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Tailoring a list to meet a specific army list is the epitome of TFG WAAC behavior. Suddenly seeing someone who never uses plasma run it because I bring terminators shows that he can't deal with tactical challenges on the table. While not every list can be a take-all-comers list, part of the challenge of any game is how well a player can adjust and adapt to obstacles.

And when does it end? You see terminators, you take plasma, then I take out terminators and add more armor, how many lists can you modify or write? This isn't a cold war, paper armies are no fun.

For me, I write a lot of lists, but I almost never write a list when I go to play. I run what I wrote up, I don't ask what people run. Most times I don't even check their lists unless it's in tournament or it's an army I never play.

 Jidmah wrote:

As you can't really fight fire with fire in this case (how do you tailor against eldar?).

Our group got a lot of eldar players when the new dex dropped and serpent spam because kinda common. As a result my crisis suits who had plasma rifles all got missile pods. I really didn't need the plasma because my Marine match-ups were so good, but adding missile pods means I can take out an extra serpent or two a turn and when the serpents are dead they make short work of guardians and dire avengers.

 Mr.Omega wrote:
The irony is that people act like those who list tailor are unpleasant when in reality its the people who absolutely cannot handle the idea of not having a completely balanced game where they do not have absolutely equal chances of winning are the sort of people I detest. They're the sort of people where they show up to play and win first and foremost, even if they're not WAAC necassarily, and stare at you funny if you suggested playing a match with an interesting element to it that might harm their chances, even if it might be more fun.

War is not completely balanced. Changing the odd thing around to tailor can actually make a game more interesting.

You detest people who expect a fair game? Interesting...how do you feel about people who engage in soft cheating to gain an unfair advantage over their opponent in a game of toy soldiers?


Unless both people are tailoring, it's necessarily unfair. And if both people are tailoring, you end up with an arms race which involves endless dancing. List tailoring is no different than moving terrain around after you've chosen table sides.

 NuggzTheNinja wrote:

 Mr.Omega wrote:
The irony is that people act like those who list tailor are unpleasant when in reality its the people who absolutely cannot handle the idea of not having a completely balanced game where they do not have absolutely equal chances of winning are the sort of people I detest. They're the sort of people where they show up to play and win first and foremost, even if they're not WAAC necassarily, and stare at you funny if you suggested playing a match with an interesting element to it that might harm their chances, even if it might be more fun.

War is not completely balanced. Changing the odd thing around to tailor can actually make a game more interesting.

You detest people who expect a fair game? Interesting...how do you feel about people who engage in soft cheating to gain an unfair advantage over their opponent in a game of toy soldiers?


Unless both people are tailoring, it's necessarily unfair. And if both people are tailoring, you end up with an arms race which involves endless dancing. List tailoring is no different than moving terrain around after you've chosen table sides.

People who get whiny when their odds aren't as good as they could be, yes, and its in a friendly game environment. At the end of the day both players have equal amounts of points and if your list has a critical vulnerability that can be exploited to the extent you have very low odds of winning then that's a fault of your own.

Its not cheating. You get given resources and it is your freedom on how to use them, unless restrictions are put in place. There is no rule in the 40k BRB that says 'btw, looking at your opponent's list and changing your own to compensate is forbidden'.

 Mr.Omega wrote:

 NuggzTheNinja wrote:

 Mr.Omega wrote:
The irony is that people act like those who list tailor are unpleasant when in reality its the people who absolutely cannot handle the idea of not having a completely balanced game where they do not have absolutely equal chances of winning are the sort of people I detest. They're the sort of people where they show up to play and win first and foremost, even if they're not WAAC necassarily, and stare at you funny if you suggested playing a match with an interesting element to it that might harm their chances, even if it might be more fun.

War is not completely balanced. Changing the odd thing around to tailor can actually make a game more interesting.

You detest people who expect a fair game? Interesting...how do you feel about people who engage in soft cheating to gain an unfair advantage over their opponent in a game of toy soldiers?


Unless both people are tailoring, it's necessarily unfair. And if both people are tailoring, you end up with an arms race which involves endless dancing. List tailoring is no different than moving terrain around after you've chosen table sides.

