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The ITC has 14 tourney results up for the current season, so I got bored and looked at a few of the "power armies." (and some I was curious about.) Specifically, I figured out the average placement of the highest placed player of each army. (I only did daemons, nids, core marines, eldar, necrons, orks, and tau. If you want offshoot marines, knights, sisters, traitors, or whatnot, feel free to go run some numbers.)

(Army name, highest rank in each tourney = total / number of tourneys attended = average highest rank) (so the lower, the better.)

eldar 9, 8, 15, 1, 1, -, 8, 1, 3, 1, 9, 1, 8, 4 = 69/13 = 5.3
necrons 2, 2, 1, 6, -, 7, 1, 3, 4, 5, 13, 2, 13, 2 = 61/13 = 4.7
tau 1, -, 13, 9, 12, -, -, -, -, 2, 8, 19, 11, 16 = 91/9 = 10.1
orks 3, -, 9, 34, -, -, 7, -, -, 10, 10, 5, 4, 14 = 96/9 = 10.7
SM 5, 1, 2, 7, 4, 2, -, 2, 6, 13, 2, 7, 10, 7 = 68/13 = 5.2
nids 32 - 13, 9, -, 4, 2, -, -, 18, 5, 6, 19, 3 = 111/10 = 11.1
daemons 22, 3, 24, 9, 3, 5, 3, -, 1, 14, -, -, 1, 5 = 90/11 = 8.2
BA -, 12, 8, 10, -, 11, 6, -, 6, 6, 3, 9, -, 15 = 71/10 = 7.1

Note that the tourneys are newest --> oldest in order, so if you want to know say... "was an eldar player at the tourney where the necrons came in first?" Simply count to the same spot on both of their lines, and that will be the same event they were at. (sorry the numbers aren't all lined up, I R not formatter expert.)

Analysis:
Eldar- Most commonly tournament champs by a large margin, claiming 5 1st places out of the 13 tourneys they attended, even though they don't have quite the best average high rank. Also what I wouldn't give to be in that one event area that didn't have an eldar player!

Necrons- Not tourney champion as often as Eldar, but consistently high ranking. Champ twice, and both times at events where Eldar were present. Very popular, only missed one event. Their only bad ranks are fairly close to when their codex came out. Perhaps a little learning time was needed, and now they're near unstoppable with some experience?

Tau- Popularity really dropped off, missing 1/3 of the tourneys. champ once, lots of teens placements.

Orks- Yay orks. Average placement got ruined by that one 34th place guy, otherwise they would be closer to 8.

SM- I can't help but wonder if all of these are gravstar variants, or if there are some legitimate marine forces clawing their way up. Right there with Eldar for highest average rank, but almost never tourney champion. Also I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw a tourney that did NOT have a core space marines army at all. Other than that one, they probably benefit in this study from having a lot of players, and thus a lot more chances to rank high.

Nids- Sometimes do good, sometimes not. Probably bad matchups coming out in the statistical wash.

Daemons- Tourney champ twice, and both events had eldar. Seem to do pretty consistently well.

BA- pretty consistent at doing alright but missing prize support by a couple ranks. (since a lot of tourneys do prizes for say...top 3.) also of note on this one is that the rank 3 placement was me.

Flaws in the analysis: number of players is actually important. If someone else has the time, they could go back through and figure up how much of the rest of the tourney each army outranked at each event, but that's too much for me to do just because I'm bored. That's more like a "pay me to do this" thing.

So what do you think?

Where are you getting all the ITC results? I want to do some number crunching myself.

Go to frontline gaming's website, and under the ITC tab, they have the 2015 event results as a selection.

And 0 guard :(

jSewell wrote:
And 0 guard :(

There are about 14 codex missing from the list. [edited out needlessly harsh comment. If you want to see it, it's been commented below.]

SO by your math Nids are the worst, followed by Orks and then .....Tau?

Gotta love how Orks (an army considered to be lower-tier) aren't far behind Tau (an army considered to be extremely broken and godly)

Interesting how Daemons are apparently NOT the super OP filth machine that everyone whined they would be because Summoning = auto-win due to Daemon player always doubling their pts total after 2 turns...

 Purifier wrote:

jSewell wrote:
And 0 guard :(

There are about 14 codex missing from the list. Way to wear horse blinkers, seeing only your own army getting shafted at every turn. That's the kind of behaviour that makes people whine about their codex even when it's not so bad.

Why such a venomous response to someone just commenting that their army wasn't there? They're hardly belittling other armies that aren't there.

its the internet. much easier to belittle someone when they are just a faceless name on a screen to make yourself look more important.t happens here all the time. Usually by select elite few.

I noticed guard were there as well. But of course, guard players usually arent in it for the tourney win to begin with. We knew that going into it. More about the fun and imagery than the almighty win.

