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Hi all,

Just last year I got back into 40k and bought myself a Blood Angels army and a Deathwatch army. I wouldn't say I was a tournament player but I understand the game quite well and have a good understanding of all the armies I go against. My armies are not competitive just nice friendly lists to have abit of fun with my friends on a night. BUT lately the games have been anything but fun for me. They come with lists that completely wipe the floor with me.

1. Ad Mech War convocation
2. The copy paste Necron Decurion list (Reclamation Legion, Canoptek Harvest, Destroyer Cult)
3. Fist of Medusa with Skyhammer Annihilation and Smashbane as a HQ
4. Dark Angels double demi with free razorback spam (also full ballistic skill overwatch)

With my 2 armies I have there is no way I can field a list to compete with these ive tried null deployment against skyhammer, ive tried playing to the objectives against crons(and almost won, even though i had 10 men compared to half of his army).

So, Instead of fielding a nice friendly list I want to hit them with the biggest chunk of cheese so they know how fun it is to be on the receiving end of a overpowered list.

Can anyone suggest any ideas for some real strong lists. Im open to new armies and im willing to spend around £300 - £400 ($375 - $500) just to teach them all a lesson. Ive tried talking to them about how strong their lists are but I get "its not unbeatable" comments and also this is the only bunch of friends around my area that play the game so instead of not playing against them anymore id rather just beat them at their own game.

Thanks

Matt

You could make a 1500 point eldar list with 3 wraithknights for under £400 if you wanted to.

1x Eldar codex
2x Start collecting Eldar
1x windriders
1x vyper
3x wraithknight

I don't have my codex to hand but I believe this is a bound list and comes to about 1600 points total. New it would cost £383.50 but you could get stuff off ebay for cheaper.
Note that I don't play competitive lists myself and I don't generally play super competitive opponents, so I can't vouch for its efficacy, but wraithknights and scatterbikes are strong units and I definitely wouldn't want to face 3 knights at 1500 points even if it would be beatable with the right list.

Also screw them man. If they never change their lists and always play the top tornament lists then why bother playing them. They also don't seem like friends at all.....


On another note, I am not trying to judge your friend group but their sense of self worth and self esteem seems tied to how effective and how many wins they acquire through 40k. Sad....

They do not seem like the jolly type to enjoy a game with some beers and fun fluff centered around a game.


To really mess with them. Id not spend 400 pounds on a new army just to show them a lesson (unless you just want a new army).


Id save the money, and spend time trying to meet a hot chick (unless you have one) and bring her into the store instead.

Their accolades in the fictional 40k universe wont mean gak. They will be jealous you actually get some real action...

You could try upping your existing models to use a gladius with the free transports? If you have a bunch of drop pods/rhinos/razorbacks it might be less of an extreme measure. People should be fine with you using the rules from codex:SM, particularly if they're running such competitive lists themselves.

If they're beating you every time though, you should be able to make them see that the games you're playing are fundamentally unbalanced. Deathwatch and BA just aren't that strong against high end competitive lists/ Maybe challenge them to a CAD vs CAD game? It'd give them a new challenge to build towards and should be more even.

Hey Deano,

Sounds like you need to have a discussion with your friends is all. Ask them to not bring tournament-strength lists to a casual game. Tell them it's like bring a professional football team to a friendly outing. Yeah, there's a lot of skill at the professional level, but even without advanced plans and tactics, the pros will easily beat the joes, and all you got are joes. There's a possibility that they desire to play these high-powered games. In which case, you also designing these uber-lists just feeds into that same thing. If you simply talk with them ahead of time about the kind of game you want to play, this will likely fix your problems. Your other option is to go crazy and build mega-doom lists yourself. If you want to do that and your group seeks to play competitively, I would suggest the following:

#1 - Repaint to a "Codex: Space Marines" force (don't do Blood Angels). This gives you access to better formations.

#2 - Make a mix of high-speed, insanely durable, and unimaginably powerful stuff. The classic example is a Gladius Strike Force for Free Transport spam, accompanied by a deathstar (Librarius Conclave on Bikes, allied perhaps with some Deathwatch, should do pretty well). However, anything in this same vein will do. Deathwatch actually has some very effective stuff that can form the basis of a good starting team.

