Stat Check Meta Report - October 2022
Author: Innes Wilson
Welcome to the second edition of the Stat Check Meta Report for October 2022.
As a reminder, this is our monthly report into the stats and updates for the last month, with Event Wins, Overrepresentation, and Winrate at 25+ Player, 5+ Round Events. In addition we poll the Stat Check contributors (and starting this month, a special guest!) for their personal tier lists, averaging them out to provide our overall rankings. You can find a more full explanation of the methodology in the first post which can be found here.
You can also now see a changelog showing how each faction has moved over the course of the last month.
This month’s special Guest is Vik Vijay of Dice Down and the 40k Fireside Podcast which you can find here.
Rankings Analysis:
1. Tyranids
Tyranids continue their strong streak through October, with the most event wins of the month, and exemplary stats in the other categories. We’ll see how much the changes to Leviathan and the Reaper affect them moving next month, but for October, Tyranids remained king. Expect to see Leviathan take a downturn but Kraken lists like John Lennon’s 10 Raveners + Sporocyst list, and new experimentations with the datasheet power of the faction, watch this space.
Key Lists: Kraken Raveners + Spores, Leviathan Warriors
2. T’au Empire
A strong performance with Tau boosted heavily by contributor voting putting them tied for first place as we feel they made out very well from the updates to the other top armies, we’re expecting to see these Fish explode out into the meta this month. New technology with Riptides and Sunsharks prove very hard to deal with and can generate a crushing alpha strike, while being very resilient with Redeploys, and Move After Shooting on up to 3 key units.
Key Lists: Farsight Riptides/Sunsharks, T’au Hammerheads, all backed by Crisis
3. Necrons
Holding steady for the Necrons with top results across the board, we’re still holding out for how the small changes to The Silent King will affect the faction going forward. There’s still plenty of power in these secondaries, as seen by the contributors putting them in third overall. I think we’ll see these drop off in the future, as more lists find the tools to kill Necrons (especially Full Power Votann), the nerf will prove more important than it seemed on the face.
Key Lists: Obsekh Secondaries.list
3. Chaos Daemons
Greater Daemons and Flamers are here to stay it seems, lodging 4 event wins and a crushing 55% win Rate (3rd highest of the month), as well as a devastatingly powerful Allies Option with Flamers inserted into Thousand Sons or Chaos Space Marines, we have them top 5 in almost every category. Be’Lakor and Flamers are very powerful and change the axis of the game, and the various Large Men you can ally them with gives the list a surprising amount of flexibility.
Key Lists: Flamers Allied, Be’Lakor+2 Greaters+Flamers
3. Harlequins
Working with 6” less isn’t the most pleasant place to be, but technically Harlequins don’t fall any spaces this month with tied 3rd. With an insultingly high overrepresentation, the top players of this faction are still putting down results out of order with their event wins. 59% win rate is the top of the meta right now, but this report contains a few weeks of pre-dataslate. Certainly losing speed will affect them, and we feel their general position in the meta has fallen to 5th in the contributor voting. Can Twilight emerge from the book to prove a third great subfaction as the only survivor of the nerf massacre?
Key Lists: Twilight Infantry Horde, Light Boatsx9
6. Chaos Space Marines
With distinctly average win rates and overrepresentation, but solid conversion to event wins and a third place in Contributor Voting, Emperor’s Children and Creations of Bile, both with and without Flamers, this faction is proving itself very capable at top level play, knocking out the win at LGT in the hands Alexandre Sacco. Expect to see these a lot.
Key Lists: Emperor’s Children Noise Marines, Creations of Bile Possessed
7. Imperial Knights
Staying around the top of the pile, Imperial Knights are showing themselves to have the capacity to win tournaments, and the fifth highest winrate in the game, Imperial Knights, and especially Freeblade Lance are doing work.
Key Lists: Freeblade Lance
8. Adepta Sororitas
Finally falling down to where this Author always feels they should have been, more players have the number on Sisters and understand how to shut down their secondary scoring. A solid win rate and 3 event wins shows that they can still make it work, but their over-representation fell below 1x.
Key Lists: Bloody Rose Melee
9. Drukhari
No Idea how Drukhari have a 54% win rate (4th Highest) but can’t win anything. Think this faction’s players need to get their act together. Their lists haven’t changed since May 2021, except for 175 Wracks.
Key Lists: Wracks AoR, The Same Goodstuff List as When They Were #1
10. Asuryani
Savage Strikes and Masterful Strokes is seeing a bit of a resurgence, but with Craftworlds dipping below 50% win rate, and a horribly low 0.61x Overrep, Craftworlds cling to the top half
Key Lists: Ynnari Melee, Masterful Shots/Savage Strikes Battle Focus Abuse
11. Thousand Sons
Seeing a brief resurgence from the ability to ally in Flamers with very little cost, Thousand Sons managed to make Top 2 of a GW Open and can clearly abuse this datasheet. There’s definitely a question of whether that’s Thousand Son’s power, or a byproduct of Daemons, with Vik Placing them in First overall, but middling results otherwise. Infernal Gateway Duplication with Cabal Points is also a cute trick to ask your TO about.
