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I don't think you're tfg at all. I would say definitely try other scenarios, apart from anything else they're fun.But I don't think you should feel bad for winning games, what's worse: Being beaten by a good list or winning a game because you opponent hands it to you (by deliberately under-powering their list)
Maybe try playing at a points handicap? give your opponent 200pts more to play with, if you still beat them then the problem doesn't lie with you.

As others have stated, stop playing kill-point games. There is a reason there aren't actual kill-point missions in the main rule book. The built-in army imbalance keeps kill-point games from being a truly fair ordeal (unless you are playing mirror matches). Some armies are simply better at getting (or resisting) kills than others.

Playing missions (eternal war or maelstrom) brings another level to the game and allows those with older or under-powered armies a better chance because they can play specifically to the mission objectives instead of trying to go toe-to-toe in a slugfest. While its no guarantee that your opponent will win, it will at least give him another avenue to approach the game with, because infantry heavy Chaos SM builds are among the worst at getting kills.

Your ork list would have me thinking. I've never fought against armies with much AV 14 and if I do its so negligible of a presence (my friend brings IG tanks).

I think I could take you, but you would be a far worthier opponent than most I get. And your allegedly new to the game.

Your not quite that guy on a strategic level which might be a good thing? Depending on what your shooting for, but with practice and if you want to feast on peoples tears DE style then your close lol. But you bought him something which is super nice. So no not TFG at all now.

Your above average in the TFG scale which everyone posses to some degree or another. Middle being your average person.

I'm sure if y'all keep playing he will eventually beat you.

I dunno man. I've seen some mega tastic scrub tier players in the world. My IG friend went out and bought a IK finally out of sheer desperation to win against me and my friends not even slightly cheesey nid list with only one flyrant. My other friend gets two can openers and sends them into a death charge against the IK. My dumb friend insisted on taking the thermal lance or whatever instead of the battle cannon thing against nids despite the fact the opponent didn't bring his one thing that had a 2+. I told my IG friend this and he didn't listen. Puts his ranged knight on the front lines and gets it can openered and loses the game spectacularly. No kids you can't just buy something and hope it will win the game for you. On the rematch he pulled off a win by the tiniest amount like it came down to I think a few points since they tied objectives. His first win ever in like 13-15 games lol. This guy is still a little intimidated to rematch me since I have my Stormsurge up and operational now. The IG player so bad he lost to a poorly optimized chaos marines list twice.

In my 22 games I've only lost twice now.

On a random tangent my armada win record is also going up, but I've actually lost a few times in that. 3 losses 5 wins. I'm just starting to pull ahead now. With Admiral Ackbar no one will stand a chance against me.

I don't know how I read that saying you didn't warn him about the stompa.... The bully boyz really aren't that hard to beat honestly. Meganobz get crushed by any S8 AP2. For instance a single deff dread can easily kill off 3-4 meganobz before they get to strike. Any powerfists just need to would and their S8 attack kills some of the meganobz which are slow outside of a transport. While it may be hard to shoot a battlewagon to death due to the AV, assaulting one will probably kill it with the rear armor 10. They will be going towards the enemy to deliver the meganobz and such so they will be in striking range and they probably aren't loaded with much in the way of firepower due to orky BS2. Really the ork formations are good but they aren't that great. To tone it down you could avoid formations but really missions might help your buddy a lot as well. Yet again be should get some transports though because if he does the same list against a mechanized list in a CAD he will probably lose massively even with objectives.

 Gamgee wrote:
I dunno man. I've seen some mega tastic scrub tier players in the world. My IG friend went out and bought a IK finally out of sheer desperation to win against me and my friends not even slightly cheesey nid list with only one flyrant. My other friend gets two can openers and sends them into a death charge against the IK. My dumb friend insisted on taking the thermal lance or whatever instead of the battle cannon thing against nids despite the fact the opponent didn't bring his one thing that had a 2+. I told my IG friend this and he didn't listen. Puts his ranged knight on the front lines and gets it can openered and loses the game spectacularly. No kids you can't just buy something and hope it will win the game for you. On the rematch he pulled off a win by the tiniest amount like it came down to I think a few points since they tied objectives. His first win ever in like 13-15 games lol. This guy is still a little intimidated to rematch me since I have my Stormsurge up and operational now. The IG player so bad he lost to a poorly optimized chaos marines list twice.

