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Personally, I tune all of my lists down, partially for the challenge of running a weaker list and partially because warhammer (both flavors but especially 40k) is frankly boring to me when both armies are using only Obviously Better units / items. The Internet can immediately tell you What You Should Run - look at almost any WoC advice thread here or elsewhere if you need proof - and I don't want to run that or, if I had a choice, face that. My main army is skaven, and there aren't too many armies that, when run "competitively" (i.e. toyhammer), are more abusive or more boring. So I choose to nearly cripple my builds, in pursuit of providing some fething variety

I guess I'm the opposite of Ralin: I want my fantasy games to be interesting and engaging by way of theme, variety and being surprised when the dice do whacky stuff;* if I wanted a no holds barred challenge, I'd frankly go play a different game. (Yes, I am building up Hordes stuff as I type this )

On the topic of empire gunlines, I tend to complain about them for two reasons. One, they usually involve a single deathstar-ish infantry unit (greatswords often) for my infantry to go fight, with perhaps some flagellants if they're feeling frisky. This makes for a pretty frustrating match, because isn't 8th edition especially about infantry crashing into infantry ftw? Everything would suggest so, but this kind of mono-unit gunline doesn't let us play that game. Two, mortars are severely undercosted. A single mortar can absolutely cripple my combat units for extremely little points investment ... and you can have three of them. Note: if I ever faced triple mortars (with even more shooting backup) in casual play, I'd seriously consider just not playing. Yes, they blow up and scatter badly and all that, but maxing out on them smells a little too much of abuse. Feel free to disagree with me.

- Salvage

*I've been doing a lot of thinking about just what fantasy is good for, like what its big draw is over other games on the market. Aesthetics and scale are certainly strong points, but I actually think the primary selling point of fantasy is sheer random luck in action. You have to completely embrace your 300+ point level 4 exploding first turn, or losing 20+ models to a perfect doomrocket shot, or etc to fully "get" the game. I think GeeDub might know this is the core experience of fantasy, yet I'm not sure it's marketed as such, beyond a general expectancy for heightened mayhem.

Boss Salvage wrote:*I've been doing a lot of thinking about just what fantasy is good for, like what its big draw is over other games on the market. Aesthetics and scale are certainly strong points, but I actually think the primary selling point of fantasy is sheer random luck in action. You have to completely embrace your 300+ point level 4 exploding first turn, or losing 20+ models to a perfect doomrocket shot, or etc to fully "get" the game. I think GeeDub might know this is the core experience of fantasy, yet I'm not sure it's marketed as such, beyond a general expectancy for heightened mayhem.

Which is precisely why i think my most fond memories are from matches against my friends' armies where something completely crazy and game-changing happens leaving us both speechless.

Being TFG is not about the army list.

Thanks for the feed back.

I'm probably going to go with the idea for a gun-line army, and build up the army enough so that I can have multiple lists of varying levels of competitiveness.

It's not so much to crate a "carebear" environment, but to create a interesting game. For me the fun of the game is in out playing the opponent, not out list building them.

Boss Salvage wrote:
Note: if I ever faced triple mortars (with even more shooting backup) in casual play, I'd seriously consider just not playing. Yes, they blow up and scatter badly and all that, but maxing out on them smells a little too much of abuse. Feel free to disagree with me.

I understand the sentiment. I feel the same way when I play 40k, and someone lines up their tanks sideways so that they can rotate for free and get that extra 2" of movement. There's a point where the game switches from a fun challenge to a challenge to have any fun.

" There's a point where the game switches from a fun challenge to a challenge to have any fun."

Man, you really hit it on the head there. I have been lucky - most of my 40K games have been fun - but you know right away when you are one of these!

I am working on an Empire army now - and this thread has been a good read. I have aa idea what a beardy Empire build is - (and also that it is not unbeatable even if you bring it) I had heard that WHFB was a more balanced system...

WHFB is less balanced now. Right now, it's all about the Death Star and/or a way of dealing with a Death Star.

skyth wrote:WHFB is less balanced now. Right now, it's all about the Death Star and/or a way of dealing with a Death Star.

?!

Less balanced than 7th? Or less balanced than 40K currently is? Either way, that's just... not true.

It's as balanced as rock-paper-scissors is...

skyth wrote:It's as balanced as rock-paper-scissors is...

With certain armies, if they're built for certain extreme types, that's somewhat true.

