Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Hi Everyone,

Just to chime in here, I'm the Aeldari half of this battle report. I can confirm that we were asked by the studio to write lists which were as competitive as possible. I actually arrived home from holiday the day before I needed to travel to Warhammer World, so I was fully reliant on borrowing models from the studio (although I was able to get almost all of what I wanted, if not the specific factions).

I can see why some folks may have an issue with the fluff of the imperium list, but let me defend this by saying that we were asked to build our lists purely from a competitive standpoint. Even then there was some borrowing of models which meant we couldn't get quite to 100% of what we wanted, but it was close.

We had an absolute blast at HQ, happy to answer any questions that I can on this if folks are curious.

I have no questions, but know that I appreciate the fact that content was included that caters to my style of play.

Im buying a copy because of what you two were able to do.

 liam0404 wrote:
Hi Everyone,

Just to chime in here, I'm the Aeldari half of this battle report. I can confirm that we were asked by the studio to write lists which were as competitive as possible. I actually arrived home from holiday the day before I needed to travel to Warhammer World, so I was fully reliant on borrowing models from the studio (although I was able to get almost all of what I wanted, if not the specific factions).

I can see why some folks may have an issue with the fluff of the imperium list, but let me defend this by saying that we were asked to build our lists purely from a competitive standpoint. Even then there was some borrowing of models which meant we couldn't get quite to 100% of what we wanted, but it was close.

We had an absolute blast at HQ, happy to answer any questions that I can on this if folks are curious.

Only question I have, were some of the staff you interacted with surprised at the choices or are they completely aware of what the current content is of soups lists?

 bullyboy wrote:


Only question I have, were some of the staff you interacted with surprised at the choices or are they completely aware of what the current content is of soups lists?

I'd say yes they were surprised somewhat - and we certainly pulled no punches in our game. That being said, most of our time was spent with the white dwarf magazine team as opposed to the game design team (although they did pop in briefly to see how things were going).

 liam0404 wrote:

 bullyboy wrote:


Only question I have, were some of the staff you interacted with surprised at the choices or are they completely aware of what the current content is of soups lists?

I'd say yes they were surprised somewhat - and we certainly pulled no punches in our game. That being said, most of our time was spent with the white dwarf magazine team as opposed to the game design team (although they did pop in briefly to see how things were going).

You say the game design team. The whole team or some representatives? How big is the team?

 liam0404 wrote:
Hi Everyone,

Just to chime in here, I'm the Aeldari half of this battle report. I can confirm that we were asked by the studio to write lists which were as competitive as possible. I actually arrived home from holiday the day before I needed to travel to Warhammer World, so I was fully reliant on borrowing models from the studio (although I was able to get almost all of what I wanted, if not the specific factions).

I can see why some folks may have an issue with the fluff of the imperium list, but let me defend this by saying that we were asked to build our lists purely from a competitive standpoint. Even then there was some borrowing of models which meant we couldn't get quite to 100% of what we wanted, but it was close.

We had an absolute blast at HQ, happy to answer any questions that I can on this if folks are curious.

Cool.

 insaniak wrote:
The thing is, for most people, 'Is the army fluffy' actually means 'Does this army match my preconceptions about what a fluffy army should look like?' rather than whether or not there is actually justification in the fluff for that army to exist.

In a setting like 40K, where we have examples throughout the fluff of unlikely alliances and odd force compositions, the difference between a 'fluffy' army and an 'unfluffy' army is down to nothing more than how much effort you want to put into devising a fluffy explanation for it.

So it's not so much that 'fluffiness' is devalued as a concept as simply that 'unfluffy' armies only exist if you refuse to accept the fluff.

'Is the army fluffy?' is a question of intent. Maybe there's a unicorn player out there who came up with an elaborate backstory that happened to result in his army being composed of two smash captains, a battalion of Guard, and a handful of Knights, but the rest of the players running that list have chosen it for pure competitiveness, rather than any sort of adherence to the background. Once you've chosen an army for competitiveness rather than what makes sense in the background, then any fluff justification is a post-hoc rationalization for what is likely an inherently unfluffy list.

On the day that the most effective tournament lists are also the ones that best fit the setting, this will stop being a point of contention. Until then, if an opponent tells me he's bringing a fluffy list and shows up with the smash captain/loyal 32/knights crew he built for a local tournament, I'm going to politely decline the game on the basis of being misled, regardless of whether he has a retroactive fluff justification to go with it.

The main problem isn't that loyal 32+knights+Custards/Dakkabots is competitive, it's that it squashes out literally any other type of list. The game devolves into "Does your list contain two knights? If not, you autolose." because there is simply no way to bring anti-knight to the table when they can throw down 3++ saves and you need to burn half of your CP pool to have even a snowballs chance of hurting them.

