Regimental Reporting: Octoberfest Intelligence Brief

Welcome back to the Vault! All the lists have been submitted for First Founding's Octoberfest 40K tournament and it's become something of a tradition for me to indulge in some pre-event Chart-Hammer, punditry and fail to predict the event winner.

This year's Mayhem tournament was the Wolf-Time as 4 players mustered their Space Wolves, so what is popular now?  Let's have a look...

Numbers! That Way!

Of the 27 players (including Dave the Odd Man), there are 16 different factions represented:

There is a good spread of forces, including some rarely seen armies (Death Korps and Grey Knights), and it seems the new Space Marine Codex and supplements has players keen to break out the Power Armour!

The change in factions and numbers from Mayhem can be seen in the table below:

There's a few interesting stories in the table:

• Chaos is under-represented; Nurgle Daemons typically do well at the First Founding events so I'm keen to see what form the Death Guard army takes
• Eldar continue to be popular in their various formats
• No Big Stompy Robots

Imperial Guard are another First Founding favourite and I'm excited to see the lists players bring, particularly the rumoured full platoon! Catachans won Mayhem and they'll do well again.

There doesn't seem to be a consensus among the Marine players as to a stand out Chapter:

The Ultramarine Successors (Emperors Spears) belong to Odd Man Dave and so may not make the table top (which is a shame given how much white he's painted).  The new marine Codex is very strong and should do well, however canny players will have designed their lists with power armour in mind.

So what's my pick for the day? I'd love to say Grey Knights :P

My virtual pound is on Iron Hands: Marines are in a very good place generally and the resilience of Iron Hands is the icing on the cake.