In Hammer of Math we look at statistics and probability in Warhammer 40k, looking at how those affect games. In this week’s Hammer of Math, we’re looking at early competitive results for the Emperor’s Children and how they’ve fared in the competitive environment since their releasae.
Although Codex: Emperor’s Children has been available for a few weeks, we’ve only really had the actual faction available for play for the last two or so, following the formal release of the codex and adoption by events. In that time, we’ve been able to collect some initial events data, and the most recent results we’ve seen have already shown up in Competitive Innovations – you can find coverage of some lists here. The Emperor’s Children don’t have a ton of datasheets, but they can reliably lean on a small number of very good datasheets, and that makes for some compelling lists.
Look at our collected tournament data, the early results for the Emperor’s Children are very positive. They’re posting over a 3 TiWP ratio, meaning they’re starting events 4-0 or better about 3x more likely than they should be, but some of that is due to sample size – our sample only has 26 players on Emperor’s Children in qualifying events over the past two weeks, so I expect this number to drop a bit, especially with Death Guard hitting the scene. Top 4 results haven’t been nearly as strong, with only four podium finishes before this past weekend. From a win rate standpoint, they’re sitting at about 57% in qualifying events – higher than we’d generally like to see, but again, with a relatively small sample size.
From a Detachment standpoint, top 4 results have so far all come from lists running Coterie of the Conceited. This Detachment gives you some very strong buffs early on for killing enemy units and it’s not uncommon for players with Coterie to end up with 3+ points after the first battle round, especially if opponents aren’t playing especially coy with their unit placement.
Tabletop Battles Data
Over the last two weeks we’ve seen 1,832 games reported for the Emperor’s Children, with a win rate just over 54%, putting them in the top third of factions over that period. Of these, just over half (992) were played with Coterie of the Conceited, which has become the army’s go-to pick.
By Detachment, it’s definitely the strongest option, showing win rates of almost 60% – in line with the tournament results we’re seeing, and worth keeping an eye on. The rest of the options here are barely pushing 50% save Slaanesh’s Chosen, and that may just be due to a small sample size. On a related note, pour one out for Rapid Evisceration, which both has players struggling to win *and* forces them to field half a dozen Rhinos.
Looking at scoring data in TTBA, it looks like Emperor’s Children players tend to do reasonably well in primary scoring but struggle a bit when it comes to secondary objectives. In particular, Bring it Down and action secondaries like Establish Locus and Recover Assets tend to be lower-scoring for them – though not by a lot, admittedly. Their secondary scoring challenges likely stem from the challenge of being an elite army – something we’ve looked at previously in my articles on 100-point games.
In terms of head-to-had matchups, Emperor’s Children do best against horde armies and armies relying on heavy infantry – that’s where they post their highest faction head-to-head win rates in our Tabletop Battles data, winning 66% of their games against Chaos Space Marines, for example. Their worst matchups appear to be Daemons, Death Guard, and Chaos Knights, though it’s worth noting that Death Guard are about to change and the sample sizes on these head-to-head results are smaller than we’d like.
There isn’t a ton more to say about the Emperor’s Children at this point but it *is* worth keeping an eye on them as a faction. They’re an incredibly fast and mobile faction, though one that’s propped up by a small number of insanely strong datasheets – the Winged Daemon Prince in particular comes to mind. It will be interesting to see how the releases of Death Guard and World Eaters – two factions which have done well against Emperor’s Children in our Tabletop Battles data – change this dynamic moving forward.
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