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Post by commandersasha on Oct 22, 2012 5:38:43 GMT
Make sure you're not suffering more from Force Weapons than you should: If he used a psychic power, such as Hammerhand to raise his strength, he no longer has enough Warp Tokens to do a Force Weapon test. If he didn't, Halberds, Swords and Falchions are only wounding on 6s, and if you got Iron Arm, maybe not even wounding at all! If you multi-assaulted carefully, you should have piled Gaunts onto his Hammer and Fist guys, killing them before they got a chance to hit your MCs.
If the above was all familiar to you, sorry! If not, check out some YouTube vids on structured assault, and maybe even try on your own with a Tervigon, a dozen Termagants, and a proxy squad of tooled-up GK.
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Post by fragile on Oct 22, 2012 13:51:19 GMT
Also remember that Tervigons and HT's can use precision strikes to eliminate those special weapon guys or banner.
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Post by Anggul on Oct 22, 2012 15:16:44 GMT
The thing is, it doesn't actually take that much thought to make a winning list. It does take thought, however, to make a winning list which is also interesting and not completely spammy.
Anyone can have a Flyrant or two, a bunch of Hive Guard, triple Tervigons and whatever else and do really well, but it's not exactly interesting.
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Post by swarmy on Oct 22, 2012 16:13:15 GMT
The thing is, it doesn't actually take that much thought to make a winning list. It does take thought, however, to make a winning list which is also interesting and not completely spammy. Anyone can have a Flyrant or two, a bunch of Hive Guard, triple Tervigons and whatever else and do really well, but it's not exactly interesting. Agreed. That is my biggest gripe about the codex and about this game in general. There's a distinct push to make terribly boring redundant lists completely overlooking all of the interesting fun mechanics they put on "less competitive" units in the dex. It really seems like sloppy game design to make that a prevalent way to gain "power" in an army. Eldar can spam to S6 laser gunlines that table people, footslogging guardsmen can shoot hundreds of shots per turn spamming, demons can spam screamers/flamers to the extent they have shredded most of the opponent by the end of turn 2. More of the same shouldn't equate to more effective if they want to promote any sort of variety in the game. That being said, I guess we are doing a little bit better than some armies in the sense that we have a few viable options for "competitive" spammy builds. Even with the spammy builds there's still some wiggle room to fit in other units outside of the spam too.
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Post by coredump on Oct 22, 2012 17:15:25 GMT
It depends on your competition and your meta.
Even back in 4th, when 'Nidzilla' was king; it was easy to build a netlist of MCs, but it was not so easy to win with them, at least not in a truly competitive environment. If you are in a more relaxed area, you can be a little more free with how you spend your points. If, however, you want to try and win large tourneys, or beat the good players with good lists, you need to be sure to maximize your list.
That is usually most easily done by taking multiples of good units. But some folks do it by diversifying... it is just trickier to play it that way.
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Post by biorivera on Oct 22, 2012 17:46:15 GMT
to be fair spam lists are realistic imo. look at military tactics over the ages. napoleons cavalry charges were devastating because back in the day mass cavalry was OP. or the germans with blitzkrieging top of the line tanks.
i know there's a real desire to have some of everything....but this is a military tactics game. generalists fare wellish against some stuff....but a jack of all trades should be a master of none.
spam lists focus on overwhelming one specific enemy line of defense so heavily it forces them to react even with units not tailored to deal with the threat at hand. also realistic imo. sure it'd be nice if some of our units were better(pyrovore) but frankly....when in rome you conquer using the most effective tactic. im not saying bring uber cheese, but if your lists only has a faint smell of cheddar no one should cry over it.
also much like in all competative games(CoD, fighting games, rpgs, tabletop) RARELY is there a perfect balance. I personally have never seen a 40 k edition that was truly balanced. I guess my bigger point is if you're only going to take units you like that aren't spamming you should probably more often than not get used to losing. that's obviously personal opinion
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Post by gigasnail on Oct 22, 2012 20:55:03 GMT
lol, balance.
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Post by commandersasha on Oct 22, 2012 21:41:39 GMT
Biorivera, I think I'd like to disagree with your point, if I may: I don't consider "spamming" to be a relevant term when talking about troop choices; after all, the BRB even refers to troops as being the most common type of unit in an army.
As such, Napoleon's cavalry WERE troops.
(I'm ignoring the fact that Tervigons can be troops, that's just a crunch mechanic, if you were to describe the battlefield role of a Terv, it would still be classed as a Leader, or Heavy Support)
Even terms like "Genestealer spam" would be better described as "Genestealer army".
To me, "spamming" is when you take a disproportionate number of a rare unit, such as leaders, support units or elite warriors. A SM Chapter, a Hive, or a Columbian drug cartel would never send all of its best soldiers into a fight without loads of foot soldiers.
