Hello, fellow Warhammer 40,000 aficionados! SaltyJohn from TFG Radio, and Las Vegas Open Head Judge, here to bring you a wrap up of this week in the ITC!
Last week we took a look at the overall leaderboard for the ITC, Independent Tournament Circuit, and the regional leaders. There wasn’t too much movement on those boards this week so I wanted to take the opportunity to explore the faction leaderboards a little bit. This week’s article will be a bit shorter, with Adepticon this weekend and Best Coast Pairing working feverishly to get all the manually reported tournaments in, while simultaneously getting us the TO Android Beta app by the end of the month, the leaderboards are primed and ready for a big shakeup at the end of March and beginning of April.
On the topic of the Best Coast Pairings app, I wanted to pass along some information from conversations I have been having with Paul McKelvey about the BCP, the ITC, and the Frontline Gaming pages leaderboards etc. Some of this will be more interesting to TOs and Judges than to people who just play the game, but it’s good info for the players to have as well, so you can understand why your scores are sometimes not up to date and why it’s important to get on your TO to use the BCP app to auto submit the scores for the ITC.
Anything that has been manually submitted hasn’t been added this season yet. Best Coast Pairings have been in back to back conventions and won’t do those updates till after Adepticon. Part of why there is the push for people to run stuff in BCP, it goes in right away. There’s been a decent amount of manual subs this season so far and BCP just hasn’t had the opportunity to add them. So, to reiterate, there will be a bit of a shakeup after Adepticon.
There have been a ton of upgrades to the token system since LVO too so TOs can see if their event has been submitted or not, the token changes from available to submit in the TO app under “tokens”. The ITC and BCP have a wave of TOs, mostly new to BCP and the ITC, that have run their event in BCP but don’t submit the event to the ITC. The ITC has become a huge league which is why they are having to build out tools to make it easier to manage. There’s a plan, and the plan is working, it’s just a matter of time now. According to Paul by this time next year, these issues will sound silly. Android TO is coming out end of the month in an open Beta form, which will change things a lot for TOs; there would be no reason, aside from team events, to not use BCP.
It is going to be wild and crazy few weeks in the ITC until about mid-April and then we’ll have the long slog through summer events. The announcements from Adepticon yesterday we now have 5 codices being released imminently. Necrons, Drukhari, Imperial Knights, Harlequins, and Deathwatch alongside the announcements that Imperial Knight are getting a new, more powerful, standard plastic Knight to go along with the Armigers and plastic Sisters of Battle (Adepta Sororitas) in 2019. Those soon to be released armies are going to really shake up the meta and make the ITC rankings an awfully fun thing to watch evolve over the course of this year. Let’s jump right into the meat of this week’s article and look at some faction rankings.
Jeremy Applebaum is currently in the lead for the Adeptus Sororitas faction by a healthy margin. Notably absent is last year’s best Sororitas player Adrienne Jeannard who may have a hard time giving it a good run this year as he moved back to France for work and the tournaments over there that report to the ITC are unfortunately few and far between. While the release of new plastic models for this faction was welcomed by the community the release window of 2019 means the players in this faction will have to make due with Index rules for this season.
The Adeptus Astartes are still being led by Patrick McAneeny and Erik Lathouras with Cary Gould nipping at their heels. After a strong 8th ed start, being one of the better Index armies, the Astartes have faltered a bit in their ability to do well at larger events consistently. The lack of a major Adeptus Astartes presence at the top level of the LVO was telling. Hopefully, as the meta shakes out Astartes players can find the right mix and win a couple big events.
One of the newer factions on the block, the boys in gold and red, the Adeptus Custodes are beginning to show their potency in local events. With Adepticon going on as we speak I would be shocked not to see a few Custodes based armies do well. While not a faction that lends itself to an army made solely from the one codex, it has some pieces that can make lists with well-allied detachments terrifying. Shane Watts, Trevor Harris, and Kriston Broxson are all within striking distance of each other, and as manually reported tournaments start to get put in and the season progresses I wouldn’t bet against seeing Geoff Robinson’s name grace the top 3 of this faction.
Loyal adepts of the Mechanicus have had some successes this season but I think with the revealing of the new Imperial Knight codex we’ll see a lot of top lists using both books to their full potential. I can’t imagine the two books having been written without the intent that they work together. We’ve seen great care from GW lately in terms of trying to add synergy to lists through rules crossing over in explicitly written terms. With only a few tournaments logged for most of the players, I would expect a big shake-up in this list after Adepticon and the manual submissions. Karl Payne, Seth Piper, and John Lippens will have their work cut out for them if this faction becomes as hotly contested as I am anticipating.
