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I had some time to lose, so i compiled the individual standing of almost 900 players with the respective factions played.
All the results are from the first half of July, so fresh.

For each faction, i listed the number of players playing that faction, and the average standing of a player of that faction. The standing is expressed as a percentage, so if the number is 0,40, then a random player playing that faction can expect to place on average at 40% of the ladder from the bottom (6-7th on 10 players for example).

Huge disclaimer: Remember that soup exists, so try to read these results in that light.

Here are the numbers, i did make my own conclusions but i prefer to not express them here, i'll leave these data open to discussion:

Faction:-------Players:------Average Standing:
Genestealer Cult ---------8--------0,650525169
Imperial Knights----------91-------0,595283598
Drukhari-------------------53-------0,578500714
Asuryani-------------------32-------0,555372332
Thousand Sons-----------33-------0,552106814
Chaos Daemons----------29-------0,549261381
Harlequins----------------14--------0,545614496
Ynnari---------------------24--------0,539428472
Adeptus Custodes-------30--------0,505153553
Astra Militarum----------77--------0,499277684
Cult Mechanicus---------40--------0,492533418
Tau Empire---------------54-------0,485729496
Chaos Space Marines---40--------0,480479393
Tyranids-------------------51--------0,450641028
Adepta Sororitas---------15--------0,437013513
Death Guard-------------44---------0,42716663
Necrons------------------42---------0,424810872
Adeptus Astartes-------60---------0,408672758
Deathwatch-------------17---------0,396487536
Blood Angels------------39---------0,394803332
Grey Knights-------------14---------0,37742672
Orks-----------------------26--------0,347076265
Space Wolves-----------16--------0,342834259
Dark Angels-------------22--------0,331649827

My Dark Angels are REALLY sad now.

Adeptus Astartes are pretty poor as expected.

Considering soup exists I really feel like these numbers aren't quite accurate. I saw a Thousand Sons list recently that had most of it's points in TS, but most of its models came from Alpha Legion and World Eaters. I just had to go "really??" when they called it a TS list just because of a few more points in one part of the army over the model count of the others.

Spoletta wrote:
Huge disclaimer: Remember that soup exists, so try to read these results in that light.

Indeed - the top sororitas and wolf lists in the LVO for instance were Smash captain and guard lists with [insert spammed unit from supporting faction here]

I would also suggest only taking the top results from each tournament. After all there are are going to be a lot of eldar, guard, knight, etc players amongst the lower ranks that have been eliminated by running into any of the countless other eldar, guard, knight etc lists.

 ClockworkZion wrote:
I saw a Thousand Sons list recently that had most of it's points in TS, but most of its models came from Alpha Legion and World Eaters. I just had to go "really??"

My 1500pt Tzeentch Ahriman list has ~1000pts of slaanesh alpha legion :p

A.T. wrote:

Spoletta wrote:
Huge disclaimer: Remember that soup exists, so try to read these results in that light.

Indeed - the top sororitas and wolf lists in the LVO for instance were Smash captain and guard lists with [insert spammed unit from supporting faction here]

I would also suggest only taking the top results from each tournament. After all there are are going to be a lot of eldar, guard, knight, etc players amongst the lower ranks that have been eliminated by running into any of the countless other eldar, guard, knight etc lists.

 ClockworkZion wrote:
I saw a Thousand Sons list recently that had most of it's points in TS, but most of its models came from Alpha Legion and World Eaters. I just had to go "really??"

My 1500pt Tzeentch Ahriman list has ~1000pts of slaanesh alpha legion :p

I compiled this list exactly because i do not believe that looking at top results has any meaning. The top places are a meta of their own which is highly different from the meta that 99% of the players is interested in.

This list here tells the average player how much playing one faction or another is influencing his average results in an event.

Spoletta wrote:

A.T. wrote:

Spoletta wrote:
Huge disclaimer: Remember that soup exists, so try to read these results in that light.