In my 22 games I've only lost twice now.

On a random tangent my armada win record is also going up, but I've actually lost a few times in that. 3 losses 5 wins. I'm just starting to pull ahead now. With Admiral Ackbar no one will stand a chance against me.

I know that feeling. My friend runs THREE flyrants... I have yet to lose to him so far, even with CSM

Given that you took the time to write this post, you are not "TFG". That act in itself indicates that you are concerned about other people's feelings -- something further shown by you buying a dread for one of your friends.

One of the best things I've learned form this game is to play hard, play fair, play to have fun. When disagreements arise in tourneys, and they will, use a fair judge to arbitrate and then move on. Friendships are most important and the rest of the game will grow around them.

First game I ever played was against 500 pts. of Harlequins, I ran Cypher's Formation with infiltrating Chosen steamrolled his Harlies without a single casualty (not even joking). Turns out, he forgot that he was planning on putting Crisis Suits into that match, so he was running a severely underpowered list. Second game, he gets some Wyches (he liked the models) and a Starweaer that he threw into the list fully kitted out, in exchange for letting me make it a 547 pt. list (fully kitted out my Chosen) on my part. Same deal, except that I took something like 5 or 6 casualties. Third game, I buy some Bikes, make an Oblit out of a Termi, and throw in some Cultist meatshields for my makeshift sorcerer (bringing the total up to something like 1250 pts., CAD and Fallen Champions Detachments) He throws in most of the Tau army that he plays, while using the Harlies as allies. Again, I wrecked face, with only ~5 Marines dead, 2 Bikes down, ~11 Cultists dead. Meanwhile, his army is destroyed by ~ turn 5. Pretty much every game we played went along these lines. The reason? He was going unbound. I won the first 8 games I played of 40k, because he wasn't running anything competitive, and failed to realize it (getting pissed in the process).

tl;dr If your friend is running Unbound, that's his own fault. Even with codices as weak as Chaos, Detachments bring a level of cheese that ignoring the rules will always fail to do. Which is why you don't run formations and detachments against unbound armies.

1. Don't Exclude Formations For the Sake of It

I don't think it's about only using CAD's or Unbound armies at all. The smaller points limit (e.g. 750 - 1,500) will also reduce your flexibility, meaning you will have to toss up whether you want to take a formation or replace it with some other units because of other benefits.


2. - Make the Games Evenly Matched

You are also going to have to match your opponent's list. For example, it's a dog move to take flyer's when you know they have no anti-air, or to take lots of armour (Dreadnoughts, Tanks, etc) when they don't have a lot of anti-armour abilities. I've had to do this when playing 1,000 point games with my mate who plays Orks: no flyers, minimal armour, etc. And you know what? They have been fun games and they've been challenging for both sides, with victories for both sides.


3. - Suggest Some Improvements for Their List(s)

Especially if you are rompa-stomping them, make some suggestions to their list(s) and/or play style. You have no idea how beneficial this can be. I got tabled by the staff member at my FLGS in a 2,000 point Orks (them) vs Black Templars (me) in 4 turns. I felt pretty gakky because I hardly did anything to his army, but I took it on the chin an, because they appreciated me being a good sport (not trying to toot my own horn), they helped me come up with e new and improved 2,000 point list as well as suggest better strategies. Now I'm doing better in games (not necessarily winning, but doing a lot better).


