Tuesday, October 29, 2013

Musings About the Current Meta

Meta, a word that can produce sighs, sneers, or a quiet acceptance from players. Some people balk at it, but call it what you will, you know what I'm talking about. Perhaps if your play group is very small and isolated you may be insulated from it, but if you're playing in community events like small tournaments or even bigger regional ones, you've seen the meta and probably been on the receiving end of it.
Basically, my point is that its tough out there right now. There are a lot of powerhouse builds being wielded with varying degrees of skill and it is hard to make lists to deal with all the likely threats that one would be expected to face.
I'm debating in my head different approaches to succeed nowadays on the game table. Better to do your best, make a balanced "all-comers" list as its called, or specialize in one or two aspects in the game and hope to make the best of those advantages? I don't know.
I have been noticing a slight shift recently from absolute number of shots for the shooting aspect of the game to slightly better quality of shots. Grav-guns have certainly made this shift a little easier as they have quality and rate of fire. Also, an increase in general mobility has been gathering steam in people's lists. Gun line style armies are getting rarer and rarer because they struggle in the objective based environment that most missions create. Interesting shifts.
And looking to the future, the hordes are coming. Hordes that don't care what AP your weapons are, and may have enough bodies on the table that many lists might not have the sheer volume of fire to stop them. Tyranids, Orks, and to a lesser extent Imperial Guard are coming and the body count is going to rise. Essentially, throwing another curve ball into the mix for players to have to plan for when building their army.

To reiterate, it's tough out there, and it doesn't look to be letting up anytime soon. So my question to you is, what is your philosophy for surviving on the table these days and going forward into the future?

6 comments:

  1. Firstly, I just want to jump in and say that I'm actually okay being beaten by power builds. I usually run power lists myself so can't say anything bad against them. HOWEVER, I absolutely HATE players who come along and say "your list is rubbish" because it isn't the No.1 meta trend.

    Back on track. Best way to survive, in my opinion, is to do the complete opposite of what the Meta is favouring. Over at Warzone, we have called it the Anti-Meta. Hence why we have been building a zombie list. People laugh at it.....but it's actually a decent list. 118 Zombies (oh which, D3 squads are infiltrating/outflanking) and 20 Spawn (3 of which are Nurgle). 188 Fearless models, of which the majority have FNP. Instead of trying to outmaneuver, you just create a parking lot on the table. 2" coherency between zombies mean you, quite literally, fill up half the table. We have been forced into making this list simply because we are tired of having to vs Serpent Spam - lol (I play that). Whoever goes first with Serpents vs Serpents....usually wins. I feel, at this time, hilarity/denial lists might be the way to go.

    - Out.

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    1. In case there was any confusion, I wasn't lamenting about power builds, just commenting that there are some rock solid builds out there that can really steamroll you if you aren't careful. I wouldn't have it any other way.
      Yes, anti-meta would indeed be a way to go. Ironically, that was why I started getting heavy into Wave Serpents before the new codex came out, having nine AV12 tanks on the board was anti-meta for 6th Ed for a time. no longer it seems.
      I enjoy the concept of your area denial list, and that gets at what I was saying towards the end of my article that hordes are another major thing to consider. Especially with the next few codexes coming out.

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    2. They were actually talking about a similar build on a podcast I listen to. I cant remember who it was though.

      Speaking of Meta, I have bike breaker version 2 almost done. turns out it might work on more than jetbikes lol

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    3. I'm up for some more bike breaker action. I pulled my Mech list out tonight by request so it could get hulk smashed by Daemons. So that was fun.
      Would rather get back to the bikes.

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  2. Lol I figured Bill wanted some serpent action when he asked for your number.

    I am going to try and come up tomorrow night or Sunday so we can try out the Bike breaker version 2.

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    1. Yeah, it was a bloodbath for sure. Looked like our last game. Assault just beats the crap out of Wave Serpents.

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