Stat Check Meta Report - November 2022
Author: Innes Wilson
Hello everyone and welcome to the November Edition of the Stat Check Meta Report.
For anyone who is new to the format, a primer can be found here.
Before we get into the analysis of the current meta, as always this serves as both a snapshot of now and a prediction of things to come. While we aim to be as forward looking as possible, the stats of the last month can and will have a big impact.
Our guest this month is Nicholas Blackburn, a top player out of Canada and contributor to Stat Check, who managed to be our Litmus Test for how silly Thousand Sons and Flamers were on a variety of terrain formats. Nick’s full ballot and rundown on the top 5 are available at the end of the article.
1: Harlequins
Coming in hot back at the top, Harlequins remain one of the winningest factions we have seen in 9th edition. With both Twilight Melee and Light Starweavers showing up in numbers. With the highest win rate and over-representation in the meta this month, a win at the Coventry GT and the second most event wins total, Harlequins are here to stay.
Key Lists: Light Starweavers and Troupes, Twilight Large Troupe Squads
2: Chaos Daemons
With the most event wins of any faction at 7 wins this month, as well as a number of showings in mixed armies like Thousand Sons, Chaos Daemons have shown themselves to be very relevant in the greater environment. Having seen innovations like lower numbers of Be’Lakor and a higher emphasis on the smaller and easier to hide units, there seems to be more depth to this book than previously thought. This month even saw mono-nurgle lists like 4 Great Unclean Ones and 3 Soul Grinders pick up an event win.
Key Lists: Big Boy Time, Lots of Little Daemons, Flamers + X
3: Votann
The new kids on the block saw an 11 placing jump this month, finally catching up with the contributor voting of last month. With the second highest win rate going and a few event wins even for a new and low player base army, there’s definitely enough here to be scared of and considering in any event going forward. Both Kronus Hegemony melee focussed lists and Ymyr Conglomerate heavy shooting “Beamdeath” putting in good placings. Expect to see a lot of these as people have more time to hobby them up and find winning list combinations.
Key Lists: Ymyr Fortresses, Kronus Combat, Various other “good-stuff” lists
4: Tyranids
Constantly adapting back and forth is becoming the name of the game for Tyranids, who maintain high win rates, a few event wins and a solid amount of top 4s for their player base, doing almost twice as well as they should, Kraken seems to have mostly stepped into the role that Leviathan played as the standard subfaction. Trading out survival for speed has very much put the faction on a knife’s edge but best in game mortal wound output and speed combined with some of the best datasheets in the game is keeping the bugs off of the shelf for at least some dedicated few.
Key Lists: Kraken Melee + Mortals, Leviathan Tervigon Brick, Various Big Monster Territorial Instinct Builds
5: T'au Empire
No real big innovations or changes for the T’au this month sees some fairly average stats and a high contributor voting keep them just in the tied top 5. The Farsight Enclaves Riptides and Sunsharks build saw great performances at a good number of events and is enough to keep our confidence in them high.
Key Lists: Farsight Vehicles, Crisis Spam
5: Necrons
Another faction that is a little bit in the doldrums from the highs of previous months, both in part because people have more experience playing around the secondary pressure Necrons can exert, and the changes to the book. New Armies of Renown have opened up some interesting options but neither have quite gotten there enough to stop Necrons falling to the bottom of the top cut, despite picking up an impressive 4 event wins.
Key Lists: Obsec Spam (Obsekh) with Wraiths or Skorpekhs, Annihilation Legion Oops! All Destroyers
7: Adepta Sororitas
Innovation is dead and Sororitas have killed it. This faction hasn’t seen a major change since the last time the Football World Cup was on and it’s doubtful anything will change soon. There’s 6 more months on the Bloody Rose supplement, while the Order of our Martyred Lady leaves in January, proving there is no justice in the world.
Key LIsts: The Same Bloody Rose list as last year
8: Chaos Space Marines
With 3 event wins this month, Chaos Space Marines are still showing the power to put in results at the top end, though their win rate falling below 50% is definitely indicative of some broader level weaker results. The top end of Chaos Marine results seem to be great, while their mid and lower end results are incredibly variable, which results in a middling placing. Creations of Bile is incredibly punishing to melee lists, and Emperor’s Children has some fantastic shooting and combat especially out of the otherwise poor Troops Slot, but the average player appears to be struggling to convert these into better than average results.
Key Lists: Emperor’s Children Terminators + Noise Marines, Bile Possessed
9: Genestealer Cults
Off the back of a few strong placings from a very small player base, Genestealer Cults have rocketed up the charts with the 6th Highest Winrate and 4th best over representation going, they’re held down by an inability to convert those top 4s into wins, and with only being considered middle of the pack by the contributors. The Bikes and Neophytes build has shown that it has what it takes to both adapt to metas with variation in the list and performance out of the hands of just a couple of players, and the melee builds are doing well enough to hold their own in that 54% win rate.
