With the next General’s Handbook expected out in July, the competitive Age of Sigmar community is approaching one of the turning points in the game’s meta. Each new handbook brings new battleplans, tactics, and most importantly the seasonal rules that can shape the year to come.
For the current season, our interactions are tied to the Scourge of Ghyran units and formations. So, how much of the current meta relies on Scourge of Ghyran?
Firstly, thanks to Neil who raised this as a suggestion for an article on our Discord. If you have any suggestions for articles, why not pop onto our Discord and drop me a message?
To get around this question, I analysed tournament data from the current Battlescroll, looking at how frequently options appear in lists and what effect they have on the factions performance.
WOT I DID
For each faction, I took each list component tied to the Scourge of Ghyran. These incluse:
- Warscrolls
- Battle Formations
- Heroic Traits
- Artefacts of Power
- Spells, Prayers, Monstrous Traits and anything else tied to the season
For each of these list components I tracked:
- How many games it was used in
- What % of total faction lists used it
- The Win rate of the component when used
- The Win rate of lists that didn’t use that component
- The Average Elo of players using it
This would allow me to determine not just whether an option is popular, but whether it is helping or hurting its faction.
In the dataset, the average Elo of competitive Age of Sigmar players attending GTs sits at roughly 429, while each faction has its own average Elo based on the players using them. This helps provide context when we start looking at the win rates. High-performing components used mainly by highly skilled players can sometimes exaggerate their strength.
Finally, each list component was labelled according to its impact on the faction:
- Positive Impact – achieves a high win rate than the faction overall
- Negative Impact – the overall faction win rate outperforms the specific list component
This should give a clear view of whether Scourge of Ghyran options are genuinely pulling up a faction, or not having any effect.
The Bigger Picture
One of the first things that’s clear in the data is that Scourge of Ghyran is not universally dominant across the factions.
Many options appear rarely in lists, and when they do appear they often perform worse than the faction’s average win rate.
For several factions the Scourge of Ghyran options seem to be a nice to have, but not essential to how the army plays. But the opposite to this is also true. In a number of factions, it shows that specific Scourge of Ghyran options are core parts of competitive lists. These are the armies that are most likely to have a difficult transistion into the new Handbook.
Factions with Low Reliance
For some armies, the list Scourge of Ghyran components only appear occasionally in lists.
Examples of this are where:
- The Scourge of Ghyran component have low usage rates
- Their win rates are below or equal to the faction average
In these cases, Scourge of Ghyran does not impact on the faction’s competitive play and when the handbook does drop, these factions are unlikely to care.
Armies such as Disciples of Tzeentch, Idoneth Deepkin and Seraphon show this. For these July may present an opportunity.
Factions with Moderate Reliance
Many factions fall into the middle ground. Scourge list components appear with some regularity and sometimes outperform the factions average. These options are usually supporting the faction rather than being core components.
In these factions, the handbook change could still alter their list construction, but the faction should remain stable. Players will shift to alternative builds.
Faction with Heavy Reliance
This is where we get the interesting cases. In these factions the Scourge of Ghyran options appear in a large number of competitive lists and are often outperforming or carrying the faction average.
Examples of these are:
Sylvaneth – Scourge of Ghyran Drycha Hamadreth appears in almost 70% of lists, and the Soggy Revenant Seekers in 42% of lists. The faction heavily relies on the Wargrove of the Burgeoning and Wargrove of Everdusk battle formations. These two battle formations feature in 66% of all lists. While the Artefact Glamourweave is in 65% of lists.
Ogor Mawtribes – 70% of Ogor lists feature the Soggy Ironblaster which gives lists that feature is an average of 53% win rate. 94% of Ogor lists use the Soggy Big Name Mage-Swallower. While just over half of all Ogor lists use the Mawpath Menaces battle formation.
Skaven – The Soggy Grey Seer on Screaming Bell sees strong turnout in Skaven lists with 65% of them using it and achieving a win rate of 55%. While The Soggy Brood Terror gets used in half of all lists and achieves 57% win rate.
Kruleboyz – 77% of all Kruleboyz lists are using the Swamphorde Bullies battle formation which sees a win rate of 53%. While the Soggy Gnashtoof is used in 70% of lists with a win rate of 55%.
In these cases, the removal of the Soggy list components could have a negative impact on the faction performance which their players will struggle to replace.
Usage v Performance
One of the more interesting things shown by the data is that high usage does not always mean high performance.
In a number of cases, widely used Scourge of Ghyran components can be tied to a lower overall faction win rate. This suggests that some choices have become popular through perceived synergy rather than actual effectiveness.
On the other side of this coin, a handful of low usage options are showing strong win rates, but in the hands of very high-Elo players. This makes it difficult to work out their true underlying strength.
What Happens in July?
If the next GHB removes the Scourge of Ghyran elements as epxected we are likely to see three different outcomes across the factions:
1) Minimal Change – Factions that rarely use the options will continue much as before. These are factions like Blades of Khorne, Disciples of Tzeentch, Flesh-eater Courts, and Helsmiths of Hashut.
2) List Adjustments – Armies that have use of the Ghyran options as support rather than core elements will need to seek alternative tools. Factions here include Cities of Sigmar, Daughters of Khaine, Fyreslayers and Gloomspite Gitz.
3) Meta Shifting – The factions that we previously mentioned that heavily rely on Ghyran options may see their win rates fall and their list builds change drastically.
Final Thoughts
Seasonal rules are designed to shake the meta up, and the Scourge of Ghyran options have influenced list construction over the past 9 months. However, the data shows that their influence is far from universal. While some factions have powerful combinations around the options, others have largely ignored them.
When the new handbook arrives in July, we may not see a large overhaul of the meta but a shift affecting a few of the factions. Which of them will adapt quickly and which will need complete overhauls?
