FoB List discussion thread

[Nicholas]

- 6x units that are steadfast with LD10

If you flank any of those units, they're steadfast on 7 (or 5 and 2). Given how many units there are, this may be quite difficult and I suppose steadfast 7 with re-roll is still pretty tough.

[Vaul]

Just looking for some advice on what to do against that list that's all guys - not so much comp campaigning as me being more intimidated than the rest of you.  I'm sure it's on target (on target to 20-0 me )

[Fujin]

- 6x units that are steadfast with LD10

If you flank any of those units, they're steadfast on 7 (or 5 and 2). Given how many units there are, this may be quite difficult and I suppose steadfast 7 with re-roll is still pretty tough.

Huh? When did flanking a unit prevent it from being Steadfast? I was under the impression (wrongly??!) that regardless of flanking or disruption a unit with more ranks (not rank bonus) than opposing units was Steadfast.

[nik_]

He's suggesting they are still steadfast, but at their base Ld, not including the rank bonus which you are denying them.

[nik_]

that's the whole idea of having guildines and no comp, right?

If I could have figured out a reasonable way of marking comp that I had a good level of confidence in, believe me I would have included a hefty comp component.

I think (this stolen from a blog somewhere) that there are 2 kinds of gamers - those who play to win and those who play to enjoy the game. Unfortunately those 2 types have to somehow coexist at a tournament. The guidelines we published were an attempt to bring the lists of type 1 gamers more in line with those of type 2 gamers.

as long as the lists are within the restrictions provided from the player pack, it should be acceptable.

It was explicitly (and in bold!) mentioned in the players pack that this is not the case. It was not possible for us to develop a set of guidelines or restrictions that would catch ALL the possible 'nasty' combinations. Therefore we had to appeal to players to self moderate, and wave the veto stick over their heads to attempt to ensure that they did.
If you have 'stealth cheesed' by finding the most abusive combinations possible that still meet our guidelines, I hope that the veto judges will discover this and act accordingly.

That being said, I am resigned to the fact that the 'level' of lists at FoB may be considered 'hard' by some players.

[Simon]

@Nik
You are exactly right about the 2 kinds of gamers, Nik. However, in a tournament without comp score, type 1 gamers tend to be the majority of such event.

Ts3 was a very good example, I remember I asked Antony why so many hard lists in TS3 but none were vetoed, his answer was “if I would veto a list with a dragon, then I would have to be fair and veto all other lists with dragons.”

The reasons why I think that army lists that are within the guild lines should be acceptable are because:

1.   After played 8th edition for about 2 months, so far I test played/ played against at least 10 different fantasy armies, and personally I felt that some of the 7th edition gaming winning combos/ units were no longer as powerful as they once were in 7th and some crappy 7th edition units suddenly became really good in 8th. Surely I can’t say I’m now a warhammer expert, but after played with so many different armies I really felt that 8th edition has completely altered the ways fantasy games are played.
Hence, this leads to a conclusion that I don’t think “anyone” in NZ has enough 8th edition gaming experience or has enough knowledge to judge the strength of a list base on what is on the paper without actually played a single game against it.

2.   Since the guild lines are set, I personally felt that everyone should adhere to them. I think the guild lines were really thoughtful and it “should” be able to eliminate some of the most abusive lists (like double hellcannons, HPAs, steam tanks, triple hydras, or 100 MOK GW waving marauders, 100 slaves wall… etc) Although you can still build a completive list within the restrictions but it shouldn’t be super hardcore abusive, therefore I think it should be acceptable.

3.   In regards to the “possible 'nasty' combinations” mentioned above. How do you define “nasty” combinations? Which combinations are considered to be “nasty” and which are “ok” in 8th edition?? Are all gaming winning combinations in 7th edition are still as game breaking in 8th edition?? If you haven’t played against a list with some specific combos then how do you know if they are still as powerful as they were in 7th??  

