Very recently this month, we got the results of the Moscow Team Tournament, a 3-player teams format that does not allow duplicate rivals decks across the whole team’s pairings. The event featured 36 players over 19 matches per team. Russia’s meta has always been very intriguing to me because it’s so completely different than everything else we see worldwide. The winning team this year brought Crimson Court (the only undefeated warband in the whole event?!?), Zondara’s Gravebreakers, and Skittershank’s Clawpack. Not at all what you expect as a tourney-winning combo!

Here’s a post with some cool pictures and a summary of the event data, the most compelling of which I will present here so you can look through the iron curtain and struggle to understand what they’re doing over there just like me. The reddit post got locked because people can’t seem to understand that the citizenry of a country and its political leadership are two different things. Be kind, y’all. As an American, I really hope you understand this – the regular people like you and me are all the same wherever we happen to have been born. You have more in common with a working-class peasant in any foreign country than you do with whatever their Head of State is. I sure do.

Ok, with my woo-woo kumbaya drum circle humanist take out of the way, I still want to comment on this tournament, simply because the warband results are straight wack. Maybe I don’t have anything in common with Russian everymen after all.

Past Moscow tournaments also had wild results. in May of 2025, Gryselle’s Arenai using a grand alliance warscroll got first place out of 16 competitors, going 8-2 with +45 glory across the event, while Jaws of ITzl took two of the bottom 3 spots and nothing higher than that. In first edition I remember an all-dark elf team taking first place, which had Gryselle, Shadeborn, and Morgwaeth’s Blade Coven taking the gold in a very large field. While the theme is cute, none of those warbands were considered ‘good’ in first edition, and it was a surprise to me that they came out on top. Six Years ago, Skaeth’s Wild Hunt took first place, Grymwatch came in second, and Mollog in third. At that time, Skaeth wasn’t somebody we would have expected (though the other two were to an extent).

All this to say, Moscow (and St Petersburg, I understand) do things differently from the English-speaking world and even the rest of Europe.

Sadly, Russians haven’t ever been at the World Championships of Warhammer or other large events like the WTC, Warhammer World Events, ITC registered tournaments, and so on so we don’t know if they are able to compete with the wider meta. Whatever they do there seems to be so fully off-meta to the rest of us. Maybe some of these warbands could use a second look from the western world and there’s something to learn. Let’s peek through their summary of results.

Part of the difficulty with parsing the results is I only have deck pairing data for the top three teams, and the team format requires no duplication across a team. Maybe a strong warband was expected to carry with a bad set of decks and couldn’t, or a bad warband benefitted from a strong deck while its opponents didn’t have that advantage. Despite this, we don’t see such aberrant results in the WTC across the rest of Europe annually and they have a similar restriction on their 3-man teams.

The Results Rundown

I did manage to get decks for the First-Place team and pairings for the top three teams:

Mikhail Belyaev of “Pitersky Krit” was the only player in the tournament to win every game. He also became the tournament’s top player based on his personal performance: Six wins in six games and a victory point differential of +56. How did he do this? With this Crimson Court BA/RF deck. BARF is strong as pretty much everyone knows, and it’s a fine choice for Crimson Court, but there are several other ‘more competitive’ warbands to spend your BARF slot on. Despite this, he excelled.

The winning team’s Skittershank’s Clawpack took the always popular Cata/Wrack which is a good choice for them though perhaps not their optimal one. Here’s their decklist!

Last, the winning team’s Zondara’s Gravebreakers took DS/PP which is a pairing I played with them in the past and found a little clunky. Both decks are strong and in combination definitely can be, assuming the pilot is skilled with their warband which I assume this one was.

The Second-Place team’s Zondara was PP/CC, which is a strong deck pairing and always has been, though again I was a bit surprised to see it with this specific warband when there appear to be ‘better’ choices. Can’t argue wioth the results though! This team took a classic Wurmspat BA/RF, which we all know to be really, really good right now. Finally, this team brought along Myari ES/NP which was card-for-card the exact same as my Myari’s build I shared a few months ago. Glad to see it has been battle-tested and came out with some podium glory!

The Third-Place team took Wurmspat as one might expect, but there were only 3 total of 12 teams in the event! The other one didn’t place very well either. More exceptional was that this one took the pairing of BA/CC, which has really fallen out of competitive favor in the last year or two. Team #3 also brought Grandfather’s Gardeners with ES/NP, which has hit the podium a few western events as well (despite my doing very poorly with it in practice). Lastly, they brought along Thorns of the Briar Queen with DS/Edge. First, Love the Edge of the Knife on the podium, big props. Second, DS/EK is a disgustingly powerful combo for Thorns (and a few others like Grymwatch, Zarbag, and Hexbane) so this isn’t surprising from my western lens. It WILL be surprising once we get into the warband analysis later though…

Meta Commentary on the Event

Warband_Ru graced us with a little tier chart of the represented warbands and their aggregate win rates. Let’s sift through it because it may be even more informative than the team placings, as it can be hard to tell who carried whom from that data.

