Hello, fellow Warhammer 40k fans! SaltyJohn from TFG Radio, and one of the Las Vegas Open Head Judges, here to bring you another article reviewing the ITC Standings for the 2019 season with the new scoring method in place.
First off this week let’s take a look at the BAO final standings. There are a few names in that top 5 from my prediction article. Just saying. The Bay Area Open was again a great success this year and continued the tradition of being a marquee event for Frontline Gaming.
Looking at the top 10 after a 2-week break from this article and after the Bay Area Open and not too much has changed. Jim Vesal had another incredible run at a Major, the BAO, even overcoming forgetting his Bloodletter bomb turn 3 and losing them during his live-streamed game against John Lennon. Jim is also still number one in the ITC Hobby Track. I can’t stress enough how incredible that is to me. Having now seen Jim’s army in person. I can attest to just how great it really is, well-deserved accolades all around this season so far.
When it comes to the new faction scoring there’s a trend I find interesting. The Chaos soup faction has had quite a bit of movement with the new scoring in place, Jim Vesal is up there too, the Imperium soup standings, on the other hand, haven’t seen the same big changes. There’s a few things meta wise in the ITC that I see going on right now. First Chaos Soup is the big bad guy on the block right, getting a lot of quality play. Imperial just doesn’t stand up. Another interesting change is the decline of Ynnari.
While Eldar still has legs as a faction the Ynnari changes I think spell the end for their competitive streak for now. Another trend, which many predicted, was a change to the influence of Imperial Knights. They are still prevalent, and even with the point increase, a single Castellan is still a justifiable choice in many lists. That said, Junior proved that the overlooked Valiant and Warden have real potential when paired with Astramilitarun and a competent player.
Geoff Robinson played a great Imperium based list and won BAO with it. Carlos Kaiser and Junior likewise had great Imperium soup lists they took to the top 8. Whereas Brandon Grant just missed the top 8 with his pure Astramilitarum list. Imperium is in a weird place right now I think, but in the end, I think it may have more legs than Chaos if you give it the right combination of detachments. We will see how Chaos Knights mesh with the current Chaos soup list building meta. That could be huge.
While on the topic of Astramilitarum let’s take a look at a few single codex factions that seem to be doing better lately. While they haven’t been winning huge events, they have performed well despite perceived nerfs from the Pure vote and actual FAQs and Errata. Astramilitarum has real potential as a pure force. The other two I see rising up are Dhrukhari and Orks. Dhrukhari have been overlooked for a while now but as a pure force have a lot to offer. The most recent FAQ is going to really force Ork players to rethink their lists and the meta for them. I see this as a big bonus ITC meta-wise because the original Ork list archetypes weren’t performing well, and I think the codex has serious potential. Someone(s) just need to unlock the code!
Ultimately time will tell meta-wise how things will really shake out. With a summer packed full of events on the horizon, it should be an exciting few weeks to watch unfold.
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