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Back when Tacs were spammed at tournies, it was called Obsec Spam, and was considered spam. A big difference, though, is that people liked it.

Even when it was good, I'd much rather have gone up against that spam than some other, even less powerful spam.

Some units feel right when spammed. Tac Marines. Ork Boyz. Guardians. Venom Kabalites. Spamming them makes for a distinctive and typically fun game. Sure, I'd rather see demicompany-style lists (the style, not the detatchment) over Tac Marine spam, but there are certainly less fun lists to go up against.

The spam most people complain about - Flyrants, Maelific Lords, Scatter Bikes - aren't just spam, they're "unfun" spam. Part of it is specialization. Those units are very, very good at what they do, and in saturation in their day, they destroyed everything. The spam that isn't as offensive tends to be units that are generalists, or accepted answers to most situations.

It is odd that 3 Russes aren't considered spam because it's not enough points, but 500 points of Reapers are getting into spam territory. Aren't 3 kitted Russes in the same territory?

To counter that, one 500-pt model is typically not spam, but it does define the list the same way 500pts of Guard or Reapers do. One Titan in a 2k game might not be spam, but the list is that titan.

Bharring wrote:
Back when Tacs were spammed at tournies, it was called Obsec Spam, and was considered spam. A big difference, though, is that people liked it.

Even when it was good, I'd much rather have gone up against that spam than some other, even less powerful spam.

Some units feel right when spammed. Tac Marines. Ork Boyz. Guardians. Venom Kabalites. Spamming them makes for a distinctive and typically fun game. Sure, I'd rather see demicompany-style lists (the style, not the detatchment) over Tac Marine spam, but there are certainly less fun lists to go up against.

The spam most people complain about - Flyrants, Maelific Lords, Scatter Bikes - aren't just spam, they're "unfun" spam. Part of it is specialization. Those units are very, very good at what they do, and in saturation in their day, they destroyed everything. The spam that isn't as offensive tends to be units that are generalists, or accepted answers to most situations.

It is odd that 3 Russes aren't considered spam because it's not enough points, but 500 points of Reapers are getting into spam territory. Aren't 3 kitted Russes in the same territory?

To counter that, one 500-pt model is typically not spam, but it does define the list the same way 500pts of Guard or Reapers do. One Titan in a 2k game might not be spam, but the list is that titan.

Wholeheartedly agree with this. Have an exalt!
"Fun" spam are those lists that look most like the fluff: Lots of Troops mixed with some other choices that fit a theme

-

In my opinion, Russ spam is totally cool, as they have had literal decades of fluff across multiple game systems (Epic, 40k, 40k 2nd edition) that they have 1 command tank and 3 squadrons of 3 tanks in a company.

Tyel wrote:
Spam isn't about models on the table but points spent.

So no, 20 tactical marines isn't spam. Its 260 points before weapons/upgrades etc. By contrast 5 Flyrants was... 900 or so (build depending?)

Having one in the list skews it more than the other. Now if you turned up with say 60 tactical marines or something you could accuse them of spam. It would also be rubbish though.

Around 500 points of Dark Reapers is probably borderline on being spam. 30 reapers certainly is. In the same way 3 Russ isn't spam but binging 10 obviously is.

That's not how it works.
Under that logic, I could do 80 Cultists and that's not considered spam because that's only...320 points. 60 Cultists is 240.

It's absolutely how many times the unit entry is being used.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Breng77 wrote:
That is more in my line of thinking, that true spam is either significantly high number of repeated units usually 5 or more (a 3 knight army is not something I would call knight spam) and/or a high percentage of the armies points being dedicated to one unit. So yes 5 flyrants at about half of a 2k list is spam, 10 russes would be spam as it is around 2k points, But to me taking the equivalent to around 3 or 4 min units of something is not spam, and something making up about 25% of your army is not what I would define the army by as far as calling it an x spam army. That would be like me taking 4 x 10 tactical marines and people saying “look at that tactical marine spam army”. Said no one ever because there is 1500 points left in the army. Tactical marine spam would be more like 80 marines making up like half the army.

That said if you view 3 or some unit and or 25% of an armies points being put into a single unit type as spam, then as I said you don’t view it the same way as plenty of other people and as such won’t understand what Nick was saying in the article, because essentially you think any redundancy is spam.

Based on how people feel about the FAQ, yes any amount of redundancy is spam.

For example, you would typically run 4 Predators because if you only have 3, the opponent needs to kill just one to get rid of Killshot ever happening. Ever just run two Maulerfiends? It doesn't work so you need three to four of them.

