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Figured I'd disrupt the front page. Goonhammer put this data together (not necessarily endorsing but crediting them since they did the work):

1. Harlequins with a 61% win average from events.

2. Imperium Soup (usually including Custodes) at 59%

3. Drukhari at 55%

4. Custodes at 54%

5. Tau at 53%

6. Space Marines at 52%

7. Grey Knights at 52%

8. Orks at 52%

9. Chaos at 51%

10. Chaos Knights at 50%

Now they did note that Space Marines aren't equal by Codex. That looks more like:

6a. Salamanders at 71%

6b. Iron hands at 69%

6c. Space Wolves at 63%

6d. All other Space Marines sub-50%.

It's actually a pretty Eldar dominated meta so far! That said, 3 Space Marine factions would be top 3 if numbered separately. So it just seems the problem is with them.

Edit: The data sample was:

Using data from Best Cost Pairings and Down Under Pairings, we pulled tournament results for 13 events, including some of the larger RTTs featuring notable players, in the US, UK, Canada, Japan, Australia, and the Netherlands. In total that gave us a sample of 329 lists across 1,523 games played since July 25, 2020.

It's OK I have numerous people telling me in the other threads that we don't separate out marines and as such we must declare marines are actually average.

Dudeface wrote:
It's OK I have numerous people telling me in the other threads that we don't separate out marines and as such we must declare marines are actually average.

Well, if you fold all those together you end up with ~58% iirc, so not average and still really good. Not as good as Harlies, but certainly not merely average by this data.

EDIT
Oh wait, I see SM are there at 52%, that's not too bad.

Harlequins looked REAL good in the few battle reports I've seen them in. I'm glad the murder clowns seem to have found a way to be relevant. SM flavors are probably suffering from a lot of in-fighting in the games counted, so they could possibly be a little better than they currently look.

Drukhari really surprises me, but they still have solid range to control the battlefield depending on the pilot. Guess Craftworlders can keep paying for the sins of the Ynnari and Wraith Knights for just a bit longer, though

I think Space Marines are being made out to be bigger bogeymen than they really are... they punch REALLY hard, but it seems like that is at the expense of the mission at times. They're still strong and scary, though, and have some great units.

I'm sure 'quins and Drukhari will start to fall off once the environment starts to normalize and people start figuring out their tricks and counter-play them better. They don't have very deep sets of tools to use, unfortunately. I think there's also a really high +/- confidence in the numbers used to get those percentages, and probably not representative of the environment, yet. A good start though.

Definitely nice to see some of the less-favored factions up there, for sure

Its becoming a bit of a meme, but I think we need more data really.

Harlequins (and I guess DE) seem good at claiming/denying objectives, but... idk really, to my mind quin's still die to a stiff breeze if they gets a vaguely below average run of luck. I think they might be benefiting from a bit of novelty which might wane over time.

As has been observed, variations in Marine subtypes are caused by the best marine players just playing the ones they believe to be the best.

I guess my breach with say Goonhammer and perhaps the competitive world in general is that I thought Tau would be largely fine - and so it seems to be proving. No offense to any Tau players out there, but negativity about the faction (echoed all through 8th - we need a new codex despite winning tournaments etc) has always been a bit weird. I think its because a lot of players got into the faction for say crisis suits, or fish of fury, and that doesn't really work, and so they are bitter about it.

Not surprised about the Quins, but I strongly suspect that the Drukhari showing is an outlier, and will drop overall.

I called harlequins as one of the top three predicted factions along with marines and custodes so I'm not surprised.

What I was very surprised by though is how chaos, particularly Death Guard, has just fallen flat on the tournament scene. I had them up there as being tourny terrors and they haven't broken a top 10 at a GT so far.

Weird how they come to the number 52%. They've got the same percentages from the breakdown I saw before, but those percentages actually added up to 57%, not 52%.

So, which Masques were these harlequin lists running? Was it just one Masque showing up in every list, or a variety indicating that the problem is with the rules specific to the Masque and not the rules specific to Harlequins in general?

How many Harlequin and Drukhari lists are we talking about here, vs how many Marine and Imp Soup lists?

EDIT: Figured it out. I added up the data from the image Daed linked in a previous thread, which actually cut off the bottom two performers for Space Marines: 8 armies with Dark Angels with a 39% win percentage, and 1 army with Deathwatch at a 33% win percentage. That's where 52% total for "Marines" comes from.

