Analyzing the Metagame

What can I expect?
The Metagame isn't the game, it's outside factors that influence the game. For example, if you just knew about Warhammer 40k and you were making an army, you might guess that you would find a little bit of every army being played. While that does happen, I know from personal experience and anecdotal evidence (tournament reports, conversations online, etc.) that more people play Space Marines than any other army. That means that if you are preparing for a tournament, you can expect to play against Space Marines more often than anything else.

The Law of Averages
Obviously, this isn't a guarantee. As an example, 3 of my 5 opponents in the Seattle GT that I attended were Eldar, and another was a fellow Tyranid player! That's the thing about the law of averages, just because it's the average result doesn't mean you'll get average results. However, it does give you an idea of what to prepare for and adjustments you might make to your list.

What'll it be?
Let's say that everybody in an area played Orks or Dark Eldar, you'd know to expect lots of lightly armored bodies and close combat. You wouldn't have nearly as much use for the bigger Heavy Weapons like Lascannons or Bright Lances, since you wouldn't have to penetrate much armor. On the other hand, you'd want weapons with a high rate of fire to bring up the body count. You might also decide to bring some mobility to keep your forces out of combat.

Check out the territory
So, let's talk about figuring out the metagame in your area. First off, take a look around when you play. What armies are present? Further, try to get an idea of how often those armies show up. If there's one guy that plays Grey Knights, and he comes in maybe once every 2 months, you probably won't have to worry much about Grey Knights. Make a list of the regular players or their armies and see how the list shapes up.

Locally, we've got a couple of regular Space Marine players and a couple of assaulty Chaos players and one shooty Chaos player. (Note, we actually have more Chaos players than that, but some of them don't show up very often, so I'll lump them all together and count them as 2 assault ones and 1 shooty one.) 1 Necron player and 1 Tau player, 1 Ork player and 1 Armored Company player. As I mentioned with the Chaos players, I'm adjusting the numbers here for frequency. For example, there's one Ork player that shows up a lot and I've seen another Ork player, but he almost never shows up. There are actually several Necron players, but most of them show up fairly rarely, so I lumped them together into 1. The Armored Company player is there quite a lot, so he gets a full slot all to himself. Remember to consider this when checking out your local metagame. Even if there are 40 Tau players, if they only show up about once a month, it's not going to be a sea of Tau.) So, of the 9 regular players, 6 of them have some sort of Meq (Marine Equivalent, that is, 3+ armor saves and T4) army. So, mostly my army should prepare to face Marine types, since that covers 2/3 of the possible opponents. In some ways, I might even count the Tau player among this number, since he's pretty heavy on Crisis suits.

This, by itself, suggests some things I should be prepared for. Primarily, I know I'll have to beat a 3+ save on a regular basis, so I should take something that will do that, either in shooting or assault. In general I'll want to have things that can penetrate that armor save, such as Rending Claws or Plasma Guns, depending on what army I'll be playing. These armies generally feature a fairly small number of expensive troops and some vehicles, so I don't need as much in the way of horde-killing weapons, but I will need something to take down vehicles reliably.

How do they do that?
Next, look at the dynamics of the armies. What do they do and how do they do it? You can start by deciding whether they rely more on shooting or assaulting. You will also want to look at a bit more detail of the composition of the various armies to get a better idea of what they are capable of. For example, a static IG gunline, a mechanized Tau army and Necrons all emphasize shooting, but in totally different ways. One features lots of heavy weapons, another has a few very effective weapons and will try to concentrate them on small areas of your force and the third has lots of small and medium weapons.

Locally, both the Space Marines, 1 of the Chaos players, the Necrons, the Tau and the Armored Company are all shooty armies. Since I know that most of the opponents feature shooting, I will have to take that into account when setting up my army. In general, I'll need to either outshoot them, or I'll have to be able to weather their shooting and assault them. Knowing this can help me plan out the army that I need, since I'll need to either put a lot into shooting (some vehicles, but mostly all those 3+ save bodies) or I'll need to figure some way to assault them without losing most of my force.

