because they they have a moving kill box, correct, right? Yep. They don't have a castle kill box They have a moving kill box that has some longer range too. I would add not a tremendous amount a lot of but enough but enough Uh, you know seraphon is the only one where I think they they Can have a tough time because the new um coalesced Thunder lizard build is actually quite damaging to a lot of ko stuff because there is quite a bit of multi damage shooting in there I'm aware They're better matched into starborn Where it's like we can play the teleport move and shoot game too And then it just becomes a one one drop or it's just this dance off right for who who's the one drop Who gets the role who's shooting who's valuable stuff first yada yada yada, right? Yep. I think they have a much harder time there Yeah, okay I would point out that Just a couple other things I want to leave people with here Iron jaws in the top tier has a 39% win rate right now Okay Because it is an all melee army and a lot of the top the sinister six exploits Melee armies and shooting and stuff, right? Yep. They have good answers for somebody who wants to show up and have a punch up Okay Against the mid tier they jump to 53% they're the next one right below the sinister six They're they're just punching nerds like I get they get that middle tier Right, it's like oh my boys. That's where we want to be Yes, exactly um And so they jump right like look at that jump from they jump 14 percent In efficacy when they go into the mid tier armies your ko literally walk up. They literally walk up to the table uh iron j i j does and they're like Oh, that's unfortunate Like depending on the opponent or all this is gonna be a good game Where ko is like i'm just gonna shoot some stuff Exactly Whereas your ko turns out your your ko and their typical argo bargle of shooting Is like it only gains 2% That's it. That's all you gained by going into the mid tier. It's like They don't gain that much Right, right, right Uh, so I just thought that kind of distinction was interesting There are some really fascinating tales of who jumps where here, right Um, Igneth by the way are another big mover 41% against the top tier 53% again tied with iron draws into the mid tier, right? They're ready to exploit the middle tier Yeah, sylvaneth is the one that grabs my attention 27% in the top tier 48 in the middle 21% jump. They almost double their win chance. Yep by going into the middle tier armies. Yep. Yeah, it's crazy, right? Uh, tyler would be very happy about that change But that's I mean that right there shows you that these top like the the the sullen six are really getting their teeth kicked in by the Top tier by the top tier, right? Yeah Abaddon said what is the reason for se being so low compared to their four plus wins? There's a lot of se being played And when you when you rank it by just percentage of win rate, it gets very different. They also had a very low This is also when and when you the the trick being is that Four plus wins is just running a count up Right, whereas this is taking the overall average percentage and keep in mind several months of this data is then with their old rules Not their new rules. So they're getting dragged down by that, right? Yep, they've had a lot more four pluses since then. So, yes, sylvaneth jumping up 21% pretty good All right, tom. You ready for the real fun one? Yeah Uh Oh, some of these don't worry, autumn. We're going to get into some big skews I promise like there is I I think that 21% is a pretty big jump But like that's a crazy swing but but but low tier. Let's talk about the swing You ready you ready tom for the bottom tier win rate? Oh, yeah Into the bottom tier the new kings of the ring. That's right. They're not even in the sinister six, but they're up top, baby From the top rope. You can't stop them. They're coming with sharks They're coming with eels That's right. The Ida neth deep kin at a 76 percent Win rate against the low tier the bottom tier. There's everybody who on that previous chart who was under 45 percent So idk rolls up and they're like, oh, it's been rough. It's been rough A rough tournament, but I got knight haunt now Come here nerds Let's yeah, absolutely. Let's just chart that again everybody. Here we go So let's just walk through that. Let's follow the Ida neth example clearly low tier can't swim Yeah Absolutely So Ida neth 41 percent into the top tier Yeah, 53 percent into the mid tier 12 percent jump Yep 76 percent into the top it's sorry into the low tier into the bottom 23 percent on top 35 percent total run from From against the high to low. This is that's one of the craziest stories Insanity. Yeah. Yeah idk is like Step aside sons Literally, yes Because it's interesting like sons actually doesn't like Doesn't do it doesn't jump as much. No In a sense they play a fairer game But when idk rolls into that that that bottom tier they're just like We got all the tools Yes, uh final flash said you all float down here. Yes, indeed Once they get in the sewers, maybe it's it's time to it's time to tussle You know like you've got you've got these these abusers the legion of