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bring 2 lists and ask what your opponent prefers you playing.

some people like the challenge and practice for tournaments, some people dont and just play for the community or social aspect

I bring a single list. It is the list that I use in tournaments. It spams Predators and has a Deathstar LR/THSS Term/Vulcan contingent. It has often been the bane of many a casual player's existences, but I do not offer to play a different list.

You can say "The list I'm running is optimised". This gives the person the opportunity in a casual setting to say "I'm not interested in playing that army." If they fail to give you this notice, you should not have to deal with upset feelings.

That said, I will always talk about a game after it is finished. I will say what I thought about an opponent's army. I will tell them if I think they made mistakes and I'm not averse to informing a player that I think their decision is a bad one. (For example, Charging my Counter-attack Purifier squad and grenade master with a Trygon.)

Darkness wrote:...but unless I am playing against the toughest lists, I am not doing my best to stay sharp.

TheHarleqwin wrote:Anyone who claims it's not sportsmanlike to play within the rules shouldn't be playing.

The thing is, we play a game with a massive variety of possible lists, and where bringing an optimised, competitive list is very easy and takes very little skill or experience. I could spend five minutes on YMDC or any other website, and have the most optimised, competitive GK army without ever having played GK before. I'm not saying I'd win with it (because I'd be a new GK player) but I'd certainly have a top notch list which would give me more of a chance.

Now, there would be no issues if we all took those lists, but those lists represent about 1% of the possible army builds out there. If we all took those lists, the game would be less varied and thus less fun. See the poster above who can't take his DG army any more because it's not competitive enough for his local crowd.

In this situation, it IS sporting to adjust what you bring to the local crowd. It doesn't imply any lack of skill on your part, because taking a well-known competitive list from the internet is not a skill. And, if you want to play challenging games to 'stay sharp', then this can be done at any level as long as the two armies are equal in power. You'll have exactly as challenging a game if you're both playing strong lists as if you're both playing weak lists.

I thought Wolf Guard Terminators were good?

I haven't won enough yet to know what is competitive and what is not. ofcourse that is because everytime im beginning to win and we are 1 turn away from total victory for me. I get the sorry i got to go or i dont want to play anymore. Only one of the people that used that excuse had an legit reason.

Play to win at all times.

How you play is more important to a friendly game than what you are playing with.

I build competitive lists.

I stay away from anything that relies on a shaky or dodgy rules interpretation.

Double Lash DP lists weren't hated so much for being effective, but more for requiring taking advantage of the poorly-worded rules.

In my experience, Warhammer is a mess of long-winded and poorly written rules, and this is the main thing that you need to accept and work around if you want to keep playing the game, as opposed to a more balanced, and clear cut set of rules like Warmachine or KoW.

There are a million and twenty different ways to abuse the crap out of rules loopholes or poorly-worded and tedious paragraphs in GW games, because balanced rules writing is something GW does not give even the slightest care about. Don't use any of them, and play without using all the stupid tricks they allow (stuff like conga lines in fantasy etc.) and you'll avoid being seen as annoying, regardless of how tough your list is (unless of course, the list makes use of these tricks as well).

Even then, it's not that simple - in many cases, using a "spammy" list is the only way to have an effective army, and that should not be held against them... ask anyone with an army book or codex that got "Cruddace'd"...

- Tyranid book: Two-thirds of the unit entries are useless, other third is a little overpowered (the ones with new models, surprise, surprise!)
- Tomb Kings 8th: Two-thirds of the book is average or useless, other third is average and requires "tricky" combos just to have a chance at winning.
- Empire 8th: One-third of the book is useless, the rest is average,and requires buff-stacking and combo synergies and other "cheese" to stand a chance against the 7th edition power armies.

Poor Tyranid players have to deal with a crap book, and then when they do take the remaining third of their units that are powerful, they get accused of spam and cheese... 9x Hive Guard might seem like spam and the other player being a jerk to someone who isn't aware of the fact that there is literally no other reliable anti-armour in the entire damned codex, because Cruddace sucks at his job.

