The Greatest Weaknesses of Every 40K Army - The Weakest Abilities of Each Faction in 10th Edition

in 10th edition 40K every Army has at least some strength and some interesting units to put on the table but in this video I thought we'd talk about their flaws let's talk through some of the greatest weaknesses of every single Army in the game hello and welcome back to war tactics for another more General 40K video in this one we're going to talk through each Army in the game and just run through a few of the things that they maybe do less well weapons that tend to be efficient against them and problems that they might have trying to achieve what they want to on the board some of these things might be genuine problems for the factions some of them might just be about trying to make armies function differently it does make sense that different factions would have strengths and weaknesses in game and that does add a bit more flavor on the tabletop loads to talk about so let's jump straight into it we'll go through the Imperium then chaos then xenos first up for the boys and power armor we have the Space Marines currently in terms of tournament win stats one of the weaker armies in 40K unfortunately a win rate of 42% sense they feel that perhaps one of their weaknesses overall is that those stats are often lower than they might be otherwise one of the problems is there's a lot of different ways to play Space Marines with lots of different chapters and unit variety and that means that any one player might be kind of unlikely to have the absolute most optimal space brain list when Games Workshop inevitably changes the rules around every so often and given the way that Games Workshop have set up these space brain chapters and attachment system it often means that you might just get a lot more value out of a Space Marine Army list if you play one of the Divergent ch chapters it does kind of feel that they're basically Marines Plus for the most part getting the same or more character choices than all the codec Space Marine chapters plus having fun unique units that might or might not be competitive otherwise for actual gameplay they do tend to be maybe a bit more Jack of all trades master of none in some cases lots of units paying for melee ability and power armor making them maybe a little bit more forgiving than some factions but maybe does come at the price of a little bit of efficiency into given targets sometimes otherwise they tend to be at least relatively Elites which doesn't make them as good for screening or putting things like hoorde units on the board that's not really something that they do and for things that will kill them anything that's flat damage two or three generally tends to be a good pick particularly things with higher AP weapons reducing those power armor saves down to something negligible and perhaps higher AP is doubly important with armor of contempt on the go it can be pretty helpful for any abilities that either of ignore modifiers or ignore cover as well on that front for slightly underpowered units maybe tactical Marine and reavers might stick out compared with the rest a bit more than most either of those just need a better ability boost or a points drop if that's not coming to compete against the Myriad other Space Marine troops armed with bolters and though codc Space Marines does have good support for a bunch of different detachments some certainly feel underwhelming Anvil Siege Force just doesn't really tend to work very well on competitive tables with loads of dense terrain and the first company task force just doesn't really seem to be doing the business quite good enough for Terminator and Veteran sort of forces just lacky a little bit of raw strength there before we move on to the rest of the armies of the Imperium I thought I'd just talk briefly about star for who chose to sponsor this video I kind of rarely do video sponsors on or's tactics though I have featured their Stu a couple of times before they're basically a luxury Warhammer 40K merch type site officially partnered with Games Workshop and allowed to make some cool stuff including perhaps one of their more surprising ranges in a range of Warhammer 40K jewelry and Insignia type things they ask me to specifically feature this rather snazzy silver inquisitorial ring inlaid with a garnet something I wouldn't really bat an isid at if there was artwork depicting an in Universe Inquisitor wearing obviously these kind of jewelry and luxury merchandise sort of products aren't the sort of thing that's going to interest literally everybody but it felt like enough of you might have at least some interested in these they do have perhaps a surprisingly extensive range of faction specific Jews and accessories and things they've got different designs Four Sisters Templars and the Imperial Guard if you were a particularly dedicated fan of the Inquisition you might be interested in this one which is made of silver with the red garnet the Inquisition one looks like it's $129 on their site which I believe can ship globally I think from Hong Kong I feel like the rest of their site in general is maybe interesting enough to have a look over for gifts and things for people in the hobby that aren't just yet more Miniatures to add to the pile of shame in any case I'll leave a link to them down in the video description and of course a big thank you to them for sponsoring our video getting back to the subject at hand though and before we move on to the rest of the Imperium let's talk through the Divergent chapters I feel like they're kind of in an odd space to talk about in terms of weaknesses given that they kind of add more to Space Marines in general so they more sort of improve the faction in their own different ways I feel that maybe it's a bit more helpful to talk about perhaps the bits that the armies don't do well or they unique rules that don't see that much play for the blood angels I feel like the most prominent are the sanguinary guard certainly got an interesting enough data sheets but just cost it into the stratosphere so that nobody takes the Inc competitive lists or at least not for the most part being outweighed by jump intercessors or death comp previously I would have said that the sons of sanguinous Detachment really wasn't holding its own but since they op it to plus two strength that got a lot of important units to good break points strength six assault intercessors on the charge or strength 10 death company power fist are both pretty intimidating it does come with its strengths and weaknesses compared with Gladius though I said that lacky access to advance and charge is one of the weaker points for the Dark Angels they've unfortunately had a rather underwhelming codex release in my opinion lots of units getting Nerfs and then not really getting the points Cuts they needed for those Nerfs to be reasonable pretty much all their unique stuff is at least borderline over costers Deathwing Knights were maybe okay efficiency but had their damage output reduced at the same points cost lion Old Johnson I don't think went down enough to compensate him for losing that minus one to wound the land speed of Vengeance and the Inner Circle companions both really didn't do well out of the points changes it is kind of weird that basically almost the entire index is pretty bad and then there's just Grandmaster Azrael who almost a to include strong for the 105 points between his great buffing rules and command Point generation perhaps to the extent where it means that Dark Angels can actually punch above many of the rest of the Space Marine chapters who often tends to be generic Space Marines centered around him otherwise for the detachments appear like the Deathwing and Raven Wing ones at least have interest they are dependent on their respective units being