the first prince another one 72 Madness like they're just Brutalizing these poor armies that can't handle the control dock right Dock at 72. Yeah, it's just all that shooting Like all that mortal wound shooting. They're just like line them up And they can and they can just pull apart the small the lower tier armies. Yep And because you have a bunch of armies that were that were Um reinforcement point dependent. They were bodies dependent And now they're literally just like msu bodies What ends up happening is they go into those units into the lrl sentinels Into the snake archers and just get shot before they can even attack. Yep But we told that we told the insane story. Let's tell a sad story here. Tom. You're ready. We're gonna go back real quick Beasts of chaos are are low on the totem pole. Okay at a 21 percent against the top tier Yeah, now they shoot up to 41 percent against the mid tier mid. Yeah when they play other low tier armies They fall back to 30 percent They go down I'm so sad 11 points They're just like because amongst the losers the other losers are better at killing them than they are It's just It's the worst. Beesman players. I'm sorry. I'm sorry that you've had to suffer the humiliation of not only having your teeth kicked in by lrl but also Bone splitters by like scaven a gloops white. Yeah. Yeah Yeah So I thought that was a fascinating journey the for the poor beasts of chaos Oh Like they had hope dashed against the rocks They're like we're up to 40% win chance Mm-hmm You know get back down to your 30 You know a lot of other ones are just a story of continued uprising like iron jaws are down further in this list Yep, a lot of people jump over top of them, but they still went up 8 right, right So, um Knight haunt, baby your knight haunt 60% win rate against the lower tier those ghosts are ready to abuse the bottom tier. They're their ability. They're so spoopy The the key is mobility there. They're just like we have tools that you don't to be on the objectives that you're not sure sure. Yeah Like I Yeah, I agree. I think knight haunt is actually when you look at their fundamentals They're certainly one of the strongest of that lower tier right against their fellow nerds. They're ready to just start swinging I think like because these other the other armies down there don't really have like for example the things that are going to stop their recursion mechanics Right, right, right. That's exactly right. And that's why actually why I think that knight haunt has Potential is because at the end of the day, they they're strong in fundamentals Like they're missing a couple key pieces like anvil or like hammers. They're strong in fundamentals The key though is that uh, like with the right tricks you can outplay players on the top Yep, like you don't need to outpower them. You just have to outplay them. But yes I'd nest deep can typical argel bargle right there Just coming in with the the all the all the abusive mechanics that really hurt the low tier people Okay Oh, that's a that's a neat point. I hadn't thought about current said also the lower tier army struggled to kill knight haunt Like to pass that because knight haunt does have some of that as well And a lot of the lower tier armies also have awful bravery That's a good point. And that's very true. A lot of those lower tier armies have some pretty poor bravery and uh, uh, Olander Yeah swinging on with her mortal wounds spam Whereas a lot of those upper tier armies are like much higher bravery people True true. Okay So I thought this one was super fun Uh, yeah win rate by tier is a is a good time. I love the the story that we the journey we go on with some of these armies, right? Oh One more just quick story to tell here as we look at it is uh Is flesh eater courts Flesh eater courts are very poor into the top tier at like 38 percent They shoot up to kind of where we would expect 48 percent around the mid tier But into the low tier they only gain two more points But they but they but again being at 50 is not terrible It's not it just feels like I would have expected them to jump more It tells you that the army has a lot of fundamental problems right now Right that that that like their problem of command abilities that don't stack with each other anymore And just a there are a lot a lot a lot a lot a lot a lot of fundamental challenges with that army right No, so there you go And I think that that tells that story really well when you look at an army like that that used to be a king of the ring Right. Yep, and you see that even into the bottom tier they still can't gain that much Right. It tells you a lot About their overall efficacy, right? They've just got big challenges big headwinds. Okay All right meta representation we've been dancing around this one for a little while. Let's talk about some meta representation uh, so Uh, this is your overall percentage in the meta like how much does this army show up, right? um Sons of bad month 7.3 sole blight 7.1 seraphon 6.8 stormcast 6.6 lumeneth 6.2 iron jaws 5.9 I would love a trend line on these. I don't have one but uh stats team if you happen to watch this if we can