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KingCracker:

I think this is going to sound arrogant no matter how I write it, but if Necrons weren't getting a new codex soon, and I participated more in tactical discussions about them, and posted in the army list section with them....how long until my wraith wing got popularized?

My armies aren't comprised of the best units; rather, they have the best units (in my opinion) to fit the theme that I'm after. And each of those themes is consistent in one, brutal fact:

Multiple, simultaneous threats. You can't ignore a piece of any army of mine (save the warriors in my Necron army) as unthreatening, or deal with it later, because they are ALL threats. My orks for example...at 2,000 points I've got 3 battlewagons, burnas, Ghazghkull, a Nob squad, a boyz squad, two deffkoptas, three warbuggies, two units of Lootas....with a KFF screening the vehicles. Ghazghkull goes with the burnas, the nobs go alone, the KFF goes with the boyz. Each of those battlewagons and their contents are a terrible threat. The deffkoptas alpha-striking in is a threat. You can't kill it all at once, and most importantly, and I can't stress this enough: There is nothing you can safely ignore.

I'm a big fan of creating situations on the table where the entirety of my army can focus on a piece of the enemy army. It's another situation entirely where my opponent voluntarily negates a piece of their army to use against me. Orks have never had trouble dealing with MEQs - that's why they're costed at the ability to come 4:1. But I definitely think that Ork advice should find it's foundation in encouraging players to play to the strengths of the codex, not to try justifying it's weaknesses.

I didn't realize that you weren't a tournament player - your OP was slanted as a competitive, tournament idea.

Weird, I wasnt aiming for that when I wrote it In all honesty, I was just writing it, because I was getting annoyed that so many people on the tactics forum just stick with copypasty and never actually THINK about what they are writing, ever. I could ask for random advice on any random army, and I can bet that I would know the majority of the answers on each codex, within 2 guesses. Why 2 guesses? Because every army seems to only have 2 "tournament" builds.

And again man, your opinion is always nice to have, specially for people really wanting the most out of their army, but you just dont quite grasp the point of this thread. I think its because your all about always winning, period. Ive read the threads where you butt heads with Redbeard BIG TIME, because he likes to use themed Ork builds rather then do what you tourny guys do. Does he always win? No, but I bet he had 10x the fun you did, when he did. Because people like us, its a different reason for playing, its not about crushing the other guy as fast and as effectively as I can, its about the match, its about the army, for me its about beating people with builds they swore up and down were garbage. Infact the only time I think you could of understood, was when you stepped out to prove to Stelek that Orks are not a gak army, and that they can kick your ass. If you remember how you felt when, when he finally admitted "Ok, Orks dont actually suck", then you can understand closer to how I prefer to play.

And thats the point of this thread, well really its alot of points. Its to get people to actually try and THINK for themselves for a change, instead of just reading something someone posted about sometime and going "ya! What he said!" Its annoying. Its beyond annoying. Its to try and make people realize, that you can use something you actually WANT to use, and you can figure out how to make it work. Its about trying to have fun, when playing, and figuring out how to make these builds actually work. Because in the end, that will make them a better, stronger player. Thats how you really improve your game, you dont use the top tier codex, with its top of the heap units and spam the hell out of them, because that is actually MUCH easier, then doing what Im suggesting. Infact IVe stated that doing it this way, requires skill. If I can take my Gitz army for example, and actually do damage with it, maybe not always win, but make people say "yea you should play that guy, his army is pretty damn tough" thats my goal. Not to mention, if I DID take super efficient armies like you keep bringing up, then I would be even more terrifying on the table, because if I, or anyone else for that matter, can make a sub par build good-scary, then when we pull out the really good builds, prepare to have a tough game on your hands

I can't find a warhammer equivalent analogy, so I will use a Magic one lol



It is the difference between this card and this card, lol


King, Dash, you are two different styles of player

I think it was best explained by Wizards of the Coast, when they came up with a rare card called "One with Nothing" which is absolutely useless. Only an idiot would put it in their deck... yet it exists... why?

Mark Rosewater wrote:
How does making a card that no one will play add enjoyment to the game?

Let me begin by challenging an assumption of the question. I do not believe no one will play the card. In fact, the card was designed to please a certain segment of the Magic community. I dub this style of player the uber-Johnny. (And I understand the uber-Johnny well as I am an uber-Johnny) Uber-Johnny, like the larger Johnny psychographic, plays to creatively express themself. The Uber-Johnny takes this challenge a step farther. The Uber-Johnny wants to do things that no one has done before. So much so that he (or she) embraces cards that other players discard. He is attracted to the bad bad card like a moth to flame. He is the person the card is designed for. In fact, look through the threads talking about One With Nothing. People keep chiming in how they are excited about the card. This is the audience for the card.
But is making a small section of the audience happy worth upsetting the larger majority?
Yes. We do it all the time. The big expensive Timmy cards piss off Spike. The narrow Johnny rares upset Timmy. Whenever we make a Magic card, everyone that the card isn't meant for tends to get upset by it. In fact, the message “if you don't like the card it wasn't intended for you” is one of the most common themes in my column. The reason I keep hitting that point is that I believe players will be happier with cards they don't like if they understand that someone else really is getting enjoyment out of them.

