Tuesday 5 October 2021

Octoberfest 2021 Analysis and Predictions

 Welcome back to the Vault! First Founding's annual autumnal 40K tournament will soon be here, and has become something of a tradition it's time for me to indulge in some amateur punditry and pretend I know something about the state of 40K.

We have 28 players with 27 having turned in their army lists. Their factions have been published on the events page so lets see who's turning up.

I've lumped all the Space Marine players into a single "super" faction as it highlights how few other Imperial players there are. There is a healthy split between Imperial, Chaos and Xenos players in attendance.

So what are the individual factions?


That's 17 Factions in attendance by my arbitrary categorisation, and the variety should make for a good selection of opponents for each player on the day.

Power Armour is the theme of the day with 16 players bringing some sort of Marine based list. I wonder if anyone has teched for marines in particular?

In the graph above the Space Marine players are separated via their sub-faction books. There's a good variety of the Chapters and if I guess the missing army correctly the sneaky-beaky Raven Guard are the most popular.

I've also categorised the Chaos Space Marines by individual Legion just to pretend that matters :P
Of the Legions with dedicated codexes, the popularity of Thousand Sons is quite surprising and I'm looking forward to seeing how well they do on the table.

I'm also intrigued by the popularity of Tyranids; they are a relatively old codex but have some strong builds available to them.

I'm also keen to see how well the Orks do; they have a shiny new book but I've no idea how much krumpin' practice their players have got in. I fully expect one telly-portin Morkanaut however!

It's worth considering the factions *not* represented as well; a number of the armies with older codexes are absent (e.g. Imperial Guard) but surprisingly a number of the top-meta forces are also missing. There's no Ad Mech, no Grey Knights and no Battle Sisters. This should make the field quite open on the day.

So I need to make some predictions for the day. In no particular order here are my top three:

Dark Eldar: Top tier codex piloted by a very capable player

Tyranids: I've played against one of these lists and it has literally squeezed every ounce of efficiency out of the current book.

Thousand Sons: shiny new book that a lot of players won't have faced before. Canny Cabalists will surprise their opponents.

And my Wild Card goes to: Imperial Knights. Big stompy robots backed up with Assassins. It's bonkers enough it deserves to do well.

I'm looking forward to Saturday and we'll see how well my predictions do!

3 comments:

  1. A couple of extra pennies worth from me, It’s a very interesting line up but the more I think about it does make sense. Marines are in a very good place right now as an all-around brawler army elite enough tools to play objectives and adaptable enough to fight against both the shooty Admech or the sneaky Drukkarii. These armies along with the new orks are harder to pilot to wins but totally punishing when brought by a skilled player. Perhaps it reflects peoples desire to bring something they know well to an event. Marines are largely unchanged in 9th from their late 8th powerhouse rule position iron hands can still spank you turn one especially with the new toys like volkite conteptors.
    I too am surprised if not relieved to see no Admech , part of the reason I didn't bring mine and opted for something fun is they are a very warping influence on the table right now you looked left or right at the LGT you'd typically see one of not both players with cookie cutter builds , one of the major disadvantages to this army is how long it takes to play and explain what everything in your army does to your opponent .

    I suspect a Nid resurgence has a little to do with the missions selected as all 3 encourage close range fighting its going to be very easy for kraken turn 1 charges into the deployment zones . Hammer and anvil lengthways deployment missions or the diamond deployment style usually used to balance combat armies out a bit isn’t being used. I hope we have enough craters to slow down those combat army movement or I expect BUGGS .
    My wildcard pick here is on Necrons , they excel at lower points value games as players often don’t have the tools to clear up the blobs in one go without triggering re-animate. One of the players is fresh from doing very well with only one loss at the LGT and they have builds like everything in my army has objective secured so can they play a very aggressive game of charging forward and just killing all your troops to play for good wins.

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  2. Excellent stuff Bryan.

    The Morkanaut will be in attendance. It's now a lord of war! How could I refuse?

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    1. Stuart and Buzz can hardly wait to meet Mr. Morkanaut. Hopefully on the table next to them!

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