The scenario for this round was Control. Control always makes my head hurt – having to do the maths in Turn 6, especially on the clock seems simple on paper but I always seem to mess it up.
For those of you that played at the recommended 1800 points this round (and 83% of you did), Control presented an even greater challenge than usual as you were left trying to cover the entire board with fewer units.
Where as last round, everything on the map was very small, this round everything was very tall. Once again I head cries that this was a map where Pathfinder armies would rule, despite their being no difficult terrain in a large section of the middle of the board. Interestingly I see these kind of reactions whenever a map is presented that skews one way or another, but they haven’t once panned out in the results yet.
You’ll be glad to know that I’ve not designed the map for Round 6, so you might actually get a balanced game this time. How boring will that be!
I know that table below might be a bit small to show up on smaller screens, but I thought it was interesting to show how different armies got on in different rounds.
Empire of Dust continue to top the table as the most popular army to play, but there was a fairly even spread of different armies played this round… apart from Brothermark. No one seems to like Brothermark.
Army Stats
Once again, I’ve pulled out the stats separately for the top 10 most played armies as these are the ones with enough data to be able to compare against each other with any kind of reliability.
The Abyssal Dwarfs entered the Top 10 most played lists this round (they were 11th last round) and in doing so immediately jumped to the top of the table for win percentage – and that’s despite them having a pretty dreadful Round 5.
The scenario for Round 4 was Loot, a scenario that I don’t see used very often anymore. It seems to have been overtaken by the more trendy newer variants of Loot; Plunder and Push – which are incidentally two of my favourite scenarios.
The number of Drawn games stayed high this round, but I was far less surprised to see this than I was for Raze. With only three opportunities to score points, Loot is a scenario that lends itself to a lot of Draws. This is something that a TO might want to keep in mind – if they find that a lot of players are ending up with similar results, introducing a scenario like Loot into round four of your event could help split up the field more by introducing a higher number of Draws.
Again, its nice to see that the Northern Kings Scoring System is looking healthy for Loot, with the average score for winning a game holding within a 0.3 range across the entire event so far.
The map for this round was… divisive. I introduced a few things that you would never normally see on a table including Height zero and two blocking terrain. There was also nothing on the table higher than Height 2.
I’m not sure if anyone loved it, but plenty of people hated it. People threatened to drop out of the event and I was told that this would be a round dominated by Nightstalkers and war engines.
I was told me that you were going to get instantly shot off the board, unless of course you’d brought Nightstalkers in which case you’d be laughing. I was curious if this was the case so I pulled up the win percentage for each round for Nightstalker, Goblins and Abyssal Dwarfs (the two main war engine shooting lists).
Not exactly what I’d call a walk over… Nightstalkers had their worst round yet and the two shooting heavy armies performed no better or worse than they have in previous rounds.
I’m planning on writing an article on the thinking behind all of the Call to Arms maps after the sixth map is released, but in a nutshell the whole idea behind them is to give people a different challenge and to let them think about terrain in a way that they normally wouldn’t.
For many people (me included) hobby burnout is becoming a real issue during lockdown, so the hope with the different styles of maps was to give people the chance to try something new and experience a different challenge.
The Call to Arms TOs are split on what kind of maps to use in future events, so if you’ve liked the different maps, do let us know. It’d be good to know if people want to see something like these again in the future or if you’d prefer us to go back to a more ‘standard’ Epic Dwarf style of map.
Dry Undead have taken the lead in terms of popularity this round. Nightstalkers were the most popular faction this round (probably because people believed that the map would lead to them getting shot at), but this was also Nightstalkers worst performing round in terms of win percentage.
Army Stats
Look at Free Dwarfs go! Scoring the highest average bonus points! Of course that doesn’t mean a whole lot because they’ve only been used 7 times, compared to the Empire of Dust who have been used 33 times, but still… go Free Dwarfs!
Seeing as there are now such wide gaps between army usage, I’ve decided to pull out the figures just for the top 10 most used factions. This allows us to properly compare the different armies as we have a good amount of games played for them.
Undead are starting to slowly pull away in terms of win percentage, but Nightstalkers are holding on to the top spot in terms of percentage of the enemy killed.
