Antonio Carrasco won the 2026 UK Clash of Kings at 6–0 with Northern Alliance. Javier Talavero also went 6–0 with Northern Alliance and finished second. Heath Barnes finished 5–1 in sixth. Five Northern Alliance players made up just 3.1% of the field, yet the faction put three players in the top six and finished 20–10 overall. That is where this recap has to start.
Before the event, I focused on Orc combat pressure, the arrival of Xirkaali, specialist shooting, and the unusually high Unit Strength carried by factions like Ratkin and Goblins. UK Clash of Kings 2026: What to Watch in the Released Lists. I also compared this first Fourth Edition UK COK field with the 2024 and 2025 events. The 2026 armies had roughly the same number of units, but more attacks and Unit Strength, less shooting, and a very different faction mix. What Fourth Edition Changed at UK Clash of Kings: 2024–2026 Compared. Now we get the useful part: Which of those pre-tournament signals actually turned into wins?
TL;DR
- Northern Alliance owned the top of the tournament. Carrasco and Talavero both went 6–0, Barnes went 5–1, and the faction finished 20–10. The first- and second-place lists shared 12 of 14 exact unit-and-size slots.
- Orcs were good, but once again nowhere close to dominant. Fourteen Orc players finished 43–39–2, a 52.4% adjusted win rate. Their best player finished 12th. Across Adepticon, US Masters, and UK COK, Orcs are now almost exactly a 50% faction.
- Unit Strength still helped. In the clean pre/post list match, the highest-US quarter of the field performed about five percentage points better than the lowest-US quarter. But Ratkin, Goblins, and Kingdoms of Men show why Unit Strength is an advantage rather than a complete tournament strategy.
The dataset
This recap uses the final results for the 160 players in the UK Clash of Kings post-tournament report and joins those results back to the pre-event list data where the player names can be matched cleanly. For win-rate calculations, a draw counts as half a win. As always, player skill, pairings, terrain, scenario order, and opponent paths matter. Five players from one faction are not enough to declare an army broken, and 14 players from another faction are not enough to prove it perfectly balanced. The data is useful because it lets us test the questions we had before the event.
The workbook includes the player standings, faction results, matchup cross-tabs, win rates, round-level data, and upset tables.
Top 10
| Rank | Player | Faction | Record |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Antonio Carrasco | Northern Alliance | 6–0 |
| 2 | Javier Talavero | Northern Alliance | 6–0 |
| 3 | Mario Murillo Raja | Dwarfs | 5–0–1 |
| 4 | Øyvind Thomassen | Forces of Nature | 5–1 |
| 5 | Radoslaw Brylowski | Trident Realm | 5–1 |
| 6 | Heath Barnes | Northern Alliance | 5–1 |
| 7 | Simon Cooper | Trident Realm | 5–1 |
| 8 | Mario Pinós Quejido | Undead | 5–1 |
| 9 | Ed Herzig | Forces of Nature | 5–1 |
| 10 | Nico Félix | Ratkin | 5–1 |
Northern Alliance found something
The faction-level result is straightforward. Northern Alliance went 20–10, good for a 66.7% adjusted win rate, the best in the event. Carrasco finished first. Talavero finished second. Barnes finished sixth. Their paths were not especially soft, either. Carrasco’s opponents finished with a combined win rate above 65%, and his final round was against fourth-place Øyvind Thomassen. Talavero’s opponents were even slightly stronger by the same measure, and his route included eventual fifth-place finisher Radoslaw Brylowski and eighth-place Mario Pinós Quejido. These were real top-table runs. The more interesting part is what they brought.