Same goes for stuff like Oblit spam, it's the only way for the army to compete in 5th edition mech-spam, but the poorly-written rules make it look like the player is choosing to be a jackass cheese-lister when the reality is, they don't have much of a choice.


In short, GW rules are unbalanced, poorly-written, long-winded garbage, and that this is the main source of arguments and problems between players who play GW games.

There is far too much to remember while playing, making it very easy to forget, leading to problems when one person assumes that the other is trying to cheat rather than simply having forgotten or misinterpreted the exact and precise sentence structure of page 234, paragraph 7, sentence 3 of the Warhammer rulebook.

scarletsquig wrote:Poor Tyranid players have to deal with a crap book, and then when they do take the remaining third of their units that are powerful, they get accused of spam and cheese... 9x Hive Guard might seem like spam and the other player being a jerk to someone who isn't aware of the fact that there is literally no other reliable anti-armour in the entire damned codex, because Cruddace sucks at his job.

This only works in a pre-organised 'competitive' situation, though.

Using 'Power Levels' as an analogy for the strength of a list...

You're essentially saying 'There is only one Power 5 Tyranid list'. You're right, but that's only a problem if you assume we should all be playing at Power 5.
There are probably ten Power 3 lists, and a twenty Power 1 lists you could get out of that Tyranid book. If you built lists and played at Power 3, your Tyranid playing friend could field loads of different lists, and your games would be more varied and interesting. And they would be exactly as skillful, tactical, engaging and difficult as if you were both playing at Power 5.

If I'm playing in a tournament - a weird, warped, unintended version of 40k - then I'll take a Power 5 list and expect to have to play the same two SW and GK builds again and again, because that's the point in that situation. But if I'm playing 'real' 40k against my friends Kroot Mercs list at home over a beer, taking a Power 2 list will result in a better game, one that should be exactly as challenging as the Power 5 tourney, but much more varied.

@ArbitorIan

When I compete at anything else in life for fun, I try to win.

I enjoy being good at the things I'm good at and I like to push myself while doing them. If my friends can't handle that, they shouldn't be my friends (it hasn't happened yet)

Why shouldn't this apply to Warhammer?

I should play a terrible army because it will be more "fun"? I don't think so.

Emerett wrote:@ArbitorIan

When I compete at anything else in life for fun, I try to win.

I enjoy being good at the things I'm good at and I like to push myself while doing them. If my friends can't handle that, they shouldn't be my friends (it hasn't happened yet)

Why shouldn't this apply to Warhammer?

I should play a terrible army because it will be more "fun"? I don't think so.

That's ok - I'm not saying you shouldn't try to win or enjoy the competition.

But winning at Power 5 requires exactly the same amount of skill and challenge as winning at Power 3. As long as you're both playing at the same level. It doesn't diminish your experience at all, and allows tons more interesting armies/builds in the game, and a lot more people (who might have 'nerfed' armies, for example) can play. Lots of advantages, no disadvantages.

Choosing to take a Power 5 army, however, is NOT a skill. Anyone who's been playing the game for while can manage that, given a quick look at the forums.

And of course, if you really were all about skill and challenge, you'd be taking a Power 1 army all the time, because it's the biggest challenge to win with, right?

says he wants a friendly game, then drops a spam list on you...

I don't see that friendly equates to running an uncompetitive list (though I can see that one could take the opportunity to try out unfashionable units in a casual setting, and why not?).

A friendly game in this sense would be better termed a casual game as competitive game can (and in fact should) be played in a friendly manner. Otherwise you are saying competitive lists (and by extention players) are necessarily unfriendly which is just not true.

If we say that there are two sorts of player -- 'sportsmen' and 'WAAC' and two sorts of lists -- competitive and uncompetitive then you can have a situation where you get a player with a WAAC attitude playing an uncompetitive list (I've encountered this a few times and it's way more unpleasant than facing a WAAC player with a competitive list). Generally the WAAC/uncompetitive player wants a list based on the units he likes and (I suspect) has an unrealistic idea about their tabletop performance based upon the background fluff rather than their actual in game abilities, or more commonly he has chosen each unit for its perceived performance withouth thinking about likely counters and/or how his army will act as a cohesive whole.

