Why do people continue to say "Soup?"

[Claws and Effect]

 

It's Soup, with a capital S, when it's an army without a coherent and obvious alignment or fluffy cohesion.

 

An army with 3 knights, a Guard and a Blood Angels batallion is Soup. Which faction would you say it is mostly? Is it Guard with fire support? Knights with ground support? Smash Captain and Friends?

 

Whereas you could do something similar and have 3 Knights with a bunch of Skitarri and Kastelan dakka-bots to support them, which is still soup, and it's still pretty cheesy, but nobody is gonna criticise you for it. It's not obvious try-hard meta-gaming min-max Soup, it's delicious fluffy soup (even if it would be brutal to fight against). You'd look at that army and say "Oh, sweet, a Mechanicus army with lots of robots. Makes sense."

 

I think there's still a lot of folks around who find the very idea of allies blasphemy, back from the days where there was no such thing. I can sympathise, because you can't make a serious argument about segregating the fluff from the game. If you go down that road, then why bother painting your minis? Why even use models? Why not just use Lego? Why not just write RHINO on a square piece of cardboard? The narrative is integral to the game.

I'm not really up on my fluff, why do knights refuse to work with guard and blood angels again?

They don't.

 

A Knight as part of a balanced force including Guard and Blood Angels is fine in my book.

 

But 2 or 3 Knights with 3 Blood Angels smash Captains and just barely enough Guard for a cheap Battalion to get more CP? In that case you are quite clearly just cherry picking good units with no regard for whether you'd ever see it in any lore. 3 Blood Angels Captains are not going to show up by themselves to fight alongside Knights and 180 points worth of cannon fodder.

[ERJAK]

 

 

It's Soup, with a capital S, when it's an army without a coherent and obvious alignment or fluffy cohesion.

 

An army with 3 knights, a Guard and a Blood Angels batallion is Soup. Which faction would you say it is mostly? Is it Guard with fire support? Knights with ground support? Smash Captain and Friends?

 

Whereas you could do something similar and have 3 Knights with a bunch of Skitarri and Kastelan dakka-bots to support them, which is still soup, and it's still pretty cheesy, but nobody is gonna criticise you for it. It's not obvious try-hard meta-gaming min-max Soup, it's delicious fluffy soup (even if it would be brutal to fight against). You'd look at that army and say "Oh, sweet, a Mechanicus army with lots of robots. Makes sense."

 

I think there's still a lot of folks around who find the very idea of allies blasphemy, back from the days where there was no such thing. I can sympathise, because you can't make a serious argument about segregating the fluff from the game. If you go down that road, then why bother painting your minis? Why even use models? Why not just use Lego? Why not just write RHINO on a square piece of cardboard? The narrative is integral to the game.

I'm not really up on my fluff, why do knights refuse to work with guard and blood angels again?

They don't.

 

A Knight as part of a balanced force including Guard and Blood Angels is fine in my book.

 

But 2 or 3 Knights with 3 Blood Angels smash Captains and just barely enough Guard for a cheap Battalion to get more CP? In that case you are quite clearly just cherry picking good units with no regard for whether you'd ever see it in any lore. 3 Blood Angels Captains are not going to show up by themselves to fight alongside Knights and 180 points worth of cannon fodder.

So if it was 2 knights and 2 captains it would be fine? Or 3 knights and 1 captain? Or is it 1 knight and 3 captains?

[Dr_Ruminahui]

Obviously the concept is subjective... but that doesn't mean its meaningless.  Like beauty, which famously is in the eye of the beholder, soupiness depends on the person viewing it.

 

That doesn't mean that as a society (or as a micro-society such as GW gamers) can't reach rough consensuses as to what the term means.  So, while most will agree that the concept of soup exists, the line where that may be drawn is fuzzy and can be difficult to describe.  Its much easier to describe the extremes than it is the borderlines.

 

It will also be contextual.  So, in regard to the above posters question as to where to draw the line as to what ratio of knights to captains constitutes soup, context is highly important.  What else is in the list?  How many points are you playing?  Is it a narrative game or matched play?  And, as noted, being subjective, it will depend on the beholder - one person might find any cherry picking of units from more than one codex to be soup, while another might only describe soup as existing at the extremes.

