Cheese

[night walker]

Im Just wondering if any of you see it as unsporting to take special characthers in your tournment lists (personally I dont) and i love squashing smug dante with a seargents power fist :wub:

 

but thogh they have specail rules which make them upber and a=for the sm's give the army specail rules, but morally is it worth it? :(

 

I sort of see it as high expectations of one unit which down to possibly bad rolling (as in other topic) can see a really expensive unit vnish and all chances of vicctory going up in smoke with it.

 

do you guys/gals have any opinions on this matter?

 

or am i blowing smoke? ;)

[StormTAG]

My gaming group is cool with Special Characters at all points levels. I don't tend to run trumped up HQs and with Combat Tactics I can often keep myself out of combats I don't want to be in. Typhus, Lucius and Ahriman have all died to Rapid Fire bolters in recent memory.

[Mal]

Well in a tourny, you need to expect to see a lot of cheese. A campaign is different (unless its a tourny campaign), as are friendly matches.

Personally I try to avoid them, and if I do take one, its never the more powerful ones avaliable....

 

But is it cheesy? Well that depends, normally I'd say it can be slightly cheesy, but the new C:SM characters are in a whole different league, their abalitites effect not only their squad, btu the whole army!! that changes thingsdrastically, and IMHO can be worth a lot more then their points costs depending on the army build, so yes I would say that they are cheesy.

[Reinholt]

In tournaments, unless comp is being scored, I would go all out to make the most vicious, unpleasant, unfriendly, and evil lists possible.

 

After all, when your ability to crush your opponent ruthlessly is a key portion of your score, I'd be ready to do just that.

 

Edit: Or, in short, if it will help you win, take a special character.

[Jackelope King]

In our friendly campaign, I no longer take Vulkan as an HQ for my Phoenix Knights, just because the twin-linked flamers were absolutely murdering my buddy's horde orks and his girlfriend's Tyranids and my TH/SS terminators were just getting a little too terrifying. I've instead settled for sticking a Chaplain in the land raider and enjoying making use of Combat Tactics to repeatedly deny CC armies the charge.

[Frosty the Pyro]

How does combat tactics deny them the charge, all it does is let you chose to fail moral test?

[StormTAG]

How does combat tactics deny them the charge, all it does is let you chose to fail moral test?

 

Often enough, you'll lose a few marines in the shooting phase before your opponent assaults. If that happens to be 25% or better, you're free to fall back, often out of charge range. I managed to do this beautifully against Lucius the other day. A buddy of his lined up my guys with Lash and he used that one sonic template weapon to wax a group of them. And they summarily fell back, leaving him and his squad primed to receive the combined fire power of... Well... The entirety of my army.

[Pasch]

I think its silly to forgo any specific unit because people think its cheesy. The fact our HQ choices tend to give army wide rules is part of how the codex is balanced. Chapters having differing tactics and heroes being great leaders as well as fighters is also a big part of Marine backstory. If you choose not to use our special HQ because they don't fit in your list, thats is one thing, but don't hamstring Marines because someone whines about the fact we can field significantly different armies depending on which HQ we use.

 

There isn't any HQ that you can field that means your opponent has no chance whatsoever. There are plenty that can make you harder to deal with if they aren't ready for them, that however is how this game works across the board. Yes there are tough combos to deal with, but that goes with every army. Not to mention switching out HQ characters means you lose combat tactics, so it is always a trade off.

[Warp Angel]

GW used to have restrictions on when "special characters" could be used. In 3rd Ed (a decade ago), you had to have opponent permission and/or a specific points level to use one of them.

 

That sort of thing all but disappeared in 4th edition. GW started ENCOURAGING the "counts as" by making specific army builds only available with certain characters. Most of these special characters aren't significantly more powerful than a similarly equipped HQ choice, and when they are, they tend to cost a ton of points.

 

NONE of them are auto-includes in any army, though some are very efficient choices. I'm actually going to argue that I can better customize a captain or master to my army's needs in most cases than I could fit a named "counts as" into my list. I'm never going to be able to fleet my terminators without Shrike, but I can live with that in most of my army lists.

 

There's nothing in the rules that says I have restrictions on when and how I can use them. So I do. So do many other people. You're going to see more of these "special" things coming in future codexes, so get used to seeing named characters in many lists.

 

Having said all of that, if anything results in you having less fun in friendly games, or making friends not willing to play you, it makes perfect sense to pull those models out of your list. It's not the character that breaks the list, it's the character and the rest of the models in your army. Not everyone has enough melta and flamers in their miniature collection to make a Vulkan worth taking. Not everyone has sternguard for Pedro or honor guard for Marneus.

 

A character and supporting models is no different than a Chaos dual lash list - the guy has to have the vindicators/oblits along with the sorcerors to make it work, and it's no different than the Eldar double Autarch reserve list that someoen was complaining about last week. It takes a whole collection to make a "cheese" army.

 

And if you want to have fun playing against your friends, you don't bring out something that they can't compete with, either because they don't have the models. Fielding Vulkan and melta/flamers isn't a whole lot different to a horde army than fielding 3 Vindicators, and 9 land speeder typhoons. They're just plain not equipped to handle that sort of battle. Against a more balanced force, the 3 Vindicators and 9 Typhooons isn't such a hard thing to deal with. Not easy, but that supports my "it's the models" argument. Someone spent almost $400 US on 12 models, more than most people are able to spend on their whole armies.

 

The cheese is in the amount of money you spend on your army, not the special characters. I don't bust out armies that my friends can't beat, and I don't spam "broken" lists, instead trying to play with an "all comers" list at all times. Even in Apocalypse when I can field a stupid amount of crazy stuff.

[Frosty the Pyro]

How does combat tactics deny them the charge, all it does is let you chose to fail moral test?

 

Often enough, you'll lose a few marines in the shooting phase before your opponent assaults. If that happens to be 25% or better, you're free to fall back, often out of charge range. I managed to do this beautifully against Lucius the other day. A buddy of his lined up my guys with Lash and he used that one sonic template weapon to wax a group of them. And they summarily fell back, leaving him and his squad primed to receive the combined fire power of... Well... The entirety of my army.

Ah I see, they need to get shot at first. I'll keep this in mind when I am using (or against) combat tactics marines. Thanks

[Frontier]

I think in a tourney, it really is about pulling out all of the stops in order to achieve victory. I remember that characters were a lot, lot tougher in older editions to the game. The stories of 2nd ed Khârn still bring me to shudder at the thought of him. I only use Chronus, and even then on rare occasions. Using the characters just never struck me as much fun, but I do use their modes for conversions for other leadership positions in my army.