 Cephalobeard wrote:
Seems like a pretty normal list.

Don't be upset about toy soldiers in toy magazines not being your favorite color toys. It's a silly thing to he concerned with.

Knights are bad for competitions because it allows bad players to win more than they should just on the simplicity of knights. Knights need nerds to make competitive play better


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Peregrine wrote:

Wayniac wrote:
Okay, so yeah it looks like they brought two tourney players to the studio to do a competitive battle report. That's a bit easier to swallow. They used to do that periodically back in the olden days (In my view one of GW's best designers, Alessio Cavatore, was the Italian WHFB champion before he joined the studio IIRC)

This is perfectly acceptable then. I almost wonder if they did this to see what makes the top tournament armies "tick" firsthand so they can look at possibly addressing it rather than relying on anecdotal evidence. Also I am guessing they are using CA18 missions, so it would also be a good test to see how those missions can work in a simulated tournament matchup.

Why is it only acceptable for GW to acknowledge and support competitive play if it isn't GW employees? Why does there need to be some hidden agenda of working on balance changes and not just showing a tournament style battle report for readers interested in the subject?

Actually I think it is simply most gw employees don’t care about being competitive in their own gaming. And the ones that do play lord of the rings :p


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 FrozenDwarf wrote:
see, this is why i have abandoned 40k in favor of AoS and AT.
only mono codex should be allowed in matched play!

I find aos even less balanced. But then again my army got nerfed into gak, and I will be eternally salty (well until they fix it)

catbarf wrote:
'Is the army fluffy?' is a question of intent. Maybe there's a unicorn player out there who came up with an elaborate backstory that happened to result in his army being composed of two smash captains, a battalion of Guard, and a handful of Knights, but the rest of the players running that list have chosen it for pure competitiveness, rather than any sort of adherence to the background. Once you've chosen an army for competitiveness rather than what makes sense in the background, then any fluff justification is a post-hoc rationalization for what is likely an inherently unfluffy list.

On the day that the most effective tournament lists are also the ones that best fit the setting, this will stop being a point of contention. Until then, if an opponent tells me he's bringing a fluffy list and shows up with the smash captain/loyal 32/knights crew he built for a local tournament, I'm going to politely decline the game on the basis of being misled, regardless of whether he has a retroactive fluff justification to go with it.

IOW, you're defining "fluffy" based on some weird kind of moral purity instead of how well it fits the background fiction. This is a terrible definition.

 Peregrine wrote:

catbarf wrote:
'Is the army fluffy?' is a question of intent. Maybe there's a unicorn player out there who came up with an elaborate backstory that happened to result in his army being composed of two smash captains, a battalion of Guard, and a handful of Knights, but the rest of the players running that list have chosen it for pure competitiveness, rather than any sort of adherence to the background. Once you've chosen an army for competitiveness rather than what makes sense in the background, then any fluff justification is a post-hoc rationalization for what is likely an inherently unfluffy list.

On the day that the most effective tournament lists are also the ones that best fit the setting, this will stop being a point of contention. Until then, if an opponent tells me he's bringing a fluffy list and shows up with the smash captain/loyal 32/knights crew he built for a local tournament, I'm going to politely decline the game on the basis of being misled, regardless of whether he has a retroactive fluff justification to go with it.

IOW, you're defining "fluffy" based on some weird kind of moral purity instead of how well it fits the background fiction. This is a terrible definition.

No, he really isn’t, don’t be disingenuous.

What the hell. Such an army from GW? Unbelievable! Blame you, GW.

 JohnnyHell wrote:
No, he really isn’t, don’t be disingenuous.

He absolutely is, it's right there explicitly stated: fluff is determined by intent, not the contents of the list.

“Oh no it isn’t!”
“Oh yes it is!”

Come on, chaps. I know it’s panto season, but still.

Bottom line? If it’s in the book it’s legal, regardless of your opinion. Complain to GW, or tell the player ‘x units? Too hot for me’. Or agree to a game if they swap armies.

No, I do not play ‘soup’ armies.

 Peregrine wrote:

 JohnnyHell wrote:
No, he really isn’t, don’t be disingenuous.

He absolutely is, it's right there explicitly stated: fluff is determined by intent, not the contents of the list.

It’s only you that drags up “moral purity” and “virtue signalling” as phrases apparently relevant to building a miniature war gaming army list. It does constantly amaze me, that.

