The meta game

I hear on the podcasts and on the forums that the meta game is full on mech, but to be honest I hardly see it. At our club the most meched up players are the DE (Gobsmakked and I) and our resident IG player, most of our SM guys play with maybe one Rhino and dreadnought and more infantry.

So I'm asking does your local meta game match that assumed in cyberspace or is it something quite different?

my marines are mech'd - Black templars....

my DE army in construction in mech'd.

our other regulars:

BA - mech'd

UM - mostly infantry.

ork - horde

chaos marine - mostly infantry

GK - deepstrike jiggery pokery

demons - nuff said.....

so i don't agree that our whole game meta swings to mech, but there are those armiesthat definietly tend to it.

I appear to be the only player in my local metagame that likes to play mechanized. My local Space Marines opponent sometimes runs drop-pod based lists and I've occasionally run into mech Tau, but I love my Venoms and I also play air cav Guard...

It might be due to the fact that 4th edition basically forced Guard players like me to run gunlines that I refuse to play non-mech lists now. What can I say? I like mobility.

I'm in Miami, in South Florida, and of the 20-30 regular players we have in my store, the only people who are NOT mech'd up are Orks and 'Nids (and some of the Orks run Kan Walls, which still means 9-12 vehicles, albeit in squadrons).

Our IG players run 10-14 vehicles.

Space Marines are usually Vulcan, SW Razorspam, etc.

Chaos is so pathetic against us that they hardly warrant honorable mention, but they.. they do their best to mech themselves up. Poor guys.

Eldar? 6 Wave Serpents and 9 Warwalkers, 8 Wave Serpents and 6 Warwalkers, or 10 Wave Serpents and 0 Warwalkers. Take your pick.

Dark Eldar? I run 12 skimmers..

I usually run against an even split. My more regular opponents mech up nicely, but my store's players are an eclectic mix of those who changed with the times and went to 5th edition armies and those that are still building like it's 3rd edition.

In our club(smal one) we have one IG-mech`d and one SM-mech`d....rest of us play more balanced list.
But club in city next to mine, has a lot more mech`d players.

Yea, I think for some its been a slow transition, but in our local gaming group (about 20 players) the transition was almost immediate. We are pretty competitive (I think everyone checks online for winnning builds) and we enjoy the challenge. That doesn't mean we don't build and paint everything, we also love the models, but when it comes to gaming, we game to win.

I'm sure some bubbles are still non-mech, I mean if your opponenets don't play mech you can still win without it, but eventually some may transition. I also know players who will never change (local GK player being one of them). But he doesn't really care if he wins or not . When we play him we usually pick a more fluffy list, just to keep the game interesting, its also fun to try to win with units that aren't considered competitive (3 units of Mandrakes ftw!)

nice replies:) having been out of the game between Rogue Trader and 5th Ed (had the odd 40k game, but still wargamed historicals) did the game switch between infantry and vehicle focus between editions? I recall vehicles were rare in RT, but becoming more prevalent as WD introduced new rules (the accetate shooting grid! ).

Lol you should see my club , its a mech fest o doom , probably around three quarters of the armies are mech and the majority of the others are hybrid, very very few foot lists.

Having said that I'm so sick of spamming similar hulls over and over again that my DE lists could be described as mech with hybrid leanings.

Venom spam is no doubt effective (and boring) but I'm not painting nine of the same vehicle for anything, venom spam lists are souless crap and does nothing to feed the miniatures enthusiast part of me.


I play Eldar?DE primarily because the fluff and aesthetic gives me the tingly tinglies, I have just made it my mission to become as good as I can be with my chosen armies, people that play an army just because they think they will win more with it miss the point.

I stuck with my Eldar (and won) right up to the DE release and still get the urge to play with them , I do love me some spaze Elvz

I got... 7 players in my Meta Game

1) Chaos Daemons and Necrons. He, for some reason, likes to the armies that are currently underpowered (He almost went for Tau instead of Necrons...). He is realatively inexperienced, nor very motivated. He just likes throwing really random and unpredictable combos around (That tend to fail).

2) The "Chaos Eldar" as he calls them. He relies on an increadibly suicidal Eldar army style. He doesn't bother with Anti-Tank, his Wave Serpents ARE the Anti-tank. Turn 1, he takes his Wave Serpent filled with Howling Banshees, turbo boosts, and rams into my Ravager. He does this consistently, and almost always takes the road least traveled.

3) Blood Angels and Tau. This is the guy who really annoys me. He constantly misinterprets his own Blood Angels rules, making an annoying army even more so, he constantly debates things we have established several games ago, and he is just generally unpleasant without realizing he is so. His preferred style involves Stormraven Spam with Death Company, Dreadnoughts and Astorath the Grim. He also tries to get us to play strict WYSIWYG which is annoying when myself and the "Chaos Farseer" are the only ones with 1500 pts of models. His Tau models are collecting dust.

4) Salamanders. This guy runs armies that look good, not necessarily play good. His armies are more oriented for looks than practicality (and he isn't a good tactician in the first place). He doesn't use Rhinos because it annoys him to have his good looking models hiding in a box for most of the game.