As Far as Being TFG

It doesn't make you TFG to win lots of games by a landslide. That can happen in any game. It makes you TFG if you don't make an effort to make the games even, if you don't give tips and tricks to help the other player(s) improve their list(s) and/or tactics, and especially if you don't try to make it enjoyable for everyone.

 dusara217 wrote:
First game I ever played was against 500 pts. of Harlequins, I ran Cypher's Formation with infiltrating Chosen steamrolled his Harlies without a single casualty (not even joking). Turns out, he forgot that he was planning on putting Crisis Suits into that match, so he was running a severely underpowered list. Second game, he gets some Wyches (he liked the models) and a Starweaer that he threw into the list fully kitted out, in exchange for letting me make it a 547 pt. list (fully kitted out my Chosen) on my part. Same deal, except that I took something like 5 or 6 casualties. Third game, I buy some Bikes, make an Oblit out of a Termi, and throw in some Cultist meatshields for my makeshift sorcerer (bringing the total up to something like 1250 pts., CAD and Fallen Champions Detachments) He throws in most of the Tau army that he plays, while using the Harlies as allies. Again, I wrecked face, with only ~5 Marines dead, 2 Bikes down, ~11 Cultists dead. Meanwhile, his army is destroyed by ~ turn 5. Pretty much every game we played went along these lines. The reason? He was going unbound. I won the first 8 games I played of 40k, because he wasn't running anything competitive, and failed to realize it (getting pissed in the process).

tl;dr If your friend is running Unbound, that's his own fault. Even with codices as weak as Chaos, Detachments bring a level of cheese that ignoring the rules will always fail to do. Which is why you don't run formations and detachments against unbound armies.

How? He must have been really, really, really unlucky, any decent harly force will be hitting you first and instagibbing a good chunk of you every turn.

 cosmicsoybean wrote:

 dusara217 wrote:
First game I ever played was against 500 pts. of Harlequins, I ran Cypher's Formation with infiltrating Chosen steamrolled his Harlies without a single casualty (not even joking). Turns out, he forgot that he was planning on putting Crisis Suits into that match, so he was running a severely underpowered list. Second game, he gets some Wyches (he liked the models) and a Starweaer that he threw into the list fully kitted out, in exchange for letting me make it a 547 pt. list (fully kitted out my Chosen) on my part. Same deal, except that I took something like 5 or 6 casualties. Third game, I buy some Bikes, make an Oblit out of a Termi, and throw in some Cultist meatshields for my makeshift sorcerer (bringing the total up to something like 1250 pts., CAD and Fallen Champions Detachments) He throws in most of the Tau army that he plays, while using the Harlies as allies. Again, I wrecked face, with only ~5 Marines dead, 2 Bikes down, ~11 Cultists dead. Meanwhile, his army is destroyed by ~ turn 5. Pretty much every game we played went along these lines. The reason? He was going unbound. I won the first 8 games I played of 40k, because he wasn't running anything competitive, and failed to realize it (getting pissed in the process).

tl;dr If your friend is running Unbound, that's his own fault. Even with codices as weak as Chaos, Detachments bring a level of cheese that ignoring the rules will always fail to do. Which is why you don't run formations and detachments against unbound armies.

How? He must have been really, really, really unlucky, any decent harly force will be hitting you first and instagibbing a good chunk of you every turn.

He was running unbound, had a Solitaire for a Warlord (he felt Warlord traits were just too many extra rules), kept running his Death Jesters and Shadow Seer without adding them to a Troupe, and consistently failed to actually check the rules regarding their weapons when they got into combat. He was consistently failing to actually read through the rules and run lists that would actually be able to deal damage to my Meqs.

 dusara217 wrote:

 cosmicsoybean wrote:

 dusara217 wrote:
First game I ever played was against 500 pts. of Harlequins, I ran Cypher's Formation with infiltrating Chosen steamrolled his Harlies without a single casualty (not even joking). Turns out, he forgot that he was planning on putting Crisis Suits into that match, so he was running a severely underpowered list. Second game, he gets some Wyches (he liked the models) and a Starweaer that he threw into the list fully kitted out, in exchange for letting me make it a 547 pt. list (fully kitted out my Chosen) on my part. Same deal, except that I took something like 5 or 6 casualties. Third game, I buy some Bikes, make an Oblit out of a Termi, and throw in some Cultist meatshields for my makeshift sorcerer (bringing the total up to something like 1250 pts., CAD and Fallen Champions Detachments) He throws in most of the Tau army that he plays, while using the Harlies as allies. Again, I wrecked face, with only ~5 Marines dead, 2 Bikes down, ~11 Cultists dead. Meanwhile, his army is destroyed by ~ turn 5. Pretty much every game we played went along these lines. The reason? He was going unbound. I won the first 8 games I played of 40k, because he wasn't running anything competitive, and failed to realize it (getting pissed in the process).

tl;dr If your friend is running Unbound, that's his own fault. Even with codices as weak as Chaos, Detachments bring a level of cheese that ignoring the rules will always fail to do. Which is why you don't run formations and detachments against unbound armies.