strong though to actually be worthwhile I really felt like they missed a trick with The Unforgiven task force though I feel like it needed something blood Angel Style just to give it a Nodge back into line with the rest of the Space Marine detachments it does have some okay things but the very weird called battle shot benefits just isn't really all that great and despite being a very infrequent pick competitively beforehand it arguably got worse not better in the Codex otherwise for the Divergent chapters we've got the Space Wolves they definitely have some very strong data sheets though I feel like maybe they're a little bit too focused on thunderwolf stormlands as their one way to do well I think it's certainly a cool way to play them though maybe overshadow some of the other units they have in their roster I feel that unlike the blood angels the champions of Ross more boost that it got in the balance data slate really wasn't enough to help them out properly the core mechanic of that just remains far too swingy the sagas are great when they're active and if you got lucky and we're able to activate a lot of them early in the game it could be really big but there's going to be some games where it's just too dependent on your opponents to be able to access them or some of them just won't be able to be done at all moving on from Space Wolves to death watch like this bloke here here they do feel like games work drop haven't really paid too much attention to them since the addition came out most of their mix kill teams are just a little bit unfortunately overcosted all their primar swes I don't think are quite where they need to be probably the most interesting thing that they have is the Proteus kill team for just an enormously threatening damage Hammer can be good with some characters and attachment combos such as Gladius fire discipline even but even then you have to hit enormously hard and the unit isn't really all that durable for the cost it does mean that you could have a huge chunk of Army wiped out in return for their unique Detachment some standard damage Buffs are at least fairly easy to use I think it does have some pretty interesting enhancements and the teleportarium strategy maybe it's just a bit unfortunate that three of their strategems now solely revolve around Bolter units where space in Bolter shooting units just don't tend to be the most scary things they have damage wise they can be okay on some of the kill teams though I guess finally for the Divergent chapters there's the black Templars who I feel like are in really quite a good spot relative to the rest of the space it does seem that they're the competitive go-to out of any of these right now most of their data sheets are genuinely quite strong I guess maybe just the standard Castell and a marshall might be a little bit on the weaker side versus the generic equivalent within codet Space Marines though that's kind of a minor grip really the Detachment also I think is pretty well done righteous Crusaders are strong enough to be played at the top levels on competitive play maybe the main thing that feels a bit odd for black Templars is that iron storm bearhead is one of their best ways to play as well just solely due to the cheap multi melters that they can tack on to big scary vehicles I feel like plus 20 points for a multi melter was far too much when the addition launch now plus five is probably a bit too little maybe they should just make them a consistent 10 across the board I feel like that could more accurately tie in with the extra value that they bring to the table moving on to the rest of the Imperium and first up we have the astr militarum they're an army with slightly lower win rate at 45% they still seem to be doing well enough to top a few tournaments with the players around though the average player does seem to be really struggling for weaknesses for the cor guard rules they are one of the armies that's a bit more susceptible to battles shock the most they've got leadership seven and if they fail battles shock then their orders cancel the majority of factions don't have their core mechanic messed around with when they fail battles shock so can just get on a little bit worse against certain factions that play heavier on it like tyranids or chaos Knights otherwise for Army capability things they don't have a ton of melee the Bens are pretty nice as Brawlers to hold down the front line they don't tend to kill anything to enormously big and tough so it could cause problems if the game unfolds that the guard could really do with killing something in melee their core Detachment buff does feel a little bit flawed for the majority of the army if they want to try and make it general purpose born soldiers is just far more useful on artillery as they're pretty much always going to be staying static compared with the tanks and infantry that needs to rumble up to get to objectives or get lines of size for weapon profiles they're good at killing them anything that strength for to six and AP minus one will pretty much ruin their infantry and then uncomplicated big high strength High AP anti-tank things are unsurprisingly the goto against Leman Rosses they maybe have more things at the extremes than in between for underpowered units it actually argue that the vast majority of the Guard codex is in a pretty playable space perhaps for some slightly less powerful examples the valkyrie the Hydra death strike and the Roth Riders could be one of the examples of things lesser play compared with several factions out there though I think it could be worst otherwise for potential weaknesses they often need to play smart about tanks getting tagged in melee you can still fire with Big Guns Never tire but it can still cause big problems like say if you needed other things to wipe out the unit that tagged your tank screening is very important certain big units like ban blades and Dawns which are certainly okay for their points in my opinion might struggle on certain tables with fitting through tight gaps in terrain and I feel like as a faction they are maybe a little bit over reliant on Lord solar being a command bunker to dish out orders to everyone if he every winds up getting toned down a bit then that's going to directly impact on the strength of the faction beyond all that just with their tournament statistics and things it does look like they're a very high skill faction an army that's going to underwhelm just for raw power but if you can choose the exact right decisions to make with your movement and application of indirect fire it does seem that they can go from good to Great next up for the Imperial Knights they're kind of mid strength in 40K right now win rates around about 49% Knights given that they're a big army full of super heavy Walkers and big vehicles are maybe one of the armies that have the most obvious strengths and weaknesses namely if they run into an enemy Army that's just got lethal hits or massive anti-tank guns in abundance they're going to have bad times and also anything that destroys big heavy Targets in melee efficiently is going to be bad news for them as they get invulnerable saves and rotate iron Shields at range but not in melee otherwise for weaknesses Knight struggle with moving around terrain might get outplay by infantry or potentially move blocked hard in early turns against the wrong opponents they don't get scouting or infiltrating units built into to screen and that could be a really big issue for them given that you're playing with quite so many big vehicles you're usually not going to be able to hide everything from enemy Firepower turn one it does mean that if the opponent's got some big scary anti-tank guns you're going to lose some important stuff most likely and within their core faction they don't really have any particularly