Counterpoint: 40K is Competitive (and Why You’re Doing It WRONG)!

This is the issue with the mindset of people who believe 40k cannot be a competitive game. Your army list is not set in stone.  Your faction that you collect is not chosen at birth, and a person can have multiple armies.  There is nothing stopping someone from buying the same army that beats them every week and squaring off.  Once you strip away the idea that you are an Ork guy/gal who only plays Orks, and decide to become a 40k player who uses what he/she needs to use to get the job done, one will realize that imbalance between factions does not determine competitiveness.

40k is a game and the models are the equipment needed to play.  Just like you need a car to race in formula one, a horse for any equestrian sports, and a deck to play Magic the Gathering.  The barrier to entry in high level competition is financial and past that, additional treasure invested increases the likelihood of a win e.g. teams with a well engineered race car are more likely to win a formula one race, Magic players need to keep up with new powerful cards to dominate their format, and Warhammer tournament players are more likely to win if they can choose a faction, and build an army to adapt to the current meta and rules updates.

The game is competitive.  In these discussions, the real questions we actually are asking is: Is there a sufficient variety of valid factions and army builds to keep the game interesting? Should there even BE list building pitfalls?  If I make an army of all grots, swooping hawks, and mandrakes, should I still be able to compete on even footing against Sean Nayden’s Lictor Shame List?  Who would ever take pyrovores and why wouldn’t GW buff them after several editions of never seeing one outside a display case?

Some now would say “Ok, fine. I could theoretically buy and paint any army and play in a tournament, but it’s a dice game.  There are no tactics! Everything is random and the match-ups are what determines the outcome”. This is also wrong. Here’s the issue with warhammer gamers: Chances are you are bad at the game and don’t see any of the tactical decisions. “But I win most of my games!” I hear you say.  That is because your opponents are bad at the game as well.

The greatest Warhammer players aren’t even playing the game.  The game is niche, most people have never even heard of it, much less played it.  The majority of people playing have not even scratched the surface of the game’s tactical depth.  If this is because they don’t care to, or don’t have the capacity to, is irrelevant.  You want to know if the game has tactical depth? Ask some multiple tournament winners. Ask the Tony Kopachs, the Ben Mohlies, and the Nick Nanavatis of the game. They will all tell you that you make your own luck. I think these three would also agree that if 40k had the popularity of baseball, they would probably not be winning any tournaments.

This still leaves the Rock-Paper-Scissor issue of match-ups.  The last bastion of defense against 40k as a competitive game. For the uninitiated this is an example of the meta-game.  Meta-gaming is essentially defined as anything done outside the game to improve your odds of winning.  In 40k this is typically referred to as a part of list theme/selection.  A good example of 40k meta-gaming would be if I knew that Knight lists were very popular, I would run a bunch of tankbustaz units.  This would be an anti-meta list.  Tournament winners will do this frequently.  In a group of scissors, it pays to be the rock. Good players also know that the first 2-3 rounds are essentially a forgone conclusion (see previous two paragraphs), and the final rounds are the only rounds when meta-gaming really pays off. If a player does their research, plays games, gets tournament experience, they will have a good idea on the state of the meta-game.  They can then use this to their competitive advantage. The state of the meta-game is knowledge a player can leverage to their advantage, and it too is an example of how competitive the game of Warhammer 40k is.