Warhammer 40K: Initial Lessons Learned From 9th Edition
Enough games have come in. We have our first set of lessons learned from the world of competitive 40K.
Well things seem to be moving along now. There are some areas around the world that have begun having events for 40K. Because of this, we are starting to see what people are bringing to events and can get a little of an idea of what seems to be working for some players. The real nice thing about this is that you are actually seeing tournaments around the world that are using the same mission set. In the past you had tournaments that, although part of the Independent Tournament Circuit, would use missions from their own area or that their tournament organizer preferred. This would sometimes make it difficult to gauge how good a list, unit, or player is because the missions were so different. With everyone using the same mission set, for now, we can get a better picture on how things are performing. This week we will look at some of the initial findings after 2 weeks of competitive play. So here are a few thoughts on what we’ve seen
Melta over Plasma
In the previous edition, Plasma weaponry was the go to weapons of choice. Although relatively low damage output, it was high AP and possible rate of fire that had made them everyone’s choice special weapon. Many players accepted the risk of overheating for that extra strength as well. The new costs for a lot of items in this new edition seems to have made players reevaluate the benefits of taking a melta gun over a plasma gun. In many armies the cost of the melta and plasma gun are the same. A melta allows for a better strength shot without the risk of dying from overheat. As we are seeing a bit more vehicles on the tabletop, the melta has a better chance of scoring a wound on them, in addition to the possibility of dealing more damage to whatever they are shooting at. Due to all this, it seems like players are currently switching to melta weapons, despite the range limitation, over the more dangerous plasma guns.
Marines Still Good
I guess I shouldn’t have been questioning if marines are still going to be good in this edition. What I should have asked was what marine armies we will see vying for the top spots. So far we can see the usual suspects but what kind of surprised me was seeing Salamanders actually winning a grand tournament. As I just mentioned, melta guns seem to be the flavor right now. Combine this with the Salamander’s chapter traits and stratagems and you get a potent force. Not to mention the new units that have been added to the marine buffet with the release of the new edition. I don’t think it is a coincidence that we see a rise in melta weapon usage at the same time that the new Eradicators are released. There are even new units for more assault oriented marines. This has given rise to more White Scars and Blood Angels armies making an appearance. If anything, it looks like we might be seeing more marine variety fighting for the top spots. As I say all this there is the fact that many players are still trying out new lists and ideas in these tournaments. Once people settle in we may see a decline in marine armies or maybe event countermeasures to marine armies. Speaking of trying new things…
Vehicles in Contention
As I mention in a previous article, I think vehicles will make a big impact at least early on in this edition. I myself am making a Armoured Company guard army and a Daemon Engine list for Chaos. We are already seeing some of this come to fruition in grand tournaments already. Ork buggies were actually a big center piece of a grand tournament winning Ork army recently. Almost the whole army was vehicles of some type. Fast movement and models with a large footprint can allow a vehicle to get to an objective quickly and block off the objective from the enemy. It forces your opponent to have to deal with a, usually, toughness 7 unit. This can be especially annoying if someone has a large number of fast and tough vehicles, like an Ork buggy army. This strategy can easily apply to other armies with cheap or relatively inexpensive vehicles. At least in these early days this seems to be the case and is also another reason that many players are using melta weapons. These are just early results but I do hope that these vehicle heavy lists can survive and thrive in this new edition. Who knows, maybe I’ll bring my precious Kanwall back.
~That’s all for this week. I hope you enjoyed the article. Let me know what you think, and what your takeaways are for the start of the new edition, in the comments section below.