In conclusion, I believe that 8th edition is so new to us all and without months of extensive test play, I simply believe we should treat all armies equally and with a set of general guild lines to eliminate the MOST abusive and majority of others should be acceptable… at less until we understand the game more.

My 2 cents

[Doug]

“if I would veto a list with a dragon, then I would have to be fair and veto all other lists with dragons.”

Only if it is being vetoes because of the dragon.  Maybe some lists with dragons were more acceptibale than others (which, after all, had other stuff in them)?

personally I don’t think “anyone” in NZ or OZ or in fact anywhere in the world has enough 8th edition gaming experience or has enough knowledge to judge the strength of a list base on what is on the paper without actually played a single game against it.

Some players dont need to play against something to know how it may or may not work.

How do you define “nasty” combinations?

The same way you did in 7th.  Of course, they wont be the same as 7th.  This isnt v7.5. 

In conclusion, I believe that 8th edition is so new to us all and without months of extensive test play, I simply believe we should treat all armies equally and with a set of general guild lines to eliminate the MOST abusive and majority of others should be acceptable… at less until we understand the game more.

I agree with the general sentiment, but not some of the details.

Yes, it is too early to incorporate specific exclusions such as those being touted on WAU.  The stated guidelines should be sufficient.

No, extensive personal playtesting is not obligatory in order to recognise overly hard armies.  A reasonable grasp of the new game rules, the ability to predict the consequences of how certain comboes may be applied, and a fair degree of basic intelligence will suffice.  Most of you forum hos possess these qualities, should you choose to observe neutrally, without viewing everything in the context of versus your own roster.

No, some lists will be notably harder while staying within the restrictions. Players can and will attempt to break the system, and this will be recognised.  I bet each of you has already done so, and also recognised that you know they'll know, and so moderated your own list accordingly.

In conclusion, I believe that whgilst 8th edition is new to us all, and that generally armies should be treated fairly equally, a set of general guidelines should serve to eliminate the most abusive builds, and vetos should serve to remove those which slip through the inevitable gaps in the guidelines.

[Digl]

You are exactly right about the 2 kinds of gamers, Nik.

No.
There are 3 types of gamers.
(1) Those who play to win.
(2) Those who play to enjoy the game.
(3) Those who argue about comp.

Not wanting to move the thread from its gripping and revolutionary topic - army composition -, or, god forbid, become caught in the crossfire, but I really don't agree with this whole 2-types-of-gamers thing.

If it is correct, the "friendly" gamers should get dropped hard first round and then play friendly games against other "friendly" gamers down the bottom of the pool.
On the other hand, the "competitive" gamers should find themselves competing against other "competitive" gamers at the top.

So what's the problem? "Friendly" gamers can't win a tournament? This is not the problem, because they shouldn't care about winning or losing.

The problem is where "Competitive" gamers drop into the "Friendly" gamers part of the field. In this situation:
- The friendly gamers do not have fun (playing competitive gamers)
- The competitive gamers are not competing (being too low to be competitive)
But really, if someone truly is a "Competitive" gamer they should not drop in the field enough to cause this problem. Therefore it stands that there must be another type of gamer who is the cause of these problems. One who isn't "Competitive" enough to be a "Competitive" gamer, and isn't "Friendly" enough to be a "Friendly" gamer.

Thus I believe there is a third type of gamer.


"Just my 2c".

Please, please, try not to take this too seriously.

