Interesting read.
Unit seen as good > unit gets targeted > unit doesn’t perform as expected > you ditch unit in v2 list
Unit general perceived as rubbish > unit gets ignored > unit does something that wins game > pick more in v2
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I think that’s right. Frostfang cav are the easy example here. Everyone sees 30 attacks with crushing and strider and focuses on them, which means they don’t actually do much because they’re perceived as good. I think the trick is to find units that people ignore. My example here is a horde of villein bowmen. They’re a block of 19/21 nerve with 3 US for 165 points. They’ll put out 2-3 wounds per turn, which is enough to be annoying but not enough to invest the resources into removing or shutting them down (with phalanx, the usual fast cav or flyers are a bad match up). So you get a unit that isn’t great on paper but performs better in person because people overlook it. Weird game-theory dynamic where people’s perceptions of unit effectiveness in turn drives unit effectiveness.
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This is very interesting.
It’s good to have precise data across many games, that’s for sure. There are plenty of different metrics to compare - damage received to damage dealt is, IMO the easiest one to evaluate. You could give a numeric value to this (y) as well, and compare that to points costs. I’m thinking that might give the best “overall” and “objective” idea of how units have performed during those games. I know points costs aren’t everything, but it can be pretty significant.
But I’m a sucker for subjective values and qualitative analysis metrics as well. I’m glad you added the “performance rating”. You could be even more accurate with that, I think, combining your own opinions of how well the units performed with your opponents. Ask them after the game if they thought those snow foxes did their job in the game. It should be easy enough for your opponent to quickly give a 1 to 5 numeric value for the units during post-game banter. Compare them to the value you gave to give another side to the bias.
Cudos for going through the trouble! These are always interesting to be sure.
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Yep, I actually do track that as well. I debated including it in the post but decided to err on the side of brevity. I track points per damage, points per damage received, and points per total average damage (a combination metric). When I view it, I typically view it for non-individuals. For some programming reasons, it’s a hassle to include the cost of spells/items/etc. (another table to join, and they can be tweaked across editions). But it does give a rough, high-level view of how units perform.
I debated asking opponents to rate unit performance as well (to your point), but I suspect that’s a bit too onerous to ask. We’ll see. I try to minimize the impact on everyone else when I’m gathering all my data. 
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Yes, for sure!
I can’t claim credit for the definitions. They came from Victoria Wargaming ( Victoria Wargaming). Roughly quantified, they’re:
| Leader | ‘Inspiring’ or ‘Very Inspiring’ |
|---|---|
| Grounder | Individual, Height >=3, Speed >=8 |
| Buffer | Has at least one spell |
| Missile | Individual, >=3 attacks, Speed >=5 |
| Shock | (1 - ((4 - self.crushing - self.thunderous) / 6)) * ((1 - ((self.melee - 1) / 6)) * self.attacks) > 5.5 |
| Anvil | (self.nerve[1] - 7) / ((7 - self.defense) / 6) > 30 |
| Plinker | Range >= 12 |
| Pest | ‘Strider’ or ‘Pathfinder’ |
| Diver | Fly and not Shambling, Speed >= 8 |
| Flanker | Speed >= 8 and Melee <= 4 |
| Anchor | Phalanx or Ensnare |
| Chaff | Speed >= 6 and Points <=100 |
| Deck Chair | Points <= 115 and Speed <6 |
| Battleline | Not individual, nerve >= 16 and defense >= 4 |
Not perfect, but it gives you some sense of what we’re looking at.
Any time I see lists posted in Fanatics, I parse them, but the sample size is so small right now. The sample I’ve seen so far, there’s a big uptick in Abyssal Dwarfs (who were basically absent before on the tournament scene but are now one of the more popular factions).
Good ideas! Let me see what I can come up with on that.
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Thanks for the suggestion! Took a look at one data set I found and tried to give you an answer.
Also, one interesting note: despite the Fanatics meltdown, the Twilight Kin aren’t doing any better in 2024 than they did in 2023.
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Interesting, I have not been able to look through all the stuff here, but mainly at the comparison between 4 big events. I think it would be interesting to see the same sort of comparion, bjt rather than from tournament to tournament, how about sorting into gropus by performance in the tournament. Is the top/winning player list notably different than others?
Thanks for this thread, will try to follow.
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Some analysis of how to think about ranged units and how they’re costed (with shoutouts to the awesome @PageNeo for tactical insights with his podcast)
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So few tournaments post both the list and the results. It’s hard to get a big enough sample size to matter. As you see tournaments that have that info, let me know and I’ll incorporate.