SGTPozy wrote:
Tau (an army considered to be extremely broken and godly)

Used to, but it isn't anymore. The numbers up there show that. Tau isn't on the same level of Necrons and Eldar anymore, but quite with Space Marines. Which is good!

 ImAGeek wrote:

 Purifier wrote:

jSewell wrote:
And 0 guard :(

There are about 14 codex missing from the list. Way to wear horse blinkers, seeing only your own army getting shafted at every turn. That's the kind of behaviour that makes people whine about their codex even when it's not so bad.

Why such a venomous response to someone just commenting that their army wasn't there? They're hardly belittling other armies that aren't there.

Yeah, I mean it seemed like an innocent enough comment. It is a bummer not to see your army represented in tournament settings (CSM and Guard player, bleh).

But like Evil Inc. said, for some players it's not about the win. More about the theme and having a good time. At least, I'll keep telling myself that while i get tabled...

 ImAGeek wrote:

 Purifier wrote:

jSewell wrote:
And 0 guard :(

There are about 14 codex missing from the list. Way to wear horse blinkers, seeing only your own army getting shafted at every turn. That's the kind of behaviour that makes people whine about their codex even when it's not so bad.

Why such a venomous response to someone just commenting that their army wasn't there? They're hardly belittling other armies that aren't there.

No, he's not. He's not even noticing it. I'm just tired of the the whole attitude where people will complain to death about how mistreated their army is, even while some of the best players of their codex are trying to give them tips. "X is overpowered" I can get, but it always seems to come back to "why can't I do that!" rather than "everyone should be balanced." And it's my opinion that not seeing the big picture is why that happens. This guy walks into a thread showcasing a fraction of the current codex's successes and the only thing he sees is that his is not there. Not that it's a very small amount of codexes that ARE there

 EVIL INC wrote:
its the internet. much easier to belittle someone when they are just a faceless name on a screen to make yourself look more important.t happens here all the time. Usually by select elite few.

Do you know what I find the select elite does? It talks over the head of people rather than talking to them directly. Way to go on that.
Do you do that in real life when you're not a faceless name on a screen? Do you walk into a conversation and address a third party to throw snide remarks at the other person in the room instead of addressing him?

Yes, I came off needlessly harsh. I appologise for that. He didn't deserve that. Evil, everything you said was dripping with Irony. Acting holier than thou while saying I'm acting like I'm better than everyone else.

What I wanna know is, what are these ork lists that are placing in tourneys??

the_scotsman wrote:
What I wanna know is, what are these ork lists that are placing in tourneys??

Greentide.

the_scotsman wrote:
What I wanna know is, what are these ork lists that are placing in tourneys??

It takes a long time to kill a unit of 100+ orks.

Edit: Well, until the new Eldar Jet Bikes are out. FFS...

whoever commented on how the Orks are good now because they are on the same tier as Tau.....did you bother reading? lol The Orks finished 2nd to last and the tau 3rd to last, and the tau only finished like that because fewer people played them (IE Fewer tournaments were entered).

jSewell wrote:
And 0 guard :(

Sorry, I didn't have the spirit or time to do all the armies. I didn't even do my own. :p

As I told fast above, if you go to frontline gaming and go to the 2015 event results, you could add in your own army. Post it here if you want. (I'd like to see it.) if you just go newest to oldest with their results, then it'll perfectly mesh into my chart


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Ghazkuul wrote:
whoever commented on how the Orks are good now because they are on the same tier as Tau.....did you bother reading? lol The Orks finished 2nd to last and the tau 3rd to last, and the tau only finished like that because fewer people played them (IE Fewer tournaments were entered).

Eh...actually both orks and tau attended the same number of tourneys. And if you were to do something to average out scores (like say drop the highest and lowest rank, a common technique to get rid of statistical outliers,) then the tau stay roughly where they are at average rank 10.1, while the orks get rid of that one terrible 34th place finish and go all the way to 8.4 or so.

 Ghazkuul wrote:
whoever commented on how the Orks are good now because they are on the same tier as Tau.....did you bother reading? lol The Orks finished 2nd to last and the tau 3rd to last, and the tau only finished like that because fewer people played them (IE Fewer tournaments were entered).

The number of tournaments entered for both armies is the same (9).
Also, Orks came 2nd and Tau came 3rd (not 2nd and 3rd to last like you said).

Anyway, it isn't necessarily that Orks are good but rather that Tau are bad.

 Ghazkuul wrote:
whoever commented on how the Orks are good now because they are on the same tier as Tau.....did you bother reading? lol The Orks finished 2nd to last and the tau 3rd to last, and the tau only finished like that because fewer people played them (IE Fewer tournaments were entered).