People who get whiny when their odds aren't as good as they could be, yes, and its in a friendly game environment. At the end of the day both players have equal amounts of points and if your list has a critical vulnerability that can be exploited to the extent you have very low odds of winning then that's a fault of your own.

Its not cheating. You get given resources and it is your freedom on how to use them, unless restrictions are put in place. There is no rule in the 40k BRB that says 'btw, looking at your opponent's list and changing your own to compensate is forbidden'.

So after you've tailored your list (to gain an unfair advantage over your opponent), do you let your opponent do so as well? And if so, do you then counter-tailor?

 NuggzTheNinja wrote:

 Mr.Omega wrote:

 NuggzTheNinja wrote:

 Mr.Omega wrote:
The irony is that people act like those who list tailor are unpleasant when in reality its the people who absolutely cannot handle the idea of not having a completely balanced game where they do not have absolutely equal chances of winning are the sort of people I detest. They're the sort of people where they show up to play and win first and foremost, even if they're not WAAC necassarily, and stare at you funny if you suggested playing a match with an interesting element to it that might harm their chances, even if it might be more fun.

War is not completely balanced. Changing the odd thing around to tailor can actually make a game more interesting.

You detest people who expect a fair game? Interesting...how do you feel about people who engage in soft cheating to gain an unfair advantage over their opponent in a game of toy soldiers?


Unless both people are tailoring, it's necessarily unfair. And if both people are tailoring, you end up with an arms race which involves endless dancing. List tailoring is no different than moving terrain around after you've chosen table sides.

People who get whiny when their odds aren't as good as they could be, yes, and its in a friendly game environment. At the end of the day both players have equal amounts of points and if your list has a critical vulnerability that can be exploited to the extent you have very low odds of winning then that's a fault of your own.

Its not cheating. You get given resources and it is your freedom on how to use them, unless restrictions are put in place. There is no rule in the 40k BRB that says 'btw, looking at your opponent's list and changing your own to compensate is forbidden'.

So after you've tailored your list (to gain an unfair advantage over your opponent), do you let your opponent do so as well? And if so, do you then counter-tailor?

List tailoring is not unfair. It is undertaken with your points allowance.

If I'm in a friendly game environment my opponent is free to change his list however he wants until we begin to play, so long as he shows me it beforehand. I'm not going to tell him 'oh, sorry, you replaced your plasmas with flamers and now I don't want to play you because I'm a jammy git.'

If both parties are list tailoring, I guess it's alright, but if one person IS and the other person is NOT, it tends to be fairly one sided and silly.

Unfortunately, some people simply MUST win, and are willing to list-tailor on the sly in order to defeat an opponent.

 Mr.Omega wrote:

 NuggzTheNinja wrote:

 Mr.Omega wrote:

 NuggzTheNinja wrote:

 Mr.Omega wrote:
The irony is that people act like those who list tailor are unpleasant when in reality its the people who absolutely cannot handle the idea of not having a completely balanced game where they do not have absolutely equal chances of winning are the sort of people I detest. They're the sort of people where they show up to play and win first and foremost, even if they're not WAAC necassarily, and stare at you funny if you suggested playing a match with an interesting element to it that might harm their chances, even if it might be more fun.

War is not completely balanced. Changing the odd thing around to tailor can actually make a game more interesting.

You detest people who expect a fair game? Interesting...how do you feel about people who engage in soft cheating to gain an unfair advantage over their opponent in a game of toy soldiers?


Unless both people are tailoring, it's necessarily unfair. And if both people are tailoring, you end up with an arms race which involves endless dancing. List tailoring is no different than moving terrain around after you've chosen table sides.

People who get whiny when their odds aren't as good as they could be, yes, and its in a friendly game environment. At the end of the day both players have equal amounts of points and if your list has a critical vulnerability that can be exploited to the extent you have very low odds of winning then that's a fault of your own.

Its not cheating. You get given resources and it is your freedom on how to use them, unless restrictions are put in place. There is no rule in the 40k BRB that says 'btw, looking at your opponent's list and changing your own to compensate is forbidden'.

So after you've tailored your list (to gain an unfair advantage over your opponent), do you let your opponent do so as well? And if so, do you then counter-tailor?

List tailoring is not unfair. It is undertaken with your points allowance.

