Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
So their list shows the meta analysis of a game ravaged by a global pandemic. It's less an accurate snapshot of the meta, and more a roll of the dice. For instance, if we go by Australian GT for our Snapshot: Astartes all suck, and Necrons are best.

This list shows Necrons are currently 4th. Does anyone actually believe Necrons are currently dominating the META, or is it just there was a FLOOD of new Necrons at the start of 9th, and we expect that to drop sharply?

Also it puts BA/DA roughly 7th and 8th, behind ORKS. No, I don't see much of value in this, it's still too early, also we will continue to see Custodes be a dominant faction until they properly FAQ our point costs. Right now we are just slighly stronger DG. There is no reason to suspect we will not see a massive uptick in DG lists next snapshot.


There is something to be said that "Classically shooty" armies are way behind the "Rushdown" style lists.

If you check the graph, they really are not dominating, and are pretty neck and neck with Chaos Daemons and Slaanesh.

That being said, if you look at the last 4 american tournaments or so Necrons had I think 4 top 4 finishes. That's pretty good and indicates it's a top army.

Of course we have to take everything with a grain of salt, since covid is limiting tournament and general play quite a bit. We've also just had two new codexes released which will have some effect on the meta as well. The fact is right now, it is the best data we have, but it should always be taken with some amount of salt.

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
So their list shows the meta analysis of a game ravaged by a global pandemic. It's less an accurate snapshot of the meta, and more a roll of the dice. For instance, if we go by Australian GT for our Snapshot: Astartes all suck, and Necrons are best.

This list shows Necrons are currently 4th. Does anyone actually believe Necrons are currently dominating the META, or is it just there was a FLOOD of new Necrons at the start of 9th, and we expect that to drop sharply?

Also it puts BA/DA roughly 7th and 8th, behind ORKS. No, I don't see much of value in this, it's still too early, also we will continue to see Custodes be a dominant faction until they properly FAQ our point costs. Right now we are just slighly stronger DG. There is no reason to suspect we will not see a massive uptick in DG lists next snapshot.

There is something to be said that "Classically shooty" armies are way behind the "Rushdown" style lists.

When I see a post like this I can't help but read, 'This doesn't match my preconceived notions of how things should be and therefore must be wrong.'

Heck, the graph doesn't even show Necrons dominating. The only armies that I'd call oppressive are Quinns, Custodes, and SoB. The next group of factions are all a cut below that; overturned but probably not so powerful that you can't get a good game against them.

Yeah, this tracks with my experience of 9th ed so far lol with the factions I play.

Sort of crossing threads from the 5 problems with 40k...

Broadly speaking I don't mind the Deep Strike rules. But I do think going *second* when deep striking/Strategic Reserving is often bad. This is because your opponent gets 2 turns to impact the board state such that when they arrive its often too little too late.

So my thought would be what if the player going second could just determine that their units in DS/Strategic Reserve will instead be deployed on the table as normal after losing the roll off?

Tyel wrote:
Sort of crossing threads from the 5 problems with 40k...

Broadly speaking I don't mind the Deep Strike rules. But I do think going *second* when deep striking/Strategic Reserving is often bad. This is because your opponent gets 2 turns to impact the board state such that when they arrive its often too little too late.

So my thought would be what if the player going second could just determine that their units in DS/Strategic Reserve will instead be deployed on the table as normal after losing the roll off?

Alternatively, would it be so bad to allow the player going second to bring in his reserves on turn 1? In the past, this could be a problem because a player could reserve a ton of their list and then just choose to go second. Now with the player winning the roll-off forced to go first, putting a ton of stuff in reserves hoping to go second would be extremely risky.

 CommunistNapkin wrote:
Alternatively, would it be so bad to allow the player going second to bring in his reserves on turn 1? In the past, this could be a problem because a player could reserve a ton of their list and then just choose to go second. Now with the player winning the roll-off forced to go first, putting a ton of stuff in reserves hoping to go second would be extremely risky.