We’re half way through Call to Arms 5 and to celebrate, I thought I’d get the stats out to you in record time.
Tournament Stats
The scenario for round 3 was Raze. Personally this is one of my least favourite scenarios as I feel that the ‘score as you go’ mechanic doesn’t fit well with the rest of Kings of War. You can often find yourself in very asymmetrical situations where your opponent has already claimed all your objectives, but you’re still trying to get theirs. At that stage, one person is playing Kill and the other is still trying to play a scenario game.
Of course, my opinion on the scenario has no relevance to the stats…
Continuing the theme of using the terrain to make players think a bit differently, I presented this monstrosity of a map! The idea behind it was to force players to think ahead about how they were going to reach their opponent’s Raze counters, when so many of their movement lanes were closed off by Obstacles.
I can at least say that no one can ever accuse me of designing maps that benefit myself, seeing as after putting together this map I went and played infantry Dwarfs!
One thing that I’ve been interested to track this Call to Arms is the number of Draws per scenario. I’m also intending to go back through the data from previous Call to Arms to do a bit of analysis there as well. While a high number of Draws isn’t a bad thing, I always think there is merit from a TO point of view in knowing which scenarios are more likely to provide a decisive result and which may lead to more Draws in a round.
Another stat that I’m tracking more for myself as a TO, is the average score per round. This lets me gauge the health of the Northern Kings Scoring System as we aim to have each scenario be as evenly weighted as possible – the scenario in Round 1 shouldn’t be more lucrative than Round 6 for example. At the moment, it looks like we’re in a good place, with the average score for the winners remaining within a range of 0.3 points.
Both wet and dry Undead continue to hold the top spot for most popular army, closely pursued by Nightstalkers and Salamanders.
Every army has been used at least once now. It looks like Twilight Kin generals are the most consistent, as they’re the only army to have been used the same number of times each round.
Army Stats
Nightstalkers enjoyed their five minutes of fame as the most successful army in the tournament, before being toppled by the usual incumbents of Abyssal Dwarfs and Undead. Abyssal Dwarfs are currently sitting on a 2:1 win/loss ratio so the changes to the Angkor Heavy Mortar and Ignore Cover rules didn’t seem to have as big an impact as some people were claiming they would.
As the most popular army with the largest dataset, you would expect that Undead should be the most likely to fall to an average 50% win rate – it stands to reason that players from across all skill levels will be using them. However, having lost only 7 of their 26 games, I think its fair to say that there might be some truth in the idea that Undead are the strongest faction in Kings of War at the moment… maybe a little too good.
The biggest shock of the tournament so far is Varangur with an abysmal 20% win rate from 15 games. I’m personally surprised by this as I’ve always found Varangur to be a solid army. I also though they would do well with the map in Round 3, as their heavy hitting Frostfang hordes come with built in Strider. What do people think about Varangur? Is this a spate of bad luck or a sign of wider issues with the list?
Clearly still angry about the loss of their Stampedes and Eagles, the Herd have taken their frustrations out on their opponents, scoring the highest average kill percentage. The Order of the Brothermark on the other hand are clearly too pious for bloodshed with a pitiful 44.5% average kill percentage.
That’s it, we’re done! 429 games of Kings of War played and spanning a total of approximately 1287 hours. That’s 53.6 days of Kings of War goodness. If Call to Arms was working a minimum wage job in the UK, it would have earnt itself £11,222 for all this work (before tax!).
I’ve decided to split the stats for round 6 and the final results and awards into two pages. You can find all of the stats for round 6 on the link below or you can look back at the stats for all six round by clicking here.
And that’s it after 12 weeks and over 400 games we’re done! I’ve split the Round 6 stats and Final Results & Awards into two separate posts. Click on the link below to find the Results and final standings. Tournament Stats The scenario this round was Salt the Earth. We discussed a few different scenarios…
The final standings can be found at the bottom of this page.
So, without further ado I present to you the winners of the illustrious prizes* of A Call to Arms IV
*Actual prizes not included. Bragging rights only.