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FoA army review
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Thanks for all the articles, always interesting reads that don’t seem to translate to my experience in the NE US region Here are a few anecdotal thoughts from me:
I have no idea why! They continue to seem broken on paper and endlessly spammy on the tabletop … but maybe there’s something in the sauce that still requires a good chef to pilot to victory. I’ve only faced new TK in the hands of a new KOW player running a soft list that didn’t duplicate the busted stuff, and I dunked him as one does while also teaching him about the game. On the flipside, probably the best player in the Northeast (Corey Reynolds) has been decimating with them whenever he can without having to spam his way to victory. But again, Corey is an amazing player reunited with his favorite army, so checks out.
Back in the Fall of 2022 I gave a real go at reviving my legacy Nurgle army as an Abyssal force for the 2023 season … and I abandoned the faction in frustration. I didn’t want to copy-paste Moloch hordes or try to make the 2x Chroneas + 1x Well combo carry me on its tall shoulders, so what I found myself with was an army that felt like it didn’t have any hammers. Like, it has an S-tier titan in the Abyssal Fiend, S-tier chaff in Gargoyles, S-tier disrupter in the Seductress, A-tier thicc chaff in Tortured Souls regiments, A-tier support in the Warlock … but I found I couldn’t actually lift anything. Horsemen don’t ever seem to work out (and are horrifically bad Mantic models to build), Tortured Souls hordes are actively bad at killing and Ba’el is a shooting platform who I’ve killed so many times from the other side of the table that I wouldn’t consider taking him. The Abyssal Fiend, for as great as it is, does a lot but style on fools in combat isn’t really one of them. It is happy to help, to be sure.
The army kind of shoots, it kind of survives, it barely melees* - apart from the slow, easily chaffed, obvious targets that Molochs are. Succubi are cool but they’re very slow at this point and from my experience mostly tank? Or don’t see the table in favor of more Molochs, who are so expensive but as discussed as the only thing that does work. The Chroneases + Well combo (which costs how much??) is also more of a cute / annoying thing that buys time for … scenario play? The Molochs to arrive? Great minis tho.
That Abyssal refresh can’t come soon enough, tho with the rumors I’ve heard it won’t be as straight forward as people are maybe hoping. Which is cool and good and should shake things up.
*I always think of Abyssals as a combined arms style list, much like Northern Alliance. Combined arms is a rad way to play a high variety army … and Kings of War 2E and 3E have both been unkind to it (I suspect 1E was as well). NA got markedly better (at 3E as well as being combined arms), so Abyssals should hopefully keep their identity while getting some much needed hammers.
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Interesting stuff as always! I was wondering when the Abyssals might be up for discussion. Some intriguing results in the analysis too, and I’d concur with most of these.
- The Abyssal Fiend is a frequent pick for me, and I’d recommend it to anyone looking to give the Abyssals a try. Tons of versatility to be had from that titan!
- The Abyssal Ghouls caught my eye recently as well, and I am currently finishing up a regiment of them, and I am kicking myself for not planning ahead to have enough to make it a full horde and get it all done at once. They are not a great combat unit, and lack regeneration, but they are cheap, unlock, have decent Nerve and are Def4. Not a bad unit to just hold ground for a few turns or babysit some tokens.
- And in that vein, I am not too surprised to see the Lower Abyssals hordes score highly. Regeneration on a horde has proven to be potent, like with your own NA Naiads.
- Lastly, I was surprised to see the Succubi Regiments rating so high! I have not had much success with them, even at the basic 150 points. I think they need multiples (threat saturation) and/or babysitting (dedicated Bane Chant, supporting unit, magic item or Lurker/Pathfinder upgrade) to be effective, which makes them harder to use.
Not to complicate your analytical efforts, but I had a few other thoughts as I read through the analysis…
Firstly, how do weapon swaps impact the standings? I’ve mostly run my Lower Abyssals and Abyssal Guard with CS weapons. So am personally curious how these shake out in the comparisons.
Secondly, the Abyssals have some upgrade options. Sacrificial Imps are widely available, but don’t seem worth it most of the time. They can probably be safely ignored for the analysis. But Succubi and Molochs have some potentially impactful upgrades…
- Molochs can take a Champion to get Brutal and Vicious. Anecdotally this is a very popular upgrade, and I think is an easy take with Molochs.
- Succubi can take a Lurker to Gain Pathfinder. To me, this is a points sink, but has been popular previously and might be worth crunching out.
And I think Boss’s practical summary is accurate, and also supports your general thesis, as does the (limited) date from your “Rise of the Abyssal Dwarfs” post. The forces of the Abyss have some good and interesting tools, but no outrageous units to lean on. Victory comes from smart play and experience with the army’s limits.
