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I've been thinking how my team did at Adepticon this year, and there's one big thing I'm taking away from the experience.

"Cookie-cutter" lists do better than lists where each player is his own beautiful and unique snowflake.

By "cookie-cutter", I mean lists where they are basically the same, except with perhaps a small handful of changes, like an unamed inquisitor when one of the other lists has Coteaz, for example.

Contrast with my team, who couldn't agree on a single codex. Our only space wolf player was a guy who had a Caestus, Long Fangs, Terminator Wolf Guard, and Logan. The other GK player and I took somewhat similar things, strikes and either terminators or paladins, depending. I had a dreadnought though and he didn't, which left him lacking in short range, but by the same token, he was actually the guy with the most firepower at 24" range. We joked about him being the "horde" player of the team because he had the most models. Then, we had a Dark Angels player who ran a deathwing army, so he had assault terminators with missile launchers (which was actually arguably our best list).

I don't necessarily want to make everyone play the same identical list. I hear enough bitching about it when I've brought it up in the past, but how do you guys normally handle this stuff when you're getting your team's armies together? Do you all collaboratively decide upon a list and replicate it? Does one person build the list and then everyone conforms to it? Does anyone have any 'success stories' about a mixed force team that has actually done really well? I enjoy playing in the team tournament, but I also like winning, and when you have a 275 point HQ who's major benefit is a FOC swap that no one can use, well, that's not exactly winning material.

I haven't played at a large team tournament, but at a local one my buddy and I brought Eldar and Tyranids and ended up doing fairly well.

What we did is just analyze what each codex does poorly and try and cover it with the other codex.

First game against GK+GK we would have won except for some poor die rolls on my part (and Eldrad dying in his first round of CC - even Fortuned).
Second round was BA+BT and we dominated them.
Thrid round was GK+DE and it was a really close game, but they eeked out a win.

I guess what I'm saying is that everyone should work together to make the list to make sure as many weaknesses as possible are covered - but I don't see a need for everyone to pull from the same codex.

I think that all the lists you build need to complement one another. This does not mean they need to be identical, but you cannot build the list thinking of it as an individual.

Basically, you are building 6 different army lists for the event. It is easier to generate a balanced army with closely identical lists, but not necessary imo.

For example, you have two SW players and 2 GK players. Both SW bring Long Fangs and the GK each take 2 autocannon dreads. Now you have a long ranged S8 firebase for all combinations of armies. Next the GK grab a strike squad with psycannons while the SW have the standard 9 man GH w/ standard, melta, mark and combi-weapon/PF Wolf Guard. All combinations have effective troop choices that can also crack high AV transports.

There is no doubt that a SW list composed this way is good and the GK acutally work well with the SW since they can bring power weapon attacks whereas SW bring a large number of attacks.

The other consideration is that special characters that modify the force org are EXTREMELY powerful in this format due to the brothers in arms rules. Most the GK lists, for example, brought either Coteaz/Draigo or Coteaze/Crowe - Coteaz Draigo works because it covers the Paladin lists major weakness of needing some cheap scoring bodies to run around (no other GK troop choice is cheap!) the other lists typically brought the dirt cheap inquisitors who have a ton of functionality for a small cost.

From your post I think the key is that you do need to build the lists together, considering the complete armies and as you stated - 275 points for a FoC swap is not worth it unless multiple teams benefit.

calypso2ts wrote:I think that all the lists you build need to complement one another. This does not mean they need to be identical, but you cannot build the list thinking of it as an individual.

The other consideration is that special characters that modify the force org are EXTREMELY powerful in this format due to the brothers in arms rules. Most the GK lists, for example, brought either Coteaz/Draigo or Coteaze/Crowe -

From your post I think the key is that you do need to build the lists together, considering the complete armies and as you stated - 275 points for a FoC swap is not worth it unless multiple teams benefit.

This! It isn't about cookie-cutter. It is about synergy between lists.

Well, yeah, list harmony is the secret. The method to that secret I've seen best implemented (such as from Hulk's team, and even years before that) was to find a single solid list, and then replicate it with minor changes. I do really like the idea of looking at it like it's 6 team army lists, not 4 individual lists though. So obvious and simple; not sure why I hadn't thought of it before. Well, I guess the reason was because we all tried to not step on each other's toes when putting together our lists. Things actually got a little heated when I pointed out my concerns, so I let it go, but that's a social issue, not a tactics one. I was just hoping to be able to hear a bit about successful list design experiences.

When we did a team tourney, we did Eldar+Salamanders and won.

Basically i built the list entirely, so that it would not be hodge podge. he did the painting and modeling, his skill set.

Then when we played, we flipped a coin to see who would start it off. Winner was the general for game 1, and we alternated from there. The other person helped with line of sight and rules look up and templates and such but really we just let each other play our style of game with the army.

Unity of purpose is pretty important and we made it work in that way.

@Daedalus

I knew from the get-go I wanted to do a single codex or at most a combo of two if I could think of a good theme. I presented the options and once the codex was chosen I created the lists. I then sent them out to everyone to evaluate and discuss and after some slight tweaking we had our lists.

This does require your team to be able to discuss things without hurt feelings. We knew from the minute we built the team that we wanted to be in it to win it and set out to do it that way from day one. Worked out pretty well for 4 dudes in 4 different states

Yeah, theme is another thing has always taken a backseat with these guys also. We've got a knack for everyone building their lists, bringing them together, and saying, "hey, daedalus, hows this going to work theme-wise?" Then a week later, "oh, I know you just figured that one out, but I'm going to do GK also, so all that reading you had to do to justify my army fighting alongside yours was kind of pointless now. Funny huh?" It's usually about that point that I have my head in my hands, sobbing.

