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late evening after football. And I'm feeling philosophical. Since I just had an interesting conversation with one of my gaming buddies, Who is a HEAVY metagamer, I got inspired.

Most people are guilty of metagaming in warhammer. by this i mean looking at other armies and planning the best way to defeat them with what's avalable to your own force. Some people do this religiously, making spreadsheets, rolling millions of dice, or just calculating sheer odds on the dice rolls for specfic situations. the question I'm asking here is:

do you as a player who may or may not Metagame to this level, have a diffrent sort of plan or tactic for countering an opponent who IS one of the aformentioned metagamers?

example: your playing a game against a player who you know does the mathhammer, and spends all of if not most of his/her free time planning on ways to crush your army. do you even bother to counter this by changing your list,ignore it and just play, or do something else? is there even a point to making an attempt at countering? what about a reverse meta game? "i know he thinks this, so ill do that instead"

what level of planning and counter planning do most people put into a game? personally, I prefer to take my list and make my opponent plan against me... since now we are playing the game to my terms. But i imagine there are multiple schools of thought here. I would like to hear what the community of dakka has to say on this.

I almost always try to go against the current meta when designing my own lists. For example I mostly play armies now that have little to no mech.

Meta-gaming and one-vs-one tweaking are two different things. One-vs-One tweaking is just lame, and should never be done because if you are tweaking to beat one person it detracts from the entire experience for both players.

Now meta-gaming, does not rely on math-hammer or any fancy calculations. It's is building a list based on expected opponent lists. Based on the variation of the Warhammer possiblities, you can only meta-game to a certain extent. You have to maximize your odds of beating the most faced opponents.

Here is where rogue makes a big difference, because all your meta-gaming and planning will be focused on killing the common lists and then lacks the capability to deal with rogue lists out there. Rogue-listing is a form of meta-gaming, not to beat anything specific but to throw off other players.

Meta-gaming is something that is done by almost all players, sometimes without even realizing. If your friends group plays with alot of SM Land Raiders, you will up the amount of AV14 you bring in your list. Not to kill the land raider, or ruin anyones experience, just to ensure you can deal with that land raider.

You cannot build an all-comers WAAC list that will will every game. 40K will always be Rock-Paper-Scissors, even if it is a mingling of smaller rock-paper-scissors games between various units.

My focus concerning playing 40k is getting away from necessary (means: being dependent on them) dice rolls.

My credo is: Move as long as you can and fight as scarcely as possible. And if you have to fight, then fight with local superiority.

The ideal battle for me is 5-7 turns of repositioning, setting traps and Killzones without even the need of executing those and winning the battle.

Therefore I look on opponents from a strategic point of view.

This is something like earth, water and air armies.

And my thinking is: There are basically 2 ways to get initiative on the 40k table:

Mobility (also: speed)
Numbers (also: resilience)

Therefore I have do deal with either of them equally good.
So mobility has to be taken out early in game. This requires either alphastrike or long range weaponry.
Numbers you dont have to get rid of as long as they dont disturb your plans. If they do, they have to be wiped with a well prepared strike with superior force (due to better mobility, because the opponents mobility has been taken out already).

Often a single tank shock in an objective game reduces numbers to nothing, so why bother rolling any dice
And often some pot shots take out the opponents transports early, so who cares about the odds being 0,51 or 0,53 if the odds are lower, well I can also take them out turn 2 or turn 3, a game has 5-7 turns...

Of course you have to look at the codizes where the opponents strength is (otherwise you will suffer from too many unhappy surprises due to special rules...), but tailoring a list against specific targets (apart from the in some cases necessary: "If the opponent brings unit X I am screwed, so I take unit Y or manoeuvre Z to counter it" thinking) always means reducing the capabilities against other opponents. This would be foolish.

And I think a warhammer player should think bigger than "what is better against AV12 a meltagun or an autocannon" stupidity.

DarthSpader wrote:late evening after football. And I'm feeling philosophical. Since I just had an interesting conversation with one of my gaming buddies, Who is a HEAVY metagamer, I got inspired.

