IFL - Road to NOVA league, more meta thoughts, demise of orks in the current GT meta.

Greets all


So I decided to toss my hat into the IFL's road to NOVA league.  (scheduling here ) I figure it will help me find a list I want to play at NOVA, as well as give me some much needed practice. Lists had to be finalized last saturday, so I ended up with.....

HQ's
Chaos Lord - Khorne, Meltabomb, Sigil, Juggy, Axe of BF - 175
Chaos Lord - Nurgle, Bike, Sigil, Blight Grenade, Meltabomb, Black Mace - 180
Herald of Nurgle - Palanquin, Lesser Reward x1, Greater Reward x1, FnP Locus

Troops
1x PlagueBearers
2x Cultists

Heavy Support
2x Maulerfiend - magmacutter
1x Soul Grinder - Slanesh, Phlegm Bombardment

Fast Attack
1x5 Spawn - Nurgle
1x5 Spawn
1x bale-flamer helldrake.
1x4 Plague Drone - Plaguebringer, Greater Gift, Deaths Heads, Venom Stings


Now I'm aware this isn't the best list, but I figure it'll be fun if nothing else! The soul grinder gives me a small bit of anti-air firepower, some decent anti-crisis suit / MEQ firepower as well, and provides a third fast assaulty vehicle to throw forward. Black mace lord and axe lord are still devastatingly assaulty provided they can reach their targets. Plaguebearers are meh with so many ignore cover weapons, but I don't have other deamon troops painted, so plaguies it is.

I don't think I'll have much of a problem vs. anyone except the new tau/eldar. At least, no more than the normal list problem solving. Tau and Eldar are going to break my knee-caps hard if my opponents are smart and have solid lists. Barring the potential I've grossly over-estimated the effectiveness of the eldar/tau shooting of nocking out my spawns (highly unlikely), this will probably be the last time I use them for anything competitive. Plague drones continue to be good, as forcing opponents to use marker lights to remove cover is always positive, not to mention a 5+ default invuln is always win.

Eldar are a great army, that book is just as good as all the other recent releases. I know a bunch of us were very sadface that howling banshees are not epic-sauce, but as a whole the book gained a lot! Swooping hawks are actually really good now! Who'd have thought that? Eldar Serpent Shields make a mockery of spawn-tide and many other lists lists due to S7 ignore cover shots at 60 inches. (Beware all you other chaos/high toughness reliant players) They make GK psybolt dreads look like a joke.  Due to silly twin-linking shenanigans, they are also reallllly good at downing enemy fliers. Don't expect helldrake to save the day.

Tau and Eldar represent full on meta-killers of what we saw at Adepticon. New meta elements such as: swooping hawks, serpent shields, marker lights, wraithknights, missle spam broadsides, interceptor/skyfire fusion blaster squads and SMS, all will force substantial changes. Necrons will have to revise their strategy of relying on night scythes to turn 5 contest. Deckchair scoring units which were previously super effective will see to their auto-inclusion in many lists ending. Blob guard looks like it will no longer be king of durability either.

 Honestly I always thought blob guard was a bit retarded, but hey, what do I know. I've only rick-rolled every guard blob I've ever fought against. (Not the same as winning the game).

Assault armies are giong to be much harder to play effectively as well. Long range high S firepower that ignores cover is always really bad for assault armies. Previously in the meta, we were well off because a majority of the armies in the game being played relied on firepower in the short to mid-range game. If they could shoot us, we could assault them. No longer the case.

I expect tau and eldar to bandwagon realllll hard.

B-Wagon orks are still sad btw, gun platforms that can move 12 inches, fire ignoring cover S7 shots, mean side armor shots are super easy to get. So, most likely hardcore face palming to continue there. GW game testers / designers, if you read this, give ORKS a good delivery system please! Also recommend lowering post costs of ork models a bit, not by much, but a point for boyz, and about 10 points for meganobz, and 5 for nobz. It would let ork players keep up the model count needed to not just get shot off the board. However, as that means ork armies would probably number about 200+ models on average (rather than just being the occasional green-tide player), it would be better if you just provided us with a better delivery platform.

Change KFF to invuln save, its now completely worthless. Orks only had cover going for them, and when your opponent can put out oh say, 36 to 150+ AP5/AP6 shots a turn that ignore cover, that ork army can disappear reallll quick like.

Orks with a flier platform that would be an assault vehicle would be totally lolz and make sense. Could even have special rules for stormboyz involving them. I hope someone there considers it.

So I guess I actually just talked myself into thinking orks are still unplayable currently. It's not that orks are unplayable per se, its that if you compete in big GT's, people are going to bring these kroot-storm lists, or the 6 wave serpents with serpent shields + swooping hawks + tau allies ect. You'll hit that, and suddenly your army is going to evaporate. You might get lucky and dodge those matches, but unfortunately those lists are quite good and unlikely to get knocked out until the end.

Well, maybe, I'm actually going to playtest my orks here in the next few days just to see if those matchups play out how I think they will. Maybe I'll happily come back and post I was wrong.

I do so love my orks.