get a trend line report of this In your tableau visualizations, I assume you're using tableau for this I don't know that for sure, but if you are I would really love a trend line report um I spend all my day I spend a lot not all my day I spend parts of my day doing requirements for analytics and reports now I get to spend my for him or evenings doing that too Anything in this oh, you know, and then you've got the people down at the bottom I I just love how no one plays heat knights anymore That army used to have a quite a significant meta representation um, it was never up at the top But it like it had a good representation even at its height, but now it's just Get out of here longer. Yeah beasts big wah bone splitters I mean big one bone splitters are honestly barely armies anymore I don't mean that with any insult. I just That's what the game seems to be telling me That's no judgment And uh, so What anything on here grab your attention? Yes, exactly bone splitters at point six explains the funky top tier stat correct That's I'm saying they're their representation so low at skew some of the data. Um, the thing that grabs me initially is uh blades night haunt and cruel boys All at sub 2.5 percent Given that they're all starter armies for the last three editions Yeah, the cruel boys could be a production issue Right like keep in mind We're talking about this is on all results since the launch of 3.0 And a lot of the cruel boys army wasn't even available for many months of 3.0 And people had to paint those because they didn't have those didn't exist beforehand Right, but let me point out that night haunt and blades Were the first and second edition and they're still really low Even though those models are profuse Like if you want armies that like where the models are easy to get a hold of right like easy starter armies Both night haunt and blades would be in that category and yet both of them are terrible Yeah, yep Um, I would point out your loft Your legion of the first prince clocking it at that two percent number that shows just how far above its weight It's punching right right, right Well, it's like fire slayers fire slayers used to like punch really heavy and it's always been at that two percent mark 1.92 percent. It's never been an attractive Uh aesthetic that people bought into I mean in every one of our surveys we did It was consistently either the bottom or second from the bottom on armies played Yep, like on aesthetics and all that. Yeah, right either people rating it on the aesthetics actual number of people playing it everywhere Yeah, I I mean I feel truly uh Singular, I mean, I know I'm not I know Kenny's out there playing fire slayers or has fire Sure, there's not a there's not a lot of mean he hasn't been playing as fire slayers, right? You know recently I know right he went over to play ogres because he decided he wanted to have fun Well, sure, but that's the point right is that there's like there's just not a lot of people that have those armies Yeah Yeah the You know what I love about this the maw tribes representation 4.9 clock it in basically a five percent. Let's just call it an even five. Okay Yep, uh Maw tribes players You're all heroes every one of you Your army it's been it's it's never been the best. It's also never been the worst And whether it's monster trucks or fat boys you're rolling. I don't care These people who play ogres they showed up to play ogres. That's why they're here They love ogres. They want to play ogres. They're sticking with ogres Right? Yep, they're sticking with the fort. They're there So, um You know like I'm I love it I think it's great Uh, how much of the five percent is the heiwo effect? I I hope heiwo is single-handedly bolstering that by by convincing people to keep playing it I don't think heiwo has been to a lot of tournaments recently. So it's not it's not him But they're but your hero is one and all every one of you ogre players Uh So yeah, yeah, I mean like let me just say as somebody pointed out the Uh Somebody said their surprise oc arc is so high at 3.7 Whoa Let's remember That a year ago they were 10 percent, right? Yeah, that's true Yep, so they're way down A year ago oc arc was 10 of the meta. Yeah During the height of petrifex elite nonsense. Yep Now what I will say is fascinating to me is that like we used to have multiples. I like that 9 10 11 percent sure and now The highest 7.3. Sure That's surprising to me We have a lot more down in the two and a half percent or lower Yeah, and when I look at this like so blight their meta representation they're they're like Their meta representation is higher than their win rate would suggest Yeah, does that make sense? I'm saying it's clearly One of the interesting things that this Can define for me is when an ascetic ascetic aesthetic Is strong enough To carry the army to carry the army and to me that's so blight Right, nothing. It's a losing army. By the way, it's it's got a An almost perfect win rate where we would want it, right? It's like it does fine It does fine. It's right in the middle. It's right in the middle the middle It's the middle of the middle of the fat middle But