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Some people try and abuse unbound by playing something stupid like 10 Riptides and 1 Etheral.

Other people make cool fluff bound lists like A horde of Crisis suits only, With a regular Crisis suit commander leading them against the Orks!

Other people want to try cool lists that just somehow break the limits, like one extra troop choice for a REAL horde of Orks!

Two out of three of these are acceptable, and I'll give you a hint, its not the first one.

 luky7dayz wrote:
Some people try and abuse unbound by playing something stupid like 10 Riptides and 1 Etheral.

Other people make cool fluff bound lists like A horde of Crisis suits only, With a regular Crisis suit commander leading them against the Orks!

Other people want to try cool lists that just somehow break the limits, like one extra troop choice for a REAL horde of Orks!

Two out of three of these are acceptable, and I'll give you a hint, its not the first one.

Why is the first one not acceptable?
You could totally have a fun game putting your 10 Riptides vs. a player of a similar mindset who brings 1 farseer and 10 wraithknights.

It's impossible to draw an arbitrary line regarding what's acceptable and what's not, because different people will have vastly different opinions.

True.

But generally it's about perceived intent - which is a very nebulous measure, admittedly.

I'd have no problem playing any unbound list. As noted above, a 1500 point knight detachment of four knights is 'bad enough', and the free bonuses for some formations is ridiculous (I think it hit its zenith recently with one of the blood angels formations -the Archangels Sanguine Wing - a 950 point formation given 400 points worth of free wargear)

For that matter, I'm tempted to try some unbound armies myself - I keep looking at superheavies other than knights, and wondering about doing something like a Renegades & Heretics traitor baneblade company, or some chaos marine legion superheavy tank formations....

Yes, I think so anyway but I try to be cool with whatever my opponent/other players want to do. It basically comes down to communication like so many problems regarding shared activities. Example if someone wants to play unbound and do some Genestealer Cult/ Gue'vesa it's fine and doesn't really require any extra communication, anybody wants to get really crazy though should be able to find some one of equal crazy. As to cheese factor bound seems like it has a lot of if not most of the nightmare scenarios that people are thinking up so it's kinda moot.

 oni wrote:

Peregrine wrote:

 oni wrote:
It's all about your intentions in using an Unbound list.

If your intentions are to create a fun and/or themed army to create an enjoyable, narrative game for both you and your opponent - you're safe.

If your intentions are to abuse the Unbound rule purely to win - you're not going to have any friends and someone will likely throw a shoe at your head.

I don't understand this at all. Why is making an unbound army because you want your army to be more powerful such a bad thing? Why is there a ridiculous double standard where you're free to make any abusive list you like as long as it's battle-forged (not exactly a difficult burden in 7th), but unbound is off-limits? I have yet to see any good answer to this that isn't essentially "I want to keep playing 5th edition".

The key words are 'abuse' and 'intentions'. Simply using the Unbound rule(s) to sure up an army with additional Elites and/or Heavy Support to mitigate a weakness isn't a problem - at least I don't see it as one. It's when Unbound is maliciously misused in the sole desire to win even if that means a complete disregard and lack of respect for their opponent. I (and most others) play 40K to have fun, to have an enjoyable social interaction playing a game with a mature, like-minded individual... I (and most others) have no desire to be the punching bag for some codependent, emotionally stunted, man child who compensates for his inferiority by thinking they can in some manner prove their worth or somehow establish dominance by winning a game. If this is your intention behind using the Unbound rule(s), whether your conscious of it or not, you're better off saving your money and just going around punching babies.

Nice load of rubbish man. I can make similar sweeping generalisations about you and post about your socialy inept crybabies club that plays games for enjoyable social interactions, did they close all the pubs and kidnap all the girls where you live, or demolished the benches in the park? Not nice really, is it? And 'Malicious' intent, seriously?

Truth is, 10 riptide or 7 flyrants is a perfectly fine list. It's just like armoured division or a fighter squadron in WW2 and make sense from a fluffy and military perspective. It poses problems in a game due to possible bad matchup but hey be mature and enjoy the spectacle of being blown to bits by an efficient, deadly force. Maybe it's you who is actualy a WAAC if you cant stand being a punching bag for a few hours while pushing toys on the table in a game known to be unbalanced to 11?

Back to your deep and detailed psychological analysis of a player with a strong spamy list and a desire to win, I think (and only think because I play mediocore lists at best in 40k) that there can be more to it than proving one's worth or establishing dominance. Efficient force is simply a joy to watch and play, the guy might be not aware that instead of having fun he should find the deepest levels of his empathy, carefuly observe the opponent body language and watch out for having too much advantage. It might even not be about winning, in PC game Wargame European Escalation I used to love taking only Challengers, Leopards and Abramses with minimum required mobile AA and just roll down the map while stabilisers did the rest. It surely wasnt about the win itself as I could do that with low tier infantry and early tank as well, it was about pure destruction fun. Not to mention I'd love to play against all those malicious abusal unbound list, nightmare mode ftw.

