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Fantesy is all about positioning and movement, which is the players skill and not the army.

No army is unbeatable.


There is some rock paper scissors but its not this army book beats that army book. Its more like this unit can beat that unit in my opponents army but I will need to keep it away from this other unit.

Example from a game I had the other day.

Opponent had a Shaggoth, 2 units of 18 Warriors with characters, 5 knights, 8 trolls, and 50 marauders with GWs. I had 2 units of 9 ogre Bulls with some characters, 4 mournfangs, 2 sabretusks, 2 ironblasters, and 6 ironguts(with flaming banner)

none of my units could tangle with the marauder horde one on one. If I got multiple units hitting it and possably flanking it I could beat it defintly.

I knew it would be tough to do that so i sent my sabretusks to keep it out of combat from my army while I focused on the warriors.

I could safely tackle the warriors with a single ogre unit if I charged. I got one unit of warriors with a unit of ogres to the front and mournfangs into the flank. I easily killed that unit. The mournfangs got flanked by the other unit and were destroyed but the game ended before they could continue on to my now depleted bull unit.

The shoggoth was reduced to a single wound by my Iblasters and so he was easy pickings once he got into combat.

The knights were killed by a down the table flank shot from the Iblaster too.

The trolls managed to kill both ironblasters but my Ironguts gave them a thrashing with their flaming GW attacks.


its rock paper scissors, but my paper may not have a clear shot into your rock and I may have to risk showing a flank to your scissors.

1 scissors kills 1 paper, but 2 paper become a rock and the scissors die.

Tiarna Fuilteach wrote:

That's what I like to see, comped play so that there isn't no fun games, although I'm assuming the no 2 rares isn't universal, like what harm in letting WE take double eagles for example, or beastmen double cygor its only really applicable to armies like daemons, vamps and lizzies etc

never played WE Eagles, but if they play anything like HE ones(and I assume they do?), they are amazing march blockers, or charge interceptors. if your going to prevent Lizzies from taking Sallies(a cheap answer to blocks), then stick with it throughout all the books, of course I don't support this in the least. if they want to play it, and its legal in their books, they can have at it.

as for hard matches up:

Slann/magic heavy Lizards vs Dwarfs, lizards really get the short end of the stick here, its really is an uphill fight. being able to shut down the magic phase, out gun, and in most cases out grind the lizardmen, its a harsh pairing. not impossible, just not the best of match ups.
Warrior heavy WOC vs Fanatics/Mangler Squigs OG, the squigs and fanatics really put a hurting on the warriors, and anything else they touch. add in some decent shooting,or the sheer numbers the OG book let the player bring, the WOC needs to be on their toes.

haven't had a chance yet to face off against the New Ogres and Skaven yet, but all the stomp attacks(OK) and huge blocks/monsters(Sk) the two lists can bring do make me cringe.

Tiarna Fuilteach wrote:although I'm assuming the no 2 rares isn't universal, like what harm in letting WE take double eagles for example, or beastmen double cygor its only really applicable to armies like daemons, vamps and lizzies etc

I don't believe it's a blanket rule but I agree with you, many rare choices aren't so bad. I believe the main idea is to stamp out the duel HPA or duel Hydra, that kinda thing. Problem is if you have a rule for one person and not another, is that fair?

Is it fair that some armies are far superior to others? I think separate comp for each army is the only fair way for instant take etc rules for example

Honestly I HATE blanket comp and find that pinpoint comp keeps the game more enjoyable. Why should I get the same dock for taking two giants and the guy taking two steamtanks?

I understand the intent of blanket comp, but I gotta agree with Johnny here. It is basically swatting a fly with a Howitzer.

Slaan wrote:Personally, if winning is that important to you that you're not having fun

This is not true whatsoever. Everyone has their own definition of fun. About 1/3 of the people I know think just running things into combat and rolling tons of dice is fun, no matter how badly you lose (or win, obviously). I'm in the1/3 that think trying to outplay your opponent and win (It is a strategy battle game after all) is what make the game fun. Then the last 1/3 is made of the painters and modelers that either don't play, or play for aesthetics or fluff reasons.

Don't say I'm not having fun just because I want to win.

Vermillion wrote:It's only sad for the people that want stuff which will win 100% of the time

Not at all. I don't care about winning 100% of the time. Would i prefer to win 100% of the time, why yes I would. That isn't the point, nor do I just want to play against new players all day just to get free wins. I enjoy "out-generaling" and out-playing my opponent.

