Sunday, September 4, 2011

The latest codex (slightly) changed the metagame again

It's a simple fact that every new codex changes the 40K metagame.  A couple years back IG with it's cheap mech and abundant heavy firepower were the king of the battlefield.  For a portion of a year most tournaments boiled down to IG leafblower vrs IG leafblower.  That ship has sailed and the NOVA open tournament results prove it.  The ultimate winner isn't the issue, that is Tony and he could win any tournament with any army using skill alone.  The important stat to look at is which armies were the in the top tier.
To me this is the stat that's most important to judge the current national metagame.  First these players had to win 4 perfect or nearly games to get this far so this culls the lucky newbs and players of average skill.  Second, only serious players who win local tournaments get this far so this shows you what armies dominate their local metagame.  Third, this shows you how competitive local metagame vrs local metagame are in a national tournament.
This is how I read it;
  1. 10 of 16 upper tier players use MEQ armies.  Upper tier players usually only use upper tier codex's.  They're not there to simply have fun, they're there to win.  More than 60% of them chose a MEQ army as a winning codex.
  2. 4 out of 16 were Xenos armies and only 1 had success vrs upper tier armies.  Necrons may change this in the future but until then the fact that 3/4 of competitive armies are Imperial suggests a bit of Imperial bias on GW codex designers part.
  3. Space Wolves are still the list to beat.  5th edition is still all about mech and Space Wolf Long Fangs are the ideal in dealing with them.  They have abundant, long range, high strength, low AP firepower that doubles out the majority of the models in the game.  GK firepower is good but it's mid-range and can't double out nearly as much.
  4. IG are competitive but no longer dominant.  The dreaded leaf blower list was overrated except in games over 2000 points.  Short of that it lacked the volume of firepower needed to sweep opponents off the battlefield.  

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