it's popular and like but the key is is that we are in the heart of like the sole blight boom Because they drop this spring give them six months to paint or after that six month hump So the bulk of your armies after release are all out and on the table You know the same can't be said of like storm cast You know or particularly cruel boys cruel boys, they're certainly like An example of that. Sure. Sure Um, it's amazing to me. I will be honest with you tom I am amazed that lumineff have held up as long as they have is that just power Is that just people meta chasing or do people really love high-ups or some of them? No, no, no, that's meta chasing Okay, like let's not I like let's not I don't think the lumineff aesthetic. I mean this is my read I don't think that it's that popular I think that that that that is literally the power Play okay, okay interesting Uh, yeah, and then there's a lot of stuff in the middle, you know, it's a big middle bunch that doesn't surprise me too much Um Gits they may be at the bottom of every win rate list But boy oh boy are two and a half percent of the people more than night haunt More than blades more than fire slayers Them gits players just like the ogre players destruction bros Know how to roll Like I think suns is the most popular army one because it only takes four figs or Or six figs depending on how you build it to play it. Okay, that's exactly right two Because destruction bros for life like people who roll destruction love destruction and want to play their destruction armies They're timmies as yes, they're they're like it attracts timmies I'm a destruction player. I've come to learn this by myself Hence the ogre maw tribes and gits representation And giant you're like, oh my gosh. Yes, you have everything but gits. I have everything but gits. Yeah, correct Correct and I mean come on at some point you're going to do this quick squig army. It'll Probably uh, what is the date of the honest war gamer data? Uh, this was as of his last stat shows. This would have been Last Monday Last Monday whatever that was like so Nine days ago or something I think he posted this up on Tuesday hit the blog so Um Okay, so it's about a week old um the But yeah, like I think that's what it's so my point is yes, sons are easy to collect. Yes, they're strong But also destruction bros. It's everything. It's the it's my point is it's the nexus of everything coming together, right? Yep So I like if you if we if we end up getting a nerf to sons in some way Or a rewrite like that percentage you'll drop but it won't fall through the floor Do you think amela destiny would do that? Sure. I pick something. I don't care like make the army tangibly weaker in one of 100 ways You will see a drop of course because that's what happens right some amount of all high percentage meta armies are meta chasing, right? some percentage But to me you're still going to see that sons showing up at a large percentage for The foreseeable future Okay, uh Crack it said people also 3d print all the models also true You don't even have to buy the actual giants You can just 3d print them or just buy any of the like 100 different other big giant models Which are around and quite easy to utilize as well quite cheaply Okay positive win rate potential, uh, this is a cool thing Uh This is uh, pwrp pwp. I don't know positive win potential This is what this is a on what honest wargamer came up with and I like this. I really like this take on it So your positive win rate potential is your Uh, is that armies? Combined win percentage Where it go where it went? Three at least three wins So where where it went three two four one or five one Okay So it's representation From the list from all turnies where that list In where where a sons of badminton lists like of all sons of badminton lists that were entered in turnies To put this in perspective like this 68 of them Got at least three wins or more Okay now David Aaron says the stat that rob really doesn't understand. I love you rob Rob says rob will often say so this is your chance of going three wins or more at an event. No No That is not what this means at all. That's not how stats work That's you can't translate back to the individual like that stats are an aggregate They don't go back to the individual your chance of going three four or five wins to the tournament is based on a myriad number of factors Uh, certainly not this Um But this is an absolutely fascinating uh stat and You know Fruie just asked a great question, which is what is an ideal practical range for every army to sit between 40 to 60 45 to 55 And my honest answer is i'm not sure I'd have to think about that like I don't I I don't know when I think about the win rate It's easy because that's a sort of well established science when you look at just the overall win rate There's lots of competitive games that have sort of tested and used the 45 to 55 percent Uh metric for a long time Uh, and so that one's sort of well established in the industry This is a new interesting stat And I don't know what the ildl range would be. I have to think about that. That's a really great question Ryan said rob is