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After much discussion, I decided to rephrase my question:

What are the pros and cons to bringing a competetive, non-tournament list to a tournament. And would that give an advantage over tournament lists?

Original Post:
So I have to start this off by saying I'm not a successful tournament player. I have, on the other hand, played in many tournaments, including a small handful of "national" tournaments, and run some locally, and am no stranger to tournaments or the meta at most.

As with most tournament players, there's a lot of thought and math that go into my serious tournament lists. I spend hours researching online, thinking and rethinking the meta in the tournament, planning out a list to best counter the meta within the given army, and practice with the list. The problem myself and I notice others in my area are having is that either our gauge of the meta is off, or the list still under performs against what it was built to performs well against.

After trying and practicing for quite some time with a few different lists, I've begun to contemplate what happens if I try to build a competitive list that doesn't fit the meta. The more I thought about it, the more it was making more sense to me. There are plenty of players who win competitive and large tournaments with non-conventional lists, that don't fit nicely into the meta. Say for instance, mix of mech/foot Black Templars, foot Imperial Guard, or green tide Orks. In instances of lists like that, they either contain units that most people are not used to playing in competitive settings or don't contain units that most meta-game armies are designed to handle.

What are the pros and cons to bringing a competitive, non-tournament list to a tournament. And would that give an advantage over tournament lists?

For what army?

Tau can get away with not taking any melta type weapons, so can guard.

I will say melta works well because it's ap 1, is instant death against toughness 4, and kills vehicles that are close dead. It's also cheap, and in a game where everyone trying to get into melee (mostly) those meltas come in handy.

It doesn't help the average melta gun is 1/3 the cost of a lascannon...

Meta, not melta.

Chimera ( Autocannon , Stormbolter pintle , Heavy Bolter and HK missile ) - Ten Man vet squad with 2 plasma guns -- Carapace

Chimera ( Autocannon, Stormbolter pintle , Heavy Bolter and HK missile ) - Ten Man Vet Squad with 2 plasmas -- Carapace

Chimera ( Autocannon , heavy Flamer , HK missile )) - Ten man Vet Squad with 2 grenade launchers led by a Primaris Pysker --- Carapace
( I run all of the Chimeras in platoon formation )

x3 Ten Man squads of armageddon Steel Legion Vets with Carapace and each unit has a Missile Launcher and Grenade launcher

x1 Ten man Kasrkin Stormtrooper Squad 2 Plasma Guns

x1 Heavy Weapons squad ( Lascannon , Mortar , Autocannon )

x1 CCS ( Melta + Plasma gun CO has plasma pistol and Master of Ordancance )

x1 Vulture Gunship ( Twin linked autocannons and 6 HK Missiles )

Leman Russ (standard , Two plasma sponsons and a foward lascannon)

Imperial Tank destroyer ( Strenght 10 AP 1 Super lascannon 72 ' range )

Armoured Sentinal ( Plasma Cannon ) Squadren

in a 2v2 local me and my teamate placed 2 our of 60 attendants , it worked well for me , yes i know it is not entirly allowed in tourni but it was a town game not a national so the rules were flexed a bit

Meta - Lists tend to be built to handle a variety of armies and units: AV14, transports, infantry, MC's etc.

An example non-meta list may focus entirely on infantry based forces and thus eliminate all the points an opponent spent on anti tank / anti MC weaponry.

Un-common unit combos, or common combinations played un-usually will give an edge as the opponent will be reacting rather than predicting.

darkdm wrote:So dakkanauts, what would be the pros and cons of playing a list that is not meta in a tournament setting? Would you gain an advantage by bringing a non-standard list, or is that more harmful?

The best list to take is one that has the tools to handle every army you'll face, but few armies will have the complete tools to defeat you.

building a list with no heed to the current meta results in a list that can't handle Mech, or terminators, or AV13.

Building a list that can handle those things, but isn't well known will help you win.

Honestly, you have to play very well to defeat the current transport-based meta. I'll ask a buddy of mine, Texan_Tyrant, to weigh in on this. As you can see in my tag, I play 2 meta armies and one decidedly non-meta army. My Salamanders face-roll so hard it's funny and it's mostly because of the strength of the list, only partially my play. The 2 Storm Raven Draigowing, aside from being pure is probably one of the better examples of the kill-point-seeking (as opposed to actually playing the scenario) meta.

