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Cayhn wrote:Centurions

Run them without grav weapons. They already have grav cannons glued on? "Counts as" something else.

Even better? Counts as assault centurions.

Devastators

Run them without grav weapons. They already have grav cannons glued on? "Counts as" something else. Upgrade sergeant to veteran status.

Assault Marines

Put them on foot without jump packs. You already glued on the jump packs? Oh well. They aren't working right. Technical difficulties. They're footslogging.

One reason I see why this is the case is because all my purchases has been made in order to exploit one or more of his weaknesses.

List tailoring is very bad form. Just so you know.

Sniper Scouts

They ran out of bullets. Counts as close combat weapons.

You don't have enough points? Add melta bombs.

If you're starting him out purely with the army from the DV box and you've gone and grabbed a bunch of things outside of the box that wouldn't normally be in it, then you're inherently better than the army that comes in that box. I've added up the cost of the two units from out of the box and I think the base DV army is already around the 700 mark while he's down at about 550. If you've added that much to your army, then you're already playing a completely different force than what that box was made to try and contest. You've already gone and put him at a disadvantage just from your other acquisitions.

Space Marines don't require a lot of rules to realize why they do what they do, however there are so many rules that they leave out of the Dark Vengeance set that the Chaos units have that he is already at a disadvantage just from the word go.

I would recommend house ruling it in that if he likes how Krannon looks, then he gets all of Krannon's Relic gear at no point cost. This helped my brother look at him as more than just a close range hopeful, especially the one game where he racked up a lot of kills on him and beefed up that soul stealer sword.

A few other things I'd recommend would be to ask him if he wants like a sorcerer or two, as having psyker access with smite from the DV set on the one side and lacking it on the other was broke beyond imagining when I played base box games against my brother.

Another would be to maybe add in a squad or two of 10 CSMs to give him equal chances of survival rather than having half of his army (Hello cultists) just get chewed to pieces by your BASIC dakka.

Try and get some terrain to play with and around. That will really help him stand a chance, as you don't really come equipped with much in the way of "Ignores Cover" and any chance he can get to keep his units alive goes a long way in helping things out. Cover was one of the biggest things I added that helped bring our last game to where he almost won, but after that it was a bad tactical decision that cost him the game.

If you're trying to jump back into the hobby as you would have years ago, then you already have an idea of how to build based on prior knowledge, versus going "that looks awesome, I'm going to try those out!" You'll kind of need to take a step back and remember what it was like for you to try and learn everything the game had to offer and all of the rules and put yourself back into those shoes. Whether you win a bunch of games or start losing, you need to look and see if he's having fun. The game isn't really supposed to be about who wins and loses but rather about playing out all the fluff related stuff on the table with the armies you've put time into. If he has fun that way, then I can see him staying and playing, especially if it's another social opportunity to hang around ya. But if he's not having fun, that's when you need to look at both what is he doing and what am I doing to make this not fun for one or both of us.

*This is from the perspective of someone relatively new to the hobby playing with some other people who are relatively new, sub-two years of playing/collecting*

Buy some BA.

 Traditio wrote:

Cayhn wrote:Centurions

Run them without grav weapons. They already have grav cannons glued on? "Counts as" something else.

Even better? Counts as assault centurions.

Devastators

Run them without grav weapons. They already have grav cannons glued on? "Counts as" something else. Upgrade sergeant to veteran status.

Assault Marines

Put them on foot without jump packs. You already glued on the jump packs? Oh well. They aren't working right. Technical difficulties. They're footslogging.

One reason I see why this is the case is because all my purchases has been made in order to exploit one or more of his weaknesses.

List tailoring is very bad form. Just so you know.

Sniper Scouts

They ran out of bullets. Counts as close combat weapons.

You don't have enough points? Add melta bombs.

This. So much this. I've played tau (everyone's favorite) since early 4th edition. I have a fair amount of experience with them and when said experience is combined with our now rather strong codex against a newer/weaker player, the results are similar to your experience. Don't try to throw games with bad in game decisions, people will notice eventually and it'll sap the fun from both players. Intentionally not min-maxing your list is a much better route. I've found that removing all AP 1-3 weapons from my army makes for much more enjoyable games against newer/weaker opponents. See terminators aren't quite as overcosted if nothing on the table can reliably get through their 2+ armor save and just delete them.