First Overall Tom Robinson, United Kingdom
Second Overall Paul Brown, United Kingdom
Third Overall Alex Kus, Canada
The Wooden Spoon Bryce Clark, United States
Bloodiest General Highest percentage of enemy army killed Tom Robinson, 93.9% Alex Kus, 87.4% Stephen Devenish, 81.9%
The Pacifist Lowest percentage of enemy army killed Steve Forster, 31.8% Richard A Rodgers, 38.8% Bryce Clark, 40.1%
The Right Place at the Right Time Scored the 1,000,000th kill point of the tournament Adam Padley vs Justin Berg, Round 6
Lords of War Country with the highest win percentage (‘Big five’) Canada, 50.7%
A Lover Not a Fighter Country with the lowest win percentage (‘Big five’) United States, 41.1%
A Breakdown in Diplomacy Country with the highest average percentage killed Singapore, 74.7%
Just Taking in the Scenery Country with the lowest average percentage killed France, 52.9%
Their People’s Champion Highest Scoring Player per Country
Argentina Exequiel ARG, 111
Australia Stephen Devenish, 128 Andrew Goodman, 123 Tas Stacey, 117
Canada Alex Kus, 130 Mark Campbell, 119 Jesse Bilbija, 113
Czech Republic Shizunk, 94
Finland Heikka Valja, 91
France Fabien Hodot, 80
Germany Manuel Roemisch, 99 Clement Quinson, 94 Daniel Plack, 75
Ireland Robert Alexander, 96
Norway Thomas B Aleksandersen, 116 Andreas Orlyng, 95
Singapore Page Neo, 117
South Africa Saul Smith, 68
Spain Luis Serra, 113 Antonio Carrasco, 111 Asier Lopez, 93
United Kingdom Tom Robinson, 145 Paul Brown, 132 Steven Pearce, 122
United States Keith Randall, 116 Kris DeGrow, 115 Ryan Munsell, 113
Easily Distracted Highest Scoring player who changed armies each round Cyle Pool, 110 Jeremy Duvall, 110 Michael Pearcy, 100
Loyal to the End Highest Scoring player who played the same army every round Paul Brown, 132 Alex Kus, 130 Andrew Goodman, 123
Stubborn to a Fault Lowest Scoring player who played the same army every round Bryce Clarke, 46
Best in Race
Sit Back, Shoot and Watch the Wins Roll In Best in Race, Abyssal Dwarfs 1st) Andrew Goodman, 123 2nd) Alan Wigness, 92 3rd) Matt Goody, 84
Is it a bird? Is it a plane? Is it an Elohi? No! Its Super Dragon! Best in Race, Basileans 1st) Mark Campbell, 119 2nd) George Kirke, 91 3rd) Eldon Krosch, 87
Hipsters on Horseback – You can all say you were playing them before they were cool Best in Race, Order of the Brothermark 1st) Tyler Schulz, 68 2nd) Steve Hildrew, 25 3rd) Tony Winmill, 22
Order of the Magic Hippies Best in Race, Order of the Green Lady 1st) Page Neo, 117 2nd) Keith Randall, 94 3rd) Jose Vega, 79
Coming Up Short Best in Race, Dwarfs 1st) Andrew Heinrich, 94 2nd) Asier Lopez, 93 3rd) Fabien Hodot, 80
Who needs Ra4! Best in Race, Elves 1st) Paul Brown, 132 2nd) Daniel Plack, 67 3rd) Robert Lee, 34
Undead Retirement Home Best in Race, Empire of Dust 1st) Kris DeGrow, 115 2nd) Adam Ballard, 99 3rd) Robert Alexander, 96
Flower Powers Best in Race, Forces of Nature 1st) Jeff Traish, 71 2nd) Drew Richardson, 59 3rd) Bryce Clark, 36
Cry Havoc and Let Slip the Mastiffs of War!! Best in Race, Free Dwarfs 1st) Bob Aspland, 49 2nd) Billy Smith, 47 3rd) Michael Pearcy, 22
Its Fun to be Bad Best in Race, Forces of the Abyss 1st) Clement Quinson, 94 2nd) Juancho Bernabeu, 81 3rd) Todd Serpico, 56
The Greenie Meanies Best in Race, Goblins 1st) Stephen Devenish, 49 2nd) Steve Forster, 43 3rd) Rian James, 41
Perfectly Average in Every Way Best in Race, Kingdoms of Men 1st) Exequiel ARG, 102 2nd) Garrett Mercier, 82 3rd) Gareth Davies, 53
