DEFINITIONS

GLOSSARY

What the terms in the Archive mean.

The Archive runs two technical vocabularies side by side: the language of competitive 40k (attackers, defenders, MFM cycles, the captain dance) and the language of statistics (confidence intervals, between-event variance, prediction intervals). The two meet most directly in the methodology pieces. This glossary catalogs both — alongside the Archive's own internal vocabulary — in plain, paraphrased terms. No rules text or point values are reproduced.

JUMP TO
WTC AND TEAM-40K VOCABULARY
Anchor
A pairing-strategy term: a high-confidence positive matchup a captain tries to lock in early, anchoring the round around it.
Attacker
In WTC pairings, a player offered up to face the opposing team's chosen defender. Each push offers two attackers per side; the defender's captain refuses one. See: Defender, Refusal.
Blind written
A pairing protocol in which both captains commit to their full pairing simultaneously, without seeing the other's. The Archive's Pairings Tool computes the assignment-optimal ceiling under blind written. See: WTC sequential.
Captain
In team formats, the player responsible for pairing decisions on behalf of their team. The captain plays the pairing process; the players play the games.
Captain dance
Informal name for the WTC pairing process: secret defender, attacker pair, refusal, repeated across three pushes. So called because it has a rhythm of its own.
Defender
In WTC pairings, the player a team puts up to receive two attackers from the opposing team. The defending captain refuses one; the other is locked into the pairing. See: Attacker, Refusal.
Maximin
Pick the option whose worst-case outcome is best. The defender-selection logic in WTC: a captain who plays maximin chooses the player whose round-value is least bad across all possible opposing defenders.
Pairing
A single matchup at a tournament — one player against one player, one table, one round. In team play, the eight pairings of an 8v8 WTC round.
Push
One of the three pairing rounds in WTC's 8v8 format. Each push secretly resolves one defender per side, two attackers per side, and a refusal. Together the three pushes lock all eight pairings.
Refusal
Declining one of two attackers offered against your defender. The non-refused attacker is locked into the pairing; the refused one returns to the pool (pushes 1 and 2) or fights the other team's refused attacker (push 3).
Table choice token
A marker passed between captains during WTC pairings granting the holder first pick of which table the defender's pairing will play on. Alternates per push.
Team event
Tournaments where players compete as members of a roster (typically 5–8 players), with team scores aggregated across pairings. Distinct from individual events.
WTC
World Team Championship. The major annual international team event in competitive 40k.
WTC sequential
The actual WTC pairing protocol: three sequential pushes of secret defender, attacker pair, and refusal. Distinct from blind written. The Archive's Pairings Tool offers WTC Sequential as its primary mode.
COMPETITIVE SCORING
20-0
A maximum-margin result in the WTC point system, where the winning player takes all 20 tournament points available for that pairing. Reflects a primary-score victory plus a sufficiently large difference on secondary or victory points.
Primary
The main scoring track in a 40k game; victory hinges on accumulating primary points across the rounds. Distinct from secondary objectives.
Secondary
Side objectives a player commits to at the start of a game, scored independently of the primary. Tournament formats vary in how secondaries are selected and scored.
Tabled
When a player loses all their units before the game's natural end, ending the game early. A common cause of maximum-margin results.
Tempo
Informal term for the rhythm of scoring and initiative in a game — who is dictating the action and who is reacting.
VP
Victory Points. The granular score within a single game; tournaments often map VP totals onto a coarser tournament-point scale.
WTC point system
A 20-point scoring scale used at the World Team Championship and many ITC-format events. Each pairing produces a numeric result on 0–20, summed across the team to give the round's team score.
FORMAT AND EVENT TERMS
Dataslate
A periodic balance-and-rules update from Games Workshop, adjusting army rules, detachments, and special rules outside the regular codex cycle.
Edition
A major rules generation in Warhammer 40,000 (currently 10th). Editions involve wholesale rules revisions and reset most of the points landscape. See: Chronicle.
ETC
European Team Championship. The major European team event, equivalent in scale and prestige to WTC.
GT
Grand Tournament. A larger competitive event, typically two days, with longer rounds and a deeper field than a regional.
ITC
Independent Tournament Circuit. A North American competitive ecosystem and scoring system; uses its own pairing and scoring conventions.
MFM
Munitorum Field Manual. Games Workshop's periodic points-cost document, updated several times per edition. Most balance shifts in the meta are anchored to MFM cycles.
MFM cycle
The period between successive MFM releases, during which the points landscape is stable. Win-rate analysis often segments data by MFM cycle to avoid pooling across distinct rules environments.
RTT
Rogue Trader Tournament. A smaller, typically single-day competitive event — historically the entry-level competitive format.
GAME TERMS RELEVANT TO DATA
Codex
In Games Workshop's terminology, the army book for a single faction containing rules, units, and lore. The Archive references them by name without reproducing their content.
Datasheet
A unit's profile sheet, listing weapons, statistics, and special abilities. The Archive references datasheets by name without reproducing their contents.
Detachment
