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You dont sound like a WAAC player at all komosunder. You admit to not playing your boring WAAC list unless the stakes are high. Thats pretty much how you should play in my book. I really enjoy playing a varied and different army. I attend 4-6 tournaments a year. I avoid ard boys. I win about one or two tournaments a year, mostly small affairs. The point of the tourni for me is to see if i can win with my oddball list, have fun, meet new people and have a good time. winning is tertiary. I want to win but i dont put a whole lot of energy into the thought that i will win.

Someone earlier said that they hate the WAAC reference because it implies that you are winning at the cost of loosing something. I think you are. I used to play a list that won almost every tourni i played in. It abused a few loopholes. Most people had never faced it and had no idea how bad it could be for them. I rolled over my foes sometimes without lossing a unit (once). The cost was the fun for me and my opponent since they were almost guarenteed a loss and me a win. It got old. I got tired of it and started playing a fun list and started winning less but enjoying the game more. Just my opinion. WAAC does nothing to demonstrate your tactical acumen, it just demonstrates that you have a basic knowledge of the game and the ability to read a net list and go to ebay to buy it.

I think competitive "WAAC" play has its place in wargaming. Usually that place is tournaments, rarely with friends unless its agreed upon. I have my army that I consider my "competitive" army and when a new edition comes out I usually play that army until I come up with a list that I am happy is a good competition list. After that, I move on to other armies and just play whatever I want and play for fun.

However, where I have a problem with people who use netlists and have that "WAAC" mentality are when they only play that one list that is "guaranteed" to win, never experiment, only have fun when they crush the other player and get pissy when they lose. I had one player who actually bent/broke rules because his netlist was losing and he couldn't stand that thought. I've seen WAAC players who crushed new players to the hobby and felt justified doing so because they won.

I'm not saying that players shouldn't play to win - that has problems too, since its not fun playing someone who isn't actually trying to win or has an "I don't care" attitude. I am saying that friendly games should be just that, friendly, not cutthroat "if I don't win, I am not having fun and the game is broken and you are cheating" attitudes.

I almost always play with people I know well. Among my friends, there is a huge WAAC attitude. We don't get to play often, so if one of us brings anything but our top notch best we tend to take it as an insult.


As far as playing unique and fluffy lists, I tend to do that more when I play fantasy. Fantasy is much less strict on WYSIWYG so conversions and themed armies are easier to put together. For example, my Beaseman army is full of Centigors and Chariots. Every model is converted. My Blood Angles, on the other hand, are a typical 2000 DOA list.


I can understand people who don't bring their absolute best and the motives behind their decision. When I go to a game, however, I neither ask for nor offer any quarter or respite. I would be insulted if people went easy on me, so i don't go easy on anyone else unless they specifically ask for it.


-Jim

Well, as to the amount of netlists I have to say around here its due to the economy that most of us in the area have WAAC armies, and they get boring to play and see, which is the biggest reason I ceased playing MTG, because everyone at the FLGS would use a variant of one of the top 3 decks, now with that said for personal prefference I love playing with/against fluffy lists, they are interesting and it makes you think outside the box. As to the WAAC players who use net lists in games against people in friendly games and get all giddy when they win no matter if its an old vet player or a new guy, I find it disgusting, now that is actually personal experience talking, when I first started I accidentally did the only competitive list necrons have, largely because it utilised the tactics that I love, mobility, ability to get away from nasty hordes, and some minor irritation, and I ended up butchering a friend who was playing a random SM list and quite frankly I felt kind of like a bastard for doing so.

ps. to explain how I accidentally did that on the necrons, I didnt care for warriors for the stand and shoot tactics they have, so I went with 2 groups of those, 2 monoliths to get the warriors out of tight spots and used destroyers because they are fun to run around and shoot with and then I used the Betrayer just because he is Loki on wheels.

Hell even now I am looking at doing just a valkyrie/vendetta spam list for fun, I would imagine all that would be necessary to ream it is excessive amounts Autocannons, however I like the general airborne fluff and strategy, odds are if it butchers fun lists I will change it up to make it more fun for both me and my oposition at the time.

I have only played WAAC lists at tournis and have stopped fielding them at all. Now i only patronize comped events. Its more fun for me when you see people who are playing every manner of list. The WAAC attitude at one local shop has killed their turnout for tournaments. The lists that you will see are as follows.
SW: 30 terminator with 15 longfangs and as many missiles and razorbacks as possible. Boring.
Mech Dar: Put everything in reserve and speed on late game to try and steal objectives.
Ork: green tide with max lootas.

Boring. Because you are sure to face certain really tooled up lists, you can either buy the necessary spam to be able to build a list that can compete or not attend. Apparently not attending has become a big thing because no one goes to that shop for events any more, much less to play games. Its sad. The other FLGs in the area has fairly large turnout. No one plays WAAC lists and we all have a lot of fun. Im not saying that they WAAC mentality is the only force that is driving the decline of our other shop, but its definitly having an effect IMHO.

