Monthly Archives: August 2013

28 August 2013

ETC2013 the view from the top

By WarHamSandwich

So my last two posts have been about the overall meta at ETC2013, and today I want to take a quick look at the top 3 countries and how they compare to the overall meta.

As a quick refresher the top performing armies were:

  1. Tau
  2. Eldar
  3. Necrons
  4. Chaos Space Marines
  5. Chaos Daemons
  6. Tyranides
  7. Space Marines
  8. Dark Angels

Whereas the most popular armies were:

  1. Necrons
  2. Chaos Space Marines
  3. Tau
  4. Grey Knights
  5. Imperial Guard
  6. Tyranids
  7. Chaos Daemons
  8. Dark Angels

Germany got the top spot (familiar territory for these guys!).

Germany

They ran with:

  • Tau
  • Grey Knights
  • Necrons
  • Chaos Space Marines
  • Chaos Daemons
  • Tyranides
  • Orks
  • Dark Angels

So this includes 6 of the 8 top armies (they left out Eldar and Space Marines), and 7 of the 8 most popular armies (they avoided IG, which was the biggest underperformer of the popular armies).

Spain came in second,

spain

and their team comprised:

  • Tau
  • Grey Knights
  • Necrons
  • Chaos Space Marines
  • Chaos Daemons
  • Eldar
  • Imperial Guard
  • Dark Angels

Again they had 6 of the top 8 armies, leaving out Tyranids and Space marines. They also brought 7 of the 8 most popular armies, just leaving out the Tyranids.

Poland were third

poland

and they brought:

  • Necrons
  • Chaos Space Marines
  • Tau
  • Grey Knights
  • Imperial Guard
  • Tyranids
  • Chaos Daemons
  • Dark Angels

This also has 6 out of the 8 top armies (similarly to Germany they left out Eldar and Space Marines), and interestingly all of the most popular armies.

So the top three countries all brought 6 of the 8 top armies (though not the same ones) and all brought 7 or more of the 8 most popular armies.  There is a big overlap in that all three countries brought Chaos Marines, Dark Angels, Daemons, Grey Knights, Necrons, and Tau.

So, what does that mean for the army rankings I described previously? Well firstly it shows that picking the top 8 armies is not necessary to win, and places more weight on my caveat that just going on army rank is a simplification that needs to be tempered by the roles needed or the team – and the skillsets of your players!

1 Comment   |  tags: , , , , , , , , | posted in ETC, Tactics and Techniques, Tournament

24 August 2013

ETC2013 Popularity vs Performance

By WarHamSandwich

So last time I put up a table of how the various armies performed (on average) at the ETC in Serbia. There were some interesting results, and today’s post follows up that line of thinking by comparing the popularity of army choices with their score rank. Popularity in this case just means how many teams included that army, and the table below puts the armies in order of popularity.
RankVsPop
So the numbers in the ‘Difference’ column highlights any disconnect between how popular an army is versus how well it performed at the ETC. A positive number means that the army performed better than its popularity, a negative number means that its popularity was higher than its performance warranted.

Tau weren’t the most popular army, but really the first three are so close that it makes little difference. The captains made those choices fairly rationally: Necrons, Tau, and Heldrakes are solid performers.

There is an interesting hiccup in places 4 and 5 where Grey Knights and Imperial Guard were both quite popular but didn’t do as well as their popularity suggests. Both armies were in the bottom half performance-wise but were both present in more than 75% of teams (my own included!)

Tyranids were fairly popular, and by the results that seems to be justified – similarly with Chaos Daemons (slightly under-represented), and Dark Angels.

Eldar were quite under-represented and were the ‘sleeper hit’ of the ETC, doing quite well for the 11 teams that brought them. Of the remainder, only Space Marines have a big positive difference showing that they did a better job than their low popularity would have predicted.

There is of course a big caveat here: armies fill particular roles on a team so simply picking the highest average scorers may very well lead you astray with too much of one role and too little of another. So we don’t have a magic formula for army selection just yet.

It also creates an interesting mind game for next year: do you bring a team that works well against the popular armies of 2013, or do you focus on bringing what did well in 2013, or do you bring counters to what did well in 2013? How much will the new codices between now and Aug 2014 change the meta?

Lots to think about for the new captains!

1 Comment   |  tags: , , , , , , | posted in ETC, Tournament

22 August 2013

ETC 2013 Armies and Stats

By WarHamSandwich

So the madness of ETC2013 is over, and the post mortem analysis can begin in earnest.  I won’t start with my own team (Ireland), but rather I’d like to take a look at the overall meta.  Thankfully my job has been made easier by the organisers who have already published lots of data on who took what armies and how they fared in the tournament.

So, what armies generally did well?

ArmyRanks

So the number 1 slot is probably no surprise to anyone, Tau are new and awesome, they wrecked face at the ESC and are probably doing well at a tournament near you right now.

Number 2, Eldar is probably a bit more of a surprise – particularly considering that it was the OLD codex that was legal for the tournament, not the shiny new one.  My prediction beforehand was that they would be a solid army to ‘not lose’ I wasn’t expecting them to win big.  The fact that they were often backed up by Tau allies probably helped a little too

Necrons, Heldrakes, and Chaos Daemons round out the ‘winners list’ (i.e. the armies that are averaging >10 which is a win).  Again this isn’t very surprising Necrons are still crazy powerful, everyone hates Heldrakes for a reason, and Chaos Daemons can certainly be deadly in the right matchup.

It worth taking a moment to think about the remaining armies.  Everything else on that list was losing on average (i.e. <10).

Admittedly, that’s a bit of a sweeping statement as the performance of an individual can vary greatly from the group average, and not just down to player skill but also down to the team pairing strategy.  The table also doesn’t factor in the use of allies – which is perhaps a project for me for another time…

But, that said, this table does give us a line in the sand as regards what the 2013 meta was like and I’m sure it will influence team and army selection for next year!

2 Comments   |  tags: , , , , , | posted in ETC, Tournament

17 August 2013

ETC 2013 Result

By WarHamSandwich

Well we had an amazing time at the European Team Championship in Serbia.  We had 6 great rounds against excellent opponents:

Day 1

Round 1: Latvia – WIN

Round 2: Belgium – WIN

Day 2

Round 3: Spain – LOSS

Round 4: France – WIN

Day 3

Round 5: Finland – DRAW

Round 6: Russia – DRAW

I’m so proud of each and every man on that team – the whole experience is a bit hard to describe in words, so here’s a video.

 

20130428-222804.jpg

In other news, I’m standing down as Captain so hopefully I’ll have more time to put into the blog!

1 Comment | posted in ETC, Tournament

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