The problem at hand is if nobody cares if you run 7 of those units, which means the issue is unit price.

Essentially, spam is what I'm saying it is, and your definition of spam is "stop running a lot of a unit I don't like". Makes sense?

Killshot still has value against lists that are mid-range like primaris or you can force longer range lists to shoot a dakka pred perhaps with long range weapons when they'd rather shoot something else.

 auticus wrote:
I'm thiinking if proper terrain exiists and not the barren tables that I saw everywhere at Adepticon that gunlines shouldn't have a super easy time at all.

Of course thats a challenge in and of itself: providing proper terrain. And while planet bowling ball is the tournament standard, that is also the expected standard at many FLGS pick up games.

Indeed Adepticon's terrain had little LOS blocking.

This is LVO:


This is Adepticon:


Nova dictates big LOS blockers:

Glad to have confirmation that I do indeed play with more terrain that tournaments.

Martel732 wrote:
Killshot still has value against lists that are mid-range like primaris or you can force longer range lists to shoot a dakka pred perhaps with long range weapons when they'd rather shoot something else.

You're missing the point of my post. I'm saying you can't get value from Killshot unless you have redundant Predators.

I just explained how you still can. The pred autocannon is really good even without killshot. Use killshot as a threat-in-being.

With a small tweak to the rules... by sayiing obstacles, buiildings, and forests block line of siight... the LVO tables would be pretty effective I think.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

Tyel wrote:
Spam isn't about models on the table but points spent.

So no, 20 tactical marines isn't spam. Its 260 points before weapons/upgrades etc. By contrast 5 Flyrants was... 900 or so (build depending?)

Having one in the list skews it more than the other. Now if you turned up with say 60 tactical marines or something you could accuse them of spam. It would also be rubbish though.

Around 500 points of Dark Reapers is probably borderline on being spam. 30 reapers certainly is. In the same way 3 Russ isn't spam but binging 10 obviously is.

That's not how it works.
Under that logic, I could do 80 Cultists and that's not considered spam because that's only...320 points. 60 Cultists is 240.

It's absolutely how many times the unit entry is being used.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Breng77 wrote:
That is more in my line of thinking, that true spam is either significantly high number of repeated units usually 5 or more (a 3 knight army is not something I would call knight spam) and/or a high percentage of the armies points being dedicated to one unit. So yes 5 flyrants at about half of a 2k list is spam, 10 russes would be spam as it is around 2k points, But to me taking the equivalent to around 3 or 4 min units of something is not spam, and something making up about 25% of your army is not what I would define the army by as far as calling it an x spam army. That would be like me taking 4 x 10 tactical marines and people saying “look at that tactical marine spam army”. Said no one ever because there is 1500 points left in the army. Tactical marine spam would be more like 80 marines making up like half the army.

That said if you view 3 or some unit and or 25% of an armies points being put into a single unit type as spam, then as I said you don’t view it the same way as plenty of other people and as such won’t understand what Nick was saying in the article, because essentially you think any redundancy is spam.

Based on how people feel about the FAQ, yes any amount of redundancy is spam.

For example, you would typically run 4 Predators because if you only have 3, the opponent needs to kill just one to get rid of Killshot ever happening. Ever just run two Maulerfiends? It doesn't work so you need three to four of them.

The problem at hand is if nobody cares if you run 7 of those units, which means the issue is unit price.

Essentially, spam is what I'm saying it is, and your definition of spam is "stop running a lot of a unit I don't like". Makes sense?

Except it cannot just be unit entry if you care about 80 cultists. 80 cultists is 2 units. So by your logic it isn't spam because it is only 2 unit entries. Or do the number of models count and 1 unit of 40 cultists is cultist spam. By your definition spam is whatever you say it is rather than being defined by anything you can put into words.

Either 3 of any unit is spam which borders on ridiculous because no one ever calls that out as spam and tons of armies are multiple kinds of spam at once. Or what is being used in repetition has to make up a significant quantity of the army. If we go by the 3 units or more rule 80 cultists isn't spam because it is 2 units, unless I take 4 units of 20 then it is suddenly spam. Or 4 units of 10 is spam but one unit of 40 isn't See how silly a standard that is.

Or "spam" is not deterministic.

Words without clear definition aren't useless. "Fun", "annoying", "jerk", "awesome", "well-painted". Likewise, "spam" can be a useful label without an entirely definable meaning.

