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 Sim-Life wrote:

 Jidmah wrote:
As long as you keep insisting that any pure knight list ever will be an unfair skew list, there is nothing left to talk about.

I just hope no poor casual knight players get their fun ruined by TFGs walking away from their games for no reason.

But no one is saying that. Most people are saying they would just like some ability to prepare or adjust their list when they find out they're going to be playing against a skew list.

In my experience at least that tends to make the game more, not less, one sided. Most possible skew lists are actually solidly less optimal than TAC lists, because having only one type of thing is actually usually a disadvantage, especially if that one thing can't deal with all threats.

There's a difference between a skew list and an actually competitive skew list, where you get both the natural advantage of skewing (presenting only one kind of available target) without the natural disadvantage. Most competitive lists do this by presenting only one type of target but having other types in the list, just unavailable to shoot at (Putting them in transports, having them as characters behind a screen, having them in reserve, etc.)

If you said "I'm going to take my list and base it around just this one unit", and you picked a unit at random, 98% of your lists would be hot garbage. 100% of them would be skew lists. You'd have all terminator lists, all dreadnought lists, all Eldar Guardian lists, all Termagant lists and the like right alongside your reasonably competitive all ork boy lists and all guardsman lists.

If you and I were playing a game, and you were going to play a GK list with only Terminators, and while you unpacked I made a scene about how I should have been informed beforehand so I could take all my special weapons as plasma guns and add a couple culexus assassins into my list, you'd rightfully think of me as TFG wanting to list-tailor against you for an easy win.

Why then are you justified in demanding that when playing against Knights that every squad have the capability to efficiently damage knights, even though a unit that can't damage knights at all can still do things to stop them from winning a game?

 Sim-Life wrote:

 Jidmah wrote:
As long as you keep insisting that any pure knight list ever will be an unfair skew list, there is nothing left to talk about.

I just hope no poor casual knight players get their fun ruined by TFGs walking away from their games for no reason.

But no one is saying that. Most people are saying they would just like some ability to prepare in advance or adjust their list when they find out they're going to be playing against a skew list.

Ah so facing already hardly overpowered list you'll list tailor for easy winning.

You really enjoy curb stomping others by list tailoring?

I'll throw it right back at you. You prepare vs my knight list so I'll bring ig infantry swarm instead. If you want to list tailor it works both ways.

tneva82 wrote:

 Sim-Life wrote:

 Jidmah wrote:
As long as you keep insisting that any pure knight list ever will be an unfair skew list, there is nothing left to talk about.

I just hope no poor casual knight players get their fun ruined by TFGs walking away from their games for no reason.

But no one is saying that. Most people are saying they would just like some ability to prepare in advance or adjust their list when they find out they're going to be playing against a skew list.

Ah so facing already hardly overpowered list you'll list tailor for easy winning.

You really enjoy curb stomping others by list tailoring?

I'll throw it right back at you. You prepare vs my knight list so I'll bring ig infantry swarm instead. If you want to list tailor it works both ways.

Ahhh, that brings back a happy memory. At one point we had a guy coming in stomping newer players by heavily list tailoring his guard army (magnetized/just a huge collection of special weapons, magnetized leman russes) and I set a game up with him asking if he'd like to play against Orks.

His list ended up having 40 flamers and 5 triple-HB punisher russes, I brought 9 killa kanz, 3 deff dreads and a stompa.

 UMGuy wrote:
With the new IK codex coming out, I have been thinking of starting an IK army, as I am sure a lot of people have been. But what's the latest thought on bringing LoWs or even a whole list of them to casual, pickup, and semi competitive games at flgs.

Am I going to be labeled tfg or has the stigma worn off? Are my opponents going to refuse to play when I starting taking out my units or will they be up for the challenge/climatic elements of it all?

As always with these threads, just talk to your fething opponent. Use your pie holes for discussion instead of Cheetos and Mountain Dew.