Therein lies the issue. I hate hard counters. Not because I need to win 100% of the time, but because I don't want to play a game where resistance is futile or at least the odds are so against me that it requires everything to go perfectly ( all the random elements: charges, magic, etc) to win. Going back to my TK example (Khalida army with the previous book): I didn't win every game, but I did like the need for target priority (both my targets to cast spells on and enemy targets to shoot) and the maneuvering and positioning required when combat hit made every game fun. However, playing against WoC was not fun in the least, because I would literally not be able to make a dent in the enemy lines, and even if I did, 5 WoC could easily take on 30+ skeletons or 10 Tomb Guard anyway. This made the game not fun. Not because I lost, but because there was nothing I could do.

I would rather have:
A 50% chance to win against every army
than:
A 90% chance to win against most armies, but a 5% chance to win against the few others

Powerguy wrote:

curran12 wrote:There's much, much less hard countering for armies in fantasy than 40k. It's much more down to individual ability and how well-crafted your list and tactics are.

If you don't know how to use the list, no matter how "counter proof" it is, you'll still lose.

I terms of army vs army matchups this is possible true. However the way 8th edition has been designed means that Fantasy is very much a game of rock paper scissors in terms of army/unit selection. If you bring massive blocks you die to magic, if you bring magic you lose to MSU and if you bring MSU you lose to big blocks. The level of randomness in the game now means that you can bring a solid army, play a mistake free game, but lose badly because mages explode, half a block dies from terrain attacking it or you fail multiple 7" charges, hence why the competitive Fantasy scene is dying out.

Dying out? From a fellow Kiwis perspective I can say its only getting higher here in NZ !

My old all-forest-spirit wood elf army had a hard counter: any daemon army (All magic attacks = no ward saves for me. Also, Lots of flaming, doubling the wounds on my trees)

Slaan wrote:The ironic thing for me is the club here is doing everything it can to stop this kinda of stupidity; max 40 max units to avoid stars, max 500 point units (I think, I forget the exact #), no dup rares, and they're looking at some of the other balancing ideas others have come up with. I think it's great...puts less focus on "the" unit(s) and more on generalship, which is where it should be.

Personally, if winning is that important to you that you're not having fun, try something else.

Duplicate rare's mortis engines are only really good if ran in a team of at least 2. Can understand not wanting to see 3 hydra's though

Hydras arn't a big deal if you have the proper equipment. Lore of Fire makes them cry, Flaming Banner means one unit can destroy them, and even if you don't have any of those the Hydra is only T5 with 4+/4+ saves. its hardly difficult for even basic troops to deal it some damage.

The Abomb is the same deal except a little more dangerous.

If you wan't a list that doesn't have as big a hard counter I would say stack skaven, its as tactical as you want it to be and with slaves being the best pt for pt infantry in the game you are overcome with options as to how to play your game.

Only dwellers will get on your nerves and with those 15pt engineer scroll caddies even that can be dealt with.


Then again skavens biggest counter is itself watch out for those missfires!

The counter for slaves is Mournfang cavelry. No scrolling here

Thats why any self respecting skaven player doubles up on warp lightning cannons alongside an abom :F But that would probably be the hardest army to come up against to be fair. Globadiers and poisoned wind mortars eat chaos warriors up pretty nicely if you get a good enough army composition you can deal with most threats pretty easily.

Of course as pointed out tho, mournfang cavalry i.e Ogres and beastmen will be your biggest challenge and thats only because for all your weapons teams and warmachines those big monsters don't die instantly even if you do take away there save Unless you have a loadout swap and roll with doomwheels vs them, then it gets funnier

Warpfire Throwers make Ogres and Beastmen cry....

I lost interest in 40K because you can look at the lists of each army at the start and know with great certainty who will win.

The wars of the time periods represented by WHFB were indeed very luck-based. They didn't have radio communications and satellites and GPS and huge intel reports. They had to wing it. I just watched the 9 part US civil war documentary by Ken Burns and the amount of disinformation the generals had to deal with even in 1860s was phenominal. They had no idea what was going on.

