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Everyone's got a unit like this, it's called "bad" and suboptimal but you keep using it because to you it's part of your armies quirky charm. the mathhammer players keep telling you you suyck for taking it etc. but you just keep plunking it down..

For me it's the basic tactical marine, sure scouts might be a bit more efficant, but damnit, I feel wrong playing Marines without a squad of two of Tacs.

I agree that a marine list doesn’t feel like a marine army unless it has a squad or two of tacs. And I field full 10 man squads, with both the special and the heavy. I’m playing Ultramarines, if I don’t uphold the doctrines of the Codex, who will?

I pretty much field the full gambit of “suck” units. Terminators, assault marines, land raiders, chaplains, drop pods in 8th. The list goes on. Not all at once, mind you. I try to temper my inclusion of mediocre units by tightening up my list elsewhere. Plus I don’t play in a hyper-competitive meta. So it works out, and I have fun.

In a similar vein to above, Deathwing Knights. They're just so cool with the robes and the shields!

To be fair, they are more viable than most Terminators thanks to the Storm Shields combined with S8 weapons that don't have a -1 to hit, and in an army that can stack some great buffs! (Hello Asmodai).

But they still suffer from the issue of how to actually get them into combat and stay there with their slow movement and lack of cheap transportation. And they're very expensive pts wise.

Ork Killa Kanz. I think they are great models and quite characterful.
But I dont use them at all.

I use my myphitic blight-hauler in all my games since coming back to the game. He's not the worst when it comes to "bad" units but it is 2 points more than a plagueburst crawler. I just assembled another two of them today so I can field the full tri-lobe. I like the model, it's an inexpensive kit and they're described as basically being like dogs.

Terminators.

 Nevelon wrote:
I agree that a marine list doesn’t feel like a marine army unless it has a squad or two of tacs. And I field full 10 man squads, with both the special and the heavy. I’m playing Ultramarines, if I don’t uphold the doctrines of the Codex, who will?

I pretty much field the full gambit of “suck” units. Terminators, assault marines, land raiders, chaplains, drop pods in 8th. The list goes on. Not all at once, mind you. I try to temper my inclusion of mediocre units by tightening up my list elsewhere. Plus I don’t play in a hyper-competitive meta. So it works out, and I have fun.

Much the same here. My idea of what constitutes a “proper” Space Marine army calcified somewhere around 1992 and I’m buggered if I’m changing that based purely on competitive efficiency.

Deathwing Terminators et al. Can't help but run a pure Deathwing every edition.

kataphron breachers.

simply a troop unit not ment for 8th edition.

Eldar Windriders. They aren't "bad" per se, but from a competitive sense, there really is no reason to take them over Shining Spears. Heck even Vypers could be argued as better with their 3+ armour and more weapon options.

Moving WRs back to Fast Attack after decades of being Troops was not executed well. Being 5-10ppm cheaper would go a long way.
But still, they are what got me started with Eldar 10 years ago, so I'll keep making lists with about a dozen of them.

Also Necron Scarabs and the Monolith. They're just such iconic Necron unit you can't not take them.

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For Eldar - it's wraith lords. I think they are one of the best looking models in the game. I try to include 2 of them to tone down lists sometimes.

For tyranids is the haruspex. It's just so ugly and vicious. Have to include.

For TS - it's rubrics - I bring 30. It's just not TS without them.

All the other armies my options are ether too limited or the army is generally all good or all bad - so I just do with what I've got.


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 FrozenDwarf wrote:
kataphron breachers.

simply a troop unit not ment for 8th edition.

Yes - I agree. My friend brings 9 of them. I hate to pick on them but their damage is WAY to high to ignore but they die SO easy. Flat 3 damage is all over the place.

Tacticals, I bring 40 of them to every match.

Necron Lychguard.
No delivery mechanisms, 5 inch movement...wheeeee

 iGuy91 wrote:
Necron Lychguard.
No delivery mechanisms, 5 inch movement...wheeeee

Beat me to it ...

so I'll go Necron Canoptek Spyder ... it never sees play because a conscript just looks at it with a raised eyebrow and it falls over dead.

I'll follow up with my Monolith which I put on the table in one game (was a 9,000 points game total) and it didn't even get to shoot. ... bleh

and lastly .. Necron Night Scythes .. .. so flimsy it may as well jsut advance full speed straight off the far edge of the table .. and take the troops on the Tomb World with it !! :(

 Xenomancers wrote:
For Eldar - it's wraith lords. I think they are one of the best looking models in the game. I try to include 2 of them to tone down lists sometimes.

Oh that's a good one. Is it too late to change my answer?

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Assult marines with jump pack for me. I just assembled another 7 because I like my current five man squad so much.

Chaos Raptors.

When I have points to burn I take a unit. They tend to overperform in my lists, either as assassins or tank-killers. They pop in to kill something then go grab objectives.

That said, most of my lists are long-range shooty. Something to be said about bad units: their value goes up in an army when they fill a gap left by your good units.

 iGuy91 wrote:
Necron Lychguard.
No delivery mechanisms, 5 inch movement...wheeeee

You can use Deceiver, Obyron and Zahndrekh shenanigans can't you?

I admit, the fact you need 3 named characters to deliver a single unit of Lychguard effectively means it's not always the best strategy :p

 Xenomancers wrote:



Automatically Appended Next Post:

 FrozenDwarf wrote:
kataphron breachers.

simply a troop unit not ment for 8th edition.