1. What kind of game do you want? Super competitive, semi competitive, or something lighter.
2. Narrative or battleforged?
3. Objectives or just blow gak up?
4. ITC missions or book?
5. Points?
6. Cool, let’s play Pew-Pews. OR Sorry, I’m not looking for that kind of game today.

Either way, shake their fething hand. Be civil.

Don’t give me any gak about “But what’s a fething competitive game? How do you define it??” You fething talk to the other person.

I would play against knights, sure. I am working on my own. But I accept that nor everyone wants to play against them, and that’s OK.

 Sim-Life wrote:

 Jidmah wrote:
As long as you keep insisting that any pure knight list ever will be an unfair skew list, there is nothing left to talk about.

But no one is saying that. [...]playing against a skew list.

I'm confused.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

the_scotsman wrote:
Ahhh, that brings back a happy memory. At one point we had a guy coming in stomping newer players by heavily list tailoring his guard army (magnetized/just a huge collection of special weapons, magnetized leman russes) and I set a game up with him asking if he'd like to play against Orks.

His list ended up having 40 flamers and 5 triple-HB punisher russes, I brought 9 killa kanz, 3 deff dreads and a stompa.

Gotta love orks for the ability to do that. Tau armed to the teeth with guns and missiles to kill as many ork boyz as possible bouncing off the deff dreads and facing a gruesome death by buzzsaw. The only time a deff dread has reached combat this edition.

Knight Player: Well, my stuff is fairly well costed, if not a little overcosted when balanced externally... but I don't care. I want my Authurian experience in 40K!

Casual Player: But your list isn't fluffy! Don't play me bro.

Knight Player: Well... fine... I guess I'll go find someone else to play. Hey, want to play? I got my new Excalibur IKs I want to play! I figured I'd let you know ahead of time because the last guy threw a tantrum about list skew and bailed.

Casual Player 2: Sure, let me get a list up for you right quick.

Casual Player 2 casually puts away all of his IG Guardsmen and brings out swarms of Lascannons supported by Basilisks.

Knight Player: Wow... totally out of my league to handle, but at least I got a game...

Yeah, you can cram that "politeness" right back up where it came from.

You know, because you gotta teach that pesky knight player that he's a bad man for playing busted models.

I mean, I get there is a social contract... but it is between two players, both ways. So if you want the onus to be on the knight player to inform everyone that he is playing with GW supported 40K models ahead of time... better be darn well certain that the other player won't do something jerky like list tailor just to smack that guy around. That's probably more of a negative experience than getting blindsided by the knights to begin with.

Especially funny if you consider that the knight player could be running freeblades only and determines their benefits and drawbacks at random.

To those who would refuse to play against Knights or tailor your lists to them, you'd have more of a leg to stand on in 7th. In 7th, they ignored half the rules of the game and were immune to anything S5 or less (S6 on the front end). Now... They're big models, but they play by all the same rules, and can hurt by Lasguns, Grots, and Nurglings.

Yes, if you field nothing but Grots, you're probably gonna lose against a Knight list, but to be fair, you were gonna lose anyway.

I'm just saying: If you want an Arthurian experience in Warhammer that died with Bretonnia. King Arthur isn't copyrighted.

Purifying Tempest wrote:
Knight Player: Well, my stuff is fairly well costed, if not a little overcosted when balanced externally... but I don't care. I want my Authurian experience in 40K!

Casual Player: But your list isn't fluffy! Don't play me bro.

Knight Player: Well... fine... I guess I'll go find someone else to play. Hey, want to play? I got my new Excalibur IKs I want to play! I figured I'd let you know ahead of time because the last guy threw a tantrum about list skew and bailed.

Casual Player 2: Sure, let me get a list up for you right quick.

Casual Player 2 casually puts away all of his IG Guardsmen and brings out swarms of Lascannons supported by Basilisks.

Knight Player: Wow... totally out of my league to handle, but at least I got a game...

Yeah, you can cram that "politeness" right back up where it came from.