I guess theoretically since we are trying to resolve first turn advantage this wouldn't be a problem.
But.... I've got a violent dislike to things which are massive skewed offense forward - like say Obliterators (not that CSM don't have problems) - being able to just drop in turn 1 and nuke stuff.

 Canadian 5th wrote:

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
So their list shows the meta analysis of a game ravaged by a global pandemic. It's less an accurate snapshot of the meta, and more a roll of the dice. For instance, if we go by Australian GT for our Snapshot: Astartes all suck, and Necrons are best.

This list shows Necrons are currently 4th. Does anyone actually believe Necrons are currently dominating the META, or is it just there was a FLOOD of new Necrons at the start of 9th, and we expect that to drop sharply?

Also it puts BA/DA roughly 7th and 8th, behind ORKS. No, I don't see much of value in this, it's still too early, also we will continue to see Custodes be a dominant faction until they properly FAQ our point costs. Right now we are just slighly stronger DG. There is no reason to suspect we will not see a massive uptick in DG lists next snapshot.

There is something to be said that "Classically shooty" armies are way behind the "Rushdown" style lists.

When I see a post like this I can't help but read, 'This doesn't match my preconceived notions of how things should be and therefore must be wrong.'

Heck, the graph doesn't even show Necrons dominating. The only armies that I'd call oppressive are Quinns, Custodes, and SoB. The next group of factions are all a cut below that; overturned but probably not so powerful that you can't get a good game against them.

When I read a post like this, I can't help but read "I'm going to disagree with someone one a single pointm while completely ignoring their other points, but maintaining a sanctimonious attitude that only serves to tear down a straw man argument that I created"

How do you feel the current state of the entire world has affected the meta, or the earliness of the prognostication relative to the life of the edition? This entire "Meta review" is akin to ESPN calling the top team in a sport based off spring Training. It's there to draw clicks. I'd expect to see this on Spikey Bits.

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
When I read a post like this, I can't help but read "I'm going to disagree with someone one a single pointm while completely ignoring their other points, but maintaining a sanctimonious attitude that only serves to tear down a straw man argument that I created"

How do you feel the current state of the entire world has affected the meta, or the earliness of the prognostication relative to the life of the edition? This entire "Meta review" is akin to ESPN calling the top team in a sport based off spring Training. It's there to draw clicks. I'd expect to see this on Spikey Bits.

The meta might be less optimized due to having fewer games played compared to a normal year but that should hold true for even casual games and thus again not invalidate the date collected thus far. The meta really shouldn't be much affected, at least in terms of army representation at events, and thus the data is likely to be broadly accurate if not as well supported as we would like. If you want to dispute this I'd like to see the data showing that we're seeing people who play specific factions being more likely to avoid tournaments thus skewing our stats.

In any case, the data we have is from more than a single tournament and doesn't warrant statements like:

"[I]f we go by Australian GT for our Snapshot: Astartes all suck, and Necrons are best."

"Does anyone actually believe Necrons are currently dominating the META, or is it just there was a FLOOD of new Necrons at the start of 9th, and we expect that to drop sharply?"

"Also it puts BA/DA roughly 7th and 8th, behind ORKS."

Your takes are both hot and bad and you should consider why your biases are influencing you to ignore data in favor of your own insights into the meta.

Tyel wrote:
Sort of crossing threads from the 5 problems with 40k...

Broadly speaking I don't mind the Deep Strike rules. But I do think going *second* when deep striking/Strategic Reserving is often bad. This is because your opponent gets 2 turns to impact the board state such that when they arrive its often too little too late.

So my thought would be what if the player going second could just determine that their units in DS/Strategic Reserve will instead be deployed on the table as normal after losing the roll off?

My suggestion to the first turn imbalance/ deep strike issue would be to allow the 2nd player to bring on their reserves in the first turn.

Aash wrote:

Tyel wrote:
Sort of crossing threads from the 5 problems with 40k...

