Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

I been out of the tournament scene for awhile I do play against tournament players though.

What are the tournament lists to beat?

Like most Magic forums have decks to beat for the different formats and web sites tend to have a listing of recent top 8s It would be nice if there was a thread of tournament winning lists from recent tournaments so people could look at them for reference of what to test against or when building their own lists.

Tournament players I play against are running the following

Dark Angels
Belial + 5 terminators with fnp and cyclone, 4-5 units of 5 assault terminators with 1 cyclone, some bikes with melta and homing beacons

Dark Eldar
baron, haemulus 3x true born blasters in venoms, mix of warriors and wracks in venoms.raiders, big beast unit, 3 ravager.

Grey Knights
coteaz, inquisitor with rad and psychotrope grenades, 2x purifiers in rhino, 1-2 grey knight strike squad with hammer psy cannon in psyback 1-2 cheap hench squads in psyback, 1-2 dca/crusader unit in storm raven/ raider 2-4 psyriflemen dreads
draigo with 10 diversified paladins w 4 psycannon + stuff. soloadin, purifiers, 3 psyrifleman dreads

Imperial Guard
Mech guard with company command with melta astropath in chimeras, 3x melta vetsin chimera , alrahem platoon in chimera, 3 vendettas, 2 manticore

Necrons
Immotek tremor necrons with scarab + wraith
dual command barge immortals scarab 2xWraith units, spiders

Space Wolves
rune priest + 2 units of scouts + mech grey hunters with long fangs in las/plas razors

I think the only one your missing is Blood Angels w/ Razorback Spam...

Venom Spam DE
GK in any variant really is OP
SW are uber nice due to Missle spam and new models =]
Necrons can be dirty but not spamming in nature.

All typical in a tournament build....

Nids and Orks dont fair so well... even though 5E is H2H and running etc.... They tend to be not ELITE enough to compete.

Tau and eldar well phew.... nothing to look at here.

So I don't really know how MTG and the deck system works, by my experience of 40K is that everybody talks about the top armies, but a lot of the consistently top players play "weak" armies like orks, vanilla marines, chaos and daemons and are still on the top tables at GTs.

Most of the armies you have listed here seem to wind up in the 3-2 bracket (with me).

Flavius Infernus wrote:So I don't really know how MTG and the deck system works, by my experience of 40K is that everybody talks about the top armies, but a lot of the consistently top players play "weak" armies like orks, vanilla marines, chaos and daemons and are still on the top tables at GTs.

Most of the armies you have listed here seem to wind up in the 3-2 bracket (with me).

Basically the same in MtG, only the metagame changes quicker. There are the usual top tier decks (that changes when the cards cycle out of Type 2, which is the most popular format) which every deck should be prepared against in tournament play. There are also rogue decks: decks that don't register as one of the popular decks. Most rogue decks would go dud, but the ones that'll top (usually combo decks) would be copied by the community at large, affecting the metagame and previous top decks would need to adjust in order to stay on top.

Necrons have been surprising as of late. They've won 3 GT's in a row with 3 very different necron builds - 1 wraithwing, 1 tremor-crons and 1 scarab-farm. Their lists are as follows:

First, we have Alex Fennel at TempleCon GT with a scarab-farm list:

Overlord: mind shackle, weave, scythe, phase shifter
Command Barge

Overlord: mind shackle, weave, scythe, phase shifter
Command Barge

Court 1: Despair cryptek with nightmare shroud and veil of darkness
Storm Cryptek with lightning field
Destruction Cryptek with solar pulse

Court 2: Despair cryptek with nightmare shroud and veil of darkness
Storm Cryptek with lightning field
Destruction Cryptek with solar pulse

10 Immortals w Tesla
10 Immortals w Tesla
10 Immortals w Tesla
5 Immortals w Gauss

3 Scarabs
3 Scarabs
3 Scarabs

3 Spyders 1 prism
3 Spyders 1 prism
2 Spyders 1 repair arm


----------------------------------------------------


Then we have Eric Hoeger with Wraithwing at St. Valentine's Day Massacre:

Overlord: Warscythe, Command Barge 180
Overlord: Warscythe, Command Barge 180
Royal Court: Harbinger of Destruction with Solar Pulse, Harbinger of Destruction, Harbinger of Despair with Veil of Darkness 150
Royal Court: Harbinger of Destruction with Solar Pulse, Harbinger of Destruction, 90
7 Immortals: Tesla Carbines 119
5 Immortals: Tesla Carbines 85
5 Immortals: Tesla Carbines 85
5 Immortals: Tesla Carbines 85
6 Wraiths: 3xWhip Coil, 1xParticle Caster 245
6 Wraiths: 3xWhip Coil, 1xParticle Caster 245
5 Wraiths: 3xWhip Coil 205
Annihilation Barge: Telsa Cannon 90
Annihilation Barge: Tesla Cannon 90


----------------------------------------------------


And most recently, we have Norbu at the Indy Open with Tremorcrons!!!

