A Very Small Sneak Peek Into the 3.0 Metagame

[swarmofseals]

5 hours ago, Ragest said:

Is related, if kairos-archaon is in the same position that list is going to dictate the meta.

Personally I think that's probably a bit of an exaggeration. Archaon and Nagash will definitely influence the meta to a significant degree, but they are going to be preying upon lists that are heavy on monster heroes and don't really flood the board. Kairos-Archaon in particular can get overwhelmed by an opponent who floods the board effectively. So if lists like that start to predominate, then Kairos-Archaon could get a lot less attractive.

[yukishiro1]

The Archaon-Kairos list is pretty terrible IMO, I don't see how that wins against a smart opponent. They'll just kill everything but Archaon - it's not like Kairos is particularly survivable - and Archaon doesn't win games on his own, especially not in Tzeentch where his output is really not that great. 

[swarmofseals]

43 minutes ago, yukishiro1 said:

The Archaon-Kairos list is pretty terrible IMO, I don't see how that wins against a smart opponent. They'll just kill everything but Archaon - it's not like Kairos is particularly survivable - and Archaon doesn't win games on his own, especially not in Tzeentch where his output is really not that great. 

I can't quite speak to how it will perform in 3.0, but I can strongly attest to the fact that in 2.0 it was a very good list. I played a bunch of games against it (piloted by high level international quality tournament players) using very competitive lists myself, and those same players went on to place the list consistently X-0 and X-1 at very competitive TTS tournaments during the pandemic. My initial impression of the list was like yours, but it definitely functions better than you would think. Granted, the versions I played against are a little different from the lists that are showing up here.

Typically what I played against was something like Archaon, Kairos, Sorc Lord, Great Bray Shaman, 2x3 Screamers, 10 Pinks, Geminids + Daemonrift + Spellportal. Hosts Arcanum then gives another 6 screamers for free. The list gets auto unbinds on turns 1, 3, and 5 and d3 units get a 6" pregame move, which effectively gives Archaon something like a 28-32" reliable threat range on turn 1 and also potentially allows the endless spells DEEP penetration on turn 1. Kairos can use spellportal to zap you with his very powerful warscroll spell and slow a key unit down with a chaos spawn or potentially use Devolve through spellportal to pull a screen out of place.

Archaon is typically getting +1 to hit, +1 to wound, and reroll everything. In addition, he can reliably get a permanent +1 attack on the first turn. His average output is something like 24 rend 2, 13 rend 1 and 6 rend 0 damage -- enough to destroy most targets.

 

[yukishiro1]

Oh, it definitely used to be a good list. I don't think it's nearly as good any more, though. Daemonrift is gone unless I've misunderstood how the new rules work (FAQ seems to say no endless spells except from your primary faction), and stuff went up enough in points that it's 45 points over now even without the 100 points of Daemonrift. If you want to keep the list's core functions (aside from the Daemonrift you already lost), you gotta swap out the pinks for another unit of screamers or something else cheap and crappy, and then you really don't have any board presence whatsoever except where Archaon is. Add on miscasts and a few other things - no more stacking CAs, the potential for archaon to get roared, etc and the list is quite a bit weaker than it used to be IMO. Terrible was probably an exaggeration, but if Archaon + Kairos ends up being a top list in early 3.0 I've obviously misread the game changes pretty significantly. Taking 1500 points of heroes just seems like a non-starter to me at this point. 

Edited July 10, 2021 by yukishiro1

[Ragest]

6 hours ago, swarmofseals said:

Personally I think that's probably a bit of an exaggeration. Archaon and Nagash will definitely influence the meta to a significant degree, but they are going to be preying upon lists that are heavy on monster heroes and don't really flood the board. Kairos-Archaon in particular can get overwhelmed by an opponent who floods the board effectively. So if lists like that start to predominate, then Kairos-Archaon could get a lot less attractive.

That list dominated the shooting meta without shoot. 
Big monsters are almost allways heros, and kairos-archaon is an autoplay hero killer no matter what you do.

[cofaxest]

4 hours ago, Ragest said:

That list dominated the shooting meta without shoot. 
Big monsters are almost allways heros, and kairos-archaon is an autoplay hero killer no matter what you do.

1 drop KO could 1shot archaon turn 1 I believe... 

 

[Beliman]

2 hours ago, cofaxest said:

1 drop KO could 1shot archaon turn 1 I believe... 

Can anyone list all the Tzeentchaon buffs? Never played versus him.

[Ragest]

29 minutes ago, Beliman said:

Can anyone list all the Tzeentchaon buffs? Never played versus him.

