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Is this a sentiment you've had before?

Right now, this is me and Imperial Guard rough riders. When playing IG, I've always favored a shooty army with a mix of infantry and vehicles, all in the Cadian style. I think rough rider models stick out like a sore thumb with their fur hats and mustaches. They also look like a pain to carry around to games, with their pointy lances and possibly one of the highest storage-space-to-points ratios in the game (at only 120 pts for 10 cavalry models). My cases of Imperial Guard models are already pretty full as it is.

But goddamn, they're so stupidly good. Same wounds-to-points ratio as an IG infantry squad, but twice as fast. Cheaper than tactical marines and almost as resilient. Can pose a significant threat to Terminators and Custodes on the charge, with up to 10 attacks that hit on 3's (2's with the Fix Bayonets order), wound on 2's, punch through armor, and deal D6 damage. Fall back and charge. You can field 30 of them for just 360 pts. No wonder they're sold out right now. Wouldn't be surprised if they dominated tournaments for a short time and then got hit with a significant points increase.

I also felt the same about the Triumph of Saint Katharine for Sisters of Battle, which for a time was considered almost mandatory. I actually do like the model, but was just intimidated by the prospect of building and painting it. It was almost a relief for me when it got hit by nerfs and points hikes. Now I don't have to get one.

.

Sir Hektur and Canis Rex.

His paint scheme doesn't fit with the rest of my Knights and I'm just sick of seeing him in everyone's Imperial Knights armies He's everywhere.

The reaon he's everywhere is because he is so good. And a good deal points-wise too.

I'm afraid to build one so close to the Codex release, because I feel something is going to change with Canis Rex.

Nowadays in 40k it's not a big push imo. Balance is adjusted often enough that by the time I've built and painted the Amazing unit, it would have been nerfed down to parity again so I no longer feel like I'm missing out not having it.

On the flipside though, "I love the unit thematically and aesthetically but man is it a damp sock" still feels like very much a thing, as bad units are not addressed in the same way.
In this situation I usually leave the unit on the shelf. Better just to enjoy the theme and aesthetic there than tarnish it with the crap tabletop performance.

In games with slower (or indeed no) balance updates, like Horus Heresy or Necromunda, "too good not to take" can very much be a thing.
But then what you usually find is the community reacts to either shun anyone taking it (thus it becomes "too good to take at all" or to moderate it "if I take a good unit I'll take a bad one in penance".

Nope. If I don't like the model, I don't buy it.

Guilty.

Nearish the end of 5th I had seen enough work done with centurions that I finally grabbed a box. Their rules were just that good. With some kitbashing, they were not horrible. So I built them with different heads, some parts left off. Amd the rules changed. And they lingered in the PoS. Right now I have one on the bench as part of my efforts to get the oldest minis out ouf the primed pile.

I buy minis that I like the look of without ever considering fielding them. I have a total of three Dark Eldar. Three.

I also play for funs so if I don't like the aesthetic of a fig I don't care how good it is, I'll do without. Never did buy a Triumph for my SoBs and still plan not to.

Collecting, building and painting are my main loves. Playing is fun but that's really secondary in my thoughts when I'm buying minis.

Honestly? No.

I’m one to take what I like, and see what I can do with it. And sometimes you’d be surprised what such an approach can do.

But, GW being GW, sometimes a barely mediocre list, with a Codex change, becomes utter filth.

But it’d still comprised of models I’ve at least grown to love.

Desolation marines are the universal answer, right?

No, I’m not a dirty meta chaser

I think the last time I did this was when I bought an Aegis Defense Line for the AA weapon back in 6th when flyers were introduced. But before I even painted it I'd gotten used to dealing with flyers with other tactics, so I never used it. Sold it off on ebay recently.

A very minor one was Grav guns when they were introduced. I don't really like how they look, but they were very effective at the time, so I took them on my Tacticals in 6th. It wasn't too big of a deal since it's just a gun on a Marine I'd already be taking anyways.

I don't take minis I don't like the look of ever. Rules are transient, minis are forever!

I'd just convert/proxy my way around it probably.

Not models, but rules. Back when CSM had only index rules in 10th, I wanted to make a Nurgle-marked army, but it made absolutely no sense to take Maulerfiends, a unit that I like, with that mark.