Orikan

Imotekh

2 x tremor crypteks
1 x Chronomotron tek
1 combat lord w/ orb

7 lychguard w/ sheilds
1 Ctan (wrything worldscape, lord of fire)

5 x warriors
5 x warriors
5 x Immortals

5 scarabs
4 scarabs
5 wraiths (coils, pistol)

3 spyders
3 spyders


----------------------------------------------------


In the West Coast, ChristianA took the Bay Area Open (BAO) with his mechguards. I don't have his exact list, but it went something like this:


2x CCS - plasmas, chimera
4x Veterans - meltas, chimera
3x Vendetta
3x2 Hydras


But I think it's not really the lists that wins. Rather, its the general behind the lists.

I don't see a lot of people copying winning lists model-for-model like is common with M:tG. However, where M:tG will typically always have Sligh, Suicide Black, Counter/Burn, Combo Engines, Stompy, WW and Mono Blue Control, 40k will also have archetypes that are always present, but the actual lists will usually vary.

Dark Angels - Deathwing
Blood Angels - Mechspam
Grey Knights - Draigowing
Space Wolves - Rhino Rush w/ Long Fang Spam
Necrons - Wraithwing, Scarab Farm
Dark Eldar - Venomspam
Orks - Kanwall
IG - Leafblower

jy2 wrote:

But I think it's not really the lists that wins. Rather, its the general behind the lists.

Right, until the release of the Necron codex, Alex was doing really well with a Deathwing list, and before that with a foot guard list (and are you sure about that Templecon list--I could swear I saw a monolith on his display board).

Spacecurves Ben, who came in second or third at Templecon, was also playing scarab farm necrons, but again until the new codex had been tearing up the circuit with a Salamanders list that had a mishmash of conventionally "weak" things like a standard land raider and a thunderfire cannon (he took Boston Brawl last year with the Vulkan list).

Also at Templecon, Warmonger Fabulous Orkboy was running undefeated into round 4 with a chaos daemon army when his ride home forced him to leave early.

And if you think Tyranids are weak, just take a look at Da Boys' Jay Woodcock's placings for the past several years with the current codex.

And if you think Chaos is weak, look at Mannahnin's crazy chaos marine record.

It seems like if you really want to place at the genuinely top levels at 40K GTs, it's not about beating particular armies. Those netlists all wallow around down in the second tier with each other. Like I say, I dunno if this is like MTG or not, but it seems like those lists all sort of level out with each other at some point and the skill of the player takes over and makes the list kind of irrelevant.

Mission, depolyments etc all play a factor as well. Recently played at a tourney that used secret objectives. No one could find out the opponents period and didn't even know their own till after deploying. lol Kinda hard for cc or walking armies when tourney rounds rarely get to 4th turn. Your deployment could cost you the game before it even starts.

I agree that having a tournament winner list thread is a good idea I see what Ava is trying to get at is to have a test gauntlet as with magic its easy to look up whats winning on Starcity/Brainburst. Having such a thread to look at that up easily instead of searching individual tournament threads and battle reports.

40k differs from magic in that unless you are looking at best general, best over all includes paint score and sometimes sportmanship along with battle points so the over all winner might not have the most kick ass list but can have scored very well in paint and sports and just done above average in battle points. Magic is just winning games.

Also it is very difficult to bandwagon quickly in 40k because of army costs and assembly/painting. Magic has much bandwagoning after each event people bring a top 8 list from the previous list to the next event since its really easy to just buy or trade for cards. 40k you have to build and paint that army which doesn't happen in a week.

Both systems are very match up and player dependent. What does well in 40k also depends on the points level. Certain armies perform at 1500 but not so good at 2000.

Some more recent winners were Grey Knights running DCA unit like what you ran when we first tested GKs last year.