+1hit/+1wound/+1save/+1attack, access to destiny dices, premove 6”, autounbind in rounds 1/3/5, reroll full hit/wounds and instakill any hero with Kairos if you need.

[cofaxest]

14 minutes ago, Ragest said:

+1hit/+1wound/+1save/+1attack, access to destiny dices, premove 6”, autounbind in rounds 1/3/5, reroll full hit/wounds and instakill any hero with Kairos if you need.

I believe he had some kind of ward saves as well.

[cofaxest]

49 minutes ago, Beliman said:

Can anyone list all the Tzeentchaon buffs? Never played versus him.

I played 4 times vs Archaon lists. 2 times I killed him on turn 1(slaanesh and khorne) before he was buffed, 2 times on turn 1 after he was buffed(slaanesh and tzeench). But I must admit that last time I have played against him I was VERY lucky and my opponent throw a bunch of bad dice.

[yukishiro1]

A few lists can kill Archaon T1, but it's riskier than it used to due to how much he can heal now if you don't kill him. Often the better play is to kill his support instead, while just blocking him off with cheap junk until he loses his super buffs and is much less effective.  His base is so huge that you can often moveblock him and vastly restrict his options re: what he can charge pretty effectively, and if he's only killing 100 points of junk a turn while you delete the rest of his army, you're winning that game easy.

It's a list that does well against other badly balanced lists that take only a few big expensive units, but if you take a more balanced list and realize that focusing on him is usually a trap, it's really not that strong. 

Edited July 10, 2021 by yukishiro1

[Skreech Verminking]

59 minutes ago, yukishiro1 said:

A few lists can kill Archaon T1, but it's riskier than it used to due to how much he can heal now if you don't kill him. Often the better play is to kill his support instead, while just blocking him off with cheap junk until he loses his super buffs and is much less effective.  His base is so huge that you can often moveblock him and vastly restrict his options re: what he can charge pretty effectively, and if he's only killing 100 points of junk a turn while you delete the rest of his army, you're winning that game easy.

It's a list that does well against other badly balanced lists that take only a few big expensive units, but if you take a more balanced list and realize that focusing on him is usually a trap, it's really not that strong. 

So basically the perfect match up for any Morathi, daughter of khaine armylist.

Killing morathi, with a ton of attacks won’t work, nor will instakilling have any affects on her.

so your basically just sending her forward and keeping Archaon for the next 5rounds occupied

[yukishiro1]

Yeah Morathi is a hard counter too. With Archaon having no way to fall back and charge and the army not having enough board presence to protect him, the only way to get away from her is to forgo a whole round of combat and try to play for the double. Gotrek too I guess in theory, if anybody ever took him, which they probably won't. Though at only 435 points now and on the smaller boards...who knows, maybe he's viable? 

Edited July 10, 2021 by yukishiro1

[swarmofseals]

I wouldn't call Morathi a hard counter to Archaon as she will go down in 4 turns (1.5 to 2 battle rounds of melee depending on if they put any mortals on her with spells), but she is very effective that's for sure.

It'll be interesting to see how the Archaon lists do in the meta.

I wonder about Nagash + zombie horde, as that list can both counter big hero monsters and flood the board with bodies.

[swarmofseals]

Added more data from a third event.

[Ganigumo]

Are there many lists running double battle regiments? It seems like an easy way to hit 2 drops consistently if you don't need an enhancement.

[swarmofseals]

19 minutes ago, Ganigumo said:

Are there many lists running double battle regiments? It seems like an easy way to hit 2 drops consistently if you don't need an enhancement.

There were definitely a few, although it wasn't super common.

[Skreech Verminking]

10 hours ago, swarmofseals said:

I wouldn't call Morathi a hard counter to Archaon as she will go down in 4 turns (1.5 to 2 battle rounds of melee depending on if they put any mortals on her with spells), but she is very effective that's for sure.

It'll be interesting to see how the Archaon lists do in the meta.

I wonder about Nagash + zombie horde, as that list can both counter big hero monsters and flood the board with bodies.

I don’t know, I Archaon is still alive after 4rounds of combat, and the dok players was able to remove most of the enemy army, there won’t be much left that archaon will be able to do against the rest of the dok units, when does are controlling, or had the control for 4 turns of most of the objectives 

[Skreech Verminking]

10 hours ago, yukishiro1 said:

Yeah Morathi is a hard counter too. With Archaon having no way to fall back and charge and the army not having enough board presence to protect him, the only way to get away from her is to forgo a whole round of combat and try to play for the double. Gotrek too I guess in theory, if anybody ever took him, which they probably won't. Though at only 435 points now and on the smaller boards...who knows, maybe he's viable? 