If a list requires post-rationalisation to be deemed fluffy it’s not fluffy, that was his point, and that’s his opinion. Please show me any examples in the published fluff showing the type of army in question to support your position. I jest. You probably can’t. You’d need to make up an explanation. That was his point. Don’t try and goad, that’s all I was saying in my prior post. It’s a perfectly fine position to take, no need to twist it and rephrase it as something not said.

Yes, the universe is vast enough for anything to be possible yadda yadda, and the Guard + Knights isn’t unfluffy in my view, but three high-ranking BA being the only BA present is suspect to me, and the bit that needs post-rationalising for some. You may accept it as is. That’s also fine. No need to polarise and demonise people with accusations and silliness.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Moriarty wrote:
“Oh no it isn’t!”
“Oh yes it is!”

Hahaha, quite!

 liam0404 wrote:

 bullyboy wrote:


Only question I have, were some of the staff you interacted with surprised at the choices or are they completely aware of what the current content is of soups lists?

I'd say yes they were surprised somewhat - and we certainly pulled no punches in our game. That being said, most of our time was spent with the white dwarf magazine team as opposed to the game design team (although they did pop in briefly to see how things were going).

Was that the design team or the WD team who were surprised?

It's weird that they'd be so unaware of some of these things when even casual gamers in my local area are aware of soup and competitive list compositions. I've always felt the GW staff were very insular.

Thanks for posting anyway, I'm definitely picking up the next WD partly to read the bat rep. Will be mt first time buying it in like 12 years or something lol

This list has a weakness. Psychic defense. A tsons smite spam list, like 10 psykers with magnus super smite will take care of it. 90 pink horrors with 4++ and a changeling giving them 6+++ will be the screen, and the rest will be tsons psykers.

 BaconCatBug wrote:
The main problem isn't that loyal 32+knights+Custards/Dakkabots is competitive, it's that it squashes out literally any other type of list. The game devolves into "Does your list contain two knights? If not, you autolose." because there is simply no way to bring anti-knight to the table when they can throw down 3++ saves and you need to burn half of your CP pool to have even a snowballs chance of hurting them.

So much wrong with this post that I'm not sure it deserves an honest attempt at reply. This is an incredibly low level mentality which displays an understanding of game knowledge that leaves a lot to be desired.

It’s what happens when all your games are mathhammer on forums or on Tabletop Simulator. ;-)

 JohnnyHell wrote:
It’s what happens when all your games are mathhammer on forums or on Tabletop Simulator. ;-)

My original reaction to that post was just to think "this guy desperately needs to play more and bitch less", so I'm inclined to think you are on to something.

 p5freak wrote:
This list has a weakness. Psychic defense. A tsons smite spam list, like 10 psykers with magnus super smite will take care of it. 90 pink horrors with 4++ and a changeling giving them 6+++ will be the screen, and the rest will be tsons psykers.

It becomes a question of who goes first.
If the Knights get first turn they can blow Magnus off the table before he gets his buffs off and have a good shot at winning.
If they don't its a hard struggle.

These sorts of lists were always going to appear when they started to allow keywords and cross-dex builds.

For me it's all about how you use these rules. For me it always seemed silly that the Imperium would not maximise its forces by combining, e.g. IG artillery with marine strike forces, etc. However, it was also clear that this would open a can of worms in terms of competitiveness, especially for factions with no possible allies (Orks, Necrons, Nids) or very limited ones. I even asked one of the design team at 40K Open Day a few years back if the reason for splitting of Harlequins and Craftworlds was to allow them to combine and the answer was a tentative yes.

The key thing now is how you play, if you are playing with your mates you can be reasonable and come up with fun crossover lists. I think it really helps the game in terms of variety of builds etc. However, if you are playing WAAC 'TFG's then it allows for a lot of gamesmanship.

I don't see any moral virtue in coming up with lists that are fluffy. It may suit some (me for example) but some want to play to win. It depends upon the setting. I actually feel sorry for GW on this because they have tried to present a game which can be played in different ways but there seem to be purists of all sorts!

For the record I think it was a WAAC list and made little sense but it lost so perhaps not that WAAC.

I'm going to say I'm glad it sounds like you guys (the players) had a good game.

I am a little shocked at the people calling those lists WAAC lists, they are competitive lists, but the player has already said they had to modify the list due to model limitations.

In all honesty I am a little disappointed that the designers didn't want to pay more attention to the game especially when it was at thier own office with the whole team present to understand why units do or don't work in competitive lists.

As I know some of them are attending things like LVO etc, but thats not the same as having the whole team with presumably the opertunity to question everything as I assume their is quite a few things like pictures and lighting that slow the game down when it's for a feature article.

Pretty sure the Imperial Soup player lost....