5) Eldar #2. This guy just started. He liked Guardians for some reason. The Parasite of Mortrex recently changed his mind, and IDK what he has been doing for the past few weeks about it.

6) Chaos Space Marines. Another guy who has just started. He likes Terminators though. That is just about all I have established about him.

7) Orks, Tau, and Space Wolves. I really hate this guy because he is just cheap. He hasn't bought a single codex yet and comes to games with a packet of papers about 3 inches thick of printed out codex pages. He constantly argues rules, he "memorized" all the prices, he tries to worm his way through misinterpretations and is generally annoying. I don't play him much for some strange reason...


Well that's my Meta Game.

The last two tournaments I went to I played 2X Hybrid Eldar, foot Guard, Mech guard, Mech Wolf, and Mech Chaos. I'd say it is 2/3 Mech (here in central Missouri), but at the last tournament there was a fair representation of some horde Orks, 'Nids, and a couple other Hybrid or foot lists.

Rangrok1k wrote:

Well that's my Meta Game.

I'm sorry man, but your meta sounds rough, no real competitive builds and a load of rule slaughterers. Those are the worst. At least buy your codex, haha. But yea, I totally get where the Salamander's playeri is coming from, and fully support it. I have friends like that who play, and I usually take something fluffy to keep it even. But people who don't know their own rules, or say that they know the price of all their units, I never trust. I have written probably 200+ dark eldar lists, with army builder and/or the book in my hands, and I still make mistakes.

The people I usually play against are my friend who have mech Blood Angels, Nidzilla, Necrons with a C'tan, semi-meched Orks (Boss and Nobs in a wagon, some Boyz in trucks and a big footslogging unit of 'Ard Boyz), Grey Knights with Coteaz, and footslogging IG (backed up by some tanks, but few Chimeras). Most of the people I play against in the FLGS play Marines or some kind, but Eldar seem pretty popular aswell.

We have a Salamander player who is heavy mech, another guy with footslogging Grey Knights, a Kan Wall Ork player and a guy with Eldar/Nids/Tau. My DE are all mech in my current list, I find that it gives us that speed that we need to not get shot to crap before we can launch assaults.

The serious players around here all field LOTS of vehicles. Orks, GK, IG, SM in all flavours, Eldar and DE all meched up to the max. Boring, but effective.

Radium wrote:

The serious players around here all field LOTS of vehicles. Orks, GK, IG, SM in all flavours, Eldar and DE all meched up to the max. Boring, but effective.

I never really thought it was boring to play Mech, just unoriginal. I love tanks, and love the tactics they provide. I just wish the rules didn't make them the end all be all. The DAVU Falcon is a perfect example of mech abuse. Fluffwise mech battles do make sense, as battles between armored columns are pretty common. That said, I usually only field non-mech forces when playing certain scenarios, like cityfight, killteams or planetstrike.

The problem does not lie with tanks. I like tanks. As a variation to the army. Most armies these days are tanks + filler. Guard are usually tanks + mechvets, and the vets don't want to leave their chimeras. BA are tanks + razorback units. Again, the filler units stay in the tank to score and do nothing over the course of the battle. Lots of battles turn into parking lots instead of battles where there is a mix of infantry, tanks and monsters fighting.

True, but only in armies where You can Take Razorbacks and 5 dudes + melta (or 5 bolter guys) inside. Even chimeras are kinda crap without AC inside so Vets shouldn't be considered as filler.

I play SM armies that rely on Tanks. BT, BA, DA... Punch enemy in the face with Armoured Fist!
Don't know, maybe I just love Dominion Tank Police anime <3

I also use Buggies, Kans, Kannonz and BW in My Ork army, but just to cover "meat" so this should count as hybrid.

DE not neccesary need "mech", but it may be useful. I plan to build both WWP and Venomspam


Anyway in my area hybrids are most common, with exception to SM players...

My area is pretty mixed. In the league I am in, I havent faced a mech list yet, foot slogging horde marines, nids, and IG with a single chimera and a few misc. tanks and arty. Even in tournies I have played at in the last year or two i cant think of many overly done mech lists. Had the Deathcompany at one, a pretty well rounded SW army, eldar guardian list(tougher than it sounds when you are geared for AT, which is why he did it), nothing mech like jumps out at me.
Myself- Air Cav IG- Elysians if allowed, otherwise 2 valks and 3 vendettas
Seige IG- very heavy artillery minded, DKOK when allowed. Foot sloggers
DE- I have alot of skimmers so yeah
Spacewolf/Nightlords- two rhinos and a LR. i field a lot of termies. Mixed
Tau- Two DF counting the pathfinders, most everything is DSing suits so not so much.
SM- Assault squad/speeder oriented so no
Eldar- lots of tanks but not only a single WS so my vote is no.

***now that I see them written out, wow i need to sell an army or two lol.

Thankfully, my local metagame is a bunch of guys that are just starting 40k.
My local metagame:
-1 storm raven
-1 waveserpent
-Everyone else footslogs

It's easy street.