I don’t know.

 Even without the points reduction, he was a excellent choice for many armies.

no he is just bonkers.

435points for a small dwarf, that just literally kills anything (except morathi), reduce every damage he takes down to one, reduces abilities, that do unlimited mortal wounds, down to 1, just means, that killing him will be almost impossible, especially now, with heroic recovery.

[yukishiro1]

Yeah, the more I think about Gotrek, the more I think he's now legitimately very good, especially as a meta pick against heroic monster lists. Killing him is extremely difficult and points-inefficient except for stuff that generates truly stupid numbers of damage 1 attacks, and he eats most units in a single round, except for stuff that can pull models to be outside 3" so he doesn't get the double activation, or for truly tanky stuff like Archaon. And even then he will beat that stuff - even Archaon - and get great value while doing it. Heroic recovery on a model that reduces damage to 1 and has a 3+ ward has a massively inflated value - you used to be able to wear him down, now that's much, much harder. He can still be kited as easily as ever, but the board's gotten smaller and there's fewer objectives, so on a lot of battleplans if you want to avoid him you're essentially giving up on the primary. If people do stick with these heroes + buffs + junk lists, he'll dunk all over them. 

Edited July 11, 2021 by yukishiro1

[Enoby]

The more I think about Gotrek and the amulet of destiny, the more I think Sigvald will be a good tech for everyone who can take him. 

He won't one shot Gotrek, but on a 7 to charge he'll do about 4 damage, or 5 with finest hour (may kill him in one shot with a higher charge value though). Not amazing, but in Slaanesh you can make him pile in twice immediately after a charge (which would kill him on average - no guarantees). 

This is more for Nurgle (if you can find a more fitting proxy or conversion for Sigvald) or Tzeentch, Slaves to Darkness, whoever else can take him. Having something to put pressure on ward saves, who is kinda cheap ish, and who doesn't need their own allegiance abilities to function is very useful if ward saves start appearing more commonly. He's not a half bad tanky unit either, though won't do too hot against Gotrek.

[Starfyre]

Great insights, thanks! Do we know which of these armies won these tournaments? 

Also, the number of SGL is really interesting - is it that the lists are Nagash heavy, that it's a new army so fewer will have played against it, or something else that makes people think it'll be competitive against what else was brought?

Edited July 11, 2021 by Starfyre

[swarmofseals]

14 hours ago, Skreech Verminking said:

I don’t know, I Archaon is still alive after 4rounds of combat, and the dok players was able to remove most of the enemy army, there won’t be much left that archaon will be able to do against the rest of the dok units, when does are controlling, or had the control for 4 turns of most of the objectives 

I can't speak to the current iteration of the list but I had a couple of games with Morathi DoK against Tzeentch Archaon in late 2.0. It felt like a good matchup for DoK, but there were definitely some ways that it could go very wrong. Kairos is very good at dramatically reducing the offensive output of Blood Stalkers, and the typical Morathi + Stalkers list doesn't exactly have a ton of room for objective cappers/screens either. Tagging Archaon with Morathi is definitely doable but by no means automatic, and if you fail the reroll ward prayer things can get ugly. Again, it definitely felt like a fine or even good matchup for DoK but hardly an auto-win.

2 hours ago, Starfyre said:

Great insights, thanks! Do we know which of these armies won these tournaments? 

Also, the number of SGL is really interesting - is it that the lists are Nagash heavy, that it's a new army so fewer will have played against it, or something else that makes people think it'll be competitive against what else was brought?

Only the third tournament that I added (the least competitive of the three) is finished. I suspect the other two are multi-week tournaments on TTS. The third tournament had 3-0 results from Tzeentch (not archaon) and Slaves to Darkness, 2-1 results from DoK, Soulblight, Khorne, Slaanesh, SCE, and Tzeentch (Archaon) as well as a 2-0 from Nurgle (probably had to drop before the third round).

13 hours ago, yukishiro1 said:

Yeah, the more I think about Gotrek, the more I think he's now legitimately very good, especially as a meta pick against heroic monster lists. Killing him is extremely difficult and points-inefficient except for stuff that generates truly stupid numbers of damage 1 attacks, and he eats most units in a single round, except for stuff that can pull models to be outside 3" so he doesn't get the double activation, or for truly tanky stuff like Archaon. And even then he will beat that stuff - even Archaon - and get great value while doing it. Heroic recovery on a model that reduces damage to 1 and has a 3+ ward has a massively inflated value - you used to be able to wear him down, now that's much, much harder. He can still be kited as easily as ever, but the board's gotten smaller and there's fewer objectives, so on a lot of battleplans if you want to avoid him you're essentially giving up on the primary. If people do stick with these heroes + buffs + junk lists, he'll dunk all over them. 

