The Meta Meets 2015
It’s been a few months since we’ve had a stats article on Torrent of Fire, so today we’re going to do a bit of “re-baselining” and look at some big pictures from the data. So, first off, just overall win percentage for all Torrent of Fire reported games:
Something to note about the data is that with some of the architectural changes to how Ringers and unlisted armies are registered, there was a pretty serious shakeup to the data. In particular, most armies had quite a few wins over Ringer armies taken away.
This is great for looking at the data as a whole, but presents some challenges when trying to look at data based on edition. In the past, I had simply used a snapshot from the end of 6th edition and removed those values from the newest data to get an accurate picture of 7th, but this no longer provides accurate data. Instead, we can only look at the last three months of numbers truly comparatively.
This will give us a quick snapshot of the current state, but it will be a few months before we can start showing trends again with any significance. As for the current snapshot, it looks a bit like this:
The bar chart is sorted by Win Percentage, from highest to lowest. The red line indicates Wins since the October data refresh. This is a somewhat smaller sample size than we’ve had in the past, with 766 games being recorded. In this time, one thing that certainly stands out is the popularity of Tyranids in this time frame:
As we can see, Tyranids nearly doubled each of the next three most popular armies, Eldar, Tau, and Space Marines in total number of games, with 170 Games played.
One thing to keep in mind as we look at a breakdown of armies is that this is Primary only. Some armies, like Imperial Knights, have a huge impact as an ally, but their predominance isn’t shown here. Of all 592 games with Imperial Knights recorded in Torrent of Fire, only 131 were as the Primary detachment.
2014 was solidly the year of the Imperial Knight, and the end of year statistics show that. In the same period of time as in the pie chart above, Knights were used as an ally in 66 games. If you considered them the primary army if they were included at all, they would be the third most popular army used in this time frame behind Tyranids and Tau.
Looking at Knights by themselves, we can take a look at their breakdown in all uses:
The sample size is fairly small for most uses, with only a single RTT showing for most. What is notable is that Eldar and Necrons, already strong armies, look to be boosted significantly by the inclusion of Knights, whereas Space Marines are hurt by their inclusion in the army. It’s also interesting to note that without support from another army, Knights’ win percentage drops to 55.6%, which would drop them to 5th, just ahead of Eldar.
However, if we look at Knights as a Primary against Knights as an ally, we see that they excel as a primary detachment:
Finally, looking at Knight Primaries with or without allies, the distinction becomes clearer:
As a primary detachment with an allied force, Knights are winning an astounding 78.6% of their games. This is an admittedly small sample size, but indicates a very strong combination. Looking at the armies Knights were paired with compared to their overall win percentage shows a similar trend for most armies:
I only look at the armies with 5+ games, but the trend is pretty clear; Space Marines and Grey Knights actually suffer slightly from adding Knights, while Xenos armies benefit greatly.
Whether Knights as they stand make for a better game is unlikely, as it indicates a potentially overpowered combination that is unmatched by anything else in the game. Something to watch for is whether this domination continues as events allow more Lords of War, like at LVO and Adepticon
Something to note about the data is that with some of the architectural changes to how Ringers and unlisted armies are registered, there was a pretty serious shakeup to the data. In particular, most armies had quite a few wins over Ringer armies taken away.
This is great for looking at the data as a whole, but presents some challenges when trying to look at data based on edition. In the past, I had simply used a snapshot from the end of 6th edition and removed those values from the newest data to get an accurate picture of 7th, but this no longer provides accurate data. Instead, we can only look at the last three months of numbers truly comparatively.
This will give us a quick snapshot of the current state, but it will be a few months before we can start showing trends again with any significance. As for the current snapshot, it looks a bit like this:
The bar chart is sorted by Win Percentage, from highest to lowest. The red line indicates Wins since the October data refresh. This is a somewhat smaller sample size than we’ve had in the past, with 766 games being recorded. In this time, one thing that certainly stands out is the popularity of Tyranids in this time frame:
As we can see, Tyranids nearly doubled each of the next three most popular armies, Eldar, Tau, and Space Marines in total number of games, with 170 Games played.
One thing to keep in mind as we look at a breakdown of armies is that this is Primary only. Some armies, like Imperial Knights, have a huge impact as an ally, but their predominance isn’t shown here. Of all 592 games with Imperial Knights recorded in Torrent of Fire, only 131 were as the Primary detachment.
2014 was solidly the year of the Imperial Knight, and the end of year statistics show that. In the same period of time as in the pie chart above, Knights were used as an ally in 66 games. If you considered them the primary army if they were included at all, they would be the third most popular army used in this time frame behind Tyranids and Tau.
Looking at Knights by themselves, we can take a look at their breakdown in all uses:
The sample size is fairly small for most uses, with only a single RTT showing for most. What is notable is that Eldar and Necrons, already strong armies, look to be boosted significantly by the inclusion of Knights, whereas Space Marines are hurt by their inclusion in the army. It’s also interesting to note that without support from another army, Knights’ win percentage drops to 55.6%, which would drop them to 5th, just ahead of Eldar.
However, if we look at Knights as a Primary against Knights as an ally, we see that they excel as a primary detachment:
Finally, looking at Knight Primaries with or without allies, the distinction becomes clearer:
As a primary detachment with an allied force, Knights are winning an astounding 78.6% of their games. This is an admittedly small sample size, but indicates a very strong combination. Looking at the armies Knights were paired with compared to their overall win percentage shows a similar trend for most armies:
I only look at the armies with 5+ games, but the trend is pretty clear; Space Marines and Grey Knights actually suffer slightly from adding Knights, while Xenos armies benefit greatly.
Whether Knights as they stand make for a better game is unlikely, as it indicates a potentially overpowered combination that is unmatched by anything else in the game. Something to watch for is whether this domination continues as events allow more Lords of War, like at LVO and Adepticon