Indeed - the top sororitas and wolf lists in the LVO for instance were Smash captain and guard lists with [insert spammed unit from supporting faction here]

I would also suggest only taking the top results from each tournament. After all there are are going to be a lot of eldar, guard, knight, etc players amongst the lower ranks that have been eliminated by running into any of the countless other eldar, guard, knight etc lists.

 ClockworkZion wrote:
I saw a Thousand Sons list recently that had most of it's points in TS, but most of its models came from Alpha Legion and World Eaters. I just had to go "really??"

My 1500pt Tzeentch Ahriman list has ~1000pts of slaanesh alpha legion :p

I compiled this list exactly because i do not believe that looking at top results has any meaning. The top places are a meta of their own which is highly different from the meta that 99% of the players is interested in.

This list here tells the average player how much playing one faction or another is influencing his average results in an event.

And those % still means nothing, if the GSC player only has an average of 755pts of... GSC and literally 1,245pts of Tyranids, how are they consider to be in the top 35%? (its the Tyranids that did the work, but this list is considered to be a GSC list). A player not knowing how real tournament lists actually work wont understand that the GSC units are very niche filler units that served a small purpose for those tournaments house ruled missions.

They way Soup and tournaments are, you can NOT say what one army is compare to another, ESPECIALLY with the 3 major tournaments all having different house rules and missions, one of the tournaments gives you VP's for 10/20/30 man units killled, one of them all level 1 terrain is LoS blocking, these rules completely change how lists are made.


If you want to show factions %, you need to have it broken down into Tournament rules, and majority points are treated as the main army. Otherwise this information is misleading.

Spoletta wrote:

A.T. wrote:

Spoletta wrote:
Huge disclaimer: Remember that soup exists, so try to read these results in that light.

Indeed - the top sororitas and wolf lists in the LVO for instance were Smash captain and guard lists with [insert spammed unit from supporting faction here]

I would also suggest only taking the top results from each tournament. After all there are are going to be a lot of eldar, guard, knight, etc players amongst the lower ranks that have been eliminated by running into any of the countless other eldar, guard, knight etc lists.

 ClockworkZion wrote:
I saw a Thousand Sons list recently that had most of it's points in TS, but most of its models came from Alpha Legion and World Eaters. I just had to go "really??"

My 1500pt Tzeentch Ahriman list has ~1000pts of slaanesh alpha legion :p

I compiled this list exactly because i do not believe that looking at top results has any meaning. The top places are a meta of their own which is highly different from the meta that 99% of the players is interested in.

This list here tells the average player how much playing one faction or another is influencing his average results in an event.

I don't think your list does that at all. TBH, I'm not really sure what your table does show, if anything. If the faction data used to compile the table is inaccurate then your output will be similarly flawed. There's also the problem of small sample size. GSC are at the top but with only 8 data points their performance is indistinguishable from random noise. While I think the intention of the table is a good one, I think the reality of the current state of 40k means you'd need to go into much, much more detail to derive useful results.

 Amishprn86 wrote:

Spoletta wrote:

A.T. wrote:

Spoletta wrote:
Huge disclaimer: Remember that soup exists, so try to read these results in that light.

Indeed - the top sororitas and wolf lists in the LVO for instance were Smash captain and guard lists with [insert spammed unit from supporting faction here]

I would also suggest only taking the top results from each tournament. After all there are are going to be a lot of eldar, guard, knight, etc players amongst the lower ranks that have been eliminated by running into any of the countless other eldar, guard, knight etc lists.

 ClockworkZion wrote:
I saw a Thousand Sons list recently that had most of it's points in TS, but most of its models came from Alpha Legion and World Eaters. I just had to go "really??"

My 1500pt Tzeentch Ahriman list has ~1000pts of slaanesh alpha legion :p

I compiled this list exactly because i do not believe that looking at top results has any meaning. The top places are a meta of their own which is highly different from the meta that 99% of the players is interested in.