As to things like 2 mauler fiends working that largely depends on the rest of your list. I will say that killshot is harder to pull off with only 3 preds, but for 2 mauler fiends they work just fine so long as there are other targets of same type, so 2 Maulerfiends running along side Magnus, or 2 Blood Thirsters, or 3 Defilers etc.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Bharring wrote:
Or "spam" is not deterministic.

Words without clear definition aren't useless. "Fun", "annoying", "jerk", "awesome", "well-painted". Likewise, "spam" can be a useful label without an entirely definable meaning.

To some extent, though at that point it is in the eye of the beholder and not useful when trying to read meaning into an article regarding spam because the author may view it differently and so the understanding of what the author is trying to say is only meaningful if you apply that same definition.

As such if you think 17 Reapers are spam then the article against spam has no meaning to you because you lack the perspective to understand it and you think the author is a hypocrite. Whereas if you are applying it to mean some larger repetition in unit then the article has value.

Breng - I agree that you need to temper your understanding of the use of 'spam' in a post, due to it's definition. Much like you have to temper the use of 'fun'.

If I post about what I think 'fun' list are, or rules that encourage/discourage what I think 'fun' would be, the lack of a solid meaning of 'fun' certainly decreases the value of the statement, but doesn't make it useless.

Onto "The author speaks agains Spam but uses Spam". He's playing a game by the rules as written. He might prefer the rules favored Storm Guardians, but if his goal is to win - and not to field Storm Guardians - his list probably won't have Storm Guardians. If he were to say "and I think Storm Guardians at 2ppm will make them auto-includes", we don't call him a hypocrite because he doesn't field them at 7ppm.

(I would consider 17 Reapers spam-light.)

Breng77 wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

Tyel wrote:
Spam isn't about models on the table but points spent.

So no, 20 tactical marines isn't spam. Its 260 points before weapons/upgrades etc. By contrast 5 Flyrants was... 900 or so (build depending?)

Having one in the list skews it more than the other. Now if you turned up with say 60 tactical marines or something you could accuse them of spam. It would also be rubbish though.

Around 500 points of Dark Reapers is probably borderline on being spam. 30 reapers certainly is. In the same way 3 Russ isn't spam but binging 10 obviously is.

That's not how it works.
Under that logic, I could do 80 Cultists and that's not considered spam because that's only...320 points. 60 Cultists is 240.

It's absolutely how many times the unit entry is being used.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Breng77 wrote:
That is more in my line of thinking, that true spam is either significantly high number of repeated units usually 5 or more (a 3 knight army is not something I would call knight spam) and/or a high percentage of the armies points being dedicated to one unit. So yes 5 flyrants at about half of a 2k list is spam, 10 russes would be spam as it is around 2k points, But to me taking the equivalent to around 3 or 4 min units of something is not spam, and something making up about 25% of your army is not what I would define the army by as far as calling it an x spam army. That would be like me taking 4 x 10 tactical marines and people saying “look at that tactical marine spam army”. Said no one ever because there is 1500 points left in the army. Tactical marine spam would be more like 80 marines making up like half the army.

That said if you view 3 or some unit and or 25% of an armies points being put into a single unit type as spam, then as I said you don’t view it the same way as plenty of other people and as such won’t understand what Nick was saying in the article, because essentially you think any redundancy is spam.

Based on how people feel about the FAQ, yes any amount of redundancy is spam.

For example, you would typically run 4 Predators because if you only have 3, the opponent needs to kill just one to get rid of Killshot ever happening. Ever just run two Maulerfiends? It doesn't work so you need three to four of them.

The problem at hand is if nobody cares if you run 7 of those units, which means the issue is unit price.

Essentially, spam is what I'm saying it is, and your definition of spam is "stop running a lot of a unit I don't like". Makes sense?

Except it cannot just be unit entry if you care about 80 cultists. 80 cultists is 2 units. So by your logic it isn't spam because it is only 2 unit entries. Or do the number of models count and 1 unit of 40 cultists is cultist spam. By your definition spam is whatever you say it is rather than being defined by anything you can put into words.

Either 3 of any unit is spam which borders on ridiculous because no one ever calls that out as spam and tons of armies are multiple kinds of spam at once. Or what is being used in repetition has to make up a significant quantity of the army. If we go by the 3 units or more rule 80 cultists isn't spam because it is 2 units, unless I take 4 units of 20 then it is suddenly spam. Or 4 units of 10 is spam but one unit of 40 isn't See how silly a standard that is.