You know, because you gotta teach that pesky knight player that he's a bad man for playing busted models.

I mean, I get there is a social contract... but it is between two players, both ways. So if you want the onus to be on the knight player to inform everyone that he is playing with GW supported 40K models ahead of time... better be darn well certain that the other player won't do something jerky like list tailor just to smack that guy around. That's probably more of a negative experience than getting blindsided by the knights to begin with.

You add insult to that injury when the first statement (about external balance being out of whack) is entirely unsupported by any kind of evidence.

You can point out all the stuff that knights can do - "OMG, there's a stratagem that lets them shoot a missile at a character! OMG, they can squish a character with the gauntlet weapon!" but it doesn't actually change anything about their ability, or more accurately lack thereof, to win games solo. Pure knights operate on 6CP, have 5-6 bodies on the table, and have fairly low killing power to show for it compared to most standard TAC lists. You can totally cockblock their movement with anything non-infantry, or infantry that don't start the turn in combat with it. They have firepower roughly equivalent to a single Leman Russ tank on a platform that costs over 3 times as much. They struggle to kill a single guard infantry squad that costs over ten times less than themselves in combat.

One knight, with the CP from an allied battery funneled into it and all the character and freeblade bonuses stacked on it plus a relic, might be competitive in the same way a trio of custode biker captains are. Maybe. We'll see what people come up with. An army of them is roughly as effective as a fluffy GK terminator army.

Individual knights cannot be characters... thus cannot take relics, cannot gain warlord traits or any of that other jazz. That is locked behind using the Super Heavy Detachment (aka: 3 knights, and I have not seen the wording specifically... but it may be 3 non-armiger knights to add a bit more lemon to that cut).

So to get traits and a relic, you're possibly dropping at least 1200 points. And at that point, you're an Imperial Knights army.

Oh, and 6 CP. But then you could probably get another 20 CP from Imperial Guard with restoring it on 5+, but that isn't a problem with Imperial Knights, now is it?

You can declare one/two knights to be characters for 1/3 CP.

Purifying Tempest wrote:
Knight Player: Well, my stuff is fairly well costed, if not a little overcosted when balanced externally... but I don't care. I want my Authurian experience in 40K!

Casual Player: But your list isn't fluffy! Don't play me bro.

Knight Player: Well... fine... I guess I'll go find someone else to play. Hey, want to play? I got my new Excalibur IKs I want to play! I figured I'd let you know ahead of time because the last guy threw a tantrum about list skew and bailed.

Casual Player 2: Sure, let me get a list up for you right quick.

Casual Player 2 casually puts away all of his IG Guardsmen and brings out swarms of Lascannons supported by Basilisks.

Knight Player: Wow... totally out of my league to handle, but at least I got a game...

Yeah, you can cram that "politeness" right back up where it came from.

You know, because you gotta teach that pesky knight player that he's a bad man for playing busted models.

I mean, I get there is a social contract... but it is between two players, both ways. So if you want the onus to be on the knight player to inform everyone that he is playing with GW supported 40K models ahead of time... better be darn well certain that the other player won't do something jerky like list tailor just to smack that guy around. That's probably more of a negative experience than getting blindsided by the knights to begin with.

Psh... Knight players apparently don't deserve the same game as everyone else. At least according to what some of these people are saying. They should be happy to get to deploy their models and honored to get blown up by my 30 lascannons! The knight player having any kind of chance isn't faaaaaaaaair.

People only get away with what you let them get away with.

Say no to list tailorers.

 Jidmah wrote:
There is no such thing as unspoken rules.
If you don't communicate your rules for fun and casual, how is the other person supposed to know them?

The only person to blame in such a scenario is the one who didn't communicate.

Exactly. So communicate before putting Knights (or anything really) on the table.

The one rule of casual is “dont be a sociopath” just plonking models down without a word and expecting “legal” to be an argument for anything at all.

I still giggle at the “legal” argument when I see it.

Just because we CAN do a thing doesn’t mean everyone WANTS to do that thing.