My Thousand Sons are my foray into a story-based army and I love them, but I have to play very well or play an opponent that I counter to beat them.

All that said, melta-toting horde IG are very counter-meta and also competitive. I think they are the prime example of a counter-meta successful Army.

Polonius wrote:
The best list to take is one that has the tools to handle every army you'll face, but few armies will have the complete tools to defeat you.

building a list with no heed to the current meta results in a list that can't handle Mech, or terminators, or AV13.

Building a list that can handle those things, but isn't well known will help you win.

I understand that, but that's components of a competitive list. Foot IG, or a mix of mech/foot marines can have just as many elements to deal with mech, terminators, and AV 13 as any list built. I'm not saying don't build a list with the meta in mind, but build your list so that it doesn't match the rest of the meta, such as a foot list in a mech heavy environment and vice versa.

I don't know if my post was clear enough, but I'm asking why I should follow the meta and build razor-spam (or purifier-spam, or a vulcan melta list), rather than build something more off kilter that is still completive like a foot guard list or drop marines.

It's a dice game first and foremost. The heavily popularized net lists that spam the most effective units ad nauseum are only really skewing about ~15% more successful than the wide variety of obscure or thematic but still optimized lists that most armies can field with the percents continuing to spiral down as a list gives up more optimization for the sake of a non competitive theme or taking sub optimal units because they are unique or fun. And sometimes you can find a little overlooked trick that is generally considered a little too niche and obscure but it ends up just paying off really well for your style of play or against a particular high tier list you come up against more than normal.

The real reason transports are so good in 5th is that they effectively provide at least a turn or two of invulnerability for whatever's inside. They also severely hamper assault-based armies who are forced to stand and get shot at by whatever was inside the taxi. Moreover, a fair few get rather good weapons/abilities for their points cost.
Regarding the meta-vs-melta confusion above, for a great many lists a large part of the meta IS melta. With transports, especially fast ones, the short effective range becomes much less of an issue, as you can get all the way across the table in a turn without any risk to the units actually wielding the dangerous weapons. In my opinion GW swung the pendulum too far when attempting to correct for the deathtrap status transport vehicles had in 4th ed; honestly, if you can blow up an APC, the guys inside it WILL be toast.

So, the thing with tournament meta is that it's literally meta - outside of the actual game by the rules itself. When you are building a list to conform to "tournament meta", what you are actually doing is creating a list that will do well after taking into account what a tournament is and how it's run. It's designed to work well in a tournament, not designed to work well in general.

Tournaments have several things that are different about them than your standard game of 40k, and smart tournament-goers will purposefully change their lists specifically to take advantage of those things.

For example, a person adapting their list to a tournament setting will change their list in such a way that it spends as little time deploying and moving, because tournaments have time limits and spending time moving a lot of models really hurts your killing power with a time limit imposed. Also, tournaments are NOTORIOUS for using way, way too little terrain, which means that smart players emphasize long-range shooting, as it's less likely to be impaired by terrain. Also, tournaments tend not to use missions the way they describe them in the book, either they will be different missions, or, much more likely, a game where you play with multiple objectives at the same time. This basically nullifies the disadvantages of MSU.

As such, what you're seeing is people adapting to make the strongest lists for tournament settings, not necessarily the strongest lists overall. As such, if you're going for something to beat "tournament" lists, then you have lots of options for making better stuff - just make lists adapted to regular games of 40k without the tournament frosting. That and it's not exactly a hidden fact what does well at tournaments, so it's pretty easy to tailor a list that both causes tournament lists to fail against you, while you have your killing power tailored to take apart what you can be reasonably certain of facing off against.

darkdm wrote:I don't know if my post was clear enough, but I'm asking why I should follow the meta and build razor-spam (or purifier-spam, or a vulcan melta list), rather than build something more off kilter that is still completive like a foot guard list or drop marines.

There is no reason to follow the norm and build what others build.
In fact, the meta shifts because people try out new ideas and new strategies and then they catch on.