 ArcaneHorror wrote:
Not models, but rules. Back when CSM had only index rules in 10th, I wanted to make a Nurgle-marked army, but it made absolutely no sense to take Maulerfiends, a unit that I like, with that mark.

Wait, why not? Maulerfiends are smashy bots. Nurgle's not against that.

I'm lucky enough that playing Orks I haven't really come across this problem since I'm a pretty big fan of the whole range and conversion/kitbashing is sort of our faction's bread and butter, so the only thing I would say that it came close for to me was what was mentioned before with the Aegis Defence Line since a 4+ cover save for like 50 points across an important part of the army was primo for the time, but even then I had the Orky version of it so it was aesthetically consistent, it just didn't necessarily feel as Orky as it should be in terms of its ruleset.

-Guardsman- wrote:
Is this a sentiment you've had before?

Right now, this is me and Imperial Guard rough riders. When playing IG, I've always favored a shooty army with a mix of infantry and vehicles, all in the Cadian style. I think rough rider models stick out like a sore thumb with their fur hats and mustaches. They also look like a pain to carry around to games, with their pointy lances and possibly one of the highest storage-space-to-points ratios in the game (at only 120 pts for 10 cavalry models). My cases of Imperial Guard models are already pretty full as it is.

But goddamn, they're so stupidly good. Same wounds-to-points ratio as an IG infantry squad, but twice as fast. Cheaper than tactical marines and almost as resilient. Can pose a significant threat to Terminators and Custodes on the charge, with up to 10 attacks that hit on 3's (2's with the Fix Bayonets order), wound on 2's, punch through armor, and deal D6 damage. Fall back and charge. You can field 30 of them for just 360 pts. No wonder they're sold out right now. Wouldn't be surprised if they dominated tournaments for a short time and then got hit with a significant points increase.

I also felt the same about the Triumph of Saint Katharine for Sisters of Battle, which for a time was considered almost mandatory. I actually do like the model, but was just intimidated by the prospect of building and painting it. It was almost a relief for me when it got hit by nerfs and points hikes. Now I don't have to get one.

.

I also play Imperial Guard. I have always had a soft spot for the concept of Rough Riders but never liked the Attilan aesthetic. When Victoria Miniatures released their Rough Riders (there are various different regiments to choose from) I picked up some of them. There are probably other suitable proxies out there, I am just using Victoria Miniatures as an example as it's what I use.

Lord Solar Leontus is another example of a terrible Astra Militarum model. Not such an issue now as he's not as ridiculously auto-include as he used to be. The proxy I use is the Adepta Sororitas mount for Junith Erutia with the old model for Inquisitor Coteaz on top. This works for me especially as the fluff for my Guard army is that it's a retinue for an Inquisitor.

The worst offender in my eyes for the Guard is the Taurox model. It's just hideous. I know there are people out there selling wheels for the model instead of the tracks. This helps a lot but not something I've bothered getting. I'm happy with my Chimeras and don't feel the need to add any Tauroxes to my army.



So yeah, proxying goes a long way.

Probably my Nurgle bikers. Bikers never were really a DG thing, but in 6th/7th CSM noone left without them. I bought the puppets war biker models and heavily converted them to nurgle CSM, which was fun and I like what I did with them. When the DG codex came out, there unsurprisingly were no bikers there, but whenever I use my models with CSM rules bikers are in.
It's possible I would have bought bikers at some point anyway because I liked the concept, but because of the horrid balance at the time they felt necessary. Btw they never were that good even at the time in my lists But somehow toughness 6 was all the rage in the interwebz.

^T6 was probably a big deal (iirc) because it meant small arms only wounded on 6's as well as pushing most anti personnel weapons down the probability chain, and T6 meant a model became immune to Instant Death. It was sort of a sweet spot for Toughness and you could lean into it with skew builds.

I'd rather lose every game I play with a good looking army than win every game I play with an army whose aesthetics I hate.

But I'm an anomaly- I don't really have a competitive bone in my body; 40k for me has always been about stories- I play it like an RPG, not a wargame.

The main one that springs to mind for me is Crypteks.

I generally like their effects (albeit in some editions more than others), but my God are they ugly as sin.

 vipoid wrote:
The main one that springs to mind for me is Crypteks.

I generally like their effects (albeit in some editions more than others), but my God are they ugly as sin.