I have suggested before that I think the game would be much better balanced if HQ, Elite, Fast Attack and Heavy Support options were ALL limited to a maximum of one of any given type of unit: you could take 3 Hiveguard, 3 Zoes and a Doom, but not 3 broods of Hive Guard.
I believe that this would reduce the spam lists drastically.
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Post by Psychichobo on Oct 22, 2012 22:10:37 GMT
The problem isn't inherently spam, it's unit design. If a unit is good enough you're going to want to take more of it, it's as simple as that. And then it comes down to how good the unit is in comparison to other armies, and the other options in those armies. The Dark Eldar dex is overflowing with good choices, and their best choices are cheap and also make up the core of the army. In comparison, some armies have rather poor troops choices and can only provide the real punch using the Elite/Heavy/Fast Attack slots. In that context, the DE dex has an advantage over other armies inherently.
Spamming is merely a result of what's necessary to remain competitive - if you want to do well in a tournament and you'll do better by including lots of units in the elite slot, you'll do that. But if you couldn't, and you were against an army that simply had better options in more places, you'd struggle by being limited to only one of each particular elite choice.
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Post by swarmy on Oct 22, 2012 23:49:05 GMT
The problem isn't inherently spam, it's unit design. If a unit is good enough you're going to want to take more of it, it's as simple as that. And then it comes down to how good the unit is in comparison to other armies, and the other options in those armies. The Dark Eldar dex is overflowing with good choices, and their best choices are cheap and also make up the core of the army. In comparison, some armies have rather poor troops choices and can only provide the real punch using the Elite/Heavy/Fast Attack slots. In that context, the DE dex has an advantage over other armies inherently. Spamming is merely a result of what's necessary to remain competitive - if you want to do well in a tournament and you'll do better by including lots of units in the elite slot, you'll do that. But if you couldn't, and you were against an army that simply had better options in more places, you'd struggle by being limited to only one of each particular elite choice. Take a look at how some (not all, I know some promote spammy things) RTS games are balanced for cost/survivability/and damage output; They tend to do it with unit cost and/or strictly limiting numbers available. I agree a good unit design does lend itself to being used to compete over a sub-par design but it shouldn't promote using it exclusively for a role. Spam is symptomatic of the 40k game design; If they want to fix that they need to cap things better across the board...and not by points cost alone because then you end up with our codex's problem. If the meta of the game blazes forwards in the direction of spam to be competitive that strips away the biggest benefit of the 40k universe: A *huge*, varied, line of miniatures compared to other games out there.
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Post by ranmafan on Oct 23, 2012 13:15:51 GMT
Mostly I find it's easier to play for the carnage rather than the win. (Helps me cope with losing by huge margins to shooty armies... ) As long as the enemy's dead pile is pretty big I'm happy with the list.
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Post by innocent on Oct 25, 2012 8:53:16 GMT
Spamming is a direct result of the current rules mechanics that rely heavily on random dice rolls. In a game dominated by randomness, the best lists are the ones that remove uncertainty, and this is achieved primarily with spamming. As a counter example, I have played a little bit of Privateer Press Hordes. While I didn't play long enough to figure out what people use at tourneys, I found that the mechanics favored more diversity and synergy. The game has an inbuilt mechanic that allows you to remove uncertainty by boosting your guys (this comes at a cost, of course, this is where the skills and tactics come in), so spamming is somehow not needed. Not saying one system is better than the other, I love 40k 6th edition as it is so far, much better than 5th. However, the over-reliance of the game's designers on randomness means spamming/redundancy is somewhat a necessity to play competitively. To the OP: congrats on your first tourney, Nids are challenging to win with. You will find a fair few good tips in the tactics and VS sections. Armies to look out for with Nids are Imperial Guard, Space Wolves, and Grey Knights primarily, and then a few less common armies (Newcron, Dark Eldars). They can put out an incredible amount of shooting, and in the case of SW and GK also outclass us in close combat. Winning against these will require you to develop sound tactics (ex: in objectives games, don't bother charging that Paladin squad with your MCs, tarpit it with dozens of Termagants while you claim all the objectives) and know your army very well. It's quite challenging, but that's doubly rewarding when you manage to pull a win against one of the top tier builds (it happens, sometimes )
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Post by rick on Oct 29, 2012 7:46:00 GMT
Andthat he has to take care with SOTW, if he is activating the hammerhand or force weapons on your synapse creatures... Not 100% effective, but still nice when he fails About the spamming: I feel that if you take a second unit which is the same as the first, that its price should increase.. This makes longfang spam for example harder because they are now "less point efficient". Like this: Long Fang 1 (normal cost), Long Fang 2 (+30%), Long Fang 3 (+60%)... What do you think?
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Post by Jabberwocky on Oct 29, 2012 7:53:32 GMT
That would complicate things incredibly.
Simpler is probably needing 1 troop to have your HQ, then 1 troop for every additional FOC slot you want to use, so half your army is always troops.
You still can get spam but troop units tend to be more balanced, beyond Paladins.
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