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double flyrants or flying circus with daemons. Reason why is theyre a rock paper scissors list. If you arent equipped to deal with it, odds are you just lost already. If you can deal with it, the nid/daemon player falls over quick.

i dislike list tailoring, my HBC riptide always has VT even if i know the person im going against rarely brings fliers because thats the way i run him. FMC spam forces list tailoring in order to deal with them, and when you tailor for them they dont stand a chance. (and before anyone says anything, my tau doesnt have an issue with these lists. its my orks that suffer)

Some lists are just tough to build without those units though.

I don't feel like I can have a fun or competative list without a Tervigon.

No unit should be like that.

I think much of this could be avoided with a beta rules release...as in GW purposefully gives a ruleset draft out to the public and opens a forum for ideas.

 ClockworkZion wrote:

 TheCustomLime wrote:

 ClockworkZion wrote:

 TheCustomLime wrote:
Even the grimdark armies of 40k do it. Chimera spam lists are armored fist regiments. Drop pod spam is tactic called steel rain. Bike spam is what the white scars do.

To a point but when it's presented in the lore we're typically dealing with a lot more units than we do on the table.

And even in the real world military some variance does exist. Not every squad is kitted for anti-armor for instance.

I think spam is when the idea is to take as much as you can of what is considered the "must take" options in the book.

My point is that spam makes sense from several points of view. Though, I will alter this with the exception of a gaming point of view when it comes to your definition of spam. It must get boring and stupid to have to fight the same exact units in the same exact army over and over again.

I wonder, do codex writers intend for it to happen or does it just does?

From what I gather they don't mean for it to happen, or else Quaddrakes wouldn't work as they do now. There is legend of someone showing one of the Devs a list from one of the big national tournamanets and they were less than excited about it.

Maybe they should learn how to balance the game then, maybe update online to help out poorer lists...

But they don't, so we get things like this.

They come out and say the game is designed for narrative play and people still insist on using it for tournaments.

That's like complaining that you can't use a knife as a hammer you know.

Spam is hard to define. My Imperial Guard army Only has plasma weapons. Every special weapon is plasma including officers and tanks etc. Why? Because i like the look of glowing plasma. What i would love to see is a change in player attitudes.

But what really annoys me is when I see people who take net lists and tell people they must take valkaries etc (pedigrene cough) but then go on to talk about how everybody needs to paint their army to forge a narrative. Now this is so annoying because what Tau army would actually field 3 Riptides in such a small force for example?

In my opinion armies should be made with a theme. I have an army of strict praetorian line infantry. Being incredibly strict in their military disciplin they have a penal legion for the slovenly soldiers who cant behave. Brits also had merc back in that era so i use the old kroot as a unit in my army. But i still spam plasma.

People just have to find a balance in theme (which means having units you enjoy) and spam.

So I guess its the huge lack of creativity, a huge amount of exploitation and the goal of peoples army lists coupled with the comments made by others that really irk me. For example its all good to take lots of vandettas but there should be a reason, most vandetta lists arent even themed as air cavalry lists. They just have them because they "need them". All in all its the attitude i see in the army list section that stops me going to tournaments.

 Swastakowey wrote:
Spam is hard to define.

That's true.

Last tournament I won my list had every Tyranid special character in it.

Hero spam / character spam?

Sort of...but the tyranid characters are all inherently very very different in their purpose.


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I also know a mech IG player who wanted to fill the air with lead and so he took any upgrade that on any vehicle that gave him more shots...spam-ish.

My Space Marine lists usually have 2 or 3 Tactical Squads with Rhinos.

ZOMG! I R Spammer!

 kronk wrote:
My Space Marine lists usually have 2 or 3 Tactical Squads with Rhinos.

ZOMG! I R Spammer!

Id only consider that "negative spamming" if you took minimum squad sizes to max how many transports you could take.

I've got a fairly narrow definition of Spam (the lazy copy/pasting to fill a list with as many of "must have" or "broken" units as you can for the sole purpose to make it easier to win instead of building to be to a theme or generally be creative), but I will admit that it can vary from person to person.

 ClockworkZion wrote:
I've got a fairly narrow definition of Spam (the lazy copy/pasting to fill a list with as many of "must have" or "broken" units as you can for the sole purpose to make it easier to win instead of building to be to a theme or generally be creative), but I will admit that it can vary from person to person.

Exactly, it should be a case by case thing. It should be theme first and always. If both players do that then the game is fairly balanced. Mostly

Themed armies are 100x cooler than any army that wants to run 4 Riptides.

Agreed, i noticed people get way more into the game (in a good way) when they are buidling themed lists too. I almost left 40k then i descovered how much fun it was to theme my army and people notice it. (i used to power game a bit... ) Added to that was the people who where playing around me started to do the same. If everyone started to do it im sure so many people would come back to the hobby and GW wouldnt be as inclined to bring out big OP models every release.

 reiner wrote:
Especially fun if you pull out stuff you don't intend to use.

