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So I decided to check back on the ITC rankings because I was curious, and thought I'd share what I had observed. In the interest of "show me the data and get out of my way" here is the table:



I had assumed that the data would be fairly static, but obviously that's not really what happened, and I'm quite fond of surprises in the data because it's an opportunity to learn something. In this case the changes reflects fairly well on the game, faction mobility when lacking new supplements shows an unstable meta, an unstable meta is reflective of faction balance. Still there were no new members of the top 7, and if you're not in the top 7 the meta seems much more settled, with some exceptions (Dark eldar and KDK).

Within the big 7 there is a lot going on, Tau got a ton more games, and more importantly lots of good finishes, which is behind their meteoric Rise. The other big story from the top 7 is the drubbing space marines took, Their top player's points didn't change, but they took hit on their average points, which means more placements outside the winners circle. My personal guess (and it's just that) is that people have learned to deal with the gladius and grav spam, and we are seeing a return to mean for the marines. I think the tau Change is reflective of a new net list for Taudar, that takes tau as the main component rather than eldar. I'll go look for it and post it here if I can find it.

A tip of the hat to dark eldar who rose four places because there seems to be a new sheriff in town, JT McDowell, who pushed the top score for DE from 18th overall to 11th. I think this is reflective of where the dark eldar should be, because their average score has always been middle of the pack, but no top players brought them to tournaments.

It's a good thing that Khorne cares not because it seems his demons are getting sent back to the warp with increasing regularity. Their average points dropped and their top player stayed static while everyone else around him increased. Melee focused armies just aren't doing well overall though, with space wolves as the top dog (haha). Being a melee army is tough enough in 7th ed with overwatch (along with armies that buff overwatch) and charge restrictions, but you add in the death stars the top 7 can casually throw out and it's hard to catch a break. Speaking of death stars the dark angels continue to be the superfriends place holder, with 4 out of 5 of their big wins being super friends list, and if you've been on the internet looking at 40k stuff we all know who the exception was.

So those are my thoughts, what do you guys think?

I vaguely recall hearing on a podcast that a recent tournament had the top tables all be Tau with the newish ForgeWorld Titan thing (tau'nar?) apparently testing things up.

You are correct, I just checked Blood Of Kittens and they have been burning it down with 1st/2nd/3rd place wins since it came out. Man that's disappointing, it's forgeworld so there is zero chance of it getting a nerf, and it just reinforces the stereotype that forge world is for munchkins. ITC hands are tied because if ITC FAQs it into line they are going to drown in Tau QQs because of how they handled the last Tau balance adjustment, which is probably why forgeworld knew they could get away with it. So many horrible rules too, T9 10 W, can stop Str D ranged attacks with it's shield, Str D massive blast, Roll twice and pick the best on D table when fighting other super heavies or gargantuan monstrous creatures, and a riptide wings worth of other shooting. 300 USDish and 600 points, what a gak show.

Here are the rules: https://www.forgeworld.co.uk/resources/PDF/Datasheets/Tau-Kx139-Ta%E2%80%99unar.pdf

It's very banned in the general ITC. The two November events that allowed it specifically altered the composition guidlines (as is any event's prerogative) to let the Big Tuna and other normally restricted units in. Any event that follows the ITC format unaltered won't see this guy in play.

The Ta'unar is almost guaranteed to get a nerf in Fires of Cyraxus, if it ever comes out.

Good to hear, I wonder if being banned in ITC hurts their sales?

 Grimgold wrote:
Good to hear, I wonder if being banned in ITC hurts their sales?

No, not at all. People buy it because they want one, not because of a tournament format.

SJ

I'm not so sure, hardcore tournament goers are the not so secret whales of 40k, between what they pay to attend these tournaments and what they pay to keep up with the FoTM, they are probably putting out several times what the average hobbyist is. Casuals won't bite at 300ish USD for a model they probably won't get to play, so that leaves them with a single market, hard core collectors, and I don't think that's a huge windfall for them. At the very least their sales would be better if they included Tournament goers.

Poor Blood Angels...
Wonder if Martel will be happy to be proved right?

They are thinking 100 points price increase on the Ta'unar or so the rumor mill goes on att. I think someone asked one of the designers at one of the shows FW was at if they had plans to adjust it and that is the response.