How? He must have been really, really, really unlucky, any decent harly force will be hitting you first and instagibbing a good chunk of you every turn.

He was running unbound, had a Solitaire for a Warlord (he felt Warlord traits were just too many extra rules), kept running his Death Jesters and Shadow Seer without adding them to a Troupe, and consistently failed to actually check the rules regarding their weapons when they got into combat. He was consistently failing to actually read through the rules and run lists that would actually be able to deal damage to my Meqs.

Sounds like he is just bad. Unbound is not the reason he was losing at all

Maybe you should suggest him using a more varied list? mono-builds are very weak, Nurgle aside.

You can only do so much to help your opponents. It is on them to learn the rules and apply an appropriate winning strategy to their army. If they don't feel like investing the time needed then no reason for you to feel bad about anything.
Keep playing them with the stuff you like and give them some friendly hints here and there when needed.

As others have suggested, an alternate mission structure might be a good idea, or perhaps a set of games starting at say 750/1000 points and slowly escalating to 2000. Hopefully the graduale build should improve his list building and show him what units work together and hopefully he should be picking up on ways to take your units apart, you could even dress this up as a narrative campaign to maintain interest in the whole thing.

Obviously using certain formations will be seen as too competitive so it may be a good idea to avoid them for the time being.

And no... you are not a TFG. TFG's put invisible revenant titans on skyshield landing pads against new players, this is not you.

 Tibs Ironblood wrote:
...

I'll start of by saying I don't think you're TFG. If you were, you wouldn't care about being TFG.

That said, I do think you've come across a problem my group faced aswell. One of our players has a Tau army which is almost entirely compromised of crisis suits, broadsides, Riptides and Pathfinders. It's been going on for some time but his army just gaks over the vast majority of our other armies (mainly CSM, Skitarii, guard and Khorne daemons) and the recent codex update didn't really improve the situation. We have talked to him many times about it but the discussion always ends the same way: "But why would I field different units, they aren't a good as the ones I'm using".

According to him, it's our fault because we don't bring the best our codex has to offer. He can't seem to grasp that I field Tzeentch CSM because I just like Tzeentch (and Hate Nurgle) and not because I think it's the better choice. On top of that he just reads stuff on the internet and uses that as an argument: "But Nurgle DP's are your best unit, why don't you use those?" Uhm... A) Because I really hate Nurgle and B) although Nurgle DP w/ Black mace might be one of the best units in my codex, that's solely because of their 2+ jink, which you completely ignore because Tau

This was a really bothersome problem in our group for some time where it got to the point that he just shelved his Tau and bought an Ork army.

Ok that was a very long monologue, but all I wanted to say was: It's ok to want to field a strong army with good units but that might not neccesarily be what your opponent is doing and he's going to get the short end of the stick.
Finally "but I'm not using grav" is a really lousy argument when using strong formations (especially on armies that are considered above average). It's like saying "but I didn't use my right arm" when beating a blind cripple with a metal bat in your left hand.

I have a friend who plays khorne demons (even before khorne demonkin) and basically, If I want to play a FUN game (where we both have a good time) against his lists, I have to make an assault heavy list. If I go shooty, it's almost always a landslide victory. If I play an assault heavy blood angel list, it's a super fun bloodbath and neither of us care who wins.

Play your orks against the slaanesh guy, and hold back on the shooty units. Go hard in the paint with your toughest close combat list, and try like hell to win. You're slaanesh loving opponent is playing that army because enjoys hand to hand combat and is probably bummed out at the gross OPness of the current shooty 40k. He will just love the fact you engaged his army...

So what I have done from all the advice so far is talk with my friends and come up with solutions to have fun for all.

With my friends we pretty much came to a few solutions.