Look for like minded players, or compromise.

I'm really not concerned with how some guys on the internet feel angry that someone would turn down a game, legal or no. My free time is precious to me.

Playing a one sided game in either direction is not something that interests me.

I don't play random pick up games. If I did, and I showed up with a meh powered list and my opponent wanted to run knights, then we would discuss what could be done to make the game fun for both sides.

I play campaigns only, with people I know though... so this scenario doesn't happen unless its part of the narrative we're writing. In which case we design lists appropriately.

And the game is not one sided in either direction. And everyone is happy and has a positive game experience.

And players that cannot or will not do this play the tournament players instead where its all "if its legal its good". And they are also happy. And everyone has a positive game experience.

Because the campaign players I play with also dont want one sided games where they won in the list building phase; they leave that for their LVO/Adepticon training lists and games.

Sunny Side Up wrote:
The one rule of casual is “dont be a sociopath” just plonking models down without a word and expecting “legal” to be an argument for anything at all.

Funny, plonking down models after agreeing on point levels and mission is how every game at a GW store ever has worked for me for in the last decade.

The only time anyone I know discusses army choices with their opponents is when playing narrative games or campaigns.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

auticus wrote:
I'm really not concerned with how some guys on the internet feel angry that someone would turn down a game, legal or no. My free time is precious to me.

Playing a one sided game in either direction is not something that interests me.

I don't play random pick up games. If I did, and I showed up with a meh powered list and my opponent wanted to run knights, then we would discuss what could be done to make the game fun for both sides.

I play campaigns only, with people I know though... so this scenario doesn't happen unless its part of the narrative we're writing. In which case we design lists appropriately.

And the game is not one sided in either direction. And everyone is happy and has a positive game experience.

And players that cannot or will not do this play the tournament players instead where its all "if its legal its good". And they are also happy. And everyone has a positive game experience.

Because the campaign players I play with also dont want one sided games where they won in the list building phase; they leave that for their LVO/Adepticon training lists and games.

Look, another one claiming every single knight army ever is going to be overpowered and unfun.

Tell me, have you read the codex? Have you played a game with or against them? Have you ever faced a knight in 8th?

Let me tell you a story about a guy at one of the stores I play at.
When 5th edition came about and released the Grey Knight codex he went all in, sold his Blood Angels and bought an entire army of them. Thing is, Grey Knights in 5th were the wet dream of any tournament player back then and not until long they were considered the cheesiest cheese there is.
People would outright tell him that they would not play his Grey Knights and walk away, he got kicked out of campaigns for playing Grey Knights and was forbidden from joining an Apoc game at one guy's home because that guy was a daemon player and had played a game where GK simply prevented him from deploying a single unit - against a different player though.
Best part: The GK player didn't even play the hot cheese everyone was so worried about. He had no psyflemen, no paladin star, no shunting dreadknights and wasn't running a single named character because he disliked them. His army pretty much looked like a GK diorama and was no match for my orks - competitive GK armies were unbeatable for me.
Recently, I saw him playing GK in 8th. Despite everyone being TFG because he was playing GK he still seems to run that army. Some long-playing neckbeard walked up to his table and made a fuss about ridiculously overpowered GK are and that an army full of smiters was OP BS.

All of the people judging knight armies and their players right now: You are that neckbeard.

Ok. If you say I am that neckbeard, whatever makes you happy.

My sleep will remain untroubled.

I don't really get the arguments of "lol what emotional noobs, they want to kill stuff".
Yes. Yes I do. Playing Necrons in 7th was awful. I guess everyone has different variations of fun (sotto voice: Hi I'm a superfriends dark angels player, hitting me on 6s when I have a rerollable 2++ is fine) - but doing no negligible damage turn after turn and just hoping they fluff their dice sufficiently I can steal objectives to win isn't that fun. Its certainly not very casual.

I mean say I turned up with a 540 grot list (I think this is doable in 2000 points.)

