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My group was discussing this so I just thought I'd look for more opinions. Yes, this is one of those "opinion" topics. One persons fluffy army is another person's WAAC army...and you can always invent fluff for a build, although I think as reasonable people we can recognize a stretch.

Title makes it clear, but many people describe their army building process as "fluffy" or "competitive". Where is this line? Is an all FW dreadnaught army a "fluff" army or simply someone choosing the most powerful units as they see it? (yes, I know, most powerful/OP is also really an opinion, so let's stay away from the trees and talk about the forest)

For example, I run 6 different armies, but only two of them are large enough to have serious options at 2k (4 of my armies reach 2k and that's it, and contain pretty much only the basic army box units because you can get them cheaper). I almost always run armies best described as Take on All Comers, with a mix of all slots. I buy (and mostly convert) the units I find "cool" from the fluff. (Examples: Dreadnaughts, Rough Riders, Howling Banshees, Noise Marines, SM bikers, etc) That does not mean they aren't useful/powerful in the game, although I doubt I'm winning a major tournament with any of my lists. Some samples to show my own thought process;

I run a Rough rider themed guard army conceptualized as a break through force. Therefore it all has speed and is mechanised. 35+ RR's, 4 Leman Russ's, armored sentinels, and troops in chimeras. I play this army hard on the table. On my tables, if I get first turn, it tends to win and I play it using the best strats etc. So, where does it lie on the fluff vs competitive? I have owned it for almost a decade and it is built on fluff (no units were chosen for their awesomeness in game, although changing rule sets have at times made them really good) but tends to crush my friends armies.

Another army is my howling banshee themed army. The background on banshees is just cool to me. The army is built around Warp Spiders and howling banshees, with farseers and a wraithlord converted to resemble the banshee aspect. It includes a wave serpent and two falcons, and although it is really fast, does not do well on the table (howling banshees and warp spiders have terrible rules this edition, although speed does score VP's). So...fluff build, fluff army?

Anyone have thoughts?

You can sometimes tell by the amount of effort gone into the modelling. I've seen a couple of tournament-level all-Dread armies and they were just bodged together, any old Dreadnought chassis they could get with Aegis Defence guns stuck on haphazardly. To me, that's not a fluffy army. That's the flavour of the month and as soon as a new flavour's released you'll happily ditch it.

Great reply right off! You are right Valkyrie, the amount of work put into an army should also be a factor in it. My SM biker army has every model converted to Ogre sized arms to represent a gene-seed irregularity and their penchant for CC.

Exalted your post!

I would second that. I think usually one should be able to see in the effort put in if it is a themed army or a WAAC army. But I assume (lacking practical experience with it) the attitude of the player also plays a role. If he seems really involved with his guys and has some ideas, maybe even a bit of fluff he likes to share about what is standing there on the other side of the table I would be much more inclined to believe that's a themed army than when he vaguely points in their direction with a "... it's like... a Leman Russ column... of Leman Russ tanks".

My "competitive" list? Plague Marines are in squads of 5 or 10.
My fluffy list? Plague Marines are in squads of 7.

It can be really hard to tell IMO. Sometimes people happen to just pick models they like that are also top-tier units in their Codex. I picked up a box of Kabalites in October and by January Druhkari players were all WAAC try-hards because the Codex turned out to be really good. The same thing happened when I decided to play Deathwatch to get my group's RPG characters on the tabletop.
I don't think there is a hard and fast way of determining whether someone's list is lore-based or competition-based. The Iron Hands dreadnought spam list was lore-friendly as the Chapter likes its bionics and its dreadnoughts, the lore informed the rules. It just so happened that the playtesting didn't catch very powerful combos, although those combos were axed very quickly once they were discovered.

