Age of Sigmar: Internal Balance of Armies From Games Workshop’s Perspective
Ever wonder what Games Workshop uses to check for Internal Balance within a Battletome and what even is “Internal Balance” anyways?
There’s a new Metawatch out today and it’s certainly worth a read. This one focuses mostly on the AoS side of the house and answers a few questions that were sent in. We won’t go over all of that today but I do want to focus in on a particular chart GW showed off.
“Q: Regarding internal balance – where you want 60% of warscrolls to be used in more than 5% of competitive lists – which factions currently do the best and worst by this metric?
A: Here’s a recent snapshot of internal balance data from 459 events held between the 6th of September and the 6th of November, showing the percentage of warscrolls that are used in at least 5% of competitive lists. “
An initial look at this chart shows the measurement that GW is using to get a surface level check on a army’s Internal Balance. From the raw numbers here, the goal is to hit a rate of 60% of all the warscrolls in a book used in at least 5% of competitive lists.
Now, I’m not entirely sure how Games Workshop came up with those metrics but those are the numbers and goals they stated and were aiming for. Currently, about a 1/3 of the factions aren’t there yet. GW also noted a “significant correlation” in regards to the number of unit options in Battletome and their use competitively. Turns out the more units you have to choose from the harder it is to hit that 60% usage target.
Maybe having 79 options in a single codex is a bit much…
So What’s Internal Balance Anyways?
Okay, so we know the stated goals but what is this chart really trying to measure? What’s Internal Balance in the first place? Again, the goals were stated in a previous Metawatch:
- Internal Balance: At least 60% of warscrolls should be used in at least 5% of army rosters
But that was defined even further and in more detail previous to that:
“Internal balance measures the relative performance of options within a faction. We measure this across several axes – warscrolls, enhancements, core battalions, grand strategies, and battle tactics. “
Basically, the Internal Balance is how well the options within a Battletome compare to each other option. As an example, let’s say there are 3 Battleline options in a book: A, B, and C. If you only ever see options A and B show up in “competitive lists” then there might be an issue or Internal Balance reason players are avoiding option C.
The inverse is also true. In the example above let’s say you ONLY saw option C picked for competitive lists. That’s still a signal that the Internal Balance is probably off.
What’s really interesting to me is that this type of data analysis can only be used as a detection measure — it’s a flag that’s being raised that something is…off. It will take further analysis to determine the reason (or reasons) that the Internal Balance is off.
Let’s do some armchair game design and take a quick look at the bottom 3 armies on this list and see if we can figure out what’s going on.
Cities of Sigmar are just under 50% of their usage rates which isn’t too far off. There’s probably a ton of factors for why you’re not seeing them closer to the 60% goal but I think we can point to 2 very obvious reasons:
- The army has 61 total options. As mentioned, it’s harder for an army with a lot of options to get to 60% usage internally
- The army is a hodgepodge of older armies stitched together with rules
Cities of Sigmar is a pretty weird army when you get right down to it. Pretty much all the options are the remnants from armies from previous versions of Warhammer Fantasy. That’s probably why GW is reworking them with the Dawnbringer Crusades. But again, 61 options — that’s the 2nd largest number of options available!
Slaves To Darkness is up next and it’s actually further under that 60% goal. It’s clocking in at around 46% — so what gives? Well, in the competitive scene there’s really only a handful of builds that work well for that army right now. Keep in mind the Win Rate data on them also has them at roughly 42% with the latest data. So yeah, they are on the low end.
They are also about to get a new book…so maybe that will be fixed when it drops later. However, they also have 46 options! That’s the 3rd most out of all the armies.
And that brings us back to Stormcast Eternals which has the least Internal Balance of any book according to the goals stated by GW. Again, 79 units in that book which is the most out of every army.
I like having lots of options in a book. However, I also understand that there’s gotta be a point of diminishing returns. We have the three armies with the most options in the game and they have the lowest Internal Balance numbers according to GW.
Strangely, it appears that the Skaven are doing it correctly. They have 45 units but 34 of them are seeing use in competitive lists! So it can be done.
Having a newer book probably does help
I think this is a neat peek behind the curtain and it’s interesting data to look at. For more on this check out the Metawatch and watch the video!
Why do you think the bottom 3 armies are at the bottom of Internal Balance?
