List building, spam, and the old FOC

[Skaorn]

Back when Apocalypse first came out I had a friend who was particularly annoyed with its rules. He lived near a battle bunker and all they were doing was throwing Apocalypse tournaments and he couldn't get in a regular game after about an hour drive to get there. One weekend he decided to go to one tournament with the most obnoxious list he could legally make to showcase why he hated the rules. The list was 1 Grey Knight HQ and the rest was orbital strikes. The idea was to let his opponent go first, target every piece of terrain, and then pop his HQ in on the very last turn. Naturally they wouldn't let him play but could not point to where the list was illegal.

 

Having recently looked at the lists of the ranking teams and players in the ATC and saw a lot of spamming that reminded me of my friends list. I haven't played since 4th or 5th but I do like seeing what's going on with armies still, especially my old ones, and with all the changes in 8th I'm actually looking at the rules. I don't think this current list building is unique to 8th, but seems like the game is easier to field these obnoxious builds than it was with the old FOC. To get 5 storm ravens you'd need 2 HQ and 4 scout squads at least as opposed to 1 & 3 in a lot of the lists I saw. Sure you could still do it but it might have been enough of a tax to cost one raven.

 

Do you have a problem with this kind of list? Do you like the current style or the old one better? What would you rather see done?

[Enurta]

We will have to wait and see. I believe that ATC is an outlier because it is a team event. They were able to pick and choose what fought against what. With ITC having a rule that you get a +1 to your die roll for first turn for low drop, I believe we will see more all comers list instead of 5 Storm Ravens and Bobby G.

[Eddie Orlock]

I think we've only seen a fraction of the intended system.

 

One of their design goals was to make every army legal to let all the players who love strong themes and have their own notions of what's appropriate be able to do as they liked. Create a system that didn't specifically punish people who started off by just buying the kits they thought looked cool by barring them from the table.

 

The bit that we've only seen scaffolding for though is where they actually incentivise people to cleave to the themes the designers prefer. Rest assured, this other half has been promised to us. I'll come out in the codices where if you build your list using only 'UltraMarines' all your ultras will get some boons. Similarly if it's all ultra they'll have some spiffy ultra powers to more efficiently spend their command points, thus incentivising you to take the detachments that yield the most command points. It'll create some interesting list design tensions.

 

So, it's too early to judge what the eighth environment will look like. Ask this again at Christmas when we've got four codices out that we can run against one another and gauge how those armies look.

[Garreck]

Every edition I've played has had some degree of min/max abusability so I kind of have to reject the premise of "current style or old one."

 

For me, I can't control what people are going to bring to the table. If someone brings something completely ridiculous...hey it'll be a brief game and maybe I'll come away with a better understanding of the game mechanics. Maybe I'll work at a composition and strategy to beat such a list.

 

If someone wants to play ultra competitive, you can either learn from them or refuse to play them. If you play in a meta where it's all cut throat all the time I have no advice to give. I've never been in that situation. I've played in many metas and there are always the few who play ultra competitive, and then there's "everyone else."

[Schlitzaf]

Totally unrelated but your friend 5th edition list, was illegal and he lost the game turn 1. Because he had no models on table. And others have said, we'll see what happens. Spam is as spam does. And this game has always had some degree of that in it. Its the question of to what extent and to what point.

[Skaorn]

I wasn't there but the list was reviewed by tournament players and GW staffers who couldn't find anything wrong with it in the rules. This was back in 4th ed so maybe it was revised by 5th to prevent this kind of list.

[Eddie Orlock]

Totally unrelated but your friend 5th edition list, was illegal and he lost the game turn 1. Because he had no models on table.

No. That was something that got changed for sixth edition as a result of alleged abuses of fifth edition reserve manipulation mechanics. Double Autarch Eldar being a classic example.

[Perry]

The natural balance to a 'spam' list in a local non tournament gaming environment would be opponents refusing to play.

 

This would force the spammer to bring a more reasonable list and help form a local meta that gamers are happy with.

 

However at a anything goes tournament you will be stuck with these 'themed' spam lists unless there are restrictions in place.

 

Personally I like the new Detatchment system as it allows some customisation if I decide to run a themed list, such as First company or biker force. Gaming groups just have to decide what constitutes spam/ abusive lists.

[the jeske]

ok which lists, aside for maybe a faction made out of named characters, is not themed when you use a lot of same style units ? tyranids are all about swarms of identical beasts, the IG has in its rules of regiment building to have identiclly armed squads, marines companies as long as their are codex are carbon copies of each other, and the chad marines even more then that.

 

Spaming is not the cause of problems in w40k, it is the result. The problem is with bad units not with good ones, but of course people who play for "fun" can't say that,because that would remove the supposed moral high ground they claim to have. So they bring up  the argument that it is those bad WAAC players that are breaking the game with their spams [or cherry picking, or what ever the fluff players do not like at the given moment]. If GW made their codex in a such a way that more then 3-4 options per faction were good, spam armies would be different from each other and did not consists of XxY unit.

 

And scaring new people in the game, that if they like unit X and take more then the local fluff bunnies finds ok[which general aligns with how easy they can beat the army], they won't be played against, is something despicable.

[joschlumpf]

ok which lists, aside for maybe a faction made out of named characters, is not themed when you use a lot of same style units ? tyranids are all about swarms of identical beasts, the IG has in its rules of regiment building to have identiclly armed squads, marines companies as long as their are codex are carbon copies of each other, and the chad marines even more then that.