Broadly speaking I don't mind the Deep Strike rules. But I do think going *second* when deep striking/Strategic Reserving is often bad. This is because your opponent gets 2 turns to impact the board state such that when they arrive its often too little too late.

So my thought would be what if the player going second could just determine that their units in DS/Strategic Reserve will instead be deployed on the table as normal after losing the roll off?

My suggestion to the first turn imbalance/ deep strike issue would be to allow the 2nd player to bring on their reserves in the first turn.

Hmm,could be too much.

Maybe a single unit.

In any case I would wait. We still have no clear idea of the full effects of the last FAQ on first turn advantage.

Also, that change is increasingly more effective the more resilient the playing factions are. Codex after codex, we are noticing a sharp increase in average durability, so the effects of that FAQ are probably going to grow with time.

 Canadian 5th wrote:

The meta might be less optimized due to having fewer games played compared to a normal year but that should hold true for even casual games and thus again not invalidate the date collected thus far. The meta really shouldn't be much affected, at least in terms of army representation at events, and thus the data is likely to be broadly accurate if not as well supported as we would like. If you want to dispute this I'd like to see the data showing that we're seeing people who play specific factions being more likely to avoid tournaments thus skewing our stats.

Isn't it for data analzys like this, no longer important if you get the whole 100% of possible data, after you go over a certain threshold? 9th has fewer games then 8th had in the same time, but it is not like the arguments are being build on a few dudes playing 3 games with each army, and saying that this army is good and that army is bad.

It starts to sound, specially the marine stuff, as if some people just wanted to have other armies nerfed no matter what, and their armies either buffed or left untouched, if they happen to be good at the time. Eldar players seem to defend the 60% win ratio harlis with the line, that they maybe good, but only if played by a good players, for example.

Karol wrote:
Isn't it for data analzys like this, no longer important if you get the whole 100% of possible data, after you go over a certain threshold? 9th has fewer games then 8th had in the same time, but it is not like the arguments are being build on a few dudes playing 3 games with each army, and saying that this army is good and that army is bad.

The only issue you might run into with the current 40k data is if you assume that the people playing aren't representative of the meta, but if you make that claim you'd need to prove it.

It starts to sound, specially the marine stuff, as if some people just wanted to have other armies nerfed no matter what, and their armies either buffed or left untouched, if they happen to be good at the time. Eldar players seem to defend the 60% win ratio harlis with the line, that they maybe good, but only if played by a good players, for example.

The disbelief seems to stem from this data not fitting with people's casual metas even though this doesn't seek to analyze such metas. It may be that a badly built list from the SoB Codex loses to an equally carelessly built Marine list and thus people assume that Marines are better than SoB.

I think that it is also that the data set doesn't have a way to account for regardless of over all balance if marines are good you can almost esentially build to beat them and have a fairly decent chance of progressing to the later rounds.

Vis vera the good players playing an anti meta list to beat X or Y which they expect in the later rounds stand a far better chance of beating the randoms in the early rounds.

While some of those top factions have traditionally lost hard to the "terrible factions" as long as those terrible factions are left unplayable the rock scissors paper approach to balance that GW seems to be indicating is their plan doesn't work.

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:

This list shows Necrons are currently 4th. Does anyone actually believe Necrons are currently dominating the META, or is it just there was a FLOOD of new Necrons at the start of 9th, and we expect that to drop sharply?

I think it's likely that Necrons still have a pretty good match up against Marines, accounting for their success and high ranking. I don't think Necrons have good match ups against any of the other top factions. This is just my personal feeling on it, haven't got the data at hand to back it up

Cynista wrote:

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:

This list shows Necrons are currently 4th. Does anyone actually believe Necrons are currently dominating the META, or is it just there was a FLOOD of new Necrons at the start of 9th, and we expect that to drop sharply?