Edit
I bought a Ta'unar just to have. I've got the fusion erradicators, the big triple barreled top gun, and the heavy railcannon array for it. I intend to get the other weapons options at some point (yes even the terrible missiles). Though these will likely have to wait for two or more years. I'm awaiting the day they reveal the larger titan class. Gotta love FW. Then again if they update the Manta I do ahve enough money to impulse buy it, but only if its updated inside and out with newer models. The old ones inside clash so hard with the much better looking Tau stuff GW has put out lately.

 jeffersonian000 wrote:

 Grimgold wrote:
Good to hear, I wonder if being banned in ITC hurts their sales?

No, not at all. People buy it because they want one, not because of a tournament format.

SJ

For some players, the tournament format is the reason to buy stuff

Honestly I think it will impact the sales, but only slightly. It's just a really cool and fun model to paint and have and admire.

I don't think a hundred points is going to fix the tau'unar, he is way more powerful than magnus plus 3 tac marines.

 Dakka Wolf wrote:
Poor Blood Angels...
Wonder if Martel will be happy to be proved right?

Yeah. Martel knows his BA very well.
How about allied armies like TauDar?

Orks that way up shows something is very bizarre in this thing

 wuestenfux wrote:

 Dakka Wolf wrote:
Poor Blood Angels...
Wonder if Martel will be happy to be proved right?

Yeah. Martel knows his BA very well.
How about allied armies like TauDar?

Dunno, I was wondering if Wolfstars count as Space Wolves or Space Marines, doesn't really say things like that.

I would think that it would be the non competitive people who would buy it over the competitive ones, because so often competitive events will add arbitrary restriction while in a normal game hey it's a Lord of War what is wrong with taking one and similar arguments

 Grimgold wrote:
I don't think a hundred points is going to fix the tau'unar, he is way more powerful than magnus plus 3 tac marines.

In standard ITC it's banned which is 99% of ITC tournaments. Tau have only won a major ITC event first place this year and its the first time in years it was done. Omegacon list.

Is the Ta'unar itself banned or is it banned because of its d strength large+ blast. I think the guys on frontline said if you run it with the heavy rail cannon array it can be taken inside of normal games since it's only a small blast d shot.

Edit
Jeez I just seen the Blood of Kittens thing. Huzzah! Tau are in ascendance after years of getting gak kicked.

 Gamgee wrote:

 Grimgold wrote:
I don't think a hundred points is going to fix the tau'unar, he is way more powerful than magnus plus 3 tac marines.

In standard ITC it's banned which is 99% of ITC tournaments. Tau have only won a major ITC event first place this year and its the first time in years it was done. Omegacon list.

Is the Ta'unar itself banned or is it banned because of its d strength large+ blast. I think the guys on frontline said if you run it with the heavy rail cannon array it can be taken inside of normal games since it's only a small blast d shot.

The Tau'nar is outright banned in normal ITC because its considered a Titan class super heavy and the latest vote didn't allow any Titan class models in.

 Vankraken wrote:

 Gamgee wrote:

 Grimgold wrote:
I don't think a hundred points is going to fix the tau'unar, he is way more powerful than magnus plus 3 tac marines.

In standard ITC it's banned which is 99% of ITC tournaments. Tau have only won a major ITC event first place this year and its the first time in years it was done. Omegacon list.

Is the Ta'unar itself banned or is it banned because of its d strength large+ blast. I think the guys on frontline said if you run it with the heavy rail cannon array it can be taken inside of normal games since it's only a small blast d shot.

The Tau'nar is outright banned in normal ITC because its considered a Titan class super heavy and the latest vote didn't allow any Titan class models in.

Ah right the new vote. I haven't played in over a year now so I'm not quite up to date on it as usual.

Edit
The Tau and FSE have simply cleaned house this year. So proud.

This is for the boys of blue having a good year. Definitely motivating me to finish my Ta'unar for the rumored black crusade world wide campaign. Bringing peace through superior firepower.

i am VERY interested why CSM placed so low. After all of our "updates" we have placed even lower than when I last looked. Guess I need to get onboard the chaos whine train.

Table wrote:
i am VERY interested why CSM placed so low. After all of our "updates" we have placed even lower than when I last looked. Guess I need to get onboard the chaos whine train.