Today your best best to build an anti-meta list is to build an army that'd good at killing MSU units. As many tourneys are now incorporating all missions at once, low KP armies are also getting stronger -- for reasons that are described in great detail on the podcast "The 11th Company". Shooting armies are also a lot more common -- which is why you are seeing more people playing Tau as a viable force.

Lets take an ork green tide army, and then a hybrid army.
Imagine how the person bringing 5 psydreads feels when each dread is killing ~10 points of orks a turn. In 5-7 turns he just can't kill enough of your army to make it worthwhile. Your first army has 180 boys, and snikrot with his krew of 15 boys. You are fielding 9 KP total, and none of them are easy to get to as you must kill 30 boys and the buried character. Your boys only need to crack a few rhinos to get ahead on KP then just squat on their objectives for the rest of the game.

For your 2nd army, take 45 lootas in 3 BWs with a KFF around them. Throw a few guns on the BWs for good measure.
AV 14 is a bear to take out at range, and 45 lootas can kill a lot of transports fast. Have a few blobs of orks to claim objectives and snikrot to contest with capture and control, and suddenly have have a tough army. In KP missions you will be ahead. In roll dice and tie, your ahead as you only need to contest them, and in objectives you just need to use battleplan 'amoebae' to blob over some objectives.

I think you can run a good anti-meta army. You will find some hard matchups when you face non-MSU armies, but I don't think it will be to big of an issue for you.

I think the issue of non meta list vs meta list is just a mistake on the origional poster's part. He says a lot about the amount of time that he spends doing research and planning out picks and counter picks, etc... But there's no mention of fun.

When you say meta/non meta lists, I think what you really mean is competative vs non competative (two dumb catch all terms that do much more harm than anything to help people). The "meta" of the game is that there are units that have X saving throws, Y toughness, av 13/14 or 6 wound MCs and vehicles cost around Z so you can expect to see whatever amount of them and so on and so on. The meta of the game is just the info in the codex books army list.

Now, should you build a competative list? Well, what does that mean? In this game, for an entire army to be "uncompetative" you have to actually try hard. You can play really bad, but a better player with your "bad" list will likely do exponentially better.

Try picking units that are fun to play. Make a themed army or just give your army a theme other than "tough to beat". My first tournament at an actual GW store will likely be my last as well as half the people there brought the exact same army +/- one unit. The people were nice enough, but to me the point is to play your army against 3-4 different armies one after the other, each with it's own strengths and weaknesses to test your generalmanship and have fun. Not to see who has packed enough melta/plasma/superawesomedeath into their units.

The last pick-up game I played was 1750 vs a space wolf army and by the end of turn 3 he had one long fang on the table. His army was good, but he played terribly and all his buddies could do was tell him what units he needed to drop and which "competative" units to take. Meanwhile my army was full of "non competative" units and they did the most damage. His two buddies played next with their maxed out deathlists and it was like watching a comedy of errors. Two guys you have to idea how to play a strategy game, but are obsessed with tweeking their lists to max out their competativeness.

The reason your army doesn't perform up to expectations is you have too much planned in at the start. Your opponent is not going to let you hit his terminators with your plasma guns if he can help it, so YOU have to be better than HIM on that day. It's like the people who post lists that have power weapons in guard squads or "uncompetative" tanks like the leman russ punisher. They get comments like, "drop the power weapon and you can upgrade to the plasma gun tank because if your army gets into close combat you're doing something wrong.". I say to that, really? You did somethig wrong if your opponant's close combat army gets up in your face? Isn't that what his army is suppossed to do? The "uncompetative" units are MOST effective because their good where you're generally not. When that squad of wyches just plowed into and through your unit, would you rather pour 29 strength 5 shots into them at 24", or try to drop a battle cannon shell on them and hope it doesn't scatter onto your manticore they're next to, or your heavy weapon teams, or just miss altogether. And if they're in cover they're getting a 4+ save anyway.

You asked if you should try to make a competative list without looking at the meta. I say drop the word "competative" from that sentence. Stop trying to make your lists better with min/maxing or picking "competative" units and pick fluffy, fun lists. You'll likely have to play harder and better at first, but when you become a much better player, you'll be the guy who winning with the unconventional list you mentioned. That's also why you should always be careful of veteran players with "fluffy" lists.

kungfujew wrote:When you say meta/non meta lists, I think what you really mean is competative vs non competative (two dumb catch all terms that do much more harm than anything to help people). The "meta" of the game is that there are units that have X saving throws, Y toughness, av 13/14 or 6 wound MCs and vehicles cost around Z so you can expect to see whatever amount of them and so on and so on. The meta of the game is just the info in the codex books army list.