just giving a figure of speech. I know he is but the way he says it I also don't want somebody new who doesn't know how to have understand data science to misinterpret his figure of speech Okay Yep Um, and I'm just ribbing in many ways. I I'm deeply grateful to rob and the stats team for putting this all together Uh, rob is going to be on the show in a couple weeks, uh, and we're going to talk a little stats But we're also going to talk rule design I am super excited to have rob on and talk about rule design by the by Hey quick shout out everybody on rob. This is late in the show. We're going to interrupt our interrupting our scheduled broadcast to say two things one Hey hit like if you haven't already don't forget to hit that like button do that We appreciate it. It helps other people find the show So slam that button Um, subscribe if you haven't already two Tom, did you know rob is being interviewed by the bbc about warhammer tomorrow? No, I don't that's amazing. That should have been in the news section That's my I'm sleeping on that. Yes Honest wargamer rob is going to get interviewed. I am excited. I think he's good I think he's a Going to be a great ambassador for the hobby. Honestly, I think he'll I think he'll give a great interview It literally is what he did professionally for a long time and sure he's he's great at speaking about this stuff I look forward to what he has to say. So I check it up. Check out bbc news. I'm going to look up his article tomorrow um Okay, so anyways back to this um the So sun's 68th percent tom 68 percent of an army with a seven point three percent representation in the meta, right? They show up a lot Okay, this is a commonly played army And 68 percent of them Are achieving three or more wins three three plus, you know, three four five It's crazy That's too much right like let's let's start talking about how we get to a range like that's too high right I mean, that's clearly too high It has to be That means seven out of ten armies Seven out of ten suns are players in a tournament. Yeah seven out of ten suns players in a tournament are Getting three or more wins. That's pretty strong. That's too much Like that's clearly too much like you should be probably around between five and six of the ten Well, let's think about this right so I need to like how many people go three two or more in a tournament. What's what's the field look like, right? Like because it it spreads unevenly And groups toward the middle right because the nature of the swiss system Like I think the three and two and two and three Is that that those two ratios Are going to take up like 60. I think Of your wins of your of your armies First of all, I want to meet the sun's players who end up two one or two three. Sorry For some reason I want to say that it's like 60 25 60 And then 35 split. I think the next two may be And then five percent split the last yeah to think about how people should arrange I need to think about how the the swiss pairings over five rounds Naturally will tend to push people like and that would give you your answer, right? That's like my god Like I would need to see the math of it But like my gut is something like 60 for the middle two 35 so when I say 60 30 and 30 for two and three and three and two And then uh, approximately like 17 on the front and back of the foreign ones Or the one and fours and then I think two and a half percent on the five and os and the one fives I think it's something like that. Sure. I mean, I like that's that's me like eyeballing it But I think that that's the math should it should be a bell curve around that area That's that's what I'm thinking. Yes. Yes, that makes sense By the way, uh, breaking news. I just got an updated trend line of meta percentage Since uh, September basically the beginning of september to now And you can see the inflection point where the auric war cleanse book comes out This is like this is on my phone. You can't really see it, but you see this one green line shooting to the moon That's iron jaws Yeah That's uh, and winded uh winded, uh Uh Tyler get his uh army Well the same time. Yeah a little bit before. Yeah. Uh, maybe it's just Tyler single-handedly. There you go Yeah, that's what your paint does for people I think it's funny the way this list is distributed, right Because this list is definitely much wider and again, I need to I don't I think it should be But I don't like it should probably be wider than the traditional win rate percentage But I don't know how much wider certainly not this white is my feeling That's just a feeling, right? Yeah And I mean ideally I think you'd want to be in the 40 to 60 percent that feels like probably right Like that feels like the fat middle is going to rear its head again, right because if you think about it What is getting two wins amount to it's a 40 percent win rate, right? And getting three wins is a 60 win rate, right? That's that's the dividing line. It's pretty straightforward math, right? Right So my thought is you'd want to see people grouping around that Yep um And there is a lot that fall out of here out the bottom of this like a lot true. It's true City