Welcome to Team Stomping Grounds’ Power Rankings, Episode 2.After looking at results from BAO among other national events, and upon our own increased testing (and the addition of two new codices), we have some army build movement leading up to NOVA. As you can see, we didn’t add any descriptions for the armies that didn’t change and only have descriptions for the armies that moved or ones that have had significant changes.
Enjoy! Read Episode 1 here.
Tier 1
AM BlobCenturion Star (Note: This is assuming your tournament allows you to bring Draigo for automatic Gate.)
Imperial Knight Formation: Given the new formation that allows re-rolling Invuln saves and with only three Knights, it can still bring a large army behind it. Primarily found with Guard as an ally. A lot of armies can’t defeat Imperial Knights.Tier 2
Summoning Daemons: With Grey Knights having so many Force weapons and Force bullets (silencers). Also adding Psych-out grenades to beat up on Psychic units.MSU Marines
MSU Tau
Farsight Bomb
Serpent Spam
Beast Pack
Necron Airforce
SM Bike: With the results from BAO, there is no way to ignore the evidence. Also from playing some games with the list, we judge it is 
certainly still strong against a number of matchups (the Imperial Knight at BAO certainly helps). Still not strong enough to carry to tier 1.MSU Grey Knights: With the Dreadknights getting better and the basic Marines getting slightly better, the list has the chance to move itself up, and we feel out of the gate that it will be overlooked and will have some room to grow to tier 2 (Dreadknights will be a pivotal part of the list).Thunderwolves: With Wolves getting cheaper and with the supplement that gives them WS 5 joined by Iron Priests able to jump on mounts, it certainly helps for more Thunderhammers and 2+ armor saves.Buddy Pods: The revision giving Space Wolves Fast Attack Drop Pods gives you a big chance to bring in some Battle Brothers. Expect to see Centurions coming out of Pods.Tier 3
Skyblight: Similar to the Daemons demotion; the presence of force and other GK upgrades knocks this build down a tier. They rely on FMCs that are now at a greater risk.AM Mech
Land Raider Marines
Gunline Tau
Seer Council
Iyanden
MSU/Mech Dark Eldar
Green Tide Orks
Bike Orks
Mech Orks
FMC Daemons
Cav Daemons
CSM Zombies
Necron Wraiths
Horde ‘Nids’
Draigo Star (Note: with Paladins or with Terminators instead)
Space Wolf Airforce: Objective-secured Stormwolves with cheap Blood Claws as their cargo can be hard for some armies to deal with.Removed
DCA Bomb: Being dropped from the Grey Knights book has forced us to drop this from the top three tiers. Not getting the same AP weapons makes these guys mediocre at best.Nidzilla: Increase in Force bullets will cause this list to be way too unreliable.
CSM Rush: Spawn are in a similar boat as Nidzilla with problems against force and having no armor saves.