If I'm in a friendly game environment my opponent is free to change his list however he wants until we begin to play, so long as he shows me it beforehand. I'm not going to tell him 'oh, sorry, you replaced your plasmas with flamers and now I don't want to play you because I'm a jammy git.'

Considering that it's been called, in this thread alone, WAAC, TFG behavior, cheating, etc., I think that the opinion of the 40k community suggests that non-mutual list tailoring is in fact unfair.

You shouldn't have to be told that manipulating the game conditions in your favor in violation of the social contract shared amongst a significant portion of the gaming community is "unfair".



It's really no different than throwing a bunch of aces in your pocket when you go out to play Poker. Sure, you're throwing down the same number of cards (points) when you present your hand. The difference is in the composition that gives you an unfair advantage over your opponent.

The only reason I'm pushing this is because noobs need to know that it is bad sportsmanship, and some may consider it cheating, especially if the opponent shows up with a locked-in list, or didn't bring their entire fething collection to the FLGS, so they can't counter-tailor without proxying.

From a fluff perspective, list tailoring is somewhat accurate. Much of the time, you know who you're going to be fighting before you engage in combat (well, at least the attacker does), and can thus prepare for it. However, there is a very wise saying: "You go to war with the army you have, not the army you want." That's why I prefer to take TAC lists, as a way to represent that "this is my army, with the equipment they chose at the start of this war, and now they have to stick with it and make it work for the duration."

I admit to a toned down form of list tailoring. I tailor lists against what the RACE I am playing against has access too. Example. Chaos Marines? hmm, something to take Heldrakes, Demon Princes, and cultists hordes, and Marines. Eldar...I plan on LOTS of Wave Serpents. Tau...means something that can survive being shot alot and still close the distance to get into cc. Orks? lots of shooty and flamey. Demons? MC. Nids? flip a coin, horde or MC spam. Stuff like that.
That being said, I run Marines. I play IF ct. This means my "tailoring" tends to stick within the bonus's granted by those tactics. So I play to MY strengths and try to limit my weakness's. I have no desire to write a hard counter to any list. I ran into the hard counter for my Marine list once. Eldar Serpent spam. I had way too few units and no where near enough anti-tank. It was a massacre. I write against the many possible builds I think can be run by that race.

I do have the ability to write a complete hard counter to a list. My son plays 1k orks with 1k necron allies. I know exactly what units he runs as thats all he has. I could plan a list around what he has. That however would be no fun. I started using the games we play to test lists that I think are TAC lists. Sometimes it works..sometimes I get hammered. I do however, tend to not take things he cant kill given his available models. My LRC tends to sit gatheriing dust when I play him, as he only has a very few items that can crack the av14.

I believe that writing a general "race tailored list" is ok, but once you get to the game, as soon as the first model is seen by either of you, thats it, your list is set. Live or die, win or lose, its all on how you prepared up to the point you walked in to the game location.

We also plan our games a week in advance. We have a more in depth random battle generation system, and most things are determined in advance though with some possibilities of unknowns. So for the most part you have a strong idea of the mission ahead of time and what enemy you are facing. You tailor your force to the situation, not against a specific army list.

 Mr.Omega wrote:
List tailoring is not unfair.

Yes it is. As I've already explained, list tailoring is unfair because both players don't get equal access to it.

 lambsandlions wrote:

 Jidmah wrote:

As you can't really fight fire with fire in this case (how do you tailor against eldar?).

Our group got a lot of eldar players when the new dex dropped and serpent spam because kinda common. As a result my crisis suits who had plasma rifles all got missile pods. I really didn't need the plasma because my Marine match-ups were so good, but adding missile pods means I can take out an extra serpent or two a turn and when the serpents are dead they make short work of guardians and dire avengers.

Well, that's cool I guess. How do I do it with orks?

We plan our games a month or more in advance and I always let the people I'm playing know what army I'll be taking and the play style (drop pods, flyers, horde, etc.) in advance. I do this because if your list can't cope with whatever I'm bringing then we are both going to have a bad time as the game can end up being effectively over in a couple of turns. As I only game once a week on average I have limited time to waste on poor games. In the past I've allowed people to stop the game, change their list and restart if they have forgotten to bring say AA and I have a ton of flyers. As I play the same friends week on week for what seems like forever I trust they won't be bringing massively tailored lists.

