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So, I've got two Nurgle armies. One is my old pack of Daemons-nearly 100 models worth of gribblies big and small.
The other is my new Death Guard. Around 30 models total.

In my experience, people have MUCH more fun facing my Daemons than my Death Guard. The only game where it felt like my opponent really enjoyed facing my Death Guard (who are, it should be noted, shelved for the moment till they're less relatively OP) was one where I ended the game with one model left. I still won, based on points, but my opponent was able to chunk through large parts of my army in time.

That's why the Daemons are more fun to face. They're tough, yeah-but not as tough. There's a lot of them, so you can FEEL them getting taken down. Sorta why Knights are often considered less fun-unless your army is specced hard into antitank or you get real lucky, you're not gonna be removing models very often. The number goes down, but that's not nearly as visceral as seeing models removed.

I still win with my Daemons-flooding the board with a crapload of tough minis will do that. But my opponent feel like they've got a good chance of pulling through-and if/when the tides turn so much that they can't come back from it, there's usually some small victory that's still achievable. Last game I had with them, I was ahead 50 to 15 or so by turn three, and the store was closing. So I just said to him "Hey, you put a lot of shots into my Daemon Prince. We don't have time to properly finish the game, so how about we just have him vs. Calgar's squad, and call it game?"

My Prince obliterated the BGV with Calgar, but Calgar dumpstered the Prince. And he had fun with that. I like that. I like it when my opponent ends the game with a smile.

This is just idle thoughts. Not sure how to properly apply them to armies, like Knights or Custodes or Death Guard, that can run afoul of being unfun. But yeah.

I think it's really depends on your local community. My previous community for example was really really really competitive. And they hate my infantry guards for some reason but was fine and have fun even if loose to my mechanized or tank heavy lists. For me most fun opponent list is thematic list. No matter what they are. Like your Grandpa's horde army. I don't play against knights but I feels like chowing through them would be fun to. But I don't like meta builds cause they, idk, soulless maybe?

kabaakaba wrote:
I think it's really depends on your local community. My previous community for example was really really really competitive. And they hate my infantry guards for some reason but was fine and have fun even if loose to my mechanized or tank heavy lists. For me most fun opponent list is thematic list. No matter what they are. Like your Grandpa's horde army. I don't play against knights but I feels like chowing through them would be fun to. But I don't like meta builds cause they, idk, soulless maybe?

That's fair! I'm obviously reporting on my personal experiences. Dunno how widely they apply-but it's good to open discussion.

How prevalent are hordes in tournaments? That might be an aspect of it.

I'd check few last tournaments and it's looks like there is some amount of horde armies right now. Idk if it common
.

Deathguard in its current condition is about as unfun to play against as any army I've faced in 25 years. Automatically making your guys harder to kill while simultaneously making my army work worse at killing is just perfect recipe for unfun.

Any and every tabletop game has the same recipe for "having a fun time".... Win or loose, everybody has more fun when you get to kill enemy models. There is immense satisfaction watching your opponents models being removed from the table, even if at the end you don't win the game.

Any game where at the end, 80% plus from both sides have been removed will be the games that make people smile. But a 15-85 loss differential will usually leave a bad experience for one player.

This isn't just a Deathguard problem, armies like Imperial Knights, Grey Knights, or other armies that artificially inflate their "hard to kill" factor tend to be less fun to fight against, even if in the end you do somehow win.

IMO, feels bad is at least in part down to players egos.

PLayers want their army to do cool things, they want to win. If their opponent does things differently and makes it difficult, it becomes frustrating for them. It's much harder for a players to get pissy at their opponent when they're using the same army, because they'd have to hate their own mechanics. But if their opponent is different and unfamiliar it is less relatable and people easily turn that into being 'unfair'.


you can see how much this attitude as affected the game in general with the stripping of anything not T, Sv W related for army's survivability. Most of the game is space marines, so if anything does a not space marine thing it easily gets scape goated as unfun. Or if it does marines better than them.


Its a selfish attitude that's not helped by GW's insistence of overemphasising marines and their powerfantasy.

What you described is a good match for my experience, JNA. Any game that I get to wipe out a bunch of enemy squads tends to end up feeling satisfying even if I lose by a mile. Whereas games against imperial knights tend to be frustrating even if I win because I feel like I didn't get to use any of my low-strength units "properly".