They’re Talking the Halfling to Isenguard, to Isenguard Best in Race, League of Rhordia 1st) Tom Robinson, 96 2nd) Shizunk, 32 3rd) Brindley Smith, 30
They Find You Very Inspiring Best in Race, Nightstalkers 1st)Robert Allen, 93 2nd) Blake Robertson, 86 3rd) Erasmus Burger, 82
Lets it go! Let it go!Can’t hold it back any more! Best in Race, Northern Alliance 1st) Tas Stacey, 117 2nd) Jeff Horton, 90 3rd) Chris Fisher, 84
Get Ogre it! Best in Race, Ogres 1st) Josh Rosado, 88 2nd) Matt Young, 82 3rd) Mike Szedlmayer, 71
Well this is Orc’ward Best in Race, Orcs 1st) Kara Brown, 86 2nd) Mathew Vermeiren, 86 3rd) Andy Marshall, 61
Getting a bit Ratty Best in Race, Ratkin 1st) Si Brand, 108 2nd) Dan Miner, 79 3rd) Joseph Greek, 70
I’m a, Slave 4 U Best in Race, Ratkin Slaves 1st) Mark Cunningham, 86 2nd) Mike Smith, 79 3rd) Richard Rodgers, 54
The New Hotness Best in Race, Salamanders 1st) Dan Zarembski, 108 2nd) Ryan Munsell, 107 3rd) Jacob Datta, 102
Wiltfather SMASH! Best in Race, Sylvan Kin 1st) Ed Herzig, 121 2nd) Visibly Riley, 23 3rd) Tim Lonas, 17
Letting Out Your Wild Side Best in Race, The Herd 1st) Andreas Orlyng, 95 2nd) Manuel Roemisch, 89 3rd) Yan Lai, 69
Crab People, Crab People Best in Race, Trident Realm 1st) Ray Shields, 113 2nd) Matt Gee, 103 3rd) Ben Johnson, 97
The Bad Boys of Pannithor Best in Race, Twilight Kin 1st) Thomas B Aleksandersen, 116 2nd) Kyle Przelenski, 94 3rd) James Mitchell, 90
Playing on Easy Mode? Best in Race, Undead 1st) Alex Kus, 130 2nd) Luis Serra, 113 3rd) Antonio Carrasco, 111
The Edgier Version of Northern Alliance Best in Race, Varangur 1st) Daniel King, 103 2nd) Billy Henninger, 89 3rd) Brian Cessna, 78
That’s it, we’re done! 429 games of Kings of War played and spanning a total of approximately 1287 hours. That’s 53.6 days of Kings of War goodness. If Call to Arms was working a minimum wage job in the UK, it would have earnt itself £11,222 for all this work (before tax!). I’ve decided to…
The scenario this round was Salt the Earth. We discussed a few different scenarios for the final round, but liked the concept of this scenario as players would have an idea of how big a win they would need to achieve the final position they were after.
Did any of you choose not to ‘burn’ an objective you otherwise would have done because you wanted the opportunity to score maximum bonus points?
Undead end the tournament as far and away the most popular army with 28 more games played than its nearest rivals. Other than that, there was a great spread of races played.
Third edition definitely seems to have seen a surge in the popularity of Salamanders and I think as the edition progresses, they’ll take their place as one of the most commonly seen armies.
The majority of players changed the race they used at least once during the tournament, but a significant chunk (45%) stuck with the same army all the way through.
Interestingly, the average number of bonus points scored for scenario was actually slightly higher this round than it was for Pillage. I wondered if two bonus points for the centre token was overly generous but looking at the table to the right it looks about perfect.
The Northern Kings are going to be doing a full review of the scoring system based on the feedback of this event and we’ll be tweaking the way bonus points are scored – my aim is to get the average amount of bonus points for a win as close to 4.0 as possible.
