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Getting back into warhammer 40k and was wondering is there a tier list/ meta for the game?

It begins...

Dangerous ground ahead.

imo the two main contenders:
Tyranid Flyrant spam took the latest tournament by storm,
Space Elves with dark reapers and shining spears also placed high in previous tournaments

Followed by Chaos Cheese (Alpha Legion beserkers) and all kinds of imperium soup (Chosen Space Marines + imperial Guard)

It's changing constantly. Ask again a year from now.

 Daedalus81 wrote:
It's changing constantly. Ask again a year from now.

A year? The meta we had 5 months ago isn't the same one we have now. Thats the beauty of 8th. No more 4 years with X cheesy list at ALL the top tables!

 Galas wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:
It's changing constantly. Ask again a year from now.

A year? The meta we had 5 months ago isn't the same one we have now. Thats the beauty of 8th. No more 4 years with X cheesy list at ALL the top tables!

Well, I mean that the books will all be out and GW will hopefully hit a stride with faqs.

Really if you took about 5 minutes you could go down the list of posts on the front page here and your answers would come flooding to you.

 auticus wrote:
Really if you took about 5 minutes you could go down the list of posts on the front page here and your answers would come flooding to you.

I dunno. It's a little bit of a shitshow right now.

 auticus wrote:
Really if you took about 5 minutes you could go down the list of posts on the front page here and your answers would come flooding to you.

Would he, though? This forum has a very weird impression of the meta. There's basically one list at any given point people are ranting about, and it happens to be Tyranids right now. But Tyranids are very far from the only competitive army right now.

My bad. Typically we have a regular bi-weekly topic discussing the tiers of current 40k. The meta online is typically revolved around what won the last big tournament.

 auticus wrote:
My bad. Typically we have a regular bi-weekly topic discussing the tiers of current 40k. The meta online is typically revolved around what won the last big tournament.

And soon. [Well. Soon ish. Maybe. Probably not.] It will revolve around the FAQ...

 auticus wrote:
My bad. Typically we have a regular bi-weekly topic discussing the tiers of current 40k. The meta online is typically revolved around what won the last big tournament.

Tyranids are a big part of the meta definitely, but there was more at Adepticon than what won the tournament. Chaos lists (mixtures of Nurgle daemons, Poxwalkers, Cultists, and Plagueburst Crawlers) were just as prominent, there's several Imperium soups with Guard/Custodes/Blood Angels/Assassins, and there's also some Dark Angels armies making an appearance. But if you follow the discussion you start to think there were 14 Tyranids players in the top 16 because all people talk about are Hive Tyrants. People very much latch on to whatever won and don't spend much time thinking about the overall meta and what else made a big showing.

Scerri101 wrote:
Getting back into warhammer 40k and was wondering is there a tier list/ meta for the game?

40k meta doesn't work like any meta in any other tabletop game(anymore) for 3 big reasons.

1. The meta lags about 3-6 months behind any given release window. Prepping an army is neither quick nor cheap and learning that army isn't something you can do through youtube or w/e. You have to actually play games with the army and considering most adults would be extremely fortunate to be able to get 2 games in a week between work, family, and just not feeling like it; getting the reps you need to get genuinely good with a list could take an entire edition.

2. The meta never settles. Because of how fast GW releases stuff relative to how slowly the meta evolves, we never really see the meta quiet down enough to give an actual 'tier list'. We can look at specific units, specific combos, and specific gimmicks and go 'okay that's super op!' but actually fully understanding where each army stands relative to each other army straight up just doesn't happen. This becomes especially obvious when people continue to complain about lists that the competitive meta has left behind, such as double primarch in 8th or Skyhammer annhilation force in 7th.

3. Tournament format has the largest impact on what is competitive of any game I've ever seen. I said this in another thread, but games played in Adepticon format vs ITC format see a bigger differentiation than there is between most of the games Fantasy Flight puts out.