cheap units the cheapest being things like armag hins at 140 points they can pick up some smaller stuff from the Agents of the Imperium maybe some henchmen War bands or a cidus assassin overall I'd say that most of the classes of Knight are at least playable given their big rerolls and raw strength and heavy guns maybe the Knight Valiant feels like it's one of the most relatively underpowered ones that one just haven't lost so much more compared with the rest when Knights were no longer able to OverWatch otherwise for perhaps some more higher end competive games there are maybe a slightly lower skill ceiling Army there maybe not a crazy amount of nuance with marching a whole load of big scary war machines towards the enemy and hoping for the best there's definitely ways that you could play them better and worse but maybe not quite so much variance compared with other armies if the opponent's threatening to take fixed secondaries as well they might potentially give up bring it down really quite easily depending on the exact list for the Sisters of battle the nons with guns are doing fairly well at Big tournaments at the moment a win rate around about 52% though in general they do tend to be an army that tends to do a bit better in competitive settings versus casual they have quite a lot of unit that are maybe fairly interesting damage dealers and can do some funky things with their Miracle dice combos but just don't tend to have all that much durability and some of them don't have much speed either it means that getting things left out in the open and exposed could lead to a lot of casualties very quickly and maybe a little bit more reliant on terrain for staying safe with their units as well doing better on tournament setup boards where you've got lots of line of sight blocking otherwise for some criticisms their Detachment rule is maybe a little bit scaton if your opponent focuses down units then you might not get much benefits from the hallowed martys and while miral dice are pretty great they can be swingy I've certainly seen in some games where sisters players have just consistently rolled low Miracle Dice and if you don't manage to net an average number of sixes then you will lose a lot of power that way otherwise for anti-tank they can sometimes have issue with their multi melters being slow and short ranged castigators can add a bit of longrange Firepower but a kind of low AP in general low strength and high apish weapons tend to do quite well against low Tous units in power armor and maybe for units that are struggling more than most perhaps the celestian sacrs might be one to single out a little most elite infantry that weren't getting played much got points decreases but they seem to be passed over at the last balance update for the Cog boys of the adaptus mechanicus they're struggling a bit in 40K right now a win rate of 44% and just in general lots of people seeing their codex as having had a whole load of issues they kind of went the wrong way for what people were hoping for when their book got up for the most part their units just tend to be very underwhelming in terms of actual damage dealers Beyond catron breaches potentially pretty well everything else tends to more fall in Gable units that sort of get annoying and get in the way of the enemy but don't really do much besides against lightish infantry this qari Hunter cohort tends to do significantly better than the other detachments though the play style is one that maybe a lot of admech players don't really feel particularly infused by doing things like throwing Big Blocks of terraxia around to move block and be us es and perhaps do the same with drons iron Striders or Vanguard in transports another one of the most common gripes is that per the amount of money that you pay for the Army you generally get some very non- elite units lots of their most expensive Elites tends to be falling in around about the 50 to 80 points sort of Mark for five of them which is very low indeed between being extraordinarily expensive to get on the table and taking a long time to paint to it is also something that gives plenty of hobbyists a challenge lots of people aren't too enthus that their Detachment role only affects range damage for the most part not really melee stuff and for other specific things heavy bolters tend to be quite efficient into their two wound infantry with invulnerable saves and for some of the most underpowered units called the castellan robots and the rust stalkers might be some of the ones to talk about most perhaps along with the archa Opus overall I feel like people might well be hoping for games work shop to take a real proper change of AD meing the next balance updates make them generally more dangerous as an army even if it did mean that some units might have to pay for that with points Rises that would be prefers to yet more points cuts for the emperor Golden Boys there's the Adept custodes currently they seem to be top tier in Warhammer 40K a win rate of 56% and greater than the vast majority of the rest certainly a far cry from being as runaway standout as eldari early in 10th though in general they are just very strong I guess if you're looking for criticisms they don't have an enormous amount of proper Firepower units aside from Allied cadius tanks or perhaps Imperial Knights they do tend to be rather slow and purposeful sing up the board in their golden armor to take the Midfield that is kind of their play style in general it does mean that the enemy might have the chance to outmaneuver them or play clever around them and while he might have a lot of potential damage to unleash he might not be able to catch the enemy when he most need to certain rules and characters can help with that like blade Champions getting you to advanc and charge otherwise they tend to be Hyper Elite as an army you can do a little bit of screening with sisters of silence though most of the time your opponent's going to be able to Alpha strike important units in your Army in general they have to trust on their defensive profiles to carry them against that and perhaps for faction capabilities they don't have any access to infiltrate units to take the mid board could sometimes lead the chance of getting move blocked a bit early in the game against SOS for weapons that are most likely to kill them high strength and good AP with damage 3 plus on maass tends to be the way to go Small Arms generally aren't that much use and you going needs to treat custodes like they're walking tanks for the most part and they've got good defense against devastating wounds and Mortal wounds the things that are underpowered for the rest of the army the verus pror still seem to be undertuned relative to the rest and most of their Forge World Range is still a bit disappointing dreadnut in particular seem to be a bit overcosted which is a shame given how cool they look overall though it does seem that when you add everything together they do seem to be one of the strongest armies in Warhammer 4K right now maybe one of their biggest weaknesses is they're likely to get toned down again in the next balance data slate fingers cross Games Workshop can try and get them right this time rather than either too strong as they were at the start of 10th or too weak as they were after that moving on to the Imperial hyper Elites but this time in silver armor we've got the grey Knights they seem to be doing really quite well after those dread Knight changes going up to a win rate of 51% I feel like the dread Knights have helped to mitigate the biggest weakness that they had which was struggling to take down tough stuff anything with T10 or more gave those four Force weapons are challenged but given that the dread Knight s cannons got to AP minus 2 and ignores cover it does mean that they can threaten at