Attention Troopers: Officer on deck! We’re locked and loaded and ready to talk about important business. With two months of tournament data available post-dataslate, it’s time to build another classic TIER LIST. So let’s see who fell from grace and what new meta monsters are waiting just around the darkened corners of the derelict space hulk in our Kill Team galaxy.
On a personal note, it’s been a year since I published my first article on Goonhammer and I’m incredibly thankful to Goonhammer for letting me participate in all this!
One last mention before down to business: I’d like to thank KT Stats for the tableau dashboard they put together on Kill Team events which was used to build this.
Methodology
For this article I took a deep look at the events of the past two months, with a focus on events with 16 or more players and 4+ rounds. I also looked at the top 8s of each event with 35+ participants, as we believe that these are the events to which top players take the factions they think give them a better chance to win. Combining these two should give us a solid picture of the current state of Kill Team.
Finally I used this data and my own personal experiences to build a tier-list. While real data was used, any analysis is going to add bias and subjectivity, so take this with a grain of salt.
But let’s not delay any longer, let’s get into our servo armors, let’s load the sacred bolter, and let’s go!
Looking at Win Rates
So let’s take a look at the tournaments from January and February which had 4+ Rounds, 16+ players (I pick those since I think they are the most relevant), following the publication of the most recent Dataslate. At the top of the standings we have four clear winners, each topping 55% win rates at these events:
- Fellgor Ravagers
- Novitiates
- Void Dancer troupe
- Chaos Cult
Meanwhile bringing things up from the rear at the bottom of the chart we have Farstalker Kinband, Hearthkyn, and Warpcoven, though it’s worth noting that only Farstalker Kinbands are below 40%. More on that in a moment.
Despite releasing in the same box, Space Marine Scouts and Blades of Khaine ended up on opposite sides of the divide, with Scouts averaging a 41.6% winrate and Blades of Khaine clocking in at a much healthier 53%.
In any case, it seems that at these tournaments, the game has leveled out to a fairly solid spread, with the majority of factions falling in that 40% to 60% band, and most within that falling into the 45% to 55% band. That makes it a pretty good time to play Kill Team.
The other part of the story here is pick rate – while we unfortunately don’t have the percentages, we do have the number of attendees at each event in our sample. The most played faction in our sample were Kommandos, with Legionaries and Intercession Squads right behind them. This is promising for Kommandos – typically larger player counts tend to push a faction toward the middle of the pack unless they’re really busted or terrible, so Kommandos dropping to 53% is a good sign. Intercession Squads and Legionary Teams at sub-50%, less so.
An Event Study
As always I have made a study of several events across the planet; thanks to the fact that Kill Team has been in constant growth over this time I have been able to select events of +5 rounds and with +35 players. I have study the world from Las Vegas with its Open (the biggest tournament in the world so far), through Australia, taking a look at the three Russia majors, then Poland on the eastern half of the continent and ending in England and Spain that have had as usual huge events. For the study I have taken the Top 8 of the following events:
United States:
- Las Vegas Open Kill Team Championship 2024
- Triangle Open Hosted by Atomic Empire
Australia:
- The Purge: Kill Team Grand Tournament
Poland:
- DropZone: R jak Rozruch
Russia:
- Against the Ice, KT Tournament
- II Moscow Major
- Kill Team Deathmatching
England:
- Kill Team: Critical Strike II
Spain:
- GT Enero Murcia
- III Valencia Nationals
- Major Girona – Ascension Day
What Does it Mean?
So what does the data tell us about team representation at these large events? Keep in mind that this is a small sample, but we have enough common factors to start making some observations.
Our sample of eleven Majors gives us at least one top 8 showing for 26 out of the 27 non-Compendium teams. There’s some over-representation here: The numbers for Kommandos, Fellgor and Veteran Guardsman stick out like a sore thumb, and Corsairs, Hierotek Circle, and Void Dancers are following them very closely.
This creates a little discrepancy with what we saw at the beginning with the WRs. Novitiates appear only three times on the collected top 8 results, while Kommandos are clear powerhouses when it comes to making the top 8 in metas around the world. We also see that the Void Dancer troupe, despite their high win-rate, comes a little short as they have only made the top 8 cut four times.
On the other hand only one team has not obtained any representation in these top-cuts: The new Scouts team. That doesn’t bode well for their future success.
The current Kill Team meta seems very healthy, with the kind of solid balance that makes nearly every team (28 out of 29) a potential contender, and most of our factions within that desirable 45-55% win rate bucket.
The Tier List
The meta is in an interesting place; I think Bheta-Decima is still making its way, and a lot of places in the world haven’t adopted it.
Note: My tier list is designed with mixed environments in mind. That is, playing events with a 50/50 mix of Open and Into the Dark Terrain.
First of all a Disclaimer: In my opinion this tier list should be tier S/A+/A/A-/B representing that the step is not as big as it seems, particularly in the first 4 groups. But many readers have asked me to make the tier list with well differentiated steps. So please dear reader, keep in mind that for me tier S are the teams which dominate tournaments, A, B and C are factions which can win tournaments but will have more difficulties, and D are those factions that surely need a player of superior skill to win a tournament.
Now let’s take a look at the tier list:
- I think the S tier was pretty clear; they are the 3 most dominating teams at the moment followed by pathfinders, and recent experience in Spain brings them in my opinion on the same line as the other three. They have a decent (or dominant) win-rate, and they have the biggest representation in the top 8.
- For the tier A we can see other factions with very good numbers at tournament level and above average on the win0-rate; I think they are waiting to rise up and become a menace if the top 4 get nerfed.
- For the B tier we have an interesting mix – on one hand teams like Blades of Khaine and Elucidian whose tricks can put them a little above their “real” level and then Gellerpox and Navy with fewer tricks but a solid performance overall.
- The C tier are some of the elite teams that are in a tough spot right now, along with Karskin and Hands of the Archon; all of them suffer against the melee meta we are actually in.
- And to wrap up we have the tier D; these factions have a bad win rate, little representation on the meta, and little to no representation on the top 8 placings.
Final thoughts
For a long time we were burdened with a meta which over-rewarded melee factions; this is something which was further compounded by the very dense maps and frequent use of Into the Dark Terrain. While it’s true at we see good representation of every faction at tournaments, the preponderance of certain factions in the top 8 warps the meta into a game of playing those teams or being a team which can stand up to them. There’s still some room for movement in the meta and it won’t be long before we have a new dataslate to turn the whole game upside down.
So I’ll see you when that happens in a few months!
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