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 kirotheavenger wrote:

Attack Bikes are pretty much the singular example of this.

Tacticals don't get a look in, unless you want a backfield camper who will contribute nothing to the game so the few points saved becomes worthwhile.
Scouts have been rendered almost totally obsolete in the face of the various Phobos units.

DW being a notable exception since Primaris don't get the special ammo.

Scouts are essentially obselete because GW moved them out of the troops slot where people just took them as a dirt cheap "troop tax" unit and into the crowded elites slot. Very few players where taking scouts back in the day because scouts where a great unit. they took them because they wanted to spend as little points on troops as possiable and GW had decided that they didn't want the core of the marine army (which is what troops should be) being "dudes who aren't in power armor"

Firstborn see a lot of use in competitive.

MMM attack bikes and Vanguard Vets above all.

Not to mention terminators.

 kirotheavenger wrote:

Attack Bikes are pretty much the singular example of this.

Tacticals don't get a look in, unless you want a backfield camper who will contribute nothing to the game so the few points saved becomes worthwhile.
Scouts have been rendered almost totally obsolete in the face of the various Phobos units.

DW being a notable exception since Primaris don't get the special ammo.

- Firstborn HQ with the better movement options.
- Vanguard Vets
- Contemptor Dreads
- Attack Bikes
- Most of the SW unique stuff (Long Fangs, TWC, Wolf Guard)
- DC and Sanguinary Guard
- All the Terminators and Bikers (for DA)
- Devastator squads in Drop Pods


No, Attack Bikes are not an exception. Phobos are taken now because no other Firstborn troop choice got infiltrate anymore.

 kirotheavenger wrote:

Attack Bikes are pretty much the singular example of this.

Tacticals don't get a look in, unless you want a backfield camper who will contribute nothing to the game so the few points saved becomes worthwhile.
Scouts have been rendered almost totally obsolete in the face of the various Phobos units.

DW being a notable exception since Primaris don't get the special ammo.

-Vanvets
-Basically all HQs
-Contemptors
-Attack bikes
-Talonmasters
-Ravenwing Knights
-Deathwing terminators
-Deathwatch Veterans

Intercessors and Eliminators are the only Primaris units I'm really commonly seeing in comp marine lists.

Eliminators are looking pretty sweet again with the points drops. 75 points for snipe and 90 for lasfusil.

 kirotheavenger wrote:
...DW being a notable exception since Primaris don't get the special ammo.

Neither do most of the Firstborn units; SIA is the power-armour veterans only now, and 90% of the time the option you're using is Kraken rounds, which just turn your boltguns into bolt rifles. Deathwatch right now are just a slightly more complicated way to play Marines with no Chapter Tactics.

 AnomanderRake wrote:

 kirotheavenger wrote:
...DW being a notable exception since Primaris don't get the special ammo.

Neither do most of the Firstborn units; SIA is the power-armour veterans only now, and 90% of the time the option you're using is Kraken rounds, which just turn your boltguns into bolt rifles. Deathwatch right now are just a slightly more complicated way to play Marines with no Chapter Tactics.

Likely true in matched.

They rock in Crusade, because there's a unit upgrade that lets you use the SIA strat free. Also, stacking your specialisms with the chapter tactic and a master of specialisms does make the chapter tactic worthwhile.

That said, I like mixed Primaris Kill Teams better than mixed firstborn teams. The firstborn KT options all lose something if don't mix 5/5. Not so much with the Primaris teams.

I missed it, how did this become a discussion of units efficiency on the table? Oh, wait...Dakka...

But in any case, seen a lot of thoughts and ideas and appreciate it.

PenitentJake wrote:
...They rock in Crusade, because there's a unit upgrade that lets you use the SIA strat free. Also, stacking your specialisms with the chapter tactic and a master of specialisms does make the chapter tactic worthwhile....

Which would be great, except that you're telling me my army that's mathematically equivalent to having no Chapter Tactics can spend resources to be playable in Crusade, while the other SM are getting their Chapter Tactics and get all the resources I spent to be playable in Crusade to get themselves further ahead.

It's sort of a moot point anyway, I sold that army because of how angry the preview PDF made me.

I would argue there isn't much of a line and more a scale. You can have an army that is both fluffy and competitive. It isn't necessarily always possible for every faction, but it does exist.

Incidentally, I notice whenever someone dares to try and gasp, win, they are immediately demeaned. Thankfully, Dakka already provided me with an example,

 Tamwulf wrote:
Fluffy Army:
"This is Primaris Captain Finius Bogg. He is a new captain and hopes to prove himself in this battle. As he is so new, the Forge Master of his chapter hasn't made him any new weapons (yet). All he has is a Bolt Pistol, Master Crafted Auto Boltrifle, and frag and Krack grenades. Maybe he'll get lucky and earn some upgrades or find something useful after this battle."
"Veteran Sergeant Kasadin is armed with a bolt pistol and chainsword. He has managed an impressive kill tally with it."
"This is Foe Reaper, my Gladiator Reaper tank with auto launchers. I've painted the number of foes it has killed on the side of it's hull."
"This guy is Lieutenant Dan. He has somehow managed to survive every battle he is in. He has a bolt pistol and master crafted power sword named Forest. He also has frag and krak grenades that he has never used."

