Post by hocestbellum on Jul 19, 2018 13:29:13 GMT
There's been a bit of activity regarding the state of Khador in the tournament meta, with podcasts addressing the matter from both positive and negative angles and generating a lot of interesting discussion.
A cornerstone of several areas of discussion was that on Discount Games, Khador has not had a top three placement in a non-team tournament since February, whereas other factions such as Trolls, Cygnar, and especially Cryx, were simply crushing everything.
There were a couple of subsets to this that I found pretty interesting: one theory was that it was more player-based than army-based: there were high-skill players making factions look good, rather than the factions themselves being good. Another theory was that the success of certain armies was more to do with specific boogeyman lists they could field, and as such you needed to have answers for those lists.
I had a bit of free time, so I did some digging on Discount Games, going back through the last 25 non-team tournaments and seeing what came up.
Overall breakdown:
Of the 75 top three placements, Cryx have 16. Trolls, Mercs, and Cygnar all have 9. Circle have 7. Grymkin and Legion have 6, Skorne 4, Cyriss and Menoth 3, Retribution 2, and Minions 1. Poor old Khador has 0.
Analysis:
I'm going to ignore the factions with three or less.
Skorne (4) had an Animantarax in every list pairing, which implies a heavy dependency, but outside of that the 9 lists contained 6 different warlocks over 3 different themes. Raseth WoD was no more common than Zaadesh Warhost or Makeda2 Masters of War. Although the sample size is small, it seems that there is a wide range of winning lists despite the high incidence of the Animantarax.
Grymkin (6) I was hesitant to include these guys, as they are a limited faction, but there is a superficially interesting observation to be made; on first glance their top pairing appears to be Child/Heretic, representing 50% of list pairings. However, it is also the case that all of these placings are by a player listed as Gonzo; all the lists are identical. This harks back to the question of player skill/caster power; outside of Gonzo, those casters are no more successful than any other.
Legion (6) They had an interesting selection of lists, particularly with regards to the spread of themes, but at the same time, all the Children of the Dragon lists were Thagrosh1 being played at the same event in South Ontario. That's a clear example of a local meta thing if ever I saw one. There was a tendency towards double throne lists.
Circle Orboros (7) Of the 14 lists, 13 are Bones of Orboros. Circle clearly have one good theme, and dammit they are sticking to it. The standout casters were Thorle (5), Kreuger2 (4), and Baldur1 (3). But again, there's a specific name. Tomasz Mucha represents three of those 7 placements, and he runs Thorle/Kreuger2. Whilst Bones is almost certainly the theme being used regardless, the actual caster usage is being heavily skewed by one player.
Cygnar (9) But if you thought Circle were being skewed, check out Cygnar. It seems Cygnar are doing really well in joint second, but in fact it's Brent Simon. If he was a faction he'd come in 7th, ahead of Cygnar itself. He has 5 of their 9 wins. The data seems to indicate a strong favouring of Gravediggers, with a leaning towards Haley3 and Siege2, but it's almost entirely him. Outside of his results there is no dominant caster or theme, so this is clearly a case of the player skill over caster power.
Trollbloods (9) are another interesting one; there isn't a single dominant player... there's three. Tim Banky, Chris Dancocks and Jaden Iwaasa are the Troll Triad. Borka2 is in every pairing without exception, with the others being Madrak1, Grim1, and Kolgrima. There wasn't really an overall winner theme-wise, but it's clear that these guys favour Borka2 + another.
But there's another wrinkle here; these guys tend to win multiple events very close together. Chris Dancocks won two events at Grotscon. Tim Banky placed in two at Lock and Load. It seems like the Troll victories are doubling down on their very good players; placing at four cons is good, but when you're getting two placements apiece from three of them your numbers skyrocket)
Mercenaries (9) have the same thing: There are three players accounting for most of the wins (8 of 9). Also, quite literally every winning pairing has Ossrum Irregulars with very similar lists. The secondary list changes by player; Jeff Everit runs Ashlynn, but the others don't, for example.
Cryx (16) Yeah, I don't really need to analyse these guys much. 12 different winners. 8 different casters. Every theme represented. If you are facing Dark Host, it'll almost certainly be Skarre1. If you're facing BI, it will be Gaspy3 or Denny2. But there's such a huge amount of variation in the other lists that you can't simply assume that you will face DH + BI. You will almost certainly face one of the two, (probably BI), but they have a wide stable of casters and themes, and after a certain point the sheer number of lists means almost everything will come up. One thing you can say, though, is that there isn't any one player skewing Cryx; they are just winning left right and centre. I suspect that this is down to a larger number of good themes and casters making it easier to build varied list pairings. Hopefully the other factions will eventually catch up when their themes are adjusted.
Conclusions:
There is a very strong case to be made for the representation on DG being heavily skewed by the stronger players; this is possibly an endorsement of the Muse on Minis podcast implying that Khador is currently lacking 'Big Names'. There were certainly several factions with near 50% representation by a single player.
But there were certainly cases where there are obvious strong list archetypes or elements. Ossrum Irregulars, Circle Bones, Black Industries, the Animantarax are all examples of extreme representation, but outside of Ossrum all of the lists had enough variation that preparing for too specific a list might actually hinder you. Preparing for Gaspy3 slayerspam and then meeting the Denny2 Black Industries would leave you very unprepared.
Overall I think this just reinforces one of the points in the chickenslayer podcast: prepare for your meta. If you've got a skilled player locally, you need to worry more about beating him than you do, say, Tim Banky.
So let's get out there and play what we feel like playing. I'm going to try my Sorscha1 Jaws of the Wolf list this evening, because I think it will beat my Cryx buddy. Will it beat Matt McWatters' Denny2 BI list? Probably not. But he's on a different continental landmass.