Sylvaneth stormcast, which is probably not true anymore, but it was right over I was gonna say the one that surprises me here is cities. Sure How is city so low? Uh, let's look at their meta representation again. So city's meta representation. Where are they here? 4.3 percent. So quite a high meta representation But they're probably a pretty finicky army to play right now So you think that there's just a bunch of bad like there's a bunch of I think it's an easy army to go to three to three with Yeah, that's in the in the current meta. Interestingly when you jump back even further um to positive, uh, not positive, uh, that's down up to the win rate here by tier The bottom even Even it's like cities are still only 43 against the lowest tier armies. Yeah, sure Yeah, if you're not picking up against the the low tier, you're not you're not like That's how you're getting that easy three two, right? If you're if you're kicking puppies, right? Right when you're dropping to bottom tables and still winning that like that's what bumps you to that three two, right? um the But there's just so much that falls out the bottom and I think when you look at the top it is interesting because this is It's hard to track like with positive win rate potential It's you really do have to think about it in terms of meta representation as well and things like that because it's interesting How those two can tie together what the army favors, you know, like with legion the first prince they have this It's 67 percent, which is effectively tied with suns, right? Like let's again assume all these have a plus or minus at least a couple percentage points Is our level of confidence, right? Like any like any survey like this we would assume this is Like that's this number of results. We're going to assume confidence, right? You know plus or minus three percent something like that, right? It's probably where the truth is And so those two numbers are effectively equal right And with legion You have such a lower meta percentage But the people who are playing them almost by nature Have to be experts, right? Like it is an army that speaks to a certain type of player Yeah, the players are ourself selecting up there. Yeah, right and it also as we saw it does perform very strongly into The low into the low tier like it is a hardcore puppy kicker Yeah, right Generating bad experiences. Yeah, sure absolutely like into the low tier and mid tier. It's just brutal It just brutalizes them right and You know, there's there's obviously a pretty strong correlation between positive win rate potential and how you play Into the mid and low tier Yep, yep, because generally two to three of your games are going to be into mid and low tier Just right because that's how swiss works, right? You're just randomly paired Right, it's not always the case. Sometimes you can get a bad draw. Sometimes you might end up being like, you know Suns suns seraphon doc It's just like, oh great, you know, like that can happen But that's not the sort of the modal is that you would be spread because all these armies are present Right, so two to three of your games are going to be against mid or low tier And if you're picking up those wins easily, you're just you're just you're just running up the clock right, right Okay Uh All right, anything else jump out to you on positive win rate potential. It's a very cool stat It's really interesting. It's something I want to think a lot more about I think it it's interesting because it shows just how bad Some of these armies are performing in a very real way Right, because when you look at overall win rate, like scaven and gloom spite, they're getting credit Effectively for the one or two wins they pick up at every tournament even though that's still a bad tournament experience Right, right. It's a losing record as it were. Yep Whereas here you really see you're not getting credit for those one or two wins Since this is a first pass the post calculation Yeah, right. Yeah, and so the armies that are Underperforming that are at the bottom Really see it because all of a sudden the only wins they have that counts are when they get at least the three two Yeah, when at least they put a winning record on the board Yeah And like gets at 17 percent Holy moses right Like that means again, we'll be generous two in 10 Of the gets players that show up at a tournament are gonna are gonna go At least three two If there are 10 gets players there aren't but still i'm just you know saying right Um That's a that's a scary stat that is woof You better like your army Yeah Yeah, you ain't wrong Okay, I mean hey gets players who write or die. So, you know, it doesn't surprise me I mean, I got a bunch of basketballs over there. Sure all right percent of finishes Okay So this kind of gets into this is just exploring positive win rate at a deeper level right because now we're going to get into the five win four win Three win and these will be like these are percentages whereas before when we looked at four plus it grouped four and five together You know and so on and so forth. There's slightly different data sets but This is I think a whole a different