Meta Snapshot 5/4/2026
After weeks of Necrons, Chaos Marines, and Ultramarines trading places within the Top Three factions, there's been a shakeup in the meta. We had a foreshadowing of this last week when Thousand Sons beat out Ultramarines as the Number Three faction. This week they went all the way to Top Faction, with 2 event wins, a whopping 5 second place finishes, and 2 third place finishes. Here's the breakdown by detachment.
After last week it's tempting to just chalk this up to Defilers and call it a day, but only 3 of the lists had Defilers in them, though those that did had 2 each. Thousand Sons were doing decently as a faction before the overpowered Defiler glow-up, and they can still do well without them on the strength of Rubrics, Scarab Occult Terminators, and their various sorcerous characters, including Magnus. Believe it or not, he was not in all or even in a majority of the lists. He was in all the Grand Coven lists, but in none of the Rubricae Phalanx lists.
Thousand Sons have a pretty shallow bench, so the same units kept popping up in all the lists. Broadly speaking, if you're playing against TSons you can expect to see Rubric Marines and Scarab Occult Terminators, with characters to attach to whichever of those two are the focus of the list. Terminators seemed to be the major damage dealers in all the Rubricae lists, with all of them having at least 20, and 3 of them having 30. Ironically, most of the Rubricae lists lacked Rubrics entirely, with only 1 of those lists having more than 1 squad. Rubrics figured more prominently in the Grand Coven lists, with each of them having 15-20 with the usual Sorcerors and/or Infernal Masters to attach to them. As previously mentioned, a pair of Defilers turned up in 3 of the lists (1 Grand Coven, 2 Rubricae), Daemon Princes popped up in 3 of the Rubricae lists, a DP with Wings appeared in a Grand Coven list, and a mixture of Sehktar Robots and the various Tzaangor units rounded out the unit choices.
As a point of interest, the top TSons list of the week was played by TJ Lanigan to take 1st out of 205 players at The Richmond Open. I know a lot of players consider TJ to have a certain odor about him, but the TSons would have still made Top Faction this week even without TJ's win.
The Number Two faction of the week, with 6 top 3 finishes, is Chaos Marines, so it wasn't a full turnover of the top three usual suspects. There wasn't as wide a spread of detachments this time though, with all the lists falling under either Pactbound Zealots or Renegade Raiders as follows:
Honestly, all 6 lists are pretty similar to each other. All of them had at least 2 Defilers (one had 3) and at least 1 unit of Chosen, and usually they had 2, with the Masters of the Maelstrom to attach to them. All the Pactbound Zealots lists had Abaddon and Cypher, while both Renegade Raiders lists had Huron Blackheart and Cypher. Chaos Bikers and Cultist Mobs were pretty frequent offenders as well. Both Renegade Raiders lists had a couple squads of Noise Marines and Rhinos for them to ride around in. There was some variation in action monkey and trading pieces units, but generally speaking all the lists had a big bad named commander, Cypher, some Chosen, and a pair of Defilers. It's almost like the CSM bench shrank down to the same size as the Thousand Sons bench.
After Chaos Marines, there's kind of a sharp drop off in faction Top Three placings. T'au have the most with 4, but it's one 2nd place result and three 3rd place results. So, instead I'm going with Emperor's Children as the Number Three faction. They only have 3 Top Three results, but all of them are event wins. No need for a graph for this one, because all 3 of the lists used the Coterie of the Conceited detachment.
All three of the lists were pretty close to identical. All of them had 3 winged Daemon Princes, at least 2 Lords Exultant, units of Infractors to attach each Lord Exultant to, 2 Defilers, and a 1 unit of 3 Flawless Blades. Beyond that, there was very little deviation. I suppose Emperor's Children is closer to Thousand Sons than Chaos Space Marines in depth of unit options.
Here's a table of rankings for the factions who scored more than one Top Three result.
- Drukhari Spectacle of Spite
- Chaos Space Marines Pactbound Zealots
- Chaos Space Marines Pactbound Zealots
- Thousand Sons Grand Coven
- Adeptus Sororitas Hallowed Martyrs
- T'au Empire Retaliation Cadre
- Astra Militarum Grizzled Company
- T'au Empire Mont'ka
- T'au Empire Mont'ka
- Emperor's Children Coterie of the Conceited
- Thousand Sons Rubricae Phalanx
- World Eaters Goretrack Onslaught
- Death Guard Virulent Vectorum
- Thousand Sons Rubricae Phalanx
- T'au Empire Mont'ka
- Chaos Space Marines Renegade Raiders
- Thousand Sons Grand Coven
- Aeldari Seer Council
- Emperor's Children Coterie of the Conceited
- Tyranids Invasion Fleet
- Chaos Space Marines Renegade Raiders
- Astra Militarum Recon Company
- Chaos Space Marines Pactbound Zealots
- Thousand Sons Rubricae Phalanx
- Ultramarines Librarius Conclave
- Thousand Sons Rubricae Phalanx
- Adeptus Mechanicus Haloscreed Battle Clade
- Blood Angels Liberator Assault Group
- Thousand Sons Rubricae Phalanx
- Imperial Knights Freeblade Company
- Emperor's Children Coterie of the Conceited
- Necrons Cursed Legion
- Black Templars Bastion Task Force
- Adeptus Custodes Talons of the Emperor
- Adeptus Sororitas Hallowed Martyrs
- Astra Militarum Grizzled Company
- Chaos Space Marines Pactbound Zealots
- Necrons Canoptek Court
- Orks War Horde
- Thousand Sons Rubricae Phalanx
- Ultramarines Blade of Ultramar
- Orks Da Big Hunt
- Necrons Starshatter Arsenal
- Aeldari Seer Council
- Thousand Sons Grand Coven
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