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armies are designed to eliminate list wins and leave it to player skill.

Nevermind that an army that can counter everything is broken as far as 40k is concerned...

Not every player in the tournament circuit is conceited enough to believe that they are the best player in terms of tactical skill. With that in mind, they can use their skills as a list maker to deal with local meta, boost there chances against common foes and fill gaps in their tactical knowledge and so on to win.

I would in not way say their armies are uncompetitive. They would in fact be uncompetitive with a pure skill army.

Being competitive is wanting and being able to win.

The problem with a pure skill army is its just that. Many people do not have pure skill. I know I often choke during tough games. So I would do better with an easier list. All the tier system to me means whats easier to get wins with. What has less opportunity cost if you will.

Also, army lists get more scrutiny online. It's easier to discuss armylist construction as opposed to what strategies/tactics are used to actually win a game.

In short: Lots of armylist talk vs. very little tactics talk.

SWPIGWANG wrote:

armies are designed to eliminate list wins and leave it to player skill.

Nevermind that an army that can counter everything is broken as far as 40k is concerned....

I wrote an article for Blood of Kittens about this and I will try to sum it up.

There are 2 types of armies, balanced and unbalanced. Think of it this way, armies are on a scale of 1 to 100. With 1 being the most assault heavy armies and 100 for the pure shooty armies, and balanced armies are closer to 50.

Most armies are unbalanced and are heavily weighted toward pure assault like orks and pure shooting like Imperial guard. These armies are easy to play and are very effective. See Darkwynn’s ‘Ard Boyz list as an example of this.

On the other side of the coin are balanced armies. They are harder to build, harder to play, but they are less susceptible to the rock-paper-scissors problem that the unbalanced lists fall into. Balanced armies are built to counter everything. See Darth Diggler’s ‘Ard Boyz list as an example of a balanced list.

grankobot wrote:
The only ork player I'm scared of is the one who's smart enough to sneak a power klaw into snikrot's unit.

grankobot wrote:
The reason why not every ork player is smart enough to do it is because it isn't immediately obvious how. You can attach dok grotsnik to the unit and still use their wonky outflanking rule.

After reading throught 5 pages of stuff I'm comming back to these comments;
#1 "sneak" As in put two in there by saying burnas count as powerfists not wepons against a person who doesn't know the codex?
#2 taking a HQ with snikt is the dirtyest thing an ork player can do and should not not not ever be done for anything but cold-bloodied-grave-dirt-revenge.



Lastly not that I have no time left yes orks are very competitive! <3

If we're going to say single most competitive, I have to throw it in for Wolves or Vulkan lists.

Some of the new Wolf lists are downright awful, and Vulkan lists essentially take your two biggest problems, armor and horde, and turn them into a shooting gallery.


Though a friend of mine plays an Ork list with which he consistently dominates. Mek, KFF, battlewagon, 9 kanz, ton of boyz, and some other goodies. The 9 kanz are a real b-tch to deal with. 4+ invul, squadron rules...ugh.

The problem with Vulkan lists is that the number of melta and flamer weapons is limited in SM units.
This limitation limits the effectiveness of the army.

On the other side of the coin are balanced armies. They are harder to build, harder to play, but they are less susceptible to the rock-paper-scissors problem that the unbalanced lists fall into. Balanced armies are built to counter everything. See Darth Diggler’s ‘Ard Boyz list as an example of a balanced list.

Balance armies don't "counter" as in "have an advantage" over everything. Even balanced armies have "not so good" matchups, only that they are not as serious as a rock-paper-scissor's list's "autolose" matchups. Despite the "every unit do everything" nature of Darth Diggler's list, it clearly contains elements that exists to counter specific armies like null zone and thunderfires that don't work well against a mirror army.

So it is possible to "tool up" for a darth diggler army if you know in advance that it is coming, simply by starting with a mirror removing elements that don't work against itself and replacing them with something that kills marines better and such. One does not need to beat a "counterattack" army with an overload army, by the way. Alternatively one try strange overloading lists that is far out of the current meta, like scab-swarm lists or something. Or maybe some guard lists can just alpha strike it easy after taking out all the anti-hoard/eldar/daemon/raiderspam/other-guard tools that costs quite a bit....

Playing a "counter list" to darth's list may be a bad idea, but it is a bad idea because very few people play darth's list. If 90% of the players play his list, for example, than playing a counter list to his would be a very good idea even if it autoloses to most other things.

Now it is possible that there exists a list where it always have an advantage (as in counter) or at least parity against any opponent, but it would mean 40k is broken since it is the best army! For 40k to be interesting, there should NOT be a best army. Every army should have an weakness, even if a small one, to keep the meta flowing and the armies diverse.

I still don't think that people have fleshed out and played Imperial Guard long enough to really discover the potential of the army.

You're seeing it now though I recently played a Imperial Guard Player that had something crazy like 25+ vehicles in a 2000 point game. 80 to 100 guys most everything was scoring.

It's prtty difficult to deal with I don't care what army you are playing to deal with that number.

People will eventually see that AV12 is well and above on the chart when compared to AV14 simply because AV14 i reliably destroyed by melta which melta destroys AV12.

Lascannon spam is possible vs A 12 as well and STR 10 you have to figure tho that if someone does lascannon spam etc.. youll eventully deal with it.


AV12 horde Imperial Guard is just difficult to deal with.

I think people like grankobot do not see the dynamics of the game and is taking it too simply from a narrow aspect. 40k, though not as complicated as rocket science, is definitely not as simply as 1 + 1 = 2 or a Royal Flush rules All.

I do not agree that many people have not discovered the potential of new IG. In fact, it is the opposite. I am seeing increasing numbers of IG players with power builds

Yeah, IG has rather powerful builds.
They are top tier in my ranking.

More and more yeah ; when it tarted it was " Oh wow Psyker Battlesquads Vendetta etc..."

The fact is though is just a difficult aarmy to deal with to the point of being almost pointless to play against.

Especially vehicle like the Hydra and Vendetta. 2 horribly undercost units.

Okay I have 3 units that put out 36 twinlinked autocannon shots ; Oh these guys oh I have 3 twinlinked lascannon platforms ; Oh and its under 1000 points.

Oh let me add the 8 or so AV12 transport carrying guys with autocannons and meltas ; oh and I got these h. flamers on all of them as well.

Oh and they all outflank.


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It's not fun to have 55 guys in troop transports jump onto your backfield in AV12 vehicles led by a guy that can give 3 orders etc..

Its just ridiculous.

o.O Yes, I HAVE to agree with that.
In fact, I would say the current IG codex is broken and unbalanced. It doesnt even qualify into our discussion of "competitive". If only 40k is like magic, where can you ban or restrict certain units o.O.

Its actually broken somewhat because of the models as well as vehicle rules.

The vehicle that gets the most broken is he sentinel. The model as in physical kit allows for it to be built low to the ground. in a squating position.

3 Sentinels with camo netting and autocannons or missile launchers for that matter 165 points.

Place behind a Chimera two of them; congratulations you have a armoured unit that has a 3+ invulnerable.

It gets worse with Armoured Sentinels. Take two armoured sentinels with whatever take a 3rd with nothing. Okay whole squad has 3+ invulnerable and requires two models to be in cover.

Now your shooting at 3 vehicles w/ AV12 3+ invulnerable save and 2 plasma cannons.


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The thing is that is cheap as dirt really.

Hell most of the codex is dirt cheap 700 points buys 6 squads in Chimeras w/ Autocannons and 60 warm bodies.