Welcome back to Hammer of Math, Dear Reader – this week I’m back filling in while Primaris Kevin reviews a new 3D printer, and as usual I have more Tabletop Battles data to talk about. We’ve previously looked at mission data from Pariah Nexus – you can find my most recent article on the topic here – but there were some things we didn’t dive into deeply last time around, just because we were short on data. Well, with another two weekends of results in the books, it’s time to revisit some of those mission rules. This week I’ll be looking at the mission rules which relate to BATTLELINE units – that is, Smoke and Mirrors, Stalwarts, Rapid Escalation, Prepared Positions, and Raise Banners, and I’ll also be looking at Fog of War.
The Dataset
This data comes from our Tabletop Battles games completed using Pariah Nexus missions after June 24, 2024. In total, the dataset includes more than 21,500 games.
Now With Significance Testing
I’ve gone through and done significance testing for each result in our dataset, comparing the win percentage for each faction with a specific mission rule to its overall win rate (comparing two sample proportions test). Where those results are significant at the 90% and 95% confidence level, I’ve marked those in the charts below. Because these are two-tailed tests, we’re looking for z-scores of 1.96 for 95% and 1.645 for 90%.
For this sample, we removed Imperial Agents, Deathwatch, and Emperor’s Children. The remaining factions each had at least 400 games played in our sample, and all but Genestealer Cults and Drukhari put up 100+ games per mission rule.
The Results
Here’s the big table of results:
There’s a lot of data in that chart, but most of the results aren’t statistically significant at the confidence levels we’re interested in. In the following sections I’ll talk about each mission rule, its impact, and which factions were right on the border and may trend to significance as we collect more games.
Stalwarts
Stalwarts lets BATTLELINE units shoot even after doing an action, and they can do actions while within Engagement Range. We might expect this to be a boon to armies with good shooting on their Battleline units, like Thousand Sons but Thousand Sons already win enough of their games without the rule that it doesn’t appear to make a significant difference. Instead, it’s really a question of “which armies are so elite they could not afford to have units do actions without giving up a significant portion of their army’s capabilities? And the answer is Knights and Custodes. Imperial Knights see the biggest benefit, where having a small number of BATTLELINE armigers means that being able to action and still shoot makes a much bigger difference for them. Likewise, Custodes are a super-elite army with very few units, and they see a significant bump when their battleline units are able to freely do actions without giving up shooting.
On the other side of things, Chaos Daemons take a significant negative hit, which makes sense as they don’t really do shooting but have a lot of units which can do actions anywhere on the table. Stalwarts is just a straight-up advantage for their opponents. Chaos Space Marines also take a hit, likely because all of their Battleline units tend to be melee units.
On the Edge
Ironically Chaos Knights don’t seem to benefit nearly as much benefit out of Stalwarts, where War Dogs are much more aggressive and you have more of them, and they have a strong negative indicator, but not enough games to be statistically significant yet. Likewise Space Wolves seem to benefit, but we need more data to verify.
Fog of War
Fog of War gives units the benefit of cover in the first battle round and prevents the use of Core Stratagems. More shooting-focused Space Marine armies appear to be the most likely to benefit from this rule, while Custodes armies perform worse. This one likely boils down to “who doesn’t need Grenades, CP Re-rolls or Overwatch” and “who doesn’t care so much if their targets have cover.”
On the Edge
Blood Angels and Space Wolves were also close to significant results here, the former positive and the latter negative. Melee armies generally don’t appear to benefit as much – Daemons had a negative result though needed more games to confirm. And Thousand Sons and Sisters, the games most flamer-heavy armies, had slight negative results but not as bad as you might expect.
Smoke and Mirrors
Smoke and Mirrors lets players drop BATTLELINE units back into Strategic Reserves after deployment. The army which appears to benefit from this the most are Death Guard, whose win rate jump to 61% when playing with this rule. While a slow army with relatively few drops may benefit more from this misdirection, it’s also worth noting that one of the two missions using Smoke and Mirrors is Purge the Foe, which benefits a tougher army like Death Guard. Still, the results are interesting. Ad Mech armies appear to struggle with this mission rule, and likewise with Rapid Escalation, the other strategic reserves mission rule. Genestealer Cults don’t love it – they get all the reserves shenanigans they need already – and neither do Tyranids.
On the Edge
Custodes, Astra Militarum, Necrons, Orks, Space Marines, and Thousand Sons were all close to significant results and those might solidify with more games.
Prepared Positions
In Prepared Positions, BATTLELINE unit scan use the Go to Ground and Heroic Intervention Stratagems for free. Blood Angels are the only army with a significant bump here, and that’s likely a result of free Intervention – whether they use it or you do, they’re happy to be killing you in melee.
On the Edge
Adepta Sororitas, Astra Militarum, Chaos Daemons, Death Guard, Leagues of Votann, Space Marines, and Orks were all close to a significant result, and that could solidify with more games.
Rapid Escalation
In Rapid Escalation, up to 200 points of BATTLELINE units can arrive from Strategic Reserves in the first battle round. This is where I expected Death Guard and Thousand Sons to shine but was surprised to find that Custodes benefit the most, with a 62% win rate on missions with this rule active. Ad Mech, Astra Militarum, and Blood Angels armies all see significant drops in win rate while this rule is active, either because it puts chargers much closer early in the case of the former two or because it can put speed bumps in the way of Melee jail for Blood Angels.
On the Edge
Daemons, Chaos Knights, Grey Knights, and Leagues of Votann armies were all close to a significant result but need more games to confirm.
Swift Action
In Swift Action, BATTLELINE units can do actions after they Advance or Fall Back. No army really seems to benefit in a significant way from this mission rule.
On the Edge
World Eaters armies are the most likely to see this become a significant negative result with more games, while Genestealer Cults, Space Marines, Tyranids, Custodes, and Astra Militarum were all close to a significant positive result.
Raise Banners
In Raise Banners, BATTLELINE units raise banners on objectives you control at the end of your turn for extra VP. Here Blood Angels have the lone significant result, and improvement to a 57% win rate when their battleline units can snag them extra VP while their Death Company and Jump Intercessors can range forward and kill things.
On the Edge
Chaos Daemons were close to a significant positive impact here as were Death Guard, while Adepta Sororitas, Astra Militarum, Leagues of Votann, Ork, and Space Marine armies were all close to negative results.
Final Thoughts
There’s a lot going on here and it’s interesting to look at the results and think about what it means for the game’s armies. There are some results here I did not expect to see and some I thought I’d see but didn’t – I figured I’d see better Thousand Sons results, for example, but they’ just tend to be consistently solid across the board. The real swings here are with Custodes and Adeptus Mechanicus armies, though Daemons also appear to vary wildly in result based on mission rule.
Plan on us revisiting this in a month or two as we have more data and can say more concrete things about the mission rule and also the primary mission, so we can work at pulling those apart.
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