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So I'm worried that I've made my list too competitive for friendly play. I'm pretty new to the game and am just interested about how other people balance their lists in order to have a fun game and not get accused of spamming or just to have a laugh.

I am looking forward to playing the list I've got at tournaments but didn't enjoy tearing apart the guy I was playing last night in a "friendly" game. He took it well but was clearly upset.

Well a few things you can do is

1. Talk with your opponent about expectations pregame. If you differ to much try to compromise.

2. keep track of your win/loss and aim for a 50/50 by making the army worse. (Don't do it by playing badly)

3. Don't bring more then 2 of the same kind of unit, unless it's rhinos/troops/light transports. (or you have a good fluffy reason)

4. Allow your opponent to proxy (Mostly if you really want practice with your tournament list)

5. Bring a handicap unit, most of my friendly list will include at least 1 unit of howling banshees.

6. Play a scenario that's hard for your army and benefits the other guy.

I don't think I've ever played the same list for two games running - I always want to try different things out. Plus I can't resist playing the coolest looking units not necesarily the most competetive.

Playing to win is fine, playing for fun is really the point - tournaments excepted!

Just my opinion.

Kholzerino wrote:
So I'm worried that I've made my list too competitive for friendly play. I'm pretty new to the game and am just interested about how other people balance their lists in order to have a fun game and not get accused of spamming or just to have a laugh.

I am looking forward to playing the list I've got at tournaments but didn't enjoy tearing apart the guy I was playing last night in a "friendly" game. He took it well but was clearly upset.

This happens a lot. When I play my 'casual friends' I'll bring units that normally never see the table.
For example, I've got a marine bike list and marine flyer list that are my competitive lists. When I go to a tourney, that's what I'll take.

For causal play, I've got an aspect warrior list with 80+ aspect warriors on the table. Its a fluff list that does well, but not great. That's what I'll bring when playing the causal guys at my FLGS

So it really kind of depends on your situation.

If you own multiple armies, or a good breadth of units in one army I would suggest making a casual list with which to play casual games made up of some of your lesser used units.

If you don't (for whatever reason: money, choice etc.) own the models for a different army their are a number of things you can do.

1.) Change up some wargear....if for instance you play screamerstar don't take the grimior in casual games, or if Tau, change up what items your buff commander takes.

2.) Pull your punches....play the mission instead of say firing off your serpent shields every turn (if you play serpent spam) don't fire them most rounds, or instead of jumping units out of a transport to kill the enemy leave them inside.

3.) Play points down (without telling) - bring less to the table and give your opponent an advantage.

The other posters gave some real good advice. One I would add to them is...

Usually by turn 2 you can tell if you are outclassing your opponent. If I find this is the case I will sacrifice something of mine. Just one stupid move that I know I won't win, deletes some of my armies points while making the guy across the board feel he has just accomplished something.

Some great advice. I'd say playing a fluffy army is the best option. It gives most players(except those diehard tourny types) satisfaction just being able to play a certain theme without winning every game.

This is all great advice.

What I now properly realise is that 40k is a list based game. Generally the game is own or lost on the list as it relates to the list you are playing. My fairly optimized/spammy list, which I built to give myself a fighting chance as a learner, actually gives me a massive advantage against most opponents. And I probably have an okay head for it anyway.

I am just starting a Gaurd army and I am definitely going to have a couple of different ways of playing it worked out.

Thanks for all the advice. I guess I need to peel out my C'Tan and work out a "fun" Necron list.... Maybe I should make a blob of flayed ones.

I always try to scale my list to the level of competition I expect to see from my opponent. If I'm up against someone competitive I'll bring my best list, but against more casual or relatively new players I try to tone it down, maybe run a screamer-killer fex instead of a dakkafex in a pod, close combat flyrants instead of dakka, maybe the Swarmlord, run Hormagaunts and Warriors, etc. I'll still try my best to win, mind you, but the games will be more even, one-sided games generally aren't fun for either player.

Spam is not automatically good, and you can have very strong lists that do not spam units. Additionally, no matter how strong the list may be in theory, if you don't execute it correctly you will fall flat.

