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Coming back to the meta after a summer off

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Clymer:
I had to take most of June, July, and August off of Warhammer to manage work and family and I feel like I came back to a whole new meta!

I just wanted to share what I've noticed in case it's helpful to others. And a little context: I play games with friends from a couple of different gaming groups. All are competitive players who stay informed and put a lot of thought into their lists and games, but none are extreme meta chasers. So it was surprising to see how much had changed even amongst these players who aren't always connected directly with each other.

1. Infantry is dead.
I started to have a hunch about this pre-summer, arising mainly from experiences in the movement phase. I just could not get my slower infantry and steam tank to keep pace with my real heavy hitters: Griffons and various flavors of cavalry. Whether I could get them into combat became more important than what they were able to do, or not do, once they got there. State troops are clearly competing for the title of worst infantry in the game, but it's not just them. It seems everyone has sidelined infantry to at least some degree.

2. Holy moly, gun lines!!!!
I guess everyone is running some version of a gunline now? I can see why, they are very effective! My Tomb Kings opponent dropped his Tomb Guard, that seemed effective enough to me, and also his stalkers in favor of more magic and a pair of Screaming Skull catapults and a little extra distracting chaff. I've faced 30 skinks with poison darts, and 30 wood elves with poisoned arrows. Even vampires with their screams and Orcs with magic and doom divers. The meta has gotten much more shooty! The only real exception seems to be Brettonia, and lets face it, the average Brettonian lance does bear some resemblance to the performance of a cannon.

3. Cavalry ascendant
Cavalry was always good, both tough and hard hitting. But it seems with the importance of the movement phase and the very high value of bonus movement from swiftstride and counter-charge, that cavalry is almost required now. It works well in a meta dominated by maneuverable monsters and gun lines, making it easier to get across the board to an enemy fire base, or to get in the way of attackers coming to attack your own. 

4. Monsters: toned down but still around
I love that dragons and monsters are a thing this edition, they were really missing from 7th and 8th edition. And whereas in early June many of us were just starting to get an inkling that unkillable uber-dragons weren't the end-all-be-all we had feared back in January, it doesn't mean they have dissappeared, just changed. Instead of all eggs in one basket dragons, I've seen dragons more lightly equipped, or dragons being put aside for smaller monsters like Chimeras. It's cool that these monsters feel like they are now more like useful parts of an army, than an army's main focus.

5. Magic remains unsettled
I expected a meta around magic to have sort of settled by now, but it seems like there's still a lot of variation. I see a mix between lists with double level 4s and just one level 4. I've also seen more bound spells (Wood elf sisters) and even a few level 2s popping up. It seems that folks have figured out how to keep their lower level casters out of wizard duels with a competing level 4. Also, the range of lores being used is pretty amazing. No one lore seems to be dominating. Battle Magic had largely been out of play in my area but seems to have made a comeback and seems to work especially well with those gun lines I previously mentioned.

Anyway, just a couple of thoughts collected for anyone's perusal. I'm sure people are seeing different things in different areas, and I'm curious to hear how others see the game evolving if they are up for sharing. Looking forward to getting back to regularly getting games in and tweaking some lists for the new meta.

Skyros:
That largely tracks with my experiences, particularly the bit about infantry. Empire infantry being the worst in the game can kind of blind you to the fact that no M3/M4 infantry is very good. Too slow to impact the battelfield. It doesn't really matter what they do in combat if they can never reach it. My Tomb Guard are, IMO, fantastic infantry, but they just don't really have an impact on any competitive game because they can be safely ignored and danced around by all the opponents fast moving cavalry and fliers.

This is a fault of the 'kill points only' style of game play in TOW. 40k has you primarily earn points through capturing and holding pieces of terrain, so strong, slowly moving blocks of infantry are quite good. They can just sit on the objective and earn points, and the enemy has to come to them.

I don't see any way to make infantry good in a kill points only game (not when they are moving 4", while pegasus knights are flying around 20" a move), unless they become so cheap you can literally fill the board with them.

Similarly, gun lines are effective, because you can begin immediately applying your killing power instead of having to advance up the board. You don't have to advance up the board, because there is no terrain you have to take. You just have to kill your opponent.

drweir4:
My feeling is that in true competitive play empire has paradoxically improved as the meta has developed away from infantry as before when people were trying to use infantry and ours was the worst empire was at the bottom but now in the more msu and shooting style meta empire has tools that make it mid tier (if not very exciting)

commandant:

--- Quote from: Skyros on September 11, 2024, 05:33:58 PM ---

I don't see any way to make infantry good in a kill points only game (not when they are moving 4", while pegasus knights are flying around 20" a move), unless they become so cheap you can literally fill the board with them.


