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I see a lot of talk on these boards about weak codexes and how they never do well at tournaments. I was curious if anyone here has ever taken it as a challange to take a low tier army, with no allies, to a tournament and do well with it. I have a friend that has been playing Orks since the 90's who has done extremely well with them and it started me wondering if there are similar stories out there and what were the selections, tactics, and missions that caused people to do well.

I've taken first place twice and second place once with pure Dark Eldar armies.

Myt first place wins were A) an Escalation league where my victories were due less to having better unit choices and stemmed more from accurately predicting what the other people in the league were going to be bringing each week. (The opponents were announced a week in advance, so while you didn't know their list, you did know their faction and the lists they'd brought previously) And B) a tournament where I lucked out. I was running gunboat/darklight spam and my three opponents were Nidzilla, Grey Knights deathstar, and Nidzilla.

The second place tournament was luck more than skill. Out of three rounds, I went 2-1, and both wins were only because of when time was called. (If the game had gone to a full length, I'd have lost the one against the Tau within two turns, and would have been tabled by the Ork opponent.)

I'm confident with my Chaos unless I run into a Grey Knight or Necron player. They are my serious bugaboos and always will be.

A lot of low tier books actually have a few very competent builds. Usually you can tell someone is ignorant if theyre saying a book cant come up with anything. When you call them out you get one of the following excuses:

-Well I dont have the time and/or money to buy whats required.
-Well I dont have the time to study the strategy and train to play well.
-I dont want to use the effective build, I want to win with whatever I choose.
-I dont believe the army can win despite evidence to the contrary because reasons.
-I dont want to use alllies because reasons.

So all and all you have a person who just wants free wins on a platter when it comes down to it.

Thing is, none of that matters. Most books have a competitive build whether someone has a ton of excuses against it or not. Personal choices/limitations dont change that. I know a dude who has mastered the Dark Eldar MSU and can take on pretty much anything. Recently in a 40 player tournament Orks placed third with a Trukk zerg list. I personally started playing a deathstar few weeks ago, consisting of KDK Lords and Flesh Hounds, Cyclopial Cabal and Cypher and I have already taken down 2 Tau armies (one with Riptidewing, other with Stormsurge) a War Convocation, Ravenwing MSU and a White Scars Gladius Strike Force.

In practice the no allies mindset is next to useless for tournament play unless limited by the event rules for obvious reasons. Some lower tier armies can get some decent lists however, like the Dark Eldar.

You can win with lower tier books just fine, just takes effort, practice and a better mindset than just making excuses and conceding before the game has even begun. Some dont have it in them, and the first reaction is usually to get mad. The better one would be to git gud.

Yes actually, it tends to happen when people actually start making their own lists and get a little creative with it. Don't cheese and spam every living thing and be surprised that *MOST* people don't know what to do when you have something that is really well balanced that can take most comers.

This is a specifically 40K topic so I am going to move it to 40K General Discussion.

 Runic wrote:

-Well I dont have the time and/or money to buy whats required.

This is a completely valid reason. The game should not be who's the richest, it should be who's the better tactician.

I've finished 1st twice and 2nd (nu tau) with pure IG in 7th. Inter-GW store tournament to be fair but that was through about 30 people.

Not doing so well now that turn 1 Assault is a factor once again.

Plenty of event wins with pure dark eldar across 5th/6th/7th editions.

More recently I placed 3rd with pure sisters (only 16 players though) and went undefeated across 4 games with 64 players with pure harlies (leaving me 5th overall)

We had a local turnie two weeks ago.

Nothing too big, or too serius, but first place was DE covens list, second necron, third harlequins and forth tau (don't remember further down)

I took 3rd in a 2 day ITC GT last spring with the 7e BA codex running a pure no allies list.
Even further: I was running two land raider redeemers!

To be fair though, this was right before the 7e eldar codex, so gladius, GC wraithknights, stormsurges, Libby conclaves etc weren't a thing yet. And most of the necron players didn't have any idea what they were doing with their decurions yet. I'm pretty certain that same list would get obliterated nowadays.

I took allied blood angels and tyranids to a tournament a few months ago. Went 5-1 on primaries, but unfortunately lost a lot of points on secondaries.
Still, defeated a bunch of fairly nasty lists, and had a good time doing it.

I've come between first and fifth (out of about ten players) with my Blood Angels consistently (Against SM, Eldar, and lots of Tau). When everyone is playing for a deathstar, don't give them one. Boom. All out rush their faces.

