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Note: First time on this forum.
Recently during a battle, anyone but my opponent, called me a cheeser, or my army at least, for the simple fact that I brought a Malefic Psyker.

Before I go ahead, here is the list i Used (1000pt),

1 Primaris Psyker, ML 2
Enginseer
CCS, MoO, Carapace for the veterans, and a LC
3 squads of Carapace, camo gear veterans, 2 with chimeras and 2 with Heavy Bolters and some grenade launchers somewhere in between.
A LR Executioner, Hull LC, and sponsor mounted melta goodnes (MM).
1 Scout Sentinel and 1 Armoured sentinel with a Plasma cannon.

and 10 Bloodletters prepared to be summoned

I honestly felt angry for being called a cheeser, simply because my army is far from optimal, maybe even competetive.
Instead of adding flavour and options to my army, it was apparently in no way OK to use daemons and cheating.

In the end I chose to concede the battle during turn 3, 50% due to my opponents Imperial Knight running amoc with a 4+ invul, and the other 50% for me feeling like that which I fielded was not OK.

What are your thought on this? What is your defenition of cheese, and what can I do to prevent something like this?

"Cheese" generally means something that your opponent finds difficult to play against.

The biggest accusations of cheese generally come from mediocre players with slightly more powerful lists than the rest of the gaming group and they're generally levelled at anyone that challenges that status.

Personally, I don't think there is such a thing as a cheesy army list - just more and less powerful ones.

Your army list is not especially powerful, a Knight in a 1K game is very powerful.

If the matter is, that my opponent should have a hard time playing against my 10 bloodletters, then it feels like the cheese label is malplaced on my army

Yeah, nothing wrong at all with your list or wanting to use malefic. Finding worth while opponents isn't always easy, unfortunately.

That guy is lame. Those people exist. If you do have to play him again, tell him to make your list for you. If he still complains about something, he made it himself.

 niv-mizzet wrote:
That guy is lame. Those people exist. If you do have to play him again, tell him to make your list for you. If he still complains about something, he made it himself.

The guy I battled, was actually OK with my list. It was some of the other guys I play with that pointed it out.

Cikkirock wrote:

 niv-mizzet wrote:
That guy is lame. Those people exist. If you do have to play him again, tell him to make your list for you. If he still complains about something, he made it himself.

The guy I battled, was actually OK with my list. It was some of the other guys I play with that pointed it out.

Oh well then they're the lame ones. 40k has an absolute TON of people who have very sideways views on how powerful/cheesy certain things in the game are. Usually players that don't play often enough to experience the "whole" metagame and/or lack the playskill to determine worthiness of unit rules vs price point. (For example, there's a relatively infamous dakka poster who thinks the wraithknight is bad.)

There is nothing wrong with your list. A single non-daemon ml2 psyker trying to summon bloodletters is a longshot with painful risks, and isn't even a blip on the cheese meter, even when it works.

I mean if malefic was safe tp use for anyone maybe it would be a little cheesy but you went up against a knight in 1k, i normally turn down that.... certainly wouldn't turn down playing against your army it seems pretty much a standard fun list

Ignore them, if things are bad enough just tell them not to interrupt or be involved, you weren't in any way being cheesy here

Cheese is a catch all term for stuff your opponent doesn't want to deal with, doesn't like, or thinks is silly.

Don't put much weight to the term. I've seen people call putting marines in transports as 'cheesy'...

It's generally just poor form and worse sportsmanship, often backed up by lousy social skills and abilities to deal with people.

Personally, I don't think there is such a thing as a cheesy army list - just more and less powerful ones.

There are cheese lists but your list isn't that cheesy at all. It is quite divers and summoning isn't really that good with only 2 caster lv's. Brining a screamerstar at 1000 points or some of those nasty high power detachments/formations that would be cheese.

Glad to know that it isn't my choice of models that causes the cheese problem
I'll probably keep using the demons every now and then, though in all the battles, the 'letters has proven themselves worse meatshields than conscripts, haha

I've seen people call putting marines in transports as 'cheesy'...