Also missing from this discussion is this:

Faction counts. This data looks at the performance of NINETY-THREE marine armies and SEVEN Drukhari, Harlequin, and Imperial Soup armies...and doesn't remove mirror matchups from the equation.

Are Drukhari an extremely strong army? Or are they primarily doing well off the back of, say, one particular custom trait combo that allows every ranged weapon in the list to deal a minimum of 2 damage and have +1 to wound?

Are Harlequins an extremely strong army? Or are they doing extremely well into an almost-guaranteed matchup of comparatively low-ROF, high-AP weaponry when they rely on modifiers and invulnerable saves for everything?

the_scotsman wrote:
Weird how they come to the number 52%. They've got the same percentages from the breakdown I saw before, but those percentages actually added up to 57%, not 52%.

So, which Masques were these harlequin lists running? Was it just one Masque showing up in every list, or a variety indicating that the problem is with the rules specific to the Masque and not the rules specific to Harlequins in general?

How many Harlequin and Drukhari lists are we talking about here, vs how many Marine and Imp Soup lists?

The full Space Marine list is:

Salamander 71%
Iron Hands 69%
Space Wolves 63%
Ultramarines 49%
Raven Guard 48%
White Scars 48%
Blood Angels 48%
Black Templars 44%
Imperial Fists 43%
Dark Angels 39%
Death Watch 33%

You also forgot to note that is fairly exhaustive of the lists though. While there are a lot more marines in the picture, there's only so many events to comb and lists to pull. See below:

Using data from Best Cost Pairings and Down Under Pairings, we pulled tournament results for 13 events, including some of the larger RTTs featuring notable players, in the US, UK, Canada, Japan, Australia, and the Netherlands. In total that gave us a sample of 329 lists across 1,523 games played since July 25, 2020.

Audustum wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:
Weird how they come to the number 52%. They've got the same percentages from the breakdown I saw before, but those percentages actually added up to 57%, not 52%.

So, which Masques were these harlequin lists running? Was it just one Masque showing up in every list, or a variety indicating that the problem is with the rules specific to the Masque and not the rules specific to Harlequins in general?

How many Harlequin and Drukhari lists are we talking about here, vs how many Marine and Imp Soup lists?

The full Space Marine list is:

Salamander 71%
Iron Hands 69%
Space Wolves 63%
Ultramarines 49%
Raven Guard 48%
White Scars 48%
Blood Angels 48%
Black Templars 44%
Imperial Fists 43%
Dark Angels 39%
Death Watch 33%

You also forgot to note that is fairly exhaustive of the lists though. While there are a lot more marines in the picture, there's only so many events to come and lists to pull. See below:

Using data from Best Cost Pairings and Down Under Pairings, we pulled tournament results for 13 events, including some of the larger RTTs featuring notable players, in the US, UK, Canada, Japan, Australia, and the Netherlands. In total that gave us a sample of 329 lists across 1,523 games played since July 25, 2020.

Yup, I figured that out. The image posted in a different thread actually cut off the bottom 2, which is how I'd previously added them up and come to 57%.

the_scotsman wrote:

Audustum wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:
Weird how they come to the number 52%. They've got the same percentages from the breakdown I saw before, but those percentages actually added up to 57%, not 52%.

So, which Masques were these harlequin lists running? Was it just one Masque showing up in every list, or a variety indicating that the problem is with the rules specific to the Masque and not the rules specific to Harlequins in general?

How many Harlequin and Drukhari lists are we talking about here, vs how many Marine and Imp Soup lists?

The full Space Marine list is:

Salamander 71%
Iron Hands 69%
Space Wolves 63%
Ultramarines 49%
Raven Guard 48%
White Scars 48%
Blood Angels 48%
Black Templars 44%
Imperial Fists 43%
Dark Angels 39%
Death Watch 33%

You also forgot to note that is fairly exhaustive of the lists though. While there are a lot more marines in the picture, there's only so many events to come and lists to pull. See below:

Using data from Best Cost Pairings and Down Under Pairings, we pulled tournament results for 13 events, including some of the larger RTTs featuring notable players, in the US, UK, Canada, Japan, Australia, and the Netherlands. In total that gave us a sample of 329 lists across 1,523 games played since July 25, 2020.