At local tournaments, you can pretty much bring any army you want and if you're a good player, you will win unless the event has a ton of seriously competitive builds, or the event is poorly structured (i.e. someone decides to run a pure killteam event and you brought dark eldar)

My most recent local tourney, I brought the ork Ghaz-curion and did...OK, I won more than I lost but had two victories by points alone with my list largely getting slaughtered. With my Harlequin/De/CWE list I have done very well and have even won tournaments.

I took Sisters to a micro tournament (30 players, 500 point games) at the end of 5th and came in second behind a Dark Eldar player.

 Runic wrote:
A lot of low tier books actually have a few very competent builds. Usually you can tell someone is ignorant if theyre saying a book cant come up with anything. When you call them out you get one of the following excuses:

-Well I dont have the time and/or money to buy whats required.
-Well I dont have the time to study the strategy and train to play well.
-I dont want to use the effective build, I want to win with whatever I choose.
-I dont believe the army can win despite evidence to the contrary because reasons.
-I dont want to use alllies because reasons.

So all and all you have a person who just wants free wins on a platter when it comes down to it.

Thing is, none of that matters. Most books have a competitive build whether someone has a ton of excuses against it or not. Personal choices/limitations dont change that. I know a dude who has mastered the Dark Eldar MSU and can take on pretty much anything. Recently in a 40 player tournament Orks placed third with a Trukk zerg list. I personally started playing a deathstar few weeks ago, consisting of KDK Lords and Flesh Hounds, Cyclopial Cabal and Cypher and I have already taken down 2 Tau armies (one with Riptidewing, other with Stormsurge) a War Convocation, Ravenwing MSU and a White Scars Gladius Strike Force.

In practice the no allies mindset is next to useless for tournament play unless limited by the event rules for obvious reasons. Some lower tier armies can get some decent lists however, like the Dark Eldar.

You can win with lower tier books just fine, just takes effort, practice and a better mindset than just making excuses and conceding before the game has even begun. Some dont have it in them, and the first reaction is usually to get mad. The better one would be to git gud.

Nice misrepresentation of various arguments there Runic. Followed up by the classic hollow answer of "git gud".

Re: The topic, As far as I know, nobody places well with the weak codex's at the more well known tournies, Whereas local tournies are another thing entirely, so can do well due a number of reasons (knowing how people play, familiarity of what they are likely to run, etc etc).

 Mozzyfuzzy wrote:

 Runic wrote:
A lot of low tier books actually have a few very competent builds. Usually you can tell someone is ignorant if theyre saying a book cant come up with anything. When you call them out you get one of the following excuses:

-Well I dont have the time and/or money to buy whats required.
-Well I dont have the time to study the strategy and train to play well.
-I dont want to use the effective build, I want to win with whatever I choose.
-I dont believe the army can win despite evidence to the contrary because reasons.
-I dont want to use alllies because reasons.

So all and all you have a person who just wants free wins on a platter when it comes down to it.

Thing is, none of that matters. Most books have a competitive build whether someone has a ton of excuses against it or not. Personal choices/limitations dont change that. I know a dude who has mastered the Dark Eldar MSU and can take on pretty much anything. Recently in a 40 player tournament Orks placed third with a Trukk zerg list. I personally started playing a deathstar few weeks ago, consisting of KDK Lords and Flesh Hounds, Cyclopial Cabal and Cypher and I have already taken down 2 Tau armies (one with Riptidewing, other with Stormsurge) a War Convocation, Ravenwing MSU and a White Scars Gladius Strike Force.

In practice the no allies mindset is next to useless for tournament play unless limited by the event rules for obvious reasons. Some lower tier armies can get some decent lists however, like the Dark Eldar.

You can win with lower tier books just fine, just takes effort, practice and a better mindset than just making excuses and conceding before the game has even begun. Some dont have it in them, and the first reaction is usually to get mad. The better one would be to git gud.

Nice misrepresentation of various arguments there Runic. Followed up by the classic hollow answer of "git gud".

Re: The topic, As far as I know, nobody places well with the weak codex's at the more well known tournies, Whereas local tournies are another thing entirely, so can do well due a number of reasons (knowing how people play, familiarity of what they are likely to run, etc etc).