Most people are guilty of metagaming in warhammer. by this i mean looking at other armies and planning the best way to defeat them with what's avalable to your own force. Some people do this religiously, making spreadsheets, rolling millions of dice, or just calculating sheer odds on the dice rolls for specfic situations. the question I'm asking here is:

do you as a player who may or may not Metagame to this level, have a diffrent sort of plan or tactic for countering an opponent who IS one of the aformentioned metagamers?

example: your playing a game against a player who you know does the mathhammer, and spends all of if not most of his/her free time planning on ways to crush your army. do you even bother to counter this by changing your list,ignore it and just play, or do something else? is there even a point to making an attempt at countering? what about a reverse meta game? "i know he thinks this, so ill do that instead"

what level of planning and counter planning do most people put into a game? personally, I prefer to take my list and make my opponent plan against me... since now we are playing the game to my terms. But i imagine there are multiple schools of thought here. I would like to hear what the community of dakka has to say on this.

I agree with you in not playing against an expected meta. It presumes you know the future, which of course you dont. If everyone is playing against the meta in order to get 1 step ahead, then there is no meta and everyone is planning against a non-existant scenario. I put melta on everything and try to run at least 20 of these guns in my army because sufficient numbers of meltaguns can handle any number of armored targets and monstrous creatures. I also try to take as many flamers as possible. Between those I know that I have the tools to handle whatever my opponent throws at me. The converse of that is taking as few armored targets as possible, since I also know that there will be alot of anti tank weapons out there, melta or no, and I dont want to give them much of a target. 40k is different from magic in that its harder for people to put an army together than it is for them to put a deck together, so the concept of the meta game doesnt transfer quite as nicely. In 40k you need to prepare for a much broader set of scenarios than in magic.

I keep the local meta in mind, but when I build a list, or face a list that is built to defeat me, I just really play through. Then again, I'm the laziest tactician who ever lived. I try to incorporate units into my army with a specific goal in mind, and I have some generalist units as well. Basically, I write a semi-decent all-comers list and see what happens.

Honestly, I feel that the meta is important, but not sacrosanct. It's merely what most people are taking, and while it's effectiveness cannot be denied, I find that personally it's just the standard, something to definitely make sure you can deal with.

i do like bucking the trend and that is something most "meta" lists can't handle.


I occasionally bring my GKs out and once i got put against a Guard army that was a mix of Power Blobs and Mech. every heavy weapon was a lascannon.

My GKs were completely on foot, the only vehicles were my 2 Dreadnoughts. i had over 50 GKs on the table as a result.


the Power blob, dispite outflanking, was cut down by massed Stormbolter fire. my Grey knights just advanced and he simpy couldn't do enough wounds with Lasguns and Melta guns to stop me and he was ripped to shreds.

he wasn't prepared to deal with a non-mechanized force.

Alright. let the king of META bring two scenarios to this thread, in addition to a personal answer.

First, taken from my Awesome Thread of METANESS where I discuss my life as a professional 40k gamer....I offer two "Ask a 40k Pro" situations concerning META.


1.

Dashofpepper wrote:Actually, I'm not going to Disneyworld, but my wife is in a couple of weeks while I go to a tournament.

In response to the question, "What will you do now?" I offer this insight into the skills of a professional gamer:

Working on my META skills are definitely what helped me get ahead; if I had to rate META skills, its like my META is so far ahead of everyone elses' META that while everyone was catching up to 5th edition META, I was zooming through sixth edition, and now my META is so advanced that its gone full circle around to first edition and is about to hit third edition. Which is why I now play Necrons. Seriously. Sitting here right now getting ready to assemble some wraiths. My META skills are so advanced that I'm going to LAP everyone elses' understanding of META soon.

2.

Dashofpepper wrote:So I keep getting a lot of questions and more e-mails and stuff, and thought I would share a very good question from a pro 40k aspirant:

The Hod wrote:

@Dash

Can I hire you to play in my games then?

Sure man sure, I get like tons of requests from people to fill in for their important league games, and I usually get paid a retainer fee to attend the last round of a tournament so that the top players can have a bidding war to get me to play their last game for them. Sometimes I do like semi pro-bono work and only charge half price to be an in-game tactical consultant or to loan my META skills to whoever hired me, but I don’t want to get in the habit of hooking up people too much or people will start expecting my advice for free.

Now, with all that said - The **METAGAME** isn't worth considering to a truly tactically minded player. There are four questions that I think are of the utmost importance to asking yourself when making a list.
Question #1: Does my list have the potential to take on mechanized lists?
Question #2: Does my list have the potential to take on non-mechanized lists?
Question #3: Does my list have synergy and a theme tying it together?
Question #4: Does my list efficiently spend points?

