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I have this constant problem: everytime I play, I try to bring something I like to play for exmple 30 chaos space marines with a good mix of heavy and special weapons. And evrytime I get stomped even space wolves stomped me without any cav or vehicles minus the murderfang.

I utterly refuse, perhaps foolishly to take anything that us considered the meta because I simply dont like the units that are currently winning. I play chaos and I find that marching abbaddon and cultists is powerful, but not fun to play the same can be send about Magnus.

Can some one please help and guide me towards what I should do even if it involves trying to play wholly new armies I dont own if that helps me stay in the hobbybacause I am seriously thinking about jumping ship completely to AoS

sushi2001 wrote:
I have this constant problem: everytime I play, I try to bring something I like to play for exmple 30 chaos space marines with a good mix of heavy and special weapons. And evrytime I get stomped even space wolves stomped me without any cav or vehicles minus the murderfang.

I utterly refuse, perhaps foolishly to take anything that us considered the meta because I simply dont like the units that are currently winning. I play chaos and I find that marching abbaddon and cultists is powerful, but not fun to play the same can be send about Magnus.

Can some one please help and guide me towards what I should do even if it involves trying to play wholly new armies I dont own if that helps me stay in the hobbybacause I am seriously thinking about jumping ship completely to AoS

First of all, I'm going to tell you from personal experience: The grass is always greener on the other side of the barrier to entry of another hobby.

A few years back I made the mistake of going "screw 40k, its so imbalanced, I'm going to go play warmahordes because it's run by a company that knows its rules and I'll be able to play whatever I want and it'll still be at least decent!"

In reality, almost everything is group/opponent dependent. In my area at least, WMH is a fairly competitive, tournament focused, tightly meta-driven game. Fluffy lists may have been tough to work with in 40k, but in that WMH group, I would literally run into matchups where opponents would perform insane one-turn-kill combos or set up situations where it was impossible for my entire list to deal a single point of damage. By contrast, my 40k group has a number of players who are pretty much just in it to bring out their old collections of minis and love playing silly narrative games. I limited my play pool to those opponents for a while, and my enjoyment of the hobby improved massively.

In my current state, my rule of thumb is to devote at least half to a third of my list to the current meta combo, if its available to me. I play my Guard lists mechanized, with Vostroyan tactics, with regular ogryns, the melee duelist warlord traits and relics, and a bunch of other suboptimal stuff - but I'll still bring mortar HWS, hellhounds, and a couple battlecannon russes, and it's just enough to avoid the "autolose to an unexpectedly competitive list" outcomes. Same thing with thousand sons. I want to run an elite, rubric-focused thousand sons army, and I will - but you'd better believe a DPTZ, Ahriman and a screen of some kind of light infantry are always in there.

Csm aren't balf bad as backfield point holders - especially alpha legion. However, they don't work too well as a centerpiece army. Perhaps, the closest to a centerpiece you can get is 20 slaanesh alpha legion marines infiltrating close to an opponent and shooting 3 plasmas and 17 bolters with+1 to wound. Twice for the slaanesh strategem. I imagine it'd be decent anti-infantry and passable anti-everything. Pretty good at scoring as it's 20 obsec bodies.
Around 300 pts.
Though i imagine noize marines could be better at it. Not troops for alpha legion, though.

See my signature. Galef had the best answer for this I've ever seen.

Outside of that, you really can only get so good at using a specific batch of units. I'd say practise, practise, practise. Use the same army over and over again. Don't keep changing the list up. You'll start developing a really good feel for just what each unit is capable of.

If you'd like new army advice (but not TOO new) I'm a Nurgle Daemons player, and (in at least my somewhat casual store) I rock people's socks off.

But, how competitive is your meta? Do they regularly attend tournaments? Because if so, probably beyond my paygrade and skill.

sushi2001 wrote:
I have this constant problem: everytime I play, I try to bring something I like to play for exmple 30 chaos space marines with a good mix of heavy and special weapons. And evrytime I get stomped even space wolves stomped me without any cav or vehicles minus the murderfang.

I utterly refuse, perhaps foolishly to take anything that us considered the meta because I simply dont like the units that are currently winning. I play chaos and I find that marching abbaddon and cultists is powerful, but not fun to play the same can be send about Magnus.

Can some one please help and guide me towards what I should do even if it involves trying to play wholly new armies I dont own if that helps me stay in the hobbybacause I am seriously thinking about jumping ship completely to AoS

You can't just take generic CSM and ignore their strengths and weaknesses. What is your legion? What kind of weapons do you take? My guess is you are not optimizing your list to fit your strengths and instead just take whatever you fancy to play.

I LOVE mechanized/possesed Death Guard, I have a ton of tanks and mutants, etc. With the new Death Guard codex I can't really play my DG the same way I used to. They aren't meant to have obliterators and possessed anymore. Yes they are in the codex, but without the DG stuff they just don't work.

So instead I run them as CSM renegades, the CSM codex has tools I can play with, where as the DG codex does not.

The point is you have to look inward if you aren't winning. It's not "meta" to play your codex, no one should fault you for using a different legion when the one you use does nothing to help the army you've built. Plus you are playing Chaos, they don't give a flying fart what legion rules you use, play to your army.