This is actually quite cheesy if you got them all for free and went all out msu...

Cheese is basically any list, wargear, unit, action, strategy, or natural talent that your opponent can't cope with and has decided to be petulant about

Some things are comparatively strong, some especially so. A few things are probably downright unbalanced, but everything that's game legal is game legal. Sometimes it helps if players discuss what kind of relative power level they're going for, if they're trying to push the envelope of powerful lists for tournaments, or if they maybe want to do something a bit fluffy... or even just use which models they bought for aesthetic purposes.

Cheese has no definition.

Its just what people cry when they cant beat an army or what they cry when they want to be edgy.

Play how you want and dont let other people walk over you by insulting your play style.

What is Cheese?
Sword 'n' Shield Lychguard+Orikan The Diviner is cheese
T5 3+/3++/4+++ Rerolling all failed saves of 1?
Thats cheese

I would define cheese as when a person takes only the most powerful units and deathstar units repeatedly in their army. This means that they scoured forums to see the most powerful units or combos that others came up with and never sat down and built a balanced army themselves.

Most cheese armies will win several games but never make it in a tournament as they are not balanced forces.

Good examples:
thunderwolf cavalry spam
missile launcher spam
flying monsterous creature spam
helldrake spam
strength d weapon spam
skyhammer spam
alpha strike armies

You get my point... spam of strong to op units and formations that give a high probability of winning and make your opponent's game less fun.

A good way to avoid this is build a balanced army. The good old force organization chart (min units, max units) is a great way to avoid cheese or spam. Another good way is to make sure you take troops, elites, heavies, anti-air, fast attack, etc... a balanced army that can do well facing any army or opponent. This takes time and experimentation with your units. It will also require that you buy many different units (or proxy them), and play a variety of opponents and armies. This also requires thought, and not just copying other power gamer's army lists from online forums or tournaments.

When you build an army this way, games are usually close and they are a blast for both players. When you or your opponent builds a cheese list, one person wins and just enjoys the win, the other person is p'd off most of the time (alpha strike army example).

 455_PWR wrote:
I A good way to avoid this is build a balanced army. The good old force organization chart (min units, max units) is a great way to avoid cheese or spam. Another good way is to make sure you take troops, elites, heavies, anti-air, fast attack, etc... a balanced army that can do well facing any army or opponent. This takes time and experimentation with your units. It will also require that you buy many different units (or proxy them), and play a variety of opponents and armies. This also requires thought, and not just copying other power gamer's army lists from online forums or tournaments.

Sounds like I need more and different kind of units then.

Is it possibly to get too diverse in selection?

Simple force org and spam controll can in general help but it isn't fool proof at all. There a are a lot of nasty tournament armies that are perfectly able to fit into it and I am able to make unbound armies that are not overpowered at all.

The best way to avoid cheese would be to:
- Take units you like even if they are bad. A mixed army with good and bad units isn't likely to be cheesy.
- Read tournaments lists of the grand tournaments -> Avoid those power builds / net lists at all cost!
- Read tactica articles -> Try to avoid spamming auto take units.
- Stay away from unfluffy units or formations from outside your army that happen to be really good.

An other good way to tune down your power is not to take any of the powerful detachments / formations that give your army huge bonuses that you don't have to pay any points for.

Your opponent brought a (good) superheavy to a 1000 point game. They don't have much room to complain.

Cikkirock wrote:


Sounds like I need more and different kind of units then.

Is it possibly to get too diverse in selection?

You don't necessarily need a diverse selection of units but you do need a diverse selection of capabilities and the units you select should be able to contribute to more than one of the capabilities. Some armies can pack more versatility into a single unit than others.

