To wrap up this series looking at each of the factions I thought I’d cover both the most and least popular factions at once to see if the numbers give an indication of why they are / aren’t liked. So without further ado let’s check out how the T’au and Servants of the Emperor factions stack up.
Popularity
Strictly speaking, the T’au faction are our second most popular faction, but the Space Marines skew the results both by being our largest faction and the one that all new players have to use. Even with that the T’au are chosen by players 20% of the time, compared to Servants of the Emperor who are selected for just 8% of battles.
Surprising no-one, their respective popularities are reflected in the win-rates of both factions, with T’au victorious in 74% of their battles but Servants only winning 34% of theirs. We recently ran a round of balancing points and Warlords but these numbers show that there’s more to do here. As I’ve mentioned before we won’t use balancing to only hamper top factions or only boost underperforming ones, but as we plan to only change some cards each time we run a balance pass we will use their relative success rates to choose which cards to focus on.
Attacks
T’au are in equal first place (with the Aeldari) as the most aggressive faction, attacking 82% of the time. This reflects their Warlords not having any specific bonuses when Readying and that they have no Psykers (so don’t have cards Readying while the Psykers make their attacks, and vice-versa). The Servants are also pretty aggressive, attacking 78% of the time, which makes sense as they want their own cards to be destroyed to trigger their Warlord special rules.
When the T’au do attack 73% of their damage is dealt by ranged and 27% with melee. Despite the heavy skew towards ranged damage, T’au decks choose to make melee attacks 47% of the time, versus making ranged attacks 45% of the time. That’s an odd statistic but perhaps is skewed by using melee attack choices to Ready their ranged attack for a devastating blow?
On the other hand, 52% of the Servants’ damage is dealt by melee attacks, possibly reflecting Canoness Veridyan’s special rule favouring melee cards. As one of the psychic factions, Servants chose that option 20% of the time and cause 10% of their damage that way.
Cards
At the time the data was gathered the T’au had 24 cards, with none of Legendary rarity, compared to Servants with 29 cards (and just one Legendary).
Both these factions are skewed towards low cost cards. T’au have the lowest average card cost of all the factions at 18.3 points, with 75% of their cards costing less than 20 points. Servants are the second lowest points on average, at 20.4 points. Servants have a good spread of point costs in their cards, though no cards over 55 points, so we definitely need to add heavy support cards to the Servants faction to give them more tactical flexibility. Look for some Astra Militarum vehicles to roll out over the next few months!
Conclusion
As has been mentioned, the data this series is using has become steadily more out of date over time, though not wildly enough to render the whole thing pointless. However, I do agree that future faction catch-ups need to happen in a single ‘block’, rather than being spread over many weeks like this iteration.
Instead of trying to cram all eight factions into a single blog post, next time I think I’ll try including two factions per post and running them back-to-back. That will get through the lot in a month, which should be a good balance of up to date data and enough space to give each some context.
As ever your feedback is useful so let me know if you’d prefer just the data or more analysis, and if there are other stats you like to see these catch-ups include.
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Thanks,
Stu
Another option would be to look at specific stats and do all 8 factions. Such as one blog about all 8 factions make up of rarity and points. Next one about 8 factions attacking percentages and readying. Next on popularity, the conclusion of the series and plan forward (roughly)
That’s an interesting alternative I hadn’t considered. Thanks for the idea!
I like the concept of these catch-ups, but as you commented upon their worth has reduced greatly as the data is completely out of date.
Id like to see a data analysis of the ranked seasons and possibly the odd campaign. That way you don’t need to balance releasing eight pieces of work at once and can focus on one timely and accurate report.
Out of interest when was this data gathered? SoE currently have 49 cards (1 legendary) and T’au 28 cards (2 legendaries). If the numbers your basing this on are correct it come at pre-Longstrike for the T’au and pre-balance changes for the SoE which I think would make a big difference. Additionally key SoE cards like the Penitent Engine have been added in that time which should have made a difference. My experience is certainly that SoE have gone up the rankings since those changes, seeing them more often in top Ranked games.
I would guess the melee attacks from T’au come from facing decks like Tolermon and Badrukk, the other top shooting decks, and also from using Commander Farsight for his melee buff and big final attack.
Yeah, the Servants numbers quoted have been affected by the balance pass, though they’re still currently the least popular / successful faction. Like the Orks, it will be interesting to see if further rounds of balancing can address the Servants Warlords which are struggling or if we’ll need to do make wholesale changes to how their rules work.
How old is that data 6 months or more…. Why you even bother digging something so inaccurate and waste time on it.??Tau have 2 legendary card and SoE have as well 2 legendary (but eisenhorn was given to few players and this card is quite op). Instead really do something usefull like it is around 400 players at terra (22 Feb 2020) take which factions are most popular (I assume tolmeron, badrukk, zephyrblade and probably immotekh) and show win rate for this factions, which cards are most popular and start balancing.
Interesting data as always, somethings that could be added:
Faction catch ups are nice no matter how outdated, since the identity of the faction remain the same even after updates, its good to check on how the faction works and suprising data (like how necron are so unpopular despite being strong) every now and then
Regular ranked statistic like every 2 seasons or so getting usage percentages, number of players on each battlezone, average player lvl of each zone, even most used cards per faction. Such statistics might sound minor, but they can allow players to see a meta on each zone and develop their deck accordingly.
Finally, a roundup of released cards would help players see your focus; e.g. “we released 7 ranged damagers to nids, 5 melee to orks and 8 mixed cards to chaos” could give us hints on where the faction is being developed to go… Also, we like to speculate! Its really fun saying stuff like “next aeldari warlord will be a servant of ynnead whose trait will care about draining enemy wounds”
Thanks for the feedback.
We’ve had a few players ask for info on the seasons so I’ll see what our data guys can pass me.
Thanks for the idea of a ‘released cards roundup’, I hadn’t considered that. You’re right that it’s fun to speculate on new cards, so I think I’ll wait until the behind the scenes battle rework going on is completed. At that point we’ll start adding more Warlords and traits (plus fixing minor issues with the existing rules and traits).