 

And while that fuzziness may make it harder to reach a common ground, it does not deprive the term of utility.  Most of our most important/common descriptors are all contextual and/or subjective - beautiful/ugly, hot/cold, fast/slow, rich/poor, heavy/light, bright or light/dark, big/small.... etc.

[Marshal Reinhard]

 

 

 

It's Soup, with a capital S, when it's an army without a coherent and obvious alignment or fluffy cohesion.

 

An army with 3 knights, a Guard and a Blood Angels batallion is Soup. Which faction would you say it is mostly? Is it Guard with fire support? Knights with ground support? Smash Captain and Friends?

 

Whereas you could do something similar and have 3 Knights with a bunch of Skitarri and Kastelan dakka-bots to support them, which is still soup, and it's still pretty cheesy, but nobody is gonna criticise you for it. It's not obvious try-hard meta-gaming min-max Soup, it's delicious fluffy soup (even if it would be brutal to fight against). You'd look at that army and say "Oh, sweet, a Mechanicus army with lots of robots. Makes sense."

 

I think there's still a lot of folks around who find the very idea of allies blasphemy, back from the days where there was no such thing. I can sympathise, because you can't make a serious argument about segregating the fluff from the game. If you go down that road, then why bother painting your minis? Why even use models? Why not just use Lego? Why not just write RHINO on a square piece of cardboard? The narrative is integral to the game.

I'm not really up on my fluff, why do knights refuse to work with guard and blood angels again?

They don't.

 

A Knight as part of a balanced force including Guard and Blood Angels is fine in my book.

 

But 2 or 3 Knights with 3 Blood Angels smash Captains and just barely enough Guard for a cheap Battalion to get more CP? In that case you are quite clearly just cherry picking good units with no regard for whether you'd ever see it in any lore. 3 Blood Angels Captains are not going to show up by themselves to fight alongside Knights and 180 points worth of cannon fodder.

So if it was 2 knights and 2 captains it would be fine? Or 3 knights and 1 captain? Or is it 1 knight and 3 captains?

 

How about that captain comes with like, a contingent of blood angels that he's leading? He's the commanding officer of 100 marines after all.

[GrinNfool]

Obviously the concept is suggestive... but that doesn't mean its meaningless.  Like beauty, which famously is in the eye of the beholder, soupiness depends on the person viewing it.

 

That doesn't mean that as a society (or as a micro-society such as GW gamers) can't reach rough consensuses as to what the term means.  So, while most will agree that the concept of soup exists, the line where that may be drawn is fuzzy and can be difficult to describe.  Its much easier to describe the extremes than it is the borderlines.

 

It will also be contextual.  So, in regard to the above posters question as to where to draw the line as to what ratio of knights to captains constitutes soup, context is highly important.  What else is in the list?  How many points are you playing?  Is it a narrative game or matched play?  And, as noted, being subjective, it will depend on the beholder - one person might find any cherry picking of units from more than one codex to be soup, while another might only describe soup as existing at the extremes.

 

And while that fuzziness may make it harder to reach a common ground, it does not deprive the term of utility.  Most of our most important/common descriptors are all contextual and/or subjective - beautiful/ugly, hot/cold, fast/slow, rich/poor, heavy/light, bright or light/dark, big/small.... etc.

I just have to say man, you gave this debate much more class than it deserved, kudos to you lol.

[Zephaniah Adriyen]

As stated previously, I run a BA-successor-but-BA-rules/Knight/Custodes list sometimes. This list has only one Captain and one Sanguinary Priest; it'll sometimes include a Librarian. It also includes a contingent of Astartes from that company, ranging from Hellblasters to Inceptors to Intercessors. In addition, I'll often include forces from the Seventh Company, which is all Primaris Phobos units (Reivers and a Phobos Librarian, first of all). The Custodes are a single Shield-Captain and four Custodian Guard. The Knight is the sole Knight in the list, and indeed, the only Knight I own at all.

 

Is this fluffier than, say, a BA/Knight/Custodes list with a second captain or something?

