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I play both competitively and casually (or at least I did - in a bit of a slump now) and I don't usually use more than 2 of any unit. This isn't because I hate spamming or object to a particular list design, it's just how things pan out for me. I generally don't like buying, assembling and painting the same kit over and over again so I'll look to an alternative.

That said, my Death Guard have 3 Blight Haulers and 4 Bloat Drones WIP and I'd probably use 3 units of 20 Poxwalkers in my troops slots if I had the models. I also have about 80-100 power armoured Chaos marines made from various Chaos and Loyalist kits, upgrade sets and 3rd party bits but they're mostly WIP and I tend not to play with unpainted or partially assembled models. I've also used 3 units of Obliterators in 7th in some of my list because I have several different kits for them, but generally only use 2 units because of points cost.

So an Imperial Guard player is spamming if he has 30 or more Guardsmen in a 2000 point list? Really?

I love how the OP can't take feedback and how anyone who disagrees with him is mocked by him or "salty" because he is a bastion of logic and reason. In this thread alone, he has said:

-Changed the title of the thread based on general saltiness
- You're pretty cynical.
-But I'm not surprised to see that response, this is literally what they teach in the USA now. If you're upset, someone must be at fault.
- "Oh look, this question is framed such that I would fit into a category I dislike. Since I only run 3 baneblades, i'm going to make a tremendous stink and derail the thread completely."
-Changed the title, and wording a bit, to hopefully decrease salt levels / turn off suicide watch.

Talk about being triggered. And the best:

-Stop being narcissistic. Should we not discuss things because people might get offended? Well, this is the USA in 2018

Oh, the irony. Seriously, someone stop the bleeding before he ends up on r/iamverysmart.

Why yes: I run 3 units of custodian guard because they are my only troop choice ;P

Sass aside: I typically try and run 3-4 units of Custodian Wardens because I love the models.

As a custodian player: I wouldn't really regard either of those options as 'spamming' the unit since we're heavily limited by points and unit selection. that being said: people who run 3+ SC on Bikes are spamming, since the HQ slot doesn't quite have the same issues as the rest of the codex.

HuskyWarhammer wrote:
Oh, the irony. Seriously, someone stop the bleeding before he ends up on r/iamverysmart.

I think Marmatag ended up on there a long time ago.

As a Guard and AdMech player, there's not an unwritten and often written rule of lots of cheap screening for bigger things.

So I run upwards of 4 Guard squads and 3-4 small Skitarii squads. Cheap and easy to put between the enemy and my tanks.

I actually voted no and then read the definition of spam in the OP... So I should have voted that I'm a spammer by this definition.

Was there something wrong with spamming Plague Marines in Rhinos or are fluffy armies exempt?

I always run plenty of tactical squads for aesthetic reasons. Lots of guys slugging across the field

I'm also very guilty of spamming Zerkers back in 6th. You remember, back when Chainaxe spam was god-tier...

I play pure SoB, so I have to spam, something...

With the state of the thread, Marmatag, what were you hoping to get out of a discussion built around the assumption that three of anything is spam?

I usually have very little duplicate units, as I find that an army with varied units is more interesting to play, and more importantly, to model and paint.

That being said, under this definition I still do spam; my Primaris Space Marine army has three Intercessor squads, while my Imperial Guard Army has three Infantry squads...

I spam units that are cool to spam. When you play IG you want to field full Squadrons of vehicle types. As for troops i like them in platoon sized bunches, 20 to 50 man platoons. IG are the kings of spam!

OP obviously doesn't understand the underlying intention when people use the phrase "Spamming"...but please continue with your super cool thread. It's incredibly productive.

I play imperial guard, a regimented and professional military faction that is built around numbers and standardization (for rough things like equipment and vehicles)

Unless I'm playing 500pts or something, how the heck would I build a list without taking multiples of something and make it look like a remotely competent force? What kind of guard unit bigger than a patrol only run 2 infantry squads? Or a tank squadron where literally every tank has a different loadout and variant? That's not just competitive lists, but casual games as well. Fluffwise that's just how the army is built. Sure there will be some variation, but it should hardly be where say every infantry squad out of 12 has a unique loadout or where you have an IG tank company where every tank is a different variant meaning resupply would be a nightmare.