way to slice and dice the data that's really interesting so five win finish rates means the percentage of Armies that have been up at the tournament that have appeared at the tournament right that got five wins So you had to win all five rounds. You went five and oh effectively, right? and the six any six Round tournaments were filtered out of this for this. Okay Look at that again. The bone splitter's number is not correct. That's that super low data set Being skewed by one player because we've segmented the data too far Um, they're they're super low meta representation because this is a percentage of all of the times they've shown up right oof poor ko 1% that's not you by the way tom Just so you know I know it's not you because I don't believe he I don't believe the stats team put Into this data set because they ruled it too different than a normal tournament because of the two list format Yeah, um, so they there was only like three ko five those anyways. I mean like there's just not a lot. Yeah um Yeah, but yeah that 1% like what in the like mall tribes and like we've seen sylvanas Down at the bottom. We've seen knight haunt down at the bottom. Mm-hmm but ko obr mall tribes i'm pretty sure those obr all are all are all o and jackson by the way Or at least like most of them are o and jackson That is truly one player lifting that number right Wow the thing that shocked me about this one is The disciples being so far outside the curve Yeah, racking up so many five plus wins Like you look at this and it's a pretty steady progression, right? One two three four five six nine And the six isn't real right remember the six is it is an incorrect skew from a bad data Set from a bad amount of underlying data Yep, so that means it jumps from five percent with legion to nine percent with disciples Yep, right AOS short said oan has six four and one results this season with obr It's pretty good It's pretty good Well, he's definitely the one that's pushing it to nine percent in that form the oan jackson. That is right The man the myth the legend Okay All right the four win finish rate, so this is obviously you went four and one right specifically four and one Yeah, okay It is funny by the way that karadrin do jump up quite a bit. We see that tom right right they My guess is there's often a Thing that is going to answer karadrin pretty well. It's a very hard army to get 5o with But a well built well played Uh KO list is you know Can be quite strong because a lot of that you're just you're just rolling that ice Like when you get to the 5o game and what is that last matchup? right Right, uh seraphon disciples legion sons lumeneth daughters Guess what we've got there tom in the four plus win rate. Who is it? It's our old friends The sinister six oliver said does this result or the does this include the precog nerf? Yes, this goes back to the beginning of aos three So this is like those disciples numbers are factoring in the pre pre before the the cogs nerf. Yes, correct Uh, there's where you really see the sinister six being just like starting their dominance Right because remember every four one of these is an 80 percent every four one is an is an 80% win rate. Yep, right Uh, oh does the honest wargamer four win finish rate include four wins and one draw? Yes. Yes, it does shorts. Yes um You know, it's and I think part of the challenge here tom Is as you know, well The difference between four and five getting four and five wins Is often time a mix of a lot of different factors. Yeah other than the army itself, right? That fifth win when you're on the top tables table one two three four playing for five. Oh, right or something like that Yep It's dice. It's scenario. It's matchup. It's player scale There's just a lot of ephemeral nature a lot of luck And you'll see that because you you'll see the same players Be in the top ten every time but they'll Flop around on positions, right, right, right? We go there first and they got seventh and they got third and they got fifth and they got first again, right? They'll kind of bounce around Because they'll and the difference will be in the are they in the four one bracket or the five o bracket Because there's a lot of luck to let to getting into the five o bracket right place right time right list right scenario right dice So And there's so much there's so much ephemeral To going five o at a time. It's really hard and it's it's there's a lot of it. That's out of your control Whereas the four plus I think is much more informed by your overall skill Right, right Although army obviously influences. I mean as we can see here the army's playing a strong a strong Place right because again the sinister six is showing up here Yep And then at the the interestingly if you look at suns uh Suns by the way in the um In the the five o Yep Still good five percent right not bad Over here 22 in the four plus But up here is where they dominate right in the three plus win right suns and daughters Dominating the top of this list along with legions Yep, all right Interestingly oc arc bone reapers flesh-eater courts These are the two I did not expect to show up here That flesh-eater