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I may be biased but i think Eldar have some of the highest potential simply based on player skill. I win alot of games at my hobby club with my eldar and i use the same list over and over (a take all comers eldar army). The only reason i felt it necessary to bring this up is that the eldar have the speed and durability (dark eldar lack durablility) to effectively control the flow of battle if used properly. Your inferior numbers dont matter if the enemy is reduced to 2/3 strength before they can hit you.

But as far as actual army books go, i rate GK and newcrons as the highest followed by spacewolves, blood angels, and dark eldar.

Though i stay true to my statement that a great eldar player can win every game he plays because thats how the book is written but know you cannot afford mistakes.

Anyone can make a general statement on the best armies. Ultimately, factors like match ups, familiarity with your list, familiarity with your opponents list, mission type and of course dice rolls is what decides it at the end of the day.

Good for you, everyone is already aware of that. The question assumes all those factors are equal. Don't say that the codex is irrelevant, because that is completely false.

In most games, the better player will win without considerations to the army on the field. That is because most people are not that great at the game - which is fine.

However, for those who take the game to the competitive level, Tiers certainly exist and the codex you choose is relevant. That is the purpose of this type of ranking.

Fair point, Dracos. I just think people should be careful about buying new armies solely based on their perceived Tier, unless super-high level tournament play is their only goal. In which case you're probably already well aware of the power level of every army. You can still make a good showing at most tournaments with any army, I would say, if you know what you're doing.

It can be univerally agreed that SoB suck, bad (and I am a sisters player). The only advantage we get is that very few people play the army, so no one knows how the army works. Sisters specialty (short range firepower), is not particularly good as it is defeated by both longrange shooty armies and assualt armies. SoB has 1 reasonable (not great) competition build at the most commonly played pts values. 2-3dominion(w/meltas out the wazoo), Uriah Jacobs(with DCA), 2-3 exocists, and and battle sisters enough to fill out the rest, maybe celestine and some seraphim if you have enough points left over. And about half the units are overpriced, and the others are on the high side of reasonable (except dominions, uriah, and celestine). and unit variety is almost non existant. You have only 1 troop choice, 2 non-special character HQs, 2 elites, 2 fast attack, 2 heavy support and 3 characters. And the number options within those categories is rather low.

The secondary concern is price, and sisters is an incredibly expensive army to play because EVERYTHING IN YOUR CODEX IS METAL. Add to it that all of the sculpts are over a decade old, and it gets really sad. Sisters players are a very dedicated lot, because the faction's support is almost worse than no support at all.

Tier 1

Wolves
IG
Grey Knights
Orks (Yes, totally serious here, and lots of data/[ersonal experience as a tournament player TO to back it up, only the inclusion of Grey Knights has diminished their claim to tier 1 fame.)

Tournament data backs that up.

Tier 2

BA (most commonly seen at tournaments, least commonly at the top!)
DE
Templars
Deathwing
Marines
Crons (a bit speculative here, but I believe this is where they will land)
Chaos (Lash and oblits still get it done)
Eldar
Daemons

Tier 3

Tau
Sisters
Tyranids

C'mon Reece, you know that just because an army regularly wins events that doesn't mean it's any good!

Hahaha, of course not, not when the Internet says they are bad!

Yeah, we have a guy here that regularly plays a SoB and still wins games with the IGs lot of mean low AP weapons. But he's a nice guy after the game.

We have a player in our area (PaintedPotato on Dakka) who wins with Sisters, too, but he is also a very good player. I think the average player would struggle with them as they stand now.

Daemons, when using pure Fatecrusher, and only pure Fatecrusher, are at the top of Tier 1.

My Fatecrusher routinely destroys these armies being run by experienced generals:

Grey Knights
Imperial Guard
Space Wolves
Orks
Blood Angels

And anything else you want to try to throw at them, baring a very few lists (Venom Spam, Mechdar). And even against Venom Spam or Mechdar, it is still
a winnable situation.

One other problem iwith this questin is that there's no site that comprehensively tracks tournaments and breaks down which armies tend to win and how they place. In MTG for exapmple there is exhaustive research as to what style of decks are winning at any given time in a constantly evolving meta. 40K has no similar site as far as I know.

Very big weakness to not have a central database that shows how tourneys are stacking up.

@Cpt Stubbs

One problem with that, is that tournaments in 40K aren't standardized. Also, we have a smaller data set. You play 2-8 games in a 40K tournament, and it takes 2-3 days. Magic plays so much quicker and you can have events more frequently.

Magic events are standardized within certain parameters, and so it is a lot easier to make direct comparisons.

@Skywise07

I don't doubt that you have success with your Fatecrusher list, but I don't think one player's results define the tier ranking of an entire army within the larger scope of the tournament meta. That, and Grey Knights warp quake spam negates the entire army in 50% of their games, plus a host of other things such as preferred wave, etc. means Daemons are a bit too random for tier 1. I agree they are excellent, but there are only a handful of players to have won events with them, and that was mostly when they first came out.