As I said, I think the crux of my issue actually lies in social issues, not tactical ones. I'm kind of blunt about this stuff, which is probably why they take to the hurt feelings so much. Perhaps I need to be more delicate. It didn't help that he was able to rationalize his list being so solid by the fact that I had such a hard time dealing with that Caestus during playtesting.

It's pretty impressive that you got everything put together so coherently when you guys were separated by such distance. Maybe this year I'll suggest that each person takes one particular thing and does it for all the team, rather than everyone trying to get their own stuff done.

Hulksmash wrote:@Daedalus

I knew from the get-go I wanted to do a single codex or at most a combo of two if I could think of a good theme. I presented the options and once the codex was chosen I created the lists. I then sent them out to everyone to evaluate and discuss and after some slight tweaking we had our lists.

This does require your team to be able to discuss things without hurt feelings. We knew from the minute we built the team that we wanted to be in it to win it and set out to do it that way from day one. Worked out pretty well for 4 dudes in 4 different states

Exactly, me and Hulk primarily sat down via email off the bat and discussed strategies for list building. Basically, the team tournament format at adepticon lets you go a couple ways:

1) More than one codex - use different codices to cover the weaknesses of another, ie, shooty mech guard + horde orks or something (just an example). Each list does one thing very well, so hypothetically, they cover each other, but when you get paired so that orks + orks or guard +guard, you have a glaring weakness, unless you do 3 of one codex, and 1 of another.

2) Use the same book, and have no weaknesses (providing you choose an all-comers style army). This is best done with force org manipulators (which is why we chose draigo and coteaz).

Then Brad wrote up a rough-cut of what he felt the Coteaz/Draigo lists would look like, and the whole team worked together to provide input/tweaking until we had armies we were all satisfied with. Some had a bit of their players flare (Aaron really wanted grenades in his list, hence the grenade inquisitor and other tweaks to use points) and I really wanted that purifier load out of 10 guys + 2 incinerators + 2 psycannons +2 hammers in a dozer rhino.

But, part of this was facilitated by the fact that I already owned a metric ton of GK's, and was willing to provide/paint the whole team army. It's harder to do if you expect each player to buy/paint his 1000 points, because he may not want to buy/paint GKs (or whatever army you choose) and then after the event, what is he going to do with it?

I always thought a logan-wing SW army had a shot at being pretty good as well, as the entire team getting wolfguard troops and only paying once for logan is pretty good. Mind you, I've never really played loganwing!

The lists my team and I took had two different armies.
2x wolfs and 2x grey knights.

Taking the same list for all players isnt manditory but every list needs to be able to fill certain requirements. Standard adepticon team missions require troops that can move and take an objective, and multiple scoring units per army. So all lists had 2x10 man squads in rhinos.

Generally fire support is good and if one player has it all players need some so that you dont get stuck with the one squad that gets blown away right of the bat, so everyone had either autocannon dreadnaughts or long fangs. Back these up with wolf priests living lightning and were good.

And finally, vehicles. Either none or enough that some will survive to do their thing. So, again all troops get rhinos, not just one troop. I generally run large assault marines with blood angles but that wouldn't have worked in the teams we chose because of this.

Basically, any combination of the 4 has to work as a viable 2k army.

On the note of chars that modify the force org chart, if you take them get the most you can out of them. We tried to fit logan in there but couldn't quite make it work well. Ended up with just crow instead. O, and 4 space wolfs just dont work. You cannot fit enough ranged anti-tank in the lists with that format because they get shafted with the wolf guard elite slot taken up and so no good ranged firepower in the elite slots, unlike say grey knights with the sniper.


So two grey knights, two wolfs, and one leadership test off of taking the trophy, or so i have been told. Well, at least my table beat Hulk.

I think the Pink Shirts did pretty well this year with totally different teams (orks, daemons, BA and something else). They just brought 1000-pt chunks of their regular armies.

Flavius Infernus wrote:I think the Pink Shirts did pretty well this year with totally different teams (orks, daemons, BA and something else). They just brought 1000-pt chunks of their regular armies.

Agreed, but those guys are also very good players, I think in order to win you need a bit of both (a synergized army + good players) with a dash of luck. We actually played the pink shirts in rnd 2

You can also go hunting specific cross-codex combos. Last year Team Sweden had an IG player with PBS, and a Blood Angel player with FotD. A few years ago my team ran three CSM and a Daemons, and he was able to use our Icons for cheap and reliable landings.

Right, but unless you have specific cross-codex stuff (like putting 16 khorne berzerkers in a crusader), then it's going to be better to have as much hegemony as possible, so as to keep some semblance of harmony.

Having a bunch of different things that work in different ways on a single team fails for the same reason having a bunch of different things that work in a bunch of different ways fails within a single person with a single list. It's not that they need to be cookie-cutter, it's that they need to be similar, something which you're happenstantially getting when you use cookie-cutter lists.

The more you can make your 4 armies played by 4 players look like a single giant army that's played by a single player, the more successful you're going to be. No matter how competent the individual players may be otherwise, if you don't have TIGHT coordination, you're going to be at a serious disadvantage against those who do. Either you need to have lists that play so similarly that there's virtually no difference, fieldwise, or you need to train and train and train some more so that every player can think about each other's armies as if they're their own.