I think it's likely that Necrons still have a pretty good match up against Marines, accounting for their success and high ranking. I don't think Necrons have good match ups against any of the other top factions. This is just my personal feeling on it, haven't got the data at hand to back it up

You don't play 2,000 games (2/3 of SM and second most overall) without facing and beating the strong armies consistently AND having a higher win-rate (58 vs 51). Necron GLICKO (per Goonhammer) is #4 behind Harlies, Sisters, and Custodes.

 Daedalus81 wrote:

Cynista wrote:

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:

This list shows Necrons are currently 4th. Does anyone actually believe Necrons are currently dominating the META, or is it just there was a FLOOD of new Necrons at the start of 9th, and we expect that to drop sharply?

I think it's likely that Necrons still have a pretty good match up against Marines, accounting for their success and high ranking. I don't think Necrons have good match ups against any of the other top factions. This is just my personal feeling on it, haven't got the data at hand to back it up

You don't play 2,000 games (2/3 of SM and second most overall) without facing and beating the strong armies consistently AND having a higher win-rate (58 vs 51). Necron GLICKO (per Goonhammer) is #4 behind Harlies, Sisters, and Custodes.

Having just had a look at the relevant stats it seems they have a bad matchup against Sisters and a very bad matchup against Harlequins. But a surprisingly good one against Custodes, I imagine this is the Nightbringer effect, who is very good against expensive infantry. Not really enough data at the moment to make a judgement on anything though

Isn't there also something to be said for the ITC events being of the sort in Florida where the guy "created" an event, invited like 6 friends, and they basically all got like max points? Dishonest event reporting I mean. Is it possible these numbers are less than 90% accurate of the Meta?

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
Isn't there also something to be said for the ITC events being of the sort in Florida where the guy "created" an event, invited like 6 friends, and they basically all got like max points? Dishonest event reporting I mean. Is it possible these numbers are less than 90% accurate of the Meta?

That was an overblown scenario and no...a handful of people did not affect over 17,000 games to skew the meta.

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
Isn't there also something to be said for the ITC events being of the sort in Florida where the guy "created" an event, invited like 6 friends, and they basically all got like max points? Dishonest event reporting I mean. Is it possible these numbers are less than 90% accurate of the Meta?

While this is quite a simplication of the events, that event got it's ITC points taken away.

Cynista wrote:

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:

This list shows Necrons are currently 4th. Does anyone actually believe Necrons are currently dominating the META, or is it just there was a FLOOD of new Necrons at the start of 9th, and we expect that to drop sharply?

I think it's likely that Necrons still have a pretty good match up against Marines, accounting for their success and high ranking. I don't think Necrons have good match ups against any of the other top factions. This is just my personal feeling on it, haven't got the data at hand to back it up

Only if Plasceptors aren't involved. That unit basically hard counters absolutely everything in the Necron book and doesn't really have any answers for it. BA are also incredibly strong, with SG, DC and again Plasceptors just tabling your army in about 3 turns before you can really gain an adequate VP lead.

However you are correct also. The SoB match-up is incredibly bad for Necrons as Retributors and Repentia just delete units while being incredibly cost efficient. The Harlequin match-up doesn't have a ton of data or games recorded for it, but the -6" range Shadowseer and Frozen Star horde + Fusion boats + Haywire also deal very well with most competitive Necron lists on a conceptual level. Necrons have a decent time vs Custodes though, solely for the Custodes real lack of good cost efficient horde clear in both melee and range, however with the increasing use of the FW units this will probably change. Slaanesh Daemons its kind of a toss-up and really feels like it could go either way.

I think Necrons are also in an interesting spot because they don't really play like a lot of other armies right now and essentially being an entirely new army about 3 months ago probably helped them rack up some early wins before people figured them out a little.