If the answer to all four of those questions is yes, then its a good list. Here's a great example: I played Dark Eldar this year. Mostly. Renowned Ork player takes DE around the circuit. =p I've traveled the country this year for tournaments....I even won my Golden Ticket to the Vegas sham with my Dark Eldar. I'm 35 wins, 1 loss. The one loss was Game 5 of the SoCal Slaughter in Space GT. I was *so* drunk that we didn't get past turn three...and it was a killpoint game. My opponent had some weaponless immobilized rhinos, a gone-to-ground unit of 1 plague marine, and was winning by one killpoint. Cost me the game. =D

I've run the same list (plus or minus a points from 1500-2000 depending on tournament) at every tournament in the country, regardless of local meta, mission rules, specific scenarios....whether every game was annihilation, or the mission penalized having a fast army, or caused auto-glances / pens / wounds on units within certain criteria - my list never changed. My orks did the same; I've run the same list at every GT and RTT and everything else I've attended to exceptional results.

Why?

Because I don't believe in the *METAGAME*. I believe in knowing my army, my list, how to use it in a wide array of scenarios, asking questions illustrated above when forming a list, and asking questions before a game of my opponent to make sure I understand the capabilities of their list. I can't tell you how many times I've gone to face someone and they didn't need a copy of my list because they knew what I was running. Or even had a copy of my list already - not like my batreps and everything else on the internet doesn't have it posted all over. Did it make me change anything? Nope.

Abandon attempts to understand the metagame, play to it, configure your army to meet its demands - those are all actions of....for lack of a better term that I can think of at the moment, an inferior player.

100% agreed Dash

hence why my GKs have a decent winning streak


que Mr. Abbadon's response

Its pretty contrary for you to make a list of things to do while list building that is half meta-considerations, and then go on to say that you don't believe in the metagame.

Preparing to face both mechanized and non-mechanized opponents is exactly what metagaming is: preparing yourself for the type of opponents you are likely to see.

I completely agree that most of what wins tournaments (apart from needing some luck) is sound tactics. But everyone still makes sure to kit out their toolbox (armylist) for what they expect to see.

One limiting factor on metagaming is the diversity of armies. If there were only a few armies to choose from, metagaming would be a stronger influence on the tournament scene than it is now. The fact that metagaming, while still a factor, is not as significant is just a testimony to the fact that the game is in relative balance.

In 40k metagaming is not about making your list good against a single strategy, simply because there is not a single strategy that trumps everything else. Metagaming 40k is about bringing the right quantity and quality of tools to prevent opponents from executing their strategies and allowing you to execute your own. This generally means bringing the right amount of anti-tank weaponry given how many vehicles you expect to see, and the right amount of anti-infantry given the amount of infantry you expect to see.

Metagamers who only think about specifically beating other players' lists are not seeing the whole picture. The mission is also important, since how you will play for one mission is completely differnt than how you will play for another. Case in point, with my Ork army if I am playing a capture and control mission, I always put my objective as far back as I can in one corner and protect is fairly well, but not obsessively, so that I can surround the enemy objective with a tighly packed hemisphere is mixed horde/mech destruction regardless of casualties, because even if I run out of units to claim the other objective, I can still win if I claim one and contest the other. I usually win these games, except against really good players with lost of deep strike units. However, I usually struggle regardless of the enemy if the mission is annihilation, because then I can't treat any of my units as disposable. From what I've heard, at 'Ard Boyz they have some pretty screwy missions, so they should even the odds between the hardcore metagamers, unless they just try to table the other player, which means you're not even trying to have a good time or provide a good time for your opponent. Of course, that's just me, I prefer to win by accomplishing the mission goals then just by mindless killing.

Dashofpepper wrote:Alright. let the king of META bring two scenarios to this thread, in addition to a personal answer.

First, taken from my Awesome Thread of METANESS where I discuss my life as a professional 40k gamer....I offer two "Ask a 40k Pro" situations concerning META.


1.

Dashofpepper wrote:Actually, I'm not going to Disneyworld, but my wife is in a couple of weeks while I go to a tournament.

In response to the question, "What will you do now?" I offer this insight into the skills of a professional gamer:

Working on my META skills are definitely what helped me get ahead; if I had to rate META skills, its like my META is so far ahead of everyone elses' META that while everyone was catching up to 5th edition META, I was zooming through sixth edition, and now my META is so advanced that its gone full circle around to first edition and is about to hit third edition. Which is why I now play Necrons. Seriously. Sitting here right now getting ready to assemble some wraiths. My META skills are so advanced that I'm going to LAP everyone elses' understanding of META soon.