Competitive Army:
"Three units of <insert meta unit here> armed with <death guns>"
"Space Marine Captain with jump pack, Tears of Terra, and Storm Shield."
"I'm playing a Brigade battle formation. Here are my three troops choices. Three Troops MSU's of the cheapest models from the codex, no upgrades"
"Techmarine upgraded to Master of the Forge"
"Two Ancient Contemptor Dreads, all Volkite"

I love this kind of narrative around 'casual' players (who incidentally, always seem to be far worse sports than any 'competitive player').

The Casual player? They're here to have fun and have managed to write up another drab, boring backstory for their Space Marine chapter. Every one of their units is so inefficient one can practically dance around them without effort.

The Competitive player? They've dared to win. They don't care about the game at all and have 0 investment in writing incredibly boring, poorly written backstories. They decided not to bring grossly inefficient units which exist to be removed from the table. They have no soul or involvement in the game.

 blood reaper wrote:

I love this kind of narrative around 'casual' players (who incidentally, always seem to be far worse sports than any 'competitive player').

The Casual player? They're here to have fun and have managed to write up another drab, boring backstory for their Space Marine chapter. Every one of their units is so inefficient one can practically dance around them without effort.

The Competitive player? They've dared to win. They don't care about the game at all and have 0 investment in writing incredibly boring, poorly written backstories. They decided not to bring grossly inefficient units which exist to be removed from the table. They have no soul or involvement in the game.

unit efficiency is not what makes overly competitive players miserable to play against. Both "casual" and "competitive" players can be miserable, generally in different ways, but the main commonality between them is blatantly applying double standards to try and win during the game.

with a competitive player, that's "win" in terms of actually winning and having more points than you at the end of the game, with the casual player, it's "win" in more of a moral, "I am superior to you for these reasons therefore the loss doesn't count" sense.

Both types of player can be enjoyable to play against as well. A competitive player doesn't necessarily have to be doing their absolute damnedest to set up their stratagems and unusual combos like trap cards in yu-gi-oh to try and catch you out unawares ("Aha, this obscure custom chapter trait you don't have memorized combines with this relic from a campaign book you didn't buy and this stratagem from this supplement you didnt read to let me charge an extra 5"! I knew I had you when I saw you measure out the threat range of that unit, CAUGHT in my superior tactical PROWESS!!!") and a casual player doesn't necessarily have to be continuously whining about how your army breaks the fluff or GW should never have made this unit so strong or that unit so weak because in the lore this fight should have gone this way or that unit should have been able to kill that thing with this gun.

I find that if you have to tell someone that your army is "fluffy" it probably isn't. When an opponent tells me that his army is fluffy I figure I am going to face the opposite, like the guy who called his list in late 2019 with two Leviathans "fluffy."

There is nothing wrong with being "competitive." I think, though, that most folks are not one or the other. I go to tournaments and I optimize, but I also try to have a theme and things are painted and decaled to be a coherent force from the background. But to be honest, I also try to make every point count...I suppose context matters. At a tournament we expect lists to be competitive.

Things can change as well. I took an all-Deathwing list to a tournament in late 2019. I was going for "fluffy" and the tabletop results were predictable (but also fun). If I took the same list today I could be called a "try-hard."

Signs you might be drifting from fluffy to competitive? You min-max. You proxy more efficient weapon options. You change your Chapter to chase the meta - no painting etc.

TangoTwoBravo wrote:

Signs you might be drifting from fluffy to competitive? You min-max. You proxy more efficient weapon options. You change your Chapter to chase the meta - no painting etc.

I find myself doing all these things VASTLY more with the armies I own that are the least competitive.

My GSC? You bet your ass every gun is a mining laser and whatever the current best cult is what my corrupted Arbites are being played as today - the other options that aren't mining lasers are like

"for five extra points, you can ""upgrade""" your D3 shot lascannon into a single shot missile launcher! Whoopieeee!"

"for five extra points, you can "upgrade" your 24" lascannon into a heavy four fething lasgun that is ap-3 on a six to wound"

"for the same cost, you can "side-grade" your flamer to 18" from 12" range, and to D3 shots from D6 shots"

"for nearly double the point cost, you can "upgrade" your acolyte into a hybrid metamorph so he can, with the very best weapon option available to him, have the exact same stats entirely but if he dies before he gets to fight, he gets to fight anyway. And also you dont get the heavy melee weapons that are the only reason to field melee acolytes feth you."

The relic I used to always use, and painted my models' gun special to be that relic because I liked it? Well, unfortunately it worded its ability to always wound on a 2 vs non-vehicles as "+3 to wound" and thus now only grants +1 to wound thanks to the new edition, and GW didn't bother to just fix it in a FAQ! So yeah now the free relic in my army is just one of the guns on my kelermorph is a special gun, it's not painted or modeled any differently.

And the cult I used to always use? Half their trait got given to everyone for free, so no, I'm not going to continue to play using 1/2 of a cult trait, I'm going to switch to something different and I'm not going to feel bad about it.