Unbound itself is not a problem imo, knights codex is already a spam codex that has formations too heh. Also as lot of people said, battle forged can be just as bad + ob sec, I'd love to see what would happen if unbound became widely accepted and official for tourneys.

Honestly, I don't see what the problem with unbound is. Unless you are playing a game of annihilation or something where objective secured isn't used, a CAD army has an advantage. I don't find multiple cads to always be a hq and troop tax either. I generally like to bring 3 to 4 troop choices and 2 hqs in my lists anyway. Unbound lists are for when I want to play a tank army and i don't care about winning because without objective secured I will probably lose. That is just how it goes. I might wipe the opponent off the board with my vindicator spam, but they will win because of more victory points. And I am fine with that, and usually my opponents are fine with that. Usually the only one who complains is the guy who likes to bring cheese lists but thinks you shouldn't field a LoW or bring your own cheese to counter his cheese.

Why not. Field whatever you like.
If your opponent likes to battle you, will be another problem.

I'd always recommend building an army that can be easily adapted to a battle forged one in case your opponent is opposed to the idea of unbound.

Nobody is going to get mad at an opponent who plays sisters it's like a unicorn

There is no real point in playing unbound unless its for fluff purposes, and even then the fluff would usually still leave you with some kind of bound list. From playing in several recent tournaments, it seems like unbound is something mostly less experienced players tend to take, and the benefits of bound, while few, are actually incredibly powerful against unbound. The only army that is actually capable of being a real threat in unbound are Imperial Guard, and that is because you can potentially run the most scummy Alpha Strike list of all time, consisting of 30+ Leman Russ tanks with Hunter Killer Missiles, supported by artillery or AA, but even then, they sort of fail if they face anything AV14 or too many infantry, or anything that can consistently pop AV14, or anything fast enough to reach their lines.

My group and myself do not play unbound, I've grown up with warhammer having organisation charts, and that's how I like it.

That said, I'm sure people play and have fun with unbound with no problems. It's all about who you play with.

The fact is that whilst unbound really gives no limits on potential douchebaggery, FOC games are not too far behind.

Tyrannids for example can squeeze in 2 flyrants and 2 troop choices for every 500 points in an army. Is this any worse than an unbound list?

A couple points;
what do people call a Crimson Fists detachment when played unbound, meaning Pedro Kantor with X units of Drop Podding Sternguard? Fluffy, casual, or game breaking?

At my former job, my manager would bring forces that he enjoyed using, FOC be damned. I still curb-stomped him 2 out of 3 games using battleforged lists, so going unbound isn't OMGITSBROKEN automatically.

Felldrake wrote:
There is no real point in playing unbound unless its for fluff purposes, and even then the fluff would usually still leave you with some kind of bound list. From playing in several recent tournaments, it seems like unbound is something mostly less experienced players tend to take, and the benefits of bound, while few, are actually incredibly powerful against unbound. The only army that is actually capable of being a real threat in unbound are Imperial Guard, and that is because you can potentially run the most scummy Alpha Strike list of all time, consisting of 30+ Leman Russ tanks with Hunter Killer Missiles, supported by artillery or AA, but even then, they sort of fail if they face anything AV14 or too many infantry, or anything that can consistently pop AV14, or anything fast enough to reach their lines.

That list is also in excess of 4800 points minimum.

Is unbound an acceptable way to build?
depends on the local gaming atmosphere. does your FLGS store like it? do they not like it? clearly there is debate here on this website, and while generally a good read, it's useless in the grand scheme of things when the people you should be asking this too are your fellow local gamers in your area.

this website is an international community, chances are there will be views that are not necessarily those of your gaming group expressed here. while it's good to have opposing viewpoints present, they will not always be indicative of the attitude in your area.

Simple answer....Yes

Complicated answer...Yes, but only if you reveal what kind of broken list your bringing to your opponent and allow him to tweak his list to make it an actual game instead of a slaughter.

If I play a Chaos player and I bring a normal list and he goes "is it ok if i bring an unbound list?" and I say "sure" he better not bring 10 Hell Chickens to the table and expect me to go....ohhh ok. Thats not fun, in fact it reminds me of those @holes in Call of Duty who play Blitz to Spawn trap people. Is it really fun to pay $50 for a video game $350 for a console to sit in a single spot and hold a button down for 5-10 minutes?

same concept applies to unbound lists. So long as its in good fun and everyone is ok with it DO IT!.

Next week I fully intend to bring a broken list of fast attack against my buddy who will be playing orks as well. 3 Bliza bombas and a small horde of bikes/trukks :-p