2.

Dashofpepper wrote:So I keep getting a lot of questions and more e-mails and stuff, and thought I would share a very good question from a pro 40k aspirant:

The Hod wrote:

@Dash

Can I hire you to play in my games then?

Sure man sure, I get like tons of requests from people to fill in for their important league games, and I usually get paid a retainer fee to attend the last round of a tournament so that the top players can have a bidding war to get me to play their last game for them. Sometimes I do like semi pro-bono work and only charge half price to be an in-game tactical consultant or to loan my META skills to whoever hired me, but I don’t want to get in the habit of hooking up people too much or people will start expecting my advice for free.

Now, with all that said - The **METAGAME** isn't worth considering to a truly tactically minded player. There are four questions that I think are of the utmost importance to asking yourself when making a list.
Question #1: Does my list have the potential to take on mechanized lists?
Question #2: Does my list have the potential to take on non-mechanized lists?
Question #3: Does my list have synergy and a theme tying it together?
Question #4: Does my list efficiently spend points?

If the answer to all four of those questions is yes, then its a good list. Here's a great example: I played Dark Eldar this year. Mostly. Renowned Ork player takes DE around the circuit. =p I've traveled the country this year for tournaments....I even won my Golden Ticket to the Vegas sham with my Dark Eldar. I'm 35 wins, 1 loss. The one loss was Game 5 of the SoCal Slaughter in Space GT. I was *so* drunk that we didn't get past turn three...and it was a killpoint game. My opponent had some weaponless immobilized rhinos, a gone-to-ground unit of 1 plague marine, and was winning by one killpoint. Cost me the game. =D

I've run the same list (plus or minus a points from 1500-2000 depending on tournament) at every tournament in the country, regardless of local meta, mission rules, specific scenarios....whether every game was annihilation, or the mission penalized having a fast army, or caused auto-glances / pens / wounds on units within certain criteria - my list never changed. My orks did the same; I've run the same list at ever GT, and for the most part mercilessly stomped on people.

Why?

Because I don't believe in the *METAGAME*. I believe in knowing my army, my list, how to use it in a wide array of scenarios, asking questions illustrated above when forming a list, and asking questions before a game of my opponent to make sure I understand the capabilities of their list. I can't tell you how many times I've gone to face someone and they didn't need a copy of my list because they knew what I was running. Or even had a copy of my list already - not like my batreps and everything else on the internet doesn't have it posted all over. Did it make me change anything? Nope.

Abandon attempts to understand the metagame, play to it, configure your army to meet its demands - those are all actions of....for lack of a better term that I can think of at the moment, an inferior player.

short version please?

Dashofpepper wrote:
Now, with all that said - The **METAGAME** isn't worth considering to a truly tactically minded player.

I disagree. It's not just about knowing your list inside out. Nor is it just about the metagame. It's about both. Leave aside 40k: isn't it basic stuff to actually research what your opponent can or can do? That's why you have spies in war, or you watch your next opponent's games in sports like boxing. In the end, metagaming is simply preparing yourself for what is likely to come their way, which is good, but is incomplete. So is just knowing your list through and through; it's a masturbatory exercise at the very least.

A guy focusing on his good list is just as mediocre as the guy who just thinks of how to beat the current meta. Both are important, and to ignore one to focus on the other is just to hamper yourself. I hate to sound like a Sun Tzu fan but...

Sun Tzu wrote: Hence the saying: If you know the enemy
and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a
hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy,
for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat.
If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will
succumb in every battle.

starsdawn wrote:

I disagree. It's not just about knowing your list inside out. Nor is it just about the metagame. It's about both. Leave aside 40k: isn't it basic stuff to actually research what your opponent can or can do? That's why you have spies in war, or you watch your next opponent's games in sports like boxing. In the end, metagaming is simply preparing yourself for what is likely to come their way, which is good, but is incomplete. So is just knowing your list through and through; it's a masturbatory exercise at the very least.

A guy focusing on his good list is just as mediocre as the guy who just thinks of how to beat the current meta. Both are important, and to ignore one to focus on the other is just to hamper yourself. I hate to sound like a Sun Tzu fan but...