Army Stats
I was a little surprised to see that Northern Alliance have the lowest win:loss ratio of the tournament – I personally think Northern Alliance are a really strong list with lost of potential. But they’re also a brand new army with a new play style that players are still figuring out, so I think its far too early to make any conclusions about army balance.
I was far less surprised to see Abyssal Dwarfs and Undead out from with a +13 and +12 win:loss ratio respectively.
Overall I think the win:loss ratio show a very healthy game state. There a few outliers but the vast majority of armies are sat within an acceptable range. Don’t forget as well, that this only represents the result of one (all be it very large) tournament so take all of the results with a pinch of salt.
In Round 6 Undead pushed themselves back into the top spot for the highest average bonus points scored.
No change on the very top spot between round 5 and 6, but lots of change further down. Abyssal Dwarfs, Elves and Ogres making a last minute push getting themselves up into the top 5 for percentage killed.
As usual, I’ve pulled out the same stats as above showing only the Top 10 most played armies. These are the armies with enough results to prevent the averages being skewed too much by a single player.
Abyssal Dwarfs end the tournament as the army with the highest win percentage, narrowly beating out The Order of the Green Lady.
Country Stats
Congratulations to Canada! JUST holding on to their top spot by 0.7%!
It couldn’t really have been closer between Canada, Australia and Spain at the end with the difference between 2nd and 3rd place coming down to the number of Draws.
The UK vs US side event (that exists purely in my mind) came down to the wire as well with the US very nearly closing the 5 game gap that had opened up at the end of Round 5.
That’s it, we’re done! 429 games of Kings of War played and spanning a total of approximately 1287 hours. That’s 53.6 days of Kings of War goodness. If Call to Arms was working a minimum wage job in the UK, it would have earnt itself £11,222 for all this work (before tax!). I’ve decided to…
The penultimate round of Call to Arms has just wrapped up with another 70 games taking place this round – that brings us up to a whopping 357 games played so far.
We haven’t quite hit the 1,000,000th kill point yet, but we’re close! The spreadsheet keeps a record of when each result is added so I’ll be able to give a special mention to the players who scores the 1,000,000th point.
After the end of Round 6 I’m going to be using the stats to hand out some extra awards (no prizes except bragging rights!). So far the awards I’m going to hand out are;
Bloodiest General (highest kill percentage)
Pacifist (lowest kill percentage)
Best in Race
If anyone has any ideas for other awards they’d like pulling out, let me know on the Facebook page or in the comments below.
Tournament Stats
The scenario this round was Invade.
This was the first round where not every race was played. The poor Free Dwarfs have clearly fallen out of favour following their glorious two victories last round.
Undead had their most popular round in round 5 – clearly as we get to the end of the tournament people are wanting to play on easy mode!
Order of the Brothermark have seen a small surge in popularity, but still remain at the bottom of the list.
I was a little concerned that Invade might be another scenario where we saw lots of bonus points being scored (like last round), but this doesn’t seem to have been the case.
There also doesn’t seem to be any significant correlation between higher bonus points scored in games played at 2300 points as opposed to 2000. The Northern Kings scoring system was developed in a tournament scene that uses predominately 2000 points and I was a little worried that more units on the board would equal more points scored. But either the additional 300 points doesn’t buy enough units to shift things much or both sides having the additional points cancels each other out in the end.
2300 continued to be the overwhelming favourite points level. We’re very aware that this will partly be due to the fact that its easier to score higher points for kills at 2300 due to the way that the scoring system scales.
It’ll be interesting to see if this preference for 2300 holds in future Call to Arms once we’ve fixed the scaling problem.
The percentage of games ending in a Draw this round held at well below 10%, showing that the spike in round 3 was almost definitely due to the Kill scenario and not a balancing of player skills from Swiss ranking.
Round 1 – Dominate – Draw percentage – 3%
Round 2 – Pillage – Draw percentage – 8%
Round 3 – Kill – Draw percentage – 21%
Round 4 – Push – Draw percentage – 3%
Round 5 – Invade – Draw percentage – 7%
Army Stats
So in case you missed it Undead had 3 wins, 2 draws and 10 losses in Round 5! Come on people you’re playing with Undead, its supposed to be an easy win!