[PapaNasty]

Ok so I'm a little bit new to Warhammer, and wanted to check and make sure that my list isn't breaking any rules or anything.  I'm pretty sure I'm within the guidelines for everything:

Vampire Lord
- Master of Black Arts
- Dark Acolyte
- Lord of the Dead
- Sword of Anti-Heroes
- Talisman of Preservation
- Flayed Hauberk
- Additional Magic lvl

Vampire
- Dread Knight
- Staff of Damnation

32x Skeleton Warriors
- Full Command + Banner of Hellfire

34x Skeleton Warriors
- Full Command + Warbanner

1x Corpse Cart
- Balefire

19x Grave Guard
- Full Command + Banner of the Barrows + Great Weapons

11x Black Knights
- Full Command + Royal Standard of Strigos + Barding

1x Black Coach

1x Varghulf

With all of the guidelines and what not I've tried to go for a pretty balanced army, and to avoid the cheese of powerstones / suicide thralls which seem to be popular with a lot of the lists which I've seen online (Since large template Purple Suns with irresistible force before you get a turn are a tad cheap imo lol)

[Vaul]

Nobody has any strategic or tactical advice for me winning against that list?  I didn't mean to de-rail things with my comment, was just making a (rare and humble) request for help on this issue.  I'm personally struggling with 8th in terms of my weak generalship.

[Antony]

Nobody has any strategic or tactical advice for me winning against that list?

Said Rats are probably just as nervous about the 1+ armour save knights, Hell Cannon, high str, I and A infantry, Gatway and Puppet, that are available to WoC 

[lockyreid]

Vaul, things i have found difficult are Armor and Warmachines.
Any combat infantry will wreck my units and my clanrats, even thought they are my main combat force, never seem to win a combat. Chaos warriors, with they're high attacks and WS are a real nuisance for me. Same with Chosen and even marauders to some extent.

[Vaul]

oh ok.

1+ armour save knights.  Furnace pumps out numerous toughness tests with no armour save allowed, HPA also has ignore armour attacks, mostly at str6.  WLC also blasts said knights pretty well if it is deployed on a flank.  Knights also are stuck for 3-4 rounds against a 60 points slave unit.

Hell cannon.  Panic test is hardly an issue with rerollable LD9 (factoring in -1 LD for cannon).  Storm banner forces at least your first shot to require a 4+ to fire.  See above for being stuck in combat for multiple rounds against cheap slave unit.  Hitting the enemy furnace dead on requires you not to scatter or misfire, and hitting the HPA requires him to fail a regen save.

Gateway.  If you throw 5-6 dice to try and get it off with IF, he'll feedback scroll you and you'll lose your general, main caster, and dispelling capability.  All for a 1 in 12 chance to remove one of his units - typically this will do 7x str7 hits that isn't going to kill an HPA or furnace outright.  If you don't throw 5-6 dice, he can easily throw 6 dice to dispel or use his scroll if you rolled a double 3 on your magic phase.

Puppet.  He's not really needing to throw more than 3 dice at a time - a bit of death frenzy and warp lightning ought to sort you out.  A lot of the time he'll be throwing 2x dice to skitterleap his brass orb into range for pwnage.  Of course... if you do dare to throw a lot of dice and he feedback scrolls you to death, with puppet out of the way he's free to turn your chosen/chaos warriors/etc into clanrats.  6 dice x 3.5 + 4 = 25, so its much more viable to use dreaded 13th now.

@ Locky - i'm not necessarily taking WOC, but if I did, i'm still not sure how I would deal with the furnace and HPA combo especially - a big block of marauders would sure tie them up, but you have a doomrocket for that.

[Glenn Patel]

"Competitive" players aren't going to all "stay out of the friendly bracket" - it's impossible.

Extreme Hypothetical For Easy Modelling:

32 players
16 Competitive
16 Friendly
Competive beat Friendly (20pts)
Competitive draw with Competitive (10pts)
Friendly draw with Friendly (10pts)
Draws are done strictly on points

Round One:
8 Competitives crush 8 Friendlies (20pts each)
8 Competitives play head to head, draw (10pts each)
8 Friendles play each other (10pts each)
8 Friendlies get crushed (0pts each)

Round Two:
8 C head to head (30pts each)
4 C vs F (30pts each)
4 C head to head (20pts each)
4 F head to head (20pts each)
4 F crushed by C (10pts each)
8 F head to head (10pts each)

Round 3
12 C head to head (40pts each)
2 C crush F (40pts each)
2 C head to head (30pts each)
2 F head to head (30pts each)
2 F crushed by C (20pts each)
12 F head to head (20pts each)

Round 4
14 C head to head (50pts each)
2 C crush F (50pts each)

...and the two tournaments finally separate. After four rounds, with friendly players literally unable to do anything other than lose 20-0 to the competitive players. If some the friendlies break from the pack and 20-0 one of their fellow friendly players, they're back up in the competitive bracket.