Yup, I figured that out. The image posted in a different thread actually cut off the bottom 2, which is how I'd previously added them up and come to 57%.

A lot of the outliers (both positive and negative) could also be:

How many harlequin and drukhari armies frequently show up? If 1 or 2 do well, and they are good for sure, then that weighs VERY heavily on the faction overall since those 5-1 or 6-0 results obscure a lot more of the 3-3s (look at the numbers for the Salamanders to see how they get 70%, you'll laugh).

Same for other factions, like Death Guard... imagine how many middling players are turning in 3-3 results with DG. I don't think DG are particularly busted in any regard, I think they're a solid "middle of the pack" contender. Their upside isn't as high as many other factions, either, but I think it may still be there. But DG do struggle with 1W vs the sea of 2D weaponry... really nerfs Disgustingly Resilient. I think DG is going to see a healthy bump when their forces get that promised +1W to their stat line. 2D weapons go down to like a 55% chance to take down a Plague Marine instead of something like 88%? Head math is fuzzy

More results are probably going to be required, especially for some of those armies with only a handful of showings that could be distorted by outlying performances. But, like I said, not a bad start!

So, for clarity, here's the original article.

The raw numbers in the first post need some heavy caveats. The main things I noticed:
- The sample size was 329 lists over 1523 games - that's not actually a bad start considering how young the edition is, but isn't a big enough dataset when you take the rest of these caveats into account.
- All of the games were tournament games, so you're looking at a higher level of play than normal, and a greater incentive for players to bring their absolute best armies and lists.
- >90 of those lists were Space Marines. That's over a quarter, and almost three times as many as the next most popular army. So there's going to have been a lot of games where Marines both won and lost, skewing the results to bring Marines nearer the average.
- On the other end of the scale, there are a full 8 armies with less than 10 lists - and these include Harlequins, Imperium Soup and Drukhari. Given such low numbers, it can easily be imagined that the players taking these factions were particularly skilled and really knew how to use them, else they wouldn't bring them to a tournament in the first place.

With all of this taken into consideration, I don't think we can say just yet that Harlequins are really on top, nor that Space Marines are that close to average.
The full article makes for good reading, though, they go a long way to explain the limitations of the data and there's a lot more in there than just a percentage list. Frankly, there's a reason they put those results near the end of the analysis - in the hopes that you'd read the rest first and realise that it's not to be taken as gospel.

Purifying Tempest wrote:
A lot of the outliers (both positive and negative) could also be:

How many harlequin and drukhari armies frequently show up? If 1 or 2 do well, and they are good for sure, then that weighs VERY heavily on the faction overall since those 5-1 or 6-0 results obscure a lot more of the 3-3s (look at the numbers for the Salamanders to see how they get 70%, you'll laugh).

Same for other factions, like Death Guard... imagine how many middling players are turning in 3-3 results with DG. I don't think DG are particularly busted in any regard, I think they're a solid "middle of the pack" contender. Their upside isn't as high as many other factions, either, but I think it may still be there. But DG do struggle with 1W vs the sea of 2D weaponry... really nerfs Disgustingly Resilient. I think DG is going to see a healthy bump when their forces get that promised +1W to their stat line. 2D weapons go down to like a 55% chance to take down a Plague Marine instead of something like 88%? Head math is fuzzy

More results are probably going to be required, especially for some of those armies with only a handful of showings that could be distorted by outlying performances. But, like I said, not a bad start!

I mean, if you said to me

"hey, Scotsman, you're going to be going to a tournament. 128/329 of the people there, 39%, are going to be bringing either Space Marines (I'd wager HEAVY on the Primaris) or Custodes.

You can take either a Drukhari list, where you can take a subfaction trait that allows literally all of your ranged weapons to have minimum damage 2, or you can take a Harlequin list, where you totally ignore AP on everything just, by default.

How d'you figure you're going to do?"

I'd probably be pretty dang confident in my performance.

Oh, definitely... there's basically 2 lists in 9th edition RIGHT NOW:

Space Marines

and

Lists that beat Space Marines (with a heavy skew towards killing primaris).

I'm just pointing out that some of these numbers could be artificially held up by a couple of players performing VERY well accounting for more representation in the compiled number than other players performing well in a faction mired with mirror-matches and tons of middling players.

Going 6-0 with 'quins in a field of 10 players has a HUGE impact on their overall standings in these percentages... much more than say... going 6-0 with Space Marines.

