The Generals Hub: Analytics for Cities of Sigmar Vol. I

Generals!

We’re bringing a new section to The Generals Hub. In this section we’re going to break down the current state of factions in the international competitive scene: we’ll show you plenty of data, percentages, and a surprise or two along the way.

We hope this type of post can help you better understand the faction you play, the ones you want to face, help you out in your team tournaments, or simply give you a bit of weekly reading on the current state of the competitive Age of Sigmar meta.

Before we start, we want to clarify where we get all our data from: Good Games Club is a website where you can find endless data on Age of Sigmar (tournaments, factions, etc.) and where you can also organize your own tournaments or leagues as an alternative to BCP.

Alright, let’s get into it.

Why did we start with Cities of Sigmar?

Simple: although Fyreslayers currently holds the best winrate, Cities of Sigmar is the faction with the most participation in the competitive scene right now. Over the last 5 weeks it has been among the top 5 armies in Age of Sigmar, and that’s worth explaining.

We currently have data from 1,207 recorded games. The faction’s overall record is a 54.7% winrate, breaking down into 667 wins, 16 draws, and 524 losses, with 5.4% popularity across all events (RTTs and GTs).

Battleplans

Thanks to our friends at GGs, and to part of the community who share which battleplans they played at their events, we can see which battleplans Cities does best in.

Keep in mind that this data is missing a lot of entries: more than half of the games didn’t specify which battleplan was played, so this particular stat could still shift.

Despite missing a lot of data, we can decipher something from this stat: Cities can adapt to pretty much any battleplan, except for Hidden Under Ash-Clouds, which will be the nemesis of many factions due to its peculiarity, and Curse of the Gnaw, due to the nature of its deployment, which can end up hurting the faction when it comes to playing tactically.

Matchups

Matchups are one of the most relevant and revealing pieces of data in this type of analysis. Who hasn’t had this happen at the London GT: your captain asks you “how do you do against XXX?” and you, who scraped together time from nowhere, played against your teammates and the odd random opponent at a tournament, and it just so happens you’ve never played that faction and have no idea what to answer?

No more disapproving looks from your captain! At The Generals Hub we’ll bring you this kind of table so you can answer your captain properly and remind them that you’d already told them you struggled against the faction they just asked about.

Now let’s get to what really matters. As you’d expect, Stormcast Eternals is Cities’ favorite opponent, and likely many other factions’ too. The faction that tends to have the most representation in tournaments currently holds a 43.6% winrate, but we can also see some other interesting data, such as the fact that in matchups against more dominant factions in the meta, like Fyreslayers or Soulblight, Cities tends to come out on top. Not forgetting the middle of the table, where you’ll find factions like Slaanesh, Sylvaneth, Tzeentch, or Khorne, against whom Cities wins by a narrow margin.

Where the faction definitely struggles is in the matchup against:

• Nurgle (it must be super fun facing any Nurgle unit, stripping weapon abilities, denying you CPs, or hitting you with the various debuffs)
• Daughters of Khaine (the subfaction and Morathi’s plays make life very hard for the Free Cities)
• Seraphon (I don’t even want to see what happens against lists like Brian Horton’s at the Old Town Throwdown Summer Stampede GT)
• Sons of Behemat (confirming their return to the meta thanks to the Aqshy Gatebrakers)

Top Lists

Let’s tighten our focus a bit and zero in on lists that achieved 4 or more wins at a GT and 3 wins at an RTT. This means we’ll get stats from all Cities players who achieved 4 or more wins at a 5-round GT — that is, a 5/0 or a 4/1 (whether with a draw or a loss) — or 3 or more wins at an RTT.

In total we have 59 recorded games under these conditions. This might seem like a small, less relevant data set compared to the 1,207 games we mentioned at the start of the post, but keep in mind this data is from the last 5 weeks: we’re talking about more than 10 Cities players having gone 4-or-more wins at a GT or having won an RTT.

Starting with drops, we can see that 3 drops dominates over any other combination, and that’s because the ease of fitting the Marshal or the Fusil-Major into other battalions gives Cities the ability to stay at or under 3 drops.

On the other hand, we can see how Zealous Hordes is far more popular than the rest, and that’s because the +1 to wound that Cities gets from this formation gets a lot of value out of Freeguild Cavaliers units.