A fluffy list is when I look at the other side of the table and I like what I see. A competitive list is when I look at the other side of the table and I don't like it

I don't really get irritated at what other people play; that's their story, their interpretation of the fluff, whatever, sure, fine. What bugs me is when I feel like I'm being punished for doing something I feel is fluffy, or using models I like, or the rules are rewritten just to force me to buy different stuff. The line between a fluffy list and anything else is when I put a unit in the list that doesn't fit my story or has models I don't really like because of its rules. I've mostly stopped playing 40k because when that's my bar I start to exist as a punching bag for the people who do buy things for their rules to steamroll, just to demonstrate to me the inferiority of my approach to the game.

a long time ago, GW used to have requirements for your army list by percentage. I kind of still think of it in those terms. If less than 25% of your army is in troops, I tend to think of that as a relatively fluffless army. if the army is themed around a cool concept, or a character and their story, those things reach out to me as fluff.

But it's a really hard line to delineate. I tend to gauge games based on who I am playing and the experience i have playing them than i do the army lists that are being played. Normally, someone who is really hard corps WAAC will show themselves soon enough, same with a casual at all costs player.

Truth is, I've played games against casual players that we're miserable, and I've gotten completely tabled by competitive players that I enjoyed playing against. For me, it's more about the intent and the player.

weird answer, i know.

I made the experience that since 8th you're far less punished for throwing whatever you like on the table. Of course, like in every tabletop game, there are optimized lists that can give you a hard time but due to balance patches since 8th it's not as unbalanced anymore as I had experienced it since 5th. This means you see fluffy lists more often even though the force organization is much more open than it was before.

I also sometimes wonder if there are unfluffy lists for some factions at all. What is an unfluffy Harlequins list? Or Necron list? Many thoughts about what makes a fluff driven list only apply to the classic factions because at some point these had pretty restrictive fluff rules (CSM, IG, SM, Orks, Eldar, maybe Tyranids?). All the other factions hardly had subfactions before or any fluff that dictated what made a certain kabal, dynastie or sept special.

For me there’s a difference between a fluffy list and a themed or thematic list. And often it’s a case of I’ll know it when I see it.

As the OP mentioned, almost anything can be justified with fluff, but I don’t think that’s what makes a fluffy list. To take the example of an all dreadnought list. That’s a themed list in my mind, not a fluffy list. That doesn’t necessarily make it WAAC, that would depend both on the efficacy of the list and the intent behind it.

The reason I don’t think it’s fluffy, is because the background justification could be pulled out of thin air to argue it’s fluffy in an ad hoc manner.

A fluffy list to me is one that represents a typical list for the faction. Representing a specific set of circumstances in a campaign from the fluff isn’t a fluffy list.

A 2000pt space marines army with a chapter master and 2 captains isn’t fluffy, it doesn’t matter that you justify as the last remnants of a chapter that survived an overwhelming blah blah blah. A fluffy list would have one captain. It represents a typical deployment.

I’m probably in the minority here, but it’s why I preferred the game when special characters (named characters) could only be used with permission of your opponent. Dante shouldn’t show up in every blood angels list, and Ghazghkull doesn’t lead every minor ork skirmish.

For me a fluffy list is one where, disregarding the state of the meta, or what units are or aren’t effective/over-powered/under-powered I have a fair idea of what the list will look like, based on the fluff, simply by knowing which faction it is:

Examples:
White scars and Raven wing- lots of bikes and land speeders.
Blood angels- lots of assault marines in jump packs.
Evil suns- ork buggys and whatnot make up a significant portion of the army.
Ultramarines- a balance of troops, assault and heavy units, predominantly infantry.
Iron warriors - lots of tanks and heavy weapons
Goffs- lots of infantry, a green horde
Bad moons- more elites and more shoots than goffs

Etc etc.

For a home brew chapter/subfaction I’d expect a fluffy list to largely match with the same expectation as I’d have with the parent chapter/subfaction.

That’s not to say that’s the only way to play with a faction, or that a themed list is bad. It’s just what I think constitutes a fluffy list.

If it doesn’t fit that expectation, I don’t consider it a fluffy list. It could be super cool and thematic, and not being fluffy doesn’t make it automatically WAAC or anywhere near it. I think it’s just about expectations.

It’s part of why I don’t really care for the term. It rarely seems that 2 players will have the same interpretation of what it means.

