Phoenicium Archives

With the release of the Battlescroll: Galletian Reinforcements I’ve been able to go back through the data from the release of the General’s Handbook and tidy everything up. In doing so, I though it may be cool to give you a run-down of how each faction performed under the current General’s Handbook until the Battlescroll took effect.

The data used for analysing these results was taken from 110 Grand Tournaments between 3rd July 2022 and 6th November 2022.

Cities of Sigmar

Region Comparison – Popularity

Cities of Sigmar saw their highest popularity in Europe with 3.5% of players choosing the faction for tournament play, while their close neighbours in Scandinavia had the lowest take-up with only 0.3%.

Region Comparison – Win Rates

They may not have been popular in Scandianvia but their win rate there was the top of the pile at 60.0%. While players in Europe could only manage 43.2%.

Cities of Sigmar saw their only 5-0’s in the UK & Ireland and North America.

Subfaction Analysis

Subfaction	Players	Win Rate
Excelsis	1	80.00%
Phoenicium	7	66.13%
Hallowheart	40	57.21%
Hammerhal	8	50.00%
Har Kuron	1	50.00%
Tempest’s Eye	24	49.17%
Living City	14	43.57%
Misthavn	1	40.00%
Anvilguard	3	33.33%
Greywater Fastness	4	28.95%
None/Unknown	14	44.20%
Faction Total	117	50.77%

Out of the many, many factions that Cities have available to them, Hallowheart and Tempest’s Eye were the most popular with win rates of 57.21% and 49.17% respectively.

Top 10 Cities of Sigmar Players

You may notice that some players have a better World/Nation ranking than players above them in this table. This is due to players playing with multiple factions. These players have been ranked on their top 4 faction results only.

This is the Top Three AoS Lists for the Flying Monkey Con Grand Tournament that took place in Wichita, Kansas , USA on 24 and 25 September. It involved 51 players vying to be crowned champion in a 5 game tournament. The top 10 has 10 different factions represented, that is certainly representative of the wide open meta we have right now.

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The Top Three AoS Lists

Allegiance: Cities of Sigmar
– City: Phoenicium
– Mortal Realm: Ghur
– Grand Strategy: Mighty Beachhead
– Triumphs: Inspired

Leaders
Anointed on Frostheart Phoenix (315)
– General
– Command Trait: Seeker of Vengeance
– Artefact: Arcane Tome (Universal Artefact)
– Universal Spell Lore: Flaming Weapon
Anointed on Frostheart Phoenix (315)
– Artefact: Phoenix Pyre Ashes
Assassin (80)**
Assassin (80)**
Celestial Hurricanum with Celestial Battlemage (290)**
– Lore of the Phoenix: Golden Mist
Haskel Hexbane (180)

Battleline
10 x Phoenix Guard (175)***
10 x Phoenix Guard (175)***
10 x Phoenix Guard (175)***

Units
10 x Flagellants (80)*
10 x Shadow Warriors (120)*
5 x Hexbane’s Hunters (180)*

Core Battalions
*Bounty Hunters
**Command Entourage – Magnificent
***Expert Conquerors

Additional Enhancements
Artefact

Total: 1985 / 2000
Reinforced Units: 0 / 4
Allies: 0 / 400
Wounds: 110
Drops: 12

Brett: A Cities list without allies on the Podium? This is something exceptional even in our current meta, and Phonecium has the lowest representation of all of the Cities at just 2%. So Jeremy is doing it the hard way(?) but with a good reason. The Phoenix heros gain a wound and the Phoenix Guard gain +1 to hit and wound rolls (and a 4+ ward) within 12″ of Phoenix Temple hero (the Phoenixes). The result is the Guard become a capablable pining unit with some punch. The Guard are all in Expert Conquerors for objective control. Flagellants are very cheap screens, Shadow Warriors for mobile threat (strike from reserve) and Hexbane’s Hunters. All of these have mostly damage 1 weapons but are Bounty Hunters. Nice play, you’d normally use GVs to clear the screening units. Extra bonus, Flagellants get extra attacks if you don’t wipe the unit.

Hexbane’s Hunters were only announced recently so they are a bit a surprise. Slow moving they are a pair of assassin units with a preference for wizard heroes (they do additional damage to Hexbane’s chosen target). If you use an Underworld squad your opponent might not know what they do. In this case it’s 2 units with a combined 15 wounds and a 5+ ward that can do some annoying damage, including MW at the end of combat. In fact good luck getting Hexbane’s warscroll (it was taken off the Warhammer site). Special mention for the pair of Assassins. They appear with any unit of 5 or more at the start of the combat phase. No need to note which unit at the start off the game.

Shadow warriors striking from reserve could charge and if successful have an Assassin added. Or they can be dropped onto a unit you’ve charged at the start of your combat phase. The Phoenixes and Hurricanum are clearly the hammer units here but are falling behind a little (the Hurricanum through spell damage and buffing adjacent units). Despite the detail this isn’t an army that wins through list tech. There are a lot of old data sheets here with lowish rend and random damage, making the most of that to go 5/0 is pretty remarkable. His first 4 opponents had units that are hard to take down (Gargants, Mawcrushas, Be’Lakor and a Stardrake). At the same time this list is hard to concentrate your forces against and very hard to prevent it scoring. Throughout the competition Jeremy scored consistently taking the even from the other 5/0.