Key Tips for your Competitive List

Writing your first competitive army list can be intimidating, getting it wrong can be demoralising, so how can you measure how "good" an army list is with just a look? Here we'll break down some tips you can use to build your lists.

We've all looked at the blank Warhammer 40K app and gone "Oh I really have no clue where to start". That's absolutely OK though, sometimes it's best to go with the unit that you like, let the creativity flow from there, but for those looking to throw down in the competitive scene, here's some little tips you can use.

Scoring Secondaries

Points mean prizes! It’s a simple fact of the game that slaughtering your opponent won’t actually mean you win the game if you don’t score those points. That’s why in list building it’s so essential to plan what units can take a turn off shooting to do an action secondary or are expendable enough to run off into a bad area of the board to score a secondary (such as behind enemy lines) and then die. 

To help with this, look for cheap, fast units, now this can be due to sheer movement speed, like jump packed units or flying units, or units with the Infiltrate rule as the unit can then get to key areas on the battlefield either through savvy deployment or just being really quite quick. Bonus points if the unit can do both such as Scouts or (index) Swooping Hawks. 

Hold the Line Brothers! 

Keeping on scoring, holding primary points and stopping your opponent pushing you off them is the quickest way to a nice win, so sounds nice and simple, but in competitive warhammer 40000 it’s not that simple. 

Armies are built to kill units that expose themselves increasingly efficiently, sure 10th was meant to dial down the killing power but let’s be honest, it absolutely didn’t! So what are some of the better ways to hold primary? One of the best is to put an expendable but durable unit onto an objective, forcing your opponent to spend resources killing something you don’t care about just so that they’re forced to deny you primary points and likely end out of position or at the very least, in a vulnerable one. Once the initial skirmishing is finished up, you’ll need something that can actually secure the objective and keep it. This is usually a role for elite infantry or tanks, some great examples are Deathwing Knights, Vindicators or Chosen as they can take some punishment and dish it out quite happily back which should be enough to handle the following wave of attackers when combined with your damage dealers. 

Speaking of dealing some damage…

KILL! MAIM! BURN!

Let’s be honest, turning our opponent’s war dollies into a pile of dead dudes is one of the best bits of playing 40k, and it’s no different at a tournament table- we all love the story of an epic charge or a gunline mercilessly bringing down a Knight but planning the kind of damage dealing you need is essential. 

Your opponent is likely going to have a nice mix of squishy scoring pieces and then some more durable units to push against you so you need the ability to neutralise both of these threats. So, the perfect sweet spot is high damage, high number of shots- which is why Demolisher cannons have been so popular throughout the edition. These guns or combat weapons usually come at quite a premium though in points or they might be on a less durable unit- so balancing this is essential when constructing your damage dealers. 

This is where your local or the current meta might factor in a little more- loads of Ork Boyz and Genestealer Cults running about, grab your gladiator reapers or minigun wielding havocs. Facing Knights every other match? Then grab your largest anti-vehicle sword (or mace!) and get stuck in in combat with them. A great rule of thumb is to remember the great “10th edition Pool Noodle”, which is a weapon that’s 4+A, S6, Ap-2, D2. This weapon is prevalent across many many different armies and is usually pretty damn efficient at taking out infantry because it has both a volume of attacks and wounds T3 on 2s, while also having solid AP and the damage output to one shot power armoured models. The humble lascannon is a great example of spammable anti-tank as well, with S12, Ap-3 D D6+1 stats. So make sure you’ve got the right balance for the meta that you are taking part in, yes, some armies will always do well regardless because of flexibility- Maces of Absolution are a great example of this, but if you nail your balance between anti-infantry and anti-tank, you’re far more likely to get the overall win at your tournament. 

I hope these 3 tips have helped you understand some new ideas for list building and what to factor in. Basically, don’t go all Dakka! You aren’t an Ork! So go get to grips with your opponent, plan your list efficiently and get some Ws!