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I would love to know what everyone's opinions are. How would you list the Fantasy armies with the strongest at the top and the weakest at the bottom?

I have heard that these are ranked at the top:
-High Elves
-Skaven
-Warriors of Choas

Skaven, Empire, Warriors of Chaos seem to be clearly above the cut this edition. The first two with their shooting and in the Skaven case Hellpits. Warriors of Chaos with their chosen warshrine.

High Elves are literally only made top rank by the inclusion of Teclis.

A whole lot of armies are in the middle, fairly well balanced.

Wood Elves, Beastmen and Brettonia are all pretty weak, due to ancient books.

The funny thing is that the Beastmen book is brand new yet still terrible!

I would say that the focus of 8th ed was to bring more balance to the game and would agree that many armies are reasonably balanced... that being said I will also state that armies in casual play vs what armies are capable of in a WAAC environment are very different monkeys...

Still, it usually seems like Skaven, Daemons, and Dark Elves don't usually have too much trouble winning.

Beastmen aren't terrible.

I think most armies are capable of packing lots of cheese. Mass war machines in Empire/Dwarfs. Mass HPA, Slave Skaven. Mass Herald and Bloodletter Daemons. Teclis in HE.

So far I think the 8th ed books, O&G/TK/Ogres are the new baseline and don't have anything immediately super cheese that I see.

Dark Elves are still a T1 army, up there with DoC and supposedly Skaven.

Right now though, it's more a matter of which armies are bottom tier rather than top. The top is more balanced this edition, but armies like Brets and Wood Elves are in serious need of updates.

DoC
VC
DE
WoC
Skaven

widely accepted as the best

TCWarRoom wrote:DoC
VC
DE
WoC
Skaven

widely accepted as the best

No. I've never seen a top five list include Daemons of Chaos and Vampire Counts, not since... Wait... Oh my gawd. Which edition are you playing? Are you a time traveler coming to us from 2005?

Daemons and Vampire Counts certainly aren't top 5 this edition.

I dont know if we are just messing with the guy or not

The top 5 would be in no particular order.
HE
Skaven
Empire
Dwarfs
Doc
Something like that.
Reasons
HE can do teclis which isnt invincible but really sucks and can win or loose the game.
Skaven 3 HPA running around suuuucks.
Empire gun line with magic shenanigans and such.
Dwarfs same as empire but with anti magic rather than anti magic.
Doc big bird magic shenanigans strong units who dosnt love a bloodthirster running around taking out units alone woot.

Beastmen aren't terrible, they just don't have thse cheesy things some armies have... They are a bit like 40k Eldar, they need to synchronize - it is all about augments and double charges. But it is true they aren't on the top tier.

I know that in the Midwest Tourney scene, that since 8th it's been a pretty good spread throughout various armies. I've seen brets place and win, same with beatment. I've seen WE in top 5 a few times in 50-60 player tournies.

Personally I think it's pretty well balanced, I think the skill of the general really detertimes the game not exactly the armies.

Skills are definitely a factor but font forget those fickle little cubes that sometimes feel like not cooperating.
I have lost chaos knights to 3 str 3 arrows (failed my 2+ and my 4+ side note they were mot with blasted standard).

So if you roll all 6s for hitting wounding charges winds of magic parry saves and roll snake eyes for every ld test and characteristic test then that would be make your army quite effective.

You know these topics come up regularly on the forum, and I think something important always gets lost in the message. There's nothing wrong with wanting to know how well balanced the armies are. Building an army is $100s of dollars and hours and hours of commitment, if you just put that money and time into a Glade Guard army, you'd want to know if other armies are going to have an unfair advantage against you or not.

What *I* don't understand, is what kind of difference exists in competitive play and casual play. Does these tiers exist purely at a competitive level, or are the so inherent that some armies will be disadvantaged even in friendly weekly games. Seriously, I'd like someone to explain it to me. Please. Help me out.

Squash wrote:What *I* don't understand, is what kind of difference exists in competitive play and casual play. Does these tiers exist purely at a competitive level, or are the so inherent that some armies will be disadvantaged even in friendly weekly games. Seriously, I'd like someone to explain it to me. Please. Help me out.

Any army can be made crap. You can totally go out of your way and make a really sucky Skaven army that can't beat a moderate Wood Elf force.

There are some combos and units that are overpowered/underpriced and/or otherwise difficult for many armies to deal with without specifically devoting their build to it (which, as you said with $100s invested, isn't always going to happen). Some players will take nothing but these units, regardless of fluff or theme or whether it makes much sense. You can tell looking at it there's no reason for that stuff to be together and often if you ask them, they won't have a reason. Like, how is it your Skaven army has multitudes of the absolute rarest items and creatures from enemy clans? *shrug*

Some armies don't have those overpowered/underpriced units.