Okay, so let's take a look at the rough army configurations to see if there are any patterns to watch for...

Space Marines: Close Combat HQ leading some sort of counterassault squad (Terminators and Veterans both make appearances here.) 2-4 Tactical squads leaning toward small numbers and lots of Heavy/Special weapons. (The renowned 6 man Lascannon/Plasmagun squad, for example) A couple of Predators with Antitank Weapons (or some Devastator squads with Antitank weapons) and 2-4 Landspeeder Tornados.

Shooty Chaos: Very similar to the Space Marines, but replace the Tornados with Daemons and make the Close Combat HQ be a nasty Daemon Prince.

Assaulty Chaos: Nasty Daemon Prince and sometimes a Bloodthirster as the HQ. Berzerker type Chaos Marines and Daemons (mostly Bloodletters) as the Troops. Predator and/or Defiler plus Obliterators as antitank.

Necrons: Lord with Resurrection Orb in a good-sized phalanx of Warriors. (usually 50-60 Warriors.) Large unit of Immortals and a large unit or two of Destroyers. Either one large or two small units of Scarabs. There is also generally a unit of Heavy Destroyers, and once in a while a Monolith.

Tau: Lots of suits trying the Jump, Shoot, Jump thing. 1-2 Hammerheads or several Broadsides. A few small contingents of Firewarriors and a large squad of Stealth suits. Pretty mobile, pretty well armored, not many bodies.

Armored Company: Uh, Tanks! I seem to remember there being a Basilisk now and then, but not very often. Several Varieties of the standard Leman Russ tanks. Heavy Armor, Big guns, very few models.

Orks: This has been more of a mixed bag than most, I think he's still trying out the army. Generally, a fair number of light vehicles and a lot of bodies. He also uses some looted tanks.

Okay, so what do they have in common?
Every army but Necrons uses some kind of heavy vehicle, often 2 or more. Thus, it would behoove me to have a good amount of vehicle-cracking firepower of one kind or another.

6 or 7 of the 9 use a decent amount of Heavy Infantry, as mentioned previously. I'd better make sure I can handle their saves. (Rending Claws, Good AP, Monstrous Creatures, even multiple shots or hits since if you make them take enough Wounds, they'll eventually fail those saves.)

6 of them (not Orks, Tau or Armored Company) use some sort of heavily Close Combat-oriented HQ, so having something that can deal with good armor, lots of combat power and high weapon skill will be important. (This one's an easy one for me: Genestealer countercharge. Let the big bad guys eat whatever they charged, then slam 8-16 Genestealers into them. Generally there will be nothing left.)

6 of them use a good number of Heavy Weapons. This means I'll need to use cover and/or have improved survivability somehow.

4 of them use High Mobility Firepower (Landspeeders, for example) so that simply hiding my units won't keep them from being shredded. I'll need to either make sure that I'm IN terrain, rather than behind it, or I'll have to make sure that no matter where they move, I'll be able to take them down right after they do their damage once. (This is more of a tactical thing than army construction, but it will help to keep it in mind.)

3 of them use Skimmer Vehicles. This means that I'll be highly ineffective in close combat with them, so I'll have to deal with them through shooting.

2-3 of them have pretty good mobility with most of their army. This means that I'll need to be able to catch them or reach out and touch them at range. Ranged weapons are very effective at this (particularly Tyranid ones, which let me move and shoot at full effectiveness) and so is high speed, either through flight or leaping.

How do I work this?
Then you should write out what you expect them to do against your army. This can be a guess at their general strategy, or it can be real experience from facing them previously. If you have to guess, always err on the side of them being really smart and doing the best possible thing. There's no point in preparing to fight a dumb opponent. You might also look into some of the options that they might use if they were specifically just fighting you.