A different list will be more effective against a mechanized guard player than against a tyranid player. If I were to custom build a list to play against each, it would be quite different. The armies I play and the lists I use are weaker against Mech IG for example than other armies. The release of new codexes hasn't changed the lists I use for each army, nor should it. My ork list is the same one that I was using before the new IG codex, the Space Wolf Codex, the Tyranid codex, the Blood Angel codex, and the Dark Eldar codex. My Dark Eldar army didn't change a whit in the last year until this month when it was forced to by my new codex release.

My point is that I think it is *FAR* more important to know your own army, how to use it in a variety of situations....and then to be quick on your feet with understanding immediate threats you face against you on a table then to try roleplaying or dice-rolling or math-hammering out what statistical outcomes will be against different armies or builds. Kind of like poker. Don't worry about what the other people might have. Focus on what cards you have.

If you know your own army and it's capabilities and have a good idea of what each opposing army can do then you will win.


it's more important to know your own army.

You statement about poker is misleading, because you worry about what you have in the context of how good it is against other possible hands. Then comes in the psychological aspect of telling a bluff.

A big part of knowing what your army or units can do is mathhammering, although many people get their information from experience rather than direct calculation.

Certainly winning an event is more about the general than anything else. Its when you come across an equal or when the dice equalize your skills that meta factors end up deciding it. I'd rather come prepared for those situations than not.

*shrug*

Gettting back to one of the OP's questions, to counter the mathhammer\meta-game you only need to understand the key thing about people, they are all very lazy creatures. It's my personal experiance that most people won't bother downloading mathhammer unless it's to win a specific argument on the internet. The tailored lists you see people bring are the cookie-cutter versions, or ever so slight variations of ones they found on the internet. So to beat them simply google "*Army Name* power list WH40K" or something like that and look at what they will bring. This also saves you from having to fight those people in the LGS who won't let you see there list until turn 2 because they think they are being clever with their "counts as" crap and sneaking in other units... sorry... done ranting now.

Some people consider what I do to be meta-gaming or one on one tailoring but I disagree. What I do is have a solid core of units that that makes up about 2/3 or my lists points then two variations for the rest, one optimized against horde and another against mech. I don't magnatize any of my models, I don't spam any particular weapon and I don't aim to beat any particular army only the tactics behind them.

Dashofpepper wrote:

A different list will be more effective against a mechanized guard player than against a tyranid player. If I were to custom build a list to play against each, it would be quite different. The armies I play and the lists I use are weaker against Mech IG for example than other armies.

The thing is, would you use the same list if you know that the metagame would be, say, 75% Mech IG piloted by pretty competent players?

And poker also uses mathhammer, too. It's all about calculating possibilities, instinctively or mathematically. It's also not the same animal as 40k because you really can't know the metagame of poker, if there really is one. The only way to know what your opponent's cards hold is for him/her to reveal it, intentionally or no. Unlike 40k, yes? There's the internet for example, where you can see the trends of the popular lists. You can also see it at your local LGS, and you can remember what this or that guy usually plays.

Now, relying solely on that information is just stupid, but ignoring it is just wasteful, which your first post seem to imply (you did say you don't give hell what the metagame is). Knowing what you can do is important, yes, but to ignore the fact that you could also know what your opponent can do and claim it's unimportant... well, let's just say that's suboptimal. you need both skill and knowledge to win consistently.

It's like playing Starcraft and saying to yourself "Oh no I won't scout the enemy base because I have 1337 micro skillz". Sure, you may be good, but even if you play really good Scissors, you'd be beaten up if everyone brings Rock.

Also, I've never met anyone who roleplayed in a 40k tournament. How does that work if you're playing Tyranids? Pretend you're the soul of the Hivemind or somerhing and communicate with buzzes?

Dracos wrote:
You statement about poker is misleading, because you worry about what you have in the context of how good it is against other possible hands. Then comes in the psychological aspect of telling a bluff.

If that were true, it would be impossible to succeed at playing poker digitally wouldn't it? There are no other players for you to look at, tells to spot....simply what you have in your hand and what is on the table. But you *can* succeed at playing poker online - if you tend the hand you have.

I'm not advocating a single correct approach to a game. There are a lot of factors that go into each person's approach.

Here's an example.

In the near future, I'm going to be building a DE assault army. I'm currently playing a shooting army because I haven't determined what kind of assault army to build....in part because of a lack of actual models being released; and while I still have my wych cult, losing wych weapons hurts. A lot. Here's how my list will be built.

#1: Wyches vs. Wracks vs. Incubi. I need the ability to put out massed attacks to deal with hordes. I also need the ability to put out power weapon attacks at better initiative than terminators. My unit selection will be based on that.

