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 kronk wrote:

 Signal wrote:

The second one looked at all my models and started scribbling up a list on-the-fly. When he was done he gave me the list and started unpacking his models. I lost the game.

This is not OK. If at a tournament, you should have one list.

In the future, pull out units that you won't be using, one by one, ask for his list when he's done with it, then pull out your real army and army list!

Ha-ha!

Better yet, if you have two armies, get out one, watch them tailor to it, and then bust out a completely different army. I'd love to see someone try and cheat like this against a 'IG' list only to have a Deathwing list pulled on them.

I never tailor my lists, but I will sometimes leave 20 points off and fill it with arbitrary extra wargear or an extra marine or Vehicle Upgrade or something, mainly because I do pick-up games and never know what size game my opponent is looking to play so rather than write the perfect 2000 pt list and have to play 1850 I stay flexible.

I also tend to write out some alternates to use if I need to drop a significant amount of points. An alternate HQ, different Special Weapons, Drop an Oblit, add cultists. Stuff like that.

But most of the time I have a set list written way beforehand.

WayneTheGame wrote:
That sounds pretty suspicious in a tournament. Usually in a tournament you have one list that you use for all the games, known beforehand, or perhaps something like other games use where you have two lists and get to pick one.

In a tournament that sounds like blatant cheating at worst, and clear TFG guy behavior at best. For friendly games it's generally assumed that if you know who you're going to be playing beforehand you'll tailor a list against them, but not in a tournament.

yeah the probably only exception I would make would be if someone's model broke when he dropped it during his deployment. Accidents happen and then I'd find it understandable

 Ailaros wrote:

TheKbob wrote:List tailoring is a gaming sin.

Hardly.

The only thing that list tailoring does is allow you to more accurately adjust the power of your list relative to that of your opponent. It's not a bad thing. It's a tool, whether it's used for good or ill is up to the person wielding it.

For example, I don't think very many people would mind if your opponent showed you his list, and you saw that it was a super-fluff list, so you used that information to adjust your list so it was lower powered. Looking at your opponent's list and then making changes to your own is list tailoring, but in this case it was used to make things better.

The only way that list tailoring for the purpose of making your list stronger is a sin is if showing up with a list stronger than your opponent is itself a sin. Put another way, what you're saying is that strong lists are sinful, not list tailoring.

I feel that you use a wider definition of list tailoring than most. My own view is that it applies to changing your list based on what your opponent is playing in a particular game, either by knowing what army they have or knowing specific list choices. To me, list tailoring is fine as long as you have the explicit permission of your opponent.

Trickstick wrote:I feel that you use a wider definition of list tailoring than most. My own view is that it applies to changing your list based on what your opponent is playing in a particular game, either by knowing what army they have or knowing specific list choices.

My point stands as written. Accepting that as the definition, it still only matters what the player does with the information he receives, not a problem with gaining actionable information itself.

Are you going to go the barricades if someone tones down their list once they see what a noob or fluffy player brought?

 Trickstick wrote:

 Ailaros wrote:

TheKbob wrote:To me, list tailoring is fine as long as you have the explicit permission of your opponent.

To me the only time its cheating is if you tailor your list just before the match, after your opponent has deployed/opened their bag and without giving them the opportunity to adjust their list to suit yours. Otherwise if you know your opponent always plays the same army; or you know most of their collection; or they spent the last week bragging about their choice then yeah by all means tailor your army to beat them. Army design is part of the game and if you've a pre-arranged match then using the right models to beat your opponent is the right thing to do.

 Ailaros wrote:

Trickstick wrote:I feel that you use a wider definition of list tailoring than most. My own view is that it applies to changing your list based on what your opponent is playing in a particular game, either by knowing what army they have or knowing specific list choices.

My point stands as written. Accepting that as the definition, it still only matters what the player does with the information he receives, not a problem with gaining actionable information itself.

Are you going to go the barricades if someone tones down their list once they see what a noob or fluffy player brought?

No, but some individuals will use this to build a hard counter list against the new/fluffy player's list, and that is what's being referred to here as a "gaming sin". But this is getting besides the point.