This is why it always bugs me when I see people want to introduce hard unit caps across the board, say only 2 of any given unit type in an army. That's all fun and games with something like grey knights that has an elite and focused army, but you quite literally break horde armies by doing so. Guard used to be able to get around this by using platoons, but since 8th many of the proposed anti spam fixes would mean such hilariously dumb things such as a 2k guard list with only 60 guardsmen in it. Worst still, you don't even fix certain spam situations. For example, a hard limit of up to 3 of any unit still means I can bring 12 leman russe's, 9 tanks in 3 heavy support slots and 3 command tanks.

Spam in and of itself is not bad, some armies are just built that way. Spam can be a sign of undercosted units, like Tau commanders and dark reapers, but that means these units in question need a tweak. For example either a pts increase like the rumored 5pt guardsmen or something like a rules tweak, where say Tau commanders get their own weapon table that is more appropriately costed, like GW's attempt to fix plasma in the IG codex.

The poll should have allowed multiple choices, as plenty of players (myself included) play both competitive and casual games. I voted for Competitive-Yes because my current competitive Chaos list runs 3 units of Obliterators. Oblits are probably one of the best, if not the best, units in the CSM codex.

Almost every ork army needs to have some unit three times.

My DG actually managed to not fall under this thread's definition of spam, but only because I bought a defiler instead of a third PBC because I liked the model more.

I run 3 squads of 5 man normal marines. Because it's lore friendly. Sometimes I run 6 squads if it's a bigger game. XD

Wow, look, as soon as the term "spam" was removed from the poll description, we went from 40% "Casual - no" with that being the most chosen response by a wide margin, to 39" "Casual - yes". The Competitive - yes column has also pulled ahead of the Competitive - no column since the poll terms were changed.

So with that in mind, let's talk about spam.

I'd say that rather than a definition that simply looks at the number of models or units a player takes, to really see something as "spam" a player needs to fit three categories:

1) The single unit must make up a large percentage of the points in an army. I'd say roughly 50% or more before I start looking at my list and thinking in terms of skew tactics and overloading threats. So you could be spamming with 200 guard bodies, or 3 baneblade tanks. Basically, I think of it as the break point where I have to start giving up on my ability to deal with particular threats or counters and I'm planning to just make up for it with sheer numbers of the same threat.

2) It (usually) has to be done for competitive gain, because most of the time spam is usually only employed as a pejorative by people who didn't like the list, or as a shorthand way to describe the list by a competitive player talking about it. You can have someone with an almost all-dreadnought, or all leman russ, or all whatever list, and somehow it always seems to only magically become a "spam" list when the rules change to make them a very difficult opponent to take on.

For the very reason that it's a subjective term, I think a lot of people are going to have a hard time nailing down a hard and fast definition for themselves.

You call it "spam", I call it "themed list".

(seriously though... 3 is way too low a threshhold. You need to run three units of a slot for most detachments. And if you want to stick to a theme, and dont want to use allies (because allies suck), then youre going to have to repeat units.

Also, as much as you repeat that youre not attaching a value to the word spam, the fact is, it has negative connotations. Id avoid using it in this context.

Sisters squads in Immolators

Dominons in Same

I play Guard my troop selection is very small, you get the picture.

I spam.

Spam is fine.

I'd much rather play against someone running a cohesive looking list with a few multiples of units than somebody running one of everything in an attempt to be 'fluffy'.

No one runs one of everything in an attempt to be "fluffy".

HuskyWarhammer wrote:

 roflmajog wrote:

 Marmatag wrote:
But it's largely irrelevant.

If we can assume that people actually answered honestly, the vast majority of players do not spam, even with what we can agree is a fairly strong boundary to qualify as non-spam.

It also doesn't reflect that some armies simply have to spam, due to limited troop choices, or overall limited variety in their unit counts. This is more true - probably - for casual players than competitive players, because competitive players are more open to souping.

I don't think you can assume people answered "honestly". I think quite a few people will have either not read your overly restrictive definition of spam before they voted or read it and voted that they don't spam anyway because they disagree with the definition you gave.