--- End quote ---

Infantry are so cheap you can literally fill the board with them.   I wrote an article sometime ago describing this exact thing.   Empire infantry are even been because they have detachments which makes it even easier to fill the board with them.   Having an infantry line that runs from one side of the board to the other is really easy.

Pegasus knights skirmishing and flying 20 inches is interesting but they are still 6 wound units.   Cannons, Dragon Bow, magic missiles and even things like handgunners are reasonable counters to pegasus knights.   if you are facing a lot of them you just put the captain with the dragon bow beside instead of in his infantry unit and then he gets 360 degree LOS as well.

Also Pegasus knights don't have that many attacks and they are only WS4.   Sure they could be an annoying unit but they I don't think that they are as powerful as seems to be considered here.


--- Quote from: Skyros on September 11, 2024, 05:33:58 PM ---Similarly, gun lines are effective, because you can begin immediately applying your killing power instead of having to advance up the board. You don't have to advance up the board, because there is no terrain you have to take. You just have to kill your opponent.

--- End quote ---

The same applies to infantry though.   You don't have to advance your infantry.   This is the beauty of Empire infantry.   If you can make you opponent come to you (which you can with long range firepower in the form of cannons and magic missiles) then the force concentration advantages of Empire Infantry come into play.   Advancing across the board into the teeth of your opponents fast moving elements is not to infantries advantage.

There is nowhere you have to hold which means you get to decide where you are going to hold.

Skyros:
A line of infantry is not filling the board, the enemy can just fly over you. I mean literally filling to such a depth the opponent can't fly over your army (at least not without sitting a turn in charge range of your front ranks)

Not even bretonnian peasants, at 4 points a model, with better special rules than empire state troops, are filling the board to such an extent that they are a viable tournament list. And those peasants are the most cost effective  line infantry in the game.

Pegasus knights have a ton of attacks with furious charge, and of course, from any characters that have joined the units. They don't necessarily need a ton of attacks on their own, because it's easy to throw in a couple units to tough targets. They have enough attacks to maul really anything except a dragon stacking saves (but they have lords with monster slayer for that) or huge stubborn infantry blocks, but they can save those for last.

6 Pegasus knights have enough attacks to kill a necrosphinx on the charge, I've sadly learned :(

Typical gameplay is they and the characters go around mopping up all your chaff/smaller units/any flying threats you have, then they pile three flyers at a time into your formed up ranks and take them apart at the end.

Pegasus knights are not 6 wound units, because at tournament levels they are taking up to 6 knights in a unit (or 5 and a character).  Shooting is not a reasonable counter to pegasus knights any more than it is a reasonable counter to dragons. In fact, cannons are worse against pegasus knights because you can (unless the enemy has deployed foolishly) do a maximum of 2 wounds. And all pegasus knights come with a free 5 up ward save against cannon balls.

I've taken TK lists with Ushabti with great bows (which are custom made to kill pegasus knights, very comparable profile to dragon bow) and all the shooting combined on the one turn you get is usually only enough to maul, not wipe out, one of the pegasus knight units.  You have to hit, you have to wound, they have to fail their armor save, they have to fail their ward save...

Ushabit hit's on 4's, wounds on 2's, then they get an armor save of 4+, then a ward save of 5+.  200 points of Ushabti's (4 of them) on average gets through like 1/2 and unsaved wound. Granted, if it does land, a pegasus dies because of the Multiple wounds 2 rule. That is highly gratifying.

But if there are 6 of them in the unit, you need about 44 shots from Ushabti's with great bows (which would be ELEVEN units of four) to kill the unit. One of three possible units in their army (although I think not all can be 6 strong, due to points limitations on the slot)

Now sure, if you are taking nothing but a gun line, you'll fare better, but the point is that gun lines are good in a way that balanced/mixed lists with a decent infantry battle line are not. Incidental shooting is nowhere near strong enough to deal with either dragons stacking saves, or multiple units of pegasus knights.

If you haven't' faced bretonnian flying circus lists in tournaments (piloted by some of the worlds best players) some half a dozen times, your opinion on how they can be countered really isn't an informed opinion.  A skilled player can utilize the 360 move and 360 charge arc to generally be out of los/arcs of your counter units. Pegasus knights seem deceptively fragile, but with the difficulty of getting to grips with them, and the lady's blessing, they can be a tough nut to crack. Played poorly, they die about as fast as normal knights on horseback.

But yeah, if there's one single unit of 3 pegasus knights in their army, that can generally be entirely wiped out by shooting and magic missiles.

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