2018 Warhammer 40,000 Snap Shot: Part I
So this being my first article on ObSec you may not know this about me yet, but I love stats. In addition I am the developer of the tournament management site Down Under Pairings, which allows for all kinds of stats… So lets take a look at a snap shot of where Australia sits!
Player Numbers
In 2017 we saw 19 tournaments run throughout Australia in the first 6 months of the year, and in 2018 we have seen 35. If we expand that we can also see that the average number of players at any one tournament has gone up from 27 to 33, and if we go one step further we had 284 “unique” players play in those 19 tournaments compared to 767 players this year so far. If you have played in multiple events you count as 1 unique player.
Here are those same stats by state.
Now stats only ever tell part of a story, however these stats are looking pretty exciting so far. So what are we seeing here?
Well first off, new faces. It is super exciting to see a lot of new faces showing up to tournaments. Now not all of these “new faces” are actually new, some are in fact returning faces. We are seeing a lot of players who dropped off during 6th and 7th edition return to the fold in 8th edition.
The tournament scene has a term referred to as “Player Churn”. This is where players leave the scene for whatever reason (eg. lack of time, money, disliking new rule set, etc.) and hopefully new blood takes their place. Anecdotally I believe that in 6th and 7th edition we saw more players leaving than new blood joining, which meant we had a negative player churn. We are at a point now where while there are some players who dislike the changes of 8th edition and may have left the scene, but the amount of players joining (or rejoining) is more than those leaving, so we are currently in a positive player churn, or player growth period.
More players, means more personalities, means more friends to make… We are in for a good time.
What stat should we look at next?
Factions
So Factions is a tricky one, but lets see what we have. With the ability to have multiple Factions in an army, it is always a difficult area to group, so the stats below are based on the Primary Faction as per the ITC Factions. Here is the cliff notes of ITC Factions.
Your ITC faction is determined as follows: find the the most specific Faction Keyword (which is typically the last Faction Keyword listed on each unit’s datasheet) shared by every model in the detachment with the most points in it in your army. Then consult the ITC Faction chart.
For the 35 tournaments on Down Under Pairings we have 1160 non unique players, of which we have the a little under half of the Factions. So unfortunately this isn’t the most complete set of stats, however it is still around 500 non unique players.
So here is a list of all the Primary Factions that were used in the first half of this year and how many players used them.
| Parent Faction | Faction | Abbr | # Players |
| IMPERIUM | ADEPTUS ASTARTES | AA | 45 |
| IMPERIUM | ASTRA MILITARUM | AM | 42 |
| TYRANIDS | TYRANIDS | TYR | 34 |
| CHAOS | HERETIC ASTARTES | HA | 33 |
| AELDARI | AELDARI | AEL | 32 |
| AELDARI | DRUKHARI | DRUK | 30 |
| CHAOS | CHAOS DAEMONS | CD | 27 |
| T’AU | T’AU | TAU | 24 |
| NECRONS | NECRONS | NEC | 19 |
| IMPERIUM | ADEPTA SORORITAS | AS | 17 |
| IMPERIUM | BLOOD ANGELS | BA | 17 |
| AELDARI | YNNARI | YN | 16 |
| IMPERIUM | ADEPTUS CUSTODES | AC | 16 |
| IMPERIUM | ADEPTUS MECHANICUS | ADMECH | 16 |
| CHAOS | DEATH GUARD | DG | 15 |
| IMPERIUM | SPACE WOLVES | SW | 13 |
| ORKS | ORKS | ORKS | 12 |
| IMPERIUM | DARK ANGELS | DA | 11 |
| AELDARI | ASURYANI | ASU | 10 |
| CHAOS | THOUSAND SONS | TS | 10 |
| CHAOS | CHAOS | CHAOS | 9 |
| IMPERIUM | IMPERIUM | IMP | 9 |
| IMPERIUM | QUESTOR IMPERIALIS | QI | 7 |
| GENESTEALER CULTS | GENESTEALER CULTS | GSC | 6 |
| AELDARI | HARLEQUINS | HARL | 4 |
| CHAOS | QUESTOR TRAITORIS | QT | 3 |
| IMPERIUM | DEATHWATCH | DW | 3 |
| IMPERIUM | GREY KNIGHTS | GK | 3 |
| CHAOS | RENEGADES AND HERETICS | RH | 1 |
What are the Tournament Champions taking?
So we have a total of 22 tournaments where we have the winning Faction, of which there are 12 Factions on our list. The top 3 Factions to take are Ynnari, Astra Militarum and Adepta Sororitas, all with 3 winners, followed by Drukhari, Thousand Sons, Chaos Daemons, and Aeldari, all with 2 winners, and finally Harlequins, T’au, Adeptes Astartes, Heretic Astartes and Tyranids. Thats actually a pretty good spread across the board.
What about Tournament Podiums?
We actually see a reasonable change to the list when we look at the top 3 players of each tournament. Out of all the players who finished in the top 3 at an event on Down Under Pairings, we have 60 of them, with 21 Factions on the board. That’s a great spread.
Whats next?
There are so many stats that I want to talk about, and that the community has requested. Unfortunately not all the tournaments out there are using Down Under Pairings to run their event, which means we can’t answer all the questions, but… So Part II will focus on game times and player turns. We will look at the events in the first half of the year that did use Down Under Pairings and work out if there are any trends on game times (11 tournaments worth), and where they were tracking the number of turns (only 5 of them) we will start looking at these numbers as well.
Till next time.
– dif