King of the Grove Series Final Report
The inaugural King of the Grove tournament series has drawn to a close with the final, featuring the top 8 players from the 5 heats across the year, run yesterday. The players battled it out over 3 rounds of 5v5 utilising the full 28 hero draft mode for Warband selection. Once the dust had settled Colin Hill remained undefeated displaying mastery of both the draft phase and in-game play to sweep all before him. The final was a very close affair between Colin and Steve Fury, with Steve fighting back from the brink to almost snatch a memorable victory before Colin managed to close it out and take the 1st year's title.
The final standings look as follows.
| Rank | Player | Wins | Souls | Levels |
| 1 | Colin "Bobliness" Hill | 3 | 15 | 17 |
| 2 | Steve "Fury" Drury | 2 | 13 | 18 |
| 3 | "King" Kyle Elbourne | 2 | 12 | 18 |
| 4 | Andrew "Guns" Galea | 2 | 10 | 12 |
| 5 | Ben "Chunky" Hayes | 1 | 9 | 13 |
| 6 | Anthony "Tort" Tortoricic | 1 | 9 | 11 |
| 7 | Byron te Velde | 1 | 8 | 12 |
| 8 | Maggie Bailie | 0 | 3 | 13 |
Full results for the day, including the round matchups, can be found on the Tabletop Tournaments web site. Games played on the top table were also streamed live all day on our Twitch channel, and they will be re-broadcast on our YouTube channel in the coming days.
As mentioned early, all 12 games were played using the draft mode for Warband selection, which across 28 heroes is a game within itself. The feedback about draf mode, from the competitors, was overwhelmingly positive and it stands as a unique feature of our game that presents the challenge of "live" list building and completely removes discussions around Warband imbalances and "cheese", since everyone is given the opportunity to outwit their opponent via the draft before the game begins.
This pic displays the 28 heroes lined up for a draft before the 1st round. They are not all painted yet, and there is one proxy as we wait for Kogan however the site of 28 Judgement heroes lined up is a sight to behold!
Here are some more pics of the day.
Colin and Steve Fury face off before the final!
Below is a pic of some of the earlier rounds.
Draft Mode Statistics
We will be publishing more in-depth analysis of the draft statistics however here is a teaser of the most prominent things to come out of the 12 games using the 28 hero draft mode yesterday.
Top 5 Most Picked
| Rank | Hero | Pick % |
| 1 | Thorgar | 83.33% |
| 2 | Istariel | 75.00% |
| 3 | Skoll Bonestorm | 66.67% |
| 4 | Brok | 58.33% |
| 4 | Barnascus | 58.33% |
| 4 | Haksa | 58.33% |
Top 5 Most Banned
| Rank | Hero | Ban % |
| 1 | Bastian | 83.33% |
| 2 | Rakkir | 75.00% |
| 3 | Doenrakkar | 66.67% |
| 3 | Saiyin | 66.67% |
| 3 | Kogan | 66.67% |
| 3 | Kvarto | 66.67% |
| 3 | Xyvera | 66.67% |
Top 5 Win Rates
Heroes that played in 5 games or more only
| Rank | Hero | Win Rate % |
| 1 | Zaron Bogdan | 80.00% |
| 1 | Kruul | 80.00% |
| 3 | Brok | 71.43% |
| 4 | Skoll Bonestorm | 62.50% |
| 5 | Sir Marcus | 60.00% |
| 5 | Thorgar | 60.00% |
Top 5 Most Overlooked
Heroes that were neither picked or banned across the 12 games. There were 4 heroes each game like this.
| Rank | Hero | Overlooked |
| 1 | Svetlana Oaklost | 8 times |
| 1 | Piper | 7 times |
| 3 | Loribela | 4 times |
| 3 | Skye | 4 times |
| 3 | Gendris | 4 times |
| 3 | Zaffen Ironhelm | 4 times |
| 3 | Viktor Clerval | 4 times |
High Priority Picks & Bans
These were the heroes that were either picked or banned in the 1st phase of the draft. So either banned 1st, or picked 1st by either player.
| Rank | Hero | # of Times |
| 1 | Sir Marcus | 7 |
| 2 | Doenrakkar | 5 |
| 3 | Brok | 4 |
| 4 | Barnascus | 3 |
| 4 | Zaron Bogdan | 3 |
| 4 | Styx | 3 |
| 4 | Thrommel | 3 |
| 4 | Kogan | 3 |
| 4 | Skye | 3 |
| 4 | Viktor Clerval | 3 |
Judgement Hero Overall Ratings
For a bit of fun, we put together a formula that provided a rating for each hero based on how much they were picked, their win rate and a weighting based on whether they were picked or banned in the 1st round of drafting. I.e. high priority picks and bans.
| Rank | Hero | Rating |
| 1 | Sir Marcus | 22 |
| 2 | Brok | 21 |
| 3 | Thorgar | 19 |
| 3 | Barnascus | 19 |
| 3 | Zaron Bogdan | 19 |
| 3 | Doenrakkar | 19 |
Looking forward to 2019!
We have big plans for the series including branching out to other Australian states in 2019. The Judgement CanCon tournament is the 1st heat of the 2019 series with full points up for grabs for competitors. Watch out for more news around the heats for next year and we encourage all Judgement players to get involved.
Comments on this post (1)
Fascinating stuff!
1) Totally not suprised to see Thorgar and Brokk leading the field when it comes to the aggressors
2) Piper being overlooked that much is just crazy! I guess people have a preference for picking the specialists to fill particular roles.
3) Zaron topping the win rate is probably just skewed because of Colin’s performance.
4) Kogan getting banned that much was also a bit of a surprise, I figured people would rate him lower than that. This excites me
5)The aggregate rankings would make a pretty interesting warband. I guess it’s a good sign that there is a varied mix of the different classes in the top 5.
— Georg Buscha