# Warhammer Army Balance - the statistics.



## maddermax

Found something a bit interesting, for anyone wondering about warhammer army balance, especially for competitive play. Here is a ranking of army power, using results from Grand Tournaments. Sorry for linking to other sites, but the guys work is pretty interesting, and I didn't want to just copy pasta - got to give him credit for doing all the leg work. 

The list all together is quite a bit different from the list we usually bandy about. Though Deamons are still well and truly at the top of the list, he notes that the results for them are all from a single GT, because they're so new, and as such that's probably skewing the results, and its probable they'll go down a bit as people work out how to combat them properly.

The results also, of course, don't take account of player skill levels very well, so the player base of a particular army might also skew the results somewhat. Altogether though, I think it gives a much more scientific basis for ranking than normal.

ah, and here's the list

--Most Powerful--

Daemonic Legion 
Wood Elves
Bretonnians
Lizardmen 
Skaven 
Beasts of Chaos
Vampire Counts
Tomb Kings 
Ogre Kingdoms
Hordes of Chaos
Empire 
Dark Elves
High Elves
Dwarfs
Orcs & Goblins

-- Least Powerful --


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## Captain Galus

Is that list using the newest Dark Elf and Hordes of Chaos books?


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## Vaz

Hordes of Chaos is now called Warriors of Chaos - if it says that Daemons are new, then Warriors weren't released.

With the old army book, unless you were a Chosen, foot warrior, then Chaos Warriors were underpowered, if you were a Marauder, you were too expensive, if you were a Chosen Knight, then unfortunately there was only one unit of you.

I'm pretty surprised at how well Beasts of Chaos did though - I'm guessing Tzeentch/Nurgle lists Bestigor+Minotaur+Spawn Spam lists.

Be interesting to see him collate the results over the next few years of GT lists - although with the constant updating of old armies, that'll skew it slightly.


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## maddermax

Yeah, I don't think warriors have had a showing in any major tourney so far, as they've only been out for a month or two. I think the Dark elf stat is based on both pre- and post new book results, so that might skew it somewhat as well. anyway, read his post, it goes though most of what he did to work it out.


_Be interesting to see him collate the results over the next few years of GT lists - although with the constant updating of old armies, that'll skew it slightly._

Yeah, I think the army updates make it hard to track these things year in year out, but generally only 3-4 armies will change, so it still gives a decent indicator. Take it with a grain of salt though.
_
I'm pretty surprised at how well Beasts of Chaos did though - I'm guessing Tzeentch/Nurgle lists Bestigor+Minotaur+Spawn Spam lists._

probably, though it could also have something to do with player skill. there aren't that many BOC players out there, and most of them are old hands at the game, not newbies - metal armies just aren't for beginners. So they could be doing better than average, but it doesn't mean BOC are making it into the top 10 all the time.


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## neilbatte

The only problem about useing tourney list to see how strong an army is only really shows how much each list gets abused. 
Many armies rarely feature in tourneys as they are considered weak and when they do get a showing its normally newbs who don't realise the handicap or experianced generals needing a challenge.
My freind came back from a tournament recently and was moaning that in all his games he only played 2 different races and all the lists were nearly identical so it must be really difficult to get a measure of each races power from tournies, although the summer campaigns may be a slight indicator as they include battles outside of the purpose built tournament scene and encompase differing levels of hobbyist.


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## squeek

It is certainly an interesting array of data, bear in mind though most of the results are from 2007, the last update was 'Updated January 4, 2008' so it is likely that the balance of power has shifted somewhat in that time.

It is a shame he hasn't added anything since really, we have a whole years worth of comps since then that would probably influence the scores quite a lot.


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## Whizzwang

pretty pointless list really.

Take heat 3 of the GT. 28 Demon players, 3 Orc and Goblin. so of course Daemons will get a better showing in those resulst as there is a high probability of them doing well.

For the record i'm 3-1 up agianst GT Daemons with my O+G's I don't rate them at all as highly as most people. Rather than sit and bitch that they're too hard I went out of my way to figure out how to beat them.


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## maddermax

squeek said:


> It is certainly an interesting array of data, bear in mind though most of the results are from 2007, the last update was 'Updated January 4, 2008' so it is likely that the balance of power has shifted somewhat in that time.
> 
> It is a shame he hasn't added anything since really, we have a whole years worth of comps since then that would probably influence the scores quite a lot.


yeah, very true. If I knew where to find all the GT results, I might try doing a bit of a list myself. Because of the constant updates, more recent results would give us a far clearer picture. So if anyone knows where to get all the results, post it up, lets see what we can do.



Whizzwang said:


> pretty pointless list really.
> 
> Take heat 3 of the GT. 28 Demon players, 3 Orc and Goblin. so of course Daemons will get a better showing in those resulst as there is a high probability of them doing well.
> 
> For the record i'm 3-1 up agianst GT Daemons with my O+G's I don't rate them at all as highly as most people. Rather than sit and bitch that they're too hard I went out of my way to figure out how to beat them.


Actually, they're ranked by how well they did on average, not if they were in the top few or whatever, so the number of players shouldn't make any statistical difference. It's actually the converse argument, that just because an army (like BOC for instance) does better than average, doesn't mean it can actually make the top 10. A large number of players is just as likely to drag you down as bring you up. 

But I like your fighting spirit! Winners are still determined by generalship, we're just trying to figure out (usually small) amount of bias introduced by army choice.


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## neilbatte

Another thing that makes it harder to determine the ranking of each army is that most armies have a weakness against at least 1 army. My chaos dwarves normally beat Deamons of chaos but when I play Dwarves I usually get my butt handed to me even though the Dwarves get beaten by Deamons more often than not and with a large showing from 1 army at a single tourny that will skew the results even further.


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