The obvious standout to address was that…Crimson Court was undefeated in this event?!? The were leading the winning team!? They were in fact the only undefeated warband out of all 25 represented. Our ITC analysis has that as an F tier warband. Things look entirely upside down here! While it was only one team in this event, it still surprises me. When I wrote up the Crimson Court Review, I noted that I think people are under-rating them, but even with my giving them a more positive review I can’t envision going undefeated at a large tournament. Their inspiration condition and uninspired stats simply don’t have the juice. Maybe I was wrong!

Dropping down to the next tier are warbands who won >60% of their games. Here we see Gorechosen (who I recently proved remain quite strong and can podium at a Grand Clash), Grymwatch, Zarbag, and Elathain. This set is pretty in-line with expectations. While I would put Elathain ahead of Dromm and probably Grymwatch/Zarbag as well, this tier shouldn’t shock anybody in the English-Speaking world. These warbands are all good (possibly too good), and their win rate >60% reflects that. There was only 1 dromm, 1 zarbag, and 1 grymwacth so it’s hard to draw thorough conclusions. There were, however, 3 Elathain’s Soulraid players which means this >60% is legit. GW PLZ NERF

Third Tier here are the warbands who win between 55-60% of their games. Myari, Ephilim, Wurmspat, Zondara, and Daggok’s Stab-Ladz landed here which is a mixed bag for my expectations. Wurmspat is pretty clearly strong based on mountains of evidence, the only surprise was that they weren’t in the next tier up. Myari is a warband that I think people are sleeping on, and again they took a deck I have demonstrated is quite strong. Ephilim is a middle-tier warband that surprised me to see this high, but it was taken by only one player so the results might be a little skewed. Daggok’s Stab-Ladz though! They’re stronger than people give them credit for and Windy gave them a C-Tier result, but they’re not this good. Being represented once might account for the skew but it’s still well above where I would have guessed. Perhaps the dice were dicing on the inspire-shanking.

Also in the 55-60% tier was a team I want to spend more time on. Zondara’s Gravebreakers was present in both of the top two teams. Our ITC analysis put them in the lower end of the D Tier, and it’s been quite a long time since anybody performed well with them in a serious event. I think 2024 Adepticon is the last time they ‘did well’? When I wrote up the Zondara’s Gravebreakers Warband Review I noted how the changes to the warscroll and the rules update gave them much more flexibility and staying power, so maybe we in the west just haven’t come around and given them a fair shake since then. I personally haven’t been very successful with them when I have made attempts, however, and wouldn’t be comfortable taking them to a big event like this. Possibly their ability to repeatedly heal/res can slow down some warbands like Wurmspat or Shadeborn that need damaged enemies around, and cheating ahead we’ll cover how Wrack and Ruin was well-represented in this event and they might counter hat pretty well also. Still, I’m remarkably surprised how well our lovers did here, and they did it twice and while using two different deck pairings.

Now we move to the 50-55% tier, or the ‘good but reasonable’ teams. Blood of the Bull, Jaws of Itzl, Shadeborn, and Skittershank’s Clawpack fell here. Jaws was represented 3 times, Shadeborn twice, and the others only once, but I believe all of these results without too much effort. The biggest thing to note (and already commented on multiple times now) is that of the winning team comprising Skittershank, Zondara, and Crimson Court, the skaven had to be carried and performed the worst. Backwards day in Moscow I tell ya.

A very interesting Tier is the 40-50% squad. The “Below Average Joes”, but not the ‘really bad warbands’ level. Here we see Spiteclaw’s Swarm, Thricefold Discord, Thundrik’s Profiteers, Sons of Velmorn, and Borgit’s Beastgrabbaz. There’s not a lot to be surprised by here from a western critic’s perspective: Thundrik and Thricefold are probably closer to 40% in hard competition. Borgit is probably closer to 50, and Velmorn right in the middle. Each was represented only once in this event, but it fits. What I want to address is the elephant in the Tier: Skritch (who I was promised was a the Greatest, Yes-Yes?)

Spiteclaw’s Swarm fell in the 40-50% win rate despite me just detailing how they’re one of the two strongest warbands in the game based on the Western/ITC and Nemesis Stats Project world. This can potentially be handwaved away by saying it was taken by only one team in one event, but still was surprising to me. I wish I knew what their deck pairing was. They’ve been slaughtering with any combo of ES/PP/DS in my experience.

Lastly, we turn to The warbands who won <40% of their games. This tier gobsmacked me almost as much as CC and Zondara at the top. Thorns, Heralds, Gardeners, Ironsoul’s, Starblood, Emberwatch all with a <40% win rate despite the fact I think they’re all very strong and our data suggests that they are in fact all top half if not better. Every one of those warbands has gotten top three a Grand Clash in the past year at least once to my knowledge, many of them being multiple-time winners.

