Hello all! Peter ‘The Falcon’ here to drop some hard numbers from the LVO.
A big and special thanks to the BCP and FLG teams for letting me have early access to the lists so that I could get a head start on compiling all the numbers in advance of the big event. There was a lot to unpack and analyze for the biggest event in the world and I wanted to take things up a notch compared to the level of analysis I have run for other events before this. This will be the first in a series of articles in the next week or two breaking down some of the high points of coverage from the data side of the event.
What Showed Up
The detachment breakdowns I’m laying out below were discussed in part on Chapter Tactics episodes 100 – 102, so if you happened to tune in to the dulcet tones of our crew over there then you will have already received the broad strokes. Some of these numbers will have adjusted since the earlier episodes were recorded, as people either dropped out or submitted their lists late.
So what DID the general populace lug into Bally’s in their carrying cases or on their repurposed fast food trays? The spread held very close to what we had been seeing for some time, with a continued upward trend in Ork and Drukhari representation. The graph below outlines both overall faction representation in lists (blue bars) and faction representation as a primary detachment (green bars).
As you can see above, Astra Militarum was the most frequently seen faction, showing up in 164 of the 661 lists or 24.81% and our beautiful big boys, the Imperial Knights, popped up in 146 lists or 22.09% of the field. These numbers are ~3% above where these factions have sat for the last couple of months. Asuryani and Drukhari were next in line, sitting at 95 and 91 lists apiece. While the Drukhari were up 3%, Asuryani numbers are only about .6% over their post-CA numbers.
As far as primary factions, Imperial Knights and Astra Militarum took the top spots again at 9.83% and 9.53% or 65 and 63 lists respectively. This is followed by Orks at 8.17%, continuing their upward trend in popularity amongst the masses. In a ‘surprise’ 4th spot for primaries was Drukhari, a perpetual contender since their codex dropped, the boys and girls of Vegas showed their support en masse for the clans of Commorragh. While not exactly Last Chance Open numbers, this is about a 2% increase over the representation we had normally seen from the faction. T’au come in 5th at %6.81 and then come Ynnari boasting 5.90% of the meta.
How did they Fare?
The LVO marked something I have yet to see while tracking all of the GTs and Majors of the last 8 months, an extremely tight core win rate, winning position representation (lists that at least went to 4-0, as well as lists that went 5-1) and average 1st loss numbers. While there are still outliers in the data, there is a lot to be excited about. The clear winners in terms of the positive stats that I track were Ynnari. They had the best win rate of any faction with decent representation (sorry Corsairs), the best average Primary VP score, the best Average VP against and the best average 1st loss (Round 2.87, the only faction that could be expected to get to round 3, on average, before seeing its first loss). See the table below for a breakdown:
Take particular note of the list of factions that fall in the 47%-53% win rates as a primary faction, and those that are there in terms of their overalls. Those numbers are highly indicative of factions that are performing within what I would consider a decent variance from the mean based on the number of games recorded at the LVO and the historicals I have pulled together from another 45ish Majors/GTs. Is this a sign of perfection, or be all and end all of a faction’s place in the game? Not necessarily, many of these factions are reliant on very specific lists to reach these numbers and there are a myriad of other factors that should be considered outside of these raw numbers, but it is a good starting point.
Another good sign of where we are headed from a balance perspective can be seen in the breakdown of the 62 lists that went 5-1 or better at the event:
Once again, the blue bars above show primary faction representation, the orange overall rep. While the expected Ynnari/Aeldari, Guard and Knights take up the majority of the spots, it should be noted that absolutely every codex faction has some kind of representation outside of Grey Knights. Even Necrons and Space Wolves had at least 1 player put in an excellent performance at the event.
The Tops in ITC
Now, while the above breakdowns were significant in showing the general popularity of the individual factions and how they performed as a whole, it should be noted that there was a significant portion of the player base that was there not just for the love of the hobby, but for a chance to win the ITC. As such, I went ahead and separated out the top 150 players in the ITC at the start of the event and tracked their individual performances. 84 of those top 150 were at the LVO; how did their list choices stand up to the ‘filthy casuals’ and ‘also rans’? (Please do not take offense at the turn of phrase, I assume most of you are pretty clean and extremely intense, like some kind of ghost pepper nacho chip that has never been touched by human hands).
In the table above, the blue bars mark primary faction representation, while the orange denote list representation as a whole. You’ll see that all but a handful of factions at least had some sort of spot in the top players’ lists, with Space Wolves and Grey Knights being the only 2 codex factions with no place to call home. The Aeldari were out for blood with Ynnari (16 lists), Drukhari (21) and Asuryani (21) as 3 of the 4 most popular factions for list representation. Those are huge jumps over their general faction representation numbers. Only Astra Militarum (20) and Imperial Knights (14) also pulled in double-digit numbers, but they were more representative of their general popularity. As for primary faction representation, Ynnari (11 lists) was most popular by far followed by Drukhari/Orks (7 lists) and then Asuryani, T’au and Cult Mechanicus.
How did this ‘cream of the crop’ perform? These 84 players had an average win rate of 70.09% overall and 79.19% when faced off against players outside of that bracket. 31 of them placed in the top 10% of the tournament and 4 more were within 10 spots of that (35 of the top 76 players at event end). These numbers definitely lend credence to the ‘jockey not the horse’ credo that Reece and a number of others in our community have shouted from the rooftops for some time now.
That’s it for now, I believe at this point I could write a novel on all of the numbers we were able to collect from the event. I am sure there is more you’d like to see and I hope I can provide. The next few articles will go more in depth on the Imperium, Chaos, Eldar and ‘Other Dirtier Xenos’; what their matchups were like, what units (if any) had a positive or negative impact on performance and any other insights we can take from their overall performances. I may even throw in some general ‘cute’ stats about particular lists or model representation as a whole.
If you have any questions about these stats or want to see more, you can always check out my web site/contact me at www.40kstats.com. I also recommend you subscribe to BCP, they’re good folks and are on the cusp of something truly awesome for our community. Now go out there and do good things my friends, unless you like doing bad things, I can’t tell you what to do, I’m hopefully not your dad and you’re probably an adult anyway.
And remember, Frontline Gaming sells gaming products at a discount, every day in their webcart!
