A. Going tall beats going wide — and the game turns on one timed push
What Wilson actually said, from 10 events and 59 games: scoring in 11th is so achievable that points don't protect you — he won a game 100–93, the highest-scoring loss he's seen, and at 95 he considers a game safe (he's drawn once in that position, never lost). List construction is being pushed tall by the missions themselves: kill-based missions tax unit count, and holding ground takes durability — "there's just so much stuff out there that punish you for playing wide." His Recon example is precise: against Take and Hold's kill condition, the Recon player needs "a unit that doesn't die when it goes into that third table quarter." Trade that unit away every turn and both players score three-for-three while the Recon player bleeds the material. The outs are a unit that lives there — his examples are the Aeldari Avatar, the Lion, and War Dogs — or overloading the scoring by going to four quarters.
Wilson's stated principle is that "generally this edition being aggressive has a lot of failure states." His model is the timing window — hold a strong scoring posture, build a hand of aggressive cards, and commit once, on the turn where your push holds the opponent's primary down while you max yours. Being forced to push on bad timing is the losing seat; the passive scorer makes the opponent play aggressively into him. His two game shapes follow from that: the lock-out game (cripple them so they score ~nothing after turn three — many of his wins were 20–0s of this kind), or the both-alive-on-turn-three game, where both players are scoring 80+ and a single timing window decides it. The "nickel and dime" texture is, in his usage, a fallback — what a Recon game becomes when the tabling plan fails.
Wilson quit Reconnaissance for events after the World Team Championship — fast Purge the Foe armies bleed Recon's screening resources too quickly, and the Recon-vs-Purge matchup is, in his words, "the reason I gave up on reconnaissance." His own preference for singles is Priority Assets — his "baby," a stand-on-the-points build that forces opponents to come to him — and his per-disposition numbers say he plays it slightly more aggressively than his Recon: opponents average 60.46 points against his Priority Assets vs 59 against his Recon. His one Take and Hold event produced scores of 100, 100, 93, 75 against opponents' 45, 70, 68, 75, 80. Disruption he refuses outright — he says no power on earth could compel him to play it in a tournament he cares about winning. And the caveat that cuts the other way: Recon is meta-dependent — it matters only if a top-three army is running it, and he floats Custodes as a potential Recon build going forward.
The "MSU Dead" thread reaches the same headline from the other side — Tyranid players report there's basically no point trying to keep opponents off objectives for a few turns when they can just kill you and max primary anyway, and Sam Pope's big-brick World Eaters show max bricks are completely viable — and the weekend's results point the same direction, with brick-heavy Marine and AdMech builds winning (see Analysis C and the Top 10). The mechanism is Wilson's: not constant aggression. Posture, patience, and one committed turn.
How it works
11th's primary scoring is achievable enough that denial-by-spread loses value, and kill-based missions punish the unit count that spread requires. Durable units hold a scoring posture without bleeding kill points, so the game resolves one of two ways: a lock-out, where the opponent scores ~nothing after turn three, or a single timing window where one player maxes primary while holding the opponent's down. In Recon vs Take and Hold, the third-quarter unit is the fulcrum — if it dies every turn, both players trade three points for three and the Recon player loses the material war; if it lives, or the Recon player overloads to four quarters, the trade breaks.
Sources: Stat Check, "10 Events of 11th Edition: What have I learned?" (Innes Wilson); r/WarhammerCompetitive, "#1 ITC player Innes Wilson shares thoughts on 11th edition so far"; r/WarhammerCompetitive, "MSU Dead"; Sunday Night Stats Oct 23–25.
B. Custodes land soft — the weakest 11th codex so far, carried by Dreadnoughts
The Sunday Night Stats chart for Oct 23–25 — the first weekend with the new Custodes rules more or less fully adopted — has Custodes at 49.0% (199 wins / 406 games, 79 players) with just 4 X-0/X-1 finishes and zero event wins. The impressions thread, written after two weeks of practice and the first tournament weekend, calls them the weakest 11th-edition codex thus far — not weak, but not taking the meta by storm, which the author notes is generally a good thing after Orks and Marines started too strong. Inside the book: internal balance is mediocre, and if you want to succeed you play Dreadnoughts; most infantry and characters feel slightly but noticeably overcosted; detachment balance is bad (Solar/Emperors plus Might plus Lions, with Auric Champions borderline); damage is way down from 10th's murdermachines while resilience is up a bit in melee thanks to freely available -1 to hit — but with roughly one unit too few, the army is more fragile than in 10th. The learning-curve caveat is real: the SNS author notes many players just built Combat Patrol armies in the last few days, and the book "plays completely differently now." One weekend doesn't settle a codex; it sets the baseline.
