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OK tradito to put it another way
Why should your one dimensional army stand a chance vs a army which is geared to have a counter to most things
Let's say you brought your cultist spam vs my tau
I'd laugh while shooting you with my riptides broadside suits path finders ghost keel stealth suits and devil fishes with all the suits but the broadsides doing JSJ shenanigans. Heck as you've only brought cultists I may even charge you

 Traditio wrote:

Peregrine wrote:1) They aren't fluffy. It's Codex: Chaos Space Marines, not Codex: Nothing But Cultists. A fluffy CSM army might have cultists, but they should be meatshields for the marines that are the focus of the codex. Same thing with other armies, I should look at your army and see something that resembles the fluff, not a bunch of copies of the same unit.

1. Why does fluff matter when it comes to game mechanics?

2. Even if fluff did matter to game mechanics, how is it somehow "unfluffy" to have an army of cultists with a dark apostle as HQ?

Weren't you just complaining earlier than the fluffy stuff is too weak? You wanted to take a fluffy combination of a tac squad with a flamer and a missile launcher and were complaining about how it doesn't work, and now you're saying that the fluff doesn't matter? Seriously, which side are you on? As for your second point here, it's a strawman argument. No one ever said that an army of cultists with a dark apostle was unfluffy. He just said that in a codex called "Chaos Space Marines" running an army of cultists is not what the book is supposed to focus on. In the fluff, the cultists are just meat shields to soak up bullets for the evil marines behind them. Which is exactly what Peregrine said, albeit differently. Now, your cultists + dark apostle army (which actually is a thing thanks to a formation called "The Lost and the Damned") could be a niche case for a gimmick army, but don't expect to win with just that. That's the point we're all trying to get across; you will struggle with nothing but cultists unless you face a similarly unoptimized list, but you could, in theory, do it.

 Traditio wrote:

2) They aren't fun.

You reject this argument when I make it it about SHVs and GMCs, as well as tank spam.

What gives you a pass to make it about cultist spam?

Because you are complaining that taking SHVs and GMCs is unfun for the opponent. Taking nothing but cultists would be unfun for you (and likely your opponent as well since it would be way too easy for him).

 Traditio wrote:

Not optimal according to the current meta is part of it, although the current meta does need some adjustments. But those lists should be more like 40/60 or 30/70 matches, because they do have a coherent strategy even if it isn't as well designed as the best list strategies. The zero-hope lists should be the ones that are fundamentally broken in some way: one-dimensional spam, neglecting important aspects of the game, refusing to take advantage of the available tools, etc.

You don't take advantage of all of the available tools. You don't use allies, as far as I'm aware: you ONLY use imperial guard. You don't even use all of the tools in your codex. You don't use rough riders, ratlings, ogryn/bullgryn, stormtroopers...do you?

...in fact, if it came right down to it, there's swaths of things in your codex that you don't use.

Does that make your army fundamentally broken? Should it be a zero-hope list?

Another strawman argument. Peregrine didn't say that you have to use every unit type in your codex. That would be silly, and impossible in anything short of an Apocalype game for most armies. Certainly if you count everything in your possible allies' codexes too. He was only saying that you should at least CONSIDER using any of the units in your codex, not that you need to use everything. I'm sure Peregrine considers every unit (however briefly in the case of the weak units) when he makes his lists, and I do the same for my armies. So do most other 40k players. Considering all the possibilities and deciding which ones will work well together is the fundamental core of list-building, and not just in 40k, either.

 Traditio wrote:
The fact that there isn't a target type where you look at it and say "nope, can't even try to counter that" is just bad game design.

Are you serious with this? Really? The whole point of good TAC list design is to build a list that can handle everything in some way. Now, naturally some lists are going to be stronger against some things and weak against others, but a good TAC list has some kind of answer for everything. Lists that don't tend to lose unless the player is really good at just ignoring whatever it is and playing the mission. If you are unable to counter something in your opponent's list in some way, you've made a mistake in your list-building. You should have at least some kind of solution (however weak/bad) for everything.

As an example, you have a TAC list consisting of some tactical squads with meltaguns, some other tactical squads with flamers, some devastators with heavy bolters, and some assault squads with good weapons (maybe Vanguard Vets or something), plus a couple of tanks. If your opponent has a lot of infantry, you probably have a good chance of winning. If they have a few vehicles in there as well, you're still okay since you have meltas for that. If your opponent has three or more Imperial Knights, you're facing an uphill battle, but you at least have something (melta Tacticals) that can do some damage and perhaps kill at least one, even if the army as a whole can't kill them all, while your other units try to get the objectives and play the mission.

The point is, you absolutely should be able to affect anything your opponent brings in a TAC list, at least in a small way.

 Traditio wrote:

1. Why does fluff matter when it comes to game mechanics?

Traditio wrote:
Missile launchers should be able to take down dreadnoughts.