That's the only reason we need more numbers, I'd say. To see where some of the under-represented outliers REALLY fall, because they have pretty small sample sizes that can be skewed easily.

But, as I have said, it is a start. We'll see more as time goes on. But I do think Harlequins are in a REALLY nice space right now, and it is good to see them stepping up and reminding people that they are a faction

It is also nice to see that the Space Marines are strong, but not so OP that they are truly playing "a different game" than the rest of us. Kind of matches my experience with playing vs Primaris so far in 9th. Good, hard, but not unbeatable by a long shot.

I am curious what the marine winrate looks like when matched up vs not-marines.

Purifying Tempest wrote:
Oh, definitely... there's basically 2 lists in 9th edition RIGHT NOW:

Space Marines

and

Lists that beat Space Marines (with a heavy skew towards killing primaris).

I'm just pointing out that some of these numbers could be artificially held up by a couple of players performing VERY well accounting for more representation in the compiled number than other players performing well in a faction mired with mirror-matches and tons of middling players.

Going 6-0 with 'quins in a field of 10 players has a HUGE impact on their overall standings in these percentages... much more than say... going 6-0 with Space Marines.

That's the only reason we need more numbers, I'd say. To see where some of the under-represented outliers REALLY fall, because they have pretty small sample sizes that can be skewed easily.

But, as I have said, it is a start. We'll see more as time goes on. But I do think Harlequins are in a REALLY nice space right now, and it is good to see them stepping up and reminding people that they are a faction

It is also nice to see that the Space Marines are strong, but not so OP that they are truly playing "a different game" than the rest of us. Kind of matches my experience with playing vs Primaris so far in 9th. Good, hard, but not unbeatable by a long shot.

I would add that it could skew Space Marines to high too. For instance, Salamanders may do sub-50% against Xenos but be REALLY good at killing other Marines. That would artificially throw their win rate too high since they're predominantly fighting other Marines.

Audustum wrote:

Purifying Tempest wrote:
Oh, definitely... there's basically 2 lists in 9th edition RIGHT NOW:

Space Marines

and

Lists that beat Space Marines (with a heavy skew towards killing primaris).

I'm just pointing out that some of these numbers could be artificially held up by a couple of players performing VERY well accounting for more representation in the compiled number than other players performing well in a faction mired with mirror-matches and tons of middling players.

Going 6-0 with 'quins in a field of 10 players has a HUGE impact on their overall standings in these percentages... much more than say... going 6-0 with Space Marines.

That's the only reason we need more numbers, I'd say. To see where some of the under-represented outliers REALLY fall, because they have pretty small sample sizes that can be skewed easily.

But, as I have said, it is a start. We'll see more as time goes on. But I do think Harlequins are in a REALLY nice space right now, and it is good to see them stepping up and reminding people that they are a faction

It is also nice to see that the Space Marines are strong, but not so OP that they are truly playing "a different game" than the rest of us. Kind of matches my experience with playing vs Primaris so far in 9th. Good, hard, but not unbeatable by a long shot.

I would add that it could skew Space Marines to high too. For instance, Salamanders may do sub-50% against Xenos but be REALLY good at killing other Marines. That would artificially throw their win rate too high since they're predominantly fighting other Marines.

Curious that the title of the post is still "Xenos (Harlequins) Best Army in 9th So Far".

Seems a bit clickbaity, considering that you're looking at 36 games total.

If I entered a tournament with Harlequins and played a single game, I would swing the win percentage of the entire faction by 3%. If I lost my one game, I'd drop Harlequins to second place overall, hilariously.

They're looking at 6-game events too, it seems. Were I a real stinker or a real hotshot, I could swing that ol' win percentage between 52% and 66%.

the_scotsman wrote:

Audustum wrote:

Purifying Tempest wrote:
Oh, definitely... there's basically 2 lists in 9th edition RIGHT NOW:

Space Marines

and

Lists that beat Space Marines (with a heavy skew towards killing primaris).

I'm just pointing out that some of these numbers could be artificially held up by a couple of players performing VERY well accounting for more representation in the compiled number than other players performing well in a faction mired with mirror-matches and tons of middling players.

Going 6-0 with 'quins in a field of 10 players has a HUGE impact on their overall standings in these percentages... much more than say... going 6-0 with Space Marines.

