Games Workshop today released the December Battlescroll for Age of Sigmar. But you may be wondering what has gone on in the background to establish these changes?

We don’t have any connection with Games Workshop, but we do have a little idea about how they draw their data together.

How GW Calculate Win Rates

Like our own stats, GW collect their data from Best Coast Pairings and more recently Stats & Ladders. This was mentioned in a previous meta article earlier this year.

GW take all events and include everything they can find that isn’t a doubles, teams or online event. So that does include RTT’s. We also know from many of their previous meat articles that they base their changes on the previous 60 days of events.

So what does that give us? Well based on the same data that we could access, we estimate, that they have calculated the following win rates:

Though as GW haven’t published the win rates for December, we can’t guarantee this is accurate.

It is interesting though, as we can see there are only two factions above the 45-55% win rate – Beasts of Chaos (who GW are phasing out and won’t be including in their data) and Nighthaunt.

Honour Guard Changes

One of the complaints (at least at competitive level) is around list building. Most players are taking 2 regiments and reinforcing all the units within that to keep their lists at two drops. This has been described as boring by some and means most lists are the same in construction terms.

Honour Guard Abilities

I think GW are trying to address this with the changes to Honour Guard. For example, they’ve included the rule Regimented Forces, which allows a player who has more regiments than their opponent to choose a second Honour Guard ability (which must be given to a unit that is not in the General’s Regiment). Regiments of Renown cannot benefit from this rule however.

They’ve also added two new abilities to the list for Honour Guard(s); Field Sergeant, for a friendly non-flying Infantry Hero that does not lead a regiment and then add 2″ movement to friendly non-Fly Infantry wholly within 12″ of that Honour Guard.

The other is Prized Beast, which allows a non-Unique Monster who is not leading a regiment to be the Honour Guard. That unit can ignore the affects of ‘Battle Damaged‘ and add 1 to hit rolls for combat attacks made by them (including companion weapons). Good for stuff like the Hell Pit Abomination for Skaven.

Seizing the Initiative

If the player who went second in the previous battle round wins the priority and chooses to go first, their opponent is the underdog until their opponent does the same.

But the main change is giving those behind by a fair bit on victory points a fighting chance to stay in the game:

If a player is behind by 6 or more victory points, they do not suffer any penalty from taking two turns in a row (Going second in one turn, and first in the next); their opponent is not the underdog for the rest of the battle, and they can use the ‘Tactical Gambit’ ability to pick a battle tactic.

Good change, and it may extend the length of games which have sometimes been a little short and end around turn 3 to 4.

What do you think?

What changes do you think have been effective (or not so) for your faction? Let us know in the comments below.