There are loads of ways to measure faction strength in Age of Sigmar, like win rates, tournament wins and popularity. But what if we tried something a bit different?
What if we took the top four players from each faction every week and turned it into a knockout tournament?
Well, I got bored, so that’s what we’re doing.
How does it work?
It’s fairly simple (I think). Every faction is going to take the results from its four best performing players each week. Those players will basically be a team, with their tournament result counting towards the faction’s score.
There’s no games between the factions in this tournament, instead we’re using real tournament results to decide which faction advances through each stage.
It’s a bit like a fantasy sports game except the players have no idea they’re representing their faction.
The scoring system
Each player’s score is calculated using their tournament win percentage:
Player score = (Wins + 0.5 x Draws) / Games played x 100
For example:
| Tournament Result | Player Score |
|---|---|
| 5-0-0 | 100 points |
| 4-1-0 | 90 points |
| 4-0-1 | 80 points |
| 3-1-1 | 70 points |
| 3-0-2 | 60 points |
| 2-1-2 | 50 points |
| 2-0-3 | 40 points |
| 1-1-3 | 30 points |
| 1-0-4 | 20 points |
| 0-1-4 | 10 points |
| 0-0-5 | 0 points |
The four highest scoring players from each faction are selected with their scores combining to create the faction score that week.
When faction scores are the same, we’ll compare how the selected players performed against what we expected their results to be based on their and their opponents WoElo ratings.
The tourament will only use results from singles based Grand Tournaments and each competition week will run from Tuesday to the following Monday, which should let me catch all that week’s tournaments results.
Qualification: Week 1, narrowing the field down to 16 factions
Our first qualification period ran from 3rd November to 9th November 2026. All of the factions had a chance to earn a place in the knockout stages, but only the top 16 from this week would go through to the round of 16.
Sylvaneth take the top seed after the qualification round with a massive 366.67 points out of a possible 400. Ogors and Nighthaunt follow them in as second and third seeds respectively. Flesh-eaters and Lumineth rounded out the top 5 seeds.
It was a bit tighter near the bottom with Ironjawz scraping through in 16th with 273.33 points and Disciples of Tzeentch claiming the last spot with 270 points.
Kharadron Overlords and Fyreslayers both found themselves eliminated in qualifying after only having two players represent them over the weekend.
Round of 16
In the round of 16 that happens this weekend, the lowest ranked qualifier will face the highest, while the second place seed will face the 15th placed seed, and so on.
What happens next?
We move into the round of 16, which will see the top four performing players for each faction again contribute to their faction score. The highest scoring faction out of each matchup progresses through to the Quarter-Finals.
These matches are now locked in and they’ll be no resseding. The winner of Match 1 will face the winner of Match 2 and so on. This will carry on each week until only two factions remain.
I’ll publish the results each week as well as the draw for the next round, and I’ll let you know which players have had their performances count towards each faction.