The Winter I. T. T. Faction Breakdown and first look.

Lists for The UKTC Winter International Teams Tournament (ITT) are now live, with list checking underway. Today we are going to take a first look at the data, what it tells us and how the meta at the event is going to be shaken up.

With 158 registered teams, this event boasts a 790 total player sign up, making it the biggest teams event in the world.

The first look for this gives us a clear and interesting read of what is popular.

At a glance, the faction distribution across the Winter ITT

We can immediately see that there are 4 key factions leading the charge in popularity.

Necrons - 60 teams

Astra Militarum - 57 teams

Adeptus Custodes - 48 teams

Space Marines (Codex compliant) - 47 teams

Whilst this is potentially surprising to some, it is worth noting that Marines as a combined faction make up a whopping 128/158 pick rate, by far the most popular faction. With a complete range of skills and tools this is perhaps unsurprising to see.

Notably, we have two of the current menaces at the top, the Necrons and the Astra Militarum. Both being significant beneficiaries of previous updates, with their latest detachments providing some much-needed power boost to their popularity.

Necrons - Seeing a wide range of playstyles, traditionally a strong blunting choice - able to play any match up and have a high score ceiling. Now present a very credible threat with a suite of new detachments lending strong play to destroyer cult units and C'tan builds.

Astra Militarum - Guard is a classic teams attacker: strong output, mission play, and the ability to punish specific archetypes. Seeing it as the 2nd most common faction suggests teams are valuing this consistency and raw damage output in parings. These lists are great for controlling primary, which is the main way that differentials are built across a teams game.

Adeptus Custodes - Seeing a surge in popularity from the recent slate reducing the points on custodian guard to a truly spammable level, these lists will look to pack as many high quality bodies onto the board as possible. With Wardens + Blade Champions remaining a totally viable threat to many armies a new archetype has evolved with multiple land raiders delivering bodies up the field and providing some serious anti tank threat with their lascannons and hunter killer combos.

The good news is that no single team has fully predicted the top 5 choices.

26 Teams - have 3 + of the top 5

22 Teams - have 3 of the top 5

Showing that a wide range of choices still remain and no single team comp is overly dominant for this event.

At the other end, the rarest appearances were:

• Imperial Agents (2)

• Black Templars (5)

• Deathwatch (6)

• Genestealer Cult (8)

A lower showing than expected for the divergent marine lists as they are overshadowed by efficiency in other options. Genestealer cults remain in the shadows as their not so graceful fall from being a staple has not recieved any notable buffs in recent slates.

What I’d expect this to do to the pairing game at ITT

Based on the roster distribution and the recent meta discourse:

• Necrons become the default “you must plan for this” faction. If you don’t have a credible plan into the top Necron archetypes, you’ll bleed points over a weekend.

• Guard and Custodes read like deliberate “problem solvers.” They’re the kinds of armies teams use to target specific opposing slots with a strong abilitiy to play fair into everything else.

• Daemons are a quiet pairing weapon. Their presence on over a quarter of teams suggests captains value the matchup-tech and scoring angles they bring in a diverse field.

• Low pick-rate factions are likely “specialist” choices. When you only see a handful of Agents/BT/DW/GSC, that often means captains either (a) don’t rate them as universal tools or (b) only want them in very specific team plans.

Closing thought: this roster looks “meta-aware,” not “meta-chasing”

The biggest takeaway isn’t just which factions are popular, it’s that almost every team is constructing a toolkit:

• an anchor,

• an attacker,

• a flex,

• a skew threat (often Knights),

• and a fifth slot to patch the worst matchup hole.

That’s exactly what you’d expect when rules and balance shifts have been released and rapidly adopted over the last few weeks.

the meta will keep moving, but uktc tickets move faster.

Not only did the Winter ITT sell out in a matter of days, but our next Teams event The ITT Spring has also SOLD OUT.

If you are playing this weekend, we look forward to welcoming you at the biggest team event in the world.

If you are not, you can follow along with our live stream coverage of the event on our youtube channel. UKTC.tv.

If you want to avoid the disappointment and be in the room for our next Super-Major, you can find all the tickets to our upcoming events here.

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