Respectfully, darkdm was pretty clear on what he is looking for. Ailaros was pretty accurate on his definition of the meta (though I would add that it also includes the current armies)

The meta of the game shifts as new armies are released. This is because the new army gives a significant advantage to an army type, and other armies adapt to it. If the meta of the game were just 'info in the codex books', it would be fairly static. Since the game 'meta' is better defined as the interaction of the 'info in the codex books', its dynamic and can shift greatly with each codex release.

Take the grey knights.
When GK was released, we saw a sharp decline in DoA BA lists. Why? Well, simply put BA armies dropping down and assaulting I6 PW wielding GKs = dead BAs. Even with a small advantage in numbers and FNP, the BA just can't compete.
GK also brought razorspam to an end. When you can bring 5 dreads that can shake off stunned results and hit with 4 STR 8 shots a turn, AV 11 crumples like wet paper.
GK armies growing in popularity was also why we are seeing more Tau armies at tourneys, and they are doing fairly well provided they are encountering GKs. Why? Because Broadsides own those psydreads.

Were seeing the same thing with Necrons today and wraithspam/scarab farms.

So when the OP asked about counter-meta it seems like he was asking if he should go with just a standard MSU army, or go with an army that's designed to counter the meta (ie, Tau).

kungfujew wrote:Meanwhile my army was full of "non competative" units and they did the most damage

When playing at your FLGS, you bring up a very valid point. However, the game changes when you move from your FLGS to serious tournament play, such as the Nova open. These people are traveling upwards of a few thousand miles to get to the tournament. The people going there practice weekly, and spend a lot of time on 40k. While you might find some weak players, you can expect that the average player skill level will be good.
As such, you need to build your army to play as well as possible vs those armies.

"When playing at your FLGS, you bring up a very valid point. However, the game changes when you move from your FLGS to serious tournament play, such as the Nova open. These people are traveling upwards of a few thousand miles to get to the tournament. The people going there practice weekly, and spend a lot of time on 40k. While you might find some weak players, you can expect that the average player skill level will be good."

And this is why I have meta armies (Salamander melta spam and a Draigowing) as well as my personal fun list (T-Suns). They're all fun, but I have to admit I like my new T-Suns the most as they have my favorite story. I mean I love as much as the next guy, but building an army with a story and feel that I like is more fun to me that rolling FLGS or club tournaments with a frankly easy to build and run list. Just my 2 cents.

The point I was trying to get across is that clearly the way the OP normaly opperates is not getting results. Perhaps a new way of looking at his army will help.

And clearly defining meta as just everything in the codexes includes new releases of codexes. I just don't narrow my definition of "meta" to include what people are likely to bring. I use unconventional armies to great effect and planning ONLY for the latest boring internet army or unimaginative spam list won't help you win against anyone who brings something wildly different.

If you're going to bring a fun and highly individualistic army you have a much better chance of upsetting peoples plans that were laid out when building their lists.

Sometimes to break the meta you have to look back to unplayed armies. For instance TS are making a comeback in my area because their invulnerable saves make them effective against grey knights.

Ixidor13 wrote:And this is why I have meta armies (Salamander melta spam and a Draigowing) as well as my personal fun list (T-Suns).

I agree whole heatedly. Theme armies are much more fun to play. Mine is an foot based all-exarch army.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

lunarman wrote:Sometimes to break the meta you have to look back to unplayed armies. For instance TS are making a comeback in my area because their invulnerable saves make them effective against grey knights.

Another good example are mech' eldar. I have a Mech'Dar army I have started playing again last year. Mech'Dar is a good match up vs GK and IG.

However, the meta has been shifting again, and my Mech'Dar army has a hard time vs Necrons. Even with 3 doomweavers to help defeat scarab farms, they can be a bear for Mech'Dar. Wraiths are even more so, as they are immune to the slowing effects of the spinners, and can pretty much ignore dragons with their 3++.