I wonder if this is a result of the big spike in the number of players choosing to use Undead this round. It stands to reason that some players will be less familiar with the list and will be coming up against players who are more experienced with the lists they’re using.
Following their poor showing this round, Undead have slipped to second in the average number of bonus points scored, taken over by Trident Realms.
And Undead almost lost their top spot in percentage killed after just regaining it last round. Undead are now just 0.4% ahead of Varangur in the fight for the killiest faction.
As usual, I’ve pulled out the same stats as above showing only the Top 10 most played armies. These are the armies with enough results to prevent the averages being skewed too much by a single player.
Trident Realms have retained their 1st place for win percentage, whilst Undead have slid down to 3rd. Abyssal Dwarfs have moved up from 4th to 2nd.
Country Stats
Canada have retained their top spot but Spain have closed the gap. There was seven percentage points between them at the end of Round 4, this has now closed to just two – with Australia just one percentage point behind Spain!
Its going to be an incredibly close finale going into Round 6 and either Canada, Spain or Australia could still emerge as the victorious country.
The UK and the US… probably won’t.
Seeing as we apparently can’t beat the rest of the world, I’m now choosing the focus on the UK vs US grudge match! The UK has managed to slightly extend their lead over the US and now has a five game advantage. Can we hold on to it during Round 6 or will the dastardly ungrateful colonials scoop victory at the last moment?!
UK 39 – 34 USA
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As yet another round of A Call to Arms draws to a close, its time for the Round 4 stats breakdown. You can find the breakdowns for the previous rounds below.
We’re now up to a mighty 287 games of Kings of War – across all those games 767,800 points worth of units have been killed.
If an average game on Universal Battle takes 3 hours, Call to Arms has been responsible for 861 hours of Kings of War gameplay, that’s almost 39 days!
Tournament Stats
The scenario this round was Push, using a fixed number of tokens per player (2) and one in the middle of the board as usual.
69/72 games took place this round, with 3 games being decided by the TO due to hitting the round deadline.
Yet again all 26 races were played at least once. Undead have reclaimed their spot as the most popular faction this round – it seems that the mid-round Mhorgoth nerf didn’t do too much to dampen the spirits of all those Undead players.
Order of the Brothermark remain the stalwart bottom of the list. This is particularly surprising when you look at how popular their fellow Brotherhood, the Order of the Green Lady are. I don’t think this low rate of play says much about the strength of the army but for whatever reason they don’t seem to appeal to many players at the moment.
The number of players scoring the maximum 25 points was significantly higher this round. This suggests to me that it was easier to score more bonus points on this scenario – my fellow Northern Kings and I will be looking into the data on this round very carefully to decide if we need to modify how bonus points are scored for Push in future events.
2300 remained the predominant points level with 71% of players choosing to play at that level.
One game was played at 2170 (I checked it wasn’t a typo) – purely so that they could make it on to my chart!
Well there you are!
The number of games that ended in a Draw fell back down to similar levels as Rounds 1 and 2, suggesting that the high number of Draws last round was due to the Kill scenario and not a balancing out of player skill due to the Swiss matching system.
Round 1 – Dominate – Draw percentage – 3%
Round 2 – Pillage – Draw percentage – 8%
Round 3 – Kill – Draw percentage – 21%
Round 4 – Push – Draw percentage – 3%
Army Stats
Look at Free Dwarfs go – not one, but two whole wins!! They still only have a 14% win rate, but its better than 0%!
Trident Realms are threating to take the crown from Undead for the army that most consistently score bonus points – Trident Realms are currently 11th in terms of games played but have taken the lead in terms of overall win percentage (see below!).
Both variety of Dwarfs are very much languishing in last place, despite the Free Dwarf’s two glorious wins (I’m not bias, honest). The Dwarfs average points for kills isn’t much lower than the rest of the field, but its their scenario points that are really letting them down. I wonder if their lack of manoeuvrability is preventing them from being able to grab objectives late game and score those few extra bonus points (even in defeat) like other armies can.
Undead have regained the title of ‘most killy’ from Varangur. For the third round running, Goblins remain the most pacifist army out there managing to kill only 51% of the opponents army on average – this is 20% less than the average Undead game.