least medium armor a whole Lo better otherwise for weaknesses they're very reliant on their teleport tricks to get value out of their units it's really powerful to be able to warp units around the board maybe do a 3-in deep strike on some of them but I feel like teleport tricks maybe only get used so far you're still going to need some things to actually try and take and hold the points in the Midfield and he can't back out of every fight and besides C go it's also a fairly unreliable way to deliver those Force weapons to close combats which tend to be stronger than their shooting so I feel like it is quite good but maybe has some diminishing returns and could run into some potentially big problems against armies that have got enough board presence to be all over the board maybe horders in particular having a fairly small unit roster as well does mean that they lack some tools for certain Battlefield roles they don't have infiltrate units or efficient longrange anti-tank at the moment I guess technically they could if their grey AR dread nort was PR a bit better though at the moment that one's one of the more overcosted things that they have otherwise for enemy weapons given their two plus armor save and sort of mid toughness profiles enemy special weapons like plasma guns and melter guns tend to have unusually good value against them something with fairly High AP and damage 2 or three is likely going to be a sweet spot maybe ignoring cover if possible anything that gets anti cyer or other bonuses against witches is going to be a problem as well given that every single unit gets the keyword more or less overall though they don't seem to be in a too bad spot doing fairly well right now and pretty much most of their core units playable I'd say that their weaker things tend to be their flyers and the dreadnut a bit more of the generic Space Marine stuff there moving on to the forces of chaos and we'll start out with the chaos Space Marines they're an army that's been nerfed really quite heavily going from one of the strongest factions in the game to one of the single weakest looks like they're putting a borderline poor performance in at tournaments at win rates of 45% chaos Marines really did take a broad battery of Nerfs to basically all their good stuff multiple strong stratums toned down multiple things went up in points or had small rules changes I feel like a lot of their units are really now paying for the massive damage that the dark packs can bring for them it's kind of funny just how much the cost of the forge fiend has risen since the Edition came out otherwise for the dark packs you do have the risk of the Mortal wound chip damage you're going to get every so often from it occasionally that could just suddenly mean that an important unit goes down to being very easily to kill for your opponent and I feel like to make the most out of your units you do need to both lean into their packs and also their strategems combining both to get some obscene damage output as in general they tend to be skewed a lot more to damage than defense as an army most their defensive profiles just aren't super stand out for how much they cost though as with space Rings most things that are multi- damage and have at least a bit of AP are going to do you well here maybe four Stand Out underpowered units bashor the Lord discordant and the hre I all feel are rather overcosted right now for more Mainline things perhaps Havoc could use a small points drop maybe not truly unusable but seem to be rarely played competitively versus other options as ra again with armies like Imperial Guard they tend to be an army that's got really quite low win rates and most people struggle with but the occasional really good player does seem to be able to get them to top tournaments from time to time they've certainly got a crazy amount of raw damage and some powerful tricks like hiding units from shooting it's just going to be a puzzle to work out which ones to use when against each new opponent next up for the forces of nurgle we have the death guard a pretty solid and well balanced army at a win rate of around 49% I feel like they're overall in a really good place certainly challenging for top spots at tournaments and the majority of their unit roster very usable again they're an army that do have some fairly notable strengths and weaknesses they tend to be really quite slow moving and their damage output tends to be maybe a bit grindy and short ranged and that does tie in with their contagion of nurgle as well giving you really quite good debuffs on the opponents but only when you're up close and the contagion range doesn't expands too much until later in the game within their unit pool they do have some Reliance on Allied nurglings at the moment for certain Battlefield roles like dropping for secondaries or infiltrating screening and perhaps if anything weirdly for nurgle their durability maybe isn't quite as overwhelming and monstrous as it has been in ages past perhaps that feels like it's the case for plague Marines in particular given that their units can load up with all manner of fun special weapons and it means that they can't really be too Stand Out durable otherwise they'd just be under cost as again as with Space Marines anything with good AP and damage two or damage three tends to do very well for criticisms within their unit roster i' say the blight Lord Terminators really stick out as a unit that just seems to be directly inferior to Death Shroud right now I feel like they could probably use a points cut and after the very on members the noxious blightbringer and the plague surgeon maybe feel like they're overshadowed by the rest of the cast the things that could cter them as well anything that gets to just flat out ignore modifiers is going to be bad it does mean that they could counter contagion type things from them and that could cause some problems for the followers of the blood God we have the world eaters again maybe somewhat like the chaos Space Marines they feel like an army that's been cut down from a fairly Strong place to a somewhat weak one a Win race for around about 45% at tournaments they were doing at least fairly well prior to the data slates but then the Nerfs at least hit most of their strong stuff in one way or another it does seem to have them struggling a bit more given that they've got a very small unique choice of units and they didn't really have many other places to go besides the ones they were already Fielding World eaters definitely have their own set play style they like running at you with a big chain Axe and therefore have very limited shooting they might be reliant on Allied War doog brigin if they want this the play style often tends to revolve around getting a whole load of eight bounds to scout up the board and charge into you very hard turn one and things like enemy scouts or infiltrators could get in the way of that if they're clattering against screening units and then maybe left out in the open after that that that could be bad times as with the rest of the Space Marines damage two or three profiles with a bit of AP will do well they generally tend to have less good defense than their damage given that they're pretty brutal in melee for the most part and if they're caught out in the open then they're going to take heavy casualties to any sort of efficient Firepower though admittedly anything that does survive is probably going to cause you some big pain I feel like most of their units maybe just a little bit overcosted from where they really want to be KH and corn Berserkers and eight8 bound all feel like it could just use a small points decrease I genely don't think it would have to be anything super major just enough to maybe get another critical unit on the table perhaps otherwise for weaknesses angron