On the other hand a sportsman with a competitive list will likely bend over backwards to help a weaker opponent (be it weaker player or just player with a noticeably weaker list) in a casual game with perhaps suggestions or opinions as to options available or always giving said opponent the benefit of the doubt if questions arise (are they in cover or not? is thet just in or just out of assault range? etc).

There's actually another sort of player who always has a casual list, and that's the guy who just doesn't care about tactics at all. This chap generally gives an unsatisfactory game (though is always nice to talk to while playing) because he's really just passing time.

The way I see it, the opponent can take whatever list they choose to take (spammy, cheesy, whatever) in a friendly game. I'm used to losing (I have terrible dice karma) and I tend to get a little too much into the spirit of my Orks (krump stuff now, claim objectives later ) and end up using unpredictable but not always sensible tactics.

But for me the main driving force is having fun, I play (mostly) to win, but I play games for the entertainment. They can have a tournament optimised list or the worst list known to man, I don't really mind so long as them and I are having a jolly good time about it

For ,me, a big chunk of the skill and fun of the game is building a powerful, competitive, take-all-comers list. So those are the lists I will play with, generally, unless we're playing a specific scenario or something.

I will happily take a list against a complete newcomer to the game (having explained that this is the list I take to tournaments), and have a "teaching game" in which I talk him/her through their options at all times, and ensure they don't make any blatantly obvious mistakes. I'll also offer list-building advice if there's time.

I don't really see any point in deliberately having a less than optimal list in a game that has victory conditions. It'd be like deliberately playing badly.

Ian Sturrock wrote:I don't really see any point in deliberately having a less than optimal list in a game that has victory conditions. It'd be like deliberately playing badly.

Or playing on hard mode.

Ian Sturrock wrote:For ,me, a big chunk of the skill and fun of the game is building a powerful, competitive, take-all-comers list. So those are the lists I will play with, generally, unless we're playing a specific scenario or something.

I will happily take a list against a complete newcomer to the game (having explained that this is the list I take to tournaments), and have a "teaching game" in which I talk him/her through their options at all times, and ensure they don't make any blatantly obvious mistakes. I'll also offer list-building advice if there's time.

I don't really see any point in deliberately having a less than optimal list in a game that has victory conditions. It'd be like deliberately playing badly.

But building a powerful list doesn't really take skill, as others have said. You can just go onto the internet and find a powerful, competitive list in five minutes.

I build the list that I want to play then play it to the best of my ability. Sometimes this means that my list is not as optimised as it could be (my Tau army uses Farsight for feths sake ) but that doesn't affect my enjoyment of the game. It means that if I do beat an opponent using a massively powerful list they got off the internet I know it was because I outplayed them, not because I had an uber-list which cannot be defeated without serious tailoring or using the same list against it.

Victory may be rarer when using a less than optimal list but it is much sweeter because of that.

Just my opinion though, so YMMV.

I've never used a netlist, out of personal preference. I don't get all that many games in, though, so if I'm playing 40K, I probably want to have my next tournament in mind, and play at that points level, with that list.

You can give a horrible player the best tourney list and the kid can still lose, you can play differently depending on who you are playing. If you find someone playing for the win, play as hard to. If your opponent is trying out some new models, use new strategies and don't try your hardest. Or you could have a list for every type of player.

Emerett wrote:@ArbitorIan

When I compete at anything else in life for fun, I try to win.

I enjoy being good at the things I'm good at and I like to push myself while doing them. If my friends can't handle that, they shouldn't be my friends (it hasn't happened yet)

Why shouldn't this apply to Warhammer?

I should play a terrible army because it will be more "fun"? I don't think so.

Several posters have tried to bring out the difference between the skills used in list building and the skills used while playing. The chances of beating a competitive list with a regular list are small even if you are a good player. Beating a regular list with a competitive one does not really reflect your skills at playing the game. Many players would not consider it a win at all. Thus, many players prefer to take sub-par lists to test their skills at playing the game.