I’ve pulled out some more detailed stats for the top 10* most played armies. These are the armies with enough results to prevent the averages being skewed too much by a single player.
*I’m actually comparing the top 11, because two armies were tied for 10th place
Trident Realms have toppled Undead for the first time in the tournament, taking the place as the faction with the highest win percentage – can they hold on to it during the last two rounds?
Country Stats
Look at Canada go! Spain has struggled a little this round, winning just one of their games – this opened the door for Canada to jump into the top spot.
In the UK vs US grudge match, the UK has managed to eek out a marginal lead taking it to:
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The stats below now represents 218 games played which is more than most two day tournaments manage over 6 rounds, and we’re only on round 3!
Tournament Stats
The scenario this round was Kill – this turned out to be a slightly controversial choice of scenario!
A big thank you for being my ‘willing’ guinea pigs for an experiment to see how a modified version of Kill worked in practice. I’m currently writing up my thoughts based on the results and player feedback and will be sharing that in the next few days.
72/73 games took place this round, with two players deciding not to carry on with the tournament and dropped out taking us to a mere 144 players.
For the third round in a row, all 26 races were played at least once.
Its a shame to see the Forces of Nature falling so much in popularity, but I can’t say that I’m too surprised. Forces of Nature where my first love in Kings of War, but they’re definitely an army that can be hard to win games with – especially in Kill.
While Undead are still storming ahead as the most popular faction overall they were not most popular faction this round. That accolade went to the Salamanders.
I’m not surprised that Salamanders have gone up in popularity as I think they’re probably the army that gained the most out of 3rd edition, but I am surprised to see them being so popular in Kill as I have never really thought of them as a ‘killy’ army.
There was a big increase in the number of games that ended in a draw this round.
15/72 games (21%) ended in a draw – compared to 3% in round 1 and 8% in round 3. It’ll be really interesting to see if this pattern continues into the next round. This will tell us if the high number of draws is down to the scenario or due to player skill becoming more evenly balanced due to the swiss rankings system.
Games played at 2300 points have definitely become the norm this round with 72% of games taking place at that point level.
Far less people scored the top points this round.
This could be due to the higher number of draws, but Tom Annis made an interesting observation on the Universal Battle Facebook page. He noticed that a lot of people have been saying that they played Kill first and ignored the secondary objectives until the end; where as he had made sure to factor them in from the start. It possible that players might have approached the scenario in the wrong way and have given up the top points as a result.
Army Stats
Due to their large showing this round, Salamanders have jumped up to the second most played army.
There definitely seems to be some stronger armies appearing, as well as armies that are struggling to keep up. I said it last time and I’ll say it again – poor Free Dwarfs.
I’ve always been a believer that player skill is the single most important factor to winning a game. As a very rough rule of thumb I would say winning is 80% player skill, 10% luck and 10% down to the army and the list you use.
Even with that in mind, there are a few armies languishing on a 20% win rate or less (Free Dwarfs are on 0/10 games!) – I feel that this has to be down to the army and not just the player.
Undead continue to top the charts in bonus points scored – with Varangur hot on their heels behind them.
There is a fairly uniform spread across all of the armies until you get to the Dwarfs and it falls off a cliff!
It seems that the few wins that Dwarfs have managed to get, have been by the skin of their teeth.
Once again Varangur are on the top spot for percentage of the enemy killed.
The most pacifist army at this point is the Goblins, they really don’t want to seem to kill anything!
To have 23 percentage points of difference between the top and bottom armies after 218 games is pretty striking.
I have always thought of Kings of War as a very balanced game (and it is) – but it seems that although all the armies are equal, some armies are more equal than others.
Like the last round, I’ve pulled out the win rates for the top 10 most played armies.
These armies have played 125 games between them, so I would consider this to be a pretty reliable indicator.
Country Stats
Ok, I know this is what you all really came here for!
As before, some of the results above represent just one or two people and while I don’t want to take away their achievements (of failures!) I’ve pulled out the five countries with the most players – the ‘Big Five’.
I’m not at all surprised to see Spain out on top as every time I’ve had the pleasure of playing one of the guys from Spain, its been a bloody tough game.
