In Hammer of Math we look at statistics and probability in Warhammer. This week, we’re looking at the relative player skill of the upcoming World Championships of Warhammer 40,000 and comparing it to other prestigious competitions across the world.
The dust has settled on the qualifiers, and the list of attendees for the World Championships of Warhammer 40,000 (WCoW) is live! Among the more than 270 participants of the Warhammer 40,000 contingent are players from over 40 countries around the globe. This event is among the most challenging to win globally, but how does it compare to other major competitions such as the Las Vegas Open, the London Grand Tournament, or the US Open Tacoma? Read on to find out!
(This article will have a considerable amount of discussion of Elo – if you’d like a primer on this please check out Stat Check’s Cliff Thomas’ article).
Global Elo Stats
Before we look at the participants in WCoW ‘24, let’s quickly review what the current global Elo stats look like and how things have changed since this time last year. As a reminder, this dataset goes back to February of 2022 and now includes over 27,000 individual GT+ players and over half a million games.
The current distribution of Elo globally looks very similar to the distribution seen in the days leading up to WCoW ‘23. The top 1% of players have an Elo of 1734.7, practically the same as the top 1% of November ‘23 at 1734.1. The difference lies in the number of players in the set – we now have over 270 players in the top 1%, as compared to just over 190 at the same time last year. The competitive scene has grown considerably in the last year, reflecting the growing popularity of the game.
WCoW Attendee Profile
Let’s start out by looking at what it takes to qualify for the WCoW; there are many ways that a player can qualify, including but not limited to winning a US Open, winning a local Major or GT depending on your country, scoring Best Overall at some qualifier events, or be re-invited after having finished in the Top 8 in the previous year. While we don’t know exactly how each player qualified, looking at the games played at GT+ (24 or more players, 5 or more rounds) events by them shows a clear trend – these folks play far more Warhammer than the average enjoyer. So far during the 10th edition of Warhammer, the median WCoW ‘24 participant played 38 GT+ games across seven GT+ events. There are some among the qualified players that have not played any GT+ events and have instead qualified through their performance at a teams event – though they are rare. The median WCoW ‘24 participant has an Elo of 1687.9, which is just above the 98th percentile for the GT+ population in 10th edition.
WCoW ‘24 attendees also play considerably more games than a typical player – see here for a comparison of GT+ games played vs Elo for the WCoW ‘24 attendees compared to the global player base for 10th Edition. The data comparison highlights a notable positive correlation (r=0.702) between games played and Elo ranking among WCoW ‘24 attendees, which is higher than the correlation observed in the global player base (r=0.541).
Comparing WCoW ‘24 to Other Events
There’s been a considerable amount of discussion about who’s attending WCoW ‘24 within the competitive 40k sphere, and with some dismissing it as a serious competitive event. So let’s now look at how WCoW ‘24 compares to last year’s event in terms of player strength as well as some of the more prestigious events of the year. We’re going to look at: FLG’s Las Vegas Open (LVO) 2024, GW’s US Open Tacoma (USO Tacoma) in 2023 & 2024, UKTC’s London Grand Tournament (LGT) in 2023 & 2024, and finally WCoW ‘23.
| Event | Event Size | Median Elo | # of Top 100 |
| USO Tacoma ‘23 | 358 | 1505.6 | 7 |
| LGT ‘23 | 734 | 1505.4 | 29 |
| WCoW ‘23 | 175 | 1689.7 | 49 |
| LVO ‘24 | 907 | 1500.7 | 32 |
| USO Tacoma ‘24 | 438 | 1500.0 | 7 |
| LGT ‘24 | 814 | 1512.3 | 28 |
| WCoW ‘24 | 278 | 1687.9 | 53 |
The data underscores that WCoW ‘24 features the highest concentration of top 100 players globally, surpassing even prestigious events like LVO and LGT. WCoW ‘23 had 49 out of the top 100 players with 175 players in attendance – all but guaranteeing that one of your games would be against one of these players. WCoW ‘24 keeps up this high representation, though the relative representation has slipped slightly, with 53 of the top 100 players present out of the 278 attendees.
What’s most interesting about these numbers is how comparable the top 100 representation is at the LGT and at LVO. Both of these events are viewed as the premiere event of the year for their respective ranking systems, with LVO being the final event for the ITC season and LGT being the same for the UKTC season. In 2023 and 2024, LGT averaged one top-100 player for every 27 participants, while LVO ‘24 averaged one top-100 player for every 28 participants. Where things differ is with USO Tacoma – this event averages only one top-100 player for every 57 participants.
This relationship can be seen more clearly by comparing the Elo distributions for WCoW ‘24, LGT ‘24, LVO ‘24, and USO Tacoma ‘24.
FLG’s Las Vegas Open ‘24
WCoW ‘24 has a fairly normal distribution of Elo, reflecting the mature rankings of the players in attendance, while LVO ‘24 has a very skewed distribution – nearly 60% of the attendees ranking lies between 1450 and 1550. 1500 is the baseline ranking for Stat Check’s Elo system, and further investigation shows that quite a few of the attendees at LVO are at their first event.
UKTC’s London Grand Tournament ‘24
Keeping the WCoW ‘24 comparison in place, we can see a similar pattern with LGT ‘24 – though the 1450 to 1550 group is just above 50% for this event. This hints at a slightly more experienced player pool, something for another article it would seem!
US Open Tacoma ‘24
That brings us to USO Tacoma ‘24 – where the 1450-1550 group makes up over 70% of the attendees! A slightly less pronounced extreme is seen at USO Tacoma ‘23, where just over 50% of the players fell into this range. One thing to note is that USO Tacoma has seen exceptional growth for a large event going from 358 to 438 players in a single year, the vast majority of this growth coming from new players, specifically players who are attending their first event.
World Championship of Warhammer 40,000 ‘23
Finally we have WCoW ‘23 – the inaugural event that we started this article talking about. Here we see something very interesting – the largest group seen at WCoW ‘23 was the 1650-1700 Elo group, making up just over 20% of the overall attendees. It’s quite the skewed distribution as compared to WCoW ‘24, with WCoW ‘24 having a more normal distribution, though this is somewhat to be expected with over a 100 more players than last year.
What’s interesting here is that WCoW ‘23 did not have a single player below 1500 going into the event, while there are a few present at WCoW ‘24. Some referred to WCoW ‘23 as the great Elo correction – you had a few players moving by 100 or more points (some up, some down!). It will be fascinating to look at how much of an impact on the standings this year’s event has, and how more (or less!) accurate the system is at predicting the outcome.
Closing Thoughts
In summary, WCoW ‘24 is poised to be one of the most challenging and skill-concentrated events of the year. The victor will have truly proven themselves among the world’s elite Warhammer players. We see this event as rapidly out-pacing other major global events as the most prestigious event of the year to win!
Watch this space in the coming weeks for a look at how accurate Elo was at predicting the outcomes of WCoW ‘23 and maybe even some predictions at what the top end of the ‘24 event may look like!
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