This list here tells the average player how much playing one faction or another is influencing his average results in an event.

And those % still means nothing, if the GSC player only has an average of 755pts of... GSC and literally 1,245pts of Tyranids, how are they consider to be in the top 35%? (its the Tyranids that did the work, but this list is considered to be a GSC list). A player not knowing how real tournament lists actually work wont understand that the GSC units are very niche filler units that served a small purpose for those tournaments house ruled missions.

They way Soup and tournaments are, you can NOT say what one army is compare to another, ESPECIALLY with the 3 major tournaments all having different house rules and missions, one of the tournaments gives you VP's for 10/20/30 man units killled, one of them all level 1 terrain is LoS blocking, these rules completely change how lists are made.


If you want to show factions %, you need to have it broken down into Tournament rules, and majority points are treated as the main army. Otherwise this information is misleading.

We don't have such data in enough quantity to get a meaningful result, this is everything we have. I got to say though that, except GSC which by the way have the smallest data sample, the numbers do give the results i expected.

Because you're not adjusting for the number of people playing the list.

Averages are not sufficient, you need to be weighting them.

 Marmatag wrote:
Because you're not adjusting for the number of people playing the list.

Averages are not sufficient, you need to be weighting them.

I don't understand your point. Those results are already weighted on the numbe of people playing that faction. What other weighting do you suggest?

For each faction, i listed the number of players playing that faction, and the average standing of a player of that faction.

That's not what you said. Could you explain your algorithm with a bit more detail, or perhaps share the data so i can do my own analysis?

A.T. wrote:
My 1500pt Tzeentch Ahriman list has ~1000pts of slaanesh alpha legion :p

Yeah, that should be called an Alpha Legion list due to where all the points are piled up.

Maybe if they had a rule about needing your warlord to be in the detachment that has the most points I'd be able to take these sort of metrics more seriously, but tournament meta in general right now is kind of a mess due to poor classification of what armies actually are. So many lists are called things while barely containing said force in them at all.

 ClockworkZion wrote:

A.T. wrote:

Spoletta wrote:
My 1500pt Tzeentch Ahriman list has ~1000pts of slaanesh alpha legion :p

Yeah, that should be called an Alpha Legion list due to where all the points are piled up.

Maybe if they had a rule about needing your warlord to be in the detachment that has the most points I'd be able to take these sort of metrics more seriously, but tournament meta in general right now is kind of a mess due to poor classification of what armies actually are. So many lists are called things while barely containing said force in them at all.

There are no such rules associated with factions anymore with ITC. 7th was majority points, 8th is pick one. You can take an IG patrol and 1900 points of IK and call it IG.

 deviantduck wrote:
There are no such rules associated with factions anymore with ITC. 7th was majority points, 8th is pick one. You can take an IG patrol and 1900 points of IK and call it IG.

That's even worse for actually figuring this stuff out. I mean, sure, it's fluffy, but when should we be worried about fluff for tournament play again?

 Marmatag wrote:

For each faction, i listed the number of players playing that faction, and the average standing of a player of that faction.

That's not what you said. Could you explain your algorithm with a bit more detail, or perhaps share the data so i can do my own analysis?

It appears he just counted up the places and averaged them.

Just out of curiosity (sorry if i missed it) how is a faction deemed that faction
Is it by most points spent on a faction
what faction your warlord comes from
The most detachments they have
What the player labels it as
I'm just asking because I've seen tons of different ways that its calculated. Either way the existence of soup makes thins incredibly hard to break down. especially in a game where each faction is supposed to have a kinda blatant weakness that you can now plug up by "insert faction x here"

Asmodios wrote:
Just out of curiosity (sorry if i missed it) how is a faction deemed that faction
Is it by most points spent on a faction
what faction your warlord comes from
The most detachments they have
What the player labels it as
I'm just asking because I've seen tons of different ways that its calculated. Either way the existence of soup makes thins incredibly hard to break down. especially in a game where each faction is supposed to have a kinda blatant weakness that you can now plug up by "insert faction x here"

It depends on where he's pulling his data. But if it includes RTTs there is little to stop people from mis-reporting. For instance, I could choose "Grey Knights" and run a Tyranids list. There is no governing body auditing every single smaller tournament.