Yeah, it is much harder to determine what is good in 40k than it is in M:tG-- there are far more situational factors in 40k (points cost, terrain, scenarios), player skill plays more of a role than list/deck composition, and games simply take far longer.

Further, many 40k events literally use different rules from one another, which in some cases can have very large effects on what's good. For instance, Codex: Space Marines is partially designed around special characters changing the structure of the army as a whole, and Codex: Dark Angels is debatably only viable at all with special characters in effect. Thus, these Codices do much worse in events that don't allow special characters. Some armies, such as Hellion-based Dark Eldar armies, aren't even legal in events without special characters.

These factors all make it a lot harder to compare different 40k armies across multiple events than to compare Magic decks across multiple events, and I think this may explain some of why there's still such a strong debate about what is viable in 40k, even comparatively late into 5th Edition's lifespan.

Both good points Fetter and Reec it does make comparison much more difficult but it would still give us a place to start if we had such a site. Especially if the site had the tourney rules, army composition, and results.

As it is now our basis for rating books is everyones opinion and their ability to see results either on Dakka or in their personal life. I just think it would be fun to see a better breakdown of the various tourneys going on around the world.

40K Tier List
Tier 1 - Grey Knights, Imperial Guard, Space Wolves
Tier 2 - Dark Eldar, Necrons, Space Marines, Orkz
Tier 3 - Eldar, Tyranids, Dark Angels, Black Templar
Tier 4 - Chaos Space Marines, Tau, Sisters of Battle
Tier 5 - Chaos Daemons

Talamare wrote:40K Tier List
Tier 1 - Grey Knights, Imperial Guard, Space Wolves
Tier 2 - Dark Eldar, Necrons, Space Marines, Orkz
Tier 3 - Eldar, Tyranids, Dark Angels, Black Templar
Tier 4 - Chaos Space Marines, Tau, Sisters of Battle
Tier 5 - Chaos Daemons

For me, this tier is closest to correct, except that Space Marines should be tier 3, and Chaos Marines Tier 4.

Seriously, I have never understood why anyone thinks astartes marines are even close to reasonable. Everything that is scary about competitive GKs, BA, and Puppies is exclusive to them; I find that the astartes book is really just meh.

Tiers are not just pure power level, that's why there is some disagreement.

Tier 1 is supposed to be reserved for armies with no real weakness, or only minor ones not easily exploited.

Since daemons are full of very exploitable weaknesses and silly randomness AS A BOOK they get bumped down, due to limited options (only 2 good builds, fatecrusher and fiend spam). Only the performance of people who play these keeps the list from being a joke. That's pretty much the definition of low tier.

SMs don't have any real weakness, and they don't really have any super strengths either (other than perhaps vulcan marines), so that is tier 2. They have the tools to have good games against top tier, and can compete on equal footing or better with everything else. They have a large number of builds available to them, so don't get bumped down to 3, even if they rely a bit too much on nullzone librarians.

DA and BT are pretty close in power level to vanilla, with a couple of builds that are arguably better. But the books as a whole are underwhelming, and the power archetypes are very limited. So the mid tier is appropriate for them.

Orks on the other hand have a good power level, one that can complete with top tier lists, but have exploitable weaknesses AND a limited number of archetypes and options within those lists. Mid tier is the correct placement, even though it is a powerful army. Would have been top tier if it weren't for the clumsy FOC writing and too many wonky rules (glory hogs, trukks, zzap guns, fearless nerf in 5th, KMB that kills user as often as a marine in cover, dedicated transport assignments, ect).

BA is an army that has a good power level, a large variety of archetypes and options within... But doesn't perform well enough to truly be a full tier 1. Why does it perform so poorly at large events? Paper rock scissors list building I suspect. All of their power builds seek to exploit the extremes of the list, from predator spam to skys of blood to razorspam ect. People aren't playing balanced lists with them, perhaps because the codex supports extreme builds better, so when they face the unfavorable matchup, they can't garner enough points to get the top ranks. So powerful army with a potential flaw (internal balance) gives it a high tier 2 rating.

DE are top tier in power level, but have built in fragility, and a rather glaring weakness in psychic defense. High tier 2 is probably correct here as well.

CSMs are similar in power level to any marine army, but cost more and have worse FOC and rules. They also have less real options, and few things that are really unique to their list that are viable. Even if some can win with them, the guys playing them probably could do even better if he was playing ANY other marine book. Don't say cool powers and MCs, as GKs do that better. This book wasn't even good the day it came out, and has only gotten worse. Only saved from joke because they are still marines, and can still compete against tier 2-3 somewhat reliably.

Tau are a low tier 3, because even though they have FOC issues, power issues, and list variety issues. their 1-2 good builds can still fight the good fight against nearly the entire field IF played well with a well tuned list. They are on the bubble though.