1. Play Maelstrom instead of kill points. Had two games with this so far and it was a lot more fun.

2. Both agree to just use CADs or unbound.

3. Provide point handicaps for the player that opts out of using formations. We have not used this yet, but it seems on paper to be a good solution and one that makes both parties happy. I get formations and if they dont want to use them they get 100-200 free points so its 2000 versus 2,200.

Not really sure on how large of point handicaps to give out so we will just play some games and see what seems fair. Any suggestions on that?

As far as playing smaller point games my friends are not really big on the idea. They all like bigger point games and prefer them to smaller ones. My chaos playing friend does fall into the trap of using too many marks and stuff talked about in this topic that bloats his point costs past reasonable limits, but maybe the point handicap can help with this.

I have also taken to telling the guys in advance if I will be bringing things like the Skyhammer or Gladius. This has only taken effect in one game so far versus my IG playing friend and it resulted in a much more balanced match as he brought a healthy selection of anti tank without going PURE list tailoring.

I am hoping I can get some balanced games going with my chaos friend so we will see on that one. Unbound/CADs on both sides or point handicaps will hopefully lead to much more interesting games.

Things are looking good so far at my FLGS from the first week of using these changes so I must say thank you very much to everyone who has replied to the topic and offered suggestions on how to get better games. It has been very appreciated and has and hopefully will lead to many more enjoyable games for all parties involved.

In regards to points handicaps, they do work, but are a real blunt-hammer approach. Players often feel dirty for using them. It works, but it doesn't work pretty. However, you can create pseudo handicaps by creating value for your opponent. Here's a few ways where you can give a handicap without using points:

#1 - Better Starting Position: Either make the terrain around them better, or make yours worse. Make it easier for them to get to objectives, and/or make it harder for you to get to those same objectives. Have some buildings start on the table, and let those buildings have value. For example, you might put on the table a Void Shield Generator and a Plasma Obliterator or a couple bunkers with some heavy weapon emplacements. Maybe put a couple of objectives near these too. Then let your opponent deploy first. More than likely they'll take the side with these buildings. They get to feel smart for choosing these, effectively gaining extra points, yet their roster shows you two having the same points! Since you put objectives near these as well, these structures now feel like they're a central part of the story of your battle .

#2 - Overload On Upgrades: Just as you can tell your opponent to take fewer superfluous upgrades, you can do this yourself to help balance points. Time to grab all those extras! On the plus side, sometimes these things will come up and you'll be able to do some fun stuff you normally couldn't, but mostly you'll struggle to find an application to use every upgrade every game. Be sure to take poorer-choice upgrades when you're limited as well, and expensive but terrible relics. Like if your opponent is using vehicle-heavy Chaos Marines, have your Astra Militarum take Grenade Launchers instead of Plasma or Melta. In this way you're effectively giving your opponent extra points by having grossly less efficient forces.

#3 - Play Story Missions that Benefit Your Opponent: One of the reasons GW prints such powerful formations and whatnot is that they think players will only use these items when the story has it make sense. The Skyhammer formation isn't just the components that any ol' commander can pull off - it required precise planning and grim determination to execute. So give your opponent a "story-boost" that just makes up something that they get as if they were a formation. Oh, you took one unit of each Mark? Well, you're obviously the "Gods United" group, and all your Marks across your whole detachment are now free, and you get to choose your Chaos Boons (though can't choose to become a Spawn or a Daemon Prince). Oh, you took three or more Daemon Engines? Amazing, because your forces must be a "Daemonforge Cohort", giving them +1 to their Invulnerable Saves and It Will Not Die rolls, plus they can use their Daemon Engines every turn with no chance of it hurting them. What an amazing strategist you are for taking these!


As for playing smaller games, here's a trick that will really get them to see and enjoy small games; try Kill Team! Kill Team is as small as they come - 200 points - but every single model counts as a separate unit. There's an old official Kill Team rule-set still kicking around, but there's also a very well done fan-made set of rules. Kill Team doesn't feel small, as every single model now has so much more importance and takes so much more of your time. Present it as just an alternate game style to try out. If they like it, it'll open the door for smaller points games (even if they're not Kill Team games).