Precisely. What people bring to a local event is far more likely to be determined by what they have than what is super powerful at the moment. You may have one or two scatter/wraithspam armies, a gladius or two, but it's not going to be a big tourney where 75% of the players are running scatter/wraith.

You can win most local RTTs with nearly any codex. I've placed in top three in more than my fair share using 'bottom tier codexes'

In larger GTs, or if you have an extremely competitive meta, that will probably not happen. That's where you see the gap between lists really start to widen.

The only tournament I've ever played in was won by a Tyranid army without a Flyrant. The format did somewhat favor the 'Nids, though. No formations, no allies, no SHV/GMCs. 1250pts. His Swarmlord just steamrolled everything.

I've won with footslogging orks once. Why once? Because i haven't played footsloggas in competitive games since. I only managed to win cause i won on maelstorm. Every game was an exhausting uphill battle cause every inch and every model mattered. There was a game where i didn't kill a single model and lost 90% of the army. But still managed to win cause the opponent wasn't too involved. By the end of the day, i was completely squeezed and with a headache.
I don't wana play a copy-paste marine or eldar army but i still want to have fun! I think i can do it with a mech list full of MANz. And screw hordes. They suck. Costly, time consuming, hard to play.

 Mozzyfuzzy wrote:
Nice misrepresentation of various arguments there Runic. Followed up by the classic hollow answer of "git gud".

Asfar as I'm concerned none of them are misinterpretations and instead actual reasons you often see brought up. The last part was a joke, but I guess I should've used an emoticon to better explain that. Some people manage to play worse codices with competent builds. Others don't. Somewhere between there is something preventing the latter to do this very thing, usually explained by one of the reasons I listed. Often they are disguised as something else, or presented in an evasive manner in order to mask the true reason of why someone can't win with their army, and in the end it's revealed to be something a bit different, most of the time exactly what it seems to be on first glance.

I'll counter by simply stating you made a nice blanket statement with nothing of substance to back it up nor prove me wrong.

It's true however that in larger tournaments the gap widens. However, many larger tournaments also use rulesets that allow for the worst kind of abuse imaginable and aren't too strict on limiting the most overpowered units and combinations. With a stricter ruleset that would nerf some of the top tier armybuilds the results would, ofcourse, vary.

Does Best Sportsman count?

Of the 20-30 man tournaments we have at our FLGS I've placed in the top 3 sportsmans 3/4 of the time. So maybe pity votes.

In terms of actual play, I did okay when I was running an all DW army when that was still possible, turn one DS everything! Despite being up against some big scary lists I've managed to place 2nd and 3rd a few times (first is usually our nid player that goes to huge tournies).

Just checking pure terminator lists are considered weak, right?

 kingbobbito wrote:

Just checking pure terminator lists are considered weak, right?

Pretty much, they are overcosted compared to what they do, and the amount of weaponry that goes right through their armour these days is just too vast. If they got to re-roll their 2+ save, got an extra Wound and maybe 1+ Toughness/FNP, they would become usable.

 koooaei wrote:
I've won with footslogging orks once. Why once? Because i haven't played footsloggas in competitive games since. I only managed to win cause i won on maelstorm. Every game was an exhausting uphill battle cause every inch and every model mattered. There was a game where i didn't kill a single model and lost 90% of the army. But still managed to win cause the opponent wasn't too involved. By the end of the day, i was completely squeezed and with a headache.
I don't wana play a copy-paste marine or eldar army but i still want to have fun! I think i can do it with a mech list full of MANz. And screw hordes. They suck. Costly, time consuming, hard to play.

It takes a certain mindset to play a proper horde army IMO. You say that "every model mattered", but in a horde, its usually quite the opposite. "Acceptable Losses" should be the mantra of EVERY horde player.

As for an elite Ork army? Don't do it, you will be incredibly disappointed. Orks were never meant to roll as an low-model-count, elite army, and as such, simply don't work when built that way. If building a mech list, I would plan on taking gobs of trukks loaded with boyz (its still a horde list, just broken up more).

 ClassicCarraway wrote:

 koooaei wrote:
I've won with footslogging orks once. Why once? Because i haven't played footsloggas in competitive games since. I only managed to win cause i won on maelstorm. Every game was an exhausting uphill battle cause every inch and every model mattered. There was a game where i didn't kill a single model and lost 90% of the army. But still managed to win cause the opponent wasn't too involved. By the end of the day, i was completely squeezed and with a headache.
I don't wana play a copy-paste marine or eldar army but i still want to have fun! I think i can do it with a mech list full of MANz. And screw hordes. They suck. Costly, time consuming, hard to play.