 

Spaming is not the cause of problems in w40k, it is the result. The problem is with bad units not with good ones, but of course people who play for "fun" can't say that,because that would remove the supposed moral high ground they claim to have. So they bring up  the argument that it is those bad WAAC players that are breaking the game with their spams [or cherry picking, or what ever the fluff players do not like at the given moment]. If GW made their codex in a such a way that more then 3-4 options per faction were good, spam armies would be different from each other and did not consists of XxY unit.

 

And scaring new people in the game, that if they like unit X and take more then the local fluff bunnies finds ok[which general aligns with how easy they can beat the army], they won't be played against, is something despicable.

 

What?!

 

The problem here is not people spamming horde-army-infantry. It´s spamming, for example, flyers and make it nearly impossible to defeat, for players not playing the best list possible.

 

I love playing the game but I don´t like it to play competitive. I want fun, not hours of army-list-building to get the best possible outcome.

 

If someone wants to start the game and is (like myself) a huge dreadnought fan, there will be no problem for 90% of the community to let him play his first games with three of them. But if someone spams dreadnoughts because with 10 of them you can win against any fluff/fun/normal armylist then it´s going to be a serious problem to the community.

 

Edit: some writing mistakes corrected

Edited July 21, 2017 by joschlumpf

[Skaorn]

I guess I just find the detachment system odd as I played Chaos when 3.5 came out and there was all sorts of complaining about the Iron Warriors 4 HS slots (despite having just 1 FA slot). 3.5 was a problem since GW didn't continue that level of customization with following codexes, but I was generally fine with messing with the FOC like that or saying X unit counts as troops but looses access to Y unit. Now you can apparently build any army like that despite it being a point of contention in earlier editions, without attempts to balance it or more of a tax for using 2 FOCs.

 

Also has anyone run into Assassins spam armies? I hear they are no longer 0-1 choices.

[Finkmilkana]

Why would anyone spam assasins? They range from useless (vindicare) over annoying but offensively weak (culexus) to nice but nothing special (eversor). Besides, you could already spam them at the end of 7th with the castellans detachment (where it would make even less sense), they were not unique.

 

In general, besides superheavy spam (which breaks killpoint missions but is not that strong otherwise), horde infantry (which i wouldn't call spam, that's just how some races seem to be meant to play) and possibly flyers (which admittedly hard counters meele lists, but are not any better against ranged than normal vehicles ), I haven't noticed any problems with general spam in 8th, only some units that are too cheap for their power and therefore massed (independent of type).

[Skaorn]

http://www.belloflostsouls.net/2017/07/40k-imperial-assassins-trouble.html

 

This gives you a better explanation of why, I was just wondering if anyone had seen it.

[Finkmilkana]

Well, I don't really understand what the Culexus are there for in that article (even if you assume not all eversor make it into meele after deepstrike, some will and the wall of culexus becomes pointless).

Now, lets say you use that spam to alpha strike (and you need to get them on the board fast, because if half your army is assasins, the rest can't match up to the enemy alone). Every eversor that gets into meele will, depending on the enemy, kill quite a lot of bubble wrap/horde infantry (about 6) and not make back his points that round. Or deal almost no wounds to transports/vehicles. Now you have an infantry meele death star on the field that either is kinda squishy (if only/mostly eversor) or kinda durable against shooting (though flamer/countercharges still destroy them), but for the points not really that great offensively (if a lot of culexus). And now it can't do anything other dedicated meele can't do (often better). For the price of one of each of them I can get 3 bulgryns + priest. By far not the strongest meele combo ingame, but still deals more damage.

 

Honestly, it sounds scary at first glance but against most normal mixed armies it should loose unless the opponent panics or puts his units out of position.

[Kilamandaros]

Why would anyone spam assasins? They range from useless (vindicare) over annoying but offensively weak (culexus) to nice but nothing special (eversor). Besides, you could already spam them at the end of 7th with the castellans detachment (where it would make even less sense), they were not unique.

 

I'm guessing you haven't played with a Vindicare? For 90 points they are insane in 8th. The amount of times I've one-shot my opponents key-psyker/buff aura character with him is crazy. He is also a insanely scary presence on the battlefield for the same cost as a kitted out tac-squad - my opponents regularly ignore the rest of my army sending in everything trying to take him out.

 

But no spamming assassins won't work because they all fill a niche role so when you take 6 vindicares and they only have 1 character you're in a bad spot!

[Finkmilkana]

I have tried them and am not impressed. The math for them is also very very unfavorable. Even for cheap buff characters/psyckers they on average take multiple rounds and for example rattling snipers deals multiple times as much damage as him for the same price. He on average only deals about 2 wounds per turn and those are not even mortal wounds. He oneshots even 4 wound characters without save less than every 14th (!) time he shoots. He has a great board presence, but only because most opponents don't know how bad he is. But I think we should get back to the topic, there is already a pretty long thread about the vindi in the agents of the imperium forum.

 

What I did notice to be an annoying 'spam' trend is list where almost everything is a psyker and just spams smite. This can be very painful for elite armies, especially those without psykers of their own. Mortal wounds hurt. But since these lists usually still mix units (often in different force orga slots) I'm not sure if it falls under the kind of spam discussed here.