What's also interesting is that despite the high overall winrate, the faction still has yet to actually win anything and at the last major GT featuring Necrons they were the second most represented army (if counting all Marines as one faction) and yet the highest they placed was 15th out of 96. In fact a lot of their recent (albeit miniscule amount of) placings they've only been getting the bottom half of top 10 at best. This really is because while the army overall is strong, some of those examples I mentioned above just hard counter the army completely and utterly and the longer you go in a tournament, the more likely you are to come across them. What's also becoming clear is that C'tan and especially the Nightbringer are not the bogeymen people thought they'd be. Even before the points hike and even when the Codex was newer, Szarekh lists were performing better than Nightbringer lists which does make sense. 350+ points for a unit that does nothing but kill things (and it isn't even the killiest thing in the game either; DA now have an Interrogator Chaplain that hits gak harder than a C'tan for 135 points ffs) and doesn't contribute anything to the mission or add any utility to your army is shockingly enough a tough sell. Not to say you can't make them work but I wouldn't be surprised if C'tan either completely disappear from lists or people do weird janky triple Transcendents and just flood the board with so many MW's as to overcome those limitations.

 Bosskelot wrote:

Cynista wrote:

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:

This list shows Necrons are currently 4th. Does anyone actually believe Necrons are currently dominating the META, or is it just there was a FLOOD of new Necrons at the start of 9th, and we expect that to drop sharply?

I think it's likely that Necrons still have a pretty good match up against Marines, accounting for their success and high ranking. I don't think Necrons have good match ups against any of the other top factions. This is just my personal feeling on it, haven't got the data at hand to back it up

Spoiler:

Only if Plasceptors aren't involved. That unit basically hard counters absolutely everything in the Necron book and doesn't really have any answers for it. BA are also incredibly strong, with SG, DC and again Plasceptors just tabling your army in about 3 turns before you can really gain an adequate VP lead.

However you are correct also. The SoB match-up is incredibly bad for Necrons as Retributors and Repentia just delete units while being incredibly cost efficient. The Harlequin match-up doesn't have a ton of data or games recorded for it, but the -6" range Shadowseer and Frozen Star horde + Fusion boats + Haywire also deal very well with most competitive Necron lists on a conceptual level. Necrons have a decent time vs Custodes though, solely for the Custodes real lack of good cost efficient horde clear in both melee and range, however with the increasing use of the FW units this will probably change. Slaanesh Daemons its kind of a toss-up and really feels like it could go either way.

I think Necrons are also in an interesting spot because they don't really play like a lot of other armies right now and essentially being an entirely new army about 3 months ago probably helped them rack up some early wins before people figured them out a little.

What's also interesting is that despite the high overall winrate, the faction still has yet to actually win anything and at the last major GT featuring Necrons they were the second most represented army (if counting all Marines as one faction) and yet the highest they placed was 15th out of 96. In fact a lot of their recent (albeit miniscule amount of) placings they've only been getting the bottom half of top 10 at best. This really is because while the army overall is strong, some of those examples I mentioned above just hard counter the army completely and utterly and the longer you go in a tournament, the more likely you are to come across them. What's also becoming clear is that C'tan and especially the Nightbringer are not the bogeymen people thought they'd be. Even before the points hike and even when the Codex was newer, Szarekh lists were performing better than Nightbringer lists which does make sense. 350+ points for a unit that does nothing but kill things (and it isn't even the killiest thing in the game either; DA now have an Interrogator Chaplain that hits gak harder than a C'tan for 135 points ffs) and doesn't contribute anything to the mission or add any utility to your army is shockingly enough a tough sell. Not to say you can't make them work but I wouldn't be surprised if C'tan either completely disappear from lists or people do weird janky triple Transcendents and just flood the board with so many MW's as to overcome those limitations.

Generally agree with most of that. Definitely feel like Necrons are overperforming their underlying metrics so to speak at the moment and in 6-12 months will be considered a mid tier faction. Back in October I was the first person on WHComp reddit to suggest they were all losing their minds over the C'tan and that they were actually exremely overpriced for what they offer. It didn't go down well but I feel increasingly vindicated

Necrons are simply riding the wave of being one of the first 9th edition codexes and benefit from the power creep.