Hello 40k players, SaltyJohn from TFG Radio bringing you a look at the ITC this week, with an emphasis on who is in the lead regionally.
So far this ITC season, the first back from 2020 with a sense of being more normal if not entirely so, has been quite entertaining to watch! We’ve had drama, new terrain rules, debates over the format of events, FLG announcing multiple new Majors in several states, and Games Workshop starting their series of Opens. It’s been a really exciting season so far, and in covering it I haven’t really discussed the current regional standings at all. Let’s start with the US as a whole and I can do the US regions another day.
The US top 20 has a whole slate of familiar names from this season and past seasons that pop in and out of the top 10 routinely. The US as a region is the only one where all of the players in the top 20 have the maximum, 6, number of events. This is probably due in large part to the size of the country and the varying State’s COVID-19 restrictions making tournaments more accessible to players in the US. Especially those willing to travel. The names Lennon, Nayde, Chester, McAneeny, Nanavati, Ogden, Kelling, Cherwein, and McDade (really everyone on that list) should be recognizable names to players who pay attention to the ITC standings and who pay attention to event results. All the players in the US top 20 have earned that spot through some heavy competition.
The UK Top 20 also has some very recognizable names in the top 20. The UK has been chugging along, a bit more slowly than the US, in terms of events but they’re picking up the pace. It’s nice to see some names near the top that are both familiar to me from writing these articles in the past and unfamiliar. New blood is always a nice addition to the community.
Canada may be the furthest behind in terms of having event scores. Like last season, this season has had the specter of COVID looming over the competitive community and the various regions’ abilities to hold events for their players. Canada is one place where the restrictions are lifting more slowly and so the number of events available to go toward their region score is lower. Remember, even if you’re a Canadian who plays in a US event, or a UK resident who plays in a European event the region score comes from the events played within that region only.
The European top 20 is always a fun category to look at. The names come from some of the other regions too and translate into the overall standings a lot as well. For example, you find Stephen Box, Mani Cheema, Torpedo, and Ben Jones on the UK top 20 and the European top 20, but many of the other names are not on the UK standings. The European Regional standings are the next most complete the US. With most players having played more than 4 events.
The South Pacific standings were surprisingly complete to me as well, I expected them to be closer to the UK than to Europe as a whole. Adam Napier is a dominant force right now in the South Pacific with 6 of 6 events logged in and a score that is 250+ points higher than number 2 Paul Gurney.
When you look at the overall top 30 in the ITC in the world after running through the Region standings you can start to see the best players in the regions pop up in the top 30. Which gives you a sense of the regions with the strongest players in contention to win the ITC overall. Whether this tells us anything about the competitiveness of those regions metas is unclear due to the various levels of COVID restriction on events. In the past, the Region leaders were almost always in similar positions point-wise and made up a large population of the overall ITC top 30. That still holds true to a certain extent, but not to the extent we saw in previous seasons before COVID restrictions. While this season of the ITC won’t be a large asterisk season the way the 2020 season was, making sure we continue to look at the season through the proper lens is important.
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