It takes a certain mindset to play a proper horde army IMO. You say that "every model mattered", but in a horde, its usually quite the opposite. "Acceptable Losses" should be the mantra of EVERY horde player.

As for an elite Ork army? Don't do it, you will be incredibly disappointed. Orks were never meant to roll as an low-model-count, elite army, and as such, simply don't work when built that way. If building a mech list, I would plan on taking gobs of trukks loaded with boyz (its still a horde list, just broken up more).

This. I run a Nob guard for my Warboss and Painboy lackey to great success. It's just meatshields at 2 wounds a pop for my Klaw and his failsafe. Even then, I will gladly throw my Painboy in the way and try to make due with my Warboss's 6+ FNP. I've won several games this way.

I have honestly done surprisingly well at local tournaments with a dread mob list.

The basic idea is that a well rounded army is going to have a good mix of anti tank and anti infantry, and since I have no infantry, a good portion of their army is functionally useless.

Plus, it's small model count, easy to set up, and is generally over relatively quickly one way or another.

That being said, I have absolutely no illusions about it being a good list. Just one that many are unprepared for.

 Kap'n Krump wrote:
I have honestly done surprisingly well at local tournaments with a dread mob list.

The basic idea is that a well rounded army is going to have a good mix of anti tank and anti infantry, and since I have no infantry, a good portion of their army is functionally useless.

Plus, it's small model count, easy to set up, and is generally over relatively quickly one way or another.

That being said, I have absolutely no illusions about it being a good list. Just one that many are unprepared for.

The Dread Mob list can be actually pretty brutal against some armies. Yeah it has a lot of weaknesses, but like you said, if your opponent brings a mix of units, all his S4 is useless.

I came third with CSM and IG allies back in 6th..

Barrage was very underestimated back then..

With Ork footslogging, I feel that has died due to shooting being more dominant in this edition but the competitive game usually plays with what I call the three rule mindset:

1) Has to be fast. As in 12" movement a turn fast.
2) MSU and spam 'em.
3) Big Stompy Things (super heavies, and Co, also known as BST)

Its why Eldar and Co. do so well. They have the mobility, they have the MSU to get from objectives and they have the stompy thing in the back in the form of a Waithknight. In addition they have over efficant firepower and Psykery to minimise the randomess in values for dice rolling.

Orks can do this but it is limitating. Trukks spam seems to be dominant when you spam 6 squads of boyz, combining convention 1 and 2. Convention 3) can come in the form of a formation of Ghazzys bully boyz and again you can cram them into trukks and fly them up 24" plus deployment on turn 1, in addition with the renegade Knights being AoC, you can easily get a big Stompy thing in the back which could do just as well dependant on customisation

Orks can screen like hell when played in this fashion, so play like stalin and make those boys the quality of the quantity I made Eldar even sacre themselves in a game as my opponent was not expecting the sheer speed of the Trukk.

Just beware the FAQ as not being able to go through walls.. could screw over the speed factor in Trukk lists

 Runic wrote:

 Mozzyfuzzy wrote:
Nice misrepresentation of various arguments there Runic. Followed up by the classic hollow answer of "git gud".

Asfar as I'm concerned none of them are misinterpretations and instead actual reasons you often see brought up. The last part was a joke, but I guess I should've used an emoticon to better explain that. Some people manage to play worse codices with competent builds. Others don't. Somewhere between there is something preventing the latter to do this very thing, usually explained by one of the reasons I listed. Often they are disguised as something else, or presented in an evasive manner in order to mask the true reason of why someone can't win with their army, and in the end it's revealed to be something a bit different, most of the time exactly what it seems to be on first glance.

I'll counter by simply stating you made a nice blanket statement with nothing of substance to back it up nor prove me wrong.

It's true however that in larger tournaments the gap widens. However, many larger tournaments also use rulesets that allow for the worst kind of abuse imaginable and aren't too strict on limiting the most overpowered units and combinations. With a stricter ruleset that would nerf some of the top tier armybuilds the results would, ofcourse, vary.

See I was going to attempt to explain those arguments to you, but you've already made your mind up about them, judging from the bolded. So whatever I say next isn't going to convince you.

