With the American Team Championship just a week away the lists are out! We have the breakdown by faction with a few other interesting data points thrown in. Thanks to Shane and all the other tournament organizers for getting this up so fast! Don’t forget you can always check out last year’s breakdown here just to see how the edition has evolved over the last year. So with out further delay, here’s the data our servitors have cooked up for you!
Factions
| Faction | Number of Players | Lord of War | Token detachment |
|---|---|---|---|
| Astra Militarum | 43 | 27 | 23 |
| Drukhari | 31 | 1 | 16 |
| Imperial Knights | 28 | 119 | 16 |
| Thousand Sons | 28 | 16 | 8 |
| Tau Empire | 25 | 8 | |
| Aeldari | 24 | 7 | |
| Necrons | 24 | 21 | |
| Tyranids | 23 | ||
| Chaos Space Marines | 20 | 2 | 7 |
| Chaos Daemons | 18 | 9 | |
| Adeptus Astartes | 17 | 12 | 7 |
| Adeptus Custodes | 15 | 13 | |
| Ynnari | 11 | 2 | |
| Cult Mechanicus | 10 | 11 | |
| Orks | 10 | ||
| Harlequins | 9 | 6 | |
| Deathguard | 8 | 7 | 7 |
| Deathwatch | 8 | 1 | 3 |
| Blood Angels | 7 | 23 | |
| Dark Angels | 7 | ||
| Space Wolves | 4 | ||
| Adepta Sororitas | 3 | 6 | |
| Grey Knights | 2 | ||
| Adeptus Ministorum | 1 | ||
| Genestealer Cult | 11 | ||
| Renegade Knight | 1 | 1 | |
| Officio Assassinorum | 11 | ||
| Sisters of Silence | 2 | ||
| Total | 375 | 215 |
The American Team Championship (ATC) is a 5 player team event. That means there are 75 teams and 375 players. The event is using the first 3 ITC Championship missions repeated twice for a total of 6 games over the course of the weekend. No team can have more than one player with any faction and there is a limit of one per team of supreme command and super-heavy detachments. We counted a list as a faction if the majority of its points were from a faction. Token detachments are secondary or tertiary detachments (think Blood Angels Captains).
Most Played Armies
Well let’s start with the armies you’re mostly likely to see. Would you look at all those guardsmen! More than half of the teams have an Imperial Guard player so get ready for that. We’ve seen everything from triple Shadowswords to gun-lines with Custodes or Blood Angels Captains support. Get ready for the Guard.
Next up is the Drukhari, everyone’s favorite evil space elves. There’s even going to be a Tantalus flying around out there. I think anyone who’s played Dark Eldar recently knows why they’re so prevalent. Their new codex really stepped up their game and there’s a fair spread of all of the internal factions but Covens lists look like they’ll represent the Dark Kin most. Be prepared for lots of Kabal of the Blackheart detachments for Agents of Vect which you can read our article on here.
With the most Lords of War of any faction at ATC, next we have the Imperial Knights (duh). Another new codex that’s changed the meta will be on full display. There will be no fewer than 119 knight titans on the field next weekend. Oh, and one renegade but we don’t talk about him. Knights are a pretty “rock, paper, scissor” list so factor that into your prep work for your pairings.
The last faction we’ll look at individually is the Thousand Sons. You thought smite spam was dead? Nope. It’s back and as scary as ever, at least to elite armies.There will be 16 Magnuses (Magni?) flying around out there. Pray he doesn’t get first turn or that one of your players know how to deal with him or control the smite spam. Horrors and Tzangors seem to be the chaff of choice to protect the sorcerers and other characters. Hey, at least there’s no more Malefic Lords right?
Quick Analysis
From here on out we can speed things up. I was surprised at how many Tau players there are and how few Aeldari players we’re going to see. I guess that Big FAQ hit the Eldar hard enough to knock them down a peg, at least in terms of player count. The Tau look to be relying on Stormsurges although I’d argue the scariest unit they have is the Y’vhara. They’re no joke and we almost altered our team last moment to include them.
The Necrons are also having a good showing with all sorts of different types of lists. They’ve got hordes and they’ve got super heavies. Tyranids have been doing well and are going to have Hive Tyrants, Biovores, or Hive Guard. Look out for GSC support that can stop overwatch or take control of a model. Chaos Space Marines are mostly Alpha Legion cultist bombs or support. Daemon lists look like a mix of different types of infantry bombs and Princes. Daemon Princes are especially restricted due to ATC specific rulings so you shouldn’t have to worry as much about getting swarmed by them.
Now we come to another surprise for us. The Emperor’s finest, the Adeptus Astartes are about middle of the pack with a lot of Aggressors. While we’ve found Aggressors to be one of the most effective marine units, their lack of invuln and a base 2+ save makes them vulnerable to a lot of weapons. They are T5 though so that helps them out. It looks like they’re being used to counter deepstrike with auspex scan or with a banner and apothecary combo. That’s a lot of S4 shooting. Also, there will be 12 Guillimans leading their gene seed into battle.
There’s also a fair scattering of other armies but I don’t think we see a lot of surprises in some of the least played armies. It looks like there won’t be any sisters players until they get plastic models and the Genestealer Cult look relegated to an allied role until their codex hits.
What is interesting is who is being taken as support. There are a TON of Blood Angels Captains with storm shields and thunder hammers. Thanks, Slamguinius. There are also quite a few Custodes Shield Captains on bikes running around. Watch out for those hurricane bolters and the counter charge. The Guard are also pretty well represented here as a command point factory on 5+ to keep or steal command points. Imperial Knights have been bolted on to several types of Imperial lists. Tyranids look to be favoring a small detachment of Genestealer Cults even if there are no actual GSC main players this time around. There’s also a fair showing of Imperial Assassins which look to either be sniping out characters or trying to nullify the smite spam.
Finally let’s look at some quick summary figures. There will be 375 players, 75 teams, 215 Lords of War, 119 Knights, and 35 Primarchs at ATC this year.
We hope this breakdown helps you prepare in the next week and get a feel for what the Warhammer 40k American Team Championship will look like this year! Look out for our breakdown of the best factions and scores after the event!
PS: If you’ll be at ATC, I’m Jordan Malik and our team is The Men Who Stare at Ones. Give us a shout out or stop by and say hi! In case you were wondering, we brought Dark Eldar, Thousand Sons, Chaos Daemons, Aeldari, and Imperial Guard.