Those three opponents were being unsportsmanlike. I have no experience with tournaments, but I would have went to the TO/made note of it on the feedback sheet.

BladeSwinga - it depends on the tournament though. Some local clubs run very casual even in their "formal" events to the point where the formal event is really just a theme for the evenings gaming. Granted they should always offer their opponent the same option to change their army list in reaction.

Depends on what kind of changes are theese. Sometimes it's not a bad thing to 'upgrade' or 'downgrade' what you got to get in the line with the opponent.
For example, if i bring a horde and see that my opponent is heavy on melta-weapons, i suggest him counting as many meltas as he want as flamers. On the other hand, when i see wave serpent spam vs my horde, i ask to downgrade some of them to fire prisms. Still great tanks but at least i'll have chances and the game won't finish turn 3 with 0 casualties on the opponent's side.
I don't focus on super-ballanced or competitive lists, so do some of my opponents. I just want the games to be fair and interesting and there's nothing bad in friendly changes. Ideal games for me are when by turn 7 i have a bunch of boyz fighting toe-to-toe with a bunch of someone like space marines and everything else around them is either dead or reduced to smoking wrecks.

For example, my last game vs tau ended on turn 7 with just 2 crysis suits fighting vs Sorc and a lone sarge. It'd end in a draw cause he had them in my corner and i had 4 marines + sorc in the opopsite corner. The points were equal, 6 vs 6 so we decided to make a final fight in the middle of the map and rushed towards each other. Still ended in a draw and we were both happy.

I had something like that happen to me in 5th ed . Played a guy with a chaos army full of terminators . He had three 10 man squads , terminator HQs and some small plague marine units.
In round one we played on opposite tables , and I saw him do rather well against SW foot army with his 35+plasma guns. Round two I was playing against him. He put all his dudes in reserv . I deployed my 2 blobs and tanks in a ruin to get a tasty +4cover save . turn 1 nothing happens turn two he gets 4 units . deep strikes and unloads with 17 combi flamers and tells me that in his codex there are no options to buy a combi plasma or combi melta or combi flamer , but only a combi weapon , so he can decide which weapon to use when he is shoting . I wanted to call it first , but then I realised that he was the store owners son, so there is no way he would rule against him . Fun fact is that next round he was almost disqualified , playing against another chaos player who counted his models fast and came up with over 200pts more then 1500. the judge ruled that he will just remove one unit from reservs.

I played a 1500 point game against a Ravenwing player in the recent past who tried to list tailor to deal with my I.G.

I had put my army out to photograph the entirety of it (all painted!) together and he walked up and asked if I'd like a game. He opened up his laptop after we agreed to a points value and proceeded to use a list building program to make a list looking at my army in an effort to get a bit of a tactical advantage. I watched him do it, didn't say anything, and proceeded to prepare for what I thought would be a tough fight (my I.G. lists are all are Tactica/take all comers lists).

Wound up backfiring on him, and through getting lucky and going first, coupled with some absurdly good shooting on my part during the first two turns, I had pretty much tabled him by the end of turn four. By the time it was his turn 5 (Bottom of turn 5) he had three marine bikers left on the board.

He didn't exactly build the list as a hard counter to mine, but he had a WHOLE lot more Meltaguns/Multimeltas in the list than I'd seen him run in the past.

Anyway, it worked out in the end. List tailoring is frowned upon in my gaming group, and I make it a point to use this example to teach the lesson to new players. Build a tactical take-all-comers list and you'll find the gaming is much more enjoyable (typically speaking).

Just my thoughts, take it easy for now.

-Red__Thirst-

 Happyjew wrote:

hobojebus wrote:
No last minute changes are not okay and it's scummy WaaC players that use tactics like that, it's quite frankly cheating and if someone does it call them out for the douche they are.

So you would rather play with/against an illegal list, at a(n) (dis)advantage, or with/against something that will just curb stomp you(r opponent) on Turn 2 with no chance of retaliation?

I don't play illegal lists and I don't play people who would either, and as imbalance I play SW in this edition I'm lacking in AA have only a few units worth putting on the table and don't use allies so I am the underdog and don't complain to my friends when they put down flyers or take things I have no ability to easily counter like a riptide.

List tailoring is not fine with me.