If I arranged to play someone and they said they were bringing a fluffy space marine list for their homebrew chapter of salamander successors and they showed up with an all dreadnought list ( that they can justify with their homebrew background fluff) it doesn’t meet my expectations of a fluffy salamander successor. I’d much prefer they said they were bringing a dreadnought themed army, that way it is clear what to expect.

Thinking on it, I feel this discussion is largely a issue with 40k.
Game rules should encourage all factions to try and fit into a story based theme.
But you have factions like space marines that have been given basically unlimited do what you want.
And I think fluffy army’s like the armoured company where mishandled and where never really healthy for the game.

With things like knights you can make a fluffy list and I think it’s kinda dumb, since the fluff was written around the models since that’s kinda all they got.
Low effort from GW, leaves players in a bit of a mess. No matter the power level they do weird things to the game that can lead to not really being enjoyable.
I think it’s growing issues as the game has changed, but no one really managed it and now not fluffy is just anything some people find does fit there ideas for the faction.

RIP if you buy into sisters of silence, who I don’t think can even really deploy a fluffy force without a bunch of rule shenanigans that many attribute to WAAC play.

One important indicator of the "fluffyness" of an army are the troops.

He is playing 3x5 min troops in a battalion or a single minimum troop in a patrol? Chances are that he went for the competitive build.

Armies are composed mostly of troops. If you see plenty of them on the other side of the table, then you found yourself a fluffy opponent.

My "fluffy" SoB army has 2x10 and 3x5 troops even if it is a single battalion, because that's how a sister army should look.

Spoletta wrote:
One important indicator of the "fluffyness" of an army are the troops.

He is playing 3x5 min troops in a battalion or a single minimum troop in a patrol? Chances are that he went for the competitive build.

Armies are composed mostly of troops. If you see plenty of them on the other side of the table, then you found yourself a fluffy opponent.

My "fluffy" SoB army has 2x10 and 3x5 troops even if it is a single battalion, because that's how a sister army should look.

I don’t necessarily agree with this. I don’t think fluffy and competitive are the only 2 options. I do agree that it sounds like your SOB army is fluffy.

As an an example, my homebrew chapter of space marines -

In a battalion I currently have 3 minimum size squads of Intercessors ( 5 man squads) filling out my troop slots. That’s largely because I also field 3 five man reiver squads in my elite slots. I don’t think anyone would argue that Reivers are a competitive choice, but they do fit the theme for my army- sneaky terror troops, ostensibly Raven Guard successors. And my chapter tactics are the stealthy Raven guard tactic and the -1 Ld tactic (again, hardly a competitive choice). I always give my warlord the -1 Ld warlord trait, again this is hardly competitive, but it fits my theme.

I consider my army thematic, but accept that it wouldn’t necessarily be described as fluffy. I don’t think that means I’ve made choices for competitive reasons though.

Spoletta wrote:
One important indicator of the "fluffyness" of an army are the troops.

He is playing 3x5 min troops in a battalion or a single minimum troop in a patrol? Chances are that he went for the competitive build.

Armies are composed mostly of troops. If you see plenty of them on the other side of the table, then you found yourself a fluffy opponent.

My "fluffy" SoB army has 2x10 and 3x5 troops even if it is a single battalion, because that's how a sister army should look.

Okey, but this would somehow make DE lists fluffy, because they spam troops , run 3 patrols as god intended, and never ever max out on elite or heavy support. While at the same time someone who is running a litteral assault demi company would have an unfluffy lists, because of all the elites and FA choices and only basic number of troops.

SoB are in the situation where it is good for them to run multiple msu squads. And some armies can't even be run the way they should be run in the fluff.

My GK are representing the 6th brotherhood army. And they have two distinct tactical things they do. First they use 6 squads of termintor armored battlebrothers and second they start every engagment by teleporting in 500 combat servitiors directly in to enemy lines. The 3ed brotherhood is headed by Voldus and has almost full fledged 30 Librarians in their ranks to a point, where squads in the brotherhood are led by them and not squad leaders. They also field squads made just out of lower ranked librarians led by the higher ranked ones. The 1st brother hood fields 18 nemezis dreadnoughts on a regular basis. along side deep striking 20 land raiders on to enemy lines. But the best stuff belongs to the 5th brotherhood. They have suits of golden age Guardian type attuned to be used by psykers. they have 21 of those, they are a crucial part of the brotherhoods tactics, only thing is they never had rules.

