Howdy folks! We’re fresh off Worlds and now have tons of data to sift through to take a meta snapshot. This was ostensibly the ‘best of the best’ 66 players brawling for the chance to call themselves World Champion, and also our first look at the Spitewood products in live testing.

As a point of comparison, here’s the ‘End of Meta Review’ I put together a little before Spitewood came out if you’re interested in seeing what’s changed and what guesses were right or wrong.

In turn, we will cover what Nemesis combos were taken and how they performed, what warbands were taken and how they performed, and then dip into individual Rivals deck performances. Let’s tuck in!

Keep in mind, these winrates (and all winrates in this article) are for the match as a whole. A 2-0 or 2-1 win counts as one win in this scheme. Losing 0-2 or 1-2 counts as one loss – I didn’t spend the time looking into game losses and all that. I also didn’t consider glory differentials. Close matches vs blowouts might change the landscape, but this is our high-level view that I was able to glean.

I also excluded draws from this data. Despite expectations, we had multiple drawn matches and true ties throughout the event.

Nemesis Combo Popularity

I didn’t make this chart, but it was an easy steal (thanks Skyler!). Here we see hard green for popular combos, soft green for lesser taken combos, red for single representatives, and blank cells for combos nobody brought along. ES/PP, BA/PP, and BA/DS were all chosen with great frequency, which fits with what you might expect. PP/DS and BA/RF rounded out the top 5. We will look more at individual rivals decks later, but next let’s see how each combo did across the event regardless of warband.

Nemesis Combo Performance

As we peruse these numbers, remember two things:

• GW states their ‘goal’ for meta balance is that all things fall somewhere between a 45-55% win rate. Things above that may need a nerf, things below may need some help.
• Secondly, these can be skewed somewhat by the frequency they were taken, so it something looks ‘wrong’ check the popularity table above to see if that explains it.

Deck combo	Wins	Losses	Win percentage
BA/RF	28	10	73.68
ES/CC	18	11	62.07
EK/DS	24	15	61.54
PP/RS	6	4	60.00
BA/DS	45	35	56.25
PP/CC	11	9	55.00
BA/PP	43	37	53.75
CC/WR	10	10	50.00
RF/DS	5	5	50.00
BA/RS	14	15	48.28
PP/DS	28	32	46.67
ES/PP	38	50	43.18
CC/DS	12	18	40.00
RS/DS	4	6	40.00
PP/EK	4	6	40.00
ES/DS	4	6	40.00
CC/RF	4	6	40.00
BA/CC	11	19	36.67
ES/HG	7	13	35.00
BA/WR	3	7	30.00
ES/EK	3	7	30.00

The first thing that jumps out to me is that there are a HUGE number of combos that fell outside the goal range of 45-55%. There are only 6 that fell within that goal, actually. 15 pairings are either “too strong” or “too weak” – ten pairings fell below our goal. That’s rough!

Our traditional archetypes of ‘full aggro’ BA/RF and ‘full hold’ ES/CC did quite well, as did the newer ‘horde aggro’ EK/DS and more all-rounder aggro BA/DS. There were a good number of pairings that didn’t fare that well, but many of them were taken only once or twice so it’s hard to draw firm conclusions.

The only ‘underperforming’ combos that were taken with high frequency were ES/PP (which suffers from yet another restriction with the new FaR), CC/DS (which is a new and somewhat complex pairing), and BA/CC (which had already struggled coming into the event and has been quite thoroughly dethroned by BA/DS).

Warband Popularity

I was very pleased to see a high amount of variety in warbands this year. After the 40% Dromm debacle from last year, it was nice to see so many viable candidates. Personally, I played 10 matches across the weekend and only had to face one warband twice, and only played into one mirror match. Pretty awesome to see!

You can check out the data below, but it’s not all that surprising at the top. Some new stuff that looked really strong was taken pretty often, and Grymwatch because they’re incredibly good and have still never been nerfed whatsoever. What’s more interesting are the one-off picks for warbands nobody saw coming like Skinnerkin and Shadeborn which (spoilers) also did pretty well.