What am I saying with this list? "Hope you brought the guns/swords to kill most of those grots, because if you didn't I am just going to sit on all the objectives and then I'm going to win."

Could it be a fun game? Sure. Would I be playing as TFG? Probably not. But it would undoubtedly be a skewed match up - rendering a large array of units you have brought horribly inefficient.
I am pretty sure Knights would be totally screwed - I don't think they can kill 100 grots per turn, although I could be wrong. If Grots don't do it for you take 200~ plaguebearers etc etc.

Its not unreasonable to ask my opponent if they want to give this a go or they would prefer to play something more conventional.

Not a Phallus Move - playing pure Imperial Knights. Not in 8th Ed

Phallus Move - being known for your predominantly infantry focussed game, then rocking up with pure Imperial Knights.

Not a Phallus Move - Declining a pick up game against Imperial Knights when it’s clear your collection will seriously struggle.

Phallus Move - Labelling all Imperial Knight players a WAAC TFG.

Not a Phallus Move - Calling out a WAAC TFG who happens to be playing Imperial Knights.

Not a Phallus Move - Asking a regular opponent which army they want to use ahead of time.

Phallus Move - Wanting to see your opponent’s exact list before even writing yours.

Not a Phallus Move - Asking to take someone’s Knight army as a challenge, and loading up on suitable Heavy Weapons.

That’s my brain on the subject, anyways.

Tyel wrote:
I don't really get the arguments of "lol what emotional noobs, they want to kill stuff".
Yes. Yes I do. Playing Necrons in 7th was awful. I guess everyone has different variations of fun (sotto voice: Hi I'm a superfriends dark angels player, hitting me on 6s when I have a rerollable 2++ is fine) - but doing no negligible damage turn after turn and just hoping they fluff their dice sufficiently I can steal objectives to win isn't that fun. Its certainly not very casual.

I mean say I turned up with a 540 grot list (I think this is doable in 2000 points.)

What am I saying with this list? "Hope you brought the guns/swords to kill most of those grots, because if you didn't I am just going to sit on all the objectives and then I'm going to win."

Could it be a fun game? Sure. Would I be playing as TFG? Probably not. But it would undoubtedly be a skewed match up - rendering a large array of units you have brought horribly inefficient.
I am pretty sure Knights would be totally screwed - I don't think they can kill 100 grots per turn, although I could be wrong. If Grots don't do it for you take 200~ plaguebearers etc etc.

Its not unreasonable to ask my opponent if they want to give this a go or they would prefer to play something more conventional.

I guess at this point for me, it's been around long enough and has enough variation within the army that I'm not looking at it as "unconventional."

A knight army with several of the smaller Armiger guys, maybe one of the new big ones, and 2-3 regular sized knights is no more a skew list in my eyes than a space marine list with marines and characters in rhinos, a few predator tanks, a dreadnought or two and a land raider.

I doubt you'd look at a list like that and go "OMGWTFBBQ?!?!? everything on the table has a 3+ save? There's only t7+ on the table for me to shoot, so all my anti infantry weapons are #unviable????!?! I'm afraid you're going to have to get something more conventional, sonny jim."

So really, "conventional" in this instance means "Skew I have seen before and know to be less powerful so I think I can win."

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Not a Phallus Move - playing pure Imperial Knights. Not in 8th Ed

Phallus Move - being known for your predominantly infantry focussed game, then rocking up with pure Imperial Knights.

Not a Phallus Move - Declining a pick up game against Imperial Knights when it’s clear your collection will seriously struggle.

Phallus Move - Labelling all Imperial Knight players a WAAC TFG.

Not a Phallus Move - Calling out a WAAC TFG who happens to be playing Imperial Knights.

Not a Phallus Move - Asking a regular opponent which army they want to use ahead of time.

Phallus Move - Wanting to see your opponent’s exact list before even writing yours.

Not a Phallus Move - Asking to take someone’s Knight army as a challenge, and loading up on suitable Heavy Weapons.