And this is just the core brotherhoods. There are separate smaller orders within the chapter like the paladins being a breed apart and purificators having their own brotherhood and job to fullfil. Can't even make those armies, because GW "forgot" to give rules to run a purificator army, or even give them the options they have in the lore, like psi titans, termintor armour and various ranks of officers.

Attitude and intention draw the line for me.

Against regular players you can usually tell by looking how (quickly) their army changes over time, wether they try to follow the meta.

That long time Space Marine player who out of a sudden got their hands on 3 Volkite Contemptors? Yeah, pretty much competition.

That guy you hardly know who says he is in the hobby for a few years now and shows up with a new grey tide after every codex release? Competition.

Pre and after game talk are good indicators, too. Competitive minded people tend to talk alot more about strategy, composition and combos in my experience.

Aash wrote:

Spoletta wrote:
One important indicator of the "fluffyness" of an army are the troops.

He is playing 3x5 min troops in a battalion or a single minimum troop in a patrol? Chances are that he went for the competitive build.

Armies are composed mostly of troops. If you see plenty of them on the other side of the table, then you found yourself a fluffy opponent.

My "fluffy" SoB army has 2x10 and 3x5 troops even if it is a single battalion, because that's how a sister army should look.

I don’t necessarily agree with this. I don’t think fluffy and competitive are the only 2 options. I do agree that it sounds like your SOB army is fluffy.

As an an example, my homebrew chapter of space marines -

In a battalion I currently have 3 minimum size squads of Intercessors ( 5 man squads) filling out my troop slots. That’s largely because I also field 3 five man reiver squads in my elite slots. I don’t think anyone would argue that Reivers are a competitive choice, but they do fit the theme for my army- sneaky terror troops, ostensibly Raven Guard successors. And my chapter tactics are the stealthy Raven guard tactic and the -1 Ld tactic (again, hardly a competitive choice). I always give my warlord the -1 Ld warlord trait, again this is hardly competitive, but it fits my theme.

I consider my army thematic, but accept that it wouldn’t necessarily be described as fluffy. I don’t think that means I’ve made choices for competitive reasons though.

Good point.
I didn't consider armies based on a theme in my analysis.

Karol wrote:

Spoletta wrote:
One important indicator of the "fluffyness" of an army are the troops.

He is playing 3x5 min troops in a battalion or a single minimum troop in a patrol? Chances are that he went for the competitive build.

Armies are composed mostly of troops. If you see plenty of them on the other side of the table, then you found yourself a fluffy opponent.

My "fluffy" SoB army has 2x10 and 3x5 troops even if it is a single battalion, because that's how a sister army should look.

Okey, but this would somehow make DE lists fluffy, because they spam troops , run 3 patrols as god intended, and never ever max out on elite or heavy support. While at the same time someone who is running a litteral assault demi company would have an unfluffy lists, because of all the elites and FA choices and only basic number of troops.

SoB are in the situation where it is good for them to run multiple msu squads. And some armies can't even be run the way they should be run in the fluff.

My GK are representing the 6th brotherhood army. And they have two distinct tactical things they do. First they use 6 squads of termintor armored battlebrothers and second they start every engagment by teleporting in 500 combat servitiors directly in to enemy lines. The 3ed brotherhood is headed by Voldus and has almost full fledged 30 Librarians in their ranks to a point, where squads in the brotherhood are led by them and not squad leaders. They also field squads made just out of lower ranked librarians led by the higher ranked ones. The 1st brother hood fields 18 nemezis dreadnoughts on a regular basis. along side deep striking 20 land raiders on to enemy lines. But the best stuff belongs to the 5th brotherhood. They have suits of golden age Guardian type attuned to be used by psykers. they have 21 of those, they are a crucial part of the brotherhoods tactics, only thing is they never had rules.

