The Bristol GT: Faction Breakdown

The lists are in for the Bristol GT Super-Major, and with 321 players in the hall, we have got ourselves a real super weekend coming up.

This is not one of those events where the faction breakdown tells you everything immediately. There is no single army looming over the field like a final boss. There is no obvious "well, everyone brought that" pick (If you count the fact that the defilers are different flavours)

Instead, we see some rogue choices and surprising choices, shaping up for a proper end of edition barney.

We've got metal skeletons, golden lads, angry red lads, giant robot lads, diseased lads, fish (/goat) lads and just enough weird nonsense to absolutely shake up someone’s weekend.

The Overivew

Much like previous events, we still see strong representations from the usual suspects of Marines, Necrons, and Tau. And at the risk of sounding like a broken record: fast gun good, C'tan good. These armies pack enough dominance in the big guns department to control the firelanes and play with the board pressure through to victory.

Marines remain both the standalone most popular faction at 25, but when you take their whole family of options the number jumps to 71, well over 20% of the field.

Melee madness

But more excitingly there are 3 factions that have come out of (relatively) nowhere in popularity this event, the Blood Angels and World eaters both seeing great faction representation, bringing the "fast punch good" approach to the tables, if these players are able to stage effectively and control the tempo through the game they can dominate the competition.

We also have Custodes toeing the line between guns and punch, with the land raider build still being the most popular variety we also see some favourites returning with Solar Spearhead vehicles and Lions/Host infantry pressure lists positioning well to utilise their high quality durable unit options.

For me, these are some great choices for this event as they can go toe to toe with the current problems in the field but are a lot of fun to play throughout the weekend.

The Elephant (Crab) In the room

There is a LOT of chaos at this event, we see spikes in most of the Chaos Marine factions, as its own but also the God aligned choices also, Thousand Sons and Emperors Children have some great representation here and both look to leverage the firepower from these datasheets. Personally, I expect to see the pactbound zealots run the show with access to stacking buffs with units like Vashtorr the Arkifane buffing them even higher with their detatchment/army rule combinations getting critical hits on 5s for sustained/lethals or quite often both. We already saw the popularity and strength of the defilers in the units

IF you have yet to experience the output from these walkers make sure you roll it out before your game - that is not a unit you can "figure it out when I get there" with. And don't let their base size fool you, with the ability to scuttle through walls and many having access to advancing and shooting means they are exceptionally hard to pin down or block out so long as they can keep their distance.

Bringing the thunder

Bristol also has a healthy amount of big armour.

Astra Militarum are on 15 players.

Chaos Knights are on 15.

Imperial Knights add another 10.

That is 40 players before we even start counting all the tanks, monsters, battlesuits and stuff hiding inside other factions. having answers to hulls is very much a must have in the current meta, if you can't kill them then they certainly can kill you and make no mistake.

the specialist factions

Down at the lower end of popularity, we have some proper specialist picks.

With just a few players for Ad Mech, Genestealer Cults, and Drukhari mean that the knowledge gap for these armies could be significant. Few players will have the chance to get reps into those choices, let alone quality games. Which is a perfect recipe for a faction specialist to make a deep run over the weekend.

So what?

Bristol looks like a wonderfully varied meta.

There is no single boogeyman faction, but there are loads of very real threats.

Marines are the most common language , but they are not the whole conversation. Necrons are still the durability gatekeeper. T’au are waiting to punish anyone who gives them clean angles. Melee picks are back in proper numbers. Chaos is everywhere, and arguably the deepest macro-threat at the event.

Then behind all of that, there is the ever present specialists ready to ambush anyone who only prepared for the top five factions.

That is what makes this kind of event so good.

To win Bristol, you will need more than a good list. You will need reps. You will need a plan into armour, elite bodies, pressure melee, shooting castles, and strange jank.

You will need to know when to commit, when to hide, when to trade, and when to accept that the opponent’s nonsense is simply happening and you need to score around it.

The faction breakdown is exciting, I would be hard pressed to pick a faction to win the event. Which is where the games get even more exciting.

With 321 players heading to Bristol, that fight is going to be massive.

If you are coming this weekend, we look forward to welcoming you, if not we hope to see you virtually in our official livestream on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@UKTCTV