That’s my brain on the subject, anyways.

Yeah I am in total agreement

Mileage may of course vary, and I’m not claiming to be an authority by any stretch. But hopefully they’ll prove useful enough to show how a person can do something and not in fact be a Phallus, even when doing something only slightly different can indeed make them a Phallus,

 Jidmah wrote:

Sunny Side Up wrote:
The one rule of casual is “dont be a sociopath” just plonking models down without a word and expecting “legal” to be an argument for anything at all.

Funny, plonking down models after agreeing on point levels and mission is how every game at a GW store ever has worked for me for in the last decade.

The only time anyone I know discusses army choices with their opponents is when playing narrative games or campaigns.

Funny, I've played 40K for nearly 2 1/2 decades now, mostly 1 game a week minimum, and I've never played a single game like that yet.

It's always specified .. I wanna practice for a tournament, I wanna just have a laugh, etc.., etc.. with more talk about specifics to follow. It's been that way since 2nd Ed. for everyone I ever played in 6 countries across 3 continents.

Indeed.

Sure, ‘true’ pick up games happen. But relatively rarely. Instead you’ll find the players have pre-arranged. Especially if their first game as a ‘true’ pick up both parties fancy a rematch.

Most Lords of War aren't really that strong.

The Shadowsword is a stand out, and bringing 3 of them is an unpleasant thing to do, but it's still far from the nastiest you could be doing.

I'm biased, I like mine and I've played with it in most games since Escalation came out, and my friends use their Stormsurges, Pylons, and Knights liberally too, so it's pretty normal to see a Lord of War on each side.

I think LoW are pretty fair game on the table. It's intimidating if you don't have one, but generally handle-able. Or bluntly, if you can't deal with the Shadowsword, you probably couldn't have dealt with the 3 Leman Russ Commanders, 4 Manticores, or 5 Baslisks [combination thereof] that would have been in its place.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

Phallus Move - being known for your predominantly infantry focussed game, then rocking up with pure Imperial Knights.

Why is that a problem? It's only going to be a problem for people that are list tailoring against you.

the_scotsman wrote:
I guess at this point for me, it's been around long enough and has enough variation within the army that I'm not looking at it as "unconventional."

A knight army with several of the smaller Armiger guys, maybe one of the new big ones, and 2-3 regular sized knights is no more a skew list in my eyes than a space marine list with marines and characters in rhinos, a few predator tanks, a dreadnought or two and a land raider.

I doubt you'd look at a list like that and go "OMGWTFBBQ?!?!? everything on the table has a 3+ save? There's only t7+ on the table for me to shoot, so all my anti infantry weapons are #unviable????!?! I'm afraid you're going to have to get something more conventional, sonny jim."

So really, "conventional" in this instance means "Skew I have seen before and know to be less powerful so I think I can win."

At the danger of special pleading - I guess it depends on whether Knights are good now. They were pretty good in 7th - and I imagine with the new codex they will be good again.

The whole "what if your opponent brings terminators & land raiders, huh, what then?" just prompts "well... they suck. We know they suck, so it isn't really the same."

With that said I can't imagine playing a 3 Land Raider list would be that fun for either side.

Nope.

See, my mates know the armies I have, and know my general preferences.

In Warhammer Fantasy, i favoured my Dark Elves with loads Of Big, Gribbly, Monsters. A list started when Hydras were crap.

So someone expecting to face that, then finding out that, tee hee hee Id actually turned Gobbo over night is at a disadvantage. List tailored against Big Gribbly Monster or not, they’d not been have the tactical brainstorms on how to stop Gobbos, but their gaming polar opposite.

That right there is a Phallus Move. Don’t say your bringing X, then turn up with Y.

Bit of list optimising is fine with me. After all I tend to get very, very good with my armies, because they tend to be a bit leftfield. Suddenly switching out just to bag another win is too close to WAAC for me.

But as I said, my list is just my brains. It’s not definitive, exhausative or authorative.