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This is something I’m honestly curious about, and would like to hear people’s thoughts on it. I’ve been seeing various tournament lists for the past good long while, and it seems like the main tendency is something like Big Super Unit x 3, plus CP farm. That’s a big oversimplification, but the general rule is if something’s good, take 3 of it. The problem is this really bothers my sense of what I guess you could call fluff. Like rather than simulating some epic futuristic war, it’s showing what would happen if 3 daemon princes ran into 3 riptides walking down the street.

I could go on about this for a while. Maybe I’ll just skip to the question part.

Question one: rather than taking 3 of something, would it not make more sense to have three different units that fill a similar function? For example, disco lords are great at close combat. I could take 3 disco lords sure, but couldn’t I instead take maybe 1 disco lord, 1 daemon prince, and I don’t know 1 keeper of secrets? They’re all super good at hitting things up close, and maybe there’s something one of them might not be so good against, but the other two might be. Like one has a lot of attacks, and another has insane AP values. Is there a reason this isn’t done?

Which sort of leads to question two: when tournament lists are made, is there someone calculating all of the possibilities of each unit and determining that yes, 3 of this one is definitely the way to go? Or are they mostly built around the fact that someone made a similar list and happened to win with it?

I’m not meaning to denigrate competitive players or anything like that, so I’m very sorry if it comes off that way. This is just an aspect of the game that genuinely puzzles me. I also recognize that my idealized vision of the game requires some very well thought out unit and mechanics design, so I’m hoping not to open that particular can of worms.

This is a symptom of the competitive nature of tournaments. I think you'll generally find that outside of competitive games, and possibly even in the lower brackets of tournaments, it's common to see players take fluffy, narrative driven lists. The problem is that these lists aren't as points efficient as taking three of the most cost effective unit available to your faction, and therefore, these lists don't often win tournaments, and therefore aren't often highlighted as much as their more victorious counterparts.

Generally if three similar units fill the same role one of them is a better/more efficient choice than the other two, which is where you get the triple-something lists.

So I guess to expand a bit, what does efficient or cost effective mean? I mean I’ve seen articles explaining average damage per point or whatever, but aren’t those kind of arbitrary and biased? They tell you how much damage they can do, but how many points is “get to and hold an objective really well”? Or as an example, Slaanesh Fiends. Their ability is that they prevent units from falling back. That sounds like a really great ability. Are they cost effective? How many points is that ability worth?
Or are things not considered competitive outside of straight damage dealing?

Crackedgear wrote:
This is something I’m honestly curious about, and would like to hear people’s thoughts on it. I’ve been seeing various tournament lists for the past good long while, and it seems like the main tendency is something like Big Super Unit x 3, plus CP farm. That’s a big oversimplification, but the general rule is if something’s good, take 3 of it. The problem is this really bothers my sense of what I guess you could call fluff. Like rather than simulating some epic futuristic war, it’s showing what would happen if 3 daemon princes ran into 3 riptides walking down the street.

I think you'll find quite a few rainbow lists if you look hard enough. Skari's list from Critical Hit GT was a triple Battalion, with 2x2 Flyers instead of 1x3+1 Flyer for example. Dan Sammons brought 2 Invictors and a Venerable Dread instead of the more classic 3 Invictors and won first place at the New Year Knockout. I think Skari probably just felt like taking two of each, but the reason why I imagine Dan Sammons took one and only one VenDread is because there is a Stratagem that he can only use once which lets him make a Dreadnought into a Character. This is usually the only reason to not spam the best unit at a role, you want to be able to use some insane Stratagem on the unit and having a backup unit is either ineffective because the unit is only effective when used with that Stratagem or you just don't need the backup because the Stratagem is used before the start of the game.

Question one: rather than taking 3 of something, would it not make more sense to have three different units that fill a similar function? For example, disco lords are great at close combat. I could take 3 disco lords sure, but couldn’t I instead take maybe 1 disco lord, 1 daemon prince, and I don’t know 1 keeper of secrets? They’re all super good at hitting things up close, and maybe there’s something one of them might not be so good against, but the other two might be. Like one has a lot of attacks, and another has insane AP values. Is there a reason this isn’t done?

No. Look at things from your opponent's perspective. Would it not be easier to pick which unit to shoot with your different weapons if they have units with different weaknesses? Your put the boltguns (assuming they are S4 AP-) into the KoS without an armour save and your lascannons into the Disco Lord to punch through his armour. Take three KoS and your opponent will be wasting lascannons on your armourless monster, take three Disco Lords and your opponent will waste bolters on your heavily armoured Disco Lord. It's also quite hard to find multiple datasheets that fulfil the same damage role, so if you take only vaguely similar units your opponent will have the option of taking out whatever is the biggest threat first, but when you spam a single unit then they are all of equal threat and you won't waste pts on durability your opponent will ignore or on a bigger damage output that will never happen because that unit gets killed first.

Which sort of leads to question two: when tournament lists are made, is there someone calculating all of the possibilities of each unit and determining that yes, 3 of this one is definitely the way to go? Or are they mostly built around the fact that someone made a similar list and happened to win with it?

Maybe? It depends on the individual guy. Sometimes it's pretty easy to feel when a unit is good or not. Maybe your hear from a buddy that Aggressors are good so you proxy them and find they are amazing or you look at top tournament lists on 40kstats and find they show up once in a while or maybe you do the math on how effective they are vs Intercessor Squads and like the results.

I’m not meaning to denigrate competitive players or anything like that, so I’m very sorry if it comes off that way. This is just an aspect of the game that genuinely puzzles me. I also recognize that my idealized vision of the game requires some very well thought out unit and mechanics design, so I’m hoping not to open that particular can of worms.

My ideal world also has more diversity and I think Stratagems does help push the game in the direction of more diversity, but GW getting the balance so exact that a Disco Lord is interchangeable not only with KoS and DP, but also the rest of the 1400 pts in your list? That's very unlikely, something has to give and so you're either taking 3x3, 2x3, 1x3 or 0. 3x1 doesn't make a lot of sense from a theoretical standpoint IMO unless you have a one-use KoS Strat, a one-use Disco strat and a one-use DP strat. If you become good enough at the game like Skari you can make the rules work for you and beat opponents even if they have slightly superior lists by making fewer mistakes than your opponent.