A friend of mine did this to one of the local power gamers at our FLGS not too long ago. He has two armies, so when his opponent showed up, they saw the parts of one army sitting out on another table and quickly drew up a list to counter it. When they started setting up for their game, he pulled the actual army he was using out of his box. His opponent actually tried to rewrite his list again but got shut down!

My pet peeve is being told that Army X absolutely needs Unit Y to be even remotely playable (such as Chaos Daemons with Fateweaver).

I don't think GW makes anything they intend to be OP, I think they just try to make cool and fun things for people to play and it just happens to be OP in competitive play because of the way the game is played versus how it's meant to be played.

Going back to the idea earlier of the fantasy format, then someone mentioned it wouldn't help with serpent spam, then another suggestion was a certain % for transport.

Well, limiting transports would invalidate certain mech lists which are always cool just on a fluff level, but serpents need to be nerfed, well the solution is a bit obvious isn't it? Each transport would be put in it's own category, so Land Raiders and serpents would be rare, razorbacks would be special, rhino's would be core etc etc. You would just get rid of the idea of unit transports, the transport would be bought and used how you see fit, transporting who you want, when you want.

 ClockworkZion wrote:
I don't think GW makes anything they intend to be OP, I think they just try to make cool and fun things for people to play and it just happens to be OP in competitive play because of the way the game is played versus how it's meant to be played.

Arguably but its a little suspicious as it always happens. Im sure you'll agree that they at least dont learn from their mistakes.

endlesswaltz123 wrote:
Going back to the idea earlier of the fantasy format, then someone mentioned it wouldn't help with serpent spam, then another suggestion was a certain % for transport.

Well, limiting transports would invalidate certain mech lists which are always cool just on a fluff level, but serpents need to be nerfed, well the solution is a bit obvious isn't it? Each transport would be put in it's own category, so Land Raiders and serpents would be rare, razorbacks would be special, rhino's would be core etc etc. You would just get rid of the idea of unit transports, the transport would be bought and used how you see fit, transporting who you want, when you want.

So the FOC gets much more complicated? I can't see that being a problem.


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 Swastakowey wrote:

 ClockworkZion wrote:
I don't think GW makes anything they intend to be OP, I think they just try to make cool and fun things for people to play and it just happens to be OP in competitive play because of the way the game is played versus how it's meant to be played.

Arguably but its a little suspicious as it always happens. Im sure you'll agree that they at least dont learn from their mistakes.

Assuming they think that they even made mistakes. Remember they operate off of what they think is cool.

Maybe just making transports a bit more generic with fewer special rules would be better balance wise

 Swastakowey wrote:
Spam is hard to define. My Imperial Guard army Only has plasma weapons. Every special weapon is plasma including officers and tanks etc. Why? Because i like the look of glowing plasma. What i would love to see is a change in player attitudes.

But what really annoys me is when I see people who take net lists and tell people they must take valkaries etc (pedigrene cough) but then go on to talk about how everybody needs to paint their army to forge a narrative. Now this is so annoying because what Tau army would actually field 3 Riptides in such a small force for example?

In my opinion armies should be made with a theme. I have an army of strict praetorian line infantry. Being incredibly strict in their military disciplin they have a penal legion for the slovenly soldiers who cant behave. Brits also had merc back in that era so i use the old kroot as a unit in my army. But i still spam plasma.

People just have to find a balance in theme (which means having units you enjoy) and spam.

So I guess its the huge lack of creativity, a huge amount of exploitation and the goal of peoples army lists coupled with the comments made by others that really irk me. For example its all good to take lots of vandettas but there should be a reason, most vandetta lists arent even themed as air cavalry lists. They just have them because they "need them". All in all its the attitude i see in the army list section that stops me going to tournaments.

Its not your fault that GW made it so the only ranged anti-meq/teq that the IG has thats not ordinance is plasma. Its also not your fault that plasma also works against vechs. Plasma is simply the best choice for a ranged do it all weapon that IG has.

I think a points costing system is needed fairly desperately to balance things out a bit. That way it all works off the same "scale".


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Something like WS/BS/S/T 2 LD5 model is 1 points and then for every two points you change on the stat (combined) it goes up by a certain amount (rounding up and never down), and for each rule and piece of basic wargear you add you add a point.

Of course this would take some fine tuning to really work out but that's the basic idea I have at least.

ductvader wrote:Some lists are just tough to build without those units though.

I don't feel like I can have a fun or competative list without a Tervigon.

No unit should be like that.

I think much of this could be avoided with a beta rules release...as in GW purposefully gives a ruleset draft out to the public and opens a forum for ideas.

True, but a Tervigon isnt a Flyrant, or two Flyrants for that matter.

MCs arent the issue, its spamming them and especially the flying ones. Flyrants are the only nid MC that gives my orks one hell of a time, as the swarmlord never reaches me and the rest get swomped by 80boyz lol. I never see daemons take only one or two big daemons, its always full out flying circus or none at all. Considering how insanely expensive flying daemons are, im kinda shocked that i see that lol.

