The Skorne Chronicles; Vol. 35

Commanders Logs

I’ve been keeping track of data on my games for about 5 years now. I really enjoy looking back on whom I played, the casters I played against and with, and all sorts of other little demographics. I like to look at my overall percentage and see that its not really changed, as it doesn’t once you get over 300 games or so. I figured it would be a good, absolute way of looking at the year past and analyzing it a bit. Take the journey with me!

So, First off, I played 72 games this year. While not as many as I would like, it is a lot of games, more than 1 a week, and with a 2 year old, full time work and other obligations, I am pleased with the quantity of gaming I got in this year. Next year should be more, and my goal is 100/year. Not impossible, but I definitely have to make it out to more tournaments.

This is what the caster breakdown looks like:

I definitely focused on Rasheth, and it shows. I played him 9 times while I was out there. If you take those away, you end up with a pretty significant bend towards Zaal2. As he was the new caster of the Year, and I was working through him trying to figure out what I wanted to do with his list and armies, I consider that dedicated time well spent. Right behind him are Mordikaar and Hexeris 2, two casters I had previously considered not in my league. Turns out, I really like both of them. Hexeris 2’s List went through more changes, and I feel I did a vastly better job at learning and implementing a list that works with him, as he was the last of the casters I played, and 12 months of experience will do that for you.

Strangely for me, I did not play the casters I expected to play. From the very start, I mentioned I wanted to play casters that were not like Cryx, ones that focused on violent face smashing with Warbeasts and elite infantry. Instead, I see a focus on very Magically focused casters – Rasheth, Mordikaar, Hexeris 2, Zaal. Zaal 2 is strange in that he takes my melee infantry to 11, but fails to enable my Warbeasts, and Xerxis is the exact type of caster I said I enjoyed. Maybe I just enjoy Xerxis. The only Two casters I’d never pulled out of the case were Hexeris 1, and Morghoul 1, two of the casters, strangely enough, that focus on exactly my desire. Weird, that!

Finally, I managed to bring, outside of our very newest caster, only a single game with each of the newer casters from the past two books. Xerxis 2 and Makeda 3 were almost never on the board, and that, looking back, makes me very sad. It makes me sadder that I have Xerxis 2 here, 75% painted, and no impetus to finish him.

Now, lets take a look at the win/loss rates of the casters. Lets see what I got. 

The statistic that seems most glaringly bizarre is my 4-0 set of games with Morghoul 2. Hit squad, Morghoul 2, or I am very good with that list. I think I know what the real answer is. Outside of that anomaly, It looks like I’m around the same win percentage with the casters. Until you look at Xerxis. I only used fist this year, and man were people ready for it. He was clearly my worst caster of the year (baring the one game I played with Mak 2/3 and Xerxis 2), which is expressly interesting considering he is the easy pair of the faction. Rasheth, Zaal2 and Makeda 1 (though small sample size for Makeda 1) all came in around 60, with Zaal 1 a touch higher, and Mordikaar a touch lower. I’m pleased with the numbers. I’m better than 50% on all but two of my casters, and all casters with 4 or more games except for Xerxis.

4 games is pretty much my litmus for how I can do with a particular caster. with none of these am I good enough to run the table, but I am strong enough to have a fighting change at every game. Even Xerxis 1, if I can pull out one more victory pulls up to a 50/50. Its interesting data, and I like to see that it reinforces my personal feelings of mid to high adequacy.

So, now we get to the data that’s really fun, at least for me: Faction Breakdown. It takes a look at each of the factions I’ve played against and gives me an interesting snapshot.

People love playing Cryx, Trolls, and Skorne around here, with a significant smattering of Legion, Protectorate and Cygnar. Cryx, to absolutely no ones surprise, gave me nightmares and I saw them across the table a bunch. Trollbloods, again as expected, were no problem. Skorne was a little rough, but again, I’ve about a 60% shot at the games, so I’m ok with seeing them across from the table. Really, honestly, It seems I want to see Legion and Circle across the board, and don’t want to see Minions and Khador. Strangely, I’ve heard that Minions and Khador, along with Skorne, are scraping the bottom of the barrel trying to be real factions, but this seems to indicate that I have a higher chance of winning against a real faction than I do one of the lesser factions in the petting zoo. I’m fairly surprised by the amount of smashing i took by Khador, winning only one game all year against them, but its likely due to past trauma. I have a very, perhaps way to strong, wariness of Khador.

It’ll be interesting for me to see how this stacks up to Cryx in a year, and what I have the most problems with. I expect my Circle percentage to be vastly lower.

Now, and finally, the caster analysis. Often, this leaves a bit to be desired because I played a caster only one time across the length of the year, so I’m not going to include them. I’ll only be looking at casters that I’ve faced at least twice.

This is always hard, because I tend to play against so many different casters over the course of the year. It does, though, mean that I get a varied and enjoyable game experience. That Haley 2, Kreuger 2 and Butcher 3 top the list does not surprise me, nor, outside of Morghoul 2 does the rest of the list. Everyone up there are casters I expect to see at a tournament. I also can’t seem to beat Butcher 3 or Rask, so there is something I have going for me in 2016. Take them both down with Cryx.

Well, that’s the year by the dry and uninteresting numbers, but its given me a little insight into how often and what I end up paired against.  Cryx, Trolls and Skorne throw curve balls every time I see them, and I see them a lot, where as the majority of the games I play against Khador, Circle and Cygnar (I wrote Haley the first two times) are against the same casters. Time to polish the old memory stick!