What do I expect them to do against my army?
Shooty Armies (Space Marines, Shooty Chaos, Tau, Armored Company, Necrons) They will generally hang back and try to shoot me (Duh!) If I can outshoot them, they will send their countercharge option (usually the assaulty HQ and backup, such as the Veterans or Terminators) forward to try to take me down in hand to hand.

Assaulty Armies(Assault Chaos, Orks) They will generally move forward and try to engage me on a wide front, hoping to tie up my front line and kill my stuff, while the shooting weakens certain units.

They must be stopped!
Next up, work out how you could counter their plan. It's best to do this with your regular army list. If you find that there are several things that you could do or you'd like to do, but they require a different unit, you may want to start including that unit in your army list.

Are there ways of countering their plan?
Well, against the shooty guys, the amount of firepower I can throw out is pretty impressive, and coupled with the Psychic Screams, should give me the leg up in shooting. Against VERY shooty armies, I would have to use my army in a very tight formation and use terrain to block a lot of Line Of Sight so that only part of the army could see me at a time, and I could shoot just that part.

Against the Assaulty guys, I can still dish out the firepower, but now I need to remember to move backward as they approach. Depending on their charge range, I may be able to get the charge off against them by having my Genestealers use Fleet to get to them before they get to my lines. If that happens, I'll still be able to shoot over the combat, since my Monstrous Creatures are Size 3. If not, I'll have to rely on my Genestealers counter-charging them and wiping them out so I can get back to shooting.

A pinch of this, a cup of that...
From all of this, take a look at your army list and see if it has the appropriate emphasis, or if you need to add something here or there to shore it up.

Now, as RedArmySOK points out, don't handicap yourself just to get a leg up on the metagame. If you plan on only playing against those Space Marines and their equivalents, and you don't bring anything to deal with the Orks, Tau or the Armored Company, you'll lose about 1/3 of your games. On the other hand, if you are totally ready for the Orks and Armored Company, you may well lose 2/3 of your games. So, what can you do? You could think of it proportionally. If 2/3 of the armies are Space Marines, prepare 2/3 of your army to deal with them. Use the other 1/3 to be ready for the other stuff. (1/9 Orks, 1/9 Tau, 1/9 Armored Company. 1850 Divided by 9 is about 205pts.) You can also look at it another way. If you have a choice between a weapon that will be incredibly good against Space Marines, but totally useless against Orks and you have another weapon that will be pretty good against Space Marines, but will also do alright against Orks, pick the weapon that gives you some flexibility. I've said it for years and I'll keep saying it, flexibility keeps you alive. No matter what they spring on you, you should have something that can deal with it. You may not have much, but you might just have enough to give you a fighting chance.

The other ones
So, what if you are fighting that 1/3 or 1/9? Then what do you do? Well, figure out what you have that works best against them. Then figure out what can sort of work against them. Finally, look at what just won't work against them. Take the stuff that won't be useful against them and use it as a sacrifice unit. You may be able to tie them up and distract them with it. You might be able to screen a more useful unit behind it, or you might just be able to claim an objective with it.

It sounds stupid to throw away an expensive assault unit, but if it has no chance against an enemy but the cheaper shooting unit it saves can kill the enemy, use what you've got. An example of this would be my Godzilla shooty list against Nick's Armored Company. Given his Tanks and their heavy armor, my Elite Carnifexes with their Twin Devourers will be useless unless I can get a side or rear shot. Nick is too smart for that, so they are no good to me in games against him. On the other hand, those Heavy Support Carnifi with their Venom Cannons are much more effective against his tanks. Unfortunately, I didn't keep this in mind when I played him. Had I thought of it in those terms, I would have used my Elite Carnifi (the ones that normally do a lot of my damage, so I want to keep them safe) as a wall to protect or at least partially block Line Of Sight to my Heavy Carnifi. That would have given me an extra turn or so of full shooting, which probably would have resulted in another dead tank or two. In at least one game, I think that would have given me the win. Lesson learned.

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