Goatboy’s Warhammer 40K Meta Thoughts: Top Armies for New 10th Edition
Goatboy is back and talking shop about the new Top Armies in the Warhammer 40,000 meta after the new Balance Dataslate!
Goatboy here with a quick breakdown of what I think will end up being the top lists in the currently environment. The interesting thing is I don’t think it changes too much from what we have now – it just brings some of that win-rate percentage down. It won’t be as easy as the whole “oops little ole me just rolled a ton of 6’s to mortal wound you to death.” The big bad is going to be there just a little bit less “big and bad.”
First the number one is still going to be Eldar. Until they fix a lot of the units and the overall vibe of the initial detachment it’s s going to be an issue. But will see – we got months to deal with this army and I still expect another points hit to come at them. It just feels like a few things probably need to go up until they really just tweak those datasheets. Who would have thought having the ability to just “get those 6’s or passing saves when they need it” would be a problem. Still the army should see a win-rate drop down as it isn’t as nearly auto winnable as it once was. The removal of Devastating Wounds is a big one as well as Phantasm allowing players to over extend and not worry about it. I still expect the army to be strong overall but will see.
The next army that seems to be ready to wreck stuff is the Necron army. With Devastating Wounds changing the new big units of Lychguard and stuff will be an issue to chew through. In fact I would expect a bit more thought goes into Necrons as well as they just seem ready to fall into that whole “hold the middle and try to chew through” part of this game lately. I do wonder if we see bigger and rougher armies designed to nuke as many Lychguard as they can as well as some shifts into D1 Devastating Wound options that can throw out a ton of damage that blasts by all their saves.
I get the feeling some Marine build is going to come out soon as a lot of stuff got cheaper and the army shifts into a much more pressure style build. A new codex is going on the way, too. So will see if they end up being this weird aggressive build I kind of expect them to be. So many things got point drops and per the write up these point drops are the correct ones no matter what the codex says. It should be interesting to see if the old sins of GW making Marines too strong happens with this army again.
On the bad guy side of things I think all the Chaos stuff might float in this middle ground. Some of the good stuff in CSM got a point increase but it might just end up getting rid of the “daemon” parts they sometimes had or other smaller things. The change to Overwatch, Towering, and Devastating Wounds all helps some of their pressure options to let them get close. Heck World Eaters saw a lot of point drops and it makes me wonder if a dual “wave” threat list might work as you crash into the enemy twice. The only real loser on the Chaos side of things is Thousand Sons who look at a lot of point increases to curtail some of their Cabal Point generation. It might be just a shift to try and clean up some of the Mortal Wounds they can still do so will have to wait and see.
The other Chaos army that looks to have a nice refresh in the sun is Death Guard. Point drops and rules updates creates a really unique looking army on paper. They have one of the better Primarch options that survived the point hits and with enough bodies on the table they can easily push the pressure into the enemy. Heck everything is turning up Milhouse with the Death Guard and we can easily see them showing up on the table tops again.
I don’t know about you but there has to be a good Ork Pressure list with Overwatch shifting and their army just getting cheaper in places. Could this be a new Green Tide coming into the game? I just like the idea of a ton of pressure options attached to very Killy characters. It is tough to kill enough of them. All the while they can score primary and secondary cards they can do.
On the Knight front the Imperial side took a hit and it makes me think the Chaos Knight side might be the better for it. Chaos Knights have some interesting Stratagems and being able to hide assault options might make the Rampager worth it as a cheap and insane” distraction Carnifex.” The Karnivores also dropped so having a Rampager and some friendly Brigands might make for a really mean Gatekeeper list. All those tough bodies on the table top will be hard for a lot of lists to effectively dismantle.
GSC appears to finally take a hard hit and might just disappear for a bit. It was already a harder army to play and with some things shifting in how they could use Stratagems and come back from the game might be the nail in their coffin. It was always a fear an army with fast transports might keep them down and it looks like some of those might be coming back with Marines, DG, and World Eaters getting cheaper. We’ll just have to wait and see.
Are you ready for the new edition? Are you excited to try out your armies again? Is it finally time to come out of your cave cuz those mean ole Aeldari are going to be easier to deal with?