#3 - Make sure that your force is already strong to begin with, and then can buff or reinforce itself wherever it needs to, whenever it needs to. The Deathwatch Frag Cannon is amazing. Think of ways to make them even stronger by combo'ing them with psychic powers or other Allies of the Imperium.

#4 - Min-Max like a madman. If you need something, find out the minimal way to take it, so you get the maximum effect. Take absolutely no basic guys or upgrades that "might" be useful. Only take stuff that absolutely is useful.

Good luck!

Cheers for the reply's

I wouldn't mind another army but like you say changing to a competitive list just feeds them. Maybe if i reject matches and wait it out till they miss me enough to think that they are ruining my fun. Usually ive waiting a couple months for a game so im just glad to get a game but after it I wish I hadn't bothered at all.

I already have the starting of a Gladius strike force with my blood angels which can be repainted (theyre not the fancy marines but just regular tacticals), so that wouldnt be a bad option.

I dont mind Deathwatch its hard to get bodies on the field but they are perfect for allies. 2 squads in pods with frag cannons totally wreck stuff when they drop in.

There are ways to create super unfluffy, horribly OP lists.

It cost a lot of money, and in the end, no one will have any fun.

I always ask players to bring fluffy lists or else I am not interested in playing.

The other think you could do is suggest alternative formats that don't play to the tournament lists. Kill team, 1000 point zone mortalis, etc.

 roflmajog wrote:
You could make a 1500 point eldar list with 3 wraithknights for under £400 if you wanted to.

1x Eldar codex
2x Start collecting Eldar
1x windriders
1x vyper
3x wraithknight

I don't have my codex to hand but I believe this is a bound list and comes to about 1600 points total. New it would cost £383.50 but you could get stuff off ebay for cheaper.
Note that I don't play competitive lists myself and I don't generally play super competitive opponents, so I can't vouch for its efficacy, but wraithknights and scatterbikes are strong units and I definitely wouldn't want to face 3 knights at 1500 points even if it would be beatable with the right list.

This is a bound list (Craftworld Warhost detachment, Windrider Host core formation plus three Wraith-Construct auxiliary choices and one or two Engines of Vaul auxiliary choices).

I don't know that I'd recommend going that route; one of the issues with deciding you're going to copy-paste a netlist of powerful units to win is that you don't end up learning how to use the army and it doesn't end up helping. I've left my Eldar mostly on the shelf for some time because nobody has any fun fighting Wraithknights and Windriders, so when I do bring them out I've got no idea how they work anymore and I tend to get eaten. If you tell us more about what stuff you've got we may be able to help you work something out with the armies you've got.

(That said another possibility if you're going to grab that Eldar army is the Warp Hunter (Doom of Mymeara); 185pts, available in squadrons of 1-3 as a Heavy Support choice or in squadrons of 2-3 as an auxiliary choice in the Craftworld Warhost, and packing a big spinal distortion gun that fires d3+1 Barrage small blasts (at 36" range) or a template, both at AP2 and at Strength D (with a -1 on the D-table, but without the D-scythe rule from the Wraithguard/Hemlock templates so it still inflicts Instant Death as if it were S10 and as a D-weapon it outright ignores Reanimation Protocols and FNP). You can probably build a respectable one out of a Fire Prism and a spare Wraithknight D-cannon, but I'll tell you after I try to.)

Ive got currently

Captain (Bike)
Chaplain (Foot)
30 Tacticals
5 Devastators
3 Bikes
4 Razorback / Rhinos
3 Drop Pods
1 Watchmaster
1 Watch Captain
3 Librarians
30 Deathwatch Veterans
5 Vanguard Vets
5 Custodian Guards
5 Sisters of Silence

Looks like a reasonable double demi gladius to me? Use the tacs, Devs and bikes to unlock the free transports and use that 1st company auxillary formation to field deathwatch as sternguard. Could try and squeeze in a libconclave if there's room?

 DoomMouse wrote:
Looks like a reasonable double demi gladius to me? Use the tacs, Devs and bikes to unlock the free transports and use that 1st company auxillary formation to field deathwatch as sternguard. Could try and squeeze in a libconclave if there's room?

Or just play Deathwatch as Deathwatch, there are plenty of single-squad formations to do that and you get to keep the frag cannons and the piles of rerolls.

