Good day fellow Warhammer 40k tournament enthusiasts! Salty John here from TFG Radio to discuss this week in the ITC.
Last weekend was significantly less dramatic than the previous in terms of Competitive Warhammer 40k. Given that, I figured this was a good time to review some of the regional rankings! Before we hop into that I want to take a look at the overall rankings for both the ITC and Hobby Track.
The ITC Hobby Track is still sort of in its infancy, perhaps it’s toddlerhood, if you play in tournaments regularly please get your TO to submit scores to the Hobby Track, and post pictures of the beautiful armies on social media! It would be great if more small stores and smaller GTs would post pictures of the great armies at their events to Instagram, Facebook, and Tiktok(?). If you’re a fan of crazy conversions check out this week’s TLDR Battle Report from TFG Radio, where our resident conversion mad scientist Danny takes his 4 Bloodthirsters into battle.
Speaking of crazy conversions let’s talk quickly about Orks! Colin Kay is the current #3 in both the overall ITC and the United States. In fact, the current top 10 for the US and the World are the same. That is likely to change quickly once more countries open up further as the Covid-19 vaccines start to set in.
So Colin Kay has been having quite a bit of success with his Orks so let’s take a quick look at a list he came in first place with at a recent RTT.
- Clan Kultur Blood Axes Super Heavy Detachment: 3 Kill Tanks with Giga Shoot.
- Lord of War Detachment: Kustom Stompa with Belly Gun, Lifta Droppa, Deffkannon, Supa-Gatler and Rokkits.
- Clan Kultur Evil Sunz Patrol Detachment: Big Mek, Weird Boy, 10 Boyz, 2x Kommandos with tankbusta bombs.
That looks like a really fun and unique list to run! I’ve wanted to see Orks be competitive for a while, they looked like they might have a moment in 8th but that never really materialized. The other thing I like about Orks is their big crazy vehicles and this list is full of them. Congrats on the wins Colin and if you could send some photos of your army my way I would love to include them in next week’s article!
One of the things I am still really liking about the season so far is the unpredictability of the Meta in many regards. We are consistently seeing people, and lists, winning and doing well at events that are very different from previous seasons. Some of this may be due to the new edition, some of it is certainly due to the pandemic. Overall the lack of a single settled meta makes the results from events a lot more fun to look at. The top 10 is still quite diverse in terms of armies being run and lists archetypes being used, I am interested to see if this trend continues and just how diverse a meta 9th edition can bring us.
The other regional standings are a little bare. The UK and Scandinavia are still not open for events but hopefully, the vaccine roll out in those countries picks up and sticks well enough soon so they can begin to open up for socially distanced, and masked, events. Some great players live in these regions and I look forward to seeing their performance in 9th edition.
Australia has had some decent-sized events so far so I expect we begin to see some of the better players from down under hop up into the top 10 of the overall ITC soon and begin a run at the overall prize. I wouldn’t be surprised to see an ITC Champion from Australia in the next year or two given the size of events they are running and an increased number of players willing to travel internationally to make it to the various “Super Majors”.
If you’re looking for events to go to make sure to check in on the Frontline Gaming Community Facebook Page to get updates on all the new events FLG will be putting on this season. It is looking like it could be a big growth year for the hobby competitively if the pandemic continues to come under more control and if you’re willing to travel and participate then be sure to stay tuned in on the FB page for news and ticket sales!