Confession: I voted "no" before reading his ridiculous definition of "spam." Apparently that time I ran 3 units of 5 DE Warriors in a 1500 pt list is considered "spamming."

Honestly I'm glad this post was made because it actually gets to something casual players and competitive players forget.

It isn't spamming if the unit really isn't that great, but some people hate the fact a unit is being ran that many times as for some reason they cannot stand the concept of redundancy.

Quite frankly, the "one of everything" armies look much worse on the table and are worse off crunch wise too.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Elbows wrote:
No one runs one of everything in an attempt to be "fluffy".

Ooooooooooh yes they do. Definitely read more of the posts on this forum.

I'm sure someone, somewhere, absolutely does do that.

Even then, he wasn't saying people do that, just that he'd rather play someone who spammed than someone who did that.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

HuskyWarhammer wrote:

 roflmajog wrote:

 Marmatag wrote:
But it's largely irrelevant.

If we can assume that people actually answered honestly, the vast majority of players do not spam, even with what we can agree is a fairly strong boundary to qualify as non-spam.

It also doesn't reflect that some armies simply have to spam, due to limited troop choices, or overall limited variety in their unit counts. This is more true - probably - for casual players than competitive players, because competitive players are more open to souping.

I don't think you can assume people answered "honestly". I think quite a few people will have either not read your overly restrictive definition of spam before they voted or read it and voted that they don't spam anyway because they disagree with the definition you gave.

Confession: I voted "no" before reading his ridiculous definition of "spam." Apparently that time I ran 3 units of 5 DE Warriors in a 1500 pt list is considered "spamming."

Honestly I'm glad this post was made because it actually gets to something casual players and competitive players forget.

It isn't spamming if the unit really isn't that great, but some people hate the fact a unit is being ran that many times as for some reason they cannot stand the concept of redundancy.

Quite frankly, the "one of everything" armies look much worse on the table and are worse off crunch wise too.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Elbows wrote:
No one runs one of everything in an attempt to be "fluffy".

Ooooooooooh yes they do. Definitely read more of the posts on this forum.

I really don't think it's redundancy people take issue with. I think it's a certain level of boredom when dealing with real spam tactics - i.e. lists that are more than 50% just one thing, because at that point you're relying on skew to make up for deficiencies in the list and you're going to have a much larger percentage totally uninteractive, one-sided games.

There's a line of reasonableness that the internet conveniently fails to recognize. When someone says "I dislike playing against spam lists" they're probably not remembering that one time someone DARED take three units of kabalite warriors, they're remembering that dude where they play who brings 2000 points of Ork Boyz with minimal support units, every game, and people have just stopped wanting to play against him. Because after a while, grinding away at 300 identical bodies who just move in a straight line across the field at you and attempt to bludgeon you with their statlines gets about as exciting as trying to kill 15,000,000 bears in an MMORPG to get an achievement. As fluffy as it is, as long as he's been playing it and as dedicated as he is to the concept, a list with very little variety is going to get a large percentage of players who will only want to play against it very occasionally and who will pass that game up for an opponent with a more varied list.

There's a middle ground, and I know this is a crazy idea, between feeling like you're "not allowed" to bring more than 2 of the same unit, and thinking that you should be able to bring 2000 points of completely identical models to the table and how dare anyone get sick of playing against that, they are clearly CAAC scumbags. Trying to present the former as "Spam" is disingenuous. Trying to cast complaints about something more like the latter as complaints about the former is similarly disingenuous.

I run 4 5-man squad of intercessors. 2 are DA with Stalker Bolt Rifles and 2 are IH with standard Bolt Rifles (I don't want to pay the points for auto)

I used to play AM where I ran 7 squads of catachan infantry and a traditional 3 tank hellhound squad (2 hellhounds and a devil dog). Three Leman Russes too.

Before this thread I'd never seen/heard of a 'one per list rule' for being 'fluffy'. Given the fiction and its hordes of faceless troops it doesn't seem a very fluffy way of playing at all.

Running 3 or 5 units of Dire Avengers is not spamming in the core sense. They are the basic troop choice.

Same with spamming any troop choice is not the same as spamming 5 Marine Captains or 6 Dreadnoughts.