I feel like there are a few factors here:
* Unless you're in a tournament or really competitively minded, the Victory Points tend not to stick with you as much as the actual tactile experience of rolling dice, picking up models, etc.

* The power fantasy in my games isn't generally about standing on magic circles; it's about seeing super soldiers duke it out. Picking up enemy models makes me feel like my super soldiers got to contribute even if the total point skilled is actually small.

* Since I started playing in 5th, there has almost always been armies/matchups where my low-strength units can find themselves without an efficient target to shoot at. So when I *finally* have something for my dire avengers to shoot at or my wyches to stab, it feels good to finally see these units get a rare chance to strut their stuff. It's freeing. My shoulders unclench when I get to see the fluffy unit I tossed into a list for funsies actually get to contribute.

tldr; it's nice to feel like your units are making progress when they attack the enemy, and it's nice to feel like units aren't invalidated by your opponent's defensive stats.

With my Death Guard I had similar experiences in the past, especially Feel no pain rolls were hated by my opponents, to the point I kept track of them to show I wasn't actually rolling above average. Funnily enough even at a time when Necrons had an even better Feel no pain and Tau had formations that killed anything opponents didn't really feel happy to face DG and hated Plague Marines especially, didn't matter they cost 23 points per model. It's probably one reason I switched to play orks more often. In 40K they won me more games while still being fun for the opponent. In OPR I mostly lose with orks AND my opponents are having fun... I guess It's time to bring out the DG for my OPR games for some good old FNP action again

People hate durable armies in general, because they don't get to kill stuff. Durable single units are somewhat fine, but people in general are unhappy is there isn't some easy way to splat a unit.
There also is the issue of 10th edition heavily punishing unfocused shooting. Durable units need to be killed off one by one, if people spread their damage around without actually wiping units, it's usually ends in a stomp. Against durable armies like tank companies, DG or knights bad players often tend to defeat themselves.

Universal to all games is that people dislike things that disrupt their plans or debuff their things.

In recent years, people also have started to really hate when orks are doing well. Due to their portrayal in the lore and the memes surrounding them, people feel like they should be push-overs with no real strengths besides getting lucky some times. People feel their immersion is ruined when orks win against their power fantasy through any means other than dumb luck.
Ork combat experts are not allowed to fight as good as other combat experts, dedicated shooting units actually being anything but complete garbage is unacceptable, horde units and vehicles should not be durable but should die like flies and fast units are not allowed be anything but driving fast for the lulz.

Durable is one aspect of non-interactive. Everybody hated Wood Elves in WFB because they were so non-interactive, even if in a non-durable kind of way The same for gunlines.

Unfun to play against=can't be interacted much with IMO. Because it evokes this feeling that it doesn't matter much what I do in the game and that's not why I want to play it.

 JNAProductions wrote:
I like it when my opponent ends the game with a smile.

This is a heart-warming thing to read!

Cyel wrote:
Durable is one aspect of non-interactive. Everybody hated Wood Elves in WFB because they were so non-interactive, even if in a non-durable kind of way The same for gunlines.

Unfun to play against=can't be interacted much with IMO. Because it evokes this feeling that it doesn't matter much what I do in the game and that's not why I want to play it.

Talking about gunlines, i have no real CC units at all. why should i interact with you in your way? i mean there is different way to interact and hold you in rapidfire range but not allow charge is also interaction and even more its startegy. why should i wanna be in charge range of khorn zerkerz or carnifex?

By gunline I do not mean an army that doesn't have close combat units. I mean an army that is doing nothing but shooting. No maneuver, no advancing, nothing. You know, like 3 units of High Elf archers, 4 bolt throwers and 4 mages of old, or a Dwarf army of handgunners, crossbowmen and warmachines hugging a hill in a corner and never moving an inch, only rolling dice and waiting for you to either get to them or not.

i play few games with 250+ guys on bastion with stationary earthshakers hydras and rapiers against some csm + demons. thats not fun even for me when you roll only shooting

I think it really depends on two things, the types of players and the types of matchups.

For instance, a lot of people will complain about Knights, I have actually rather been enjoying the matchup. I run full Kroot and our armies essentially hard counter each other so everything dies really fast on both sides and it's always a tense game. However, I can completely see why some people don't like the matchup, especially if they are up against it all the time because it's the new Meta hotness.