How it works
Custodes' new game is mobility plus options instead of raw damage. You trade the 10th-edition stat-check — shove forward, survive, kill everything — for a game where Dreadnoughts do the heavy lifting, infantry holds at arm's length, and list-building is squeezed because nearly everything sits in the 230–280 point bracket, so a 15-point saving rarely buys another meaningful unit.
Sources: r/WarhammerCompetitive, Sunday Night Stats Oct 23–25; r/WarhammerCompetitive, "Early competitive impressions of the new Custodes"; Auspex Tactics, "What's Winning Warhammer 40K? … Custodes Hit the Meta…".
C. AdMech is the weekend's form army — and Coventry proves it
Adeptus Mechanicus posted 57.1% (109 wins / 191 games, 37 players) in the Sunday Night Stats chart — the best rate of any faction with a real sample — with 10 X-0/X-1 finishes, 3 4-0 starts, and the win at the weekend's biggest event, Coventry. The collector's Top 10 confirms it from the other side: Sam Nash's 8-0 Take and Hold run won the Coventry 3-Day outright (see Top 10, entry 1). The SNS author credits the call some (the "6+++" crowd) made after the last balance update — Mechanicus might be S-tier — and says he's starting to think they might be correct. A commenter in the Custodes impressions thread adds the caveat: AdMech's strength right now is partly that much of its kit "absolutely rips against the 11th edition Termies" — a meta call, not a raw-power law. If Terminator-heavy Marines recede, re-test this.
Sources: r/WarhammerCompetitive, Sunday Night Stats Oct 23–25; BCP Coventry 3-Day results (Top 10 below).
D. Assault Brethren: the detachment every melee Marine list starts from
The question in the week's most detailed Marine thread: would any melee-slanted army NOT take Assault Brethren if it could? The case: it gives Take and Hold — arguably the best disposition — a one-turn armywide Advance + Charge, a 20-point Death Sword (6 attacks, BS2, S7 AP3 Damage 3, buffed by whatever unit carries it), 10-points-per-squad Sustained Hits upgrades, and three stratagems covering everything a melee army wants: Armour of Contempt, Fight on Death, and a 1CP damage nuke with Lance and +1AP. Then BA Commander published the receipt: a GT-winning Blood Angels list built on Assault Brethren alongside Encarmine Speartip and Ironclade Champions, ending a four-month 11th-edition GT drought for the faction despite Codex: Space Marines points increases. The weekend's numbers back the direction without proving the detachment: Blood Angels went 54.5% (91/167, 32 players) with 2 event wins and a 12.5% 4-0 rate in the SNS chart. The honest counter inside the thread: a heavy Sanguinary Guard Blood Angels army may get less from Assault Brethren than the hype suggests — those units already have Lance, run with Captains who can put them in any doctrine (or Dante, always in two), and may prefer Tactical's reactive move with Encarmine's flat-6 fallback damage. Even the skeptics call it "undoubtedly a very good detachment."
How it works
Assault Brethren stacks three multipliers most melee detachments get one of — mobility (armywide Advance + Charge for a turn), damage (Sustained Hits upgrades, the Death Sword, Lance + AP nuke), and survivability (Armour of Contempt, Fight on Death) — on top of the best disposition. That's why lists "start with the AssBros detachment" and build outward.
Sources: r/WarhammerCompetitive, "Would any Melee army NOT take Assault Brethren if they could?"; BA Commander, "Finally, Blood Angels win a 11th Edition GT (Full Breakdown)"; Sunday Night Stats Oct 23–25.
