The inaugural World Championships of Warhammer are just two weeks away, running from Thursday, the 16th of November, until Sunday, the 19th of November. The best and brightest players from over 40 different countries will come together to answer the ultimate question: Who are the best Warhammer players in the world?
This huge four-day spectacular will cement international bragging rights for Warhammer players the world over, in an invitational tournament featuring 340 entrants for Warhammer 40,000, Warhammer Age of Sigmar, Kill Team, and Warhammer Underworlds. Every player will compete for individual glory along the way, in categories for generalship, paint skills, and more.
We’ll have all the live coverage here on Warhammer Community and on the Warhammer Twitch channel, so you can cheer along at home as your team racks up the medals. Support your local team, or back the plucky underdogs, it’s all to play for in Atlanta, USA.
There’ll be Golds, Silvers and Bronzes in all sorts of categories – best overall, best general, best painting, best-in-faction, and more across all four systems, with a live medal table throughout.
This is a total celebration of the best competitive play in the Warhammer hobby. All year, players from across the world have been playing in close-fought qualifying tournaments for their ticket to the finals of the World Championships of Warhammer, and all that work will come to fruition over four days.
The competition is a diverse celebration of worldwide Warhammer, with participants attending from five continents, and travelling from as far away as Australia, China, and Argentina. Each and every one of them has fought a hard campaign to reach these World Championships, conquering all before them at regional tournaments. Some countries, like Vietnam and Iceland, are sending just a handful of players – and even the host nation of the USA is heavily outnumbered, making up less than a third of the total players.
These players have journeyed from far and wide to jockey for individual awards – and this World Championship will also track the overall performance of their home nations! So how does the system work?
Each player earns World Championship Points (WCPs) throughout the competition, based on their performance in various disciplines. For example, the winners of the Best Overall category in their respective game will be awarded up to 10 WCPs, as seen in the table below.
With more than 340 participants from over 40 nations, we want to give every country a fighting chance – whether they have a hundred players in attendance or only a handful. As such, only the top five points awarded to each nation will contribute to their final score. Likewise, each player can only contribute one result, so if you’re amazing enough to earn six points for your painting prowess and seven from your final tally of Victory Points, only your seven will be counted toward the World Championship Points.*
To give you a quick rundown of how the tournament itself works, we’ll take a look at the Warhammer 40,000 brackets. Everyone who starts on Thursday will be organised into one of eight pools, just like major sports tournaments, and after five intense matches over two days, the winner will advance to the coveted Championship Bracket.
From there, it’s a cut-and-thrust double elimination tournament to determine the final victor and holder of the Best General trophy. This format allows those who lose a Championship Bracket game to claw their way back in – but if you lose a second, you’re out.
Every other player will instead enter the World Bracket, playing three games over Saturday and Sunday. World Bracket players can still contend for the Best Overall, Best Faction, and other awards, so playing well here is important, too – plus, these games will win points that affect their country’s overall ranking.
The tournaments for all four game systems run on roughly the same rules. But if you’re REALLY keen to know all of the nuanced detail, you can find a more in-depth explanation – as well as detailed descriptions of the brackets with timings and schedules – in the downloadable event rules packets below.
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This is nothing less than the crucible in which the best Warhammer players in the world will play the fiercest games of their lives – but it’s also a celebration of all things Warhammer, and a tribute to the global scene of independent tournament organisers, who do incredible work all year round to build the community in their regions.
And don’t forget, the World Championships of Warhammer aren’t the only thing going on in Atlanta that weekend – the Grand Narrative is also being held at the venue, in which intrepid Warhammer 40,000 players will head to the Patat System to battle for death and glory. We’ll have coverage of that event too - but we don’t want to spoil any surprises for the players yet!
Tune in and make sure to catch every nail-biting moment!
And if you missed out on a ticket this year, keep your eyes open for qualifying events in 2024, both at official Warhammer tournaments and major independent events.
* Unless fewer than five players are attending from a particular country, like our four attendees from Thailand.