I agree that Gotrek is better now than he was, and he's showing up in some lists for sure. That said his problem has always been that he's slow, usually much slower than the big monster heroes that he excels against. In terms of defensive efficiency Gotrek is definitely strong, especially for a hero. Against 1 damage attacks his weighted defensive efficiency is .092 which is mediocre but OK for a hero. Against damage 2 attacks he's .184 which is good overall and very good for a hero, and against higher than damage 2 he is of course excellent. His weighted offensive efficiency is mediocre (.073) to excellent (.145) depending on if he piles in once or twice. Against regular units it's very easy to prevent him from piling in twice, but against monster heroes he's going to get a second go unless he kills the enemy with the first attack. Gotrek will definitely be a strong piece against heroes+buffs+junk, but he's not fast enough to "dunk all over them" especially if there is a good amount of terrain on the board. He can only be in one place, and unlike an Archaon or Nagash he can't quickly move around the board to smash things wherever he wants.

[stratigo]

On 7/10/2021 at 1:05 PM, yukishiro1 said:

A few lists can kill Archaon T1, but it's riskier than it used to due to how much he can heal now if you don't kill him. Often the better play is to kill his support instead, while just blocking him off with cheap junk until he loses his super buffs and is much less effective.  His base is so huge that you can often moveblock him and vastly restrict his options re: what he can charge pretty effectively, and if he's only killing 100 points of junk a turn while you delete the rest of his army, you're winning that game easy.

It's a list that does well against other badly balanced lists that take only a few big expensive units, but if you take a more balanced list and realize that focusing on him is usually a trap, it's really not that strong. 

KO really can't one turn alpha him anymore I am pretty sure.

[yukishiro1]

1 hour ago, swarmofseals said:

I agree that Gotrek is better now than he was, and he's showing up in some lists for sure. That said his problem has always been that he's slow, usually much slower than the big monster heroes that he excels against. In terms of defensive efficiency Gotrek is definitely strong, especially for a hero. Against 1 damage attacks his weighted defensive efficiency is .092 which is mediocre but OK for a hero. Against damage 2 attacks he's .184 which is good overall and very good for a hero, and against higher than damage 2 he is of course excellent. His weighted offensive efficiency is mediocre (.073) to excellent (.145) depending on if he piles in once or twice. Against regular units it's very easy to prevent him from piling in twice, but against monster heroes he's going to get a second go unless he kills the enemy with the first attack. Gotrek will definitely be a strong piece against heroes+buffs+junk, but he's not fast enough to "dunk all over them" especially if there is a good amount of terrain on the board. He can only be in one place, and unlike an Archaon or Nagash he can't quickly move around the board to smash things wherever he wants.

Both his defense and offense are better than the raw stats let on IMO. Defensively, his tiny base size protects him from the stuff he's most vulnerable to, massed damage 1 attacks, because those almost always come from big units that are going to generally struggle to get all their models in range to hit him, especially with the coherency changes in 3.0. Offensively, it's true you can pull models so he doesn't get to activate twice in some cases, but if you do, you're also creating more space on the objective for the Gotrek player to pile on to with a supporting unit. And of course the reducing spell and ability damage to 1 is pretty huge too in terms of improving his defensive capabilities in a way that common stats can't really put a value on since it's totally unique. 

He's definitely slow, but that's not all that much of a weakness against a big god lists IMO because they have to commit their god somewhere, and Gotrek stops them from committing to wherever Gotrek is. If your 660-970 point god is stuck running away from a 435 point model, you're not in a good spot in the game. So he becomes area denial that's actually quite points-efficient at that role, given how much cheaper he is than any of the gods. The big weakness of those lists is that they can't establish board control in more than one place; if you put a 435 point model + 100 point chaff unit in one place and they can't go there with their 1000 point buff castle, that means you have 1500 points against their 1000. Redeploy also gives him a small but significant mobility boost compared to 2.0. 

IMO he works well in a list that is otherwise quite fast and/or shooty, i.e. that can project power across the board effectively with its remaining 1600 points, while he stands somewhere with a big "no parking here" sign. I think he also does better in high drop than low drop lists, where you can afford to hold him back until after your opponent is forced to deploy their big thing, so you can match their deployment and then force them to waste a turn repositioning. 

Edited July 11, 2021 by yukishiro1