#2: Theme: Depending on what kind of theme I end up with (wych cult vs. haemy cult vs archon's cult), I will have to decide if I want large squads or small squads - which will determine if I use raiders, venoms, or try making webway portals work.

#3: Anti-tank: Dark Lances got quite expensive and harder to acquire in the FoC, so I will start inserting anti-tank into hopefully every unit on the board. Haywire grenades, blasters, blast guns, anything that I can.

#4: HQ: What HQ choices would be the best support for the army I built? Vect can be a CC monster. Can I justify the points for him? With a 4+ seize? How will having a 4+ seize affect my deployments? Will it make me more likely to deploy when I would otherwise reserve? My vehicles *are* after all AV10 open-topped.

#5: Optimization: Am I wasting points anywhere? Can I slim down anything?
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
And then my list is built. I don't take any particular opponent army into consideration, I just make sure I have the ability to potentially have an answer for everything. Since its an assault army, I need to be able to crack open transports so that I can assault what is inside them.

My focus after that is to put it on the field and see what it looks like. Move it around and get a feel for its synergy. Then to test it against people. I don't care what armies I play against; I'm more concerned with how MY army works with itself as a whole, not about how I match up against a particular army. That comes later.

And finally, when I'm comfortable with the army I have, how it works together....when I show up to a game, I look closely at each unit, what it has, and I look for the biggest threats to me. And then I focus on neutralizing those first. I played against Tyranids yesterday - he had stealer shock with Tyrannofex support. My first turn, I could have cleaned half the board (maybe) of his gargoyles and genestealers, but instead I concentrated all fire on his two tyrannofexes. One went down and one took two wounds. One less threat to my vehicles. The next turn I concentrated on the other tyrannofex; 50-60 shots to take it down. Then his Hive guard. Those were the biggest threats to me. Against a mech IG player earlier in the day, two ravagers and a trueborn unit jumped in from reserve in the corner and wrecked a squadron of three leman russ battletanks as their primary target - because I thought those were the biggest threat to me.

I just don't think that building your list to take on certain other armies is worthy. I think everyone should have a little checklist (Ok, I have the potential to take on infantry, vehicles, monstrous creatures, models with 2+ armour saves). That's about as meta as it should get. =p

Dashofpepper wrote:

Dracos wrote:
You statement about poker is misleading, because you worry about what you have in the context of how good it is against other possible hands. Then comes in the psychological aspect of telling a bluff.

If that were true, it would be impossible to succeed at playing poker digitally wouldn't it? There are no other players for you to look at, tells to spot....simply what you have in your hand and what is on the table. But you *can* succeed at playing poker online - if you tend the hand you have.

Funnily enough, professional poker players playing online rely more on math-hammering and calculating the statistical outcomes than anything else, since you can't bluff for gak.

Dashofpepper wrote:I just don't think that building your list to take on certain other armies is worthy. I think everyone should have a little checklist (Ok, I have the potential to take on infantry, vehicles, monstrous creatures, models with 2+ armour saves). That's about as meta as it should get. =p

And so we are in agreement. I was simply saying that these things are meta considerations. So while there are meta considerations, they are mostly general concepts and not specific strategies.

It's important to be aware of the meta so you know what to expect. If you build a balanced army you can beat any army including the odd ball lists trying to take advantage of the meta. Basically there are three ascepts to the game - movement, shooting and assault. If you are strong in all three then you've got a great army. If you strong in two you still have a good army (e.g., mech IG). If you are only strong in two of the three categories then your army has a weakness that can be exploited. Mobility/movement is the least dependent on dice/chance so that is very important to consider and take advantage of if you can. To me it's all about going for the high odds and maximizing those probabilities.

Easy: Take units you like, units 'no one' uses, do random stuff.
Meta becomes a pyramid scheme-like cluster screw. Ignore it and dont' let it effect you.

Dashofpepper wrote:
I'm 35 wins, 1 loss. The one loss was Game 5 of the SoCal Slaughter in Space GT. I was *so* drunk that we didn't get past turn three...and it was a killpoint game. My opponent had some weaponless immobilized rhinos, a gone-to-ground unit of 1 plague marine, and was winning by one killpoint. Cost me the game. =D

Its a great list and some good advice...

but didn't you experience some losses at the NOVA, St. Valentines day massacre and such?