And this is just the core brotherhoods. There are separate smaller orders within the chapter like the paladins being a breed apart and purificators having their own brotherhood and job to fullfil. Can't even make those armies, because GW "forgot" to give rules to run a purificator army, or even give them the options they have in the lore, like psi titans, termintor armour and various ranks of officers.

But that's what's fantastic about the DE book.
DE lists are fluffy AND competitive!
Admechs too. They are playing a lot of regular guys backed up by their priests and marshals, with heavy support provided by chickens and some planes. A few specialized units help in the vanguard.
One can say what they want about how it feels playing against DE and Admech, but those lists are nice to see on the table.

It is not fantastic, when the same designers write the DE book and the DW book. And one feels like someone pre build an army, wrote rules for it and then assgined point costs and the other feels like someone had to do a lot of copy pasting, because DW players are suppose to buy primaris, combined with a prior big nerf of everything that was good about the army in the first place. What does it say about GW and their vision how a faction should be played, if they get two such different results in the end?

And this ain't no regular game, so the chance of a patch fixing stuff in 3-6 months time is not there. You get a codex out and it is bad, you are stuck with it for years.

Basically, if someone says their army is "Built for Fluff" and that's a comment they make early on in the game, generally I go in pretty wary because I'm anticipating having a gakky experience of an opponent whining about each and every little thing my army is capable of doing/capable of destroying. When someone complains that 3x double-fist kastelan robots in the melee subfaction using their ability that makes them good at melee and worse at defense can kill a Knight Armiger (300+ point unit killing a ~150 point unit) then I just know...urgh, this is gonna be a rough one.

It still shocks me that there exist people out there who have not yet gotten it through their heads that in a normal game of 40k, you will lose about half to two-thirds of your models. And your army will (and should) lose the game, about half the time, in which case you will probably lose a good deal more of your army. It's been like this for a while - I remember the days of fifth edition, when the mission we were playing matterered maaaaybe 1/3 of the time, because you'd almost always end up with one side either tabled or call it because they were about to be tabled on turn 5/turn 6. 40k has always been a pretty destructive game in terms of how many turns you can expect your units to last on the table.

The line between a "fluff" army and a "Competitive" army is typically how recently, if at all, the player piloting it has looked at their units and swapped them in or out with an eye to competitiveness.

The whole "gw could buff your fluffy army and make it insta-competitive overnight so maybe that's what happened to the guy you think is WAAC what do you think of that huh?" thing is just crap. I knew a dude who had a huge Saim-Hann eldar jetbike army going into the craziness of 7th edition's meta. His list became tough in casual games, but if he'd taken it to an actual tournament, he'd have gotten his gak torn apart, since he'd basically be playing a much worse version of the current list everyone was tailoring against.

Because it was an actually fluffy setup, predating the optimal loadout: all his bikes were set up with 1 in 3 heavy weapons, basically all Shuriken Cannons rather than scatter lasers, he had 3 Vypers with Bright Lances, a bunch of Shining Spears (at the time one of the worst aspects), 1 biker warlock per big biker squad, 1 farseer and 1 autarch also on bikes.

The difference between his list and the actual optimised version was MASSIVE. He couldn't do a third of the gak that list could do. He could have ebayed a whole gak ton of scatter lasers to stick on every bike, bought and painted a couple wraithknights, bought a whole bunch more biker warlocks to make a seer-star, ditched the non-competitive pieces...but he was already winning plenty of games, what would be the point? His army was as strong as it had ever been, why would he now go 'hot diggity, I gotta get optimizing this!' when he wasn't doing that before?

Karol wrote:
It is not fantastic, when the same designers write the DE book and the DW book. And one feels like someone pre build an army, wrote rules for it and then assgined point costs and the other feels like someone had to do a lot of copy pasting, because DW players are suppose to buy primaris, combined with a prior big nerf of everything that was good about the army in the first place. What does it say about GW and their vision how a faction should be played, if they get two such different results in the end?

