The latest data about the state of the competitive meta for Warhammer 40,000 is available via tournament tracking website Stat Check, and two factions have pulled ahead of the pack. There’s no surprise that the Death Guard are performing so well after their killer new Codex – but we weren’t anticipating that the Imperial Knights would be very nearly level with them.
Stat Check has summarised data from 10,258 Warhammer 40k games played across 28 tournaments since May 10, the release date for the new Death Guard Codex and World Eaters Codex. Both Death Guard and Imperial Knights have a 59% win rate, with the Death Guard claiming five tournament wins and the Imperial Knights getting three.
You can find the 10th Edition Meta Data Dashboard on the Stat Check website. It has a lot of interactive features if you want to break down the performance of specific Warhammer 40k factions, or roll back the clock to earlier metas.
A 59% win rate is good, though it hardly matches the nauseating win rate the Aeldari achieved at the start of the edition. Still, 59% puts both the Death Guard and Imperial Knights well outside the 45-55% win rate that Games Workshop aims to keep factions within for a balanced metagame.
The Imperial Knights codex release date will be some this summer, so it’s unlikely that Games Workshop will take much corrective action until after that is in players’ hands. The Death Guard may also not get an update in the next balance dataslate: that is expected to arrive some time in the next two months, and it may already have been finalised, before data about their tournament performance was available.
There’s one other faction that you should keep an eye on – the Aeldari, specifically the Devoted of Ynnead detachment. While the overall Aeldari faction win rate is just 55%, it jumps to 65% for the Devoted of Ynnead, and there have been five Ynnari tournament wins. Games Workshop needs to look at this detachment specifically.
Are you surprised by Imperial Knights’ performance, or did you see it coming? Are you a fierce devotee of a faction that’s currently in the doldrums? We’d love to chat in the official Wargamer Discord community!
Aside from balance, the other big concern for competitive Warhammer 40k players is stock availability. As soon as the new Chapter Approved mission cards were announced by GW, competitive players were worried about getting their hands on them – and lo and behold, they sold out while still on pre-order. It’s frustrating when a core part of competitive play can simply be ‘sold out’.
Source: Wargamer