That's the only reason we need more numbers, I'd say. To see where some of the under-represented outliers REALLY fall, because they have pretty small sample sizes that can be skewed easily.

But, as I have said, it is a start. We'll see more as time goes on. But I do think Harlequins are in a REALLY nice space right now, and it is good to see them stepping up and reminding people that they are a faction

It is also nice to see that the Space Marines are strong, but not so OP that they are truly playing "a different game" than the rest of us. Kind of matches my experience with playing vs Primaris so far in 9th. Good, hard, but not unbeatable by a long shot.

I would add that it could skew Space Marines to high too. For instance, Salamanders may do sub-50% against Xenos but be REALLY good at killing other Marines. That would artificially throw their win rate too high since they're predominantly fighting other Marines.

Curious that the title of the post is still "Xenos (Harlequins) Best Army in 9th So Far".

Seems a bit clickbaity, considering that you're looking at 36 games total.

If I entered a tournament with Harlequins and played a single game, I would swing the win percentage of the entire faction by 3%. If I lost my one game, I'd drop Harlequins to second place overall, hilariously.

They're looking at 6-game events too, it seems. Were I a real stinker or a real hotshot, I could swing that ol' win percentage between 52% and 66%.

Theyre in a fragile position but it's still technically accurate for now. It seems clickbaity because I think it's trying to use it as a podium to highlight the marines in 6th spot more than anything.

Dudeface wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:

Audustum wrote:

Purifying Tempest wrote:
Oh, definitely... there's basically 2 lists in 9th edition RIGHT NOW:

Space Marines

and

Lists that beat Space Marines (with a heavy skew towards killing primaris).

I'm just pointing out that some of these numbers could be artificially held up by a couple of players performing VERY well accounting for more representation in the compiled number than other players performing well in a faction mired with mirror-matches and tons of middling players.

Going 6-0 with 'quins in a field of 10 players has a HUGE impact on their overall standings in these percentages... much more than say... going 6-0 with Space Marines.

That's the only reason we need more numbers, I'd say. To see where some of the under-represented outliers REALLY fall, because they have pretty small sample sizes that can be skewed easily.

But, as I have said, it is a start. We'll see more as time goes on. But I do think Harlequins are in a REALLY nice space right now, and it is good to see them stepping up and reminding people that they are a faction

It is also nice to see that the Space Marines are strong, but not so OP that they are truly playing "a different game" than the rest of us. Kind of matches my experience with playing vs Primaris so far in 9th. Good, hard, but not unbeatable by a long shot.

I would add that it could skew Space Marines to high too. For instance, Salamanders may do sub-50% against Xenos but be REALLY good at killing other Marines. That would artificially throw their win rate too high since they're predominantly fighting other Marines.

Curious that the title of the post is still "Xenos (Harlequins) Best Army in 9th So Far".

Seems a bit clickbaity, considering that you're looking at 36 games total.

If I entered a tournament with Harlequins and played a single game, I would swing the win percentage of the entire faction by 3%. If I lost my one game, I'd drop Harlequins to second place overall, hilariously.

They're looking at 6-game events too, it seems. Were I a real stinker or a real hotshot, I could swing that ol' win percentage between 52% and 66%.

Theyre in a fragile position but it's still technically accurate for now. It seems clickbaity because I think it's trying to use it as a podium to highlight the marines in 6th spot more than anything.

I was gonna write a response but this is basically it. It's the most comprehensive study we can really do right now so they get the title and I wanted to highlight that the meta doesn't have Marines as invincible as Dakka tends to portray it.

 buddha wrote:
I called harlequins as one of the top three predicted factions along with marines and custodes so I'm not surprised.

What I was very surprised by though is how chaos, particularly Death Guard, has just fallen flat on the tournament scene. I had them up there as being tourny terrors and they haven't broken a top 10 at a GT so far.

They took #2 at Vanguard. Caveat - 25% nurglings.

Well, Harlies at the top is just a snapshot.
Harlies are a glasscannon and will drop soon in the above list.
Hands down.

Marines are probably not going to deviate too high largely due to their popularity. Representing like what? A third of the entire game space? It is going to be rife with mirror-matches that naturally have a 50% win rate, and will draw in a lot of the variation in their standings.

