As is custom, the 40k2ndACVII is going to be spreadsheeted to death! And beyond! I have a weird desire to log and track all kinds of stuff. I wouldn’t say I have much understanding of anything, but even with my basic Excel skills, I feel there is a story to be told.

Of course the first month has not passed yet, so there is very little to tell from the front. But, we can at least delve into who and what and where…

Let’s start out looking at the basics. I hear you ask: ‘How many models have been entered? And by how many people? And while we are at it, what sort of people?’

Well, for starters a grand total of 35 particapants have signed up for this year’s 40k2ndAC. And between these people a whopping 961 models have been pledged. Now, you ask, ‘what constitutes a model?’. A very good question actually, I’ll grant you that. Over the years, I have tried multiple (at least 2) different systems for tracking models. One was simple: 1 entity = 1 model. Be it a tank, a demon, a halfling or whatever. Another model used a differential score where one tank/vehicle was 6 points, a humanoid figure was 1 point and so on.

Now, at the end of the day, it didn’t really make much sense with the elaborate system, since the effort put in to 10 miniatures, could be less than that someone else put into 1. So, since it didn’t increase the detail level anyway, I decided to ditch it and go with the 1 entity = 1 model again. Let me get back to that later. First let’s look at the stats.

Looking at the stats we see that there is actually a but of difference between the continents. Modelwise, the Europeans are slightly more ambitious, while the Americans fall a bit behind the rest. In Oceania they like the middle ground. The veterans seem to have used their experience and only pledged the needed miniatures, whilst the rookies (anyone with 0 or 1 completed challenges in the boot) have pledged a few more models.

Pointwise, the Americans are leading! This is largely driven by a single entry, by an especially lazy bastard. In Oceania, which is more or less exclusively Australia, they’ve gone for the exact limit – nearly 1,000 points on average. What a delight to see these bushcraft outback trail dogs behaving civilised! In total, 40,073 points have been pledged. How suitable!

As we turn our heads to the highly coveted and acclaimed Points Per Figure (pints per figure to the British audience) we can instantly see what skewers the American effort. It is indeed glaringly obvious that the sole entry of an Assassins based army is tampering with all the stats. At 200 points per figure they are breaking all records.

Lastly, looking at the distributions of armies and codexes used, we actually see most Chaos armies this year. It is a strong army, and one that has a great potential and complete freedom in many aspects so it is little wonder that it is popular.

Eldar are another popular force in this challenge. For as long as I can remember (which on a good day can be up to several hours), we have been beset by the Eldar menace to a level such as this here of roughly 1/5. Angels of Death is the last of the ‘always popular’ entries.

Needless to say, Dark Angels and especially Blood Angels are considered 2nd ed core. Orks and Imeprial Guard are usually represented at this level also. They are model heavy armies and require a steady hand and an unsound mind. Out of the ordinary, we see a strong Tyranid following this year. 3 entries is above the standard.

Lastly, we have a spattering of ‘smaller’ forces. Assassins is a first. whilst Sisters of Battle have been here before, but are not that common. I don’t know if it is because they are late 2nd ed, that they often get overlooked. A bit like the Necrons. A single Ultramarine army has also snuck in, which has happened before. Unlike the Blood Angels and Dark Angels it is not my impression that Ultramarines ever achieved the same level of love in this edition. Or maybe the other two just take up more space. No, Necrons, Squats or Space Wolves this year.

When we look at what armies people have selected from the codecis is blatantly clear that we are dealing with a Chaos incursion! One of the Chaos lists is a Cult, so it has a seperate entry.

Lastly, I want to point to a new feature this year: We are asking you all to record (or guess) roughly how much time you spent painting, and also what level of frustration/ease you are feeling – in other words how close you are to bottling out.

I toyed around with a bit of math and devised an equation for the ‘Resilient Performance Index’. It goes a bit like this:

My thinking is that the first term is the ‘Workload mass’, so hours spent compared to the mean. The second term is a ‘craft bonus’ where the hours per model is compared to the mean hours per model. Third term models ‘throughput under pressure’ by taking the amount of models painted, comparing to the mean, while considering the pressure felt while painting. The last term is a resilience amplifier, so it should boost pressure IF pressure is coupled with hours. I am looking forward to seeing how this will evolve as we go.