Makumba wrote:

This gets tougher when you are thinking of an all comers type environment, but in a smaller group is a little easier, but you still don't *know* that what you think your opponent will bring to the table is exactly what they will bring.

How can you not know what your opponent plays , they would have to own two armies for that or more units then they could actualy use and while I can imagine that with tau or eldar , a lot of armies a lot fewer builds. It is not hard to tailor against IG or SoB. 4 helldrakes 2 mini cultist units 4 units of autocannon havocks and list is ready..

Makumba, I currently have 9 armies I can play at any given time, plus another 2 in process. All are in the multi-thousands of points. Therefore it is hard for my opponents to know exactly what I will be bringing even if they know the specific army I plan to play. Most folks who have been playing for a while have multiple armies or one massive collection of a single force. In a group of newer players who all have about 1500 points of their chosen army, there isn't much list building anyway for a 1500 point battle day. Everyone brings what they have and unless you built your army specifically to counter one of those other armies you aren't going to have the options to try to counter with anyway.

Skriker


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Jidmah wrote:

As you can't really fight fire with fire in this case (how do you tailor against eldar?), a lot of people stopped playing him for this reason. Getting curb-stomped by the perfect counter to the 1500-2000 points of models you own over and over again isn't fun for anyone.

You do exactly what you did. Instead of playing the same army week after you week like a newb, you mixed it up and it screwed him. All those flamers look great against hordes of orks, but against bikes that run circles around them plus kans not so much. There you go. Instant counter. You can't tailor unless you know exactly what you opponents will be bringing. That build focused to take out multiple monoliths would have less direct impact on a necron swarm of infantry models where hitting single targets uber hard ultimately doesn't amount to enough to win the game and leaves the eldar player vulnerable.

Vary the way you play your army from time to time to keep people honest. Since you only have one person doing this a simple "dude, knock it off it isn't fun" should get the message across. If it doesn't then start formalizing your playing days: Everyone shows up with their list *FOR THE DAY* and it is reviewed by everyone present. Then randomly determine opponents for everyone so he can't tailor because he doesn't know who he'll be facing at all. Simple solution. Or if he refuses to play nice just stop inviting him.

Skriker


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Mr.Omega wrote:
People who get whiny when their odds aren't as good as they could be, yes, and its in a friendly game environment. At the end of the day both players have equal amounts of points and if your list has a critical vulnerability that can be exploited to the extent you have very low odds of winning then that's a fault of your own.

Its not cheating. You get given resources and it is your freedom on how to use them, unless restrictions are put in place. There is no rule in the 40k BRB that says 'btw, looking at your opponent's list and changing your own to compensate is forbidden'.

It *is* cheating if BEFORE you build your list you look at an opponents list directly, see the vulnerability and build a list SPECIFICALLY to target that vulnerability to give yourself a bigger advantage and more likely win. It is NOT cheating if both players show up, one person has a vulnerability in their force and someone else just happens to have built their army for the day with the right tools to exploit it.

No the rules don't forbid it. They also don't forbid me from punching my opponent in the face for cheating either, but that is also frowned upon.

Skriker

Here is a thought.. If you avoid spamming is it possible to protect yourself from list tailoring?

3 LR's and then zero fliers, rhinos, and jump infantry? Ok list tailor goes and grabs all the meltas

200 orks and no walkers or battlewagons? Inb4 every template in the codex.

An ork list featuring an equal amount of boyz in trukks and wagons, stormboyz, coptas, bikes and a few meganobz in maybe another wagon? Guess the best you could list tailor it with is all the 5-7 str shots you can field (the current meta right?)

So expect people to bring an all comers list so I can beat it with lopsided spam different then the current meta? Who is list tailoring who? "all comers" is just another word for meta game tailoring.

One of the people in my gaming group will try and play mind games while we write lists.

He will put 2 landraiders on the table to try and get us to tailor our list towards anti landraiders and then bring an army of fliers or all infantry.

Or he will set up one army and then we write our lists and use a completely different army.

The skullduggery is strong in our group.

I always come to the store with my list prepared. I almost never know my opponent.

I don't really play in stores or clubs, just a group of us typically play in my garage. We list tailor for the army in general, not the specifics. We all field so many different builds, its practically impossible to build a true hard counter.