Key Lists: Duplicity Scarabs, with or without Flamers
12. Orks
Orks sure do go fast, new Goff MSU lists have seen results in the hands of players Ben Jurek and Sean Nayden, but with very little conversion to event wins, and the standard Ork middling winrate, we’ll keep watching this space.
Key Lists: Goff Pressure, Speedwaagh???
13. Adeptus Custodes
Another faction living mostly in the past, I think every datasheet in the codex has been explored now to reasonably disappointing effect. Rocking a 52% win rate, but low over-rep, terrible contributor perception and only one event win, we’ll see if this faction can use the fall of Harlequins and Tyranid’s top end to boost their performance.
Key Lists: Dreadnoughts Spam, 2021 Good Stuff
14. Leagues of Votann
Oooooh boy. We’re still a way out from seeing the full impact of the Space Dwarves on the meta, but with Anthony voting them in second overall, clearly we’re expecting good things. The box units are rocking about a 50% win rate, which is a little higher than we were expecting from an army with 4 accessible datasheets, so watch this space.
Key Lists: Literally just the Box
15. Genestealer Cults
This author’s personal darling, but a terrible winrate, overrep and no event wins makes it a little hard to be batting for their corner right now. Erik Lathouras is putting in results with Neophyte Horde in Industrial Affinity, but few others are making them work. The army has an insane amount of shooting, and surprising resilience, but difficulty in play and the weakness of non-optimal lists has these Cults down in the dump.
Key Lists: Industrial Affinity Neophytes and Bikes, Twisted Helix Melee
16. Adeptus Astartes
Space Marines continue to defy definition, winning both a Super Major in Kansas City with Blood Angels, and 42% of their normal games. Variability continues to be the name of the game, with only one subfaction put in real numbers. Shock Tactic’s change is debatably going to help the faction win some close games, but the tough ones will stay just as tough as before.
Key Lists: Blood Angels Things with Wings, Other Subfactions Exist
17. Chaos Knights
With one of the lowest overreps, at 0.24, Chaos Knights do about a quarter as well as expected. With what is amounting to a very one dimensional codex that people have more and more experience against, no event wins and low contributor faith, Chaos Knights fall deeply below their Imperial Brethren. The Magaera with updated keywords is making some waves in the faction and might open up some new options, but that remains to be seen in results.
Key Lists: War Dogs, War Dogs + Flamers, War Dogs + Abaddon
18. Death Guard
We’re 30 days on and 17” of maximum movement means Death Guard aren’t keeping up, both in Analysis, Results or Confidence. Sorry Death Guard, the Plague Marine Garage Sale Weapons List is not enough.
Key Lists: Plague Marines, Morty plus 40
19. Grey Knights
It’s tough to be at the bottom, and Grey Knights continue to have absolutely no defining characteristics worth making them stand out. Grey Knights don’t have particularly anything that serves as a competitive advantage for them.Literally they have not even logged one top 4 this month. Sorry Grey Knights.
Key Lists: Dreadknights, I guess
20. Adeptus Mechanicus
With reversions to a bunch of nerfs, and a bunch of nerfs that had already been removed that nobody noticed, AdMech have yet to start really making an impact again. Skitarii still have a reasonably pushed datasheet but the game has moved past them a little bit. I don’t think we’ll see a big change to them moving forward but if some top Adeptus Mechanicus players come back, maybe there’s space.
Key Lists: Even Siegler Doesn’t Know
21. Astra Militarum
Just Wait for the new book Kids
Key Lists: Shopping
That’s it for the Stat Check Analysis, but we also had Vik involved this month, so I’ve asked him to put together his thoughts on the top three factions in his perception right now, so without further ado;
"The dataslate changes have, in my mind, pushed Tyranids and Harlequins just out of the top 3 factions in the meta. My number one pick, Thousand Sons, is entirely on the back of the synergy that Tzeentch Flamers add to the faction, covering weaknesses in mobility/reach, screening and generally giving a significant boost to the overall damage output of the list. Between their durability, excellent secondaries and multi-phase output, the Thousand Sons & Flamers list has, in my opinion, a strong match into the widest range of factions in the meta.
My number two choice is Tau Empire who have the best flyer datasheet in the game for its points cost (sunshark bombers) alongside a punishing level of non-interactive firepower from Riptides and 'Strike and Fade' crisis suits units. A well played and optimally designed Tau list has all the tools to play into a wide range of factions with a high level of consistency.
My pick for the 3rd best faction is Chaos Space Marines, specifically Emperor's Children and Creations of Bile + Flamers. Both of these sub-factions come with a huge level of melee control and excellent ability to hold primary. Regardless of their relatively weak secondaries, the straight forward game plan of threat saturation and controlling the mid board with a defensively buffed brick of 10 terminators, chosen or possessed, is a consistently successful approach that players of a wide range of competitive experience should be able to pilot effectively.
Vik’s Full Ballot can be seen below:
Thanks again to Vik for taking part with us, it’s been a pleasure to have you!
That’s it for us for the month of October, thank you everyone for reading and we will see you next month.
If you enjoyed this, you can find more from Stat Check on Youtube on our Weekly Show every Tuesday, and if you’d like to support us, you can find us on patreon.com/StatCheck
