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So 8th edition has been around for, what, a year and a half now? The meta has changed enormously throughout this time- imagine fielding an army of brimstone horrors nowadays...

Does anyone have/could make a timeline per month of the top three lists since 8ths inception? There's been a darn lot of em and I'm not that tournament/competitive savvy so could anyone put that together?

(start) Tripple Stormravens------ynnari darkreapers----knights(now)?

My attempt at the time line showing the top of the pac... I'm probably missing loads, but these are the ones I could think of instantly.

July 2017 BAO - guard conscript spam lists and chaos maelific lord renegade spam lists, plus some tau commander spam. IIRC this is also when the flyer nerf came in.
Continued on through the Sept 2017 Nova Open.

2018 saw a lot of eldar and reapers - all three top spots at the Feb LVO tournament.

March 2018 had Abaddon cultist blobs and hive tyrant spam topping adepticon

By June you were seeing the guard/knight/support blobs, and the Nova open in July was the knight soup vs DE/eldar for almost all the top spots

A.T. wrote:
July 2017 BAO - guard conscript spam lists and chaos maelific lord renegade spam lists, plus some tau commander spam. IIRC this is also when the flyer nerf came in.
Continued on through the Sept 2017 Nova Open.

2018 saw a lot of eldar and reapers - all three top spots at the Feb LVO tournament.

March 2018 had Abaddon cultist blobs and hive tyrant spam topping adepticon

By June you were seeing the guard/knight/support blobs, and the Nova open in July was the knight soup vs DE/eldar for almost all the top spots

To add on a bit, Pre-codex and pre-flyer nerf Stormraven spam was the single most broken list 8th has seen, relative to the available field. Even the FW index Malefic+Superchicken wasn't AS bad.

With the exception of the LVO, Flyrant spam was dominating most large events, with Adepticon being a culmination. It was the perfect storm of favorable missions, favorable terrain, and a super strong army.

Razorback spam was a big contender when the SM list first dropped as well.

 NurglesR0T wrote:
Razorback spam was a big contender when the SM list first dropped as well.

Yes, Guilliman plus Assback spam was one of the most powerful list for the first 5 weeks of the 8th edition. It soon be destroyed when codex creep surfaced.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
By late 2018, the contender of the most competitive army should be IK plus IG CP battery VS Aeldrai (all kind of them, Craftworld, Dark Eldar, Harlequins).

I put my bet on the latter, since their firepower and close combat can shoot or chop both IK and hordes, and basically anything in the game into hell, while being able to make the actually most tough units in the game with stack minus to hit and high inv saves.

Aeldari will soon be leaves in an 18-Traktor-Kannon wind.

 grouchoben wrote:
Aeldari will soon be leaves in an 18-Traktor-Kannon wind.

I bet Traktor Cannon will be FAQed into oblivion soon, with points increase and rule change to having to roll to hit, after enough Ork players had poured their money into GW to buy that gun.

So Aeldari will still sit on the top, with maybe a 3pts to 5pts increase to their strongest units as a nerf and GW will call that a day.

IIRC closer to nowadays there was the Magnus + Morty party with invun shenanigans. Not sure if this is still a thing though as I don't really follow the competitive scene.

Just want to throw in Razorwing Flock, Sniper Drones, Brimstones, Conscripts, Flyrants and Plagueburst Crawlers which all had their place in the sun. The latter were ruled in by the rule of three, the former got their own FAQs.

Can anyone give me some links to sites with winning lists? The big tournament winners for each tournament were all of their time I think.

 grouchoben wrote:
Aeldari will soon be leaves in an 18-Traktor-Kannon wind.

Traktor kannon is super niche tool against eldars though. Against anything but -1 to hit smasha gun outkick them big time. Even against -1 to hit smasha guns outperform seeing you get 3 for price of 2(2.333 hit vs 2). So really you are trading higher damage output for the flying vehicle bonus.

18 traktor kannons won't be competive UNLESS you are list tailoring vs eldars.

(and necron vehicle spam would be funny list tailor counter vs that as traktor kannon rule basically improves necron vehicles inv save)

Traktor kannon was all fush until people actually mathed it out and found out it's the smasha gun that's the real sweet deal. That's the one more likely to suffer nerfbat than traktor kannon. If aeldari wasn't so common traktor kannon would suck. But then again aeldari soup has perfect hard counter vs loota bomb which is shaping up as cornerstone of competive orks so...