 Marmatag wrote:

Asmodios wrote:
Just out of curiosity (sorry if i missed it) how is a faction deemed that faction
Is it by most points spent on a faction
what faction your warlord comes from
The most detachments they have
What the player labels it as
I'm just asking because I've seen tons of different ways that its calculated. Either way the existence of soup makes thins incredibly hard to break down. especially in a game where each faction is supposed to have a kinda blatant weakness that you can now plug up by "insert faction x here"

It depends on where he's pulling his data. But if it includes RTTs there is little to stop people from mis-reporting. For instance, I could choose "Grey Knights" and run a Tyranids list. There is no governing body auditing every single smaller tournament.

From my understanding even in ITC its left completely up to the event. At least that's what they say on their podcast every week. Things like point level, rules, missions are all just suggestions and not a requirement to be an ITC event

The factions are the ones declared in the BCP results.

As for the algorithm i'll try to explain it better.

First i get all the results from a big bunch of events. All events with at least 8 partecipants are good, since i'm not interested in top players, i'm doing an analysis of the average players of the factions.

I then separate all the results in factions and consolidate in major factions, for example the blood angels results come from the BA results and the Flesh Tearers results.

Generic factions were discarded (imperium, chaos and Aeldari)

I divide the individual standing obtained for each tournament result of each player of each faction for the total number of players of that event and subtract it from 1. So if player Bob with Hive Fleet Kronos ranked 6th at an even with 8 players, he scored a 1-6/8= 0,25. He was at 25% of the ladder from the bottom. This contributes to the Tyranid factions total score, which is obtained by summing together all these partial resuts, and then dividing by the number of players contributing.

As for the raw data, i can provide the semi compiled version, which is a list of rows with the following informations:

Faction - Standing - Total players in the event.

If i have the time i will compile the second half of july, which should be another 900 rows of data.

Spoletta wrote:
The factions are the ones declared in the BCP results.

As for the algorithm i'll try to explain it better.

First i get all the results from a big bunch of events. All events with at least 8 partecipants are good, since i'm not interested in top players, i'm doing an analysis of the average players of the factions.

I then separate all the results in factions and consolidate in major factions, for example the blood angels results come from the BA results and the Flesh Tearers results.

Generic factions were discarded (imperium, chaos and Aeldari)

I divide the individual standing obtained for each tournament result of each player of each faction for the total number of players of that event and subtract it from 1. So if player Bob with Hive Fleet Kronos ranked 6th at an even with 8 players, he scored a 1-6/8= 0,25. He was at 25% of the ladder from the bottom. This contributes to the Tyranid factions total score, which is obtained by summing together all these partial resuts, and then dividing by the number of players contributing.

As for the raw data, i can provide the semi compiled version, which is a list of rows with the following informations:

Faction - Standing - Total players in the event.

If i have the time i will compile the second half of july, which should be another 900 rows of data.

Thank you for the explanation and the work you put in to get the info. This is the exact type of data analysis the community needs

Does BCP use the warlord to determine faction? Sadly, as long as Grand Strategist is FAQ'd to be strictly better than similar versions of the same trait, I think a lot of Imperium lists are going to be considered Guard despite being ~10% of the army.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 ClockworkZion wrote:
Considering soup exists I really feel like these numbers aren't quite accurate. I saw a Thousand Sons list recently that had most of it's points in TS, but most of its models came from Alpha Legion and World Eaters. I just had to go "really??" when they called it a TS list just because of a few more points in one part of the army over the model count of the others.