Similarly, if some of the competitive players get flattened by other competitive players, they get forced back down to playing the friendly players.

[PapaNasty]

I think though, that it's not so much that the competitive players will destroy the friendly players

But more that the games won't be very fun

i.e.  Game 1-2:  Player A gets first turn, kills 800 points of Player B's army using purple sun + power scroll/stone for irresistible force with large template, then uses 3x sniping spells to kill another 200 points worth of characters (Since full 12 PD after casualties from Purple Sun).  Essentially has Victory before opponent even gets a turn.

Game 3:  Player A gets first turn, misfires with Purple Sun and loses his suicide caster.  Game plays out as normal.

Game 4-6:  Player B gets first turn, kills suicide caster with shooting / magic (Or maybe their army just has high I, so don't take many wounds from purple sun).  Game plays out as normal.

That's just 1x imo "broken" combination, there's plenty of others which players could also use as well.

People who want to be competitive won't necessarily win all of their games unless they are indeed a good general, since a lot of the "too good" strategies will often focus on exploiting a particular weakness, while exposing their own weaknesses as well (Whether the weakness is extra vulnerability to misfires, low mobility, inconsistent magic etc)

But what will happen, is that the players who play them, won't enjoy the tournament.  2x full days of warhammer is pretty intense, and players will get more than a little "intensely frustrated" if they didn't even enjoy half of their games.


In saying that, I'm a bit of a noob, have only seen a couple of the dirty tricks described on forums.  So am only writing on the couple which I've seen described / envisioned myself.

[Fujin]

PapaNasty's army list...

Looks hard to me. Toughest elements are the 4 magic standards in every unit that can take a standard), the tried, tested and awesome combination of Grave Guard + Barrows + Great Weapons and potentially the level 4 recasting (with likely a lot of dice) Van Hel's over and over and over again with +4 to cast from his level buffs. That basically lets you do whatever you want with the Grave Guard/Knights while the Skellies add the ranks to break Steadfast units or just sit it out and take a bit of effort to grind through due to large numbers.

No scroll but possibly with the level 4, Balefire (essentially making you +5 to dispel) and the Coach stealing from your opponent's power pool this might not be as much of an issue (you weren't going to be scrolling IF spells anyway - you're odds on to stop quite a bit of incoming magic with your current setup).

I'd be keen to hear your feedback after the tournament on the Coach vs your level 4 Lord and how this affected your own magic phases. That was one of the conflicts I encountered in my own list.


I'm not sure the judges would accept the list due to the elements I've quoted in combination - Coach, L4 (Van Hel's spam), Grave Guard, Knights, magic banners for everyone.


There you go - my opinion

[Josh]

The VC list looks fine to me, plenty could be done to make it a lot harder, so I think the concessions are reasonable enough to allow it through.
Movement phase - good with VH spam, magic dice and opponents defense dependent though.
Magic phase - The coach is going to suck up a bit of your offense, so it's in no way over the top. Magic defense is good though, with Balefire and the coach.
Shooting phase - Vamps = none and only raises to save the knights/GG/coach. No warmachine hunters, etc, there's a good chance a gunline would wreck this army.
Combat - the bus is good, GG are good with a little support (Vargulf/coach) and the skellies add SCR or die.

It's kind of rock/paper/scissors/lizard/Spock army. The magic has a big part to play in this army which is risky, but if it does it's job and the CC units survive enough to get into combat against the right things you'll do fine. 