 Cephalobeard wrote:
I genuinely enjoy soup and that it gives mean excuse o bit models from armies I typically wouldn't.

I don't want a full AM army, but I enjoy my little brigade I've made and have had a lot of fun with it.

Wouldn't have ever bought those or done that without soup.

Nothing wrong with that. I do think there is a difference between soup existing, and giving people the option to try out new stuff AND soup being the only way to play, or invalidating whole factions, because identical more efficient lists exist. Plus soup makes GW lazy. If soup didn't exist, they would have to fix bad books. Right now they can just say the ultimiate fix to everything is to take knight+IG+minium of your own army.

In regards to a composition of the forces in a game of 40k, you can only determine how “fluffy” a list is, based off your current game narrative.

Sure, 32 Guardsmen, a Chief Librarian, 2 Captains and some Knights might be a really really really really really rea…. Rare occasion on some backwater planet in a minor 1 off skirmish, but, it’d actually probably be extremely likely on a battlefield such as Cadia.

Taking a list to a competitive event (unless it is a narrative event) has nothing to do with fluff I’m afraid. Such, you can create your own narrative, but at the event people would likely be interested in reading it and hearing about it, but, it’d ultimately be a cool sidenote. You could also say that a big tournament is nothing more than a massive crucible of war with all random forces thrown together in one massive maelstrom.

The point is, the setting makes anything and everything possible in a fluffy way. How you determine your casual game’s narrative is what will determine whether a list “fits or not” in your own section of the setting.
A single 2000-point game of 40k might not represent the entire battle. Scale is important to take into account. Just because something doesn’t “fit” at first glance, doesn’t mean it doesn’t fit.

Kdash wrote:
In regards to a composition of the forces in a game of 40k, you can only determine how “fluffy” a list is, based off your current game narrative.

Sure, 32 Guardsmen, a Chief Librarian, 2 Captains and some Knights might be a really really really really really rea…. Rare occasion on some backwater planet in a minor 1 off skirmish, but, it’d actually probably be extremely likely on a battlefield such as Cadia.

Taking a list to a competitive event (unless it is a narrative event) has nothing to do with fluff I’m afraid. Such, you can create your own narrative, but at the event people would likely be interested in reading it and hearing about it, but, it’d ultimately be a cool sidenote. You could also say that a big tournament is nothing more than a massive crucible of war with all random forces thrown together in one massive maelstrom.

The point is, the setting makes anything and everything possible in a fluffy way. How you determine your casual game’s narrative is what will determine whether a list “fits or not” in your own section of the setting.
A single 2000-point game of 40k might not represent the entire battle. Scale is important to take into account. Just because something doesn’t “fit” at first glance, doesn’t mean it doesn’t fit.

Okay, let's look at this another way. We've all played players who have named their characters, giving them elaborate backstories and being able to tell tales of their conquests in previous games, frequently from previous editions. To me, that's a pretty solid indicator of somebody who is playing something for fluff reasons, not just post-hoc fluffiness. How frequently do we run into Loyal32+Knight+Cap players who have done that? I've yet to meet somebody who runs that sort of list who has done that sort of thing. Sure, maybe coming up with cheesy names or whatever isn't for everybody, so maybe that's not a good metric.

Okay, how many people played a Loyal32+Knight+Cap list at any point when it wasn't OP? Surely, if the list was fluffy in 8th, it was fluffy in 7th too, right? Okay, you'd have to replace the Castellan with a regular knight, but that's not a problem, oh, and you'd have to take a platoon. Okay, not a big deal. And I guess the BA guys would have to take an allied detachment, so maybe that part falls apart a little, but whatever. Did anybody play this sort of list in 7th? I'm guessing not... what was the big difference? Oh wait, this list would've been pretty garbage in 7th.

I get what people are saying. You can't immediately judge somebody with a very strong soup list as not caring about the fluff. But I don't think it's very hard to demarcate the fluffy (and fluffy as intended) lists from the wolves in fluffy clothing.

there's so much soup discussion in here Jamie Oliver just rode past on his moped and shouted "Needs more Salt!"

Seeing as we're at it ... and GW approve that soup is a thing (or at least have not disapproved ..yet) the issue becomes not that soup is bad, but that there's only really one maybe two soups out there that work well enough to be the de facto list component.

you want competitive you have to accept that you'll be facing these and either counter or bring the same.
it becomes as self fulfilling prophecy.

as for if it's fluffy or not.. man just pick up a HH novel and there's Guard / BA / knights in pretty much every major battle scene ... watch Helsreach - Grimaldus is marching alongside a Titan like a boss with guardsmen meeting him in the street to fight off Orks ... if that's not a true representation of the Meta right now I don't know what is

and let's be honest ... we haven't seen the fallout from CA2018 yet to see if the adjustments have affected anything significantly.
as a Necrons player, having played a few games so farr in a very Semi-comp setting.. I'm mildly hopeful that there'll be a small change in things to allow some more choice out there.
and then in April another minor tweak might change it up again..

the sky is not falling yet

 Gene St. Ealer wrote:

Kdash wrote:
In regards to a composition of the forces in a game of 40k, you can only determine how “fluffy” a list is, based off your current game narrative.