Manifestations are where things get more split. The Incarnate tops the list for several reasons: it doesn’t cost points, it’s a good piece for covering DRs, generating threats, or simply screening zones, and that, combined with the fact that many Cities lists run with a single mage, makes it usually the most sound choice. On the other hand, Aetherwrought Machineries (or “the cogs one,” so we understand each other) or Primal Energy, while a step below, are also very good options; it all tends to come down to whether you want to include Decorations of Valour or not.

When it comes to heroic traits, we’ve got a tie between Stentorian General and Beloved Leader, and that’s because both are excellent. Although Stentorian General has some conditions that can stop you from getting 100% value out of the trait, the reality is that in a meta where Cities coexists with so many units with a 5+ ward — like Soulblight’s Barrow Knights/Guard, Slaanesh’s Myrmidesh, Tzeentch with their spell, Idoneth units under the turtle, Rotsword under the tree, etc. — shaving 1 point off ward can be decisive in the matchup.

On the other hand, Beloved Leader, granting the ability to ignore negative modifiers when hitting and wounding within 12” of the bearer, turns this heroic trait into a must for certain matchups.

When it comes to artefacts of power, there’s no doubt: The Last Blade of Embergard is clearly the most used item in Cities’ winning lists.

As for Decorations of Valour, we can see that a high percentage of players prefer not to use them and instead spend those 10 points adjusting the rest of the list. On the other hand, the players who do use them usually go for the -1 to hit, or for boosting the control score on a 5+.

Let’s move on to a very interesting stat: which tactics winning lists use, and why. Obviously this is a totally subjective take — as a Cities of Sigmar player myself, I’m still far from having a credible opinion on this topic — but the graphs give us some very telling data.

The tactic par excellence is Blazing Onslaught. Cities’ ability to deal wounds across 3 phases (shooting, charge, and combat) is fantastic, on top of the ease of moving around the battlefield with the Cavaliers and ending up in spots where maybe it shouldn’t have been.

Siege of Ashes and Burning for Vengeance are the other two most used. Siege suits Cities well by nature, given the units it tends to run in its lists (Steelhelms, the Warforger), plus the fact that few units should be able to wipe out a horse unit, which would allow you to keep advancing through the tactics tree. On the other hand, Burning, with the shooting range Cities has and the triple activation from the second tactic onward, should be easy to complete in full; where it gets tricky is on the first branch, where it’s not as easy to set up quadrants, hence why it only sits at 35.6% participation.

And we can see this reflected in the most common tactic combinations among winning lists: as we explained, Blazing and Siege pair very well with Cities’ gameplay, although Blazing and Burning also show up with a significant presence in the graph.

And finally, if we’re talking about units in an army with so many varied warscrolls, the reinforced Cavaliers clearly top the list (we wanted to distinguish between reinforced and unreinforced units) because their ability is fantastic. Everyone’s wondering how they’re going to get balanced and whether Cities will survive that nerf, but the truth is it’s a rare list that doesn’t include 2 reinforced Cavaliers units.

On the other hand, and with very good representation, we have the Warforger (mortal crit on a 3+ to a friendly unit within 12”) and the Steelhelms, which, thanks to their ability in the combat phase to pull enemy attacks, and their points cost (90), become a must in any Cities list. And, closing out the list, we have the Marshal on horseback: another hero that’s a must, especially for kicking off the Blazing tactics branch thanks to their mortal wounds ability with the Cavaliers.

Moving to the moderately used units, reinforced Handgunners are a very good alternative for that extra shooting, on top of taking up a great amount of table space. Thalia couldn’t be missing from this list: the masterpiece of Cities of Sigmar is genuinely good and lives up to every expectation you put on her. Her ability to move an infantry unit in the enemy’s turn, or the +1 to hit / +1 to wound once per battle, give the list a real edge worth taking into account.

The appearance of the Grenadiers in these positions is surprising, as they don’t seem to quite find a spot alongside figures like the Cavaliers, Steelhelms, or Handgunners.

And, closing out the list, we have good old Fusil-Major, granting that +1 to hit in every phase, which helps the riders maximize their damage or lets you get a bit more playful with the Battle Trait; or the long-awaited Cannonade Cogfort, which still doesn’t seem to have found its place either in Cities or in the rest of the factions in the game that can use it.

And that’s it for the first Analytics post, dedicated to what is currently the best faction of the moment: Cities of Sigmar.

Keep an eye on our Instagram Stories for next week’s analysis.

Cheers to all!

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