[Fujin]

The VC list looks fine to me, plenty could be done to make it a lot harder

Not suggesting you're wrong Josh, but I'd like to have specific examples of what could be done to make it harder.

Ghouls instead of Skeletons? More Grave Guard in a bigger unit instead of the Black Knight bus? Hoff banner on a BSB? Another Vampire or a Necro with another arcane item (a Dispel Scroll)? That's pretty much all I could come up with - would you agree those elements would make it a stronger list?

[Simon]

I think it looks fine as well.
WS hat on the vampire lord will make it much harder.
A unit of 19 grave guards is too small to be a huge threat, 25+ would be ideal.
Add in a wight king bsb with reg banner, or arm him with sword of the kings + gems

[Josh]

Drakkenhoff Banner, Skull Staff, Lore of Death on a lvl 2 vamp to spam purple sun and get more PD for the lord, bats or dogs or something for anti-shooting, more grave guard, wraiths... anything to help negate the weaknesses I mentioned before.

[wouster7]

IMO I think that the lists put forward look great. The mass infantry of 8th have changed the dynamic of all the potential army lists. I wouldn't be too concerned with magical banner usage as points spent in one category means less spent on others. I still haven't seen any potential Gaulish army lists that would make the whole entire forum take up arms yet, but I suspect those armies are too shamed to put their 'choke cheese' on public show.

We do have to remember that this is GuardCon for which we are expecting competitive armies. FluffyCon is another few months away which will feature a more aggressive toning down of lists. For those that complain still that arrows are too sharp, why don't your spears have a marshmallow point, and your army should never be able to beat mine, then there is always MummyCon tournament. Where you can wear that collection of girls blouses you have been collecting in your wardrobe

[nik_]

Phil, based on the 12-0 win/loss record you are claiming, I'm going to veto your list right now, and only accept it once your spearmen have 'upgrade: marshmallow spear points, 400pts per unit'

[wouster7]

@Nick

But none of those games have been against your overpowered Woodies

Just resent my list with the magic lores for the mages included. Apologies for the muck up.

[Josh]

If Mr Wu's list doesn't exactly line up with the rule book, does he get a penalty for being a noob? 

[Fodderboy]

re Papa Nasty's list

Fit in a naked Wight King BSB somewhere. Then you can go crown of stupidity without being too worried. Not sure where the other 85 points would come from.

Reducing the crumble is fanastic, and 3 KB attacks with T5, it takes a while even for the 'men' in tights to take him out.

[PapaNasty]

Yeah I really wanted to put a BSB in, even if just in the Black Knights unit to reduce crumble if my Lord meets an untimely end (Which seemed to be happening alot more often than anticipated!!).  But I just couldn't find how to get the extra points without gimping my GG even more

Was strongly considering ditching the GG completely and putting the points into a BSB + Necro Scroll Carriers, but didn't want to risk being veto'd for having too stronger magic phase.

Ended up tweaking the list slightly before I submitted though (Black Periapt, Helm of Command & 3+ Armour Save instead of LotD & 2+ Armour Save)

[wouster7]

If Mr Wu's list doesn't exactly line up with the rule book, does he get a penalty for being a noob? 

Yeah I'm a noob. Line up a game with me for a easy trampoline up the board

Record against Josh   1 win - 6 lost, abysmal.

[Vaul]

Niiiiiiiiiiiii iiiiiiiiiiiiii iiiiiiiiiiiiii ick rion submitted a list with two hellcannons + puppet

[nik_]

Niiiiiiiiiiiii iiiiiiiiiiiiii iiiiiiiiiiiiii ick rion submitted a list with two hellcannons + puppet

Yeah, and it isn't even the most controversial list. The first round of 'please resubmit your list with the following suggested changes' will be going out tonight or tomorrow.

[Josh]

Good idea on including advice on how to make a rejected list more acceptable. Look forward to not receiving an email