by Peter Atkinson

Well this is quite the pickle, isn’t it? We’ll see the Battlescroll soon enough, but based on THWG’s excellent stats, we can see that Big Waaagh is overperforming:

Meanwhile, Ironjawz, Bonesplitterz and Kruleboyz all very much are not overperforming – if anything, they’d need a bit of love. If GW did nothing but jack up the points on Gobsprakk, Warchanters and the Wurrgog Prophet, that’s a bit stiff on those other armies. So what else could we do to address Big Waaagh being ahead of the curve?

I don’t know any more than the rest of you – these are just my own thoughts, but the Battlescroll can’t be far away now, so let’s publish in a blind panic before this article is made obsolete see how it all shakes out.

Why Big Waaagh is doing so well

The biggest factor behind Big Waaagh overperforming is their huge suite of easy battle tactics:

All of the highlighted options are ridiculously easy with units that Big Waaagh wants to run anyway, in the way it wants to run them. So you can win a whooooooole lot of games very passively, just by sitting back and racking up the VPs.

Sneak Up is a copper-bottomed turn 1 tactic, and Wait For It Ladz is pretty much guaranteed for late game. Dat’s Our Turf Now is there if you need it, and Take Dat, Ya Suckers is the pick of the General-contingent options. All of these are really easy to secure, and what’s more they’re evenly spread out across the turns, to give you a smooth pathway through the game. And that’s without even looking at the GHB tactics.

It really is too easy for them, and I say that as an Orruk player myself. We happen to have the closest thing we’ll ever get to a scientific experiment, where the same units are underperforming in their own armies, which is telling us that it’s not the units themselves that are overpowered and undercosted – it’s the secondaries that are doing it.

General Knowledge

I’m going to speculate here that GW hadn’t really thought about Big Waaagh when they dished out the Pity Points to IJ and KB. And the solution is right there in front of us.

In the initial Battletome, GW linked most of the tactics to your choice of General. There was one for each type of General – so IJ, KB and BS all got their “own” BT – plus one that everyone could access, one for bringing Kraggy and for Big Waaagh specifically (which also happens to be one of the easiest in the game, and often still achievable even if you’ve been tabled).

This was already skewed slightly to BW because they got their own and one of the “pick your general” options. Where it really went off kilter was the Battlescroll update bringing in the new BTs (Sneak Up and Dat’s Our Turf Now) without linking them to your general – so BW could score all of them, and its own, and one of the General-keyworded ones. It’s just too much.

So here’s what I would do. I’d link those two new tactics to the keyword on your General, so if you want access to Sneak Up you lose Dat’s Our Turf and Squish Da Puny Gits, and you have to put your CT on a Kruleboyz unit (which hurts people who only take Gobsprakk). Big Waaagh are only just over the line, so I would suggest that’s enough for now, but if they wanted to put in some minor points increases on specific units I wouldn’t exactly have a tantrum over it. 

Objectively the other Orruk armies do need a little bit of help (although I’m not holding my breath for Bonesplitterz), so there should be room for targeted points drops for units in those armies that aren’t overperforming in BW – so if Gobby goes up by 20 points, some other KB units could come down 10 points each and leave that army no worse off than it was. On the Ironjawz side, we need a substantial points drop on Arbodyz and the Big Pig. We’re talking about an internal rebalance that leaves individual Orruk factions a little bit cheaper overall while narrowing the scope of Battle Tactics that Big Waaagh can access.

This solution would also close a little loophole I’ve been talking about – namely that you can score Sneak Up in a Bonesplitterz or Ironjawz army by taking Big Grikk’s Kruleshots – but that’s a pretty minor issue.

Fun Fact

Do you know what’s the most popular Battletome in the game?

That’s right – it’s Orruk Warclans!

Big Waaagh constitutes 4.1% of the meta, then Ironjawz and Kruleboyz bring in 2.7% and 2.3% each, with Bonesplitterz contributing a mighty 0.3% (my fault). That’s a combined 9.4%, with Gitz right behind them in second place. 

So next time someone tells you that orcs and goblins aren’t popular, pop Destroyer and call the Waaagh on their ass.

And now that the Battlescroll must be getting close – how about some points drops on those Ardboyz and the Big Pig? C’mon GW, go for gold!

Check out THWG’s excellent stats show right here.

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