More points makes more sense to me than most models. I mean, its basically impossible to ally anything with Knights and not have more models of the ally, even if those knights are going to absolutely dominate the list in terms of points, game impact and any meaningful sense of identity. That's... kind of the reason points exist after all. I don't go up against Orks and say they have more armies than me just because they have more guys.

 LunarSol wrote:
Does BCP use the warlord to determine faction? Sadly, as long as Grand Strategist is FAQ'd to be strictly better than similar versions of the same trait, I think a lot of Imperium lists are going to be considered Guard despite being ~10% of the army.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 ClockworkZion wrote:
Considering soup exists I really feel like these numbers aren't quite accurate. I saw a Thousand Sons list recently that had most of it's points in TS, but most of its models came from Alpha Legion and World Eaters. I just had to go "really??" when they called it a TS list just because of a few more points in one part of the army over the model count of the others.

More points makes more sense to me than most models. I mean, its basically impossible to ally anything with Knights and not have more models of the ally, even if those knights are going to absolutely dominate the list in terms of points, game impact and any meaningful sense of identity. That's... kind of the reason points exist after all. I don't go up against Orks and say they have more armies than me just because they have more guys.

No, BCP doesn't even require you upload a list. Hence my point about RTTs.

Any RTT with less than 14 people in it should not be counted for the purposes of analysis. Once you get 16+ you'll see some competitive players.

Bigger RTTs in competitive areas like mine will actually see people not participating in tournaments auditing lists to make sure faction is represented. I know of an instance where a friend of mine, who is competing for best in faction, actually emailed a store owner about a bad list.

 Marmatag wrote:

 LunarSol wrote:
Does BCP use the warlord to determine faction? Sadly, as long as Grand Strategist is FAQ'd to be strictly better than similar versions of the same trait, I think a lot of Imperium lists are going to be considered Guard despite being ~10% of the army.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 ClockworkZion wrote:
Considering soup exists I really feel like these numbers aren't quite accurate. I saw a Thousand Sons list recently that had most of it's points in TS, but most of its models came from Alpha Legion and World Eaters. I just had to go "really??" when they called it a TS list just because of a few more points in one part of the army over the model count of the others.

More points makes more sense to me than most models. I mean, its basically impossible to ally anything with Knights and not have more models of the ally, even if those knights are going to absolutely dominate the list in terms of points, game impact and any meaningful sense of identity. That's... kind of the reason points exist after all. I don't go up against Orks and say they have more armies than me just because they have more guys.

No, BCP doesn't even require you upload a list. Hence my point about RTTs.

Any RTT with less than 14 people in it should not be counted for the purposes of analysis. Once you get 16+ you'll see some competitive players.

Bigger RTTs in competitive areas like mine will actually see people not participating in tournaments auditing lists to make sure faction is represented. I know of an instance where a friend of mine, who is competing for best in faction, actually emailed a store owner about a bad list.

I'm not going to say that my results are perfect, there is a certain noise deriving from cases like the one you mentioned, by dubious faction definitions and so on. That said, if the numbers were all over the place then the noise would be too prevalent and the data worthless, but what the results show is a really clear trend. All the PA factions for example ended up being bundled together in the list. These kind of trends give me confidence in the quality of the result.

As for the presence or not of competitive players, i honestly don't care. Or better, if i could somehow filter them out, i would. No one is interested in the higher spheres of 40K competition, what almost everyone is interested in is "Am i gimping myself with x faction?" or "I keep losing, is it my fault?" or "Am i evenly matched with my friend's faction or i should restrain my lists a bit?". Who cares if the last tournament was won by death guard? That doesn't mean that DG is OP. OP is defined by this kind of analysis, by taking the largest possible amount of unrelated results, and trying to understand if simply playing a different faction can improve or degrade your results, THIS is definition of OP and UP factions. Top level play has nothing to do with it.