The interesting thing is that if you flip it around, the story is different. Nearly everyone I've played against would tell me after the match how great of a time they have facing off against my army, despite in many cases, where I had won the game by a very wide margin with a very fast and oppressive list, but no one seemed bothered by it. I think this came down to 3 factors. 1) The list is unique, people almost never see full Kroot, so it's an interesting experience to play them for the first time. 2) I make sure people know what they are getting into BEFORE the game I advise them to remember screening with infiltrators and not to overly rely on Deep Strike, and/or that I can play another army if they'd like (everyone has still wanted to face the Kroot so far). 3) I like to think that I'm generally an enjoyable person to play against.

I like building strong lists, but I also like building thematic and off meta ones, so I think that helps a bit with it too, that despite being strong, it's not something people are sick of fighting against.

Another factor that I didn't think of until reading this thread was that my army does have a lot of bodies, so even if I handily win on points, they've killed a lot of things in the process.

 Jidmah wrote:

In recent years, people also have started to really hate when orks are doing well.
... horde units and vehicles should not be durable but should die like flies...

I'm somewhat guilty of this particular point. Not because I think orks should be pushovers but because I still haven't gotten used to the ork toughness buff. Orks used to be that slightly beefy horde army that died at a satisfying rate to S4 shooting. Now basic S4 weapons are fishing for 5s against boyz who have the same Toughness stat as Terminator armor. The first time I faced T5 orks I was like, "Wait, I'm only wounding a third of the time against the horde unit?!"

That's not to say that I think orks are too strong or whatever. It just feels similarly to going to bite into a fruit and realizing it's tougher to bite/harder to eat than you'd expected. The flavor is still good, but the satisfying tactile experience you were expecting has been swapped with something less pleasant.

There is always fun in removing models, but still also you get fun when your expectations meets realty, like durable horde orks. Or very tactical Tyranids who kite all around board, use mine fields etc instead of rushing and die. And that's break fun for many people. The other thing I think what we mostly see that same list times again and again.

Part of the current Death Guard problem is they don't really have a core resilience so much as a bunch of different layers. When you find something isn't working and try a different approach, you find that also doesn't work because of a different rule.

In my experience i have more concern about fun/unfun players than i do specific armies. in the last 25 years i have done games against just about every type of army you can think of. including tournament meta builds and stuff that was just off the wall silly (like the 5th ed barrel of monkey's list for grey knights).

A good fun game is where the game is back and forth and often to hard to call till the end. Nobody wants a one sided stomp no matter which side you are on.

 aphyon wrote:
In my experience i have more concern about fun/unfun players than i do specific armies. in the last 25 years i have done games against just about every type of army you can think of. including tournament meta builds and stuff that was just off the wall silly (like the 5th ed barrel of monkey's list for grey knights).

A good fun game is where the game is back and forth and often to hard to call till the end. Nobody wants a one sided stomp no matter which side you are on.

Agreed, but there are times when fun players can’t salvage a bad matchup.

I had a game where the opponent’s gunline was so damn killy it felt like I never had a chance. He was a pleasant chap, but it still was a slog of a game.

Attitude 100% matters though! Be kind, be sporting, and be fun!

I think it can just be frustrating to pour a lot of attacks into enemy units and achieve basically nothing because they all fail to hit, or fail to wound, or bounce off armour, or are deflected by invulnerable saves, or are ignored by FNP, or accomplish nothing because the unit has a pile of surplus wounds.

Obviously not all attacks/shooting can (or should) be successful. But it gets tiresome when a unit's defences make it stupidly resilient.

e.g. back in 7th, it took 72 lasgun shots to inflict a single wound on a Necron Wraith. At two wounds apiece, that's 144 shots to kill a single one. So close to two entire platoons rapid-firing into them. And these were 40pt models.

Meanwhile, if the enemy has a lot of comparatively fragile models, you at least feel like you're accomplishing something with your attacks, even if you ultimately end up losing.

 Wyldhunt wrote:

 Jidmah wrote:

In recent years, people also have started to really hate when orks are doing well.
... horde units and vehicles should not be durable but should die like flies...

I'm somewhat guilty of this particular point. Not because I think orks should be pushovers but because I still haven't gotten used to the ork toughness buff. Orks used to be that slightly beefy horde army that died at a satisfying rate to S4 shooting. Now basic S4 weapons are fishing for 5s against boyz who have the same Toughness stat as Terminator armor. The first time I faced T5 orks I was like, "Wait, I'm only wounding a third of the time against the horde unit?!"