In my local group, we don't have any of the big "meta's" that are around. I don't face any loyal Marine players, 2 IG players - one tank-happy, the other Artillery-Happy (with both using HWS) - an Ork player who's finally beginning to expand into his codex after using nothing but 180 boyz, a KFF, and a few support units (but no vehicles), a DE player who is now dabbling in Daemonhunters, a Tau player who doesn't use Markerlights or a lot of Fire Warriors, and a Chaos Marine player who runs a sub-par list and is not as into the game as he used to be.

This is my local meta. It would be dumb not for me to take all of this into account. I've begun dabbling into other races recently (using proxies), since I was trying Tyranids and was having 0 luck with them. It would be dumb not to be aware and take measures against all these major threats. Namely, no less than 2 Leman Russ tanks (probably 3), a few AV 12 guard vehicles, some guard artillery, HWS, ork boys and bikers, DE and their new, kick-ass codex, Grey Knights, Tau with a mix of range and CC, and a mediocre Chaos list and player (who I have never won against: 0-3. I'm not saying I'm better then him, just the opposite, just saying).

That being said, I have to plan for all this. I would be giving myself a lesser chance of winning if I didn't. However, I also plan for what I want my list to be able to do as well. And my list has a strategy, a plan, a dedicated purpose. I have built lists with the intention of ignoring one of the above things because I said "It's too much - this part of my enemy's force won't be able to handle the numbers/the resiliency/the speed of this list. And I plan for it by making my list make it a non-factor - this could potentially weaken my effectiveness against it, should an overwhelming amount of firepower of this type come to bear, but that's part of the game - since no list can beat another.

Plan for your local opponents, and discover yourself limited to beating only them.

Plan for hypothetical 'metagaming' opponents, and find yourself able to beat no-one.

Plan for EVERY eventuality, through a Balanced list, and reading every other Codex...and observe yourself able to beat everything.

Elessar wrote:Plan for your local opponents, and discover yourself limited to beating only them.

Plan for hypothetical 'metagaming' opponents, and find yourself able to beat no-one.

Plan for EVERY eventuality, through a Balanced list, and reading every other Codex...and observe yourself able to beat everything.

I do agree with this. Except the last line. You can never beat everything. Ever. There are too many options and too much parody in 40k for that to ever be the case.

In my personal case, I will never have the models for a tournament anyway. So I have no need to beat anyone other than my local group. I can't even go to a FLGS, since they play on Sundays, and I am eternally busy on that day (with my life outside Warhammer, see).

ive found that sometimes bringing a diffrent list or army then you normally do can often change things up. EG: if i normally play speed freaks with my orks, swapping to a green tide, or even a kanwall can completley change the game. personally the local meta at the FLGS is take as many tanks as possible, so ive started bringing mass infantry to counter that. sometimes it works well, and othertimes i get spanked.

but i do love it when an opponent is expecting one thing, tailors his list to beat what he thinks ill bring, then i surprize him with something totally diffrent.

I like playing with all kinds of armies (that is to say codicies), so I wouldn't mind changing my race from week to week.

And Tank spam is one player's favorite IG tactic in my group too. It sucks. I want to play a nice balanced army sometimes, and I gotta worry about tons of tanks all the time.

frgsinwntr wrote:
Its a great list and some good advice...

but didn't you experience some losses at the NOVA, St. Valentines day massacre and such?

Well, you can see all that in my signature. I brought Orks to both the Nova Open and the SVDM. I went 3-2 at the SVDM (my first GT ever), and I went 6-1 at the Nova Open. Those three losses account for three of my losses this tournament season, with my game against Stelek during the Celebrity Death Match being the fourth. Thus my DE are 35-1-0 right now and my Orks are 32-4-3.

TheRedArmy wrote:
I do agree with this. Except the last line. You can never beat everything. Ever. There are too many options and too much parody in 40k for that to ever be the case.

In my personal case, I will never have the models for a tournament anyway. So I have no need to beat anyone other than my local group. I can't even go to a FLGS, since they play on Sundays, and I am eternally busy on that day (with my life outside Warhammer, see).

Yes...you *CAN* beat everything. You can't win every battle in every possible scenario (you got second against an alpha strike list, deployed on the board and got massacred, or failed your reserve rolls, or deep-struck mishaped 3/4 of your army) - but you a balanced list CAN defeat any other list with good generalship.

If you've never been to a tournament (which you say), how can you have any concept of what can beat what on the serious 40k level?