The Spring I. T. T. Faction Breakdown

One of our most popular events is almost back, we have over 135 players across more than 70 teams preparing to battle it out this weekend to crown the champion in our latest event in the UKTC International Teams Tournament Series. List submission is now closed, and except for just 4 players we are able to take a pretty complete look at how the Meta shapes up.

The Top 5

There are absolutely no surprises here, we see:

Necrons take the top spot, with their durable stat checks of Warriors and C'tan continuing to cause problems across the matrix.

Tau following up in second place, with the Mont'ka list being one of the most powerful in the game, commonly a first defender to take a light board if they win the roll off can pay dividends for getting that first drop, first turn combination.

Marines take the final spot in the podium, offering strong versatility with effective melee and very efficient shooting. You can expect to see plenty of repulsor executioners sighting down the fire lanes on these boards.

Guard and Adeptus Custodes round out the top 5, with lists packing plenty of durable hulls and strong board controlling infantry units. The Land Raiders and Dorns may suffer into to a meta where people are building to answer the defilers and riptide menaces.

Big Winners

There have been a few datasheets released recently that have seen a factions popularity and win rate skyrocket (I'm looking at you, Twin Lance). This trend has continued with the latest release of Defilers and Destriers for the Chaos Factions and Imperial Knights repectively.

The Defilers are the hot topic for this event as we see a massive spike in Death Guard and Chaos Space Marines, both are positioned as counters to the Tau and Marine gunlines. With the Deathguard leaning into hyper durable shooting that can withstand the punch and close the gap to do some damage. The CSM have the speed and raw output to "Out Tau the Tau". The output from the defilers are easily able to answer the Tau big hitters and C'tan with laughable ease,

Whilst no team has taken 5 for 5 of the most popular factions, there were a few teams that got close:

Number of top-five factions in team	Teams
5 of 5	0
4 of 5	4
3 of 5	14
2 of 5	28
1 of 5	18
0 of 5	7

Back of the pack

Unfortuantely, for each over-represented faction we have the under-represented counterparts, for this event we have seen an absolute plummet in the numbers for World Eaters down to the joint last place pick, sharing a similar fate as Dark Angels and Deathwatch (Though, some players set these factions as Space Marine Astartes). These more niche playstyles do currently struggle in a meta of big stompy robots with massive fire output so this is not overly surprising. This bracket also includes the more specialist factions of Grey Knights and Genestealer Cults, that are suffering from a lack of popularity and comparative strength, although the GSC do have play into the Tau match they require a very practiced pilot.

Ready for the weekend?

No matter which team or faction you are cheering for, with the list checking now live and pairings coming on weednesday the hype is only going to grow for this weekend as we get closer to the day, if you are in the room we are looking forward to welcoming you all in person, and if you missed out on this massive Sell-out weekend, we hope you can join us virtually as we bring the action straight to your screen in our UKTC.tv official livestream!