Hammer of Math: Post Q3 Dataslate Meta Check-in

In Hammer of Math we look at different statistical concepts and issues in games, looking at how they affect your decisions and games. In this week’s Hammer of Math, we’re taking a broad look at how faction win rates changed following the Q3 2025 Balance Dataslate. 

We are just about one month removed from the last Dataslate for Warhammer 40k, giving us a major update to the game that improved the fortunes of World Eaters, Orks, Adeptus Mechanicus, and Deathwatch, while dropping major nerfs to Knights, Chaos Knights, Thousand Sons, and Space Wolves. In this week’s Hammer of Math we’ll look at how key factions have changed over the last three weeks since the change and what we might expect in the weeks to come.

The Sample

We’re looking at two key datasets here:

1. Tabletop Battles Data. We can look at data from the 31 days immediately before and after the dataslate dropped, starting on September 19th, 2025 – one week after the balance update – and ending on October 20th. We’ll be comparing that to the 31 days prior, the period from August 18th to September 18th. We do some data cleaning here, removing games which didn’t finish or which did not have a combined score of at least 30 VP. Only games with the Chapter Approved 2025-26 missions have been included.
2. Tournament Data. We collect data from Best Coast Pairings and other tournament software to gather data from events worldwide on a weekly basis. For this we’ll be primarily looking at GT-sized events, that is events running 5+ rounds with 28+ players, and looking at win rates from those events and final placings.

One other interesting note: Game activity picked up somewhat following the Dataslate – both in tabletop battles and at events. Players recorded 50,818 games of 40k in Tabletop Battles in the 31 days before the Q3 balance update, and 77,772 games in the 31 days following. Some of that is seasonal – last year our recorded games count increased about 14% over those same two time periods – but the 50% jump this year suggests a flurry of practice games being played. That said, last year was a bit of an anomaly – the fall balance update didn’t hit until mid-October (October 20th), and the number of games recorded actually decreased following that update, dropping about 7% in the month before Thanksgiving and the World Championships.

On a similar interesting note, the number of tournament players and games spiked following the Q3 update, jumping from 2,989 to 4,276 at qualifying events – a 43% jump with a similar increase in games. That said, there weren’t necessarily more events – 56 in the after period vs. 55 before – but those events were much larger.

The Q3 Balance Update

If you missed it, or just need a refresher on everything that changed in the Q3 update, you can find our recap here. 

Faction Win Rates

Let’s start with win rates. Win rates aren’t my favorite metric to use for this – you need others to tell the complete story – but they’re easy to look at and they are at least part of the picture. We use win rate data from Tabletop battles in part because of the volume of games is high and because we don’t have data about the relative skill level of players available in the same way we do for tournaments.

Let’s start with the data:

Some of the big winners here were easy to see coming: The Adeptus Mechanicus and Deathwatch in particular got big buffs in the Q3 update, and we similarly saw solid improvements for Chaos Daemons (though it was argued “not enough” at the time), T’au Empire, and Orks. The big losers are more or less what we expected – Genestealer Cults, Imperial Knights, Thousand Sons, and Space Wolves all took substantial hits, while Chaos Knights and Death Guard more or less held firm, having already received their nerfs a month earlier and seeing only small changes in the balance update.

At this point, Tabletop Battles data paints a pretty picture of the meta – almost every faction is sitting between 45% and 55% win rates – but that’s always more likely to be the case with Tabletop Battles, which includes lots of practice games, RTTs, and games where players are testing different list concepts. I think this win rate data tends to paint a solid picture of understanding the meta beyond events, where things are flatter because lists aren’t always optimized and players aren’t always making the right plays or punishing opponents. Where 100-point games are actually kind of rare.

So what does the tournament data look like? Well, there are a much wider set of stats we want to look at when we look at tournaments, such as appearances in the top 4, TiWP (players starting with 4-0 records or better), and representation.

Remember when I said earlier that we had more players per event after the balance update? Well, that’s going to throw off the numbers for Top 4 representation, since the same number of events will produce the same number of Top 4 spots for what is now 40% more players. In this case however we’re also more likely to get TiWPs from players as we can have more players start those events 4-0. The key here is to look at the ratio of TiWP to faction representation – if a faction makes up 3% of the meta, they should make up 3% of TiWP results, and going over or under that gives us interesting insight into their relative strength.

Looking at this shows a very similar list of climbers and fallers – Adepta Sororitas tend to massively overperform their expectation due to having a very low player count, while Deathwatch and Adeptus Mechanicus saw huge gains in win percentage as a result of the balance update and those win percentage increases have translated to success at the competitive level, with more TiWPs and event wins. Aeldari and Chaos Daemons also improved here, but our other big climbers were Grey Knights, Orks, and Dark Angels. Meanwhile some changes were offset by increases in faction representation – World Eaters may have improved, but their faction representation jumped substantially, limiting their ability to generate a better TiWP ratio and outperform their expectation.

From a pure win rate standpoint, these results look very healthy – everyone more or less in that comfortable 45-55% band. That said, the results to look out for are those factions hitting 1.5+ on their TiWP ratio (sisters possible excepted given their low faction representation), and those factions strongly underperforming, i.e. Emperor’s Children, Dark Angels, Imperial Knights, and Tyranids.

What’s Next?

The big thing on the horizon is Drukhari, who we’ll start to see tournament results for this weekend. They seem like they’ll slot in around the same area, having received a number of buffs but with point increases to compensate (around 5-10 points per unit), but they’ve already been doing well recently, comfortable operating in an environment where trading up pays off big. We’ll catch back up again with a look at the meta later in the year, likely after the world championships.

See you then.

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