Take a little peek at some of the Warhammer: The Old World European meta from the 6 Nations tournament. There’s some interesting stuff to be learned!
The other weekend saw the 6 Nations tournament take place over in the UK. This is a team event where each nation fields 8-person teams to battle it out. The nations invited to the event are England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland, France, and Italy. In some ways, it’s like a little mini pre-WTC. Now it is a 2200 pt event, so a little different than normal, and of course it’s a team event. However, it can tell us a bit about the direction the meta, or at least the European meta, is heading. So let’s take a look at what was played.
6 Nation Results
After 5 brutal and fun rounds of gaming, Team Italy took the win, going undefeated. Note, for a team event, this means the team won every round, not that every player won every game. The final rankings were: 
You can also view all the event info here. Now, obviously, some of these countries are much bigger than others and have deeper benches to draw from. Both England and Italy are real powerhouses from ToW, so these results might not be super shocking to those who follow European meta and team events. But it seems like it was a really fun event.
The Popular Armies
But what can all this tell us about the meta? Well, let’s look at what armies the teams fielded. Each team can field 8 armies, but you can’t take 2 of the same faction. So here is how things broke down:
- Tomb Kings 6/6
- Empire 2/6
- Grand Cathay 6/6
- High Elves 4/6
- Dwarfs 5/6
- Bretonnains 5/6
- Wood Elves 1/6
- Vampires Counts 6/6 (shout out to Adz from team Wales, who I got to play vs in a practice match).
- Orcs & Goblins 4/6
- Beastmen 5/6
- Warriors 3/6
- Chaos Dwarfs 1/6
So we can see from this that every team brought a Tomb Kings, Vampire Counts, and Cathay list to the game, though there were some differences in them. These are clearly seen as indispensable lists and the top of the meta. All but one army also brought Beastmen, Brets, and Dwarfs. For the Dwarves, all the lists were Expeditionary Force. For Brets, 4/5 of the lists were Exiles, and for Beastmen, 4/5 were Wild Herd. These are all clearly very strong lists, and do well in a team format as well. You could make a decent argument for these 6 armies being the top armies in the game, though in singles, I’m not quite sure Expeditionary Force is on par with the others.
After that, High Elves and O&G were the next most popular. All 4 High Elf lists ran 2 dragons and took advantage of the larger point value to go a little over 500 pt. So most of these lists wouldn’t quite work at 2000. Unsurprisingly, the O&G lists were all pretty fanatic/shooting-focused.
What Did Well
So that’s what everyone was playing, but how did these lists perform at the event? Wild Herd by far did the best, with a massive 80% win rate. They won 16 out of 20 games and only lost a single 1, with 3 draws. Normal Tomb Kings were the next best with a 70% win rate in 10 games, followed up by Mort Cult with a 61% win rate in 18 games. O&G had a 58% win rate and VC a 57% (they also had the most games at 30). Everyone else had a 50% or lower rate.
Wolves of the Sea, normal Beastmen, Wood Elves, and Chaos Dwarves all had no wins, with only 1 of each army being played. I think the worst performance overall has to go to Expeditionary Force. With the 2nd most games,25, they only had a 24% win rate, with only 6 wins. Possibly the most surprising is Jade Fleet, considered by many to be a top army, only having a 50% win rate in 20 games.
However, one has to consider that in a team event, winning is not everything. Some lists are very much designed to lose or draw in some rounds, and are there more as counters to others. Sometimes getting a small loss vs a very powerful list/player is what your team needs to win a round. Jade Fleets 50% performance could mean that the other teams had good counters and managed to mitigate it. Expeditionary Forces’ poor rate could be a reflection of it being sacrificed a lot. Obviously, you want to win games, but the per-list/player win rate is not the whole story.
What Does This Tell Us About The Meta
Now, obviously, the European team meta is not the meta everyone, or even most players, play in. But I think it can give us some insight into things. It’s clear there is a set of armies that are generally viewed as being the best/ most competitive. TK, VC, Brets, Cathay, and Beastmen are pretty clearly in this list. Both Dwarves and High Elves can get in, but with very narrow builds, Double Dragon and Xfroce. Fanatic heavy O&G also make it, and I think I’d place them above Dwarves and HE. Perhaps surprisingly, WoC/Wolves don’t really seem to fit into this, being a more middle-ground list. Nuln also seems to be falling out of favor. Outside of these lists, everything else is pretty much a curiosity.
It’s also pretty clear that some of the old scary armies have been countered/nerfed. Both Brets and Cathay had middle-of-the-road to bad performances. Wild Herd, TK, and VC, meanwhile, don’t seem to have great counters as they were all very popular and also had high win rates. So overall, these are clearly the things to watch, and I’d argue this is another point proving that Wild Herd/Viletide likely need to be addressed.
Let us know what you think this tells us about the meta, down in the comments!
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Abe is that rare thing, an Austin local born and raised here. Though he keeps on moving around, DC, Japan, ETC., he always seems to find his way back eventually. Abe has decades of experience with a wide range of tabletop and RPG games, from historicals, to Star Wars to D&D and 40K. He has been contributing to BOLS since almost the start, back when he worked at and then owned a local gaming store. He used to be big into the competitive Warhammer tournament scene but age has mellowed him and he now appreciates a good casual match. He currently covers Warhammer: The Old World, as well as all things Star Wars, with occasional dabbling in other topics. Abe mourned over loss of WFB for its entire hiatus, but has been reborn like a gaming phoenix with Warhammer: The Old World.
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