Oddly enough, this goes into the spam debate. Spamming to me is taking an unusual number of something depending on the points. Troops excluded for obvious reasons, but if you send a couple Tervigons and Flyrants at me in a 1250pt game im going to say youre MC spamming and praying i dont have weapons to deal with them, which at 1250 i probably dont. Same goes for riptides in my case, running 1 is fine, 2 below 1500 or 3 below 2500 is spam to me. Any other is the same idea as the nids i gave, im banking on you not having enough to deal with them. If the game isnt challenging, im not having fun. I dont like steamrolling my opponent because i spammed a big unit he wasnt expecting or prepared for this time and he didnt stand a chance because its 0 challenge.

Things that look "gimmicky" usually are my "eye roller" things. I can live with things like wave serpent spam if I must, even though they're hideously broken, because, well, they fit the army and aren't relying on janky combo's to be powerful but rather their own special rules. Triple helldrake is eye-rolling, but a lot of that also has to do with how much of a crutch that is for the army.

Things that I hate most are stuff like Mantle of the Laughing God on a jetbike for a 2+cover save in the open, 2++rerollable daemons, janky riptide drone unit-type changing shennanigans, prescience artillery combos, allies shennanigans, etc.

 Vaktathi wrote:
Things that I hate most are stuff like Mantle of the Laughing God on a jetbike for a 2+cover save in the open

The Solitaire should just be considered a character by now...haha.

 ClockworkZion wrote:
They come out and say the game is designed for narrative play and people still insist on using it for tournaments.

That's like complaining that you can't use a knife as a hammer you know.

If they were competent designers it could be used for either. Its more akin to whining that the super expensive smart phone you got can only be used to browse facebook since itll freeze if used to look at anything else.

Then again, if they were competent we'd lose YMDC and half the topics on Tactics.

 TheCustomLime wrote:

 ClockworkZion wrote:
They come out and say the game is designed for narrative play and people still insist on using it for tournaments.

That's like complaining that you can't use a knife as a hammer you know.

If they were competent designers it could be used for either. Its more akin to whining that the super expensive smart phone you got can only be used to browse facebook since itll freeze if used to look at anything else.

Knives shouldn't be used as hammers, no matter how well they're built.

Ideally it could be used for both, but I refuse to fault designers who are designing one thing for a specific purpose when it breaks if I use it for something else. It's not their fault I used it for something else besides its intended purpose.

 TheCustomLime wrote:
Then again, if they were competent we'd lose YMDC and half the topics on Tactics.

You say that like it's a bad thing.

Seriously though, even Warmachine has questions about the game. The only difference there is you have people in the company who have the authority to say how it should work to stop the rules arguments. We don't get that from GW because of how bad the forums were (I partially blame how they were run, and partially blame the members who were pants on head moronic and made it a cesspool).

 ClockworkZion wrote:

 TheCustomLime wrote:

 ClockworkZion wrote:
They come out and say the game is designed for narrative play and people still insist on using it for tournaments.

That's like complaining that you can't use a knife as a hammer you know.

If they were competent designers it could be used for either. Its more akin to whining that the super expensive smart phone you got can only be used to browse facebook since itll freeze if used to look at anything else.

Knives shouldn't be used as hammers, no matter how well they're built.

Ideally it could be used for both, but I refuse to fault designers who are designing one thing for a specific purpose when it breaks if I use it for something else. It's not their fault I used it for something else besides its intended purpose.

 TheCustomLime wrote:
Then again, if they were competent we'd lose YMDC and half the topics on Tactics.

You say that like it's a bad thing.

Seriously though, even Warmachine has questions about the game. The only difference there is you have people in the company who have the authority to say how it should work to stop the rules arguments. We don't get that from GW because of how bad the forums were (I partially blame how they were run, and partially blame the members who were pants on head moronic and made it a cesspool).

I can partially see your point since it is (what I believe) Gee Dubs said about their game. Though even for forging a narrative it's still poorly written. Who wants to read the story of the farseer that beat up the Ultramarines using big machines over and over? If the game was balanced itd make for far more engaging fiction.

About the forums, I think Games Workshop couldve made it the place where the explained their intent, got feedback for their rules and the place to settle disputes. Instead it buried its head in the sand. Thats very telling of a major gaming company.

Anyone got links to archives of the gw forums? I want to see this.

Mechvets, Nidzilla, Deathwing, Tau gunline, Necron gunline. Does anybody even field anything else these days? I haven't been to Tabletop in months for just that reason. Have an original though already, for feth's sake!

I've never heard good things about the community in those forums sadly so I can't place the full blame on GW for pulling out. Everytime they do something that some don't like the get hammered by people (mostly Americans) flipping their gak all over the place.

I can't blame anyone for not wanting to deal with that, especially not directly.

 ClockworkZion wrote:
I've never heard good things about the community in those forums sadly so I can't place the full blame on GW for pulling out. Everytime they do something that some don't like the get hammered by people (mostly Americans) flipping their gak all over the place.

I can't blame anyone for not wanting to deal with that, especially not directly.

I believe TVtropes has an article on this phenomenon "This is why the fandom cant have nice things". So, you are right on that account. But then one must question if 40k had a pleasable fanbase or not. I would say yes, myself.

I'd say that it is not 100% "please-able" and never has been. Stories of complaining about GW's actions back on BBS attest to that.