....Yes, many people are going to hate the card. People are going to write horrible things about it. But the card is going to be memorable and it's going to add something to the overall Magic experience.

Original article: http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtgcom/daily/mr179

Aktually Dash would be the perfekt image of Spike, not Johnny
For non magic nerds:
Spike is the highly competitive player type who will play any card if it's good.
Johnny is the guy who like complex combos who make him win the game(5 card combo in his fluff text).
Timmy is the kind of person who likes to play huge flashy stuff(Leviathan used to be the biggest creature in the game, but also an extremely terrible one).
You can basically categorize any magic player by dividing his play style into Timmy, Johnny and Spike.

Flash Gits are the perfect example of a Timmy unit - flashy, pack a punch and not necessarily competitive. Actually, the entire ork army is basically a timmy army, because orks like huge and flashy

Space Wolves Long Fangs would be a Spike unit - not very flashy, not extremely complex to use, but undoubtedly highly competitive.

Eldar Farseers or Lash Princes are the closest you get to Johnny units, as WH40k has no "true" combos. Both do nothing on their own, but get pretty devastating if paired up with the right units.

Anyways, severedblue hit the nail in the head. KC is probably a Timmy player, while Dash is about as much Spike as you can get. Magic says I'm somewhere in the middle between Spike and Timmy.

btw: "One with Nothing" is a card that makes you discard your own hand for no benefit. Nothing ever justifies using that card

Guys, as I've pointed out several times......my entry into this thread was based on the quotes in my own OP - that this thread was driving a competitive, tournament aspect.

Jidmah, to use your analogy, there's no problem taking "One With Nothing" in your Magic Deck. You could create threads about it. How awesome your awful deck is, and why you get a kick out of it.

But once you put it into terms of "How to maximize the efficiency of a "'one with nothing deck'" and spin it in a competitive slant.....that's a completely different ballgame. And as I've said, that's why I'm here. I'm not actually a Spike player. I play FRIGGIN NECRONS. I adamantly believe that Grey Knights are completely, abusively overpowered. The 50% of the entirely of the 40k world that switched to play them are Spikes.

I'm a Timmy. I like huge flashy stuff. In every army. Deffrollas with sparkly gems on them. Ghazghkull Thraka goes into EVERY army list. If it's 500 points, I've got Ghazghkull Thraka and some gretchin if needs be. My DE are all about flashy combos. I've even tried dressing up my Necrons to be flashy with a Garden theme.

This is all tangental though. =p

My critique here is not based on Flash Gits. I have no objection to using flash gits in an army. I've used them myself, even competitively three times. KingCracker, the only unit in the Ork codex I haven't fielded is an HQ painboy, or an HQ weirdboy (I always take a warphead or upgrade to Zogwort). I may be ashamed that I have FOURTEEN WARBIKERS that I PURCHASED, and primed blue and painted in strange colors....but they've been fielded. I have no objection on people using them either, until they advocate them for competitive, tournament environments.

Redbeard and I clashed on them because he was claiming they were competitive. He went...2-2 I think at Adepticon? With one of those wins being a forfeit or something from a guy who didn't want to play? And his batreps were against awful armies. That's not a shining advocacy for the utility of a unit.

Again...this is COMPLETELY, and SOLELY about the competitive slant, which the last few posters seem to miss when you're accusing me of missing the point of the thread. How could I? I quoted the OP and responded directly. My arguments here are based on competitiveness, efficiency, and tournaments......which are the things I quoted from the OP. If you want this thread to NOT be about those things, then don't drive at them.

And as I've said from the beginning: If those things were absent, I wouldn't be here. I have issues with the cornerstones of the OP on how to build an army (the idea that you build an army around the units you want to take), and the response of tournament players to the unknown.

And Kingcracker....you *get* copy/paste answers in here for one reason only. 90% of the people who post on Dakka should not be doing so. They read what someone else posts, and parrot it in other threads to try sounding like they have something worth saying. If you've noticed in my own posting history, the only time I really chime into a thread is to dig my claws in and rip the other way. As I'm doing here. If someone is asking for DE advice, I don't chime in if there are 10-15 people posting, and some of them have views in alignment with mine. That's really where the Dash-hate comes from on the internet - if I'm posting, it's because I'm being disagreeable. In the past couple years, I've just been more polite about it.

=D Cheers chatting with you.

Actually, there is a huge problem with taking "One With Nothing" in your deck - there are cards which do exactly the same, but you get a benefit from it. Think of it as the ork codex having a second kind of boyz für 6pts each, but those will shoot themselves at the end of turn one. But you know the internet - people still create threads with decks to make "One With Nothing" work WH40k simply has no model that does nothing but hurt yourself. Even the space pope can at least some upsides.