Further, as a D6 system, both games suffer from a lack of numerical diversity. 40K takes more of the approach of 1 being impossible to miss and 6 being impossible to make (or sometimes 12). In WHFB, a single malnurished Skaven Slave, with a broken arm and missing an eye, can conceivably kill a million billion elite Warriors of Chaos directly blessed by the Ruinous Powers--it's absurdly unlikely, but it can happen. Just like it's really unlikely you're going to win the lottery, but someone does every week. In 40K, you can simply have situations where no one can win that lottery no matter how many times they try. Personally, I dislike that, but to each his own.

Sasa0mg wrote:If you wan't a list that doesn't have as big a hard counter I would say stack skaven, its as tactical as you want it to be and with slaves being the best pt for pt infantry in the game you are overcome with options as to how to play your game.

Only dwellers will get on your nerves and with those 15pt engineer scroll caddies even that can be dealt with.


Then again skavens biggest counter is itself watch out for those missfires!

I'm guessing you haven't seen wind of undeath hit skaven slaves yet...
Dwellers kills half of one unit.
Wind of undeath is going to kill ~46% of every skaven unit in the 10" to 44" long, 5" wide line. It's like getting hit with 3-5 dwellers all at once.

-Matt

I love me some Wind O' Undeath...

Hard counters!? Bollocks i say, if my triple stegs + carno can take on imperial gunlines and win

Come to think of it I have not found a hard counter to my empire Bang Bang list... Welll besides the one where no one will play me....

I imagine Skaven with the Stormbanner could give you trouble, assuming you don't roll yourself out of the Banners effects.

Johnny-Crass wrote:Come to think of it I have not found a hard counter to my empire Bang Bang list... Welll besides the one where no one will play me....

Purple Sun on a flying dude (usually encounter this with WoC, and WoC then run over and destroy the troops)

Or WoC with the Blasted Standard on one MoT unit and the Chosen Deathstar of 3+ Ward.

The issue with the big bang empire is lack of mobility.

And I feel your pain with people not wanting to see me roll dice for 3 turns and remove their models

To be fair, going competitive knowing WoD is going to be present and not taking enough scroll caddies (because for skaven lvl 1 wiz scroll cadies grow off trees at only 15pts each) your doing yourself a disservice.

You can cap out 200 slave tarpit for about 400pts that almost nothing is going to just run through, followed by a block of stormvermin rolling with the stormbanner, a grey seer, 2 cannons and 1 abom being almost default setup. It's going to be one of the lesser-easy armys to counter, its why I don't really see them as having a 'hard' counter, which is what your trying to avoid.

Johnny-Crass wrote:Come to think of it I have not found a hard counter to my empire Bang Bang list... Welll besides the one where no one will play me....

2x10 hex wraiths, 2x6 wraiths (rare), spirit hosts, and then zombie bunkers, who hold outside of range and just weather the warmachines until they are all dead.


-Matt

I have found ethereal spam does not hold up very well to Waralter and Lvl 4 Fire.

Warriors dont last against real shooting and steamtanks

And stormbanner is a nice gimic but not really that scary.

Only thing the Bang Bang list has struggled with is a Dwarf Bang Bang list and the fact that he went first. I am my own hard counter

Normally yes, WoC melt to Lore of Shadow + Mortars and a Stank. But 1 Wizard on Disk flew over, 3++ and charmed shield weathered the fire, and then Purple Sun 30" to clean up almost 700 points of Warmachines (including stank)

Before that moment I was winning by 550 points easy

How was he throwing lore of death and rocking a 3++? Mark of Tzeentch should have put him on lore of Tzeentch. Unless *you* had death, and he Third Eye'd it...

Red_Zeke wrote:How was he throwing lore of death and rocking a 3++? Mark of Tzeentch should have put him on lore of Tzeentch. Unless *you* had death, and he Third Eye'd it...

DOH!

4++, he was riding the Carpet. His other wizard was rocking the 3+ on disk. Got mixed up

Skaven army with lots of contraptions....as long as they don't blow up in the rats' faces.

Johnny-Crass wrote:I have found ethereal spam does not hold up very well to Waralter and Lvl 4 Fire.

Odd, I had the exact opposite experience.
6 wraiths do wonders against a waralter that has 2 S4 attacks that might be magical. 6 chill touches (hits auto wound with no armor) carve up that alter in no time.
Likewise, the level 4 of fire is good, but can't keep pace with 32 ethereals (44 wounds worth).
Have you run up against 12 wraiths and 20 hex wraiths? It's a lot more ethereal than most people consider the ethereal spam.

-Matt