Audustum brings up a very useful point:

Marines normalize with matches vs each other, but what do they look like fighting outside of their own bubble? I'd be curious to see those numbers too... but as the number of marine armies go up... so do the number of mirror matches and thus, harder to get a real estimate of how they are truly performing.

They're probably closer to the Drukhari% or high 50s, which still means you have something like a 66% chance to lose against a marine army if you're playing against any of the < 50 armies.

Now... if only we could shake this covid nonsense :( I'm fairly curious of the numbers BEFORE the codices start dripping out. At least to have a solid base for progress through the edition.

A sample size of 36 versus a sample size of literally hundreds, whoa.

 Void__Dragon wrote:
A sample size of 36 versus a sample size of literally hundreds, whoa.

Statistically not significant enough.

Audustum wrote:

Dudeface wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:

Audustum wrote:

Purifying Tempest wrote:
Oh, definitely... there's basically 2 lists in 9th edition RIGHT NOW:

Space Marines

and

Lists that beat Space Marines (with a heavy skew towards killing primaris).

I'm just pointing out that some of these numbers could be artificially held up by a couple of players performing VERY well accounting for more representation in the compiled number than other players performing well in a faction mired with mirror-matches and tons of middling players.

Going 6-0 with 'quins in a field of 10 players has a HUGE impact on their overall standings in these percentages... much more than say... going 6-0 with Space Marines.

That's the only reason we need more numbers, I'd say. To see where some of the under-represented outliers REALLY fall, because they have pretty small sample sizes that can be skewed easily.

But, as I have said, it is a start. We'll see more as time goes on. But I do think Harlequins are in a REALLY nice space right now, and it is good to see them stepping up and reminding people that they are a faction

It is also nice to see that the Space Marines are strong, but not so OP that they are truly playing "a different game" than the rest of us. Kind of matches my experience with playing vs Primaris so far in 9th. Good, hard, but not unbeatable by a long shot.

I would add that it could skew Space Marines to high too. For instance, Salamanders may do sub-50% against Xenos but be REALLY good at killing other Marines. That would artificially throw their win rate too high since they're predominantly fighting other Marines.

Curious that the title of the post is still "Xenos (Harlequins) Best Army in 9th So Far".

Seems a bit clickbaity, considering that you're looking at 36 games total.

If I entered a tournament with Harlequins and played a single game, I would swing the win percentage of the entire faction by 3%. If I lost my one game, I'd drop Harlequins to second place overall, hilariously.

They're looking at 6-game events too, it seems. Were I a real stinker or a real hotshot, I could swing that ol' win percentage between 52% and 66%.

Theyre in a fragile position but it's still technically accurate for now. It seems clickbaity because I think it's trying to use it as a podium to highlight the marines in 6th spot more than anything.

I was gonna write a response but this is basically it. It's the most comprehensive study we can really do right now so they get the title and I wanted to highlight that the meta doesn't have Marines as invincible as Dakka tends to portray it.

Kind of like using data that shows deaths as a percentage of cases to prove that a particular country I may or may not live in is handling the Coronavirus the best out of all the countries in the world, hmmm?

If 1/3 of the armies represented in a sample are marines

and therefore a large percentage of the matches representative of the winrates for marines are going to be marines vs marines

and another solid 20% of the factions present are using the same style of army construction as marines (similar defensive profiles, similar offensive profiles, similar approach to secondary objectives)

and the rest of the field, the other 50%, KNOWS this, and is obviously going to be bringing their best counter to marines (See: All the Ork, Drukhari and Harlequin top tourney lists that lean heavily into Flat 2/Flat 3 damage weaponry and not caring about AP)

.....then that is absolutely a meta dominated by marines, and warped by the rules that marines get.

This is like trying to analyze a League of Legends meta where a particular champion is a 100% ban rate and saying "See, this proves that Champion X is actually not overpowered at all - they haven't won a SINGLE game in competitive play since they became quote-unquote 'overpowered'!"

the_scotsman wrote:

Audustum wrote:

Dudeface wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:

Audustum wrote:

Purifying Tempest wrote:
Oh, definitely... there's basically 2 lists in 9th edition RIGHT NOW:

Space Marines

and

Lists that beat Space Marines (with a heavy skew towards killing primaris).

I'm just pointing out that some of these numbers could be artificially held up by a couple of players performing VERY well accounting for more representation in the compiled number than other players performing well in a faction mired with mirror-matches and tons of middling players.