I probably didn't explain those roles properly - both Johnny and Timmy do not care if they lose, as long as they did their combo/flashy stuff. If pure Timmy brought his SAG, one-hit kills his opponents Terminators and then get's tabled, he is fine with the game because he did something flashy. I might not know you personally, but reading your posts for quite a while now, you don't seem like the person who is fine with commonly losing for the sake of doing something flashy. Even in Magic, no one is a pure Spike, Timmy or Johnny. Everyone is at least a combination of two, usually three. While you like flashy stuff, most of the examples you named aim at competitive flashy stuff, making you a Spike-Timmy, with Spike definitely being the dominant part. You even said you played the entire codex to see if it was any good, rather than for the sake of fielding any other units. Also these classification show which type of game you enjoy most, not necessarily which games you always play. If you'd play me in Magic, you'll see combos rarely, but I do have combo decks, on the other hand you will get huge creatures stomping your way fairly often, still only roughly half my decks are made that way.

The point is, you don't field all necron warriors and then try to beat your opponent. You pick up Necrons and do the best you can do with them. This is the difference between Magic and WH40k. You can switch and mix colors, cards and decks however you like, all your options come out of one big pool. In 40k you have multiple pools of options, and are forbidden From mixing them. With necrons you chose one of the weaker pools, but with the options in that pool, you did what Spike would do.
Also keep in mind that even the weaker codices are much, much closer to SW, BA or IG in terms of power than any "One With Nothing"-deck could ever get to any top-tier deck winning a big magic event.

Oh, and I'm not accusing you of missing the point. You have already done what KC tells people to do, namely getting your own opinion on all units of the codex by actually playing them.

Could you imagine a 40K where you could mix and match codices? It'd be absolute Madness!

Yea, Grey knight everythings, with DE transports, and IG heavy support

Alright, well maybe we are both missing each others points, I dunno, agree to disagree. ALSO, I wasnt saying to build an army, you build around a certain unit, not normally, if you read again, I was talking about, for example, building an army with "bad" units like FlashGits. FlashGits should be in bold, with neon signs and fire works going off. Because I can tell ya from playing them alot, you dont just say "well Ive got X amount of points, Ill just take FlashGits" When doing a Gits army, THATS when you build around those units.

Apparently I wasnt clear enough on that, and if so, then I apologize, because I agree with you, normally you dont build an army around 1 particular unit. But as always, thanks for chiming in Dash, and I have noticed that you really only chime in when it seems to matter.

This is why you should always try to play to your strengths - impose your game on your opponent. That way, you'll never find yourself in a situation where you think, 'what now?'

Jidmah wrote: I might not know you personally, but reading your posts for quite a while now, you don't seem like the person who is fine with commonly losing for the sake of doing something flashy.

How about a handful of sparkly pink gretchin multi-assaulting a unit of horrors and a Soulgrinder? =D

Dashofpepper wrote:And as I've said from the beginning: If those things were absent, I wouldn't be here. I have issues with the cornerstones of the OP on how to build an army (the idea that you build an army around the units you want to take), and the response of tournament players to the unknown.

It seems to me that building the best list you can from an underpowered codex (like Necrons) is coming from much the same place as creating the best list you can field based around an underpowered unit. Everyone builds their army lists around the units they want to take, it's just that some folks want to take specific units for different reasons than others. I also think there is less of a gap between the desires of the players here than is being hinted at - anyone making a Necron army is trying to make a strong army that WINS. Anyone making an army around a unit they love but is less uber than the tournament scene likes is likewise trying to make a strong army that WINS.

When I created my Sisters army, I knew what units I wanted to use, and I knew I would need a plan to make them work - the same plan you advocated point of fact...
"Multiple, simultaneous threats. You can't ignore a piece of any army of mine (save the warriors in my Necron army) as unthreatening, or deal with it later, because they are ALL threats."

I found that when used correctly, units weak in other builds can become quite strong. I think every dex has a number of "undiscovered" builds that can function (to varying degrees) in a competitive environment, but are largely overlooked for more obvious builds. I see no reason to discourage people from trying to build something around their favorite army/unit/tactic that works - sure, don't bring it to a tournament without any play testing, or even run out and buy the list without proxying it first. But go for it, nonetheless. The game is simply more FUN with more variety.

I agree. Last edition of fantasy I used Treekin - a 'useless' or 'suboptimal' unit.

One of 2 things happens : opponent thinks you are an idiot in which case you have the upper hand.

OR

Opponent over estimates the unit seeing as how its not widely fielded.

In fairness the availability of a particular minature has a lot to do with it's amount being fielded as well.

Well sometimes yes, but units like the Tervigon and Spore pods. Both are among the strongest builds in the Nid dex, and neither have models
But usually yea, your correct