is all rather amazing but you could have very big swings in the game as to whether or not angron regenerates or doesn't if he does it could be gamechanging or winning and if he doesn't it could lose so your hands are in the blessings of corn dice Gods there similarly if you desperately need both need the plus two to movement and the advance and charge turn one to get some key charges off if you happen not to roll those despite any rerolls then again that could be a big deal determined no by no more than luck finally for the D specific Legions we've got the Thousand Suns representing for each again they seem to be doing rather well in tournaments and things a win rate are around about 51% they feel like they've got a reputation for being a trickier Army to play than most generally a faction that tends to do a bit better in the hands of really high skilled players versus people who are newer to the game there's lots of big choices to be made such as where to spend those cabalistic ritual points particularly when you've got huge options like massive damage debuffs on the enemy spamming out mortal wounds or big things like a double move which could be crazy when applies to certain threatening units Magnus the red in particular speaking of which Magnus tends to be the competitive heart of thousand Sons list at the moment kind of cool to see the primar being quite so strong he is a model that needs kind of careful play though you can't really afford to get him killed too early if you do that could lose the game but but also if you're too Cy with him and don't get the value out of that massive points investment the opponent might get too far ahead and he just might not have enough value out of those points that you paid for him otherwise for the rest of their battle line they tend to be at least fairly slow moving without certain movement tricks like those double movement or the umbrella Crystal their other units tend to be a bit better against bullying enemy infantry versus heavy tanks not really a whole load of ranged Andy tank besides Magnus himself the units tend to revolve around rubrics led by Sorcerers and it means that any damage two or three weapons again are pretty great here and any weapons that affect Pyers in specific again are going to have a really good time there also an army that might give up the assassinate fixed objective rather easily too given their big abundance of characters otherwise for underpowered units I'd say that Zango and Scar of Ault Terminators tend to be kind of underused at the moment I feel like maybe some very small points decreased on these could be okay though at the same time I feel like you wouldn't want to go too far given that having the Rubik Marines at the heart of the army does feel very appropriate overall they feel like in a fairly good place certainly able to do well at tournaments they might need some clever schemes and forward planning to get you there next up for the spiky Knights the chaos Knights are fairly well balanced right now a 50% win rates even if the way that they do so is often using math wogs there which I think is a criticism that quite a lot of players have it will be a bit better if more of the big Knights were a little bit more balanced with the little guys as with the Imperial Knights they do have kind of similar strengths and weaknesses lots of big easier to command units but having a huge amount of vehicles are hard to hide from enemy Firepower if the enemy's got loads of lethal hits or high power anti-tank weapons then they're going to go down more easily and particularly anti-tank in combat where they don't get invulnerable saves they don't have any cheap units in the roster though you can rely on some Allied nurglings for some infiltrate and secondary objective work and compared with the Imperial Knights they maybe struggle just a little bit less with terrain given that they have that walk through wall strategy though even with that i' still consider it a weakness compared with the Imperials the chaos Knights have their battle shock Shenanigans rather than just some raw damage and defense bonuses it does have some interesting abilities and it's one of the armies that makes battle chock work best I think though it is going to affect some factions better than most it depends on the leadership of the army plus whether or not you're likely to just kill units outright or leave them damaged for weaker units it still seems that despite the points adjustments as mentioned the war dogs are a bit too dominant over the Titanic Knights I've seen a few people using things like the chaos Knight Lancer a bit though still seems to be the default finally as for the Imperials they do give up the bring it down secondary very easily plus the same as them they're just a rather limited scope Army they'll just walk at you just trying to coordinate some big stat lines and big guns into position you can definitely play them well or better the mayy just don't have quite as much scope for big clever tricks compared with some of the others when they're at this sort of power level they often tend to be an army that will do well against the majority of the field but might not make it to the top tables of grand tournaments all that regularly for the denisons of the war we have the chaos demons following some big points Cuts in the last balance data slates their win rates improved a bit to a solid 50% they're an army that plays very differently to the majority of other factions in Warhammer 40K having big emphasis on their deep strip mechanics and warping into real space plus kind of being a sort of fantasy Army in space which does mean that they have way more representation for melee combat compared with ranged attacks in their roster those deep strike and redeployment type tricks are may be quite strong versus some armies but a bit less so against others anything with just a ridiculous amount of board control like an enemy horde could give them problems even if they can put something within 3 in or drop closer with the shadow of chaos the shadow of chaos itself I think is all right as an army rule it's maybe just a bit awkward in the times where you check when it affects though as you have to have the midb objectives under your your control at the start of the movement phase which often might well not be the case and that could mean that you might have a little bit less scope for close 6 in range deep strike unless you've got bellor along as with the chaos Knights as well the battle sh shanans it brings are better against certain armies than others otherwise for enemy weapons big volumes of low AP attacks are going to tend to be the most efficient things against them given that they get invulnerable saves not armor saves and that's also kind of a weakness with the very easy cover saves that you can get intent that often demons just don't really care too much about getting cover at all as they're going to be saving on their invulnerable save either way lethal hits and auto cannons and things are probably not really what they want to see on the other side of the table overall I feel like given they had so many points decreases a lot more things went from being kind of bad to at least kind of playable they still maybe feel like they need a lot of emphasis on the greater demons to be able to take down enemy tanks and Heavies and I feel like as an army they've got quite a lot of blows in the HQ section many of which just don't really get picks often at all perhaps out of other more battle liny sort of units the play drones might be particularly singled out as a bit overcost us it still feels like there's plenty of stuff that's just about usable but also kind of so so there might be a bit of an element of functioning as four mini armies within the same Army might lead to a bit less Synergy than