80 Cultists can be anywhere from 2 units to 8. 25 Reapers could be 3-5 squads. See the pattern there?

Usually people are talking about MSU. So yeah I could potentially mean 8. I could also mean 5 (which is 16 in a group).

So the only real "spam" is undercosted units, which means those need to be fixed rather than adding a blanket rule.

Nah, points will never fix spam, it won't happen because the points cost required to do that makes the unit in question unplayable.

Bharring wrote:
Or "spam" is not deterministic.

Words without clear definition aren't useless. "Fun", "annoying", "jerk", "awesome", "well-painted". Likewise, "spam" can be a useful label without an entirely definable meaning.

Fair enough.

I consider spam to be a unit used in large redundancy, which can be 4 or above. The example of the main unit I spam is Tarantula Sentry Guns as the minimum squads of 1 to meet FA requirements, and I use 5. All in one squad or two they wouldn't be, but as I'm using the unit entry 5x, it is.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Breng77 wrote:
Nah, points will never fix spam, it won't happen because the points cost required to do that makes the unit in question unplayable.

Yes it can. It's up to GW to not be lazy about it.

Lets say War Warlkers were the OP spammed option pre-FAQ. They were fine if you have 3 of them, but OP if you had 4+.

If I build a list with 3 War Walker squads and 3 Wasp squads (basically the same thing with slight variances in rules), is that spam?

Pretend Dev Marines are OP (*PRETEND*).

If I build a list with 3 SM Dev squads, 3 Long Fang squads, 3 BA Dev squads, and 3 DA Dev squads, is that spam?

I've frequently called my lists 'Aspect Spam'. They have frequently been called 'Exarch Spam'. The only duplicated entry is 2-4 DA units. But that is a form of spam. (I'd like to think it fits as 'fun' spam.)

Just how different do things need to be to not be considered 'Spam'?

 Daedalus81 wrote:

 auticus wrote:
I'm thiinking if proper terrain exiists and not the barren tables that I saw everywhere at Adepticon that gunlines shouldn't have a super easy time at all.

Of course thats a challenge in and of itself: providing proper terrain. And while planet bowling ball is the tournament standard, that is also the expected standard at many FLGS pick up games.

Indeed Adepticon's terrain had little LOS blocking.

This is LVO:

Spoiler:

This is Adepticon:

Spoiler:

Nova dictates big LOS blockers:

Spoiler:

Ok, now I know why I have 0 problems with gunlines and shooting alpha strike. Our tables have so much terrain that in many cases is even hard for rhinos and other vehicles to move. If you want to hide half your army from the enemy in your first turn, you absolutely can.

For Context, this was me playing agaisnt Tyranids in my first tournament of 8th after jumping back to the hobby:

Part 2 is live now:
https://thebrownmagic.com/2018/04/19/faq-breakdown-part-2/

 Daedalus81 wrote:

 auticus wrote:
I'm thiinking if proper terrain exiists and not the barren tables that I saw everywhere at Adepticon that gunlines shouldn't have a super easy time at all.

Of course thats a challenge in and of itself: providing proper terrain. And while planet bowling ball is the tournament standard, that is also the expected standard at many FLGS pick up games.

Indeed Adepticon's terrain had little LOS blocking.

This is LVO:

Spoiler:

This is Adepticon:

Spoiler:

Nova dictates big LOS blockers:

Spoiler:

Oh good lord. No wonder the tournament meta is in the state its in. Our group plays with easily double that amount of terrain.

It's easy to claim "tables should have way more terrain on them!" until you've actually tried running a large event and supplying 500+ pieces of terrain.

 Sim-Life wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:

 auticus wrote:
I'm thiinking if proper terrain exiists and not the barren tables that I saw everywhere at Adepticon that gunlines shouldn't have a super easy time at all.

Of course thats a challenge in and of itself: providing proper terrain. And while planet bowling ball is the tournament standard, that is also the expected standard at many FLGS pick up games.

Indeed Adepticon's terrain had little LOS blocking.

This is LVO:

Spoiler:

This is Adepticon:

Spoiler:

Nova dictates big LOS blockers:

Spoiler:

Oh good lord. No wonder the tournament meta is in the state its in. Our group plays with easily double that amount of terrain.

In the defense of TO's, they've gotta get enough terrain to cover a good 50-100 tables, sometimes more. It's hard to get that much consistent terrain to make every table the same and not have certain tables grant an unfair advantage/disadvantage. While I'd love for them to use more terrain, I do sympathize with them immensely on this one.