Sure, 32 Guardsmen, a Chief Librarian, 2 Captains and some Knights might be a really really really really really rea…. Rare occasion on some backwater planet in a minor 1 off skirmish, but, it’d actually probably be extremely likely on a battlefield such as Cadia.

Taking a list to a competitive event (unless it is a narrative event) has nothing to do with fluff I’m afraid. Such, you can create your own narrative, but at the event people would likely be interested in reading it and hearing about it, but, it’d ultimately be a cool sidenote. You could also say that a big tournament is nothing more than a massive crucible of war with all random forces thrown together in one massive maelstrom.

The point is, the setting makes anything and everything possible in a fluffy way. How you determine your casual game’s narrative is what will determine whether a list “fits or not” in your own section of the setting.
A single 2000-point game of 40k might not represent the entire battle. Scale is important to take into account. Just because something doesn’t “fit” at first glance, doesn’t mean it doesn’t fit.

Okay, let's look at this another way. We've all played players who have named their characters, giving them elaborate backstories and being able to tell tales of their conquests in previous games, frequently from previous editions. To me, that's a pretty solid indicator of somebody who is playing something for fluff reasons, not just post-hoc fluffiness. How frequently do we run into Loyal32+Knight+Cap players who have done that? I've yet to meet somebody who runs that sort of list who has done that sort of thing. Sure, maybe coming up with cheesy names or whatever isn't for everybody, so maybe that's not a good metric.

Okay, how many people played a Loyal32+Knight+Cap list at any point when it wasn't OP? Surely, if the list was fluffy in 8th, it was fluffy in 7th too, right? Okay, you'd have to replace the Castellan with a regular knight, but that's not a problem, oh, and you'd have to take a platoon. Okay, not a big deal. And I guess the BA guys would have to take an allied detachment, so maybe that part falls apart a little, but whatever. Did anybody play this sort of list in 7th? I'm guessing not... what was the big difference? Oh wait, this list would've been pretty garbage in 7th.

I get what people are saying. You can't immediately judge somebody with a very strong soup list as not caring about the fluff. But I don't think it's very hard to demarcate the fluffy (and fluffy as intended) lists from the wolves in fluffy clothing.

I’m not defending people taking the list simply because it is classed as one of the “top competitive lists”. What I was trying to do is counter some of the misconceived arguments around what is “fluffy or not” from both sides of this argument.

99.99% of the people running this list are competitive only players or people who’ve seen the list online and decided to try to smash their local store with it. But, what I’m also trying to explain is that, although it sucked before, and although it wasn’t seen before, it doesn’t mean it wasn’t fluffy before.

I play mainly at events, and, if I’m honest I suck at coming up with “cool” names for things. I had to come up with some names for the WHW Vigilus Weekender event and my god that was stressful I do enjoy reading well written fan fluff, but, it also annoys me when people submit lists where they’ve changed the names of the entries on the official list to their own names. Kinda a “time and place” guy.

Not sure why people are upset. This list shows, unequivocally, that GW is aware of this type of list and how good it is. I haven't seen the battle report, but I'm assuming it's a competitive battle report. Great! If it's a competitive battle report, then I sure hope that whomever is playing takes the most competitive things they can. This helps EVERYONE to see this:

#1 - This helps GW see what a competitive list is like. I'm sure they already knew, but still, this is great to see.

#2 - This helps competitively minded players see what a competitive tourney list is like. This helps inform those players for their buying decisions.

#3 - This helps non-competitively minded players know what a competitive tourney list is like. If someone comes in with a list like this "for fun", then you really do have it from the horse's mouth that this isn't a for-fun list.

#4 - This helps GW's sales. As stated, they are saying "these things are good, so consider buying them."

#5 - This helps competitively minded players know what to expect to fight against, even if they don't play these armies. These lists have tiny weaknesses, barely any. That makes sense; your best lists are going to be strong and try to have minimal blind spots.

#6 - Hopefully, assuming the opponent ALSO brought a competitive list and is a good player, we get to see these weaknesses come up and how openings and movements are exploited so that the counters to these lists are better known.


All in all, this battle report sounds great, and I'm excited to read it!