Meta Snapshot 5/18/2026
It was not hard to choose the Top Faction of the weekend. Chaos Space Marines ran away with that accolade, with a grand total of sixteen (yes, 16) Top Three finishes. That's over three times as many Top Three finishes as the next most prolific contender. The finishes and detachments are broken down as follows:
Holy fuck, what is going on with the Pactbound Zealots detachment? It's hard not to come to the conclusion it has something to do with Defilers. Across the 13 Pactbound lists, there are 29 Defilers. Six of the lists had 3 of them, including two of the winning lists, which included the list that won the biggest event of the weekend. It probably won't surprise you to learn that every single one of them having the Mark of Nurgle for Crit 5's when they Dark Pact for Sustained Hits with their shooting.
We should remember though that Chaos Marines were bullying the meta for months before GW dropped the Defiler update. They have a deep toolkit with a wide range of units that are competitive choices and can do work for their players. Defilers weren't the only shooting platforms across these lists, just the most common by far. They were backed up by a good variety of hard hitting melee units (most commonly Chosen) and useful utility units. Characters appear to vary depending on what individual players want their lists to do, but Abaddon made it into 12 of the lists, and it was pretty common to see Huron Blackheart, Cypher, and/or Vashtorr the Arkfane.
Interestingly, neither of the Huron's Marauder's lists had any Defilers, which goes to show my point about Chaos Marines being competitive without them. Still, it must be nice to just be able to spam one datasheet and have three times better chances of getting a podium result than if you were playing any other army in the game. Am I salty about it? Dang skippy I am.
The Number Two faction of the week was Death Guard, with three 1st place finishes and one 2nd place finish. I'm going to dispense with the table because all of them were Virulent Vectorum lists.
What do these lists all have in common? Sight unseen, given what we've just seen with Chaos Marines, it's tempting to say Defilers, and that's not far wrong (3 of the lists had 2 Defilers each), but a more nuanced examination is that they all have Daemon Engines with good Blast weapons, and the detachment and unit choices synergize well with Blast weapons. You may recall Death Guard being on a tear earlier in the edition, at least partially on the strength of these interactions with units like the Plagueburst Crawler and Bloat Drones. Bloat Drones with Heavy Blight Launchers popped up in 3 of the lists as well.
The bench for Death Guard is a lot more shallow than it is for Chaos Marines, but two of the lists had Morty in them and he eats up a lot of points. Common to all 4 lists were a Daemon Prince the Revolting Regeneration enhancement, a Lord of Contagion, a small squad of Deathshroud Terminators to attach the Lord of Contagion to, and Poxwalkers. A Lord of Virulence was in all three of the lists that have Defilers in them, and he's a value-add to those lists, as he grants Blast Weapons full rerolls against a target visible to him within 30".
In fairness, with their two 1st place finishes and three 3rd place finishes, they're not in the Number Three place by much of a margin. Six other factions had at least 3 Top Three finishes (among those being Necrons, Emperor's Children, and Thousand Sons), so it wouldn't have taken many games going differently to see another faction in this place. But here they are. The graph shows you the breakdown of which detachments scored what places.
So what does Astra Militarum have going for it that got them here? Well, I don't claim much expertise with the faction, but the Recon Element army looks like a board control list with 180-odd Infantry models of various types. The winning Grizzled Company list looks like it derived most of its killing power from a trio of Rogal Dorns. I suppose it's not exactly a penetrating insight to state that all of the Grizzled Company lists had good tanks. Of the 3rd Place lists, one had a Rogal Dorn Commander and two Leman Russ Vanquishers, a second had three Vanquishers, and the third had two Rogal Dorn Commanders and one regular Rogal Dorn. That could go some way towards explaining how Militarum made it up to 3rd place. Defilers might have a hard time into Toughess 11-12 tanks with 2+ saves, and the tanks in question are certainly capable of picking up Defilers.
Militarum being a faction with a deep bench, I could go on at length about individual unit choices and not do anyone much good. Suffice it to say all the lists had some manner of hard-hitting assault units so they wouldn't be helpless in the Fight phase, being either Bullgryn or Rough Riders (often both), and the three 3rd Place lists all had a healthy representation of the more elite Militarum infantry, either Kasrkins or Militarum Tempestus, and often both.
And then there's the also-rans. Hooboy. As it's currently 7pm on Thursday as I'm writing this, I'm just going to give you tables and trust you can figure out my abbreviations for factions and detachments.
- Chaos Space Marines: Pactbound Zealots
- T'au Empire: Retaliation Cadre
- T'au Empire: Mont'ka
- Death Guard: Virulent Vectorum
- Drukhari: Spectacle of Spite
- Astra Militarum: Grizzled Company
- Chaos Space Marines: no list provided
- Leagues of Votann: no list provided
- Tyranids: no list provided
- Astra Militarum: Recon Company
- Chaos Space Marines: Pactbound Zealots
- Chaos Space Marines: Pactbound Zealots
- Chaos Space Marines: Pactbound Zealots
- Death Guard: Virulent Vectorum
- T'au Empire: Mont'ka
- Emperor's Children: Coterie of the Conceited
- Emperor's Children: Carnival of Excess
- Aeldari: Serpent's Brood
- Astra Militarum: Grizzled Company
- Chaos Space Marines: Pactbound Zealots
- Astra Militarum: Grizzled Company
- Chaos Space Marines: Pactbound Zealots
- Chaos Space Marines: Pactbound Zealots
- Astra Militarum: Grizzled Company
- Death Guard: Virulent Vectorum
- Thousand Sons: Grand Coven
- Emperor's Children: Court of the Phoenician
- Adeptus Sororitas: Hallowed Martyrs
- Chaos Space Marines: Pactbound Zealots
- Blood Angels: Rage-cursed Onslaught
- Drukhari: Spectacle of Spite
- T'au Empire: Mont'ka
- Chaos Daemons: Legion of Excess
- Dark Angels: Wrath of the Rock
- Tyranids: Subterranean Assault
- Chaos Space Marines: Pactbound Zealots
- Imperial Knights: Freeblade Company
- Chaos Space Marines: Huron's Marauders
- Necrons: Hypercrypt Legion
- Chaos Space Marines: Huron's Marauders
- Chaos Knights: Infernal Lance
- Adeptus Custodes: Shield Host
- Death Guard: Virulent Vectorum
- Imperial Knights: Freeblade Company
- Necrons: Pantheon of Woe
- Necrons: Canoptek Court
- T'au Empire: Kroot Hunting Pack
- Emperor's Children: Coterie of the Conceited
- Chaos Daemons: Scintillating Legion
- Chaos Space Marines: Huron's Marauders
- Drukhari: Reaper's Wager
- Chaos Knights: Infernal Lance
- World Eaters: Khorne Daemonkin
- Chaos Knights: Infernal Lance
- Ultramarines: Blade of Ultramar
- Thousand Sons: Rubricae Phalanx
- Necrons: Awakened Dynasty
- Adeptus Sororitas: Hallowed Martyrs
- Tyranids: Subterranean Assault
- Orks: War Horde
- Chaos Space Marines: Pactbound Zealots
- Imperial Knights: Freeblade Company
- Blood Angels: Rage-cursed Onslaught
- Imperial Agents: Imperialis Fleet
- Thousand Sons: Rubricae Phalanx
- Tyranids: Invasion Fleet
- Ultramarines: Ceramite Sentinels
- Adeptus Mechanicus: Eradication Cohort
- Aeldari: Corsair Coterie
- Chaos Space Marines: Pactbound Zealots
- Chaos Space Marines: Pactbound Zealots
- Thousand Sons: Rubricae Phalanx
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