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So I got my first game of 40k in a long while yesterday and I went with the Big'n'Stompy Kan Wall I posted in the Army List forum last week (9 Kanz, Rokkits, KFF Mek, 60 Sluggas, 60 Shootas, 25 Lootas, 1 Deff Kopta w/ Rokkits). I went up against what I figured is a pretty typical Mech list for Sisters: 3 Exorcists, 4 MM Immolators (each carrying 2 Melta toating sister units), and 3 Rhinos packed with Flamer/Heavy Flamer troops. I know it's not as long ranged as a normal SM Razorback kind of list would be; but I figure it's pretty typical of a Mech Heavy list.

We had an Objective game (3) and Pitched Battle deployment. My opponent quit on turn 3; he lost too much, I lost too little, and I was sitting on 2/3 Objectives where if he came anywhere near it, he was toast.

My thinking coming out of this is that a Kan Wall style Ork list is a pretty good counter to a Mech SM style list. Is that a correct assumption? I assume that Land Raider spam (as in maybe just 2 of them) would give my army a lot of problems, especially if they're LR Redeemers, but other than that, what scares the Kan Wall? AV11 Walkers under the KFF, with the Boyz behind getting 4+ Cover from the Kanz (or at worst 5+ from the KFF) is pretty hard to kill.

After playing the game, and seeing how tedious it is to move that much, I was thinking about taking BattleWagons and Trukks - but...isn't that what would be playing into exactly what everyone and their mother builds to kill? It does seem like a lot more fun than moving around 150 or so models, sometimes twice each turn.

Long distance weaponry murders Kan Walls. An opponent who brings enough Missile Launchers, Lascannons, and weapons with long range that can puncture AV 11 can tear through enough kans to remove them as a threat by turn 3.

Space Marines should actually be able to handle the list fairly well unless they roll poorly and/or don't bring enough High Strength weaponry.

That said, your list has LOTs of target saturation, so an opponent is racing against the clock to take out large swaths of your list while getting some units around to contest objectives.

The higher the point cost of the game though the poorer the Kan Wall does.

As for Battlewagon Lists, people expect it, but what makes it good is the combination of speed and power that Orks use to punch through enemies with Deffrollas and the damage things like Burna Boyz do.

WarOne wrote:Long distance weaponry murders Kan Walls. An opponent who brings enough Missile Launchers, Lascannons, and weapons with long range that can puncture AV 11 can tear through enough kans to remove them as a threat by turn 3.

I played (and defeated) a Kan-Wall player last week with my SM list. I run bikes with support, with the support being 2 typhoons, 1 AC/LC spon pread, and 1 TL AC dread. I destroyed every Kan before it got to me, even with the KFF Mek.

The only reason I did so well was because I am a big believer in long range transport killing power. Many people in the current meta believe that all you need is melta. Melta guns are full of fail vs. a kan wall list, as by the time they get within 12" to destroy a kan, the entire ork horde is on top of them!

Basically, if you face a well rounded opponent, it will be a good game. If you face a player who only invested into short range killy, then you will roflstomp him. Thats a broad generalization, but is the rule of thumb Ill give you. (Note : Be wary of death stars, as a tight placement of points is something that you may not be able to react quickly enough against)

I'm looking at the possibility of not going full Kan Wall and meching up a bit, possibly modeling up that unit of Nob Bikers I've planned since god knows how long ago.

Question for you guys up on the current Meta: Has all the craziness of Meltas and tons of Anti-Tank/MSU gone and made Land Raider's + TH/SS Termies a bit obsolete? I've been reading all the big "winning lists" (looking at Nova since that's the most recent threads I've found) out there and I don't see them in there, also not a lot in the Army List forum too.

With a lack of Land Raiders around due to all the Las/Meltas about, does that make Nob Bikers much more viable as a result?

Trying to out guess the meta game isn't going to work. It's like paper rock scissor, and your opponent took rock the last 5 times. It's likely he's going to pick rock again, so paper is the wisest choice, but he knows that too, so he might pick scissors to be one step ahead of you.

You can't out meta the meta game, you can only build lists that are capable of handling everything with a slight slant towards the current meta and hope you don't come across something too extreme.

@ The terminator question, TH/SS termies in a LR are still a staple unit in many vanilla marine lists, I'd say somewhere around half take the unit. The thing that's throwing you off, is that of marines (SW, BA, Chaos, Vanilla, BT, DA with Ravenwing and Deathwing) vanilla makes up less then a quarter of them. So they seem rarer, but that's only because vanilla is a small portion of marine armies now, especially in the top end of tournaments. You sadly don't see many vanilla marine lists ranking in the top 10 of the biggest tournies.

As for the meta making terminators + LR obsolete? No IMO. The thing that makes terminators so valuable now IS the mech/melta meta. Their 3++ invul save and ability to smash tanks and troops alike makes them invaluable, especially at a mere 200 points for 5. Of course you want a LR for them to get them into place, but even that is only 250 points. It makes a very effective magnet for melta fire and draws a lot of attention away from your tacticals and other tanks/dreads.