Going 6-0 with 'quins in a field of 10 players has a HUGE impact on their overall standings in these percentages... much more than say... going 6-0 with Space Marines.

That's the only reason we need more numbers, I'd say. To see where some of the under-represented outliers REALLY fall, because they have pretty small sample sizes that can be skewed easily.

But, as I have said, it is a start. We'll see more as time goes on. But I do think Harlequins are in a REALLY nice space right now, and it is good to see them stepping up and reminding people that they are a faction

It is also nice to see that the Space Marines are strong, but not so OP that they are truly playing "a different game" than the rest of us. Kind of matches my experience with playing vs Primaris so far in 9th. Good, hard, but not unbeatable by a long shot.

I would add that it could skew Space Marines to high too. For instance, Salamanders may do sub-50% against Xenos but be REALLY good at killing other Marines. That would artificially throw their win rate too high since they're predominantly fighting other Marines.

Curious that the title of the post is still "Xenos (Harlequins) Best Army in 9th So Far".

Seems a bit clickbaity, considering that you're looking at 36 games total.

If I entered a tournament with Harlequins and played a single game, I would swing the win percentage of the entire faction by 3%. If I lost my one game, I'd drop Harlequins to second place overall, hilariously.

They're looking at 6-game events too, it seems. Were I a real stinker or a real hotshot, I could swing that ol' win percentage between 52% and 66%.

Theyre in a fragile position but it's still technically accurate for now. It seems clickbaity because I think it's trying to use it as a podium to highlight the marines in 6th spot more than anything.

I was gonna write a response but this is basically it. It's the most comprehensive study we can really do right now so they get the title and I wanted to highlight that the meta doesn't have Marines as invincible as Dakka tends to portray it.

Kind of like using data that shows deaths as a percentage of cases to prove that a particular country I may or may not live in is handling the Coronavirus the best out of all the countries in the world, hmmm?

If 1/3 of the armies represented in a sample are marines

and therefore a large percentage of the matches representative of the winrates for marines are going to be marines vs marines

and another solid 20% of the factions present are using the same style of army construction as marines (similar defensive profiles, similar offensive profiles, similar approach to secondary objectives)

and the rest of the field, the other 50%, KNOWS this, and is obviously going to be bringing their best counter to marines (See: All the Ork, Drukhari and Harlequin top tourney lists that lean heavily into Flat 2/Flat 3 damage weaponry and not caring about AP)

.....then that is absolutely a meta dominated by marines, and warped by the rules that marines get.

This is like trying to analyze a League of Legends meta where a particular champion is a 100% ban rate and saying "See, this proves that Champion X is actually not overpowered at all - they haven't won a SINGLE game in competitive play since they became quote-unquote 'overpowered'!"

But that makes the dark eldar and harlequins the best army in this meta It's no more marine dominated than previous years I don't think? Maybe by a small percentage, but the good players will want to bring that which excels best against the moat popular army, so as much as marine form the pivot for the meta, they're not dominating it clearly.

Marines having the luxury of normally being the most represented faction out there means they always "warp the meta" - only problem is now they are also good. They'll warp it a little more, define it as it were. But they're not really dominating it as so many are pulling out their tools to combat them.

Once marine players get tired of facing "primaris-killing" lists and move onto other armies (you know, jumping on the "primaris killers") you'll see their overall share drop and numbers will change... again.

At least now you know what is defining the environment. And it isn't really a bad thing... at least they're decent at being the bully on the block for once.

Harles aren't at the top. Being at the top of win rate doesn't mean you're the strongest faction, if you don't actually win events. And they aren't at the top of the win tables anyway; Salamanders are.

Harles have won precisely nothing so far in 9th in terms of major events. Zilch.

Space Marines are the faction to beat. The fact that lots of people play space marines and don't do great with them doesn't mean that it isn't Space Marines armies that are winning events.

Number aren't information, they must be put into some context. Always.

So don't take those numbers as truth, because they're not. SW for example aren't better than Ultramarines, Ravenguard, White Scars and maybe other chapters and yet their winning rate is pretty higher than those other chapters in that table.

And yes, Harlequins can be competitive, but top tier? I wouldn't be so sure. Actually I wouldn't even be sure that they're the top xeno army. They're also an army with just 8 datasheets so if they really become a thing they would probably be quite easy to counter.