A list-building structure within a faction, defining which units may be taken and what shared rules they receive. A faction may have several detachments with very different rules emphases.
ELO-adjusted win rate
A win rate weighted by the strength of opponents faced, accounting for the fact that not all games are played against the same field. Tends to reduce apparent win rates for factions favored by stronger players and elevate underplayed factions whose pilots are above average.
Faction
One of Games Workshop's named armies in 40k (Necrons, Aeldari, Astra Militarum, and so on). The Archive analyzes the metagame at the faction level and below in Dossiers; faction names appear under nominative fair use.
FAQ
Frequently Asked Questions document issued by Games Workshop for an edition or supplement, clarifying rules interactions and correcting errata. Frequent FAQ updates can shift the meta within a single MFM cycle.
List
A specific army a player has built and registered for an event. Two players of the same faction can bring very different lists; aggregator data often conflates the two levels.
Spike
An unusually high one-event result for a faction or player, often dramatized in coverage but typically within the noise floor of single-event variance. See: Variance, Sample size.
Win rate
The proportion of games a player or faction wins over some sample. Often presented as a single number with an apparent precision the underlying data does not support. See: Confidence interval, Sample size.
ARCHIVE-INTERNAL VOCABULARY
The Archivist
The Archive's institutional voice. The intelligence that catalogs and computes. Presents data, methodology, and the Strength Index. Has no opinions and no conflicts of interest. See: The Editor.
Awakenings
The Archive's weekly dispatch. A periodical synthesizing what shifted in the metagame each week.
The Captain Decision Archive
Inside Matrix: annotated decisions from real and illustrative WTC rounds; the why behind notable captain calls.
Chronicle
The Archive's history section. The long view: edition retrospectives, faction arcs, balance-pass post-mortems.
Dossiers
The Archive's faction field guide section. Currently hosts the Strength Index; will grow to per-faction dossiers and archetype taxonomy.
The Editor
The Archive's human voice. Interprets data, writes editorial synthesis, discloses material connections. Distinct from the Archivist.
Matrix
The Archive's team-40k section. Hosts the Pairings Tool and the Captain Decision Archive; will grow to live and practice tools.
The Pairings Tool
Inside Matrix: a calculator that runs either the blind-written ceiling (assignment-optimal) or the WTC three-push sequential solver against an 8×8 matchup matrix.
Protocol
The Archive's methodology section. The place the Archive shows its work — confidence intervals, sample-size adequacy, two-proportion tests, the methodology library, and this glossary.
Quantum
The Archive's dashboard section. Presents current metagame snapshots, charts, and KPI strips. Distinct from Chronicle (history) and Awakenings (weekly).
The Strength Index
Inside Dossiers: a composite faction tier list across singles, teams, and crossover modes, with a historical filter from MFM 1.2 forward.
Wayfinder
The Archive's ecosystem directory section. Curated outbound links to other 40k resources, with disclosure tags where the Editor has a material connection to a listed resource.
STATISTICAL TERMS
Binomial distribution
The probability distribution of the number of wins across a fixed number of games, given a single underlying win rate. The mathematical structure behind why an individual player's record at a single event carries more noise than the form suggests. See: Sample size, Variance.
Cochran's Q
A test statistic for between-event heterogeneity. Asks whether the apparent faction win rate is really one global meta or several localized ones. See: I², Random-effects model, Fixed-effects model.
Confidence interval (CI)
A range that captures the underlying probability with a stated likelihood (commonly 95%) given the observed data. Narrows as the sample grows; widens when between-event variance is properly accounted for.
Fixed-effects model
In meta-analysis, the assumption that every observation comes from the same underlying truth and variation is just sampling noise. The implicit assumption behind pooled win-rate reporting; often wrong. See: Random-effects model, Pooled.
I²
A statistic quantifying how much of the total variance in a set of estimates is between-source rather than within-source. In faction analysis, an I² near zero suggests one global meta; high I² suggests metas are localized.
Pooled
Aggregating all observations into one sample for analysis. The standard practice in current 40k aggregator reporting. Simple and powerful when the assumption holds; misleading when it doesn't.
Prediction interval
A range expected to contain the next observation — in faction analysis, the next event's win rate. Always wider than the confidence interval, and a more honest summary when reporting "what should we expect at the next event."
Random-effects model
In meta-analysis, the assumption that each event has its own true underlying value, drawn from a distribution. Models between-event variance explicitly. The more honest framing for clustered metas. See: Fixed-effects model, Cochran's Q, I².
Sample size
The number of observations underlying an estimate. Large samples produce narrow confidence intervals; small samples produce noisy ones regardless of how clean the calculation looks.
Significance
Whether an observed difference is large enough to be unlikely under the null hypothesis. Pooled significance tests routinely overstate confidence when between-event variance is real.
Variance
Loosely, the role of dice in outcomes; tightly, the statistical measure of dispersion. In tournament results, both senses matter — a single game reflects skill, list, and dice, and a single tournament reflects all three across many games.