Games Workshop dropped the latest Age of Sigmar Battlescroll yesterday, so as always, I’ve spent too much time staring at spreadsheets.
Instead of going through every change, I wanted to try something different. I’ve got thousands of games sitting in the Woehammer database, along with player WoElo, lists and unit usage.
It’s all a load of horse…
Freeguild Cavaliers have gone from 150 to 180 points. This hasn’t surprised anyone who’s played against Cities recently.
Cavaliers were in 91% of Cities lists in our data.
But how popular something is doesn’t always mean something is good. Maybe everyone likes horses.
Unfortunately for the horses, there’s more.
Lists that had Cavaliers had a win rate of 56.9%. With WoElo, we can get an idea of how often those players should have won based on their WoElo and the players they faced, 51.7%.
They beat that number by another 5.2 percentage points over 756 games.
So it was heavily used, winning a lot and pulling up the win rates of players using them. Another 30 points is understandable
Skimming the Surface
The Fateskimmer was only in 20% of the Disciples lists, but the results were crazy. Lists with it won 69.5% of their games. Good players were using it, and WoElo expected them to win about 56% of the time. They beat that expectation by 10 percentage points.
So GW put the Fateskimmer up 10 points. Cavaliers were everywhere and overperforming, while the Fateskimmer weren’t everywhere, but the lists with it in were massively overperforming.
Then there’s Monsta-Killaz
These are more interesting, they appeared in 72% of Kruleboyz lists. Their win rate was only 52% and their WoElo adjusted rate was the same.
No obvious power issue like the Cavaliers or the Fateskimmer. But with nearly three-quarters of Kruleboyz players taking them, perhaps the issue isn’t power?
| Metric | Gutrippaz | Monsta-Killaz |
|---|---|---|
| Kruleboyz Lists | 65/87 | 66/87 |
| Inclusion | 74.7% | 75.9% |
| Games | 318 | 319 |
| Observed Rate | 51.3% | 51.9% |
| WoElo Expected | 49.6% | 51.5% |
| vs Expected | +1.6pp | +0.4pp |
| 4+ conversion | 18.5% | 18.2% |
| Avg Starting WoElo | 409.6 | 430.2 |
Whatever the reason, GW decided to put them up 20 points.
I would love to hear your thoughts on the Battlescroll changes, who do you think the big winners and losers are?