Very roughly IMO

Summer 2017 - Stormraven Spam, heralding in the Boots on the Ground Rule.
Fall 2017 - Guilliman/Razorback spam and Tzeentch Smite/Brimstone Spam (with Maelific Lords and sometimes the FW big bird), heralding the first FW nerf and first Smite nerf. Also Conscripts.
Winter 2017 - 9+ Plagueburst Crawlers, Hive Tyrant Spam and Dark Reaper spam, heralding in the rule of 3 (though that took a while).
Early Spring 2018 - Deepstriking Bash-Brothers have about 2 weeks of tournament dominance. Custodes Jetbikes appear. Endless Poxwalkers are also a thing.
Late Spring 2018 - Vect arrives at the Scene, as do Ravagers (as well as Talos/Grotesques, though never quite in Black Heart Ravager numbers).
Summer 2018 - Imperial Knights
Fall 2018 - Imperial Knights still flood the mid-tables, but you really start seeing double-spear Ynnari in greater numbers (despite that list winning LVO 2017 and being good at ETC, it never seemed as numerous as today).

Neophyte2012 wrote:

 grouchoben wrote:
Aeldari will soon be leaves in an 18-Traktor-Kannon wind.

I bet Traktor Cannon will be FAQed into oblivion soon, with points increase and rule change to having to roll to hit, after enough Ork players had poured their money into GW to buy that gun.

So Aeldari will still sit on the top, with maybe a 3pts to 5pts increase to their strongest units as a nerf and GW will call that a day.

I disagree with both your statements.

Traktor kannons are not even auto takes, they're well priced. Smasha gunz are a bit undercosted, they should be +4-9 ppm.

The aeldari soup is not superior to the imperium one, which is certainly more powerful. The aeldari soup is just more anti tournament meta since most players tailor their list in order to 1-shot a knight but those kinds of lists don't perform very well against aeldari. In a single game between two TAC armies the aeldari soup is far from being overpowered, the imperium one will bully every table.

I guess orks could do very well in tournaments for the same reason: anything that is designed to 1-shot a knight will have a bad matchup against orks, at least the ork lists that spam infantries.

 McMagnus Mindbullets wrote:
Can anyone give me some links to sites with winning lists? The big tournament winners for each tournament were all of their time I think.

http://bloodofkittens.com/8th-edition-top-army-list-compendium/
Lot of smaller tournaments in there, and only the top 3 from the bigger tournaments. Search around for the top 8/16 from things like adepticon and the LVO.

You can match them against the codex release dates - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codex_(Warhammer_40,000) and faq/errata releases for some context.

Not sure where the contradiction lies.

Of course a 18 Traktor Cannon list will wreck many (Dark) Eldar lists badly and is an interesting anti-meta gimmick if you see lots of Mech Eldar/Ravager Spam, etc, and it can simultaneously be a bad match-up against other things.

And as we've seen with lists like Bash Brothers, Endless Poxwalkers, Cultist Spam, it could easily fall into that category of lists that doesn't win a big tournament because the Top 20-30 or so players in a given region/country know how to play around with it, but still be an extremely OP and unfun list to face in the game more broadly and thus be far more problematic for the game, broadly speaking, than some freakish Sean Nayden or Nick Nanavati list, which might technically be more OP for people playing in the LVO Top 16, but not something the other ~ 20 Million 40K-players on this planet will ever face or experience as problematic.

Sunny Side Up wrote:
Not sure where the contradiction lies.

Of course a 18 Traktor Cannon list will wreck many (Dark) Eldar lists badly and is an interesting anti-meta gimmick if you see lots of Mech Eldar/Ravager Spam, etc, and it can simultaneously be a bad match-up against other things.

And as we've seen with lists like Bash Brothers, Endless Poxwalkers, Cultist Spam, it could easily fall into that category of lists that doesn't win a big tournament because the Top 20-30 or so players in a given region/country know how to play around with it, but still be an extremely OP and unfun list to face in the game more broadly and thus be far more problematic for the game, broadly speaking, than some freakish Sean Nayden or Nick Nanavati list, which might technically be more OP for people playing in the LVO Top 16, but not something the other ~ 20 Million 40K-players on this planet will ever face or experience as problematic.