Carrasco and Talavero shared 12 of their 14 exact unit-and-size slots, an overlap of 85.7%.
| Common piece | Shared amount |
|---|---|
| Magnilde | 1 |
| Ice Queen | 2 |
| Human Tribesmen Horde | 3 |
| Pack Hunters Regiment | 1 |
| Snow Foxes Troop | 3 |
| Hearthguard Thunderers Regiment | 2 |
The differences were fairly small. Carrasco added a fourth Human Tribesmen horde and a Pack Hunters troop. Talavero added another Pack Hunters regiment and a Hearthguard regiment. That is a recognizable chassis. It also connects nicely with something I wrote back in January in my Fourth Edition Northern Alliance review, Chillin’ Like a Villain. The early efficiency work suggested that the faction’s 4E strength was shifting away from the old monster-heavy Northern Alliance identity and toward efficient core bodies. Chillin’ Like a Villain — Northern Alliance 4E review
UK COK gives that theory a much better tournament result. The winner and runner-up were not leaning on a giant centerpiece package and hoping it carried the game. They had layers of useful pieces that could score, trade, screen, shoot, and continue affecting the board. That is a very Fourth Edition-looking army. The result also fits one of the concerns from the preview. I found more evidence that same-faction lists in this UK field were converging around common cores. Northern Alliance provides the strongest possible example of why that could matter: two extremely similar armies finished first and second.
I would still stop well short of calling the faction solved: the other two Northern Alliance players finished 132nd and 154th.
A strong chassis can create opportunity. It does not deploy itself, pick the right charges, manage scenarios, or navigate six rounds of good opponents. But after this weekend, the Tribesmen–Foxes–Queens–Pack Hunters shell deserves attention.
Orcs are good. The results still do not say “overpowered.”
Orcs entered UK COK with just about every reason for players to be nervous. They were the largest faction in the tournament with 14 players. Their pre-event lists had the highest average calculated damage in the field at roughly 84.7. They had obvious common packages around Greatax, Riftforged Legionaries, Gore Riders, Godspeakers, and Helstrikers. And community perception around Orcs has been strong basically since Fourth Edition arrived.
Then they went 43–39–2 (a 52.4% adjusted win rate). Barry Green had an excellent 5–1 weekend and finished 12th. Paco Lopez finished 19th, Jon Quayle 21st, Kenny Bintz 24th, and Alistair Vowles 31st. Those are good results. They are not dominant results. No Orc player made the top ten. And this is becoming a remarkably consistent pattern.
| Event | Orc record | Adjusted win rate |
|---|---|---|
| Adepticon 2026 | 11–12–2 | 48.0% |
| US Masters 2026 | 13–17–6 | 44.4% |
| UK Clash of Kings 2026 | 43–39–2 | 52.4% |
| Combined | 67–68–10 | 49.7% |
At Adepticon, Orcs were the largest faction and finished basically average. At US Masters they finished below average. UK COK is their best of the three major results, and it moves the combined number to almost exactly 50%. That is now 145 Orc player-games across three major events. Their adjusted win rate is 49.7%. I keep coming back to this because Orcs look fantastic.
My Fourth Edition Orc review found plenty to like: efficient Greatax, durable Riftforged Legionaries, cheap board-control pieces, useful command orders, respectable scoring density, and a lot of honest combat output. Orcs in Kings of War 4th Edition: Best Units, Strategy, and Tournament Analysis. None of that analysis suddenly becomes wrong because the faction wins half its games. Good tools do not automatically produce an overpowered army.
The Orc results are also consistent with the broader 2026 tournament analysis I ran last month. Across that larger sample, Orcs had a 50.4% score rate and a relatively ordinary spread of player results. They did not look like a faction hiding some huge elite-player ceiling underneath mediocre averages. The Consistency Gap: Which Kings of War Armies Produce the Most Predictable Results? UK COK gives us another datapoint in almost exactly the same place. For balance discussions, I think the standard should be fairly simple. Orcs deserve respect. Their efficient pieces are real. Their command orders are real. Their ability to punish positioning mistakes is very real. The actual tournament evidence still does not support treating the faction as a broad balance problem.