Turns out games tend to be pretty interesting when an opposing landraider (that your army literally cannot kill) crashes into your castled firewarriors and dumps out a squad of assualt terminators. Learning how to worm your way out of impossible situations like that is utterly satisfying and even if you win your opponent got to go ham with his awesome models. It's a win-win (unless you lose which will happen). Still, in my experience losing is always more enjoyable than crushing/tabling your opponent.

I have the same problem when I play with my friend - he's not great at strategy and even if I hamstring myself with a points disadvantage, I'm more than likely to win.

The trick is, you have to pull your punches without making it look like you're being an arrogant dick. Here are a few suggestions that have made my games more fun.

1. Do fluffy things instead of necessarily smart things. For example - a Commissar and a Guardsman Squad would be best off holding for overwatch against an Assault Squad but instead choose to have the Commissar order them to fix bayonets and charge!

2. Give yourself unrealistic yet cool goals - 'I will kill your HQ in CQC!'. Then dedicate resources to achieving this goal (choosing to do this over the actual game objectives).

3. 'Miss' your opponent's mistakes. He positioned himself horribly? You didn't see that - don't capitalize on it.

I guess my feeling from this thread is that your buddy isn't even that interested. You keep re-iterating that he doesn't want to spend money.
You can't really do much in 40k without dumping a load of money. Even second hand models rack up the cost.

Don't use standard Chaos space marines, if you have them run them as plague marines, after ensuring you have given your Lord Mark of Nurgle. This makes them troop choices and objective secured
Use a Helldrake, this is a marine killer.
Use Terminators as Obliterators.
Use cultists, they're cheap for just sitting on objectives
Don't use Warp Talons
Don't use Hellbrutes

Taking grav against CSMs with Terminators is downright cruel. You've list-tailored and ended up stacking the deck so much in your favour the other player has zero chance. I'm not entirely sure what OP expected.

Why did you list tailor at all? I'm curious.

 Purifier wrote:
and even Cultists who are useless on paper but holds an objective as well as a unit 4 times their price if you have enough of them.

Compare Cultists to Guardsmen. They're more expensive, worse saves, with worse options. With their LD, they're likely to run away after being shot at. Nobody ever said a standard Guardsman platoon is good, and neither are Cultists. Cultists are only good for unlocking other CSM allies so you can spam HQs.

...git bad?

Martel732 wrote:
Buy some BA.

You said that already.

 ChazSexington wrote:
Taking grav against CSMs with Terminators is downright cruel. You've list-tailored and ended up stacking the deck so much in your favour the other player has zero chance. I'm not entirely sure what OP expected.

Why did you list tailor at all? I'm curious.

 Purifier wrote:
and even Cultists who are useless on paper but holds an objective as well as a unit 4 times their price if you have enough of them.

Compare Cultists to Guardsmen. They're more expensive, worse saves, with worse options. With their LD, they're likely to run away after being shot at. Nobody ever said a standard Guardsman platoon is good, and neither are Cultists. Cultists are only good for unlocking other CSM allies so you can spam HQs.[/qu

Your opponent could go a step further and run Typhus, making your Cultists Plague Zombies, fearless with fnp

 ChazSexington wrote:
Why did you list tailor at all? I'm curious.

As much as I'm against list tailoring I think it is inevitable if you're only playing one other opponent (or in a very small group).

Even if you're trying not to tailor your perception of what's good and bad is highly influenced by your meta (which in this case is a single opponent).

Tailoring (the good kind) your own army to match the power level of an opponent's list is more difficult than it appears.

 Sidstyler wrote:
...git bad?

Martel732 wrote:
Buy some BA.

You said that already.

True, I was very tired.

 Scott-S6 wrote:

 ChazSexington wrote:
Why did you list tailor at all? I'm curious.

As much as I'm against list tailoring I think it is inevitable if you're only playing one other opponent (or in a very small group).

Even if you're trying not to tailor your perception of what's good and bad is highly influenced by your meta (which in this case is a single opponent).

Tailoring (the good kind) your own army to match the power level of an opponent's list is more difficult than it appears.

Of course list tailoring to your meta and your meta's competitiveness is good (Facing Wraithknights, Scatterbike and Warp Spider spam isn't fun for my CSMs from a even game point of view), but there is no way turning up with grav weapons against CSMs with Terminators and Raptors is an attempt at trying to level the playing field. To OP's credit he said he was actively trying to exploit the weaknesses of the other guy's force. I'm just trying to figure out why he thought this was a good idea.

