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I was talking with some friends looking at 40k recent tournament winning lists and breaking down how to maybe counter them when we started a fun conversation. we tried building lists that might have a reasonable chance to come out of nowhere and actually pull off wins in this meta while being objectively terrible lists. what would your terrible but might be able to work list consist of?

This could be anything from bringing one single warlord titan to pure terminator grey knights.

My entry that I think might actually pull off a win is an absolute tyranid horde.

custom hivefleet w/ adaptive skeleton (6++) and hypermetobolic acceleration (reroll advance)

3x tyranid primes, 1 warlord with adaptive biology and norn crown

8 x 20 hormegaunts
8 x 20 termigaunts

zero upgrades on anything. just 323 fearless charging bodies, mostly troops.

Are there things that can wipe it? absolutely, is it a smart investment in time money etc, absolutely not. but if you get lucky draws in a tournament it might be the "wtf just won that event" list

I'd swap out a Prime for a Broodlord, to keep pace with the Hormagaunts and ensure that they remain under synapse control. Should they tangle with anything too tough, the Broodlord will get the job done.

You're on the right train of thought. It's often speculated that huge horde armies are a potential metabreaker. The problem is in practically playing these in a tournament setting. You have to bring the army, painted, and move it around the gaming space. You have to deal with a timer, but also the actual fatigue of moving models that fast and rolling dice for hours on end. Plus, because you have to roll so much so fast, it's impossible for your opponent to keep track of your rolls.

All that being said, I'm a fan of mass Guardsmen. You can easily get to 250 bodies with scores of special weapons. There's even a rule-bending tech due to GW's update to Orders. Now that orders propagate, it seems you can use the Laurels of Command to get a 4+ chance to affect every unit with an additional order. By issuing up to 3 orders per turn, it's extremely likely you get FRFSRF, Take Aim, and sometimes you'll also get Bring It Down. Lasguns don't care about your defensive improvements since they can't get any worse. When I theory crafted this list a while ago, the math said it was killing about a Knight per turn with Lasguns.

The most practical examples of these meta-breakers are the 14 Armiger Imperial Knights which do sometimes crop up, and the Daemons infinite Horror list. That one I've only seen once, when Nick Nanavati played it against Richard Siegler in a show match.

 DarkHound wrote:
You're on the right train of thought. It's often speculated that huge horde armies are a potential metabreaker. The problem is in practically playing these in a tournament setting. You have to bring the army, painted, and move it around the gaming space. You have to deal with a timer, but also the actual fatigue of moving models that fast and rolling dice for hours on end. Plus, because you have to roll so much so fast, it's impossible for your opponent to keep track of your rolls.

All that being said, I'm a fan of mass Guardsmen. You can easily get to 250 bodies with scores of special weapons. There's even a rule-bending tech due to GW's update to Orders. Now that orders propagate, it seems you can use the Laurels of Command to get a 4+ chance to affect every unit with an additional order. By issuing up to 3 orders per turn, it's extremely likely you get FRFSRF, Take Aim, and sometimes you'll also get Bring It Down. Lasguns don't care about your defensive improvements since they can't get any worse. When I theory crafted this list a while ago, the math said it was killing about a Knight per turn with Lasguns.

The most practical examples of these meta-breakers are the 14 Armiger Imperial Knights which do sometimes crop up, and the Daemons infinite Horror list. That one I've only seen once, when Nick Nanavati played it against Richard Siegler in a show match.

I have pulled off some smaller local tournaments with ork boyz since 5th edition (not possible in 9th sadly) the armiger list sounds cool I will look for that one. I am currently working on an all kroot army to give that a try. another army brought up in talkign with friends that sounds maybe awesome is an almost pure leman russ army tank commander and russes and just a few cheap infantry to hide and do objectives

Russ spam isn't exactly novel. Albeit they can be tougher than dreds but when 10 dreads some with 5++ and some chars gets busted in couple turns without even really mean list not convinced it works

Enough lasguns to kill a knight is cute and well, but first you need to fit enough models closely around the knight to actually fire that many shots which is going to be nearly impossible given slow horde speeds. Mathhammer =/= TT.

The problem with off meta is that while you can gank most of casual armies (or even optimized ones from weaker books, *cough* SM) you will do little to nothing to truly broken lists. Tau, DE, and Eldar have literally zero weaknesses, including speed, and can just concentrate whole army in one spot due to ridiculously broken move ranges before moving to the other end of the table next turn, and delete even biggest spam in detail. You'd play like 7th edition SM, plop down as many wounds as you can on objectives and pray you can weather enemy damage output long enough to outscore enemy (though given ridiculous dice output of flamers all three xeno armies can put in a single unit I'd only count on that if opponent made major error in list construction).

Funnily enough, the xeno army that would fare against it the worst would probably be orkstodes, because their T5 buff does nothing against the lasguns while raising their average points. Even then you'd need to watch out against turn 1 charges with enough dice thrown to wipe out even biggest chaff squads. Alas, the days of 7th edition where you could win at the army creation stage seem to be back...

 Irbis wrote:
Enough lasguns to kill a knight is cute and well, but first you need to fit enough models closely around the knight to actually fire that many shots which is going to be nearly impossible given slow horde speeds. Mathhammer =/= TT.

I accounted for that, yes. In a Guard tide list, you'd take a custom trait to make Rapid Fire double shots at 18" instead of 24". Depending on the terrain layout, it's possible to kill one Knight and cripple another each turn. Infantry Guard are also very fast, with copious access to Move Move Move. You'd leap frog the army: send 50 Guardsmen to the Knight's ankles to prepare for next turn while shooting at 24" with the rest of the army. I could go on.

Saying things like "Tau, DE, and Eldar have zero weaknesses" is needlessly reductive. Especially since the Eldar book isn't even out and nobody's played any games with it. In fact, Custodes are most of the top place finishes currently. Tau have only started winning, but aren't dominating yet. Dark Eldar have fallen off almost completely.