This Week in the ITC: 8-22-19 Who is Winning the Race for Best Custodes, Aeldari, and Mechanicus?

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.

This week I wanted to continue what I started a few weeks ago and take a look at the top-scoring players in a few of the Factions. This week I wanted to show off the top 3 players vying for Best Custodes, Aeldari, and Adeptus Mechanicus. Before we do that though, there has been some movement in the top 10 overall so let’s look at that first.

It is such a slew of great players in the top 10 right now, and the race is still so amazingly close! I am really happy with how the new scoring system seems to have made it more of a race than in previous years by this point. Great changes overall. In the race for Best in Faction we had a change too. It was voted by the players to have Best in Faction points awarded to Faction only if you’re playing a pure* list, and you would be in a soup category like Imperial or Chaos if playing a mixed army. *A list is pure if it is written on the army list as mono-faction, if you play 1000 points of Thousand Sons, and summon in 1000 points of Daemons during the game your faction would be 1k Sons, not mixed Chaos as it is determined by what is on your list, not what you actually played in-game. First up let’s take a look at the top Custodes players right now in the ITC!

Richard Martin from team BroHammer is currently on top of the Adeptus Custodes Faction. A big win with his team at the ATC, American Team Championships, gave him quite a few points towards best Custodes player, just inching out the number 2 spot by 1.40 points! Richard Martin took a true pure Custodes list to ATC, no Assassin summoning, here is a look at it in all the Orion Assault Dropship glory, or a nightmare if you had to face it.

Well done, this will be a fun faction to watch as I am sure more than one pure* Custodes player will show up to LVO. Another great Faction to watch down the stretch will be the Adeptus Mechanicus.

Bethany Taylor, who I previously interviewed for this article series, is a great UK based player who has a lot of great finished with Mechanicus. She has a larger lead over the competition than the Custodes players have but the competition between Bethany, David Koszka, and Brad Townsend for best Mechanicus will be fun to watch as the season begins to enter the final stretch. Here is a look at the list Bethany used for her best finish this season so far, at the London Open Part 2.

I am personally interested in how many of them ended up running a Mechanicus Knight and an Assassin in their lists by season end, as you can have those in a Mechanicus army and still be considered pure* for the sake of scoring points. The last faction I want to cover today is Aeldari, again this is a faction that will be interesting to watch going into, and at, the LVO.

Aeldari has, like Custodes, a very tight race for the top spot. With Mark Crombleholme currently leading Ruben Fernandez by a little under 4 points and Ben Cherwien just behind in 3rd place! Mark is a fantastic player year in and year out in the ITC and this year is no different. Mark piloted a great list at Summer Slam GT, which was actually a Major despite the name, here is a look at the list.

Super solid list, as a Knight and Chaos Knight player, let me tell you how great those Haywire Cannons are on the Harlequin jetbikes! With a first-place finish at a Major and a GT already this year it is going to be a toss-up who gets this award at the end of the season and it likely will come down to which of these three players attends and does the best at LVO. When it’s this close you almost certainly have to attend LVO and perform well if you’re hoping to take home that Best in Faction trophy. Good luck guys!

 

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