Andrew won Conflict (1750) with his mech grey knights in January.
Coteaz 100
Grandmaster: Incinerator, Rad & Psychotroke Grenades, 3x Servo Skull 225

3 Acolyte, Razorback: Psybolt Ammo 62
3 Acolyte, Razorback: Psybolt Ammo 62
3 Acolyte, Razorback: Psybolt Ammo 62
3 Acolyte, Razorback: Psybolt Ammo, Searchlight 63
3 Acolyte, Razorback: Psybolt Ammo, Searchlight 63

1x Henchmen Warband (Unit Breakdown Below) 135
5x Death Cult Assassin
4x Crusader
Razorback: Psybolt Ammo, Searchlight 51

10x Purifiers: 2x Daemon Hammer, 2x Incinerator, 2x Psycannon 316
Rhino: Dozer Blade, Searchlight

Stormraven: TL Multi-Melta, TL Lascannon, Searchlight 206

Dreadnought: 2x Autocannon, Psybolts 135
Dreadnought: 2x Autocannon, Psybolts 135
Dreadnought: 2x Autocannon, Psybolts 135

Total 1750


Nick won Warm Fabric National GT (2000) with his GKs last weekend
Coteaz 100
Inquisitor- rad and psykotrok grenades level 1 psyker hammer hand 3 servo skulls 94

Elites
5 Purifiers- 2 psy cannons hammer halberd rhino with dozers and searchlights 193
5 Purifiers- 2 psy cannons hammer rhino with dozers and searchlights 191

Troops
5 Strikes- psy cannon master crafted hammer razorback with psybolts searchlights and dozers 181
5 Strikes- psy cannon master crafted hammer razorback with psybolts searchlights and dozers 181
5 Strikes- psy cannon master crafted hammer razorback with psybolts searchlights and dozers 181
5 Strikes- psy cannon master crafted hammer razorback with psybolts searchlights and dozers 181
10 Death Cult Assasins 150

Heavy
Dread- 2 twin linked auto cannons psy bolts searchlights 136
Dread- 2 twin linked auto cannons psy bolts searchlights 136
Land Raider Redeemer- Multi melta, psybolts searchlights extra armor 276

His bat rep is here:
http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/436485.page

jy2
Thanks for the lists. Great that IG is doing well for once. I been running into some bad match ups with Guard. IMO generalship matters as well as mactch ups. Some match ups like Nightfight Necrons are really miserable for a mostly shooting army like Guard.

Flavius
Orks can be pretty solid as some people like DashofPepper still do well with them. Nick did well with Demons before bailing for GKs and Ben and Dameon still rock with regular Space Marines. I saw a Chaos list featuring lash, lots of berzerkers and 9 oblits at SVDM GT.

Your list is part of it but Generalship and match ups play a bigger role. Have to find a list that fits your style of generalship and that has less bad match ups.

azazel the cat wrote:I don't see a lot of people copying winning lists model-for-model like is common with M:tG. However, where M:tG will typically always have Sligh, Suicide Black, Counter/Burn, Combo Engines, Stompy, WW and Mono Blue Control, 40k will also have archetypes that are always present, but the actual lists will usually vary.

Tell me about it. I don't think it's wrong to copy a deck in any way if your objective is to win, but for your own sake use your own brain. I've seen at least two guys who copied my deck exactly after I won a National Qualifiers tournament, and they didn't bother to think why I only have one forest and 17 snow-covered forests (hint: I can't find/trade another snow-covered one so I went with a normal one).

It also applies in 40k, I think. For me it is totally okay to copy a list down to the last model, but make sure to understand why those models are there and how they work.

Okay, whats this talk of Daemons being poor match-up armies? I play all Tzeentch, and my lists have gotten me 1 win, 2 ties and a loss. This is me thinking about the lists before I buy the models so I save money, then play the games. Anyone who says Daemons suck can dicuss it with me somewhere else.

jy2 wrote:Necrons have been surprising as of late. They've won 3 GT's in a row with 3 very different necron builds - 1 wraithwing, 1 tremor-crons and 1 scarab-farm. Their lists are as follows:

First, we have Alex Fennel at TempleCon GT with a scarab-farm list

That's not Alex's list. Looks like Ben's list. Alex's has one of each vehicle for which there's a kit, one barge overlord and another on foot in a big unit of warriors, etc.

Here in Australia atm necrons and GK are No.1 and 2. even when comparing the best generals from each army

The rankings, breakdowns and so on can be found here; http://www.rankingshq.com/rankings/default.aspx?GameSystemId=3&RegionId=1