Then again even against ideal target(dark eldars) is that really such a problematic unit? We are talking about 810 pts. And last time I faced dark eldars which wasn't even top level list and had tons of h2h elements he would have destroyed at least 6 mek guns in turn 1. Only thing that stopped was ice cold deck(how many 1 to wound or 1 damage can one guy roll...). Seeing dark eldars also have perfect counter for what is forming up counterstone of ork lists(25 lootas) making that 425 pts unit into very good splinter target to be wiped out in 1 turn...Orks need SOMETHING that is good vs dark eldars. And even there 18 traktor gun would be inoptimal. You want to use traktor kannons to finish off vehicles. 18 will mean that you have bunch of finishers trying to do job of raw damage. (myself if I were list tailoring I would go for 2 smasha gun for 1 traktor kannon so 12/6. Smasha guns would also be better vs the popular talos spam).

Pretty much any other faction just shrugs and is thankful you didn't bring 18 smasha guns instead.

The traktor kannon SOUNDS awesome...Until you do some basic elementary school math and realize it's actually bit expensive niche tool. Not something you want to take 18. If you are looking at 18 mek guns of one type it's smasha gun that will be go-to. That's the mek gun you should be more worried about and more likely to be hit by a nerfbat.

I agree with tneva82 and I also add that Smasha Guns are very powerful against Drukhari since their armored stuff is basically T5-6 with just talos being T7 under haemy's aura. No T8. They are undercosted because 31 points is a bit cheap but traktors? Definitely not, and you won't see more than 2-3 at most in any TAC meta, including tournaments.

 Blackie wrote:
I agree with tneva82 and I also add that Smasha Guns are very powerful against Drukhari since their armored stuff is basically T5-6 with just talos being T7 under haemy's aura. No T8. They are undercosted because 31 points is a bit cheap but traktors? Definitely not, and you won't see more than 2-3 at most in any TAC meta, including tournaments.

Yep. The smasha gun not only scores bit more hits per point but also wounds by rolling 5 or 6 on 2d6 vs 3+ traktor kannon does which is better odds. Of course extra damage helps but let's see. 3 smasha guns will cause 4.53 wounds vs T5 5++ -1 to hit drukhari vehicle. 3.996 for traktor kannons. That doesn't seem that bad. After all auto explosion. But that's why you take MIX of the two and note this was basically against ideal target for traktor kannon. Against many other targets the smasha gun comes out at top. Oh and vs talos while T7 starts to hurt the fly bonus doesn't matter as talos is monster and not vehicle...

So yeah. Not 18 times spammable material. It's not junk but it's not something you would want to spam. If you nerf traktor kannon then that needs to be joined by nerfs to OTHER mek guns as well(barring bubblechukka) as internally traktor kannon is not broken. It might be externally vs other codexes but in that case smasha gun is even more bonkers(and I can't deny that smasha gun could do with price hike)

My take has been similar to above.

Simplified:
Edition started with:
-Conscript Spam, Maelific Lords, StormRavens, Custode/IG lists, and Maggy/Morty lists
-SM book: Bobby G + Assault Cannons joins
-CWE book: Ynnari Reapers joins
-CA2017:
--Bobby G, SRavens drop off
--Conscript Spam gives way to IG and/or Loyal32
-Nid book: Flyrant Spam
-Spring FAQ:
--Flyrant Spam out
--Spears replace Reapers - not as strong, but still top
--Ynnari now about par with CWE
-DE book: Aeldari Soup dominates
-BA book: Smashfether replaces Custodes in the IoM lists
-Knight book: Current Knight/Beatstick/Loyal32 list solidifies
-Fall FAQ:
--Smashfether swapped out for Custodes beatstick

And here we are. Ork release is too soon to really categorize.

Interestingly, we'veseen all the following represented at the top of the meta:
-IG
-Vanilla Marines
-BA
-IK
-Custodes
-R&H
-CSM
-DG
-TSons
-Demons
-DE
-CWE
-Ynnari
-Harlies
-Nids

That's a whole lot of factions that have been on top in such a short period of time. ALthough it's almost all soup-capable, and the majority were present as soup. The only ones that really did it it mono I think were SM and Nids.

Bharring wrote:
Edition started with:
-Conscript Spam, Maelific Lords, StormRavens, Custode/IG lists, and Maggy/Morty lists

I don't remember much pre 2018 custodes stuff, any examples?

Somewhere in all of this would have been the assassin spam that led to the character rule change too.