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I don't like the term, it's super reductive, but why do Spam Builds do so well at tournaments?

For instance, the highest ranked Eldar list at Caledonian Uprising had 6 units of Wraithguard, all in Serpents and one Spiritseer to make them troops and that's it. It's a great army. Five serpents with DAVU and three Wraithknights did well. But the more variety in the lists, the less well armies seem to do. It's unusual to see a top table army with significant points spent on more than two or possibly three units. Hornets are great. Wraithknights are great. Wraithguard are great. Yet there weren't any of the top armies that spead their points around all of these units. The best Tau primary army was also the most successful Ad Lance army. It was basically 3 Riptides and Ad Lance. Almost all the points on two units. Why is it that this is the route to success, rather than having a spread of successful units balanced across your army?

Spam armies work because any "all comers" lists have enough to deal with a bit of everything, but not ALL of one thing.

If you face 270 ork boyz , chances are you will not have enough dakka to take them out, and by the end of the game they will hold or contest all the objectives due to massive board prescence.

Ad-lance works because the only people who can beat it, are those who built to beat it, weakening other parts of their army.

The main idea, is to have a win condition and stick to it. unless someone beats you by rock-paper-scissors you should be fine.

Because these lists can *usually* only be beaten by counter lists, they are much safer to run at high levels, which is why they are common.

Because it over-saturates on a single threat making it so normal lists can't handle it. A good way to think of it is like rock paper scissors. A balanced list will have a mix of all 3, while a spam list will bring only rocks. When the balanced list fights the list spamming rock, the scissors are useless and his own rocks won't generate any advantage but he also doesn't have enough paper to deal with all the rocks his opponent has because he spent some of his list on now useless scissors and rocks. Basically balanced lists are only 1/2 effective against spam lists so will inevitable lose (especially when the spammed unit in question is basically rock and scissors combined like the wave serpent is)

The only issue spam lists have is exactly like RPS in that they lose to someone spamming their counter (so the list spamming rock will loses to the list spamming paper). In big tournaments with several round this is bound to happen eventually over the course of several games but in small tournaments it's easy enough to miss the match up entirely.

Because whats worth doing is worth overdoing.

As crown axe said. your opponent wont be able to deal with your whole army unless they are your specific counter spam.

Now I'm still getting the hang of 40k again, but I have been writing a book on Game Theory in non-maths applications for some time, so I might be able to offer some small insight here:

Often times the phenomena of "min-maxing" works so well because the system has been designed for each component to work, and work together, towards the systems end goal and not the players.

When a single component is stressed repeatedly it often cannot be coped with by the system because you are creating an intentional imbalance that is not what the system was designed to do. This shows the difference between the systems "goal" (in this case: a well balanced game), the players "goal" (of being able to win >50% of the time) and the strategy used to enact that goal (stress a single element until it unbalances the whole system.)

Now the "counter" to such things is often obvious from a player perspective (the ork horde mentioned above would probably lose to an army of nothing but anti-infantry,) but is statistically unlikely to be enacted because we have a somewhat random pairing of lists (you don't know what you are going to face in a big tournament,) and that particular element cannot be stressed for the same generic advantage against the "standard" all around build (an all anti-infantry list would not pair well against a balanced list with armour.)

The end result is that when people take "spam" lists they work against the system in exactly the same way that players creating a "balanced" list work within it. Both are instances of meta gaming (using knowledge outside of the system to affect the system itself, or using knowledge from the system to affect other systems,) but one has the element of sportsmanship behind it (building a balanced list and thus working "With" the rules,) and the other an element of ruthlessness about it (building a list specifically to exploit a difficult to balance aspect of the system.)

The real answer lies within the "goal" of the players themselves. If the goal really is "win >50% of the time" then the spam list is the way to go (as long as you are stressing an element with a counter that is difficult to run against a balanced build.) If your "goal" is instead to work with the fluff, have fun, let others have fun ect: then a balanced build actually works to that goal better.

I apologize for the length of that reply, and I may have used too much jargon to make it comprehensible, but I hope the point gets across anyway :-)

Okay. So is it possible to build an army with no more than two of each unit that can win big? Not full Highlander, but varied in its unit choice (even if a lot of them do similar jobs)?

Aww dang it: Crown beat me to it, and probably said it clearer too :-)

 Kholzerino wrote:
Okay. So is it possible to build an army with no more than two of each unit that can win big? Not full Highlander, but varied in its unit choice (even if a lot of them do similar jobs)?

In a game of dice it is possible.

Gak happens all the time.

Ieerm02 - very well put. That really makes me think about it differently. Thanks.