Key Lists: Myriad Cults Atalans, Twisted Helix Melee
10: Imperial Knights
Imperial Knights continue to do exactly one thing well, which is Armigers with -1 Damage in whatever variation of that you like. A solid 52% win rate hides no event wins, and Imperial Knights have always struggled with not hitting at least one list that can just erase them from play over an event, but the currently preferred of the two Knighly factions stays in the top half for now.
Key Lists: Freeblade Lance 1+10, Taranis Mortal Wounds 1+10 or 2+7
11: Thousand Sons
What’s this doing down here? We’re choosing to believe that the stats for Chaos Daemons are more representative of this faction, but not tracking soup separately from the primary factions definitely is contributing to the Sons of Prospero looking a lot weaker than they should. Combined with a very mediocre 49.7% win rate, this being here is enough to have us looking at a methodology change for next month. Thousand Sons double casting the Tzeentch Daemons spells is incredibly powerful, and the speed and flexibility of the Scarabs and Flamers build puts it as one of the best lists you can play right now.
Key Lists: 30 Scarabs, Scarabs and Flamers
12: Asuryani
Indirect never went away, it’s just attached to a body that moves 20” then runs away, whether that be Shroud Runners, Swooping Hawks, Warp Spiders or Vypers, Asuryani have one trick that's working pretty well at converting event wins for a small number of players, as well as the standard Hail of Doom and Ulthwe shooting lists, and Ynnari combat. Staying above 50% win rate and with a good number of event wins, but with low contributor confidence moving forward, Eldar have a lot of space to move up or down in the coming month.
Key Lists: Swift Strikes Swooping Hawks, Hail of Doom, Ulthwe Good Stuff, Ynnari
13: Adeptus Custodes
Very little has changed for the golden boys recently, a few wins and a good win rate props up a generally struggling player base with a low top 4 conversion rate and a tough match up into a lot of what is good right now. Bikes have returned to vogue a little recently and seems to be a bit better than the 6 Dreadnoughts list that caught on in the past few months with a bit more play and movement into a lot of the lists that can definitely run the stat check on dreadnoughts.
Key Lists: March Goodstuff, Dreadnought Wall
14: Drukhari
Wrack Horde remains powerful in the hands of a few dedicated players, but Drukhari have dipped below a 50% win rate across the board as the weight of multiple nerfs has finally caught up with the book. If you don’t want to put 180 models on the board right now, don’t expect much from the Incubi + Characters of yesteryear.
Key Lists: 2021 Drukhari, Wrack Horde Army of Renown
15: Space Marines
Blood Angels continue to be the only real faction of note here, with no other chapters having any real success besides one or two players here and there. Nothing has really changed on this front, by virtue of the size of the player base, Marines picked up 3 event wins, which keeps them out of the true dregs, but even Games Workshop has identified the need for some support here.
Key Lists: Blood Angels Jump Packs, Space Wolf Successors
16: Death Guard
Again, we enter another month of no real innovation on this front. The Garage Sale Plague Marines weapons loadout is proving to be nowhere near enough to get them on the top tables with dismal stats in every category save their one event win.
Key Lists: Plague Marine Death Ball
17: Chaos Knights
It’s shocking to see Chaos Knights down here but unfortunately by virtue of how their secondaries work, they just don’t benefit as much from diluting their lists with units like Abaddon and Flamers of Tzeentch, and the meta has had much more time to tool and tech for them and their Imperial brethren. Herpetrax War Dogs still put an insane number of wounds on the board, but at the bottom of nearly every category it’s a bad time to be a Chaos Knight.
Key Lists: Herpetrax 1+10, 13 Wardogs, Dogwalker with Abaddon
18: Orks
Orks are another faction with a high disparity between the top end and the bottom end with some players piloting them to excellence, and the average win rate and over representation in top 4 being some of the worst in class. Orks show up in the top 4 at one third the rate expected. The Goff Pressure list with units like Kill Rigs and some insane secondaries is allowing top players to get great results here, but the average is just miserable.
Key Lists: Goff Pressure Melee, Deathskullz Brigade Scoring
18: Grey Knights
Infantry spam continues to remain king of what little domain Grey Knights have left, with the Interceptor and Strike Marine datasheets being the only real high points remaining to the faction. With no event wins and a terrible win rate, Grey Knights have nothing to show for their high point at the end of last year.