Unit Strength still matters — just not by itself
This was the storyline I was most interested in coming out of US Masters. At Masters, Ratkin and Goblins used bodies, scoring power, and repeated useful units to create a problem that went beyond raw damage. Sean Troy won with Ratkin, Travis Timm finished second with Goblins, and those two factions filled a disproportionate share of the top standings. 2026 US Masters Recap: Ratkin, Goblins, and the Power of More Bodies
UK COK gives us a more restrained version of the same signal. When I join the final results back to the pre-event lists, the highest-Unit Strength quarter of the cleanly matched field produced an adjusted win rate of a little over 51%. The lowest quarter was just under 46%. That is meaningful enough to keep watching but nowhere near strong enough to say “stack Unit Strength and win tournaments.” The faction results show the problem.
Ratkin entered with the highest faction-average Unit Strength in the field at 32.8. They finished at 51.4%. Nico Félix had an excellent 5–1 run to tenth, but the faction as a whole was basically average. Kingdoms of Men averaged 28.9 Unit Strength and finished at 50.8%. Goblins averaged 30.7 and finished at only 44.4%. Meanwhile Forces of Nature entered with only 22.5 average Unit Strength and finished 39–26–7, a 59.0% adjusted win rate, with players in fourth, ninth, and fourteenth.
Unit Strength creates more ways to solve scenario problems. It gives you room to lose pieces without immediately losing scoring power. It lets late-game survivors matter more. It does not tell us whether those pieces can survive, reach the right part of the board, win the necessary fight, or avoid getting jammed somewhere useless. That fits the longer-term data as well. In my analysis of roughly 2,600 tournament matches, scoring units and Unit Strength repeatedly showed up among the useful predictors of success, but they were part of a larger package that also included durability and other list characteristics. What the Data Says: 5 Key Traits of Winning Kings of War Lists
Northern Alliance actually gives us a good example of how those pieces can come together. Carrasco had 30 Unit Strength. Talavero had 29. Barnes had 31. All three also had real combat output, useful ranged pressure, multiple cheap scenario pieces, and enough redundancy that losing one unit did not collapse the plan. The practical takeaway is the same one I came away from Masters with, just toned down a little: Build enough scoring power that you can still play Kings of War after the first major exchange.
UK COK suggests that matters. It does not suggest that Unit Strength can replace the rest of the list.
What UK COK adds to the early Fourth Edition picture
I like this result for the simple reason that it makes the meta harder to reduce to one rule. Ratkin looked terrifying at Adepticon. Ratkin and Goblins controlled US Masters. Northern Alliance just took first, second, and sixth at UK Clash of Kings. Trident Realm quietly put players fifth and seventh and finished at 63.9%. Forces of Nature had three players in the top 14 and finished at 59%. Orcs brought the largest contingent and ended up almost perfectly average.
That is a much healthier analytical problem than finding the same army at the top every weekend. It also reinforces why I am cautious about making balance calls from list math alone. Before UK COK, Orcs looked like the scariest damage faction in the spreadsheet. Northern Alliance was barely a headline. After six rounds, Northern Alliance had two undefeated players and Orcs had zero players in the top ten. The spreadsheet is useful, but the games still get a vote.
For now, my updated read on the three questions from the preview is:
Northern Alliance: there is a real competitive core here, and it deserves more testing.
Orcs: very good tools, very ordinary aggregate tournament results. I still do not see evidence for faction-level panic.
Unit Strength: still one of the list characteristics I want, especially in Fourth Edition, but UK COK is a useful reminder that board presence has to come with a plan for actually using it.
And that gives us a few more questions for the next event: Which factions can reproduce their UK results? Does the Northern Alliance core work when opponents start preparing specifically for it? And how many more major tournaments can Orcs finish around 50% before we stop talking about them as though they are secretly ruining the game? I have my guesses. The next dataset gets a vote too.
Download the Full Data
This is the post-tournament workbook used for the analysis above, including final standings, faction performance, round-by-round results, matchup tables, win rates, and upset data.