And this ain't no regular game, so the chance of a patch fixing stuff in 3-6 months time is not there. You get a codex out and it is bad, you are stuck with it for years.

You might have a point if DW (or Space Marines) was a bad codex, which it is not.

No idea what you mean with prebuilt armies.

"DW players are supposed to buy Primaris" needs more than just your personal opinion to back that up with facts.

Firstborn were buffed and remain the more flexible and in some cases more optimal options (Eradicators and MM attack bikes?) compared to Primaris.

It's complicated by the concept of 'fun'.

I find useless units just boring to play. When a unit always achieves absolutely nothing and dies, whilst costing a significant chunk of points it just feels like a weight around my neck, rather than an enjoyable unit to field.
Especially if in the fluff that unit can be expected to achieve more.

So I drop those units in favour of more effective units. The army might make less sense from a purely fluff perspective, but it'll be more fun to play and tabletop performance will match the fluff better.

Is that a competitive army? You won't see anything even remotely like it at a tournament, it's only "okay" units, I've just cut out the "bad" units.
It's not a particularly fluffy army and fluff wasn't a driving force behind it.

 the_scotsman wrote:
Basically, if someone says their army is "Built for Fluff" and that's a comment they make early on in the game, generally I go in pretty wary because I'm anticipating having a gakky experience of an opponent whining about each and every little thing my army is capable of doing/capable of destroying. When someone complains that 3x double-fist kastelan robots in the melee subfaction using their ability that makes them good at melee and worse at defense can kill a Knight Armiger (300+ point unit killing a ~150 point unit) then I just know...urgh, this is gonna be a rough one.

It still shocks me that there exist people out there who have not yet gotten it through their heads that in a normal game of 40k, you will lose about half to two-thirds of your models. And your army will (and should) lose the game, about half the time, in which case you will probably lose a good deal more of your army. It's been like this for a while - I remember the days of fifth edition, when the mission we were playing matterered maaaaybe 1/3 of the time, because you'd almost always end up with one side either tabled or call it because they were about to be tabled on turn 5/turn 6. 40k has always been a pretty destructive game in terms of how many turns you can expect your units to last on the table.

The line between a "fluff" army and a "Competitive" army is typically how recently, if at all, the player piloting it has looked at their units and swapped them in or out with an eye to competitiveness.

The whole "gw could buff your fluffy army and make it insta-competitive overnight so maybe that's what happened to the guy you think is WAAC what do you think of that huh?" thing is just crap. I knew a dude who had a huge Saim-Hann eldar jetbike army going into the craziness of 7th edition's meta. His list became tough in casual games, but if he'd taken it to an actual tournament, he'd have gotten his gak torn apart, since he'd basically be playing a much worse version of the current list everyone was tailoring against.

Because it was an actually fluffy setup, predating the optimal loadout: all his bikes were set up with 1 in 3 heavy weapons, basically all Shuriken Cannons rather than scatter lasers, he had 3 Vypers with Bright Lances, a bunch of Shining Spears (at the time one of the worst aspects), 1 biker warlock per big biker squad, 1 farseer and 1 autarch also on bikes.

The difference between his list and the actual optimised version was MASSIVE. He couldn't do a third of the gak that list could do. He could have ebayed a whole gak ton of scatter lasers to stick on every bike, bought and painted a couple wraithknights, bought a whole bunch more biker warlocks to make a seer-star, ditched the non-competitive pieces...but he was already winning plenty of games, what would be the point? His army was as strong as it had ever been, why would he now go 'hot diggity, I gotta get optimizing this!' when he wasn't doing that before?

This happened with my heavy deathwing army in tbe 7 and a half days people tought they were the most op thing since the Cocacola.

I hand a bunch of táctical terminstors with ass cannons, lighthing claw tártaros , more characters than It was healthy to have. And I bought 0 stuff for them inn9th
I played that army all trought 8th , dying like cocroaches, when Dark Angels were the worst marines when marines were Pretty weak by the most part.

To my mind an army is built for fluff when a player identifies some sort of theme and picks units appropriate to that theme rather than their actual ability.