More Bandages for Bad Rules.

The most balanced edition every guys! Amiright?

I think everyone agrees with that. But the fact is, you can't complaint about the prevalence of shooting alpha strike based in tables that obviously lack the amount of terrain the game should have. We could blame GW for this, because they don't have any indication in the amount of terrain that we should use.

Pancakey wrote:
More Bandages for Bad Rules.

The most balanced edition every guys! Amiright?

Says a lot about prior editions

 Galas wrote:

Spoiler:

Audustum wrote:

 Sim-Life wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:

 auticus wrote:
I'm thiinking if proper terrain exiists and not the barren tables that I saw everywhere at Adepticon that gunlines shouldn't have a super easy time at all.

Of course thats a challenge in and of itself: providing proper terrain. And while planet bowling ball is the tournament standard, that is also the expected standard at many FLGS pick up games.

Indeed Adepticon's terrain had little LOS blocking.

This is LVO:


This is Adepticon:


Nova dictates big LOS blockers:

Oh good lord. No wonder the tournament meta is in the state its in. Our group plays with easily double that amount of terrain.

In the defense of TO's, they've gotta get enough terrain to cover a good 50-100 tables, sometimes more. It's hard to get that much consistent terrain to make every table the same and not have certain tables grant an unfair advantage/disadvantage. While I'd love for them to use more terrain, I do sympathize with them immensely on this one.

I think everyone agrees with that. But the fact is, you can't complaint about the prevalence of shooting alpha strike based in tables that obviously lack the amount of terrain the game should have. We could blame GW for this, because they don't have any indication in the amount of terrain that we should use.

On the other hand, I could just as easily say that this is the terrain format for the biggest tournaments with the most players, so it's hitting the most people. If the game should be balanced around any type of table, it should be that one.

Audustum wrote:

 Galas wrote:

Spoiler:

Audustum wrote:

 Sim-Life wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:

 auticus wrote:
I'm thiinking if proper terrain exiists and not the barren tables that I saw everywhere at Adepticon that gunlines shouldn't have a super easy time at all.

Of course thats a challenge in and of itself: providing proper terrain. And while planet bowling ball is the tournament standard, that is also the expected standard at many FLGS pick up games.

Indeed Adepticon's terrain had little LOS blocking.

This is LVO:


This is Adepticon:


Nova dictates big LOS blockers:

Oh good lord. No wonder the tournament meta is in the state its in. Our group plays with easily double that amount of terrain.

In the defense of TO's, they've gotta get enough terrain to cover a good 50-100 tables, sometimes more. It's hard to get that much consistent terrain to make every table the same and not have certain tables grant an unfair advantage/disadvantage. While I'd love for them to use more terrain, I do sympathize with them immensely on this one.

I think everyone agrees with that. But the fact is, you can't complaint about the prevalence of shooting alpha strike based in tables that obviously lack the amount of terrain the game should have. We could blame GW for this, because they don't have any indication in the amount of terrain that we should use.

On the other hand, I could just as easily say that this is the terrain format for the biggest tournaments with the most players, so it's hitting the most people. If the game should be balanced around any type of table, it should be that one.

But you can even see that Adepticon has much less terrain than LVO, or even NOVA. So even those "Biggest tournaments" have a very big difference in the amount of terrain, even if all of them have less terrain than most LGS, etc... theres not a standard of terrain, and thats a problem. This is a game where terrain is so important to the outcome of a battle, GW should say whats the expected amount of terrain, the one they use to properly balance the game.

Pancakey wrote:
More Bandages for Bad Rules.

The most balanced edition every guys! Amiright?

Just because imbalance exists does not mean the edition is not the most balanced.
I've played 5 editions so far and I have never seen the variety of lists possible than in this editions.
They will always be units that are clearly more efficient than other, but the gap between them is much, MUCH smaller.

And I have also never seen GW respond this quickly to perceived imbalances. 8th is the best edition, and if people still don't like that is their issue and they will likely never be satisfied.

-

The current OP is "Gunline" or "AM or maybe Eldar".

Past OP, at different parts, has been:
-ScatterBikes. Everything else dies.
-SM ObSecSpam. Nothing can clear
-Gladius. So much free.
-Necron Decurion.
-DAVU

In the past, the OP has been one or maybe two things that were currently "the best in the game". Now, it's a class of things of whcih there are a few examples.

It should be more balanced, but it does feel a lot better than it was.