40K Editorial: Metagaming for Advantage
Paintraina here, rabid defender of the BOLS status quo here with some tips on winning tournaments using metagame. Let me start by saying that I define the use of the term “Metagaming” in this article as “using trends in tournament groupthink to your advantage”. I know that’s not exactly right. I don’t care, and neither should you.
I’ll start with an anecdote: At the ETC this year, I had good success with an Ork list which was widely considered to be subpar. It had 90 Boyz, Kannons, one Trukk with Meganobz, only 10(!) Lootas, and a maxed out unit of…Warbikers. Not Nobs on bikes, just regular 25 point Warbikers. This unit won me most of my games. Warbikers on their own are a great buy. They are tough, fast, good at shooting, and with a Warboss on a bike, pretty mean in melee. The real reason they won me games though, is the dominance of Nob Bikers in the Ork tournament scene. Almost every person I played against realized they were Warbikers, but they were so used to seeing Nob Bikers (despite having my list beforehand) they treated them as such. They poured an immense amount of fire into them, fire that would have instant killed Nob Bikers. Rarely did the unit survive a game, but almost everything else in my army did (yes, even that one Trukk).
The rise of the internet and the large reader base of sites like BoLS and wargaming forums leads to (for better or worse) a homogenization of list building strategies, and to lesser extent, tabletop tactics. This can be easily used to your advantage when choosing what you bring to war. Nowhere else has the current metagame been countered better than in the next example.
In 5th ed, mech is king. We hear it often, and this parroting is reflected in some of the more common lists. It has led to the rise of the meltagun, missile launcher, and GW’s bottom line. However, there are a small handful of players who have developed lists whose primary function is to exploit this trend. There is no better show of this than Foot Guard. For those of you who don’t know (and this will be many) Foot Guard is an Imperial Guard army without any tanks. It relies on immense 50 man combined squads with lascannons and power weapons as well as Col. Straken alongside psyker squads with Al Raheem to grab downfield objectives. To prevail against it with a normal list, is… difficult. To beat it with a list which is tailored to beat mech, it is nigh impossible. There are several units in the game which do well against these mobs of guardsmen: Khorne Berserkers, Ork Slugga Boyz, Ork Warbikers, Hormagaunts, Fenrisian Wolves or any unit with lots of flamers. The problem is that almost no one takes the number of units mentioned that are required to win the war of attrition against the Foot Guard list. In fact, it’s easy to build an army which can succeed against Foot Guard, but it doesn’t matter because they are so rare at tournaments. As a result, before the dice roll most of the Foot Guards opponents are playing for a draw.
In closing, I urge you out there to examine local and national metagame. Get inside the collective heads of your presumed opponents, and think about what is going to give them a lot of trouble. Check out lists from recent tournaments with an eye on what they are designed to beat and bring the opposite. This is very easy to do on a local level, since you will know your regular opponents and what they bring almost unit by unit. Most of the 5th ed armies have a build which will effectively mitigate damage from anti mech lists. The key to winning (rather than just not losing) is to find a way to imitate some of the benefits that mech gives you by clever use of cover, stealth, and intelligent deployment.