Sigh Im not a WAAC gamer I just dont own any of my codexs "bad" choices. This hobby is way to overpriced to waste money on models that live on your shelf /looks over at collection of ork trucks and cries


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sennacherib wrote:I have only played WAAC lists at tournis and have stopped fielding them at all. Now i only patronize comped events. Its more fun for me when you see people who are playing every manner of list. The WAAC attitude at one local shop has killed their turnout for tournaments. The lists that you will see are as follows.
SW: 30 terminator with 15 longfangs and as many missiles and razorbacks as possible. Boring.
Mech Dar: Put everything in reserve and speed on late game to try and steal objectives.
Ork: green tide with max lootas.

Boring. Because you are sure to face certain really tooled up lists, you can either buy the necessary spam to be able to build a list that can compete or not attend. Apparently not attending has become a big thing because no one goes to that shop for events any more, much less to play games. Its sad. The other FLGs in the area has fairly large turnout. No one plays WAAC lists and we all have a lot of fun. Im not saying that they WAAC mentality is the only force that is driving the decline of our other shop, but its definitly having an effect IMHO.

Only one of the list you mentioned is powerful and all those list look much better on the tabletop then some random collection of units that dont make any sense both tacticaly and fluff wise. I am so sick of fluff bunnies bitching about WAAC list when they are so fluffy for instance mech IG= mech inf company and that makes more sense then some fluffy players random collection of models (with 10 pages of back story that I really dont give a gak about other then giving me something to mock you about)

So I have been playing eldarfor about 8 years now and do all sorts of lists. Cookie cutter lists arent really that great imho... I found doing things differently has worked wonders for me. Wraithlords in Mechdar, scorpions in serpents, harlies in mechdar, footdar without wraiths... All this stuff works, may not be super competative in the wrong hands but you get a player who has come up with their own way of cheeze they are near unstopable. In my area we have the duel jetcouncel mechdar player and yet people are more affraid of my wacky eldar lists because i have found a way to make nearly any unit in that codex cheezy.

Now I am moving on to dark eldar and allready people hate my army. (Damn what a player can do with a new codex!)

I think it really depends on your playstyle and the people you play.

I hate to say it, but an established list in the right player's hands is off the charts effective.

I like playing random and wacky, but the result is I usually do around the .500 mark (or worse) in a competitive setting.

There's a reason MtG every season became only about 3 decks. Heck, during "black summer", it was either necropotence or a necropotence deck counter.

40k is the same thing.
To each their own...but if you choose to be a "connosieur of crap", you have to accept your list's limitations and be able to lose.

I feel the same way, OP, I run a list with Logan Grimnar, all the time, and everytime I hear, "why dont you just drop logan and you can have another 2 razorbacks with grey hunters?" or "Logan's too expensive, hes not competitive" well, I REFUSE to run cookie cutter lists, cause its lame, and i have more fun getting into the game then winning it, and Logan Grimnar's fluff and special rules are awesome!

“Even if the situation is the same, do it differently.” – Gen Hermann Balck

I think this quotation neatly sums up the problem with the cookie cutter lists. People tend to build the lists in anticipation of matchups but often neglect to account for terrain and, in some builds, how the point efficient pieces they've included interact with the rest of the army. I've been very successful running what is generally considered a sub-optimal Marine army because the pieces work well together. While the more "cookie cutter" lists can be highly competitive in the right hands, they are also easy to pick apart in the hands of an inexperienced or poor player who cannot do a good analysis of his opponent's army. In this case, it goes back to Sun-Tzu: you have to understand the terrain, your own forces and the enemy's forces to be consistently successful. The focus on maximum efficient builds tends to overshadow effective builds generated by units that are synchronized inside an army list that cover each other's weaknesses. It also makes people undervalue seemingly inefficient units such as a lascannon/autocannon predator because they do not understand its function inside the army and its role in setting conditions to make the other units in the army more effective.

It also overemphasizes the list, as opposed to the use of the list. Even Pyrovores can be devastating in the hands of someone who knows how to use them properly, and can read the terrain and battlefield right.

I'd kind of like to see a Chess Playing Supercomputer repurposed for a 2000 point 40K game. Feed it 'bad' armies, and see how it does.

I've alway calculated my army based on flexibility for anything I find it adds a more tactical edge to the game . These cut out armies just make victory seem as fun as winning rock paper scissors which lost interest for me in grade school.

Funny, but I always build my armies based on the models I have/will have, and the strategy I feel will give these units the best synergy. Net lists are nice to look at, but hardly a deciding factor versus my local metagame/bi-weekly paycheck.

SJ