His CSM opponent has been mauled enough by the Loyalists he might not play anymore due to being exposed the horrible game balance, which is a pity, so the damage is done. Honestly, I don't blame him. I've played the non-competitive CSM lists for over a year and I think I've racked up something like 5 wins out of 35-40 games. wh40k is one of the least balanced games I've ever played if both players aren't trying to balance it themselves.

OP buying a new Space Marine force that roughly matches the CSM power level is one way of fixing it, or the aforementioned proxying. The SM codex can be better balanced against CSMs; dropping grav, GSFs etc. helps.

 ChazSexington wrote:

 Scott-S6 wrote:

 ChazSexington wrote:
Why did you list tailor at all? I'm curious.

As much as I'm against list tailoring I think it is inevitable if you're only playing one other opponent (or in a very small group).

Even if you're trying not to tailor your perception of what's good and bad is highly influenced by your meta (which in this case is a single opponent).

Tailoring (the good kind) your own army to match the power level of an opponent's list is more difficult than it appears.

There is no way turning up with grav weapons against CSMs with Terminators and Raptors is an attempt at trying to level the playing field. To OP's credit he said he was actively trying to exploit the weaknesses of the other guy's force. I'm just trying to figure out why he thought this was a good idea.

I just meant that list tailoring just happens when playing in very small groups because your idea of what's good and bad quickly becomes what's good and bad against that particular opponent.

Unfortunately it appears that the two of them have different mindsets -OP wants to be good at the game by selecting effective units and planning how to utilize them well while his friend wants to pick cool models and push them around the table. It's a difficult gap to bridge and people of the latter type rarely want to meet you halfway.

 Scott-S6 wrote:

 ChazSexington wrote:

 Scott-S6 wrote:

 ChazSexington wrote:
Why did you list tailor at all? I'm curious.

As much as I'm against list tailoring I think it is inevitable if you're only playing one other opponent (or in a very small group).

Even if you're trying not to tailor your perception of what's good and bad is highly influenced by your meta (which in this case is a single opponent).

Tailoring (the good kind) your own army to match the power level of an opponent's list is more difficult than it appears.

There is no way turning up with grav weapons against CSMs with Terminators and Raptors is an attempt at trying to level the playing field. To OP's credit he said he was actively trying to exploit the weaknesses of the other guy's force. I'm just trying to figure out why he thought this was a good idea.

I just meant that list tailoring just happens when playing in very small groups because your idea of what's good and bad quickly becomes what's good and bad against that particular opponent.

Unfortunately it appears that the two of them have different mindsets -OP wants to be good at the game by selecting effective units and planning how to utilize them well while his friend wants to pick cool models and push them around the table. It's a difficult gap to bridge and people of the latter type rarely want to meet you halfway.

I think I answered with my edit

 Purifier wrote:
The problem with that is that whenever I've gotten clear cut handicaps like that, it's felt like a pretty hollow victory if you do happen to win.

You need to take page from go player attitude Handicaps are integral part of the game rules and win is a win whether it's 0 handicap or 24 handicap(well okay officially game has only 9 handicaps but when gap between players is simply too good...)


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 lion_el_johnson wrote:

 Purifier wrote:

 Korinov wrote:
if not the worst outright.

I don't think it's unfair to call CSM the worst codex at the moment.

Does everyone seem to forget that Codex: Orks exists? At least CSM have some decent builds. Orks only work with the forgeworld biker character and even then they are outshone by literally every other bike army out there. (ie, Nurgle Bikers, White Scars, Ravenwing, Scat Bikes, etc). Orks are easily the worst army to date.

Whatabout sisters of battle? Don't seem to hear them being particularly good and at least orks and CSM have miniatures easily available

Sisters aren't that bad just rare.

Do I get this right? He's playing a footslogging csm list with some warp talons? Against what almost looks like a long range gunline.
That's basically just asking to loose.

At the bare minimum he should use some bikes. Maybe he can proxy some with the DV bikers? Put the lord in there. You could use spawn but the bikers are cheaper and he'll want to squeeze out every point he can get.
Are you playing maelstrom? Cuz that would probably help some too.
The warp talons can be made useable, but it requires an army to do so. And you need allies, csm on their own just don't cut it for this. They're just a waste of points with this kind of setup.