Key Lists; Maximum Infantry Skew
20: Astra Militarum (2017 Codex)
Kasrkin are an insanely pushed datasheet, the Russ Executioner is one of the best units in the game and fills a variety of oh wait this is the 2017 codex. Umm. You can still play this, as some events are not allowing the new codex. We’ll not be including that in tiers until the full release of that codex, but you can probably at the very least assume you’ll be removing that little 0 above.
Key Lists: Who cares new codex is out
21: Adeptus Mechanicus
Section Intentionally Left Blank
Nicholas Blackburn:
Thank you very much to the Stat Check team for giving me the opportunity to contribute to November’s Stat Check Meta Report. The team provides a terrific service to the 40k community, and it was an honour to be asked to contribute.
Briefly, my methodology was simple. After pouring over the data, I ranked the factions based on their win rate, event wins and over-representation (overrep) from 1 to 21. I then did a simple average of those individuals rankings (i.e. (Rank Win Rate + Rank Event Wins + Rank Over Rep)/3) to give an overall rank. From this “overall” rank I made some minor adjustments based on my personal experiences and opinion.
This includes how I expect they would perform in a top player’s hand at a singles event, how many good or bad matches they may have, how much terrain influences their power, and their raw damage output and scoring potential. This method is simple and has the benefit of both using real-world data, and player experience and knowledge. Not perfect, but it’ll do.
The biggest adjustment I made to the ranking described above was plucking Thousand Sons from the upper mid rankings and placing them right into 1st. The reason I did this is comes from my personal experience of having recently won a GT with the infamous Thousand Sons + Flamer list, but also through my discussions with top players such as Vik Vijay (Fireside 40k), Francois Lalonde (CanHammer), and Jeremy Atkinson (Stat Check).
Flamers bring much needed mobility and flexibility to Thousand Sons and really propels them in power. They free Thousand Sons players from the rigid 20 Scarab Terminators build. Thousand Sons now have more units, more killing, more psychic damage, excellent scoring, and it’s a winning formula. They do have some tougher matchups. For example, armies like Blood Angels and potentially some very aggressive Kraken builds can give them pause, but they have more tools than ever to compete in these matches that historically were quite difficult for them.
My #2, Harlequins, are a favourite punching bag for the quarterly balance data slate, but they still seem to harvest event wins like it’s always in season. Their speed, shooting, melee, and psychic shenanigans means they always have tools no matter the match and terrain layout, and that’s why I think they are a close second. One of the best players in the world, Mike Porter, can’t seem to lose with them. Who knows though, maybe GW should nerf Mike Porter?
I won’t accuse my 3rd pick, Daemons, of having a deep book, but they do have some devastating datasheets (see flamers). Their manifestation and warp locus rules also mean they can pick many of their battles. They can run into trouble with armies that can screen their deep strike or who can reliably do damage in all phases, but if you’re a monophase army – you’re in for a bad time.
Tyranids (#4), the other punching bag of the data slate, are finally starting to drop off a little from the absolute top of the meta. Though, you would be a fool to count them out. Their book is incredibly deep, they play all phases, and their datasheets are ready to party. A skilled player can take Tyranids to a top finish.
My last of the top 5 is 40k’s newest army: The Leagues of Votann. The pre-release nerf they received and the fact that players were starting from 0 from a hobby perspective meant their introduction into the meta was quiet. Now that most players have had time to get them ready, we are starting to see what they bring.
From my own personal experience playing against them, they are incredibly potent in melee and shooting (BEEEAAAAAAMS!!!). They can; however, run into trouble scoring being light on the ground. They may run into issues against opponents who can score well, can kill them decently, but who can also target their primary or secondary scoring.
Overall, I think the competitive meta is incredibly diverse and from my perspective a skilled player can take most of the armies and do well at events – except Admech and Grey Knights. How far they have fallen.
| Rank | Army |
|---|---|
| 1 | Thousand Sons |
| 2 | Harlequins |
| 3 | Chaos Daemons |
| 4 | Tyranids |
| 5 | Leagues of Votann |
| 6 | T'au Empire |
| 7 | Necrons |
| 8 | Adepta Sororitas |
| 9 | Chaos Space Marines |
| 10 | Asuryani |
| 11 | Imperial Knights |
| 12 | Genestealer Cult |
| 13 | Adeptus Custodes |
| 14 | Drukhari |
| 15 | Space Marines |
| 16 | Orks |
| 17 | Astra Militarum |
| 18 | Chaos Knights |
| 19 | Death Guard |
| 20 | Grey Knights |
| 21 | Adeptus Mechanicus |
That’s all she wrote folks. Thank you to Nick for your contribution and apologies for the slight delay in getting this out as real life conspired to tear away my writing time. December is always a little quieter on the event front, but we have had the Leicester GT as well as I’m sure a host of GTs, and it will open up some time for some coverage on the predicted LVO meta so be sure to tune back in next month.
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