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And by fluffy I mean: that fits traditional formations for the army played. Most generally mono-army.
And by viable, I mean that you won't majorly handicap yourself playing it.
I really enjoy making list that fits a theme, but tournaments lists that I'm seeing rarely have a theme.
So can one make a fluffy but crunchy list
Something like:
Ig armored company
Ig artillery company
Space marine battle company
Space marine tank company
Spacewolf great company
Deathwing
...

Outside of armies that can't soup you'll always be losing something by not souping. It'll just come down to what percentage of the armies potential power you lose by not souping. For example if your army would be 3% better by souping you can decide that it's not enough of a benefit for you to bother and the list could still be viable. Fluffy isn't the right word for what you're asking though. In the fluff armies work together all the time, there's even examples of chaos and the imperium working together at times. By the standard of only using a solo army though the only time you're not losing something is when the option to take it simply isn't there. The reason that you rarely see pure lists in tournaments isn't necessarily because they're bad. Tournament players just typically will do whatever they can to maximise their odds of winning be it increasing their odds by 1% or 50%.

TLDR: It's all a matter of degrees. Dark eldar can be viable without soup for example but you need to weigh up whether what you lose is worth it to you personally to stick to any self imposed restrictions.

Imperial soup is fluffy.

Green Tide of Ork Boyz...??

BY fluffy maybe lets say our their any mono factions lists viable

Ravenwing isn't at horrible standing currently; their flyers are quite strong. Knight lances are viable and fluffy. Tau gunlines w/a support mecha are, as well.

Imperial Guard, Tau, Tyranids, Orks, Necrons - these are armies where you can build a mono-army fluffy list and be decent to the standard of play that one would expect from a "fluffy" game.

The only space marines that I would say can be "fluffy" and succeed would be space wolves, and deathwatch, because they're very specialized even when they're fluffy.

An Imperial soup of dozens of guardsmen, tanks etc, and a dozen Marines leading the charge sounds pretty fluffy to me.

I do well locally with mono-Space Marines. Lots of 10-man Tacticals, Devastators, plus transports and no Guilliman.

If 7th Edition Militarum Tempestus codex is still valid, then 2000 points of Militarum Tempestus with Valkyries is fluffy. It is essentially the entire Scion regiment on the field.

Assuming you mean "fluffy" to mean "resembling a fighting formation that makes sense in the 40k universe," then yes, there are still some viable, representative lists.

Mono IG: lots of men, tanks, and guns.
Tau: A good list can be built around the bigger suits, drones, and fire warriors.
Dark Eldar: their best stuff is mostly bread and butter: kabalites, raiders, ravagers, jetbikes, and flyers.
Ad-Mech: with or without knights, Admech have some strong units, but some hard counters.
Mono-Nurgle: Admittedly demons plus Deathguard, but there are some great builds in there
Craftworlds: Bikes, Flyers, wave serpents, guardians, Dark Reapers, and Fire Prisms are all great, while Shining Spears are borderline OP. Alas, Alaitoc is by far the strongest craftworld, which limits the pure fluff potential. Still, a Biel-Tan list build around aspects and transports would still be really good.
Knights: probably the simplest answer, even taking away their CP farm they are damn good.

Most space marines, as well as CSM, would struggle to find a really strong, fluffy list. Custodes can be very strong, but only when spamming jetbikes. Nids can be feisty, but they aren't great. I don't know enough about Necrons. Harlies can be really good but collapse against knights like a cheap card table.

Yeah, I've had good local success with this general list:

60 Plaguebearers in two squads of 30
A bunch of small Nurgling squads
9 Plague Drones, in sets of 3
Epidemius, a Poxbringer, and a Spoilpox Scrivener.
And end it off with a Daemon Prince.

In larger games, I sometimes add Nurgle Obliterators, along with Cypher.

Admittedly, Cypher probably ain't fluffy, but I could easily exchange him for a Lord or Sorcerer.

Craftworld Eldar? Dark Eldar?
True you do see these mixed with each other and/or Ynnari, but you can build a perfectly vialble and powerful list without "souping" them

-

 Marmatag wrote:
Imperial Guard, Tau, Tyranids, Orks, Necrons - these are armies where you can build a mono-army fluffy list and be decent to the standard of play that one would expect from a "fluffy" game.

The only space marines that I would say can be "fluffy" and succeed would be space wolves, and deathwatch, because they're very specialized even when they're fluffy.

Necrons cannot be built fluffy and have any possibility of being competitive. Vaults, DDay Arks, Destroyers, TB and wraiths with no troops, monolith, etc... isn't fluffy.

IMO the infantry-heavy IG army, backed up by artillery & tanks, is both fluffy and kick-ass this edition. Probably king of this edition. Particularly with the Warlord Trait/Warlord Relic CP recycling combo.

Sisters AoF spam works, but I'm waiting for the trial rules & the plastic models.

Thousand Sons Smite-spam works. Most will say use Cultists as Troops, but I say that, while Rubrick Marines are more expansive, the Aspiring Sorcerers add nicely to the Smite Spam.

People can say assault is dead in 8th, but IMO World Eaters is still an assault army to be feared.

You should be able to run a single Drukhari Kabal or Wych Cult. Or, you could go Ynnari which combines Drukhari, Craftworlds, Harlequins, and Corsairs into a single army. It's very fluffy as well as the army has an entire book dedicated to it in The Gathering Storm story arc.