As an example, saw a game of tau vs dark eldar recently. The tau list on the surface looked rather strong for dealing with dark eldar: maxed out on missile broadsides with a bunch of drones, decent amount of firewarriors, pair of riptides, as well as the usual support pieces and aegis line. The dark eldar list on the surface looked a bit of a mess, practically the only thing being duplicated being the ravagers in HS. However, by turn four the tau list was on the ropes, and practically wiped out on turn five. This happened because the tau castled up on his objective (not always bad, but in this case very much so), and so could not apply much firepower except for the riptides. The DE pecked off several broadsides over the first few turns, putting a couple of wounds onto other stuff as well, then swept in on turn four with reaver jetbikes cutting through the firewarriors before tieing many of the remainders up in assault, blocking supporting fire lanes with other transports. On turn five the rest of the army assaulted and managed to sweep practically the entire of his force. The game would have been so much different if the tau player had broken his castle and advanced up the board slightly to let his broadsides and fire warriors fire. Even then, this could have been avoided in the list building stage by including more things that could threaten the back of the board and not been reliant on the enemy to come into your threat range.

Yeah, spamming is an aesthetic choice first and foremost. You only make easy lists to play when you spam things that are strong.

I like spamming, but I also like to play a game while I'm playing a game, so when I spam, I do things like spamming stormtroopers for guard or khorne berzerkers for chaos. With lists like that, I can hardly be called a WAAC gamer, despite making generous use of only two or three units in my army lists.

x13rads wrote:
The other posters gave some real good advice. One I would add to them is...

Usually by turn 2 you can tell if you are outclassing your opponent. If I find this is the case I will sacrifice something of mine. Just one stupid move that I know I won't win, deletes some of my armies points while making the guy across the board feel he has just accomplished something.

I have done this before. Was playing a DE player once he was making A lot of mistakes and wasn't very happy by the end of turn 2 so I sent my HQ on a suicide run he killed and started to smile again. I still won bit he felt a little better about it. In the end my most talked about games are the close ones, those games were your not sure till the end those are the fun ones.

Smaller points is a great way to make a fair game too.

Its interesting to see this. So any of you have a way of dealing with this that it is pbviously an actual problem within the game, particularly if you want to play friendly.

I'm having fun coming up with (still hopefully good) Necron list with no duplicate units. And its making me think about my next army, which I am starting to work on at the moment too...

I quite like playing games in general in a competitive manner, but I'm sure there is room for this too.

Best way to avoid spamming: do not use any models that are not fully painted and WYSIWYG. It's a lot harder to spam the most overpowered stuff when you can't proxy it and/or throw half-finished models on the table.

Kholzerino wrote:I'm having fun coming up with (still hopefully good) Necron list with no duplicate units.

Dont' bother. One-of-everything lists tend to be very weak, and not particularly fluffy either. They really serve no one.

Make a list that's fun to play against, even if you have to spam to do it. Just don't make the mistake that spam lists are automatically fun to play against, and you'll be fine.

Problem with that, Peregrine, is that I have three nearly fully painted Night Scythes, a fully painted Doom Scythe (spent ages making the 4 flying stands - they are themed as Tomb World Awakens - zombie crons rising). But spamming the Tesla Destructors / Fliers combo is what makes this a hard to beat army.

Guess I can play my C'Tan though. He's a cool, fully painted model and totally over priced. :-)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=anwy2MPT5RE

Kholzerino wrote:
So I'm worried that I've made my list too competitive for friendly play. I'm pretty new to the game and am just interested about how other people balance their lists in order to have a fun game and not get accused of spamming or just to have a laugh.

I am looking forward to playing the list I've got at tournaments but didn't enjoy tearing apart the guy I was playing last night in a "friendly" game. He took it well but was clearly upset.

People get emotional about games, it happens. Always be a good person first and a good player second.

That said, under 5th edition rules, I used the ultimate Chaos spam army: Tide of Spawn. Put 33 Chaos Spawn on a table and let them go with it. Each time we fought, opponents thought it was hilarious, then they got worried when the spawn would not die, then they got concerned because my army was eating all their units without taking casualties. This was great at first, I was playing this unique army and looking like a tactical genius. Then it got old, every game was a repetition of what happened before. Then I crushed the opposition at a store tournament, saw some kids ordering spawn in bulk to run the same army just because it would win, and gave up on the Tide of Spawn for good. Sometimes it is no fun to win.

If you think you are running a list that is too competitive, experiment. You will always have this one to fall back on, so why not change the list around, take some other units, try to optimize, see what happens when you experiment with psychic powers, and risk losing a few games. It's something you have to understand in order to be a real gamer. To make up for the Tide of Spawn, I stopped taking exactly the same list twice to friendly games. It's made wargaming fun again.