With Season 2 of the General's Handbook around the corner, we've got a supersized Battlescroll to share with you all today, including a full update of points values for nearly every faction in Warhammer Age of Sigmar.* Design Lead Matt Rose sat down with Ben Galler to discuss the changes coming to the game.
Matt: This season shifts the focus away from massed infantry and towards the footslogging heroes of Ghur, so the Warhammer Design Studio is expecting considerable changes in the meta over the coming months. This provides a good opportunity for us to take a closer look at internal balance while we wait for the dust to settle.
When we started to update points costs, we followed the following process:
Analysis: We gathered data from hundreds of recent events, and broke each unit down in a variety of ways: win rate when included in a roster, how often that unit was included in a roster, how many copies of that unit were included, and how often that unit was reinforced. We cross-referenced this information with overall stats for that unit's faction, as well as stats when included as an ally.
First Pass: After analyzing the available data, we made adjustments. In many cases, the data provides a clear picture – for example, if a unit's win rate and inclusion were both higher than we'd like, that unit could probably use a points increase, whereas if both indicators were lower than we'd like, it was time to look at a proportional decrease.
Other cases are more complicated – for instance, units with a low inclusion rate but high win rate. In these cases we'd take a closer look at the unit, how it was used and at what scale of event, and then adjust accordingly, generally with a more conservative approach due to increased unknowns.Feedback and Iteration: Once we’d completed our first pass, we sent it out to our two external feedback groups: the Metawatch Advisors, mostly made up of tournament organisers and analytically-minded individuals from the community, as well as our external playtesters, made up of skilled tournament players. I'd like to extend a huge thank-you to both groups, as their feedback has been invaluable.
This was an iterative process, and really helped to account for things like expected shifts in the new season, or identifying cases where a points drop on one unit might crowd out another unit in a similar role, causing it to drop in inclusion too rapidly.Finishing touches: As a minor quality-of-life improvement, we've also added updated official base sizes to every unit in the Pitched Battle profiles. We've also decided to round off points values to the nearest 10, to make list building a bit easier.
These updated points are just the baseline for the upcoming season – you can still look forward to regular Battlescrolls every quarter to continue to make adjustments based on how the balance of the game evolves as we move into the next season and more factions receive updated battletomes.
We hope you're all as excited as we are for the next season of competitive play. It's been an absolute pleasure getting to meet and talk to you at events, and to read the feedback you've sent into aosfaq@gwplc.com. Your contributions continue to help grow the thriving matched play community, and I can't wait to see how it will evolve over the coming months.
Thanks Matt! All of the points updates – and everything else that’s changing – can be found in the latest Battlescroll, which you can download here.**
* With the exception of Gloomspite Gitz, Beasts of Chaos, and Slaves to Darkness, all of whom have new battletomes imminent.
** These updates will go live in the app next week.