You could make the claim that a single event with a single representative might have been played by a less-experienced pilot or subject to bad matchups or bad dice, sure. Bottom-tier warbands taken only once were Kurnoth’s Heralds and the Emberwatch, so we will give them a pass. Thorns too, despite being on the third-place team, was only taken once. You know who doesn’t get that excuse to the same degree? Gardeners, Ironsoul, and Starblood all appeared twice. Even if one of those two players was a ‘bad player’, I’m surprised their other once couldn’t drag the average up to at least 40%.

Notable Warband Exclusions

Looking back at the ITC analysis Windy did for the page, there are several warbands that we ranked as quite highly-performing that do not make an appearance in the Moscow event. There were literally no instances of Exiled Dead, Kamandora’s Blades, Gnarlspirit Pack, Headsman’s Curse, Ylthari’s Guardians, Mollog’s Mob, or Knives of the Crone despite each of those landing in B Tier or above. Exiled Dead weas S Tier! Mollog routinely gatekeeps and hits the podium! Gnarlspirit is one of the most well-rounded strong teams available. Do we know something they don’t? Or are those warbands not as useful in a meta that, say, Wurmspat and Elathain were only on three teams each and Zarbag only appears once?

I won’t pretend to understand all the implications of their warband frequency, but some things like “Knives’ auto-cleave isn’t as good if nobody runs Wurmspat” can be used to try and understand much of it. I invite you to take a look and see if you can puzzle through some of what we see here. If you can’t explain something’s performance, maybe it’s better than we have given it credit for and we should take it back to the tables again to see what we’ve missed. I know I’m going to look at Crimson Court another time soon.

Deck Choice Analysis

We also have a rivals deck summary from the event:

Boy do I wish I knew what warbands these all went with, but alas.

Some things make a lot of sense to our usual experience. Blazing Assault and Pillage and Plunder were taken the most often (but surprisingly, not by every team!). Emberstone Sentinels held a strong fourth, which aligns with expectations as well. Realmstone Raiders, Raging Slayers, and Hunting Grounds were each only brought along one time. This is in line with what we see at Worlds and at the WTC.

Let’s focus instead on what is a little more interesting:

Reckless Fury was only taken by 6 of the 12 teams. This despite the fact that my experience has it as one of the strongest decks around despite the multiple rounds of nerfs. It has reliable 2-3 glory end phases, doesn’t require hits or kills as much and has strong control potential. BA/RF has been proven time and time again as one of the strongest combos in the game. Even if you’d rather save your BA for a different pairing in this event’s format, RF can do well with DS, CC, Wrack, and more depending on your warband. I’m very surprised to see it represented so rarely here – though it’s worth noting the strongest finish in this event was a BA/RF pairing as one might expect. I just wonder what the 6 teams who elected not to take it were up to. Possibly people were worried about the potential counterplay; if you simply don’t charge and take strategic move actions, you can block a lot of its potency. With multiple Zondara, a Zarbag, and several other warbands that can get away with not charging, maybe people were worried they’d get a bad matchup and be bricked there.

Countdown to Cataclysm was only taken 7 times. This deck has historically been one of the strongest in the game, potentially even more so now that AG tokens help advance the tracker. Deadly Synergy was only taken by 7/12 teams as well, and it has a plot card that is legitimately insane, several 2-glory end phases that are hard to stop. It’s a mystery to be that both these decks were avoided by 5 teams, as they go well with so many warbands you can probably find a home for them on a team of 3.

Nexus of Power was taken a very surprising (to my biased eyes) 7 times. I’m on the record as being underwhelmed by the deck especially against pillage opponents, and there was plenty of pillage out there. However, ES/NP was on both the second and third place teams, so it seems to be doing well enough in Russia at any rate.

Wrack and Ruin was taken by 9 of 12 teams and was the third most common deck. THAT excites me. Maybe I DO have something in common with them Russians! Its only appearance in the top three teams was Skittershank CC/WR and that landed in the 50-55% wins tier. Maybe it was taken in frequency but didn’t perform as well. I have no data on deck win rates so it’s hard to say.

Wrap

Now that I have spent forever analyzing this event (which did have 36 players and several rounds), I have to be honest with you and say it’s silly to put so much thought into a single event and try to draw conclusions about a national meta from one weekend. If I did this level of microscopy for Tacoma, Adepticon, NOVA, or some other larger American event I would skew things and cry wolf about how Elathain must be bad because nobody took him or Da Kunnin Krew is actually the strongest thing around because one talented/lucky player brought them. That said, it’s still interesting to look at, was interesting for me to write, and hopefully was interesting for you to read.

I haven’t dug through it yet, but I did manage to find this Russian language website that I will hope Google Translate can do some heavy lifting on. It looks like it gets regular updates and posts, so maybe we can pierce the veil on their meta by reading things there. Here’s the link if you want to join me in this fool’s errand. I can already tell there’s a Kamandora fan there! Love it.

Whichever side of the world you’re spending Glory on, I hope you enjoy yourself out there with a warband that catches everyone off guard. Cheers to you, Duvalle.