However, our Necron player is getting pretty predictable of late, so its becoming harder and harder not to put in a few hard counters for his usual shenanigans. Truth be told, we are all so tired of the same tricks over and over and over again, we are starting to purposely build in counters just to convince him to change things up. One can only play against re-rolling Imhotek and the Flamer Cryptek/Sniper/Nightscythe combo so many times after all.

I will eventually have people that hard counter me. I know its coming and I am doing it to myself. I take heavy bolter and las devs, split. I use at LEAST 10 sternguard in a drop pod, generally more..in drop pods. I could change it up. I have the models. However, I like the way he Sternguard preforms and I run IF combat tactics, so heavy bolter and las devs are almost a no brainer.

I enjoy messing with assumptions.

'What are your you bringing?'

'Orks.'

'Um...all these meltas and plasmas are Flamers, ok.'

Sub

'Sure'

Game begins, and I set down a half dozen battlewagons...

People always seem to assume orks = horde

If someone read my list and tailored for it I'd just pull out another prepped list after they scoped it

 Skriker wrote:

 Jidmah wrote:

As you can't really fight fire with fire in this case (how do you tailor against eldar?), a lot of people stopped playing him for this reason. Getting curb-stomped by the perfect counter to the 1500-2000 points of models you own over and over again isn't fun for anyone.

You do exactly what you did. Instead of playing the same army week after you week like a newb, you mixed it up and it screwed him. All those flamers look great against hordes of orks, but against bikes that run circles around them plus kans not so much. There you go. Instant counter. You can't tailor unless you know exactly what you opponents will be bringing. That build focused to take out multiple monoliths would have less direct impact on a necron swarm of infantry models where hitting single targets uber hard ultimately doesn't amount to enough to win the game and leaves the eldar player vulnerable.

Those people weren't running different armies for two reasons: First, they don't have the cash to buy a hard counter. Considering that 500 points of units usually cost around $100, that's a pretty good reason. Second, the old necron codex (like most old codices) didn't have anything else to field besides monoliths and destroyers. Right now, I'm in a similar situation with orks. There are about 1.5 playable list, how do you counter tailoring with that?

An ork list featuring an equal amount of boyz in trukks and wagons, stormboyz, coptas, bikes and a few meganobz in maybe another wagon? Guess the best you could list tailor it with is all the 5-7 str shots you can field (the current meta right?)

I'd totally borrow my models to you to watch you field exactly that army. Good luck not getting tabled. No one could tailor against you, that's true, but you've already tailored against yourself. You pretty much brought a target for every gun an opponent could possibly bring, and killed any possible synergy between units in the process.

Warhammer 40k is not balanced towards bringing as many different units as possible, it is balanced towards spamming because certain units are strictly better than others, target saturation is much more powerful than flexibility and the extremely high death rate of units forces you to bring redundancy.

My point wasn't made clearly. In a tournament setting it seems to me you won't know who or what you are playing against. As such, you need to take a gun for every type of target and twice as many of the guns that overlap targets in the middle. You don't know what type of unit you will be shooting at, but you know what that unit will have to be shooting at you if they plan to win more than one game. The only way you can give yourself an (unfair?) advantage in this setting is (list tailoring) target saturation of one extreme. The community seems to desire this type of setting in friendly games were the situation is not the same.

If my friend always play three land raiders.. Why should I continue to bring an all comers list for playing against the unknown in a flgs? What is wrong with me going "Land Raiders again? Hold on at least let me grab some deff rollas and a few tankbustabombs to make this not terrible."

Why do we tell someone that the above example is cheating but bringing target saturation against the mixed offensives of an unknown list is somehow smart, competitive, and encouraged?

It's all acting on knowledge you have beforehand.

My Two Cents:

Writing a list knowing you are going to face a certain race or even a specific list (your mate saying I'll try my TAC tornament list again sort of thing). Is fine providing you do it before your opponent starts unpacking their models; and you have it written down as a single this is the list I am using tonight.

As soon as you see the models coming out of the bags (or you see the physical army roster) then its a bit underhand to start changing.

When you see they don't have any anti-air, its fine to take a load of flyers out to put the wind up them and joke about, "well you didn't expect that", but you should have your own fixed list. ( Putting the extra Chaos Boon spawn and demon prince model next to your CSMs army sort of thing; putting out two or thee landraider so you can look at the paint jobs ans select the one for the evening).