some factions have if you did want to have something with an area of effect buff like say a great unclean one for nurgle it means that you only have quite a small roster of things that is actually going to affect versus the big amount of choice in the rest of the index over all certainly a very different Army to play and maybe can be a little bit trickier to grasp than some of the other armies but sometimes that might be work out for the advantage with other people not knowing quite how to react to them on the other side of the table moving on to the xenos now and first up we have the elari they're still holding fairly strong it's a win rate around 51% despite repeated multiple layers of Nerfs to them ever since the addition came out their army power certainly been greatly diminished since that point though that's probably a good thing given how rampant they were fate D are just a bit less of an important mechanic given that they dropped down to only six of them following the Nerf and they devastating wound weapons aren't quite as overwhelmingly enormously brutal for other disadvantages they don't really have that many cheap Expendable units to portional objectives or really tough Anvil sort of units to hold the midb and take some punishment maybe wraith blazes or the Avatar of Kane could do though it's not something i' call a strength of this in general besides those options as well they don't really have many options for quality melee compared with their range damage often Craft World lists tend to be a lot more shooty than close combat focused for enemy weapons any sort of mass strength for volume fire is going to be bad for them and maybe particularly indirect fire that can hit things behind terrain lots of their fast moving objective scoring units that tend to get taken really don't want to be hit by a bunch of mortifier or something for notably underpowered units maybe howling banshees are particularly obvious as an aspect I'd argue that most of their harlequinn and Corsair us units are kind of rarely taken and compared with a few factions in the game it does feel like there's a few of their units that are costed as per their strongest load out say the support weapons with their D cannons or The Wraith knights with the Heavy D cannons overall though they still seem to be doing okay despite repeated batteries of Nerfs since the addition came out on competitive tables they still seem to do really quite well though again maybe feel like an army that now needs to be played with a lot more intelligence than they did and they might not light tables with small amounts of line of sight blocking terrain that could be news for a lot of their objective scoring interference units like Shadow specters warp spiders and swooping Hawks for S to dark held our cousins again i' also rate them as really quite strong in 40K right now tournament wins around 50% with The Skys spinter assault Force coming in the last balance data slate they tend to be hitting very hard out of transports at the moment for any weaknesses in their army capabilities they may be have a few fewer big durable units to draw on than some other armies TS really aren't too bad maybe don't tend to get played as much considering the focus on transports in the sky Splinter they certainly can do annoying things on objectives with transports and then units disembarking behind terrain the damage output can definitely be terrifying but it maybe can be a little bit swingy depending on the circumstances it'll drop off a bit after the initial Alpha strike outside of transports where they get LS and things and while they're paying tokens can get you some enormous damage Buffs they might occasionally be a bit snowball where if you get a few early you might find it easier to get more and against some armies you just might not have as many of them that you can access say for example if you're fighting against Knights or custodies with just a few massive units on the other side of the table for their movement they do move fast but at least compared with previous editions of the game The Fly keyword doesn't interact quite in such a Godly way with terrain as it did before things like that transports reavers and helion will often have to go around things like Tor ruins rather than straight over for weapons that tend to be effective against them high rates of volume fire a mid to low AP tend to kill lighter infantry really quite efficiently and their light transports tend to not get along very well with things like Auto Cannon equivalents which might often do more damage to them on average than last cannons a bit of indirect fire or some extreme fast movers can be bad news as well to hit things like scourges that often tend to get played in competitive list and tend to rely on remaining safe behind terrain with their jump shoot jump maybe for the more underpowered units in the roster at the moment the helion the Flyers and maybe the Huli and the grotesque stand out a little bit compared with the rest as undertuned in general though I feel like that index has it really quite good with most units being interesting somehow right now and for other random things is the detachments do feel like they're badly balanced Sky Splinter just feels like it's got far more use overall than real space Raiders unless you really wanted to build an army that was big and focused around pain engines and Talos traps and it maybe is a bit weird that certain Lance platform units can be weirdly more effective in Inari versus Drew Cari gaining access to those battle host rolls for the tyranids they're on the slightly underpowered side of things at the moment of win rates around 46% it does seem that they've been struggling to break their way into the top tables or actually win tournaments since the balanc data slate update the current roster of units tends to be fairly inefficient against things that are toughness 10 or higher things like spamming exocrine or malice spor shots tend to be some of the better ways to go though that might only get you so far and they do tend to be perhaps a little bit better against Elite infantry the shadow in the warp can be kind of big for objective things but in some games might just literally wind up being essentially a coin flip versus denying an enemy scoring one objective one turn which while not nothing is always a bit of a feels bad when your army rule basically does almost nothing in one game on the flip side Games Workshop do seem to have built their synapse web into the army fairly well losing synapse creatures could genuinely make them a lot more prone to battles shock several of the tyranid units having a fairly terrible leadership a on the outskirts of their army for the detachments their balance is okay I'd say assimilation swarming Crusher stamped might struggle a bit versus the rest assimilations SW mainly just because they don't have many units that can actually have the keywords for their durability they've got a fair range of profiles with hordes mid infantry and tougher monsters on the go perhaps nothing enormously stands out as they must have against tyranids I say the durability is kind of mid maybe not stand out bad but not really stand out great either for perhaps some more notable underpowered data sheets the Swarm Lord and the psychop AG feel like they could both need points cut I feel like tyed Warriors really could go down a bit as well to try and make them a bit more of a central unit as they feel like they should be and there certain other things that just seem to be costed into Oblivion by GW things like lone Spore mines Spore assists or the Flyers another at least fairly common criticism of tyranid armies is they've got a bit of an over Reliance on biovores and rippers to essentially autocomplete certain secondaries out there it often seems to be a