That's not to say that I think orks are too strong or whatever. It just feels similarly to going to bite into a fruit and realizing it's tougher to bite/harder to eat than you'd expected. The flavor is still good, but the satisfying tactile experience you were expecting has been swapped with something less pleasant.

Horde units are durable units in general, irrespective whether they have T3 or T5, 20 wounds with a 5+ save aren't trivial to knock out. If shot at weapons units meant for killing elite infantry or vehicles, even a unit of termagants is difficult to chew through, let alone three.

It's also worth noting that 20 T5 orks now aren't that much more durable than 30 T4 orks used to be, but are easier to move and cost a lot less money to buy and paint.
You also need to abandon the "same toughness as termiantor" thinking. A terminators durability is defined by it's armor, wounds and toughness. Against shuriken catapults, a tactical termintor is 7.5 times as durable as an ork boy. In 5th edition, it was 6 times.

Sure. But there's a big difference between the feeling of shooting a bunch of bolters or shurikens into 20 gaunts and seeing 2/3rds of your hits turn into wounds, vs seeing less than half your hits turn into wounds when you shoot at 20 boyz.

Viscerally, they're very different experiences. One has you shoot the little guns at the little enemies and watch a bunch of models get picked up as a result. The other has you shoot the little guns at the "little" enemies, and then watch significantly fewer models get picked up.

It feels good when you see that your basic guns have an efficient target. The first time I shot shurikens at T5 boyz, there was this moment of,

"Oof. I guess I'm supposed to be shooting basic horde units with shuriken cannons and heavy bolters now."

 Wyldhunt wrote:
Sure. But there's a big difference between the feeling of shooting a bunch of bolters or shurikens into 20 gaunts and seeing 2/3rds of your hits turn into wounds, vs seeing less than half your hits turn into wounds when you shoot at 20 boyz.

Viscerally, they're very different experiences. One has you shoot the little guns at the little enemies and watch a bunch of models get picked up as a result. The other has you shoot the little guns at the "little" enemies, and then watch significantly fewer models get picked up.

It feels good when you see that your basic guns have an efficient target. The first time I shot shurikens at T5 boyz, there was this moment of,

"Oof. I guess I'm supposed to be shooting basic horde units with shuriken cannons and heavy bolters now."

I feel this... the illusion of greater success is better than just raw numbers. Hitting on 3s with 24 dice, wounding on 4s and the target is saving on 4s is 4 dead models. The same as hitting on 5s with 24 dice wounding on 4s but the enemy has no save is the same 4 dead marines. But the first situation feels better to the player even if the outcomes is the same.

I used an assault cannon for the first time today in 10th. I was horrified by its lack of power considering where it came from back when I used them in 4th and 5th edition.

You are essentially making the same mistake as when addressing terminator durability - looking just at strength for weapon effectiveness. Especially against hordes, the number of shots and AP matter just as much. Neither heavy bolters nor shuriken cannons are great for killing the or boy profile. Meanwhile, missile launchers are great against hordes, despite being S4.

As an ork player, I'm still just as worried about a unit of dire avengers or intercessors unloading into one of my units as I was years ago - not because their strength, but because of their number of shots and AP.

To many veterans are stuck on comparing strength against toughness to figure out which weapons are good against what. That just shows how little tactical thinking was involved in old editions when selecting targets. Don't let outdated thinking hold you back from becoming a better player.

 Jidmah wrote:
You are essentially making the same mistake as when addressing terminator durability - looking just at strength for weapon effectiveness. Especially against hordes, the number of shots and AP matter just as much. Neither heavy bolters nor shuriken cannons are great for killing the or boy profile. Meanwhile, missile launchers are great against hordes, despite being S4.

As an ork player, I'm still just as worried about a unit of dire avengers or intercessors unloading into one of my units as I was years ago - not because their strength, but because of their number of shots and AP.

To many veterans are stuck on comparing strength against toughness to figure out which weapons are good against what. That just shows how little tactical thinking was involved in old editions when selecting targets. Don't let outdated thinking hold you back from becoming a better player.

Exactly this, especially in 10th edition, where there's a lot more overlapping rules when it comes to damage effectiveness against certain unit types than others and keywords that play in with one another (e.g. anti-infantry or anti-vehicle), it's very myopic to simply look at bolters or shuriken catapults in a vacuum and throw a minor tantrum on how your 5 man squad of dire avengers can't just wipe a boyz squad on a whim without looking to explore what your dire avenger unit can actually do beyond the weapon profile on their datasheet.