The quantity of what you need to kill will depend on points levels but you need to consider the different kinds of targets:
AV14 vehicles
A higher qty of AV11-12 vehicles
Fliers
Large amounts of T3 low save infantry
Medium amounts of T4 3+ infantry
Small amount of T4-5 2+ infantry
High T and W monstrous creatures
Etc.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 oldzoggy wrote:

Personally, I don't think there is such a thing as a cheesy army list - just more and less powerful ones.

There are cheese lists but your list isn't that cheesy at all. It is quite divers and summoning isn't really that good with only 2 caster lv's. Brining a screamerstar at 1000 points or some of those nasty high power detachments/formations that would be cheese.

Those are just lists at the higher end of the power scale. They may or may not be appropriate depending on your gaming group and opponent (utterly inappropriate against a new player, for example, but equally I've played at clubs with multiple national and international level players where lists like that would be considered perfectly normal)

It mostly comes down to spamming units, in a small game 4 wraith knights might be a bit of cheese, same with some of the tau formations in friendly games.

 TheAvengingKnee wrote:
It mostly comes down to spamming units, in a small game 4 wraith knights might be a bit of cheese, same with some of the tau formations in friendly games.

Exalted for truth, but with one caveat: Cheese is not the same as Spam.

Most every unit in the game can be spammed. I can take a Dark Eldar Realspace Raiders detachment with six units of Mandrakes. I may be spamming Mandrakes, but the reason you don't see people complaining is because Mandrakes are bad. Spam is only powerful in combination with powerful/cheesy units.

First of all: Thanks for all the replies, it helps me a great deal, and I got some good tips on army-building in the process!

It seems to me, that there are A LOT of interpretations of what cheese actually is, or even if it actually is even a viable term to use.
The general consenus in this thread seems to be, that some lists can be more powerful than others (I knew that much), and it depends on those I am up against and/or my gaming group. What level of power we're both fielding.

Cheese to me is taking obnoxious combinations of units or taking extremely powerful units in lower point games, where they're much harder to deal with. For example, taking an Imperial Knight in a 500 pt game to me is cheese. Now in a 1500 pt game I would be ok with that, as I would have the tools to fight it. Same goes for something like the Wraithnight. In a 1500+ game I have no problem letting my opponent take one, below that I get a bit iffy about it.

I think the essence of cheese is a playstyle, unit combination, or army list that usually attempts to minimize the opponents actions, game impact, and ability to counter play while maximizing the players options, game impact, and chance to win. A "cheese" tactic makes the opponent feel like they have no potential answers while the opponent is not under the same pressure or constraints.

This invisible death star with 2+ rerollable saves can't really die, can't be targeted by blasts/templates, and will win nearly all combats while the opponent doesn't really have much of an answer as to how to remove the unit from the game. Riptides seemed like cheese because of how durable they are and have such powerful weapons so your options felt limited while the Tau player had freedom to make choices (unless against an equally terrifying threat). Even if they aren't really unstoppable, they tend to seem very daunting and thus cheesy. Bring out 3+ Riptides and the cries of Cheddar ring out (for some armies they really didn't have the answer to such a unit).

I think that is the best summary I have seen VanKraken

Generally speaking, if you're playing an IG only list, it is impossible for you to be using cheese. The codex has none.

Unless you're playing against CSM or a fairly weak IG player, then you may need to consider some stuff. But your list looks fine to me.

With all the nerfs we get with outdated codex, lack of formations, LoW/SH being exiled into IA or Escalation, even universal special rules nerfed especially for us ( MoO + mortar in CCS is NOT a multiple barrage while chapter master +TFC is..).. being IG player and called a cheese player.. is like..
sweet nectar to my ears do not bother and let them whine

Son, if that list of yours is cheese then what I run must be pure, unfiltered, raw century aged stilton.

Ignore your opponent, he/she is being a whining ninny. Right now the Imperial Guard are the second weakest codex in the entire game and quite frankly if you are winning/coming close whilst using them then you have my respect as a fellow IG player.
You should try to get some LR Exterminators and Battle Tanks, they will improve your army greatly.

Quick thing, your list is illegal. Psykers and engine seers cannot be your mandatory hq