talking point on the cment of my videos that if you took that away tyranids would really Take a Tumble down the rankings I would agree that it feels like a very odd thing for them to be propped up by for the cultist of the forearmed emperor we have the je to the Colts kind of in a similar sort of win rate spot to the tyranids at the moment around 46% they did take some pretty massive Nerfs since the addition start with those crazy respawning unit tricks they tend to be really quite Alpha strikey in their game play their units needing to hit very very hard out of alpha strike and be able to utterly parts of the enemy force and they do run the risk that if their damage bounces somewhat they could be in a very bad position getting hit back hard in return their units on the front line will tend to be at least fairly Fragile with a bunch of one wound infantry often right up and close to the enemy for their core mechanic those called Ambush tokens have some weaknesses against a fast moving foe they could just be deleted by things that deep strike somewhere within 3 in or very fast movers that can zip over and take one off the board plus they can be really quite swing now even for the battle line units a good chance not to get them back even if you roll for them in early game for enemy weapons they don't like generally anything with mass AP one damage one to clear out those hordes is going to be good against them blast can be quite strong as well against big rank top 20 man blocks of neop fites and for more underwhelming data sheets the major the hybrid metamorphs and The Rock grinder I feel like all units that could afford to go down in cost not really seen quite so commonly on competitive tables of Roar between all that they feel like an army that you just needs to play with very very carefully you can stack some pretty massive damage combos between strategems characters and units like the Achilles Ridge Runner AP debuff but all that needs to come together right and then he needs to make sure you apply it at the right place lots of big decisions that could be made some random swings that could unseat your plan and they do seem to have some unusually bad matchups against certain armies Orcs generally tends to do well against them with mad rush melee pressure and a bunch of Chopper attacks AP1 damage one and the lari seem to do well with things like jumping warp spiders able to scrub markers plus a lot of their favored objective skirmishing units are really good against infantry things like swooping Hawks warp spiders or maybe Shadow specters moving on to 40K Space dwarves and the leagues of votan are currently at least fairly strong in game right now a win rate around 50% their core mechanic is to hand out a bunch of judgment tokens pregame to the four scariest things in the enemy Army at least at 2,000 points and then potentially acquire more as enemy units destroy yours due to the Focus nature of those debuffs with a plus one to hit and wound their damage tends to be far stronger against armies that do just have a few really big units that they can just put those on immediately when they're hitting on a four plus and don't get plus one to wounds their damage output just feels far more anemic otherwise in limitations for their army they do really have quite a small unit roster at the moment I'm sure 10th edition will add some extra units for them including that upcoming infiltrating hin Jager units but until that point they do just struggle to fill certain roles with units for example they don't really have a very fast melee unit or an infiltrate unit or a big indirect fire artillery unit or anything like that just lots of things that some factions can do that they can't otherwise for General trends for them I'd argue that they just don't really have all that much solty Beyond raw damage numbers maybe in a similar sort of way to Knights it often means they tend to do okay against the field of other armies but maybe don't top Grand tournaments all that often despite doing okay and compared with some armies certainly when they get knocked down and they're on fortun and out of transport and things they w't really be quite so fast moving across the board and tend to be at least fairly short ranged for enemy weapons generally higher AP things tend to be quite nice against the League's votan maybe with damage to that can be pretty nasty against their halfth guard and given that they can threaten their void armor to debuff AP any things with extremes of AP can be very nice against things like land fortresses I feel like more so than some armies as well they really don't like either mortal wounds or devastating wounds all that much getting around their toughness and their saving throws that can be quite good for units in their roster I'd say that only really youth are the destined really stands out as being a bit weaker than the rest perhaps units like the cathian berserks and Harkin Warriors feel that they're merely okay certainly not unusable but maybe not going to carry the faction for raw power there for the Tower Empire currently they're in the weird limbo state of having their codex released but not actually having the updated points for it so it's not officially gone live yet or anything like that we'll probably have a few weeks to wait for it currently they really don't seem to be doing too badly right now though putting in a solid 52% wins I'd argue that their internal codex balance is a lot better than many of the other armies in the game the vast majority of their units being really quite usable maybe just a few stick out as truly quite bad like the tide wall fortifications and the Flyers i' say are a bit underwhelming compared with the on theboard Firepower for faction weaknesses though the tower kind of famously have some areas where they're strong and some where they're not so great they are almost entirely a dedicated range faction with very few melee offerings like farsight and I guess those creu talk Rampages in the new book being so skewed to range versus melee definitely has its downside dense tables with loads of line of sight blocking terrain are probably going to hurt the town more than they help them and having a lot of units that kind of want to keep the foe at arms length for the most part it does create a bit of a challenge between how much of the army you choose to push up and play aggressive with you need to do at least some otherwise you're not going to score any objectives but they do have quite a lot of stuff that will quite happily sit and shoot the opponent for a few turns provided they've got line of sight to do so also not really helping with the holding the midb sort of thing is they don't really tend to have enormously durable units that can just sit on an objective and laugh off all enemy damage they tend to be more about the Firepower and the mobility versus Raw tankiness with their shooting as well their ballistic skill four plus that they have built in generally means that they need to make the most of their guiding Special Rule if you're not hitting on a 3 plus then a lot of their units are going to be kind of sad for damage output that can mean things can start to get a bit inefficient if say you have some key Observer unit shot down and even for the units being guided themselves it can sometimes be a bit of a mixed blessing given that it makes your split fire a bit worse so you might have stronger damage output against your primary target but if you wanted to use some secondary guns to mop up some lighter infantry or something it's not going to be quite as good the tower do have a fair mix of different defensive profiles everything from Hoy crouts to Mid strength crisis suits to tanks vehicles and two plus armor saves would massively raid any one type of Firepower to be better than the rest I