But I'm going to anyway

So I'll go with the one that irritates me the most "-I dont want to use the effective build, I want to win with whatever I choose. " In an internally balanced codex, you have a choice of options and can work out a myriad of builds and usually have units you like the fluff for or look of. For example, If I wanted to play Elday, I could play a wraith army, I could play a warp spider/fire dragon army, I could play a jetbike army, or even a mixture of those and manage to be fairly successful with any of them, which is fine.

But the problem then comes from the fact that I don't play Eldar, I play CSM. So if I want to play competitively my options are minimum CSM units with either Daemons allies or KDK. Fun fact, I don't like the look of daemons and while I enjoy Khorne, the competitive KDK list is Gorepack (Bloodpack) which strangely enough relies on Khorne Daemons at it's centre.

So yes I'm at fault for the aesthetics I like and the kinds of list I want to run, it's all my fault and nothing to do with whomever "writes" my codex. I should just suck it up, replace my CSM with a minimum sized squad of cultists, an unmarked sorcerer and (in my opinion) the awful looking Heldrake, then pick up CSD to fill in the rest of the points.

So that I can then go and have my arse handed to me by anyone who vaguely knows how to play the game that decided they think Saim Hamm (Hann?) is the best craftworld and that Jetbikes are cool.

/because reasons.

 Mozzyfuzzy wrote:

 Runic wrote:

 Mozzyfuzzy wrote:
Nice misrepresentation of various arguments there Runic. Followed up by the classic hollow answer of "git gud".

Asfar as I'm concerned none of them are misinterpretations and instead actual reasons you often see brought up. The last part was a joke, but I guess I should've used an emoticon to better explain that. Some people manage to play worse codices with competent builds. Others don't. Somewhere between there is something preventing the latter to do this very thing, usually explained by one of the reasons I listed. Often they are disguised as something else, or presented in an evasive manner in order to mask the true reason of why someone can't win with their army, and in the end it's revealed to be something a bit different, most of the time exactly what it seems to be on first glance.

I'll counter by simply stating you made a nice blanket statement with nothing of substance to back it up nor prove me wrong.

It's true however that in larger tournaments the gap widens. However, many larger tournaments also use rulesets that allow for the worst kind of abuse imaginable and aren't too strict on limiting the most overpowered units and combinations. With a stricter ruleset that would nerf some of the top tier armybuilds the results would, ofcourse, vary.

See I was going to attempt to explain those arguments to you, but you've already made your mind up about them, judging from the bolded. So whatever I say next isn't going to convince you.

But I'm going to anyway

So I'll go with the one that irritates me the most "-I dont want to use the effective build, I want to win with whatever I choose. " In an internally balanced codex, you have a choice of options and can work out a myriad of builds and usually have units you like the fluff for or look of. For example, If I wanted to play Elday, I could play a wraith army, I could play a warp spider/fire dragon army, I could play a jetbike army, or even a mixture of those and manage to be fairly successful with any of them, which is fine.

But the problem then comes from the fact that I don't play Eldar, I play CSM. So if I want to play competitively my options are minimum CSM units with either Daemons allies or KDK. Fun fact, I don't like the look of daemons and while I enjoy Khorne, the competitive KDK list is Gorepack (Bloodpack) which strangely enough relies on Khorne Daemons at it's centre.

So yes I'm at fault for the aesthetics I like and the kinds of list I want to run, it's all my fault and nothing to do with whomever "writes" my codex. I should just suck it up, replace my CSM with a minimum sized squad of cultists, an unmarked sorcerer and (in my opinion) the awful looking Heldrake, then pick up CSD to fill in the rest of the points.

So that I can then go and have my arse handed to me by anyone who vaguely knows how to play the game that decided they think Saim Hamm (Hann?) is the best craftworld and that Jetbikes are cool.

/because reasons.

While I get your frustration, that's not what the OP was asking about. He was asking if a weak codex has finished strong in a tournament setting.

In fact, your statement essentially backs up Runic's point. You are saying that CSM are a codex that can't win in a tournament environment because you don't want to utilize all of the tools at that army's disposal (allies, FW units, etc) and/or because some units don't fit your personal preference. In a tournament environment, efficiency will ALWAYS trump fluff and preference.

If Death from the Skies becomes accepted by tournament organizers, CSM could see a resurgence of sorts, because 4 heldrakes in a wing formation would be no joke to all the bike/jetbike heavy lists out there.