[Marshal Reinhard]

I think what most consider unfluffy with the rampant use of captains, is that your typical 'competetive' list will contain one or more captains, simply because they're a highly mobile beatstick character, that's a mechanically good unit, but for no other reason.

 

A marine captain is the commander of 100 marines. Arguably, the fluffy way of fielding one is having him lead his marines in battle. If he's just alone it begs the question why, and having multiple captains but no sight of any other marines, most I think would agree compounds the issue. This isn't to say it couldn't happen, but why? Is there a reason someone has bunch of captains without (or with few) their companies' marines? Other than captains are what's good to bring and someone wants the most effective list they can bring.

 

I mean, I'm not saying you have to play your captains as actual leaders for your marine force (not aimed at anyone in particular, btw), but if asked wether it is fluffy or not, I think most will argue that the list alternatives where the captain has troops from his company is the fluffy one. I mean, I don't think anyone really finds this particularily hard to grasp?

[Vermintide]

 

It's Soup, with a capital S, when it's an army without a coherent and obvious alignment or fluffy cohesion.

 

An army with 3 knights, a Guard and a Blood Angels batallion is Soup. Which faction would you say it is mostly? Is it Guard with fire support? Knights with ground support? Smash Captain and Friends?

 

Whereas you could do something similar and have 3 Knights with a bunch of Skitarri and Kastelan dakka-bots to support them, which is still soup, and it's still pretty cheesy, but nobody is gonna criticise you for it. It's not obvious try-hard meta-gaming min-max Soup, it's delicious fluffy soup (even if it would be brutal to fight against). You'd look at that army and say "Oh, sweet, a Mechanicus army with lots of robots. Makes sense."

 

I think there's still a lot of folks around who find the very idea of allies blasphemy, back from the days where there was no such thing. I can sympathise, because you can't make a serious argument about segregating the fluff from the game. If you go down that road, then why bother painting your minis? Why even use models? Why not just use Lego? Why not just write RHINO on a square piece of cardboard? The narrative is integral to the game.

I'm not really up on my fluff, why do knights refuse to work with guard and blood angels again?

 

 

I never said they don't, but I challenge you to provide a decent fluffy explanation for that army that isn't "Uh well uh they uh. They all happened to be fighting in this big battle so that's uh. That's like, my army, bro. I have 46CPs."

 

My point was more about visual recognition than fluff. If you see a mix of units from 3 factions, what do you call that army, at a glance? Hence why it gets called soup, because it's a balanced mix, it has no strong identity of its own. You genuinely don't know what to call that army besides soup. Whereas if it's a mostly obvious faction with a few flavour units thrown in, you immediately recognise the primary faction, and call it as such.

[RandyB]

The rules are not fluffy. The fluff is not balanced. These are the problems. Until the discrepancy between rules and fluff is substantially reduced (because they will never be exactly identical), complaining about non fluffy armies is imposing your personal preferences on others.

[Vermintide]

The rules are not fluffy. The fluff is not balanced. These are the problems. Until the discrepancy between rules and fluff is substantially reduced (because they will never be exactly identical), complaining about non fluffy armies is imposing your personal preferences on others.

Yeah I can't wait to read the next Astra Militarum codex that reads "The Imperial Guard are the first line of defence for humanity. By the will of the Emperor, these fearless, lightly armed  warriors are deployed in exactly 32 men formations, supported by their allies, the Blood Angels."

[Closet Skeleton]

I think what most consider unfluffy with the rampant use of captains, is that your typical 'competetive' list will contain one or more captains, simply because they're a highly mobile beatstick character, that's a mechanically good unit, but for no other reason.

 

They'll also sometimes contain 3 units of 5 scouts for CP reasons which actually feels less wrong but still bad.

 

 

The rules are not fluffy. The fluff is not balanced. These are the problems. Until the discrepancy between rules and fluff is substantially reduced (because they will never be exactly identical), complaining about non fluffy armies is imposing your personal preferences on others.

 

Imposing your personal preferences would be trying to kick someone out of a gaming club.

 

The idea that stating an opinion is imposing it is a curse on internet culture.