There's nothing wrong with trying to win. But in a sense I think of WHFB as a sort of roleplaying game. It's really built around lore and fluff. That's what the armies are and why they aren't simply called A/B/C/D and why there are highly detailed models to configure and paint. If it was only about strategy, you could simply use one set of pieces with maybe a rule cheat sheet on top.

In tournament WHFB my list stands in no particular order. Those are the armies that are winning the most.

Skaven
Demons
Vampires
Dark Elves
Lizards
Warriors

These armies are winning more actual tournaments. Garage games are another story all together.


Here is an official list from Rankings HQ for the U.S. only. These are the top 5 armies currently in the U.S. tournament scene.

Warriors Of Chaos Michael Hengl 2610.0406
Lizardmen Brian Moyer 2594.0177
Daemons Of Chaos Mike Norton 2514.3291
Dark Elves Lee Horn 2496.8241
Skaven Mike Ludwig 2490.2185





Automatically Appended Next Post:
Here are the top 5 tournament armies in the U.K.

Dark Elves Ben Curry 2775.9487
Lizardmen Martyn Cooper 2714.3946
Daemons Of Chaos Chris Legg 2713.3766
Skaven Ben Johnson 2607.1956
Warriors Of Chaos Fabian Quinn 2561.3359

Squash wrote:
What *I* don't understand, is what kind of difference exists in competitive play and casual play. Does these tiers exist purely at a competitive level, or are the so inherent that some armies will be disadvantaged even in friendly weekly games. Seriously, I'd like someone to explain it to me. Please. Help me out.

As an example, none of the folks I play against go to tournaments, so I have yet to see a stubborn/horde unit in action. i have yet to see a 40 model unit either. We still build armies and play similar to the way we did in past editions. So, in our ork v bret matchups, the outcomes have been pretty even, and no one has complained about being 'second tier'.

Cruentus wrote:

Squash wrote:
What *I* don't understand, is what kind of difference exists in competitive play and casual play. Does these tiers exist purely at a competitive level, or are the so inherent that some armies will be disadvantaged even in friendly weekly games. Seriously, I'd like someone to explain it to me. Please. Help me out.

As an example, none of the folks I play against go to tournaments, so I have yet to see a stubborn/horde unit in action. i have yet to see a 40 model unit either. We still build armies and play similar to the way we did in past editions. So, in our ork v bret matchups, the outcomes have been pretty even, and no one has complained about being 'second tier'.

I second this. Where I play, we only have one WHFB player who goes all-cheese, all the time. He plays DoC by the way.

The rest of us play a variety of armies, and we seldom go for cheese combos, unless its a local tourney. As a result, it's impossible to look at two armies on the table and say "oh, you brought Beastmen to a High Elf battle... you poor git..." becuase it's litterally anyones' game. I've devoured High Elves with my Beasts (neither army had any special characters) I've ground Empire armies into taco filling (thank you, Primal Fury + Manbane) and I've been murderized down to the last goat by Brettonians. That is what casual play is about, and I feel that most armies are competetive under casual play conditions.

When you get to the hard-core tourney scene, the rules change, and my Beastmen find themselves really, really wishing that they still got Marks of Chaos.

Me and all my friends only play friendly games, either at home or my FLGS. So far, from what I have been against, I'd call Empire, Dwarf and High Elf armies top tier. For my Orcs and Goblins, I can't say they are tier 1 army, but they are certainly above average in my opinion... well balanced.

This is how I rathe the top armies in my gaming circle, this all boils down to the person ranking said army, and what kinda armies one faces ofc.

WoC
Beastmen
Ogers
Empire

i havent played 8th (and due to time/travel might not ever) but i could never understand peoples ranking of 7th armies ie Demons and , VC way ahead of everyone else, in my experience Lizard men were the most crushing army against my regular opponents-i most regularly played against VC and won with Beasts, Demons, All Tree army, other VC but lizards flattened them.
As always my advise is pick models you like best because as you get older and playing time diminishes you can still enjoy having them in your cabinet, and as we all know it will all change again in a few years with 9th anyway.

TCWarRoom wrote:In tournament WHFB my list stands in no particular order. Those are the armies that are winning the most.

Skaven
Demons
Vampires
Dark Elves
Lizards
Warriors

These armies are winning more actual tournaments. Garage games are another story all together.


Here is an official list from Rankings HQ for the U.S. only. These are the top 5 armies currently in the U.S. tournament scene.

Warriors Of Chaos Michael Hengl 2610.0406
Lizardmen Brian Moyer 2594.0177
Daemons Of Chaos Mike Norton 2514.3291
Dark Elves Lee Horn 2496.8241
Skaven Mike Ludwig 2490.2185





Automatically Appended Next Post:
Here are the top 5 tournament armies in the U.K.

Dark Elves Ben Curry 2775.9487
Lizardmen Martyn Cooper 2714.3946
Daemons Of Chaos Chris Legg 2713.3766
Skaven Ben Johnson 2607.1956
Warriors Of Chaos Fabian Quinn 2561.3359

So I should change my name to Michael or Benjamin and be good to go.