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I think it depends on which lord of war. A lot of them are not that beefy, but some of them can be pretty crazy. A knight titan or a baneblade can be dealt with, and are just not the badshit crazy trains they once were.

If you show up to a 2K game with like, a Mastodon, that might be pretty TFG.

I know because I did it once Mastodon with a buttload of CC death guard, it was disgusting! I wouldn't, and didn't do it without permission from my opponent.

Tyel wrote:

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.

If you want to say "If I judge that a particular skew list is more powerful then I will refuse to play against it" then that's kind of up to you.

But the proposed reasoning I was seeing was "This list is no fun for me to play against because it only contains T7/T8 3+ targets, so it's just a list check where you either have enough lascannons or you don't and all your anti-infantry guns are useless."

That's not the same. A perfectly standard, normal space marine list will extremely commonly present you with nothing but T7/T8 3+ bodies to shoot at initially. That's just playing a normal mechanized list. Same deal with dark eldar: it's perfectly normal to see a dark eldar list presenting nothing but T5 5++ vehicles, making any lascannons you bring pretty inefficient.

You're not making a judgement based on what these things do in game, you're making a judgement based on what they did in a completely different version of the game. They can't totally ignore light infantry anymore. The codex brought them significant points drops (looking like roughly 40-50 points off a regular sized knight compared to current index values, meaning a full army of knights could get one of the little guys for free) and it brought them the ability to take the little guys which cost and shoot similarly to a loaded-up marine predator.

None of this changes that in 8th edition, you can target them with a large number of guns that could not scratch them before (Heavy Bolters and up basically are now fine, it's only when you drop to S4 or below where you're going to be totally inefficient) and you can impede them with units you could not before (light infantry have something to do in a game against them).

It's not just about whether I can bring enough toys to deal with T7/T8 3+ bodies. It also might just not be fun.

One of the things that ruined WarMachine for me, before I got into 40k, was gargants. I won most of my games against gargants (not that I'm good, gargants just weren't great then). But I enjoyed almost none of them. I'd rather a stomping from a non-gargant list than a win against a gargant list any day.

So, a pure LoW list may be autowin or autolose (which one? don't care), but I can say with a great deal more certaintly that I'm not going to enjoy it.

So I'll play against it from time to time, sure. But I'll prioritize games with people who aren't bringing it.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
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.

That "optimising" is used far more often to stomp people with limited model collections than it is to close the gap with a very experienced player (not least because the experienced player usually has a substantial range of models to chose from making tailoring much harder).

Personally, I'll always encourage people dealing with that to mix up what they bring specifically to punish people for list tailoring.

 kronk wrote:

 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.

Kronk Nails it.... its just Dolls boys. Have fun

 zedsdead wrote:
Kronk Nails it.... its just Dolls boys.

Ackshually I think you'll find they're multi-pose (or at least they were) action figurines and the suggestion that these high class works of engineering and art are dolls!!
rolls eyeballs then adjusts glasses
Is frankly preposterous.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
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.

If they are mates why are they list tailoring in the first place?

If they are list tailoring vs what you bring it's totally fair to switch gears unannounced. Thing about GW games is that if you list tailor you WILL have huge advantage. There's very little things in the game that don't have hard counter. So list tailoring is hardly most sporting thing(especially vs friends) and isn't really efficient if your goal is to make interesting game.

LoW are not as bad as they were previous editions. 8th has balanced them out a lot. I say bring it.

My local has a houserule of ONE titanic model.

Not all SH are Titanic, to be sure, but it cuts down on the whining that SH are overpowered.


Almost no-one brings them anyway, except the occasional Mortarion (who isn't Titanic anyway IIRC) and my Lord of Skulls showing up once in a blue moon...

 Ascalam wrote:
My local has a houserule of ONE titanic model.

Not all SH are Titanic, to be sure, but it cuts down on the whining that SH are overpowered.


Almost no-one brings them anyway, except the occasional Mortarion (who isn't Titanic anyway IIRC) and my Lord of Skulls showing up once in a blue moon...

Your local, your rules, but is anyone ever going to complain about a Lord of Skulls? I'd love to see one.

tneva82 wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
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.

If they are mates why are they list tailoring in the first place?

If they are list tailoring vs what you bring it's totally fair to switch gears unannounced. Thing about GW games is that if you list tailor you WILL have huge advantage. There's very little things in the game that don't have hard counter. So list tailoring is hardly most sporting thing(especially vs friends) and isn't really efficient if your goal is to make interesting game.

Simply, it’s kind of expected. And also at least partially reflective of real world stuff.

As I mentioned, I tend to do better than my skills because very, very few of my lists are predictable - I’ve a personal penchant for taking lesser seen units and finding a way to make it work. No, it doesn’t always work.

Hence on my list of ahem Phallusies (do you see what I did there? Clever, innit), knowing which Codex your opponent is using in advance is fine (with me). But waiting to see exactly what I’m fielding and tailoring from there, isn’t. At all.

So to run with my previous Dark Elf army. Those who’ve faced me before know roughly what I’ll be fielding and can better plan. But someone who attempts to list tailor to punish relatively lightly armoured T3 Pansy Elves would be in for a real shock, because I found a way to make a ‘sub-optimal’ list. All monsters, all chariots, compulsory 3x10 Repeater Crossbows. And no Magic. At all. Not even magical defence.

Most of my armies are comprised of the unexpected. And I tend to do very well against the fabled ‘netlist’, because it’s so well documented, I can more-or-less, with reasonable accuracy, guess at what I’m likely to face off against.

Compare to the near definitive Phallusy of ‘yeah man, I’ll being my, erm, Orks next time’, then rocking up with pure Imperial Knights. That’s an incredibly different force composition by their very nature.

Now again for clarity, I’m only speaking for me and mine. When the club lads are looking for Tournament Practice, I’m up for it. Not because I’ll attempt to net list, but because I know, tactically, they’ll be on a level I’ve never personally aspired to, so I get added experience and challenge. When my Knights are all built, they’re welcome round mine, knowing I’ve done my best to create a Tournamentesque list.

But outside of arranged games, just don’t gloat when your meta oddity roflstomps your foe. Knights aren’t what they once were thanks to 8th Ed, but for the unprepared they’re still a helluva hill to climb.