Did you take them in an Aspect Host? Well you've got lots of shots, if you really need that horde sized units dead, spend the 1CP strat for Lethal Hits and if you're not in half range you can chuck the Shrine Token to get Sustained Hits on top of that. Even with a min squad of 5, if you give the Exarch the extra Avenger catapult, you've got 24 shots, with exploding 6's, 6's that auto-wound, and if you're in the Aspect Host, either re-rolling 1's to hit or wound. That's not bad at all for the 80 points you're paying and it can even do decent damage to more elite units since they have AP-1.

It's the same thing with lasguns for guardsmen. In a vacuum, they look absolutely horrid, but throw in orders, lethal hits from certain detachments if you're targeting the right kind of unit and they fall back into their role as a solid wall of lasbolts that can wear down most light to mid-level infantry units.

Ironically, as far as regular main army rifle weapons go, it's Orks who legitimately have no real usage for regular shootas and big shootas that aren't already baked into a unit's profile, since the gun itself has nothing inherently good statwise but there's also a fundamental lack of inherent rules synergy to make shootas worth taking (frankly GW should just bite the bullet and make shootas and choppa boyz two separate datasheets).

To be clear, I don't think any tantrums are being thrown.

All I was really commenting on was that S4 guns "feel" like they're not very good into orks because of T5. Obviously you can get plenty of use out of such weapons if you try, but the initial feeling is that you've made a mistake by pointing this gun at that target because wounding on 5s in 40k usually means you're going after a suboptimal target.

 Wyldhunt wrote:
To be clear, I don't think any tantrums are being thrown.

All I was really commenting on was that S4 guns "feel" like they're not very good into orks because of T5. Obviously you can get plenty of use out of such weapons if you try, but the initial feeling is that you've made a mistake by pointing this gun at that target because wounding on 5s in 40k usually means you're going after a suboptimal target.

Not these days.
As someone who runs high-Toughness bodies against Marines a lot, going from 6s to 5s with Oath of Moment is a big deal, and does damage.

 Wyldhunt wrote:
To be clear, I don't think any tantrums are being thrown.

All I was really commenting on was that S4 guns "feel" like they're not very good into orks because of T5. Obviously you can get plenty of use out of such weapons if you try, but the initial feeling is that you've made a mistake by pointing this gun at that target because wounding on 5s in 40k usually means you're going after a suboptimal target.

I don't think he was talking about you in specific in regards to tantrums. It's a complain you regularly face when playing orks against veterans who are used to over a decade of terrible ork rules that had nothing but numbers, lucky rolls, lynchpin units and rules exploits to keep them afloat. Now that orks finally get proper rules just like any other army, those people struggle with the power fantasy of their army because they no longer auto-win after putting some flamers in their army and their melee units take casualties in combat when facing against ork combat experts instead of just walking through them unharmed.

For players who didn't start in that era, or people that have adapted to 10th edition target selection, that "feel" you are describing just isn't there.
From an ork player's perspective, T5/5+ orks feel more right than anything ever before. It properly portraits orks surviving lethal wounds and continue to fight, while still dropping like flies when shot at by grenade launchers, gatlings or heavy ordnance. And all that without rolling a FNP to drag down games endlessly.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 JNAProductions wrote:

 Wyldhunt wrote:
To be clear, I don't think any tantrums are being thrown.

All I was really commenting on was that S4 guns "feel" like they're not very good into orks because of T5. Obviously you can get plenty of use out of such weapons if you try, but the initial feeling is that you've made a mistake by pointing this gun at that target because wounding on 5s in 40k usually means you're going after a suboptimal target.

Not these days.
As someone who runs high-Toughness bodies against Marines a lot, going from 6s to 5s with Oath of Moment is a big deal, and does damage.

Agree. 5+ is still a good value to be wounding at, as long as you got a reasonable amount of hits and there is a decent chance to punch through armor.
6+ is usually an act of desperation.

The discourse I see these days is so very reductive and egocentric. Moreso than it used to be, and this is from people who have been in the hobby for decades, not some ephemeral 'generation' ruining gameplay.

This I place at GW's feet for literally being reductive in their game design in the name of simplicity.


It basically comes down to, if your opponent's dudes do something you can do, but better, the feels bad starts to rise in people's gorges. Being incensed that your army isn't the protagonist and best at what it does seems to be a lot more prevalent than it used to.