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Holding all other factors (player skill, terrain) constant, is there an difference between a poorly designed army and an average army when viewed through the lens of an optimized highly competitive army?

Does putting in some amount of list building effort make a difference or does an optimized list so completely outclass it than nothing short of another optimized list is a challenge?

40k in many ways is broken. A lot of games are won at list creation. Then again a person with actual skill and mediocre army can beat a noob with a deathstar list. The problems really come to the fore when players of different intents mix.

The best way to approach any GW game is to figure out what you want from the game and then find others of a like mind.

 Crimson Devil wrote:
40k in many ways is broken. A lot of games are won at list creation. Then again a person with actual skill and mediocre army can beat a noob with a deathstar list. The problems really come to the fore when players of different intents mix.

The best way to approach any GW game is to figure out what you want from the game and then find others of a like mind.

Agreed, but finding consensus amongst a player group may be difficult.


My fear is that, to a competitive list there only exists two types of opponents, easy prey and true challenges, nothing in between.

It depends. Competitive marine lists are more vulnerable to "average lists" than Daemons or Eldar. A bad list will lose to practically anyone who is paying attention.

 minigun762 wrote:

 Crimson Devil wrote:
40k in many ways is broken. A lot of games are won at list creation. Then again a person with actual skill and mediocre army can beat a noob with a deathstar list. The problems really come to the fore when players of different intents mix.

The best way to approach any GW game is to figure out what you want from the game and then find others of a like mind.

Agreed, but finding consensus amongst a player group may be difficult.


My fear is that, to a competitive list there only exists two types of opponents, easy prey and true challenges, nothing in between.

That is true, but you'll also find that you prefer certain players over others. Despite the size of the group I play with. There are two to three people I prefer to play, so I generally make lists to face them. Make a couple of lists at varying power levels and use the list appropriate to your opponent's competitiveness.

Compared to a truly competitive, tournament winning list, anything less than that is exactly that: lesser. It's like taking a knife to a gunfight; it doesn't matter how big your knife is, or how good you are with it, when the other guy is dual wielding AR15s while wearing rocket powered skates to evade you.

 Tannhauser42 wrote:
Compared to a truly competitive, tournament winning list, anything less than that is exactly that: lesser. It's like taking a knife to a gunfight; it doesn't matter how big your knife is, or how good you are with it, when the other guy is dual wielding AR15s while wearing rocket powered skates to evade you.

But what if the dude holding the knife is guardsman Marbo?

Skill always comes into play. I have ran a balanced SoB army against wraithspam and Farsight lists wielded by new players and (not playing aggressively) I dominated in those games. But two players of somewhat similar skill will have a lopsided game if one army is nasty and optimized while the other is not; 40k is just built that way. If both players run fluffy, balanced lists there might be a more balanced game, but optimizing is just that, optimized. Some codices are more powerful than others; its how things go; at the end of 5th Draigowing was dominant, beginning of 6th Cron Air was. So right now, the SOPMOD M4 is probably Tau or Eldar, with some SM and Chaos Daemon builds coming in as run of the mill ARs

What Crimson Devil says is the truth. Theres nothing worse than a mis-match game!