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Just getting back into warhammer 40k and would like a competitive army to play with, i do have nids but don't think they would be top tier. i don't care if the army is top of the top but want a good army to play with please help!

Scerri101 wrote:
Just getting back into warhammer 40k and would like a competitive army to play with, i do have nids but don't think they would be top tier. i don't care if the army is top of the top but want a good army to play with please help!

Well, I believe that Tau is the newest codex, so may be thus up there in the "top tier"

But I think that almost unanimously, people will point to Eldar and Necrons being the tops of the top tier armies currently. More information would probably be best in some of the 40k centric forums, ie. 40k Lists.

This thread will do better in the 40K General Discussion forum, so I shall move it there.

Eldar are the top dogs, capable of doing almost anything you want to.

Necrons have the durability to take a beating and have strong options for all types of shooting as well as capable fast assault units.

'Nids can sometimes rely on a multitude of flyrants (about 5) with some support to devastate armies light on AA.

Marines can spam grav cents in pods and relentless grav devs in skyhammer, as well as getting 10 free transports and re-rolling a bunch of times.

Tau can break armies that rely on cover which is much more common now that when you probably last played

Daemons can still do well with a couple of different builds, but the model collection required is extensive since summoning will almost always be required and fateweaver and screamer star and/or drone bus is a thing, and some people still have success with flying circus.

War convocation gets ~400 points of free upgrades and can be fairly rough, as can mechanicus or skitari (or both) coming out of blood angels drop pods.

Some metas will still have trouble with an all knight army, though it won't take too much for your opponents to set up to face roll you (unless they play orks, then you're just being mean).

DA can do very well in a tau lite meta with their 2+ re-rollable jink saves.

SW have access to thundercav as part of a super friends or thunderdome list.

Orks have had some success with green tide and bully boys/blitz brigade, but again, that will be highly meta dependant, both for tournament system, game type and opponent variety.

CSM, SoB, BA, IG, DE, Inq, Tempestus and Harlequins are all trash tier, though BA, GK and DE do have options as a taxi service provding Raiders/Venoms/Webway/Drop Pods/GoI to other armies and DE harlies and Eldar can be uised to Ld based gimmicks, but will fail hard against marines or fearless enemies (ie. most things, again, meta dependant). SoB can pull out the odd trick, though not against the truely broken high end stuff.

So im leaning towards Necrons, but how would they do vsing elder and Tau?

Eldar are the Necron weakness. Their strength D weaponry bypasses all the insane Necron defenses and wraithknights can tank all the usual Necron melee threats no problem (while waiting on a 6 stomp to wipe them out)

Tau it is near impossible to win vs Necrons. Similar hard counter going the other way. Tau just do not have the volume of fire to get thru the multi layered defenses of the Necrons and the crons can just shamble into melee with them usually and control the whole board.

I wouldn't call chaos marines trash tier to be honest it's just most people tend to go Nurgle Biker lord nurgle spawn plague marine and maulerfiends spam which is quite easy to deal with for someone who knows the weakness of the list. We can do some quite funny lists but we lack alot of synergy so with chaos you have to make the synergy. For example alot of lists are generally low on model count where as my 1500 point chaos marine list has over a hundred models and can create more via summoning

Scerri101 wrote:
Just getting back into warhammer 40k and would like a competitive army to play with, i do have nids but don't think they would be top tier. i don't care if the army is top of the top but want a good army to play with please help!

Nids are probably getting an update soon. As for right now though Lictor shame is one of the best armies out there with practice.


And don't listen to 90% of what people tell you here. Dakka is filled to the brim with arm chair generals and goobs that I'd be surprised if they had the cognitive ability to walk and chew gum at the same time. They fall for the easy fallacy that if it beats them and they cant beat it with without adapting then it must be OP and unstoppable.

The requirements change but right now you need to be able to do 4 things with an army to do well:
1) Ignore cover
2) Kill 1 or more imperial or wraith knights in a single turn
3) Counter invisibility
4) Have either overwhelming fire power or durability.

In addition to this you also need to cater to the tournament/rule set. That means adapting, rewriting and in many cases scraping.

 Drasius wrote:
Eldar are the top dogs, capable of doing almost anything you want to.

Necrons have the durability to take a beating and have strong options for all types of shooting as well as capable fast assault units.

'Nids can sometimes rely on a multitude of flyrants (about 5) with some support to devastate armies light on AA.

Marines can spam grav cents in pods and relentless grav devs in skyhammer, as well as getting 10 free transports and re-rolling a bunch of times.

Tau can break armies that rely on cover which is much more common now that when you probably last played

Daemons can still do well with a couple of different builds, but the model collection required is extensive since summoning will almost always be required and fateweaver and screamer star and/or drone bus is a thing, and some people still have success with flying circus.

War convocation gets ~400 points of free upgrades and can be fairly rough, as can mechanicus or skitari (or both) coming out of blood angels drop pods.

Some metas will still have trouble with an all knight army, though it won't take too much for your opponents to set up to face roll you (unless they play orks, then you're just being mean).

DA can do very well in a tau lite meta with their 2+ re-rollable jink saves.

SW have access to thundercav as part of a super friends or thunderdome list.

Orks have had some success with green tide and bully boys/blitz brigade, but again, that will be highly meta dependant, both for tournament system, game type and opponent variety.

CSM, SoB, BA, IG, DE, Inq, Tempestus and Harlequins are all trash tier, though BA, GK and DE do have options as a taxi service provding Raiders/Venoms/Webway/Drop Pods/GoI to other armies and DE harlies and Eldar can be uised to Ld based gimmicks, but will fail hard against marines or fearless enemies (ie. most things, again, meta dependant). SoB can pull out the odd trick, though not against the truely broken high end stuff.

This is a very accurate and detailed description of the metagame right now in tournaments. I think we're done here. :p

There is a common misconception that tau are top tier now, but don't fall for that, their upper middle tier at best

IDK, if you want top tier tau, add a Culexus or two. But standalone? yeah tau doesn't hold a candle to necrons or eldar.

So necrons can still beat Eldar? and can necrons good at taking down titans?