Wish me luck!
A cornerstone of several areas of discussion was that on Discount Games, Khador has not had a top three placement in a non-team tournament since February, whereas other factions such as Trolls, Cygnar, and especially Cryx, were simply crushing everything.
There were a couple of subsets to this that I found pretty interesting: one theory was that it was more player-based than army-based: there were high-skill players making factions look good, rather than the factions themselves being good. Another theory was that the success of certain armies was more to do with specific boogeyman lists they could field, and as such you needed to have answers for those lists.
I had a bit of free time, so I did some digging on Discount Games, going back through the last 25 non-team tournaments and seeing what came up.
Overall breakdown:
Of the 75 top three placements, Cryx have 16. Trolls, Mercs, and Cygnar all have 9. Circle have 7. Grymkin and Legion have 6, Skorne 4, Cyriss and Menoth 3, Retribution 2, and Minions 1. Poor old Khador has 0.
Analysis:
I'm going to ignore the factions with three or less.
Skorne (4) had an Animantarax in every list pairing, which implies a heavy dependency, but outside of that the 9 lists contained 6 different warlocks over 3 different themes. Raseth WoD was no more common than Zaadesh Warhost or Makeda2 Masters of War. Although the sample size is small, it seems that there is a wide range of winning lists despite the high incidence of the Animantarax.
Grymkin (6) I was hesitant to include these guys, as they are a limited faction, but there is a superficially interesting observation to be made; on first glance their top pairing appears to be Child/Heretic, representing 50% of list pairings. However, it is also the case that all of these placings are by a player listed as Gonzo; all the lists are identical. This harks back to the question of player skill/caster power; outside of Gonzo, those casters are no more successful than any other.
Legion (6) They had an interesting selection of lists, particularly with regards to the spread of themes, but at the same time, all the Children of the Dragon lists were Thagrosh1 being played at the same event in South Ontario. That's a clear example of a local meta thing if ever I saw one. There was a tendency towards double throne lists.
Circle Orboros (7) Of the 14 lists, 13 are Bones of Orboros. Circle clearly have one good theme, and dammit they are sticking to it. The standout casters were Thorle (5), Kreuger2 (4), and Baldur1 (3). But again, there's a specific name. Tomasz Mucha represents three of those 7 placements, and he runs Thorle/Kreuger2. Whilst Bones is almost certainly the theme being used regardless, the actual caster usage is being heavily skewed by one player.
Cygnar (9) But if you thought Circle were being skewed, check out Cygnar. It seems Cygnar are doing really well in joint second, but in fact it's Brent Simon. If he was a faction he'd come in 7th, ahead of Cygnar itself. He has 5 of their 9 wins. The data seems to indicate a strong favouring of Gravediggers, with a leaning towards Haley3 and Siege2, but it's almost entirely him. Outside of his results there is no dominant caster or theme, so this is clearly a case of the player skill over caster power.
Trollbloods (9) are another interesting one; there isn't a single dominant player... there's three. Tim Banky, Chris Dancocks and Jaden Iwaasa are the Troll Triad. Borka2 is in every pairing without exception, with the others being Madrak1, Grim1, and Kolgrima. There wasn't really an overall winner theme-wise, but it's clear that these guys favour Borka2 + another.
But there's another wrinkle here; these guys tend to win multiple events very close together. Chris Dancocks won two events at Grotscon. Tim Banky placed in two at Lock and Load. It seems like the Troll victories are doubling down on their very good players; placing at four cons is good, but when you're getting two placements apiece from three of them your numbers skyrocket)
Mercenaries (9) have the same thing: There are three players accounting for most of the wins (8 of 9). Also, quite literally every winning pairing has Ossrum Irregulars with very similar lists. The secondary list changes by player; Jeff Everit runs Ashlynn, but the others don't, for example.
Cryx (16) Yeah, I don't really need to analyse these guys much. 12 different winners. 8 different casters. Every theme represented. If you are facing Dark Host, it'll almost certainly be Skarre1. If you're facing BI, it will be Gaspy3 or Denny2. But there's such a huge amount of variation in the other lists that you can't simply assume that you will face DH + BI. You will almost certainly face one of the two, (probably BI), but they have a wide stable of casters and themes, and after a certain point the sheer number of lists means almost everything will come up. One thing you can say, though, is that there isn't any one player skewing Cryx; they are just winning left right and centre. I suspect that this is down to a larger number of good themes and casters making it easier to build varied list pairings. Hopefully the other factions will eventually catch up when their themes are adjusted.
Conclusions:
There is a very strong case to be made for the representation on DG being heavily skewed by the stronger players; this is possibly an endorsement of the Muse on Minis podcast implying that Khador is currently lacking 'Big Names'. There were certainly several factions with near 50% representation by a single player.
But there were certainly cases where there are obvious strong list archetypes or elements. Ossrum Irregulars, Circle Bones, Black Industries, the Animantarax are all examples of extreme representation, but outside of Ossrum all of the lists had enough variation that preparing for too specific a list might actually hinder you. Preparing for Gaspy3 slayerspam and then meeting the Denny2 Black Industries would leave you very unprepared.
Overall I think this just reinforces one of the points in the chickenslayer podcast: prepare for your meta. If you've got a skilled player locally, you need to worry more about beating him than you do, say, Tim Banky.
So let's get out there and play what we feel like playing. I'm going to try my Sorscha1 Jaws of the Wolf list this evening, because I think it will beat my Cryx buddy. Will it beat Matt McWatters' Denny2 BI list? Probably not. But he's on a different continental landmass.
Wish me luck!