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I think that’s right. the FoA don’t have auto-take units, especially on the hammer side. Molochs are fine, but because they’re about the only real hammer, they get the Frostfang horde treatment and are completely focused on to the point of doing nothing. That goes back to the earlier conversation about the sweet spot of being good enough to matter, not so good you’re worth focusing on–and that may be where the succubi slot in. At 150 points, they’re still relatively cheap, and if you have several of them, it becomes the question of whether you focus on something that’s not THAT scary, but if you don’t focus on them, they can do some outsized level of hurt. I haven’t really struggled against them much because I typically run combined arms, and they’re pretty easy to shoot off, but I wonder if they’re worth testing more.
For the upgrade options: I have done it for a few units. Right now I pull/parse all the entries and dump them into a csv, so I more or less have a single spreadsheet with every unit entry. For some (like giants), I create a copy of the alternate unit entry and go with that as well to have two variations. I could do that with any unit that has the weapon swap option, but it’s a manual process to set it up, so I haven’t done it much outside of the armies I run. I will try to roll in the Lower Abyssal/Abyssal Guard variations and run that. Moloch champion should be easy enough as well. The pathfinder upgrade is tricky, because that only matters when you consider terrain. Offhand, I believe terrain is seeded into the analysis at a 30% clip, but bumping that up or down makes a huge difference in the outcome of what units do well. E.g. if we’re assuming 50%, then it makes a massive difference, and if we assume 15%, then it’s negligible.
I have some time this weekend and will try to re-run the simulation with these tweaks. Let me know if there are any other units you’d like rolled in. Basically an algorithm selects units to go head to head and fight 5 battles, updates their elo rating, and then moves to the next combat–for a total of 1.25 million rounds (which takes awhile). At that point, rankings are pretty stable, and things aren’t moving around much.
I think that’s spot on. They have a number of units that are marginally above average, but nothing that really stands out to drive the entire outcome. It looks to me like an army where player skill matters much more than what units you bring to the table.
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Will be interesting to see what the changes are in the upcoming revamp and which units get new models.
The Abyssal Fiend is great value and gives you a very solid allround unit for a pretty budget price (it absolutely rocks in Ambush games, esp at under 750pts where units have a 200pt cut off). Yes, it can’t do everything on its own, but great support beasty.
Love succubi regiments and pretty much always take lurker. Ideal candidate for Measured Force for me.
Ghouls are fantastic for the points with a lot of nerve for a budget price.
A horde of lower abyssals will usually find a place in the list.
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Overdue, but A review of one of my favorite KoW blogs: Regnum Aeternum (aka the qualitative ying to my quantitative yang)
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You are definitely overhyping me, but I greatly appreciate the shoutout and kind words. Looking forward to seeing you across the table again soon!
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Ran some simulations on 2HW upgrade for several units: 2HW Upgrade: Worth it or not?
Also, apologies that things have been down for a few days…I had to do some rebuilding on the back end to make it more responsive and easier to maintain, but hopefully should be good going forward.
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Great summary of things! This felt like a great introduction to tournament play for all of the Wisconsinites, and it is neat to see the same event from another perspective. My last write up should be done tomorrow and then I’ll share them in the reporting thread.
I figured there’d be a lot of high defense lists, but Rob’s Halflings were what I was most scared of going into the event, as my partner didn’t seem to quite believe in chaff, and we didn’t have much of anything to stop those Wild, Striding cavalry charges. We picked a great time to lose, and dodge that pairing. 
Do you happen to have a copy of Jeff’s list? I chatted with Rob a bit and saw Jeff’s army, but he was next door at the time. Dissecting that list a bit might be worth a post from one of us.
I’ve been trying to get better the framing of things in game. (Explicitly saying stuff like “I charged, it was not hindered, I hit on 4’s. Defense here is 4? Ok, I’ve TC1 and CS1, so 4’s to hit and 2’s to damage” and “my unit is here, let’s check the leader points… yep, I still have your unit in my front arc.”) What were Jeff’s most helpful narrations? Anything we can borrow from this for cleaning up our own play?
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Because he was a late add, he didn’t have physical copies of the KoM list. From memory, I believe there were three regiments of knights, a troop of mounted sergeants, a peg wizard, and a horde of footguard. Not sure what else was in there that I can recall.
Two things really stood out. First, in deployment, he was thinking several steps deeper than we were. E.g., when the siegebreaker hordes were placed on opposite sides, he immediately turned to Rob and said, “See, when he splits the hammers . . .” (followed by whispering I didn’t quite follow), and that changed their deployment. I wanted to get my naiads across from the foot guard to grind, but as soon as I placed my naiads, they dropped a halfling horde as well that put me in a box with no good options to do anything except either wait to die or YOLO a bad charge that would get flanked.
Another that stood out was after he charged and took off a unit along the edge of the board, he sidestepped into the board edge to finish flush. It took a second, but I realized that’s because of base sizing, it meant that he could only be single charged and not taken off. It never would have occurred to me to use the board edge like that. But there were several moments throughout the game when it was like, “Oh . . . that’s what I should have been thinking.”
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