Not really. The pure codex armies are rather bad.
But the new supplementary books will shift the meta a bit. I think they will become medium tier. They still have a delivery problem and the Marines are too pt costly.

I don't think the new books have had any chance to affect the meta for CSM. Also I myself am confused as to the sudden shift towards Tau all of a sudden.

Maybe it had something to do with the latest ITC votes and then the GW faq's?

Once upon a time I wanted to do an ELO style rating system for the factions, so that players could properly handicap battles for even matches between factions of different strength, but frontline blew me off. So Instead I'm limited to just spitballing relative faction strength, which is an interesting data set in and of itself, but is more informative than actionable. As for questions:

Orks placing well(-ish): With the new ork decurion they are actually no longer pushovers, I fought them with my crons and it was a fun and not completely one sided match. Mind though they are kind of the top of the rubbish heap, anything below space wolves is not in the same league as anyone above.

Tau ascendance: Tau had two recent tournaments that allowed a horribly unbalanced model into play, and predictably smashed those tournaments. That drove their average score up, as well as their maximum score.

Allies: Allies are not clear in this data set, so it's best to think of these as the best placing lists that have a majority of the faction listed. We know from blood of kittens that the only real gotchas are dark angels (who are a place holder for super friends space marine rainbow list) eldar (who are quite often taudar), and Ad mech (who are almost always war convo). Wolves are mostly pure wolf lists with maybe an inquisitor/Assassin here and there.

CSM: Not enough time yet, though if I were interested in how Chaos will fair in the post Traitor Legion meta, I'd pay close attention to the LVO. My bet after reading the rules and playing around with the list is that they will replace Orks as top of the rubbish heap, they have a couple of lists that might punch above that (specifically death guard and 1k sons) the problem is that those lists have hard counters in the current meta.

Except that the lists Tau used to gain ascendance aren't using Stormsurges let alone Ta'unar. The Ta'unar was banned in play for full ITC tournaments due its large d blast. It's now banned under the no titans rule even if you take the small d blast weapon.

Go to blood of kittens and look at the top Tau lists and you'll see none of them are using the Ta'unar. So clearly something else is causing this.

Edit
On Blood Of Kittens I seen the two lists with Ta'unar and neither took first place. -_-

The three wins in december used tau'anua, the two for renegade and the one for warzone. Those are also the only new ones since the last time I did this.

I see the lists. Only one of those lists won first though with the Ta'unar. The other two took second. So they didn't wipe the floor. Your making it sound like the Ta'unar was a guaranteed win and so op it won everything.

Edit
Nvm. It took first and second place in one of them and then second place in the other. Impressive track record given the limited data.

Edit2
In that case if the rise doesn't drop back down after those two tournaments then we'll have to see and speculate what is causing it. Otherwise looks like a bump in the data from the Ta'unar tournaments.

Its already hard enough getting FW haters to accept little things like Plague Hulks. Then they release the Tau titan and gives the anti forgeworld people another round of ammo. Here is hoping GW takes further steps to pull in FW and legitimize it while screening for stuff like this. Having two balance teams cannot end well.

An official corporate policy that forces all GW stores to remove all restrictions on forgeworld would help.
Seeing models actively restricted plants the seed of hatred in many people's minds, and many peopld start the hobby in GW stores. People seeing more forgeworld on the table would go a long way towards legitimizing it.

 Verviedi wrote:
An official corporate policy that forces all GW stores to remove all restrictions on forgeworld would help.
Seeing models actively restricted plants the seed of hatred in many people's minds, and many peopld start the hobby in GW stores. People seeing more forgeworld on the table would go a long way towards legitimizing it.

I agree but the problem is a lot of the forgeworld stuff is insanely good. Until GW and by extension forgeworld starts actually balancing things instead of putting out these ridiculously overpowered models to try and sell them it will not matter because either you ban everything or allow everything, since if you ban only certain things people will complain why is that legal but this isn't.

Also you cannot stop people from saying they don't want to play with certain things. Removing all restrictions on Forge World may not actually do anything other than turn some people away from the game when they see these gigantic expensive and overpowering models all over the place because it's free reign.

right now the issue is that the balance scale of Forge World is all over the place with some things being acceptable and some being ridiculously expensive and at the same time ridiculously overpowered.