 

I have on occasion casually complained to real life adults at tournaments about the unfluffyness of their lists and most of the time they agree with me and we get back to the game.

 

In a non-tournament setting its important that both players discuss what they want out of the game and if one player cares more about theme than the other player sometimes both players have more fun if the guy who cares less compromises with the other guy.

[Marshal Rohr]

People continue to say soup because it’s a meme now, like leafblower and flying circus. The mixed lists were never representative of a narrative army, it was just an easy way to encapsulate the nature of the list.

[RandyB]

People continue to say soup because it’s a meme now, like leafblower and flying circus. The mixed lists were never representative of a narrative army, it was just an easy way to encapsulate the nature of the list.

 

Exactly. Mixed lists are not necessarily narrative. And neither are tournaments.

 

If you want narrative lists, play Narrative Games. Done.

[Dr_Ruminahui]

From my view, there are 2 uses of the term "soup" in this context, and part of the strong feelings on this matter comes from not separating the two.

 

The first is using it as a tool to describe the army as a whole.  For example, if an army is composed entirely of blood angels, I think everyone would agree its a blood angels army.  Add a "loyal 32" to the army, and most would likely describe it as a blood angels army with AM allies.  Add an assassin and some knights, and some would likely describe it as imperial soup.  Change the ratios of the various armies such that there is no one codex that forms obviously forms the core of the army, and most would likely describe it as soup.

 

This use of the word "soup" doesn't carry any value judgments as to whether said army list should exist, but rather is concerned with the best way to describe that army in a succinct fashion.  It's often used in discussing tournament results and how different codexes are doing in the current competitive meta, where it can be misleading to say "X army is doing well" when the top performing armies are really only a few of the best units of it, or are are investing the bare minimum in order to access certain stratagems.  A person using the word "soup" in this way isn't saying that you shouldn't field the 3 chapter master + knight + loyal 32 + assassin + etc army, but is instead saying that such an army shouldn't be described as a blood angels army.

 

Where the line is drawn is obviously subjective.  For example, I have an Emperor's Children army, but I have recently been painting up slaaneshi demons and a knight.  At the moment, as most of my models are chaos space marines, even if a field models from the other 2 codexes, my army is still best described as a chaos space marine army with allies, though could also be described as slaaneshi soup.  If more and more allied units are added, at some point there may be no dominant core codex to describe the army, in which case slaaneshi soup would likely be the accurate description.

 

The second is as a tool to state that a given army doesn't match the fluff expectations of such a force.  This is a normative description - in using the term in this way, the implication is that the person believes the army shouldn't be fielded as it is as such a composition doesn't match the background.  This is the use of "soup" that is more likely to get people's back up.

 

 

 

Exactly. Mixed lists are not necessarily narrative. And neither are tournaments.

 

If you want narrative lists, play Narrative Games. Done.

 

 

I don't think such a "my way or the highway" approach is very helpful.  Certainly, anyone competing in a tournament should recognize that there will be many armies that don't conform to what they think is appropriate, either in terms of list composition or paint schemes.  Saying that such people shouldn't play the list that they want because others may field something different is more than a little hypocritical.

 

Besides, narrative lists are not for only narrative games - they are for any game the person wants to play.  Many people with "narrative" lists prefer to play matched play games, for many reasons but often because matched play games are the most balanced.  People approach the hobby from many angles, and its rather prejudiced to say because you enjoy a certain part of the hobby that you are required to play in a certain fashion and in no other. 

[Claws and Effect]

Besides, narrative lists are not for only narrative games - they are for any game the person wants to play. Many people with "narrative" lists prefer to play matched play games, for many reasons but often because matched play games are the most balanced.

This is me. I tend to play narrative games, but I use matched play rules for them. This is largely because I play with my 8 year old son a lot. The only armies he has built to the point of playing full scale games of 40k are Necrons and Tyranids. It's not fair to pit my Raven Guard against them in PL games when I can load up my squads with all the best weapons for no extra cost and he has comparatively few options for his guys. So we play by points so I don't have an unfair advantage.

 

Slightly off topic, but I wanted to give an example of a case where the most competitive version of the rules are used in a more laid back way.