I've had opponents ask me if they can swap things out and into their force, which is usually fine with me; but they haven't been WAAC players.

You are missing one aspect of the game if you don't try list tailoring at all. You can agree with your opponent that both of you create lists based on the knowledge what kind of models the opponent could use in his army. This brings surprising results when you try to think what kind of army your opponent could field and how to counter that. You might be completely incorrect.

In our group we generally have that knowledge and then agree to publish our lists to each other one day before the match. It also allows us to think of tactics in advance.

I don't see anything wrong with that. It has made the games more interesting. TAC lists seem to be more stagnant, now we get much more variation and I feel that we are on more equal footing. It is easier to build an effective TAC list with some codexes.

 Jidmah wrote:
Warhammer 40k is not balanced towards bringing as many different units as possible, it is balanced towards spamming because certain units are strictly better than others, target saturation is much more powerful than flexibility and the extremely high death rate of units forces you to bring redundancy.

Sorry, but I don't agree here. You don't *need* spam to succeed. You just need multiple units covering the same role. Why would you choose 3 of the same unit in a force that can all be nullified the same exact way over and over again in games? It is just asking someone to tailor to your list. You need different varieties of units, but that fill the same role. For example, you could have 2 units of devastators or one unit of devastators and one land raider instead. The weapons best against the land raider would be slow to take out the devastators and the weapons that would more easily deal with the devastator squad en masse would not as quickly or effectively take out the land raider. That flexibility succeeds more often than not on the table top. Redundancy does not equal spamming. It equals covering your bases with multiple units so you aren't caught short. Yes I know you play orks, but the concepts work the same way. Spamming works to a point, but then people get bored and tired of dealing with it and will do everything they can to counter it judiciously and if you bring the same spammed units to every game always, then you are pretty much inviting them to do it to you as well. Using different units to cover the same role makes your opponent have to work for their win instead of making it easier. Also if you buy into the "only certain units are worth using" mentality you are limiting yourself even further. A tendency to spam units and only using 25% of the units in your codex ever, again, makes it easy to tailor against you in a regular play group.

Of course game to game flexibility is harder if you have a limited collection of minis, but you can still build a baseline force that is flexible and not full of spam to use that will keep things from being easier to your opponent.

Skriker


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Naw wrote:
You are missing one aspect of the game if you don't try list tailoring at all. You can agree with your opponent that both of you create lists based on the knowledge what kind of models the opponent could use in his army. This brings surprising results when you try to think what kind of army your opponent could field and how to counter that. You might be completely incorrect.

In our group we generally have that knowledge and then agree to publish our lists to each other one day before the match. It also allows us to think of tactics in advance.

I don't see anything wrong with that. It has made the games more interesting. TAC lists seem to be more stagnant, now we get much more variation and I feel that we are on more equal footing. It is easier to build an effective TAC list with some codexes.

Ok people there seems to be some deep seated confusion here as to the negative connotations of list tailoring. The negative connotations do not apply in a group of friends who are completely open about exactly what each other has and wants to bring to the game. They all have the same level of ability to tweak based on what the opponent is bringing. There is nothing wrong with that at all. There is also nothing wrong with two friends about to have a game and finding out before hand that one army will have very limited effect on the other and discussing and making some changes to make the game a better overall experience for both players. Also spamming a certain type of unit to limit the number of weapons a possible opponent's force that will be effective for them is, again, not list tailoring or cheating. Furthermore making a list that is heavily "anti-armor" or "anit-flyer" in the hopes that an opponent will show up with forces in one of these extremes is also not list tailoring either. All of these either involve openness between all the players involved or still are done as a *guess* that they will have the desired outcome in the matches coming up, but still no guarantees.

The negative connotation of list tailoring from the cheating standpoint is a specific and deliberate attempt by a player to gain advantage over their opponent for a given game by building specific counters for the army they know they will be facing. With the primary goal being to stack the deck so much in their favor that a win is all but inevitable barring poor dice rolling. This could be done just because you know a regular opponents only available minis that they use every game, or by watching a likely opponent playing someone else and building a list to counter what you see they have on the table that day, or even waiting until an unknown opponent pulls out their army and then choosing what to include in your own army. THAT is what people are complaining about and are considering cheating.