If you don't have that pre-existing theme, then you are likely kidding yourself, because any unit in the game can be combined with any other unit and someone with a tiny amount of imagination can come up with a fluff justification for why that is the case.

I feel this is harder in smaller factions, as there's not many units to pick from in the first place. To a degree Marines, Orks, Eldar all have multiple strong themes you can choose from. Someone building for lots of wraithguard will obviously look different to someone with lots of jetbikes.

By contrast if I look at say Tau - I'm finding it harder to see "themes" - even if bringing say 100 Fire Warriors will look different to bringing 15 Crisis Suits, which will also look different again to running triple riptide.

Maybe its just familiarity breeds contempt - but I don't consider DE to be all that fluffy. I'm not really sure why - Fladerisation perhaps. But I wouldn't consider someone running say mono-Wych Cults to be a strong fluffy theme, even if arguably it is.

Tyel wrote:

Maybe its just familiarity breeds contempt - but I don't consider DE to be all that fluffy. I'm not really sure why - Fladerisation perhaps. But I wouldn't consider someone running say mono-Wych Cults to be a strong fluffy theme, even if arguably it is.

tbh I dont know if it's exactly possible to argue that current DE are MORE flanderized than their original incarnations. But hey, you're right, maybe they do take their 'note' a little too far.

Now if you'll excuse me, I need to finish painting my blood angels sanguinary guard - it's so difficult to get the right gemstone paint on the blood drops encrusting their encarmine axes and the blood chalices on their angelus boltguns are just so fiddly!


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Galas wrote:

This happened with my heavy deathwing army in tbe 7 and a half days people tought they were the most op thing since the Cocacola.

I hand a bunch of táctical terminstors with ass cannons, lighthing claw tártaros , more characters than It was healthy to have. And I bought 0 stuff for them inn9th
I played that army all trought 8th , dying like cocroaches, when Dark Angels were the worst marines when marines were Pretty weak by the most part.

Let me guess - you played a few games with them, and the fact that you hadn't actually optimized for competitive play got through peoples' heads fairly quickly and all the more competitive players where you're at could still pretty easily stomp your face?

because that's what always happens. People can bitch and moan all they like about GW driven balance swings, but it's a tango that takes two - the balance of your army only really swings hard if you've skewed your army heavily towards just one single option/one single weapon loadout.

if every model in your army is armed with the exact same heavy weapon and the exact same special weapon, your balance is going to swing wildly. you might get super lucky, and have a dozen IG mortar teams when those swing into meta favor, or more likely, you might have built all your stuff with the best option in a previous incarnation of the rules (Say, Devastators with all Missile Lauchers) and now youve got 100% everything armed with the very worst option.

Meta chasing is a dragon that creates itself. The admech player who's curently building and painting 60 skitarii is probably doing it because GW made sure to tamp down on the all-guns Kastelan Robot build (which the player had 3 boxes of, of course) and the melee electropriests popping out of the transport (which the player had 2 boxes of).

I honestly do not draw a distinction between the two because its rarely (outside tournament play or tournament prep) strictly one or the other. Sometimes i find "fluff" players to eb insufferable as they complain that my orks were able to kill 2 space marines at range and how they never would be able to do that in the "fluff" when presented with the long and sourced list I keep of engagements with orks and examples of orks going toe to toe with marines they still claim its usually space marines killing orks in droves without any citation beyond "general knowledge"

hyper competitive tournament play/prep players 100% want to game the system and if you are doing a prep game want the strongest stuff the codex has to offer. I like these games in that the opponent knows the rules often of both armies and its a nice technical game.

The middle of the road is where I find most players. They don't want to take the low power gak and often will lean towards the stronger units to play the game but will not be playing a min-max netlist (and even when they do they lack the skill to pilot it properly and see what each unit is meant to do) They have soem favorite models that they like the look of or did a better job painting than the rest and are proud of it and then have the rest of the army built of pretty good for the points things.