 Traditio wrote:

The fact that there isn't a target type where you look at it and say "nope, can't even try to counter that" is just bad game design.

Traditio wrote:
If I brought a CAD with devastators, tactical marines and assault marines, but no grav, why should I even bother unpacking my models to play a game with someone who brought wraithknights and scatter bikes?

Can you not pick an argument and stick with it?

As to your second point - a single unit should not be able to threaten all other unit types (and this is a key issue with certain problem units) but you absolutely should be able to select a combination of units in your army that can threaten all other unit types.

 Traditio wrote:

You don't take advantage of all of the available tools. You don't use allies, as far as I'm aware: you ONLY use imperial guard. You don't even use all of the tools in your codex. You don't use rough riders, ratlings, ogryn/bullgryn, stormtroopers...do you?
...in fact, if it came right down to it, there's swaths of things in your codex that you don't use.
Does that make your army fundamentally broken? Should it be a zero-hope list?

Are you being deliberately obtuse or do you just not understand that an army is more than a collection of units?

You don't need to use every tool in order to select a range of tools that lets you handle a broad selection of challenges.

This is in direct contrast to your army that spams a couple of the least versatile tools and, as such, can't handle a whole range of things.

take what you want. So will I, and so will everyone else. If you are unwilling to make it easy for me to beat you, WHY SHOULD WE DO YOU THE FAVOR IN REVERSE?
Traditio, you always seem to find problems with other people's armies. JSJ is broken, etc. If we Tau players don't bring JSJ, are you willing to surrender Psychic Powers? If we give up Markerlights, are others willing to give up something else? No. Take what you want, and don't complain when you face something you cannot deal with. . . it is why we change.

 Traditio wrote:
1. Why does fluff matter when it comes to game mechanics?

Because the game mechanics are a representation of the fluff. This is a basic concept of game design, yet another one that you don't seem to understand.

2. Even if fluff did matter to game mechanics, how is it somehow "unfluffy" to have an army of cultists with a dark apostle as HQ?

Because it's Codex: Chaos Space Marines, not Codex: Cultists. I think it should be obvious why a fluffy chaos space marine army should actually have some chaos space marines in it. Fluff-wise the cultists exist so that your marines can have a wall of meatshields to support them, they're not supposed to be the core of your army. That's why there's a single cultist unit with very few options. If you were making a fluffy chaos cult army you'd probably do something like a core from the IG codex (including a diverse range of infantry units) for the cult itself and maybe a small allied detachment of demons or summoning psykers (I forget if IG psykers can take summoning spells) to represent the demonic forces they call upon. A TAC list build like this would be just fine, and have nothing to do with a one-dimensional spam list from the CSM codex.

You reject this argument when I make it it about SHVs and GMCs, as well as tank spam.

What gives you a pass to make it about cultist spam?

Because they have nothing to do with each other? Making the argument "X is not fun" does not mean I have an obligation to accept every other argument that something isn't fun. By your reasoning here I could turn around and ask you why you accept "LoW aren't fun and shouldn't be in the game" but reject "tactical squads with missile launchers and flamers aren't fun and shouldn't be in the game".

You don't take advantage of all of the available tools. You don't use allies, as far as I'm aware: you ONLY use imperial guard. You don't even use all of the tools in your codex. You don't use rough riders, ratlings, ogryn/bullgryn, stormtroopers...do you?

You do understand that rough riders, ratlings, etc, are not in my army list, right? The only thing on your list that I have available and don't use is allies, and I don't think either of us want to make the assumption that a viable list has to use allies. Otherwise we're going to have to start asking why you think you deserve to win any games when you don't make use of the Eldar allies you have access to and take some Wraithknights of your own.

I didn't intend for a direct one-to-one correlation. This is the only point I'm making: in that scheme, you have A counters B counters C counters A. So if you want a "good" army you'd take a blend of the three.

Rock/paper/scissors is merely one approach to balance, and not one that is well suited to 40k. You can't assume that there is something wrong with balance if the game doesn't comply to your rock/paper/scissors concept.

You have an army of what should be fast attacks and heavy supports.

The fact that there isn't a target type where you look at it and say "nope, can't even try to counter that" is just bad game design.

And that "should be" is your personal opinion, not objective truth. IG armored regiments exist (and, in fact, are pretty common) in the fluff and the army list for them is a fluffy representation of what they should be. Just like, say, Deathwing armies get to take terminators (normally elites) as troops an IG armored company list gets to take LRBTs as troops. This is balanced by their very limited access to the infantry units that make up the core of a codex IG army. What you're doing here is getting tunnel vision on the idea that the unit allocation of C:SM is the only way to do it, and anything that puts units into FOC slots in different ways must somehow be bad game design.