SG

With the rule of 3 in place its difficult to build tyranids unfluffilly. And even then, the ‘unfluffy’ hive tyrant spam lists had some sort of justification via one of the behemoth splinter fleets which comprised almost entirely of monstrous synapse creatures iirc.

Doctor-boom wrote:
And by fluffy I mean: that fits traditional formations for the army played. Most generally mono-army.
And by viable, I mean that you won't majorly handicap yourself playing it.
I really enjoy making list that fits a theme, but tournaments lists that I'm seeing rarely have a theme.
So can one make a fluffy but crunchy list
Something like:
Ig armored company
Ig artillery company
Space marine battle company
Space marine tank company
Spacewolf great company
Deathwing
...

Imperial Guard gunline. Fluffy and fairly decent.

There's no real drfinition to what "fluffy" is

I do well locally with my imperial guard superheavy tank company. It's not going to win any tournaments, of course, but it's pretty good I'd say.

 koooaei wrote:
There's no real drfinition to what "fluffy" is

True, however it seems odd that when presented with 2 different army lists, one built with theme over competition, the other built for competition ignoring theme, players almost universally agree which is the more "fluffy".
There just seems to be something intuitive about list building that makes it clear when a player is building to play the system, rather than to play the game for fun.

-

All infantry imperial guard list. Massed waves of troops is so fluffy as you can get but the things they can pull with there stragems and orders plus all the heavy weapons there close to unstoppable. The down side is it's probably the most expensive in 40K to collect.

Any Lamenters list that gets stomped is pretty fluffy.

valdier wrote:

 Marmatag wrote:
Imperial Guard, Tau, Tyranids, Orks, Necrons - these are armies where you can build a mono-army fluffy list and be decent to the standard of play that one would expect from a "fluffy" game.

The only space marines that I would say can be "fluffy" and succeed would be space wolves, and deathwatch, because they're very specialized even when they're fluffy.

Necrons cannot be built fluffy and have any possibility of being competitive. Vaults, DDay Arks, Destroyers, TB and wraiths with no troops, monolith, etc... isn't fluffy.

I don't know about that. I have had some good success in my local meta with running


20 warriors
20 warriors
10 warriors in a ghost ark
Cryptek w/ shielding ability / immortal pride / veil
Overlord
Deciever

Deceiver moves a block of 20 and overlord up, cryptek moves other 20 up with himself. Sit on an objective and use the nihilak dynasty. I normally lose one group of 20, but then i boost the other, use the strat to give them 3+/4++ save, and with 2 reanimation attempts at 4+ and not having to worey about moral the silver tide can be really effective at holding the center of the board.

Your local meta can really derermine how effective fluff can be.

 beir wrote:
Imperial soup is fluffy.

Too bad I prefer my soup chunky.

No, wait, they call that a stew.

What do you mean by "viable"? Do you mean:

A) A fun list which is strong enough to score a win on a tabletop in a local setting, narrative or open play, or just general pick-up games.

or

B) A strong, tournament-aimed list which can make it to a top table.

Those are two hugely different goals. Every codex can more or less be A, but fewer can be B without some help.

 beir wrote:
Imperial soup is fluffy.

In theory yes... but once you start having custodes all on jetbikes and imperial knights and gulliman in every army then not so much.

Spaces rarely if every fight by themselves.... But they also fight together as a whole. Entire tactical squads not 5 man units.

Astra Militarum combined arms (tanks+infantry) are viable

The good ol' Imperial Household lists have new life (a few knights and a contingent of Astra Militarum 'household guards')

Dark Eldar, especially multi-kabal

Ynnead lists (kind of new in 8th, so I don't know if it counts)

Ork Boys Mob

Ultramarines w/Guillman

Blood Angels mono-list

Dark Angels mono-list

Deathwatch kill teams

Pure Custodes

Custodes rescuing Astra Militarum

Chaos Undivided

Tzentch lists

Deathguard lists

 Galef wrote:

 koooaei wrote:
There's no real drfinition to what "fluffy" is

True, however it seems odd that when presented with 2 different army lists, one built with theme over competition, the other built for competition ignoring theme, players almost universally agree which is the more "fluffy".
There just seems to be something intuitive about list building that makes it clear when a player is building to play the system, rather than to play the game for fun.

-

And they're often completely wrong on what constitutes fluffy. We've had people on here claim that mixed regiments in an IG army is unfluffy and that tactical+devestator+razorback blood angels is unfluffy.

Both are clearly erroneous but some people are so wrapped up in the assumption that strong = unfluffy that they can't actually see past that.

craggy wrote:
An Imperial soup of dozens of guardsmen, tanks etc, and a dozen Marines leading the charge sounds pretty fluffy to me.

Not really. Marines are a rapid insertion elite force. They are used very differently tactically than guard are. In the overall battlefield yes, you can have marines and guard. But them fighting together? Not really.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Table wrote:

craggy wrote:
An Imperial soup of dozens of guardsmen, tanks etc, and a dozen Marines leading the charge sounds pretty fluffy to me.

Not really. Marines are a rapid insertion elite force. They are used very differently tactically than guard are. In the overall battlefield yes, you can have marines and guard. But them fighting together? Not really.

Its the same way that CSM will use and work with a traitor guard army but wont be on the front lines with the rabble.