With more necrons showing up, I'm thinking of shelving my Mech'Dar again for hybrid IG.




Automatically Appended Next Post:

kungfujew wrote:If you're going to bring a fun and highly individualistic army you have a much better chance of upsetting peoples plans that were laid out when building their lists.

Well, again, if were talking about someone who plays every week and has been doing tournaments for years, odds are that their not going to be caught flat footed.

I think though we are talking about something very similar. Lets say you have 2 players of equal skill. The only things that will determine the outcome of the game are dice rolls and army lists. The first one cannot be mitigated -- some games you just will have hot dice or bad dice. The second one can.

However, just bringing a newer codex does not help at all. In my earlier example Mech'Dar is a good match up vs GK. Fire dragons can suicide into the psydreads, and scatter lasers will tear open henchmen spam. You can literally just tank shock draigowing off the board as well. However, that same Mech'Dar list has a hard time facing 18 wraiths. The wraiths are fast enough to pin the Mech'Dar down, and will tear the armor right open with STR 6 attacks (even when hitting on 6s). Combined with night fighting and command barges doing flybys, its a hard matchup.

When designing army lists you can try and go with something that's the standard meta. Today that's IG/Necron/SW/GK. Or you can go with a non-meta list that does well against those 4 types of armies. The challenge is making a list that is a good matchup vs all 4 of those. Take the example of Mech'Dar, it does well vs the first two but does poorly vs Necrons.
What does that mean at a tourney? You probably will win 2-4 out of five games, but will draw or lose the others. This is not due to player skill, but just bad matchups.

Lately I've been pouring a lot of thought into what can do well vs the 4 that throws people off their game. Oddly enough I find myself going back to the Ork codex. I think that you can make an extremely effective hybrid BW spam with Lootas and 30 man slugga boy mobs that will do very well in tourneys.

Thanks for your feedback everyone.

Ailaros, your definition of meta-game is way more accurate than mine. It also, in a way, answers my question of a meta vs. non-meta lists. It also makes sense with what Polonius said, that essentially any list built, be it a standard tournament list or a non-standard one built to operate better in the tournament setting is a "meta-list".

kungfujew, I have brought "fun" and "tournament" lists to tournaments, as well as to friendly games. I left "fun" out of my initial post because I was trying to broaden the question to include more than just myself, and usually "fun" lists do less well at tournaments then "tournament" lists (all other things equal).

That being said, I think I'm going to rephrase my original question and change the name of the thread to reflect it:

What are the pros and cons to bringing a competitive, non-tournament list to a tournament. And would that give an advantage over tournament lists?

What are the most common armies you're going to face?

Imperial Guard, Grey Knights, Space Wolves because they're widely seen as the strongest lists (and they probably are).

Necrons, Dark Eldar and Blood Angels are probably the next level.

Orks, Codex Marines, Tau, Eldar and Deathwing would probably make up the remainder.

You need an army that poses hard counters to the first level and can hold their own against the other two.

Off the top of my head I can't think of one.

Cool thread.

I would say that you should NOT go with a standard list designed to handle the meta.

I should preface this by saying that I am a very successful tournament player, with several 1st and 2nd place finishes under my belt. In my current competitive league, my record is 7 - 1

You will play at your best with a list that you like and conforms to your particular play style. You will never play at your best with a list that doesn't match your personality or that you find boring.

For me, my play style is extremely aggressive. My take on the 40k ruleset is that it rewards bold, aggressive play. And I play accordingly. I don't mess around. I go right at you with my main force, but I keep around 25% of my army in reserve for deep striking so that I can react as the battle unfolds and also harass my opponent. Deep striking things in your opponent's face forces him to play the game on YOUR terms. In 40k, the best defense is a good offense.

So, I tailor my lists based on that play style, which happens to suit my personality. And I do quite well, even though I often take "non-competitive" units in my tourney lists like Death Company, Chapter Master Gabriel Seth, etc.

My two cents.

I tend to subscribe to mike brandt's list building philosophy. Of having a solid reliable army that can beat anything by a little bit, and relying on my skill to make up the rest. I think its better than trying to take some kind of weird meta swinging army. The big issue I see with these lists is that you rely more on the army to win the games, than you.