Did you even read it. Orks and tau played the same number of tournemnts, and the orks had much more consitantly better results. The only reason they are ranked worse than tau is one 34th result. A result that is so far off it could be exluded as an outlier. Excluding it puts them higher than demons. Where do you want to draw the line on being good. Does coming in top ten in 7 of 9 shown tournaments show that they are not good?

This is certainly not a comprehensive study of these tournements and the reults, but these reults do not give any credit to orks being bad.

Now this is just congecture but I would wager that if you adjusted for the number of players that play each army, and brought in the rest of the armies orks would stand up pretty well.

Ninja'd

I wouldn't worry too much about what Ghazkuul says, he has a weird need to say how much Orks suck or need to be buffed in some way even though he plays them and people have pointed out (as this particular example shows) how Orks as an army can be made to work pretty consistently.

"Do you know what I find the select elite does? It talks over the head of people rather than talking to them directly. Way to go on that.
Do you do that in real life when you're not a faceless name on a screen? Do you walk into a conversation and address a third party to throw snide remarks at the other person in the room instead of addressing him? "

There is a huge difference between talking over someones head. It seems I do that all the time. My earlier comment being an example. However, actually ridiculing them and making fun of them and calling them names and such is a totally different animal. THIS is what was done earlier in the thread and by the rest of the "elite".
If you wish to continue that discussion PM is likely the best medium. Feel free to use it.

As said earlier, guard not being represented does not mean they are super "weak". I have found them to still be decently strong if you play to their strengths. I have managed to place in many smaller tournies and even pulled off a 1st with them.
I think you'll find the larger tourneies draw more of the "competetive players than the kind that play guard. I think this has a lot to do with reputation of the events themselves. Many think, "not worth my time, I'll only get tabled each game and not have fun". Not to say this is how it actually is, just how many see it. It can also be that many players have multiple armies and even if one of them is guard, they take the more competetive ones to the big tournies.

I also say wait a year or so when all the armies have been "updated". Then start watching the tourney scene and see how it goes.

Edited to add in BA. I'll get to some others later if no one else does them.

Haha, I love how BA are better than Tau too! This makes me so happy due to how I always hear how bad BA are from this one guy...

 EVIL INC wrote:

I also say wait a year or so when all the armies have been "updated". Then start watching the tourney scene and see how it goes.

That's a good point, since so many codex's are in flux right now. Hopefully GW rolls out the newest set relatively quickly, or I fear we'll see much more imbalanced tournament listings. Especially if all the new Eldar talk is true.

 clamclaw wrote:

 EVIL INC wrote:

I also say wait a year or so when all the armies have been "updated". Then start watching the tourney scene and see how it goes.

That's a good point, since so many codex's are in flux right now. Hopefully GW rolls out the newest set relatively quickly, or I fear we'll see much more imbalanced tournament listings. Especially if all the new Eldar talk is true.

It's too late now, they've unbalanced it between 7th ed Codexes already. So when they're all out they're still gonna be imbalanced. And then we just start the cycle over again, isn't that exciting!

 ImAGeek wrote:

 clamclaw wrote:

 EVIL INC wrote:

I also say wait a year or so when all the armies have been "updated". Then start watching the tourney scene and see how it goes.

That's a good point, since so many codex's are in flux right now. Hopefully GW rolls out the newest set relatively quickly, or I fear we'll see much more imbalanced tournament listings. Especially if all the new Eldar talk is true.

It's too late now, they've unbalanced it between 7th ed Codexes already. So when they're all out they're still gonna be imbalanced. And then we just start the cycle over again, isn't that exciting!

Considering that the new Eldar codex hasn't even seen actual release yet, let alone had some actual play time at any tournaments, I think it's perhaps a little early to claim the game in unplayable and Kraftworld Smelldar auto-win just by showing up...

But then I remember this is Dakka...

SGTPozy wrote:
Haha, I love how BA are better than Tau too! This makes me so happy due to how I always hear how bad BA are from this one guy...

Heh, you like picking on him too much. :p

In the tau's defense though, having a primary Eldar detachment with a fire base support cadre allied in counts for the eldar and not the tau. Another flaw in the statistics, unfortunately. My hypothesis from looking over the results says that tau are still doing good as a secondary force, but I have not hammered out any data to support that. (Other than knowing that the eldar list that roflstomped me and took 1st in that tourney had a firebase formation.)

I think this information is useful, to an extent, but is not done on a large enough scale to actually give you the true powerlevel of each codex.

The variables are far too numerable. First, you have the generals behind each army. I notice that people are commonly saying that "Orks are better than X army" or "Tau is worse than X"

Saying it that way takes the players out of the game and brings this down to who brought what codex should win, or should have an advantage. While, to an extent there is some truth to it, I'll bet that that any of those players who won a championship could probably beat your average 40k joe with almost any codex.

But again, I understand the OP is just here to present the facts and these facts are indeed interesting. I just dont think they should be interpreted as the official power level of a codex.