ETC Results Are In – Defences win Championships.

Well, you are probably aware that the ETC happened recently (if you didn’t, well, it did. I head the coverage was very good this year – from my point of view it wasn't really, lots of youtube coverage (note: hard to subtly check at work) and limited twitter coverage (note: easy to check at work)). The Warhammer World Cup, as I would prefer it to be called (original and inspired, I know), was, by all accounts, a roaring good time. In a shockingly predictable outcome, the ladies of Serbia appear to have been a big hit with the mighty travelling warriors. Some of the wargaming was good too by all accounts.

So, once the dust had settled, one thing was clear: ze Germans are the mightiest wargamers in the world. Its official, rampaging home with first place both in Warhammer and PewPewHammer. The English, being the English, forgot to bring the ETC shield to pass on to them… but I am sure they find our disorganised nature cute - in the same way a puppy chewing your shoes is “cute”…

On the WFB side, the rest of the contenders contending at the top of the table surprised no one with an interest in such things – Italy came agonisingly close to winning it, Denmark and Poland closing out the top 4 spots.

So, I thought I would put up a quick post with some (as ever) half-baked thoughts to have an initial look at something I have been thinking about for a while.

Analysing an event of this style in any detail is a huge task. Easier perhaps to look into the performance of one team, go through their match-ups, try and work out if they got those right, look for weaknesses in their lists etc etc (actually doesn't sound all that easy at all..).  All rather laborious, and not so fun as making general all-encompassing statements, so lets not bother J

What I wanted to do is look at the top performing teams/armies at the event. Now, there is a plethora of caveats that should go without saying, so let us assume they have been said. In the land of the internet warrior a legal education comes in handy (if arguably not worth the financial investment). What should be said though is that the Team-based nature of the ETC play is something few really understand without having played team events. Individual scores really should be ignored as far as “x is better than y” conversations. A player does his job if he fulfils the role his team needs him to fill – often this will mean losing (though admittedly probably by as little as possible – unless the team has some interesting notions).

Every team will have players whose roll will be to sit tight and thing of dear of England whilst Johnny foreigner does unspeakable things to them. Such is the way it has ever been. Limiting the amount of things Mr Foreigner (we are a polite people, after all – unless you find yourself in London at rush hour, but that’s a whole different conversation) is allowed to do to ones posterior is the key here – and in many ways the singular distinctive thing about the top teams. The top teams were not filled to the brim with armies that outperformed their peers by staggering degrees (though having one or two “best in race” performances obviously helped, and each of the top 3 teams had at least one of these), but rather, these teams had star curb-bitters. As is ever the case, the dashing scorers get all the attention, affection, groupies and illegitimate children, but as someone somewhere once said: Defences win Championships.

As the events of ETC 2013 culminated in an almighty climax of activity (unrelated, I understand, from the aforementioned lovely ladies), Germany and Italy ended up on the same points, with Germany winning on count-backs (in this instance, uncapped battle points). How much of an impact did the lower and higher scoring players have on the ETC result in the end? And, conversely, did the headline-grabbing all-conquering performances of the top scorers for each team make the difference in the end?

I thought I would have a look at what the numbers show if you exclude the worse and best performing players from each of the top players of the top 6 countries at the event (why top 6? Because that’s the crazy sort of power I wield around here (yes, Monday mornings are slow at work – ok, maybe they shouldn't be, but I make sure they are)). [Important caveat, because each round is capped at 100 points, total points do not necessarily lead to final positions, as can be seen by Denmark finishing above Poland despite having 10 less points – it is still, I believe, an enlightening factor though).

ETC Standing	Country	Points	Points without 2 worse performing players	Points without 2 best performing players
1	Germany	600	477	408
2	Italy	591	494	399
3	Denmark	557	445	389
4	Poland	567	442	404
5	Greece	541	442	365
6	England	536	451	365

The starkest difference we see with the numbers is what happens when you remove the lowest performing armies – Italy would have comfortably won the ETC, and England would have repeated their success of last year and finished 3^rd. On the flip side, remove the top players and Poland are the big winners, finishing up with 2^nd highest points, but there is precious little other movement to be seen (obviously final placings would be affected by when they were scored due to the aforementioned capped rounds).

This is in no way an indictment of those who did get the low scores for their teams. Rather it highlights the importance of these armies and their players. On these fair shores at least, there tends to be a sneery under appreciation of the roll the team’s b***t plays – the consensus appearing to be along the lines that anyone could go to their ETC if their role is simply to lose by as little as possible, and in all likelihood being taken off game after game. As we can see here, their success in (or lack thereof) holding points whilst becoming all too familiar with the underneath of the proverbial bus is one of THE key differentiators between those that to win the event and those who yet again fail to get hold of any hand rolled Cuban goodness.

In conclusion, it is perhaps not surprising that ze Germans, built as they are with Teutonic efficiency in every fibre (clichés are there to be used, right?) won the event with a team that solidly performed across the board. None of their players averaged less than 10 points a game, and this in itself make them an unstoppable juggernaut.

Until next time

Raf

Addendum: Obviously, these numbers don’t come close to proving anything at all. The situation a team finds itself at the beginning of a round plays a massive factor on their scores. Going into the last round, for example, Germany knew they just had to not lose too badly to Italy to hold on for the win – cue extremely defensive play (resulting in probably lower scores) and a valiant rear-guard. The quality and composition of teams each team faced also plays an obviously significant role in the scores they get.