Skriker

 Skriker wrote:


Sorry, but I don't agree here. You don't *need* spam to succeed. You just need multiple units covering the same role. Why would you choose 3 of the same unit in a force that can all be nullified the same exact way over and over again in games? It is just asking someone to tailor to your list. You need different varieties of units, but that fill the same role. For example, you could have 2 units of devastators or one unit of devastators and one land raider instead. The weapons best against the land raider would be slow to take out the devastators and the weapons that would more easily deal with the devastator squad en masse would not as quickly or effectively take out the land raider. That flexibility succeeds more often than not on the table top. Redundancy does not equal spamming. It equals covering your bases with multiple units so you aren't caught short. Yes I know you play orks, but the concepts work the same way. Spamming works to a point, but then people get bored and tired of dealing with it and will do everything they can to counter it judiciously and if you bring the same spammed units to every game always, then you are pretty much inviting them to do it to you as well. Using different units to cover the same role makes your opponent have to work for their win instead of making it easier. Also if you buy into the "only certain units are worth using" mentality you are limiting yourself even further. A tendency to spam units and only using 25% of the units in your codex ever, again, makes it easy to tailor against you in a regular play group.

That's one way to look at it. The other way to look at it is that building TAC lists in 40k is literally impossible, and what we play is more like Rocks-Paper-Scissorshammer.

Most people can handle 1 Land Raider. Bringing 4 or 5 Land Raiders isn't about spamming the best unit per se, it's about overloading your opponent's ability to deal with that particular style of threat. In my IG / Chaos army, I've got things that'll roll Land Raiders no problem. 4 Melta Guns hopping out of a Vendetta? That's gonna hurt. Likewise, there's a Heldrake in there that will eat a squad of Devastators in one turn just by farting in their direction. The problem is that I don't have enough Melta Guns to target 4 Land Raiders, or enough Heldrakes to target 4 Devastator Squads.

This is the kind of thing that Jidmah is talking about. Offensively, sure, Land Raiders and Devastators can be tooled out to do pretty much the same thing. In terms of resilience though, the types of things that one-shot Land Raiders will never one-shot a Devastator Squad, and vice-versa.

What we do: about 8-12 in our group show up on any given Sat. Brothers and Roomies and such don't play each other. But other than that... Set your list out. Then we all roll two dice. Highest two play on table 1, next two on table 2 etc. with 8 possible opponents no one can tailor and everyone gets a fair shake.

 NuggzTheNinja wrote:
In terms of resilience though, the types of things that one-shot Land Raiders will never one-shot a Devastator Squad, and vice-versa.

Which is my point.

Skriker

Which was actually my point.

[Disclaimer: This is an example. Let's ignore point costs and strategic value of the single choices for this]

Let's assume your opponent has a tactical squad with a lascannon, a plasma gun and a razorback with a TL-lascannon. If you have two land raiders, the tactical squad will only be able to harm them with the lascannon, all their other guns are useless. If you bring two units of devs, the razorbacks TL-lascannon is only killing one of those ablative wounds per turn. However, if you bring one of each, your opponent can aim the TL-lascannon at the landraider and hope to explode it, while still being able to use the bolters and plasmagun to fulll effect against your devastators.

Another example would be an ork army bringing a footslogging ork boyz mob and a mob riding on a battlewagon. If you have the above squad and their razorback, the squad could aim at the boyz, while the lazorback wants to blow up the battlewagon. If the ork player brought two mobs of footsloggers, the lazorback is wasted, if he brought two battlewagons, the plasma gun and bolters would be doing nothing.

If you spread out your weaknesses, you passively increase your opponent's firepower, because everyone gets to shoot at good targets with their guns. Some guns simply come with every army, because they are mandatory (bolters) or simply the best choice for any given unit/slot (baleflamer).
This is even worse than getting tailored against, because now everyone has a weapon which is great at killing your army, rather than just the units which can be used to tailor. Of course this does not mean that mixing is bad. A landraider and the new centurions are both weak and strong to the same type of weapons, so there is harm to bringing one of each. Same goes for bringing both sternguard and devs, or dakkapreds and rifleman dreads.