I find if you are very clever and know everything you can about units that are not among the top meta you can get the drop on opponents. There are plenty of times where a supposedly bottom tyre unit can get the jump on the meta. A good example of this is Lictor shame back in 7th.

I would suggest mixing things up try using your units in different ways. Try different chapter tactics. Try different relics. Try out building around some stratigums. Try allieing in different deamons. First and foremost have fun.

If you know your opponents, talk to them that you want a friendly, fluffy game, and you should be able to run anything. I still run tac marines in my lists (Sub-Par), but I run them in razorbacks (Pretty good) to make up for that.

Playing marines in general is an uphill battle this edition.

 Yarium wrote:
See my signature. Galef had the best answer for this I've ever seen.

Outside of that, you really can only get so good at using a specific batch of units. I'd say practise, practise, practise. Use the same army over and over again. Don't keep changing the list up. You'll start developing a really good feel for just what each unit is capable of.

Totally this. If you refuse to use certain combos or units due to popular in the meta then it's not the fault of the army you chose, it's you. That said, even less than optimal army lists can win games when played by people who know the army and it's combos well and optimize their strategy to take advantage of their strengths while trying to minimize their weaknesses.

I'll be honest with you.

There are problems running marines right now. Every other faction can run a "non-meta" list and do something. Marines are in a very woeful position right now unless you tilt with the meta.

That said, try different game modes. If you're playing book missions, balance issues will be more apparent than if you play NOVA, or ITC rules. These are generally designed to provide alternate paths to victory. So maybe you don't have the volume of dice to deal with stormshield cavalry - but you do have the bodies, so win on objectives, for example.

sushi2001 wrote:
I have this constant problem: everytime I play, I try to bring something I like to play for exmple 30 chaos space marines with a good mix of heavy and special weapons. And evrytime I get stomped even space wolves stomped me without any cav or vehicles minus the murderfang.

I utterly refuse, perhaps foolishly to take anything that us considered the meta because I simply dont like the units that are currently winning. I play chaos and I find that marching abbaddon and cultists is powerful, but not fun to play the same can be send about Magnus.

Can some one please help and guide me towards what I should do even if it involves trying to play wholly new armies I dont own if that helps me stay in the hobbybacause I am seriously thinking about jumping ship completely to AoS

I mean, if you flat out refuse to play anything that's "meta", then it doesn't matter if you switch to Imperial Guard or Eldar, your odds are not going to improve. If you impose the requirement "nothing good can be in my army", it doesn't matter what army you play, you will continue losing.

There are plenty of decent chaos lists out there which don't involve Abbaddon and a giant army of cultists. Try using Slaaneshi heavy weapons units [Oblitz, Havocs], and Khorne Berzerkers. You can use Alpha Legion to infiltrate them, or load up in Rhinos.

Hmm, depends on what you got, but using your CSM as Havocs or Chosen with maximum special/ heavy weapons, sorcerer support and Veterans of the long war could make for a decent Alpha strike. Make them Iron Warriors to ignore cover and ignore morale on larger squads. That's nothing that screams competitive, but in casual gaming it works.

Also, CSM horde 20 strong with chainswords and dark apostle would also make for a nice blob that hits quite nice. Make them World Eaters for more fun.

Sgt. Cortez wrote:
Hmm, depends on what you got, but using your CSM as Havocs or Chosen with maximum special/ heavy weapons, sorcerer support and Veterans of the long war could make for a decent Alpha strike. Make them Iron Warriors to ignore cover and ignore morale on larger squads. That's nothing that screams competitive, but in casual gaming it works.

Also, CSM horde 20 strong with chainswords and dark apostle would also make for a nice blob that hits quite nice. Make them World Eaters for more fun.

Just be 'zerkers then, though. Berzerkers are pretty good.

My friend likes Alpha Legion Slaanesh Havocs. Double firing Lascannons are pretty scary, and -1 to hit them goes a long way.

List design is all about compromise. If you're inflexible about something in your list, you need to be more flexible elsewhere or else you need to accept that success may be the area that you have to be a little more flexible about.

Sometimes you'll find there's a good middle ground between taking as much of something that you want and not taking it at all. You might prefer 3 troops of marines over 3 troops of Cultists, but if your marines end up being more successful and impactful by taking one unit of them along with 2 units of cultists , isn't that more fun? Personally, I like to design a competitive core, but I also earmark around 500 points for fun models I just think are fun. I find that works out a lot better than trying to force an entire army out of them and being disappointed on the table.

Almost Pro gaming did a great video on building competitive list from scratch. It doesn't really go into specific models but more theories for building the best list possible with the models you own: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=88QCNb9dpoU

As long as you refuse to use anything that is considered good, you will never do good. You are shooting yourself in the foot for an unknown reason.

If you want marine spam, Death Guard have the best marines in the game. Rhino rush DG with plague marines isn't meta, but it is strong. You can do well with a DG list if you want all infantry. Their extra durability and special weapons make them a very good choice.
You're rules would prevent you from taking Daemon princes, necrosius, bloat drones with spitters, and PBC with spitters.

Easiest way to find out if something is meta, is go to the tactica thread and type something like, "Plague marines are really strong this edition!" and then see how often people shoot you down.

You do have that grenade stratagem which is really solid, and Plagueburst Crawlers are not bad either. A relic'd out Daemon Prince can also be very nasty for Nurgle.