And it still leaves it more balanced than 7th ed, which was rock, paper, scissors, with the inclusion of a wet newspaper (which loses to anything, ie Ogre Kingdoms & Dwarves) and Dynamite (which beats anything ie Vampire Counts & Daemons)

The worst dick I ever played fielded a pure gunline of doom with dual steam tanks.

However i was not the build, but the fact that he kept trying to reroll more dice than he was allowed with his engineers (2 for 5 warmachines) and watching and measuring every 1/20th of inch my infantry units moved.

If it hadn't be a league game, I'd have wrapped my stuff on turn 2.

I also played a pure hardass gunline empire who was one of the best and more sporting players around. I also got royally creamed, but at least it was fun.

Boss Salvage wrote:
- Salvage

*I've been doing a lot of thinking about just what fantasy is good for, like what its big draw is over other games on the market. Aesthetics and scale are certainly strong points, but I actually think the primary selling point of fantasy is sheer random luck in action. You have to completely embrace your 300+ point level 4 exploding first turn, or losing 20+ models to a perfect doomrocket shot, or etc to fully "get" the game. I think GeeDub might know this is the core experience of fantasy, yet I'm not sure it's marketed as such, beyond a general expectancy for heightened mayhem.

This x1000.

I exalted this post, btw.

I agree with you while playing normal games Salvage. I think the bi-weekly tournies and Ard Boyz tournaments I enter are the only games I play to win at all costs short of cheating. Your sentiment is exactly why I love storm of magic. The last game I ran featured 15 converted Chaos Unicorns charging across the field at my opponents Sabretusks. A Daemon Prince of Tzeentch (something I never use) flew off a tower to battle a pair of Giants while my Ogre Kingdoms partner took 2 of the mega giants and 4 of his own giants and crashed them into a Vampire Count tri of Zombie Dragons.

Epic fething Battle.

You wouldnt see any of those units in a serious tournament or somewhere people were crying about balance. It was fun fun times.

Nothing wrong with gunline only just realize that gunline empire is like Tau, shooty but if one ogre bruiser gets across the board allive, you lose and you only ever get about 2 turns of shooting before their horde units or cavalry are mixing it up with you.

I broke a friend from gunline when I took a "Flyrant" which is an Ogre Tyrant on a magic carpet. Any army that has fliers, fast cav or scouting skirmishers will ruin your day.

What matters is how fun you army is to play, also, on the topic of randomness:
I was playing my friend and his skaven, with all knights (and a treb), he wipes out a good chunk of one of my knight units in turn 1, and my lvl 4 prophetess, with his warp lightning cannon, then my Trebruchet, named "ol' temperamental" thanks to his tendency to either misfire or scatter, gets a direct hit on his wizard and wipes it out as well, we spent the rest of the game without magic, . I probably could have taken a better list, but I took this list because it was fun to play with.

Thatguyoverthere wrote:...I really want play a Empire Gun Line, but given the large number of comments I've read about how overwhelming cannons and mortars are in 8th edition, I'm kind of wary.

Ideally I'd like to be able to play a gunpowder themed army with lots of cannons, mortars and hand gunners. But I'm I'm concerned that people might see that I've got six cannons and four mortars in a 2000pt list and think that I'm some sort of WAAC monster.

I like the idea of an army that fields exclusively gunpowder units, and looks down their noses at all the uncivilized foes still hitting things with sharpened sticks.

Is there any way that I could still create the sort of gunline I want and avoid being TFG? Are there Core or Rare choices that are sufficiently awful that they could balance the list? Ideally I want to field an army that has a good chance of losing, so that the game is still a challenge. Would the opponent look at me weird if I intentionally screwed myself over in the deployment phase?

It seems like you are saying two different things:

First, you are saying that you want to play a gunpowder themed army. Then, in the same sentence, you are saying that you want to play an army with lots of cannons, mortars, and hand gunners. Which is it?

The Empire has hand gunners, but also has Outriders and Pistoliers. The Empire has Cannon and Mortar, but also has Helblasters Volley Guns and Helstorm Rocket Batteries. It also has Engineers with specialty blackpowder weapons and Steam Tanks.

If what you want is just lots of Cannons and Mortars and Handgunners, you don't want a 'blackpowder themed army'. You want a Shooty Empire Army from Heck, and you are flirting with being TFG. You're taking the most effective shooting units (not necessarily the best, but probably the best per point) and taking a ton of them. It doesn't make you TFG, nor does it mean that you are WAAC, but it is a symptom of both.