I take several lists and extra models to mix in to strengthen or weaken a list depending on what the opponent wants. like literally i ask if they want the low middle or high power list to play against, most choose middle for what its worth

 G00fySmiley wrote:
I honestly do not draw a distinction between the two because its rarely (outside tournament play or tournament prep) strictly one or the other. Sometimes i find "fluff" players to eb insufferable as they complain that my orks were able to kill 2 space marines at range and how they never would be able to do that in the "fluff" when presented with the long and sourced list I keep of engagements with orks and examples of orks going toe to toe with marines they still claim its usually space marines killing orks in droves without any citation beyond "general knowledge"

99% of the time if someone references how their army is fluffy in actual real-life conversation, they will be incredibly precious and whiny about any of their stuff ever getting destroyed at all in the game.

Any low quality weapon that gets through and causes wounds through weight of numbers "should not ever be able to kill *thing*"

Any high quality weapon that is designed to destroy the type of target they are fielding and does so "super undercosted, crazy that they let that get into the game, so OP"

Somewhere there may be someone who describes their army as 'fluffy' and is playing something other than SM, CSM, Custodes, or some kind of Superheavy/big thing that they'll cry about losing, but I haven't met them.

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 Galas wrote:

The admech player who's curently building and painting 60 skitarii is probably doing it because GW made sure to tamp down on the all-guns Kastelan Robot build (which the player had 3 boxes of, of course) and the melee electropriests popping out of the transport (which the player had 2 boxes of).

Personally, since the AdMech codex dropped (and infact since I purchased a total of 2 boxes of serberys raiders when Engine War came out), all I have picked up since is 1 box of skitarii (10 models), 1 Marshall and 1 Archaeopter Fusilave.

I picked up the skitarii because many of my previous ones held a bunch of special weapons - so I can no longer include all of these in the same squad - so I needed some more basic models (I now have just over 20 basic skitarii of each flavour in addition to all the ones holding special weapons, and I will not be getting any more).

I picked up the Marshall because it was a new unit so needed to add it to my collection anyways.

I picked up the Fusilave, becasue I always wanted one - again so I could add to my collection.

As it turns out the rest of my lists/collection is actually on the competative side - 10 Breachers, 4 Ironstriders, 3 Dragoons, 5 Infiltrators, Electropriests, Manipulus etc.... oh and since the 8th ed codex dropped I have been pretty much playing Lucius lists anyways .

That reminds me of a friend that ragequitted a Game of MESBG After my cheap as chips haradrim were decimating his all rivendell heavy cavalry army.

But what fault I have for Rolling a 6 to hit, 6 to hit the Rider, 1 to wound rerolling for poison inti a 6 to kill 1-3 times per turn!!!


After coming back to Warhammer I have found that the true competitive and tournament Driven players are the chillest dudes to Play and most have fun armies they play to relax After Big events.

The moment a player calls himself casual or narrative... Beware. Nothing good comes out of that crowd. Most are the kinda players that dont Accept this is a Game,someone has to lose, and nothing is inmortal. Most competitive players laugh when my crappy revolushion gretching army takes a win or does something Epic or improbable. Narrative ones are the kinda to say "a full trol army in fantasy! Go Play aos for that crap, is only fluffy if you have 30% of troops! Btw this is my very fluffy vampire Lord on zombie dragón with 300 points in artifacts called Murder HotWheell and I wrote a 56 Page essay about him"

Nah friend, it should be something like, this is my Ghoul lord on a zombi dragon, lording over 2 other dudes on dragons, because one specific army subfaction lets me do it.

I had nothing but professionalism from people that are tournament gamers. Roll you over in 30-35 min. No talking, no phones, no going out durning their turns etc. The non new player non tournament players are always a gem to expiriance. Your bases are colour coded ergo the army is unpainted. My Inari army is 100% lore and fluff, your IH army build out of two dark emires and two ETB primaris dreadnoughts is a WAAC abomination etc The more casual the player, the worse the people act.

 Galas wrote:
Btw this is my very fluffy vampire Lord on zombie dragón with 300 points in artifacts called Murder HotWheell and I wrote a 56 Page essay about him"

If you aren't writing an entire novel series based around your army then you aren't a true Narrative player. Sorry but I don't make the rules.