Warband	Count
Mollog’s Mob	7
The Grymwatch	6
Thorns of the Briar Queen	5
The Wurmspat	4
Elathain’s Soulraid	4
Zarbag’s Gitz	4
The Starblood Stalkers	4
Borgit’s Beastgrabbaz	4
The Gnarlspirit Pack	4
Jaws of Itzl	3
Skittershanks’ Clawpack	3
Blood of the Bull	3
Kurnoth’s Heralds	2
Thundrik’s Profiteers	2
The Exiled Dead	1
Ironsoul’s Condemnors	1
The Shadeborn	1
Kainan’s Reapers	1
Skinnerkin	1
Grandfather’s Gardeners	1
Ylthari’s Guardians	1
The Sons of Velmorn	1
Zondara’s Gravebreakers	1
Hrothgorn’s Mantrappers	1

Warband Performance

This category is pretty vulnerable to outliers since we have a pretty good spread of warbands. In order to get the most reasonable ‘true’ win percentage, here’s the data for warbands that were chosen at least three times by competitors.

Warband	Wins	Losses	Win percentage
The Wurmspat	25	15	62.50
Zarbag’s Gitz	24	16	60.00
Elathain’s Soulraid	23	17	57.50
The Grymwatch	32	27	54.24
Mollog’s Mob	35	30	53.85
Jaws of Itzl	16	14	53.33
Thorns of the Briar Queen	26	24	52.00
The Gnarlspirit Pack	19	21	47.50
Skittershanks’ Clawpack	14	16	46.67
The Starblood Stalkers	18	22	45.00
Borgit’s Beastgrabbaz	13	25	34.21
Blood of the Bull	9	21	30.00

As we can see above, there a few standouts – notably Wurmspat, Zarbag, and Elathain were above the 45-55% ‘goal’ for meta balance. Grymwatch, despite being considerably ‘better’ than many other warbands coming into the event, barely remained within goal at 54%. It appears damage potential and resilience +/- a high model count are the keys to victory in this meta.

Another interesting wrinkle is that we had 3 Jaws of Itzl; two who did remarkably well, and one who did quite poorly. They averaged ~53%, but there was a wide disparity between performances. The warband can be very strong, but requires some finesse, as we have seen before.

Falling below where we would hope, The Starblood Stalkers barely hung on at 45%, Borgit’s Beastgrabbaz fell to 34%, and Blood of the Bull is sitting at a sad 30% win rate. All three are reasonably strong warbands, so it’s possible that the matchups simply didn’t favor them, or their signature skills (high defense stats across all three warbands) just couldn’t hold up to the potency offered by the decks available. I know personally my Starblood 2 defense with a reroll, which should be busted good, felt awfully thin in the face of Deadly Synergy.

Below is all the data, so some warbands will be brought up by strong performers while others will be dragged down by poorer showings – this may be less informative but does provide a snapshot of what went down and how to potentially evaluate the lesser-taken warbands.

Warband	Wins	Losses	Win percentage
The Exiled Dead	7	3	70.00
Kurnoth’s Heralds	12	7	63.16
The Wurmspat	25	15	62.50
Zarbag’s Gitz	24	16	60.00
Ironsoul’s Condemnors	6	4	60.00
The Shadeborn	6	4	60.00
Skinnerkin	6	4	60.00
Grandfather’s Gardeners	6	4	60.00
Elathain’s Soulraid	23	17	57.50
The Grymwatch	32	27	54.24
Mollog’s Mob	35	30	53.85
Jaws of Itzl	16	14	53.33
Thorns of the Briar Queen	26	24	52.00
The Gnarlspirit Pack	19	21	47.50
Skittershanks’ Clawpack	14	16	46.67
The Starblood Stalkers	18	22	45.00
Thundrik’s Profiteers	8	12	40.00
Kainan’s Reapers	4	6	40.00
Ylthari’s Guardians	4	6	40.00
Borgit’s Beastgrabbaz	13	25	34.21
Hrothgorn’s Mantrappers	3	6	33.33
Blood of the Bull	9	21	30.00
The Sons of Velmorn	3	7	30.00
Zondara’s Gravebreakers	3	7	30.00

Exiled Dead, as expected, looks pretty strong with excellent efficiency and recursion and freak damage potential. Kurnoth’s Heralds are the real surprise, as I think many of us wrote them off on release and they likely deserve a second look. G will be discussing his strategy on What the Hex soon, so look forward to that.