Get a coke can and use it as a maulerfiend lol. Its not that far off in terms of size and it'll do much more than a helbrute.
He could slap some flamers on the terminators and termicide with a unit of 3, or plasma, but there is no way to make termies useful outside of termicide with those points.
And I hate to admit it, but a heldrake with baleflamer would pull a number on you. Or use onliterators instead, just to have some ranged support.

Perhaps look into some formations. It sounds like he might be able to combine the Crimson Slaughter Cult of slaughter formation with a purge detachment. Or the CS Brethen of the dark covenant, feel no pain would go a long way with such low points.
The other thing he could consider is using khorne daemonkin. They're still CSM to a degree and the bloodtithes would probably help greatly.

Here is something. PLAY to have fun with plastic toy soldiers, instead of NEEDING TO WIN with plastic toy soldiers.

As was said before, nothing wrong in wanting to win and being trying to be the best at it. Problem is, you need an opponent for that. Since your friend is not that kind of player, you will have to adapt to him, or like you said, he will loose interest and you have no one to PLAY with.

After all we are here to PLAY like little boys going pew pew.

And please read my sig. That might open your eyes a bit on why you may become. Not saying you are that kind of person, but your friend is defiantly NOT.

Points do matter though, balance matters, and having an enjoyable time playing a game of toy soldiers and having a reasonable chance of winning matters.

All of these things are integral for the average person having a good time playing a game or sport or whatever.

Why do you think that sports are such a huge deal for people in most countries. The high level of competition piques the interest of most people and why people go crazy for good teams that make it to the finals against other good teams.

You think people would be interested in playing or watching a game that had the 92 NBA all star team vs. the local high school team?

Thats what this is, thats what a game without points or restrictions or proper points balancing/codex balancing is. Garbage.

 lion_el_johnson wrote:

 Purifier wrote:

 Korinov wrote:
if not the worst outright.

I don't think it's unfair to call CSM the worst codex at the moment.

Does everyone seem to forget that Codex: Orks exists? At least CSM have some decent builds. Orks only work with the forgeworld biker character and even then they are outshone by literally every other bike army out there. (ie, Nurgle Bikers, White Scars, Ravenwing, Scat Bikes, etc). Orks are easily the worst army to date.

Have you considered...

Also, OP - can we see a picture of your gaming table? If you have inadequate terrain then you are hugely disadvantaging your friend.

Buying units that specifically crap on your friends units.

What the hell is wrong with you?

Cayhn wrote:
One reason I see why this is the case is because all my purchases has been made in order to exploit one or more of his weaknesses. His limited purchases has mainly been based on whats cheap (money) and looks cool.

Any suggestions what to do?

SM are known to be good. CSM are known to be bad. And you're amplifying it by buying competitive units, rather than cool units for what is clearly casual play. You are a bad friend and should feel bad.

As penance, you need to swap out all of your "good" SM models for Imperial Guard allies.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Purifier wrote:
While you may not be an experienced player compared to some of the maniacs on this forum, to you two it's really the relative experience between you that matters. So you don't have to be great, you just have to be better

That is why it's important to have running shoes when you're hiking with your friend in bear country. You don't have to outrun the bear. You just have to outrun the slowest other person.

Another thing. 40K is NOT BALANCED. Just because you have 100 points actually means your buddy is using 70 points.

Come on, think about it, you are paying what 1 point to have Know no fear or what ever it's called?

Here is one, you play with 75% or so of the game. If you are playing a 750 point game, he gets 750 points and you only get 600 or you get 750 points and he gets 900.

There is a reason why Space Marine players get labeled "the easy button".

Another option would be to give him some free rules - count all of his models as Khorne Daemonkin for blood tithe, for example, and those benefits might let him get through the game. You could make a good case that it's just to rebalance units that really should've had it in the first place.

Throw games.... Unless he is already doing that to you.

It's a skill most experienced players learn to do perfectly. Great for keeping people in your local area playing the game.

I've thrown more games than I've won in my long gaming life.

Let is be known that I firmly disagree with the whole "Thousand Sons are rubbish" thing. They annihilate meqs in my experience

 Overlord Thraka wrote:
Let is be known that I firmly disagree with the whole "Thousand Sons are rubbish" thing. They annihilate meqs in my experience

They are just vastly overpriced for that one job (which is easily negated by just getting a cover save)

Use his army to see how it feels. :-)