On the other hand, if you were playing an Empire army from Nuln, and you took a cannon or two, a mortar or two, a Helblaster, a Helstorm, a Steam Tank, some Engineers (maybe one with each kind of blackpowder weapon), some Outriders, some Pistoliers, and some Handgunner units, then you'd have a blackpowder theme and not be nearly as much of TFG. If you went the extra step and made up some Free Company detachments for the Handgunners that looked like additional artillery crew (sooty, armed with cannon balls and the like), and called them the "Sons of the Guns" (as the orphans in the Nuln Gunnery School are known), then you go even further away from being TFG. Make sure your captain has a handgun or something. Maybe even take a Gold Wizard, since their alchemical studies are used to assist the engineers in their research.


Rather than filling up your army with multiples of the same few choices, then deliberately tanking your other choices and hosing yourself on deployment, why not branch out and take a more varied, but still "gunpowder" themed army? I appreciate that you are not TFG (if you were, you wouldn't be looking for poor choices of troops and trying bad deployments). However, just by broadening out your theme a little, I think you could still have a 'shooty' Empire army, without looking like TFG.

Da Butcha wrote:

Thatguyoverthere wrote:...I really want play a Empire Gun Line, but given the large number of comments I've read about how overwhelming cannons and mortars are in 8th edition, I'm kind of wary.

Ideally I'd like to be able to play a gunpowder themed army with lots of cannons, mortars and hand gunners. But I'm I'm concerned that people might see that I've got six cannons and four mortars in a 2000pt list and think that I'm some sort of WAAC monster.

I like the idea of an army that fields exclusively gunpowder units, and looks down their noses at all the uncivilized foes still hitting things with sharpened sticks.

Is there any way that I could still create the sort of gunline I want and avoid being TFG? Are there Core or Rare choices that are sufficiently awful that they could balance the list? Ideally I want to field an army that has a good chance of losing, so that the game is still a challenge. Would the opponent look at me weird if I intentionally screwed myself over in the deployment phase?

It seems like you are saying two different things:

First, you are saying that you want to play a gunpowder themed army. Then, in the same sentence, you are saying that you want to play an army with lots of cannons, mortars, and hand gunners. Which is it?

The Empire has hand gunners, but also has Outriders and Pistoliers. The Empire has Cannon and Mortar, but also has Helblasters Volley Guns and Helstorm Rocket Batteries. It also has Engineers with specialty blackpowder weapons and Steam Tanks.

If what you want is just lots of Cannons and Mortars and Handgunners, you don't want a 'blackpowder themed army'. You want a Shooty Empire Army from Heck, and you are flirting with being TFG. You're taking the most effective shooting units (not necessarily the best, but probably the best per point) and taking a ton of them. It doesn't make you TFG, nor does it mean that you are WAAC, but it is a symptom of both.

On the other hand, if you were playing an Empire army from Nuln, and you took a cannon or two, a mortar or two, a Helblaster, a Helstorm, a Steam Tank, some Engineers (maybe one with each kind of blackpowder weapon), some Outriders, some Pistoliers, and some Handgunner units, then you'd have a blackpowder theme and not be nearly as much of TFG. If you went the extra step and made up some Free Company detachments for the Handgunners that looked like additional artillery crew (sooty, armed with cannon balls and the like), and called them the "Sons of the Guns" (as the orphans in the Nuln Gunnery School are known), then you go even further away from being TFG. Make sure your captain has a handgun or something. Maybe even take a Gold Wizard, since their alchemical studies are used to assist the engineers in their research.


Rather than filling up your army with multiples of the same few choices, then deliberately tanking your other choices and hosing yourself on deployment, why not branch out and take a more varied, but still "gunpowder" themed army? I appreciate that you are not TFG (if you were, you wouldn't be looking for poor choices of troops and trying bad deployments). However, just by broadening out your theme a little, I think you could still have a 'shooty' Empire army, without looking like TFG.

Or he can just buy and play what he wants.

If he wants to run a uber shooty gunline amry then there is nothing in the rules to stop him so aslong as he is pleasent to play the OP is dong nothing wrong.

You are forcing what you feel the game should be onto another player if you want to run a ton of sub par units because you like the models fine dont bitch when someone puts down a well tohught out and competive army and your trash gets rolled. All I expect from my oponents is they be pleasent to play the armies they bring can be as unpleasent as they like.