Yes - I agree. My friend brings 9 of them. I hate to pick on them but their damage is WAY to high to ignore but they die SO easy. Flat 3 damage is all over the place.

yea i have 9 myself, buildt 6 months before index dropped and they are 60% of my now no longer existing cult mech army thanks to GW.

While it's not bad persay, it certainly has it's niche in ruining Mortarion and Eldar's life...

Love me my Astraeus. She's a beastly brick of resin with fairly nasty guns. The stats don't add up to 750 points, however... Such a shame.

I love the basic troops of pretty much every army in the game. I love Plague Marines and Rubric Marines and Chaos Space Marines. It's sad that most of my games involve trying to minimize these units now. The only basic troops I tend to take now are Cultists and Poxwalkers, but if I know I'm having a non-competitive game, those basic dudes make their way out in totally inappropriate numbers.

Zarakynel, or as I call her - The Violet Heart.

Nearly 700pts, She's massive, hard to hide and fragile

Terminators. All kinds except regular vanilla terminators. I haven't played marines in a while though, so don't have any.

My latest love is Allarus Terminators. I recently bought a squad of them and can't wait to paint them and wreck face in some more casual games.

 Thadin wrote:
While it's not bad persay, it certainly has it's niche in ruining Mortarion and Eldar's life...

Love me my Astraeus. She's a beastly brick of resin with fairly nasty guns. The stats don't add up to 750 points, however... Such a shame.

I was so excited to get this thing - then saw it's rules and I was like...WAH?

Terminators, while they're still pretty crap they're not bad at putting out a surprising amount of firepower on a hardy platform.

Tactical Marines as well I still love, again not the best but you can get a decent array of weapons on cheap-ish units.

Leman Russ Vanquishers, I hear nothing good about them, people just whinge and bitch about them, yet I use it with Pask, Lascannon and 2x Multi Meltas and he does pretty well, can make his points back most times I use him.

 Xenomancers wrote:

 Thadin wrote:
While it's not bad persay, it certainly has it's niche in ruining Mortarion and Eldar's life...

Love me my Astraeus. She's a beastly brick of resin with fairly nasty guns. The stats don't add up to 750 points, however... Such a shame.

I was so excited to get this thing - then saw it's rules and I was like...WAH?

I'm fine with it's rules. It's main cannon is powerful; it's just about a Baneblade Cannon, with a reliable number of shots, weaker STR if I remember right, but, the added bonus of ignoring Modifiers to Hit vs Targets with Fly. A host of other decent guns, hard to charge and tie down, ect.

I wish it's Void Shield was better, and that it had a Transport Capacity, but that's just my opinion. I like it's rules. I don't like it's cost.

Another thing I wish, was for all Anti-Aircraft weapons, and things like it, I think it would be better if they had the Astraeus' wording. Ignore negative modifiers to hit when targeting fly keyword, rather than a mere +1 to hit. It's worse against non-eldar, not supersonic equivalent flyers, but stronger against stacked modifiers.

 Valkyrie wrote:

Leman Russ Vanquishers, I hear nothing good about them, people just whinge and bitch about them, yet I use it with Pask, Lascannon and 2x Multi Meltas and he does pretty well, can make his points back most times I use him.

There's a couple of things going on here:

1.
In most real games you can afford to make a few sub optimal choices and it won't have much noticeable effect on how the game goes. Either it's made up for elsewhere, or your opponent is also taking a couple of sub optimal things and so the overall power of the lists is still the about the same as each other. People do get a bit carried away with min-maxing everything on here at the expense of what people actually enjoying playing with sometimes!

2.
Pask is an absolute monster. With a Battlecannon he in incredible. Vanquishers are frankly a fair bit worse, but Pask is still so good that it balances out to still a pretty decent unit!

Bullgryn.

Bullgryn with bats.

Bullgryn with bats and a priest and a Chimera to ride around with, in order to best deliver said bats.

BrianDavion wrote:
Everyone's got a unit like this, it's called "bad" and suboptimal but you keep using it because to you it's part of your armies quirky charm. the mathhammer players keep telling you you suyck for taking it etc. but you just keep plunking it down.

With my Sisters it's Repentia. They're incredibly bad now, but they were hilarious during 5th edition where a unit of them could cleave a Land Raider in half in a single round of melee. The internet kept telling me they were bad and I'd have to bend over backwards to make them work, but when I got them into combat (they didn't always make it) they did magical things.

These days I'm looking at running all Primaris, which includes suboptimal choices like the Reivers and Repulsor. To be fair, Marines in general aren't "optimal" at the moment so it's more the less optimal choices of an already suboptimal subfaction of a suboptimal codex.

With Tau, it's probably my Stormsurge and my Ghostkeel. They were both incredibly good in 7th, but a bit lackluster in 8th. The thing that keeps the Stormsurge down in 8th is the lack of the <BATTLESUIT> keyword, meaning it can't pass wounds off to drones and has to just hope it can roll 4++ saves well. Everyone tells me to run more Riptides instead, but I stubbornly insist on bringing out the Stormsurge. The Ghostkeel just costs too many points and its special stealth drones are too easy to just delete, but I love the model and thus run it sometimes. It has done good work for me at times, too.