Sons of Velmorn also fall to the ‘depressingly low’ tier here, which is to be expected with their undercooked warscroll. Hrothgorn also needs a boost, as the gnoblars just suck so hard right now, and the trap may end up being a liability more than a benefit in some matchups.

Rivals Deck Popularity

Let’s take a look at Rivals Decks brought along regardless of pairing.

Rivals Deck	Count
BA	27
PP	27
DS	24
ES	16
CC	14
RF	6
EK	6
RS	5
WR	3
HG	2
RR	0

Surprising very few, we see that BA and PP remain very popular choices – interestingly this is still true even in the face of a second Pillage surge being restricted. The other ‘timely’ thing to note is that Deadly Synergy was chosen a resounding 24 times and was the third most popular rivals deck. It was well received at release, and as expected was present in force at WCW.

Notably there were zero instances of Realmstone Raiders at worlds. This may have been to a handful of factors: The scoring is difficult to track, which opens up potential for disagreements in End Phases where judges won’t be able to reliably rule on the outcome. The deck suffers into 1 and 0 bounty fighters, which were expected to be around in plenty. The deck still has several outstanding FAQ requests that were not clarified prior to worlds. It carries a high mental burden and you’re more likely to make mistakes across 20-30 games during the week. And it’s just, well, kinda rough competitively speaking.

Rivals Deck Performance

Knowing how many people brought each rivals deck, let’s see how they all stacked up.

Rivals Deck	Wins	Losses	Win percentage
RF	37	21	63.79
BA	144	123	53.93
EK	31	28	52.54
DS	122	117	51.05
WR	10	10	50.00
RS	24	25	48.98
PP	130	138	48.51
CC	66	73	47.48
ES	70	87	44.59
HG	7	13	35.00

RF did quite well, and this despite the fact it has multiple forsaken cards and a restricted card. It wasn’t taken super often and did win the event, so there may be some outlier tilt here. It is the only deck that does better than the ‘goal’ 45-55% win rate, however, so even though BA, PP, and DS were taken a ton, they weren’t necessarily overperforming.

Other notable things I took away from this was that Edge of the Knife looks way better than expected, though again with a small sample size. There were only two decks that fell below the ‘goal’ of 45-55%: Emberstone Sentinels and Hunting Grounds. ES struggles into consistent aggro which we have a lot of now, and the new token placement rules may help in some regards but hurt Slow Advance a substantial amount. Un-restricting Supremacy may go a decent way towards improving this deck’s performance.

CC did worse than expected, though likely because they rules team pulled a “Surprise! AG tokens actually don’t go on Embergard boards after all”, and frustratingly decided this only 24 hours before deck lock was complete. I imagine this screwed a lot of people over. I spoke to multiple people over the tourney who felt slighted by this.

HG is really a mystery as to ‘how to make it work’ and while two people tried, they didn’t get super far. I imagine the deck will either need some errata/FAQ to help out, or will end up falling to the wayside like RR did.

Wrap

For the nerds, you’re welcome. For the rest of you, sorry for all the numbers.

While it’s likely too early to say, and a relatively small sample size, my biggest takeaways are the following –

Here’s what might deserve a nerf soon: RF (again?), DS, and maybe BA. Wurmspat, Elathain, Grymwatch (GW plz), and somehow Zarbag AGAIN.

Here’s what hopefully gets a buff soon: ES, HG, and maybe RR since nobody took it. Velmorn, Blood of the Bull, potentially Borgit, and a handful of warbands nobody thought were strong enough to take. BA/CC needs some help but I’m not sure how to do it in ways that don’t overbuff other combos.

It looks like the PP nerf landed in just about the right place! I still think Strip the Realm is a dummy card and should be restricted or something.

Until next time, go jam some more matches, make sure to enter your results in the Underworlds Statistics Project so people can get a read on the meta as it matures, and Spend some Glory!