I've seen too many potential new entrants to the hobby turned away by self-diagnosed Aspergers types roflstomping their first army list with BA razorspam or DE Venom Swarm under the guise of -reaching- them to think we can really be cavalier here.

My list is not really competitive but it's not soft either. But for my DE, I would say that i have a 'fluffy' list, with a plot behind it, and my tournament list, and let them pick. I don't think it's patronizing at all. Being made to feel helpless and disappointed in your investment is not a learning step.

I'm pretty sure it's the roflstomping persona that turns people away, not the list. :(

My local group tends to play quite competitive games. Maybe not every list is optimised, but every player is aiming to win, and expects to lose badly to start with.

I've no objection to other people having fluffy lists vs tournament lists. Personally I'd find it a bit of a waste of my limited gaming time. I certainly also play experimental lists, but I don't think I'd learn much from a fluffy list vs fluffy list game, and I like to get better with each game if I can.

darefsky wrote:Wow, what timing for this post.

I went to my FLGS yesterday looking for a game. Wound up playing a guy who was playing his 3rd game ever.

I took a very soft 1850 eldar list so he could get more experience with his necrons (they were by no means optimized).

I wound up teaching most of the game, showing him how to move and think about what to shoot and how to prioritize targets ect. was a great time.

If I had used my tournament list it wouldn't have been fun for anyone (I don't bask in the glow of stomping n00bs into the ground)

Quite often I accidently bash em up a bit to much. It doesn't help if a tourney player is behind you telling you your advantage. Well, maybe it was because that noob had been beating me with his grey knights in other games, so when I get a mycetic spore I put my warriors in it next to his psykers.
Now I ask if it's a hard game or a friendly game and tell them too remind me their skill.


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Dayvuni wrote:You can give a horrible player the best tourney list and the kid can still lose, you can play differently depending on who you are playing. If you find someone playing for the win, play as hard to. If your opponent is trying out some new models, use new strategies and don't try your hardest. Or you could have a list for every type of player.

I agree with the sort of level 1-5 of listing but also levels 1-5 of good tactics.

played a lvl 5 grey kinght list with a lvl 2 nid list and won.
how? Because Im a lvl 3 player and their a lvl 1 player. you should base the games on both factors.

LVL 2 list, LVL 4 player VS LVL 4 list, LVL 2 player.

that would be interesting, provided that they dont go charging into CC with ranged units or try to run through huge minefeilds.

We have a very very diverse community when it comes to wargaming and we have to find ways to stick together because lets face it, our hobby is going to be like yesterday's model trains, it will grow old with us, but the new blood will someday die down to a trickle.

So the point is, in the realm of pickup (friendly) we should try to be conscious of everyone because that is where we all meetup, regardless of playstyle.

ivangterrace wrote:..... our hobby is going to be like yesterday's model trains, it will grow old with us, but the new blood will someday die down to a trickle. .

Actually you'd be surprised for model trains are still popular in some places. I guess some types just like to build stuff.

Model trains are awesome.

The competitive side of warhammer is fairly ugly and unfun, IMO. People just seem to be obsessed with the WAAC mindset at my FLGS. They're nice people and I love to head down every Saturday and see what they've painted and show my work off as well (sadly only a few even bother to paint).


But once the game starts is maximum carnage with no mercy.

It's also unfortunate that not every unit or army is created equal in terms of effectiveness vs. points cost. The game has some balance issues to be sure.

I wonder how the game would be in its current incarnation without forums like this where people have mathammered out every unit and possible combination of upgrades and tactics. I think some people take the game, and themselves, too seriously. It's supposed to be fun, right? Not a mechanical regurgitation of rules and probability matrices.

Cave_Dweller wrote:
I wonder how the game would be in its current incarnation without forums like this where people have mathammered

You'd have more ensconced metas where people would think certain
things were good because individuals play them better than the locals
around them and they'd have no outside data to show them that
certain things are really just chancy or matchup dependent.

I'm torn between two worlds because I have two mates who I usually play againt, one really terrible, and the other is a WAAC player.