is really interesting Yeah, especially since They have a pretty poor win rate overall And don't but but but remember against the mid tier Remember how against the mid tier they were in the low tier they were clocking right around 50% Yep, yep, this is what's pushing that that yes that tells me that they're really good at going 32 Yeah, right because we go back to the four one. They're way down here four percent right Here this massive jump up to 38 It is the army of going 32 Yeah, it is you still got enough Excuse me gas in the tank But you can beat up some nerds you can play pretty well into the mid And low tier and then you hit any high tier army and you're dead in the water instantly Right yep And so to me that's just that's exactly what's happening there Uh, again, that's my inference. I don't know that for sure. We don't know any of this for sure. This is all our punditry You know as to what's happening trying to infer from the data And and map these correlations. It's almost impossible to get causation out of the data at best We can say these things are correlating Anything else grab you out of this tom with the uh with the three Uh finish or the four or five um No, no it like all of it it like it all of it is fascinating Yeah, this is a great data set. It really is right. Um, I think there's there's so much to look at here Uh, so yeah, there you go. But that's it folks. That brings us to the end. There we go. That's all of the that's all the stats now So, um, so let me can I point something out real quick? Um, so michael ross said in a perfect five round swiss with 128 players He said four should be at five. Oh 20 should be a four and one 40 should be at three or two Okay, um, so do you remember the numbers that I broke down? Yeah, I said it was 60 which means that 60 would have been in the the two Like three two and two and three So three two by him, uh, 40 Uh divided by 128 is 31 Hmm So that so I'd get I'd guess 30 on each of those. Yeah, he's saying 31 On each of those and then when you go out to the foreign ones 20 of 128 Is 15.6 percent Nice, I said 15. Yeah. Yeah, it's cool. No good. And then the last two was, uh, four in Four in 128, which is three percent, which is basically That five percent on the on the two ends. Gotcha. Okay, so yep Um, so hey, there we go It put in that degree to work tom Uh For reset is this data available in a spreadsheet? Uh, it is not Right now you if you want to go check this out. There's a link Down below to the honest wargamer website if you look in the blog posts It's the most recent stats blog posts a new stats blog post goes up every time he does it They are honest wargamer is looking at they're getting the hosting sorted for where they can host this Actually, so people can interact with the dashboard and begin doing their own slicing and dicing of the data So go check that out. Um, I don't know when he plans to launch that Maybe he'll talk about it when he when he's on the show in a couple weeks I'm excited for that when he actually like it. So they think this is a rather complicated thing to host But they are gonna they are gonna put this data up so you can publicly, you know, like Drill through and stuff like that It's I don't know if they're actually using tableau, but it feels very tableau-ish But so you'll be able to interact with it Um, so go check that out and like I said the the four plus wins and the trend lines that's all on aos shorts site That's also linked down below. So go check that out. Um, he has a lot of great breakdowns of that kind of thing All right, well, there we go. That's the current meta We'll have to see what happens when we get our balanced data slate I thought this was good to lay this down So we understand that like some of these armies that are hurting They're really hurting and like talk about why and some of these armies that are winning They're really winning Right, right and we need to understand like the variety of factors and some of it points just isn't going to fix it right Right, well, you can't fix most of the sullen six by points as we talked about right, right Right, and that's and that's that's my big complaint is that like Just jacking up the points on sentinels isn't going to actually change the problem, right We need to do more Right, there's gonna have to be real tangible changes. So there we go. Everybody. That's the stats. Go check out those sites for more details Uh, don't forget nergal next week. Get ready for the grandfather's blessing I have so many thoughts. I've been watching the uh, the whatsapp stuff Sure. Oh, I'm sure. Yeah, the nergal channel is exploded very explosive right now It is it is and I have so many thoughts. So uh, and you'll get all of them next week folks It's gonna be a fun show So check that look for that. Uh, it'll be an early show next week. Tom, you don't have to talk about that See if you actually can do it because it won't be a normal time show next week. So you might not Uh, but anyways Look for that soon, uh, don't forget to hit that like subscribe if you haven't already as always everybody We really appreciate you watching and we'll see you next wednesday