I never use my proper chapter traits.
I object to GW trying to tell me what my army does and how to represent it on the tabletop.

I unashamedly pick the trait that I feel gives the best bonus to the army I want to run. They're nothing but a rule anyway.

 kirotheavenger wrote:
I never use my proper chapter traits.
I object to GW trying to tell me what my army does and how to represent it on the tabletop.

I unashamedly pick the trait that I feel gives the best bonus to the army I want to run. They're nothing but a rule anyway.

Yeah, I'll never complain at someone for doing this. If you feel like your Ultramarines army is like honorable close combat warriors because youre doing the first company or whatever and falling back and shooting feels cowardly to you, go custom traits or do black templars or whatever. I sure as hell use Freebootas tactics for my Evil Sunz because I feel like Evil Sunz basically just teleporting into close combat range turn 1 is boring and I love the mini-game aspect of the orks being overcompetitive that Freebootas plays into.

I don't really mind whether you are competitive (I've brought these units because they are the best) or fluffy (this is my Guard Army, its based on a Soviet Union Anti-Aircraft Artillery Regiment, what you mean Hydras are not a meta unit?).

The clash is when someone brings along their guard army, a castellan, some smash captains and scouts, and then brazenly tries to say its a fluffy list because they've written a story about it. (I realise this anecdote is getting a bit dated now, but still.) We all know its not a fluffy army, its a cookie cutter build being replicated just one table over, never mind the rest of the world.

Tyel wrote:
I don't really mind whether you are competitive (I've brought these units because they are the best) or fluffy (this is my Guard Army, its based on a Soviet Union Anti-Aircraft Artillery Regiment, what you mean Hydras are not a meta unit?).

The clash is when someone brings along their guard army, a castellan, some smash captains and scouts, and then brazenly tries to say its a fluffy list because they've written a story about it. (I realise this anecdote is getting a bit dated now, but still.) We all know its not a fluffy army, its a cookie cutter build being replicated just one table over, never mind the rest of the world.

This is basically the same as

 Arachnofiend wrote:
A fluffy list is when I look at the other side of the table and I like what I see. A competitive list is when I look at the other side of the table and I don't like it

How is Astra Militarum based on a Soviet Union Anti-Aircraft Artillery Regiment fluffy? If this was Bolt Action, maybe that's the case. Honestly the Castellan army is more fluffy because it's actually based on the fluff of 40k. Like 70% of all 40k stories are based on Astra Militarum being backed up by Space marines and/or Knights. If somebody built a battle company of Space Marines, and that became The Meta Cookie Cutter List would you say it's not fluffy?

Tyel wrote:
I don't really mind whether you are competitive (I've brought these units because they are the best) or fluffy (this is my Guard Army, its based on a Soviet Union Anti-Aircraft Artillery Regiment, what you mean Hydras are not a meta unit?).

The clash is when someone brings along their guard army, a castellan, some smash captains and scouts, and then brazenly tries to say its a fluffy list because they've written a story about it. (I realise this anecdote is getting a bit dated now, but still.) We all know its not a fluffy army, its a cookie cutter build being replicated just one table over, never mind the rest of the world.

Which gets back to the intent rather than the content ...

Tyel wrote:
I don't really mind whether you are competitive (I've brought these units because they are the best) or fluffy (this is my Guard Army, its based on a Soviet Union Anti-Aircraft Artillery Regiment, what you mean Hydras are not a meta unit?).

The clash is when someone brings along their guard army, a castellan, some smash captains and scouts, and then brazenly tries to say its a fluffy list because they've written a story about it. (I realise this anecdote is getting a bit dated now, but still.) We all know its not a fluffy army, its a cookie cutter build being replicated just one table over, never mind the rest of the world.

yeah, I also hate when someone brings their dark eldar army with an archon, a succubus, and a haemonculus, multiple squads of troops in raider transports, and runs them as a close range/melee army in a fast raiding force. And they try to argue that's a fluffy dark eldar army! psh, come on, that's a competitive meta list right there! wheres the, uh..slow stuff the dark eldar are known for? Wheres the long range shooting units sitting in the back?

 the_scotsman wrote:

Tyel wrote:
I don't really mind whether you are competitive (I've brought these units because they are the best) or fluffy (this is my Guard Army, its based on a Soviet Union Anti-Aircraft Artillery Regiment, what you mean Hydras are not a meta unit?).

The clash is when someone brings along their guard army, a castellan, some smash captains and scouts, and then brazenly tries to say its a fluffy list because they've written a story about it. (I realise this anecdote is getting a bit dated now, but still.) We all know its not a fluffy army, its a cookie cutter build being replicated just one table over, never mind the rest of the world.

yeah, I also hate when someone brings their dark eldar army with an archon, a succubus, and a haemonculus, multiple squads of troops in raider transports, and runs them as a close range/melee army in a fast raiding force. And they try to argue that's a fluffy dark eldar army! psh, come on, that's a competitive meta list right there! wheres the, uh..slow stuff the dark eldar are known for? Wheres the long range shooting units sitting in the back?

Sometimes it's easier to judge intent than other times (which I think is a point you yourself brought up, rightfully so!).