guess if you're trying to Gun Down crisis suit type units then strength six weapons with multi- damage and a bit of AP are all right that could help out of bit against some of their most iconic units next up we've got the violent hordes of the green skins again they're doing kind of okay in 40K right now a solid win rate of 50% many carries by howling masses of orc melee violence often jumping out of Transport Vehicles their core index definitely supports melee far more than it does range kind of appropriate enough for Orcs but it is is a bit surprising that just how many of their Firepower units really are quite inefficient right now I'd say the only truly scary one is badrock with flash gits jumping out of a transport they've got enough scary general purpose Firepower to really make things count maybe that might be something that gets addressed in the Codex when they actually hopefully get some DACA focused attachments otherwise for weaknesses of the Army in general they can struggle against things that are high saves or high toughness or both say things like GLE and Ross tanks or Knights on toughness 12 might be hard for Orcs to take down lots of their damage comes from volume attacks some of them are kind of mid strength like power claw Lots with slightly lighter stuff like Choppers and things and they might need to do do a whole load of Chip damage with things like Beast snaggers with anti vehicle many of which might actually be able to wound the tanks all right but still also have low AP at like AP1 and things can just mean that any big armored Target the Orcs don't actually have that many options with how to deal with them maybe another weakness of their core rule is the W needing to be called at the start of the the battle round which why it's kind of fine if the Orcs are going first it does mean that if you have to trigger it on your opponent's turn then they're going to know it's coming and can move to position their units knowing that you get to advance and charge and they're going to be receiving an excess amount of green skin violence generally for enemy weapons they want to look out for anything that's got high strength volume fire not necessarily with great AP tends to be good against Orcs lethal hits is quite nice as well and autoc Cannon equivalents do quite well against quite a few of their targets otherwise within the army they still feel like they've got some big winners and losers as I mentioned most of the daer units particularly the Bogies and planes maybe tank Busters and looters and some of the Walkers like the stomper death dread and The Gawker and moonut hopefully the Codex does a little bit to write a bit of balance and have you some interesting ways to play shooty Orcs finally we've got the undead living metal of the necrons seeming to be the other Army right at the top end of Warhammer 40K right now tournament win rates of 56% and certainly a very challenging phote to overcome for many armies out they're mely really not so crazy far ahead of the pack that they're not beatable by the other factions they're Far Cry from 70 old wi% lar at the start of the Edition perhaps for the main weaknesses of the nekron data sheets overall are that a lot of units don't tend to be particularly Speedy unless they're getting some sort of supports to walk Round the table such as in hyper crys and their core mechanic in the reanimation protocols is definitely helpful though it does feel far less relevant than it was towards the start of the addition when you could get some pretty crazy stacking Buffs on units like Lich guard re ating for small necron units out there you can kind of counter it a bit by focusing down individual squads one by one as opposed to leaving several things damaged for weapon Choice necrons do tend to have quite a big range of profiles for the most part bar monolith quite a lot of things either tend to have sort of mid saves or good and vulnerable saves so AP maybe isn't quite as important against them as some other forces but in general do have things at a big range of toughness all the way up from tanky Katan down to little scarabs Katan are often something that the enem is going to destroy shoulds take out just for the ridiculous durability that they have in general things with a random number of damage or an odd number of damage might do a bit better than even numbers due to them causing all their enemy damage in half you don't really want to be shooting damage to things against them if you can help it and weirdly enough smaller chip damage with damage one can still chip in quite a lot the actual saving throw is kind of mediocre and you can't har a one damage result even if realistically due to the high toughness and the feel no pain it's still only going to do so much realistically I think a lot of the time you're going to be better off trying to ignore as many Katana as possible and focus on the rest of the list and winning the mission despite the necron's having some obscenely powerful stuff I don't think they're an army that's got particularly good internal balance there's lots of things that are definitely on the weak end of the power Spectrum there like Warriors triarch petorian TR and the infinite and the obelis to name just a few and I feel like really quite a lot of their strength is coming from just throwing say a nightbringer and avoid Dragon into an otherwise all right list if Games Workshop significant nerfed the Katan as I feel like is almost certainly coming for them then the faction is probably going to look a lot more in line with the other armies for internal balance as well the detachments certainly aren't really much On a par the canop court and the hyper cryp Legion dominate competitive play the awaken Legion is kind of okay but certainly far lesser played than those ones in any case necrons still are difficult to handle being one of the strongest factions in the game with the right lists so anyway there we have it with the xenos talked about that's just about every faction in warham oford 4K focused on and a few of their weaknesses with army capabilities underpowered units and things that might considerably kill them quite well let me know thoughts about any of the armies talked about down in the comments below there'll certainly be things that I haven't touched on here skimmed over or missed look forward to hearing any of the weaknesses of your own faction or enemy factions that you've played against down in the comments feel free to subscribe to oret tactics and if you would like to check out those Star Force people I'll leave their links down in the video description a thank you to them for sponsoring the video I'll certainly be back for some more Warhammer 40K content over the next day finally if you have been enjoying the videos on oret tactics then I'd just like to mention that oret tactics does have a patreon page as well and you can find that Linked In the video description if you'd like to help support and keep these coming Channel patrons do get a fair few advantages seeing certain videos early regular votes to see what sort of things happen next on the channel and automatic entry into the regular prize giveaways with a chance to win some big model kits each month if any of that sounds good to you or you'd just like to help support the link is down in the video description in any case a massive thank you for listening and I'll hope to see you guys next time

Channel: Auspex Tactics

Views: 91,750

Keywords: warhammer 40k, 10th edition, weaknesses, drawbacks, negatives, warhammer, 40k, 10th, space marines, adeptus astartes, tactics, codex, tenth, strategy, tournament, competitive, review, gaming, games workshop, warhammer 40000, tactica, Auspex, ultramarines

Id: fEFRvclOSCA

Length: 52min 8sec (3128 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 23 2024