On one hand, I like playing my terrible mate because I teach him as I play, I use fluffy lists to a point, and I can enjoy the flow of the game more. Although the poor bugger has no morale at all, and once the casualties mount up he almost just gives up.

Then, on the other hand, my WAAC mate is really good, knows the rules better than me...mostly...and tries every possible spammy netlist he can get his hands on. I only keep up because of Dakka and constant research, but every game turns into this annoying grudge match. Although, it makes me a better player I guess, but when I go back to 'fun' games, I end up stomping my other mate because I've had my tactics so refined and its really hard to go back to playing it easy.


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Just for the record, I don't think I am an exceptional player or anything, just in case I made it sound like I was...

TheHarleqwin wrote:The point behind the basis of it as a game is competition. This comes down to decisions and tactics in game, in addition to your pre-game which includes your list building. If you pick something that works, you're playing the game. Do you dumb down when you play poker? Do you run slower when you play soccer? No, even in friendly games you understand that there's a winner and a loser. Why get upset if you lose, regardless of how the game went? If you're upset, it shouldn't be at your opponent for being the one who came out on top.

That doesn't mean cheat, but if it's within the rules to do something it's fair gaming. Anyone who claims it's not sportsmanlike to play within the rules shouldn't be playing.

ITT: WAAC gamers who have deluded themselves into believing that their victories are due to their own superior ability, rather than the often ludicrously unbalanced Warhammer rules. Also ITT: People who think a tabletop wargame published by a company which has an entire division devoted to narrative gaming is equivalent to a pro-sport designed from the ground-up for unrestrained competition.

The absolutist and entirely inconsiderate arguments you make in the quoted post are exactly why "fluff" gamers find playing WAAC'ers so annoying, boring, and unfun. It's not just that you can't conceive that someone has a different opinion, a different approach to finding their enjoyment in the game, it's that you are perfectly aware but dismiss them out of hand.

So, IMO, anyone who doesn't have the common sodding courtesy to consider their opponent's enjoyment as much as their own is the one who shouldn't be playing.

darefsky wrote:Wow, what timing for this post.

I went to my FLGS yesterday looking for a game. Wound up playing a guy who was playing his 3rd game ever.

I took a very soft 1850 eldar list so he could get more experience with his necrons (they were by no means optimized).

I wound up teaching most of the game, showing him how to move and think about what to shoot and how to prioritize targets ect. was a great time.

If I had used my tournament list it wouldn't have been fun for anyone (I don't bask in the glow of stomping n00bs into the ground)

Full congratulations to you, buddy. You are the kind of hobbyist I want to meet and spend time with.

Personally, I would not mind playing any kind of list. I am not playing a list, I am playing a guy owning it. This is a social interaction game, the experience depends entirely on the guy. I would much rather lose to a decent opponent than win over some big jerk.

That being said, playing single power list in all situations kind of tells that you are probably a jerk. If you know beforehand that your opponent is a much lower level than you, that's you who decide what kind of game it will be. You can either crush him outright for your own enjoyment, or provide a reasonable challenge. In second case, you get to experiment with some less useful units, too. Of course, if you don't know your opponent level, you are in full right to assume he's good and play him on your max.

My 2 cents

Whenever people talk about WAAC gamers, I assume they're talking about people other than me, as WAAC clearly means you'd happily break the rules of the game, lie, hold your opponent's family hostage at gunpoint, etc. I don't think I've ever met anyone would wanted to win at all costs.

In fact, most tournament and other competitive players I've met are the very model of a good opponent -- they know the rules, recognise there are occasional rules inconsistencies (and are happy to call a ref over, or just dice off for it, rather than getting into long arguments), and scrupulously play within the rules.

I've had more instances of cheating (sometimes accidental or semi-accidental) from supposedly casual, fluffy players. I recognise that the plural of anecdote is not data, so I certainly don't regard all casual players as cheats. But I really despise the default, and erroneous, assumption that anyone who plays competitively is a WAAC player. It's as insulting as it is wrong, and has no place in constructive discussion.

Personally I'm very, very happy to lose, whether my opponent is a new player or an old hand. I learn something every time I play, and I learn even more if I lose.