In the past several book releases, we’ve seen something of a trend. More and more, we are seeing an increasing viability of many of the tougher targets that were on the out last edition. The most recent example of this would be the large price breaks (and effectiveness increases) of Leman Russ tanks of various sorts in the IG book, but this is hardly the only instance- Knights, despite their real-world price tag, are sure to make an appearance at some tournaments, and other factions have seen some tough contenders as well.

Against these hard targets, the usual fare of S6-7 torrent weapons simply does not suffice- they can sometimes deal some minimal damage, but more often than not they will simply plink off without effect, and many of the units are sufficiently hard-hitting that slowly wearing them down over 3-5 turns just isn’t an issue. Hence I think the meta is going to drift in the direction of seeing more and more inclusions of the harder-hitting weapons of days past, melta included.



Now, obviously this isn’t going to be just or even mainly Melta weapons, because for one many armies have limited or no access to them and for two Melta is not always the ideal way to destroy such targets, but it serves as a good sort of archetype for these weapons. Melta, Lances, Lascannons, Haywire, and the variety of other guns with high strength, low AP, and/or special rules allowing them to hurt hard targets are poised to make something of a comeback.

Why? Well, let’s look at what units are popular from the last several codices. Imperial Guard? We can’t say for sure yet, but Russ variants are almost certainly going to be a mainstay. They’re immune to S6 and virtually immune to S7 and they can spit out pretty dangerous firepower against a wide variety of targets depending on their loadout. Imperial Knights are an obvious second example, and are in many ways even tougher- a permanent 4++ and the superheavy immunities make scoring just a handful of damage results unlikely to be a viable proposition- and combined with their speed they are things that need to be eliminated with haste. Eldar brought us the Wraithknight, a singularly tough beastie that also comes coupled with the ability to advance very rapidly. Tau have the ubiquitous Riptide, which can shrug off whole swathes of S6 firepower, as well as the Skyray and Hammerhead, both able to compete with some of the toughest tanks in the game and all able to put a major hole in any general’s plans. Even SM/CSM had the Predator and various bike units.

In short, as the edition has progressed we have no lack of tough targets that Autocannons and their equivalents simply are not well-equipped to handle. While some of this has gotten lost in the shuffle of new releases, I think with Knights and IG making their debuts it is going to come to a head- in the last couple of months in writing lists I have had to sit down and say to myself “How am I going to kill an army that brings 3-5 Knights or 4-6 Russes?” and, for many of my older lists, the answer was “poorly.” That’s not a good sign for an army, especially when it comes to whatever hot new release is just off the presses, so I’ve had to go back and make some significant changes to accommodate such targets.

This can come in any number of ways, and it generally won’t mean complete retoolings of a list; in my Tau armies, for example, it means I am more likely to use Fusion on my Crisis and Riptides as well as a Tank Hunting Heavy Burst Cannon on the latter. I don’t have to take the entire list apart and start from scratch, because the good units are still good, but it does mean I need to bring a new focus to some elements and take such heavy anti-armor weapons where I can get them- which sometimes means that other parts of the army have to be reconfigured to cover the new gaps. Similarly, my Eldar have been making use of Wraithcannons to fill this gap, necessitating a change in HQs and other shuffling of parts.

Don’t get me wrong- we’re not going to see the disappearance of Wave Serpents with Scatter Lasers or Missileside squads. These guns are still excellent against most of the field and often come on platforms with many other advantages, but an army of six Serpents with DAVU units in them is going to fare pretty badly against a bunch of Knights or Russes, and that means making sure there are other solutions available. To what degree this actually happens will depend on how popular the armies fielding these new units become in the wake of the variety of different tournament standards, book allowances, FAQs/errata, etc, but I think it’s mostly inevitably that we will see some changes in response to them. A top-tier tournament army simply can’t afford to concede an entire match because it failed to bring any good way to deal with a particular opponent- whatever people may say about “unbalanced” lists these days, that is rarely a good way to get to the high tables.