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hello everyone, i'm a new player and i was wondering, should i know which army my opponent is using before making the list? I don't want to know the full list but i only have necron while my friend has daemons/thousand sons/chaos space marine so i think he has quite an advantage knowing what i play.

There are no rules about this, it's entirely between you and your opponent how to decide it.

In a tournament setting you would not normally know exactly what armies you would face so you would have to finalise your list without that knowledge. However, for friendly games you can do whatever you want.

He knows what army but he doesn't know your list or your plan; yeah he's got a slight advantage but look at it like a challenge. Also ask him if you can have a go with his army one day. Do a swap for fun innit.

The closest the rules come is that they tell you to agree with your opponent on a battle size before mustering your army (i.e. writing your army list). This means that you would know who your opponent is before you write your list, even if you might not know their exact faction.

Yes, this means that players with multiple armies may have a slight advantage over players with one army as they could tailor their list to suit. In the gaming circles I've been part of, tailoring your list is generally frowned upon unless the players have agreed to do it (e.g. asking your opponent to bring the toughest list they can to test weaknesses).

The most common convention I've seen is that players prefer to put together a "take all comers" list for a few game sizes (usually 1500pts and 2000pts, but YMMV) so they can be ready for whatever size game their opponent prefers. Regardless of who they end up playing at the venue (usually a gaming club, store or person's house), they use one of these TAC lists.

 Bilge Rat wrote:
In a tournament setting you would not normally know exactly what armies you would face so you would have to finalise your list without that knowledge. However, for friendly games you can do whatever you want.

The situation still comes up though many tournaments allow round 1 grudges where you might know but this is balanced by later rounds.

You can try varying your lists even within a faction.
A list focusing on infantry and destroyers is going to perform very differently to one centered around ctan.

It is also why I would recommend tourney practice because if your practicing what you would run for a tourney your not going to run an anti faction list