You might be a Chaos player and see that a top tier tourney player won a Major or GT using Dark Eldar, but you don't know squat about Dark Eldar. There are lots of nuances and intricacies in this game and you can't simply rely on a net list to get you through without understanding those nuances. The idea of using what you know hearkens back to the earlier point of players getting net lists and not understanding how they work. Generally speaking, unless you play Warhammer 40k 3-4 times a week with various armies, you're going to have maybe one or two armies in your collection that are tournament capable. But we can pick that army up and usually always do well with it. Perhaps it is because it is our favorite army lore wise, or perhaps it just fits our play style. We all have at least one army in our collection that we know extremely well. Can you beat those armies? And can you do so and also beat the random Tyranids, Necrons, or Tau army you may play along the way? You can pull the meanest nastiest net list used by some of the top tier players in the game, but if you have a limited understanding of how it works, you will struggle to use it effectively.īefore approaching the list design phase of entering a competitive event, take a moment and ask yourself what are my goals for this event? Is your goal to win the event? Is your goal to try and win Best Painted or Best Sportsman (if so then list design most likely isn't that important to you.) If your goal is to win, and you know the meta you are going into, then do you have the tools to beat those lists? As of October 2018, the best armies in the game are any of the Eldar varieties, and along the way you can expect to face Chaos and Imperial Knights, just on the whole, if your goal is to get to the top table. Your skill as a player is what will make the list work or not. You can go online to a variety of sources from Reddit, to Facebook, to Best Coast Pairings and pull down lists of tournament winners. Too often we put a bit too much emphasis on Army Lists, however, and not enough on player skill. Having a well designed list can give you an edge and the best players at events are often using the best lists they can build. Let me state up front that lists are important in this game.

There is this notion that list design in Warhammer 40k is basically a mini-game a game within the game. These are basic concepts for newbies into the game or those just starting their journey into tournament 40k to help improve their experience.

The Basic Tactics series will be a group of articles covering the basics of competitive play in Warhammer 40k 8th Edition. Hey all, Chandler here with the first in our new Basic Tactics series of posts for Warhammer 8th edition.

Tyranids 8th edition tactics