Might want a few extra bikes and transports to do a Gladius with this. What are we looking at in terms of wargear? How much grav/how many frag cannons do you have in amongst all this?

I was more thinking in terms of the auxillary choice the gladius needs. Don't think he can make anything good besides first company. Could get the three scout squads for 10th company though potentially?

No need to repaint. It's not like a codex Marine chapter can't have a red paint job.

 DoomMouse wrote:
I was more thinking in terms of the auxillary choice the gladius needs. Don't think he can make anything good besides first company. Could get the three scout squads for 10th company though potentially?

I keep forgetting about the auxiliary formation. At that point using the Deathwatch models as Sternguard might actually be the right thing to do with them, trying to fit in your podding special-weapon squads and another detachment is probably a bit excessive. And the -Ld trick might come in handy in some situations (one use: Fearless doesn't make you auto-pass all Ld-based tests. You actually sort of can stun-lock Necron Wraiths with Ld penalties and Dominate. It's harder to do without Eldar Ld-penalty-stacking shenanigans, but it's possible.)


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Grand.Master.Raziel wrote:
No need to repaint. It's not like a codex Marine chapter can't have a red paint job.

And it's not like the Carcharodons and Fire Hawks (Forge World Chapter Tactics) don't sort of fit into what playing Blood Angels should feel like anyway.

If I were you mate, I'd see about "alternative" places you can go if the your friends power gaming gets horribly out if control. Sounds like they have been to used to you being the "whipping boy" as it were, and might sink to new lows to be on top again once you get your own power list.

Lost a good friend back in the day because he refused to play nothing but a horrific power list in his Tau army, so I stopped playing against him. It sucked, but I finally saw sense once he mentioned this immortal sentence:

"The fish of fury maneuver isn't broken, you simply don't know how to deal with it!"

 Freddy Kruger wrote:
If I were you mate, I'd see about "alternative" places you can go if the your friends power gaming gets horribly out if control. Sounds like they have been to used to you being the "whipping boy" as it were, and might sink to new lows to be on top again once you get your own power list.

Lost a good friend back in the day because he refused to play nothing but a horrific power list in his Tau army, so I stopped playing against him. It sucked, but I finally saw sense once he mentioned this immortal sentence:

"The fish of fury maneuver isn't broken, you simply don't know how to deal with it!"

This seems like good advice. If they aren't going to play anything but the cheesiest lists, then you aren't going to be able to have fun.

Sidenote: what was fish of fury? It was a 5e thing wasn't it?

 gnome_idea_what wrote:

 Freddy Kruger wrote:
If I were you mate, I'd see about "alternative" places you can go if the your friends power gaming gets horribly out if control. Sounds like they have been to used to you being the "whipping boy" as it were, and might sink to new lows to be on top again once you get your own power list.

Lost a good friend back in the day because he refused to play nothing but a horrific power list in his Tau army, so I stopped playing against him. It sucked, but I finally saw sense once he mentioned this immortal sentence:

"The fish of fury maneuver isn't broken, you simply don't know how to deal with it!"

This seems like good advice. If they aren't going to play anything but the cheesiest lists, then you aren't going to be able to have fun.

Sidenote: what was fish of fury? It was a 5e thing wasn't it?

This was the 4e-era abuse of the LoS rules where your Fire Warriors could see under the Devilfish to shoot people, but people couldn't shoot back and had to go around the vehicle.

Some armies can't really deal with certain formations. So it's sorta silly advice.

If everyone but you is playing a certain way, that doesn't make everyone else the problem. That is so backwards.

If you game with a group of 5 people who all show up with tournament caliber lists every time, and you aren't, it's completely unfair to be upset. Clearly you want something different than they do. You could talk to them, and ask them to bring something different, but it shouldn't be from a perspective that they're jerks.

A lot of people are attributing emotions to both sides of this that the op never even hinted at.

Look, you're a space marine player right? Look up 'frankie giampapa adepticon list' and build towards that, making changes where your preference veers off.

Also frak what you paint them, they don't have to match what army you play them as.

I hate to say it, but if they are bringing the same lists, have a list specifically designed to beat each of theirs. I know in MTG when playing competitively, you either play one of the top decks, or you play a deck tailored to beat the top decks.

An alternative, if you can borrow the models, is to play a mirror match.