E. Priority Assets is the melee player's lever — and the counter-play is known
A local scene reports a significant rise in melee armies — Emperor's Children, World Eaters, Custodes — picking up Priority Assets, including some of its best players. The play, as described: passive scoring after staging, forcing the opponent to commit, then using 11th-edition threat ranges to overload an expansion and turn central objectives into surgical strikes. The poster is 0-7 into Priority playing Take and Hold or Purge, both of which require exposed positions to score. The thread's own counters are the useful part: as Take and Hold, deny the button is impractical (they can push it on any objective outside their deployment zone), so the realistic win condition is killing them down until they can hold only one objective outside their deployment zone on turns 4 and 5 — start passive holding home/expansion/centre, then push all-out on turn 4 with durable holders and a brutal clap-back. The caveats: elite armies struggle for unit count (a World Eaters player notes Priority wants 13+ units; their cheapest is 65 points and big units eat the budget), and on some layouts the button is trivially placed (one map's expansion objective sits 1" out of the deployment zone). One scene's experience, not a meta verdict — but the counter-play described is testable anywhere.
How it works
Priority Assets scores for actions on objectives outside your deployment zone, so the Priority player stages, scores passively, and lets the opponent walk into a prepared counter-punch. The counter is attrition plus timing: make their late-game buttons cost more than they can afford, then break their hold on turns 4–5.
Sources: r/WarhammerCompetitive, "Rise of Priority Assets".
F. Thousand Sons are at the bottom — and their own list thread reads like damage control
The Sunday Night Stats chart has Thousand Sons last among real factions: 35.5% (22/62, 12 players), one X-0/X-1 finish, zero event wins, zero 4-0 starts. The SNS author puts it bluntly: "it's never a good day when you're looking up from the bottom at both Agents and Guard." The faction's own "All Is Dust" top-lists thread opens with the same verdict — "GW has essentially decided that they don't want us to play TSons" — and argues the recent changes made Rubricae Phalanx an uphill struggle, showcasing what still works, including Tom Kayser's 4-1 Paris list (a "classic Coven" build with Magnus, a Daemon Prince, Scarab Occult Terminators, and Rubric Marines, with the Terminators' reduced Overwatch threat and Magnus's adjusted wound profile noted). The direction — results plus the faction's own framing — agrees.
Sources: r/WarhammerCompetitive, Sunday Night Stats Oct 23–25; r/WarhammerCompetitive, "All Is Dust! Top Performing Competitive Thousand Sons Lists".
G. Grey Knights are quietly at 50% — while tier lists park them in C
The "Sigil of Excellence" Grey Knights compilation argues the faction sits around 50% despite tier lists ranging from "I don't play Grey Knights so let's put them in C tier" to a janky Banishers experiment. The dominant detachment, per the thread, is Warpbane Task Force — exemplified by Ben Greenlay's 6-0 Bloodshed Bay list built on multiple Grand Masters, Dreadknights, and Purifiers — with the suggestion that other detachments may emerge as players adapt to the recent points changes. The weekend's SNS chart is consistent with the thread's framing rather than proof of it: Grey Knights at 48.5% (48/99, 19 players), no event wins, but a respectable 15.8% X-0/X-1 rate. One compilation, one named 6-0 — worth one watch, and the natural test is whether Warpbane keeps showing up in the next two weekends' top tables.
Sources: r/WarhammerCompetitive, "Sigil of Excellence: Well Performing Grey Knight Lists"; Sunday Night Stats Oct 23–25 (context only).
H. What the creators led with — tier lists, weird lists, and one big claim
Auspex Tactics' weekly "What's Winning" video leads with Custodes hitting the meta (see Analysis B), and his separate army tier list ranks what's strong and weaker right now.
Art of War's "The New Warhammer 40k Meta Is Getting Weird" — John and Michael on the unique, interesting lists performing at a high level: the weird lists are winning, not just the netlists.
Forge the Narrative's episode floats "Outriders Might Be Busted Now" — one claim, no detail yet; if Outriders are genuinely pushed, every Marine list changes. And in the news: Spikey Bits has priced and pointed the 2026 Christmas Battleforces — the follow-up to last week's reveal, and the number that decides whether a box changes a faction's accessibility.
Sources: Auspex Tactics, "What's Winning Warhammer 40K?" and army tier list videos; Art of War, "The New Warhammer 40k Meta Is Getting Weird"; Forge the Narrative (podcast); Spikey Bits, Christmas Battleforce pricing/points.