Aeldari, Aeldari, Aeldari. Should we just call this the Dark Reaper faction? I’m kidding of course, but I feel the need to make that clear after the response I got to last weeks article from some members of the Tau community, despite my heaps of praise for the fact one of their own was in the top 10 using the Index lists. First through third in the Aeldari faction have a decent spread in points so far, if a few Aeldari players crush it at Adepticon this weekend we could see a few new names at the top of this one. For now, James Kelling, Ben Cherwien, and Paul Bowman are on top.
Astra Militarum is currently being led by Mitch Pelham, who had a great showing at the LVO with his Artemia Hellhound based list. He continues to show dominance with Astra Militarum lists. Joe Beddoe and Nick Barden are nipping at this heels. With little coming out for Astra Militarum specifically AM players will have to rely on the power of the other new codices coming that they can take complimentary, or perhaps supplementary, detachments from to bolster their codex.
The Asuryani join with several other factions to represent the pointy-eared Dark Reaper spamming jerks of the 41st millennium, again, it’s a joke let’s not take ourselves too seriously. Although I am sure Eldar players are capable of taking a joke! It seems like the multiple Eldar based factions are a bit less contentious, probably due to their being so many Aeldari based factions, but I am sure that will all settle out and then heat up as we go further into the season. Currently, Jordan Stein, James Koons, and Matt Runde hold the top 3 Asuryani spots.
Blood Angels are a newer codex faction and they’ve taken some time to settle into the meta. Personally, I think they’re really strong and the showings thus far from the top 3 players support that. Thomas Hegstrom Oakey, William Ivey, and Robert Chandler are all recognizable names in the 40k community and they’re great players repping the Blood Angels this season. With only 3 of 5 events and 250.28 points to his name, Thomas is a real contender for holding onto that top spot this season.
Chaos Daemons are yet another faction that seems to be in the awkward 8th edition stages of trying to get settled out into the meta. Once a dominant faction in events they seem to be struggling to find a place between primary faction or supplementary force. Jeffrey Florido doesn’t seem to be struggling too much with 252.72 points to his name and currently the top Daemon player, way to go!
The next 3 groups are all hotly contested groups with codices of their own. Chaos Space Marines, Dark Angels, and Death Guard. I like how they are listed on the rankings page in that order. Sandwiching the secret traitors in-between to out of the closet set of traitors I see…
Joking about the Dark Angels deep dark secret aside there are some great players vying for the top spots in these three factions. Of the three I think Dark Angels are the faction that still needs the most fleshing out in the competitive Meta. Death Guard is a ridiculously solid army and Chaos Space Marines are still competing at a high level. Josh Death and Don Hooson are two names to watch in the ITC in general and it looks like in the Death Guard faction they’re set to go head to head for the top spot. First, they have to pass Kristopher Boss, whose name I misspelled last week, sorry about that!
A few more important standouts from the Faction Rankings in a rapid-fire format:
Patrick McNeil has accumulated nearly 300 points in just 3 events playing Imperial Knights. With a new codex inbound according to GW at Adepticon, he could make a serious run at the ITC overall.
Derek Page has been running Knight based lists on and off for several seasons now. If the Knight Renegades get access to some of the cool new toys coming out as well look for his performance in this faction to become even more dominant over time.
Oh boy. With a new codex mere days away from the top place Jessica Bowman for Necrons is poised to continue domination in this faction, provided she can find a build that works well for her quickly before someone else.
Thousand Sons and Tyranids are having a bit of a Renaissance moment in 40k right now. If you look at some of the better performing lists at Adepticon you can’t help but notice a few detachments of 1k sons up there, and 3 Tyranids in serious contention. With players like Matt Root, Gary Frank, and Shawn Prosser repping the Tyranids top faction spots it’s easy to see this codex may have been underestimated upon release. Adam Gati is a player known for playing good armies and doing well with them, the fact he’s sitting on the top spot for 1k Sons is also a good indicator that there’s some unrealized potential in that book. Several well performing lists at Adepticon day 1 were using Tzangores…
Well, I hope you enjoyed “This Week in the ITC for 40k” with me SaltyJohn. I will try to mix things up each week with the format and what info I will present to you, but always with a focus on the changes to the standings and interesting lists, factions, and regions. Let me know in the comments what you liked, didn’t like, or would like me to cover in the future!