In the greatest conflict the United Kingdom and the United States have fought (my history isn’t good!) it is incredibly close. As we go into round 4 there is just one game in it!
United Kingdom 22 – 21 United States
And that’s all for now. Now that I’ve got a good amount of data I’m going to start pulling out some more detailed information that I’ll be sharing over the next few weeks – I’ve already had a few requests for additional information.
The scenario this round was Pillage with a set 6 objectives. Pillage is a simple scenario but one of the best in my opinion.
71/73 games took place. The results for the other two were decided by the TO Adam – he wasn’t joking when he said get your results in or he’d decide them for you!
Once again, all 26 races were represented at least once. Its becoming obvious that some factions are much more popular than others – its almost like Undead are really really good!
I’m surprised to see Goblins so far down the list, I thought people might use the opportunity to take the crazy hordes lists that you wouldn’t ever want to build in real life.
The most popular points value was again 2300 points with 56% choosing to play at that level.
We saw a big reduction in the number of people scoring the maximum points this round. I’m not sure if this is because Pillage is a harder scenario to score full points on, or if the players were more evenly matched because of the swiss ranking up system. My guess would be that its a little early in the tournament for swiss ranking to be having much effect, so the scenario is definitely having some impact.
On average, people also killed a lower percentage of their opponent’s army. I’d guess that this is because Dominate (the scenario in round 1) encourages a big brawl in the centre of the board, whereas Pillage is more spread out.
It’ll be really interesting to see if we get see less big results scored as players become more evenly matched – or if there is a clear pattern between results and the scenario played.
Army Stats
Its not a good day to be a Dwarf! Or at least, not a well behaved Dwarf. Dwarfs and Free Dwarfs have a combined total of 19 games played, but a win rate of only 21%.
At the moment, Elves are the only army with a 100% win rate – although to be fair that is only out of 5 games.
I think that the amount of armies that are on or around a 50% win rate is a really good indication of the balance within Kings of War – it does also highlights that there are a few armies that seem to need a boost.
The Elves and Brothermark lead the way with the average amount of bonus points scored, but again these results should be taken with a pinch of salt because they are based on relatively low number (only 2 in the Brothermark’s case).
The highest scoring army with a decent number of results is Undead.
I’m not surprised by this at all as I personally think Undead are the strongest Kings of War faction. It shows that their popularity is at least partially because they’re a powerful army and not just because people like the fluff or playstyle etc.
Poor Dwarfs…
While I’m very impressed with the amount of kills the handful of Elf generals have managed to achieve, once again I’d be cautious about putting too much weight on their place in the rankings – their average is out of only 5 games compared to Undead’s 25.
Varangur take the top spot in the ‘decent number of games played’ category. Its fitting that Varangur should have such a high average percentage of kills as they’re such an aggressive in your face army.
As a baseline to compare against, the overall average percentage of enemy’s army killed is currently 60%.
The two charts above show the win percentage and average percentage of enemy army killed for the armies that have more than 10 result. I’d consider these a more reliable measure of how the army is performing.
There’s currently a significant difference between the highest and lowest win rates and it’ll be really interesting to see if this carries on as the tournament progresses. As players are matched up more in line with their skill level, we’d expect to see all the armies evening out at around 50%, so any outliers might suggest that an army is too powerful, or could do with a boost.
Country Stats
Call to Arms 4 truly is an international tournament, with 14 different countries represented.
The United States make up just under 50% of the field with the UK second (21%) followed by Australia (9%) and Canada (8%).
Spain is currently out in front in terms of win percentage – the Spaniards have won an impressive 58% of their games so far.
Quite a few countries are represented by just one of two people, so for the sake of more even comparison I’ve split off the ‘big five’ into a separate chart – these are the countries that have more than 10 players representing them.
Starting in round 3, I’ll be sharing a table showing each country’s win rate is vs each other country, so in your round 3 games don’t forget that you’re representing your country!
Round 3 is going to be Kill, using the modified Northern Kings version, so it’ll be really interesting what impact that has on the stats and if the different style of scenario mixes things up a bit.
One Northern King 