I'm not a big fan of the chin.
I like the single eye, I think that's really cool and makes the necrons look more alien, but the long chin just looks weird on them.

 PenitentJake wrote:
I'd rather lose every game I play with a good looking army than win every game I play with an army whose aesthetics I hate.

But I'm an anomaly- I don't really have a competitive bone in my body; 40k for me has always been about stories- I play it like an RPG, not a wargame.

As someone who has played Kroot since 8th, I'm very much that kind of person too.

That being said, I am enjoying how good they are currently. Actually going toe to toe with top meta players rather that just playing in causal events so I don't get totally face rolled has been a surprisingly fun experience.

Not so far. I make lists with a theme. The models I don't like usually don't fit in the theme. Of course, I'd be hard pressed to list models/units I didn't like. Plus I normally have to trim to fit because I had more I liked that fit the theme than fit the points.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Tawnis wrote:

 PenitentJake wrote:
I'd rather lose every game I play with a good looking army than win every game I play with an army whose aesthetics I hate.

But I'm an anomaly- I don't really have a competitive bone in my body; 40k for me has always been about stories- I play it like an RPG, not a wargame.

As someone who has played Kroot since 8th, I'm very much that kind of person too.

That being said, I am enjoying how good they are currently. Actually going toe to toe with top meta players rather that just playing in causal events so I don't get totally face rolled has been a surprisingly fun experience.

That's kind of where I'm at. There's a lot of models I'd like to be good, but I'm just waiting for the edition when they are.

 JNAProductions wrote:

 ArcaneHorror wrote:
Not models, but rules. Back when CSM had only index rules in 10th, I wanted to make a Nurgle-marked army, but it made absolutely no sense to take Maulerfiends, a unit that I like, with that mark.

Wait, why not? Maulerfiends are smashy bots. Nurgle's not against that.

Because the Nurgle Mark im the Index/Pactbound detachment has no effect on the mauler, since it just buffs shooting.

Oh, mechanical reason!
I was reading that as a theme choice.

I've always just assumed this is a normal part of army collecting and playing.


It's the flipside to "this unit looks really awesome and cool and its stats are not that good but I'm going to field it anyway!"

I generally consider myself a fairly big fan of most of what GW does and within the armies I collect I like most of the models in each army - its part of why I collect them in the first place. But yeah there's always a few that are perhaps "so so" or maybe just aren't my favourite take or design.

For me they might be something I buy later so the choice of taking or not is fairly moot as I don't have them. If their stats are really good though then yeah why not take them. PART of the game is the visual side; PART is the aesthetics and theme of an army; PART is the cold hard mathematics.

-Guardsman- wrote:
Is this a sentiment you've had before?

Nope.
Why should I waste precious time & $ on something I don't like?

JNAProductions wrote:

 ArcaneHorror wrote:
Not models, but rules. Back when CSM had only index rules in 10th, I wanted to make a Nurgle-marked army, but it made absolutely no sense to take Maulerfiends, a unit that I like, with that mark.

Wait, why not? Maulerfiends are smashy bots. Nurgle's not against that.

Lord_Valorion wrote:

 JNAProductions wrote:

 ArcaneHorror wrote:
Not models, but rules. Back when CSM had only index rules in 10th, I wanted to make a Nurgle-marked army, but it made absolutely no sense to take Maulerfiends, a unit that I like, with that mark.

Wait, why not? Maulerfiends are smashy bots. Nurgle's not against that.

Because the Nurgle Mark im the Index/Pactbound detachment has no effect on the mauler, since it just buffs shooting.

Yes, the Mark of Nurgle did nothing for melee, as it only buffed shooting. That would be good for someone leaning into a Purge-themed army with an emphasis on toxic firearms, but a melee-centered army got nothing from it.

48 hours ago, I'd have said, "Not I that would ever play World Eaters, but if I did, then Angron would fall into this category."

Seriously, his 40k model looks like a derpy Saturday Morning Cartoon. I absolutely hate that model. But, if you're playing World Eaters, you pretty much need to take him (even if for no other reason than a lack of options).

I don't think I've ever taken a unit that was just "too good" not to take, but I have taken units that I did not like because they fulfilled some role that my army needed. In early 5th I ran MM attack bikes in my BA because I needed some ranged antitank. In 6th I felt forced to run a bastion in my Eldar list so I could have something to shoot planes down with.