Goatboy’s Warhammer 40K Meta Hotness – Post Balance Dataslate Rising Stars
Goatboy here with a trio of rising stars looking to shake up 40K in the aftermath of the Balance Dataslate.
It is going to be an interesting few weeks as the Dataslate shifts some armies up and hopefully we have some new miniatures to discuss on upcoming Meta Hotnesses. This time around instead of waxing poetic on how mean the Aeldari are let’s look at three different units that might just make the cut this next time around. I don’t think will see the top games dominated by the Space Elves – but if they still rule the 40K roost – expect another swift kick in the business side by GW. But enough of that – let’s talk about new stuff.
Plague Marines a Go Go!
First up on a unit that might see some play right now is an actual somewhat decent Battleline choice. The new updated Death Guard rules are pretty good and with an extremely aggressive point drop on a ton of units means the army might get a nice shot to upper mid. With that their Plague Marine unit is also just 80 points for 5 which feels like a steal for a, Toughness 5, decently armed unit. In fact it is kinda crazy to think how efficient this little unit is with all their weapon load outs, ability to ride around in a Rhino, and stratagem options with overwatch and grenades.
Heck it makes me think I need to do an article on what makes a Battleline unit good. We’ll sit on that a bit and see as I got some ideas there. But this unit is actually decent as again it is cheap enough and has offensive abilities to matter on the tabletop. I don’t know how many Plague Marine units you will see or if we’ll end up seeing some kind of massed Plague Marine Rhino rush army in the mix of things. I just could imagine a ton of them running out of Rhinos, vomiting all over the enemy, and then getting business done in Close Combat.
Angry, Angry Chaos Knight Rampager!
The next interesting thing is how cheap the Chaos Knight Rampager is. I think you might see a theme in this list of 3 with cheap and effective units being at the top of a new meta. These guys seemed poised to do well with an aggressive point cost for a Titanic towering lump of devastation. What makes them neat is the lovely little Stratagem that allows a Chaos Knight to Kool-Aid man thru a wall. I think the actual rule is they phase thru it – but we really know what they are doing.
This effectively lets them run around the tabletop and actually use the terrain to hide. With the changes to Towering they can easily be set up towards some bigger mid-table piece of ruined masonry, wait a turn, and then come at you. You throw in some now cheaper Karnivores and you got a very aggressive pressure army that might win you some games.
I get the feeling there will be a big shift in the game towards pressure lists with a ton of assault options getting cheaper, armies getting faster, and the ability to get close easier. We’ll see as the meta continues to evolve and maybe – a sweet Rampager list might do well enough on the tabletops. I still want to build my “Ork” Chaos Knight list.
Grey Knight Hosts of the Beatdown!
I get the feeling that a Grey Knight army in the hands of a good general is going to do some work in the meta. The Grey Knight Terminators got a nice point change and mixed with their ability to be all over the place means this army can easily shift the battlefield based on what is needed. Remember just killing the enemy army is not the only way to win this game.
Being able to move and shift throughout the battle is going to be a powerful ability – especially since some of the other armies that did it got hit a bit in the update (GSC). This ability to control the table and pressure as needed will be huge and the Grey Knight Terminators got cheaper. This means we might see more of them or at the very least just a better set of two with powerful HQ support helping them out.
Will see if the overall lack of shooting damage towards big stuff will matter as the game isn’t always about killing things. I think just being able to hold any objective at any time will be pretty good. It also helps they can wreck stuff in close combat if they get a charge off or get close enough.
So what do you think? Are there some new hidden gems showing up? I think Tau Crisis bombs are going to be coming back with a vengeance too as well as any of the high damage output armies like Guard. Just not having to worry about a Knight like thing removing all your goodies from across the table is a huge boon for a lot of armies.
What do you think is going to rise to the top?
