Top 5 List Building Mistakes

[Frosty the Pirate]

Daniel Brewster with another brilliant video I just had to share.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=rw997VIZE0g

Lots of math at the beginning that might not seem relevant in casual games, but if you are someone who sometimes is influenced in your list building or unit choices by tournament results or the competitive codex-review scene and mathhammer then you might have some of these mindsets.

The section on over-focusing on killing and buff-synergy is a very common mistake I'm seeing newer-players who've "discovered mathhammer" make. It's very important to realize that trading is only one aspect of the game and that there are many many ways to win this game that don't involve tabling your opponent on turn 2.

Overall, this is definitely worth a listen if you are someone who is big into list building or just trying to understand your faction(s) or all of the factions at a higher level as part of improving your game.

[Typhus]

To his first point, in regards to single psyker lists, this is an idea that's been around since the beginning of 9th edition - and indeed, it resulted in a severe nerf to Abhor the Witch.

That said, the consensus for a while has been that it's a bit of rock-paper-scissors - lists with no psykers have an advantage against lists with many psykers, lists with many psykers have an advantage against lists with few psykers, and lists with few psykers have an advantage against lists with no psykers.

EDIT: Also not sure about the argument that killing power is a mistake to spec into, considering many of the top lists are taking 0 Troops and leaning completely into a turn 1 slaughter. An Orks list at a recent GT wiped 1800 points of Dark Eldar off the table in its first turn. I believe the Ork player went on to win that match.

I definitely see a lot of inexperienced players altering their list after a single poor showing - always hard to stick with what may be a loser, just to make sure it wasn't a fluke.

[Hi I'm Derek]

Choice of venue was probably a mistake...

[Frosty the Pirate]

I'll agree to your first point about Psykers as an example. But if you expand that consciousness to his other example of meta ghosts about 'oh well my list is great but it struggles against Knights' or other 'i suck against a specific faction' situations, trying to tech into countering a specific weakness or counter faction is often a bad idea imo. I've always been an advocate of augmenting your strengths at list design time and using game-time tactics to cover a weakness. And this is what he's trying to preach here. That it's ok to have bad matchups as long as you know what they are and they aren't overly popular or top factions that you are extremely likely to see across the table from you.


On your second point about killing power. I don't think those heavy alpha strike lists are worth thinking about for much longer. CA and points changes are coming before end of the year and I suspect big changes to prevent those types of lists from being a problem are already being discussed at GW. I'm not going to speculate on what those changes may look like through.

Lists need a healthy amount of killing power, but over-focusing on buff combos or how awesome unit X becomes if I sink 3CP of strats into them every turn disregards reality of the game sometimes. Tactics like move blocking, or properly positioning models to use terrain elements or keywords can outright win games without a shot fired. Many newer players just focus on how many dice they can roll or get lost in the frenzy of trying to kill stuff back and forth and forget the mission and/or secondaries exist too when they spec too hard into killing power.

[Typhus]

Nov 4, 2021 17:44:40 GMT -5 Frosty the Pirate said:

I'll agree to your first point about Psykers as an example. But if you expand that consciousness to his other example of meta ghosts about 'oh well my list is great but it struggles against Knights' or other 'i suck against a specific faction' situations, trying to tech into countering a specific weakness or counter faction is often a bad idea imo. I've always been an advocate of augmenting your strengths at list design time and using game-time tactics to cover a weakness. And this is what he's trying to preach here. That it's ok to have bad matchups as long as you know what they are and they aren't overly popular or top factions.


On your second point about killing power. I don't think those heavy alpha strike lists are worth thinking about for much longer. CA and points changes are coming before end of the year and I suspect big changes to prevent those types of lists from being a problem are already being discussed at GW. I'm not going to speculate on what those changes may look like through.

Lists need a healthy amount of killing power, but over-focusing on buff combos or how awesome unit X becomes if I sink 3CP of strats into them every turn disregards reality of the game sometimes. Tactics like move blocking, or properly positioning models to use terrain elements or keywords can outright win games without a shot fired. Many newer players just focus on how many dice they can roll or get lost in the frenzy of trying to kill stuff back and forth and forget the mission and/or secondaries exist too when they spec too hard into killing power.

I think ultimately it's a question of what faction/list you're playing yourself - of course in Death Guard you could spew hundreds of points on wargear and character support to buff your offense, but you're kidding yourself if you think your damage output is enough to rumble with the big boys. Better to focus on your strengths - "just enough" offense coupled with a staggering amount of durable bodies that can grind on Primary. For Dark Eldar, as a contrast, killing power is something you have to lean into as a necessity - you're too fragile to play the long game, Covens aside.

To the former point - I certainly agree that you can stretch yourself too thin trying to take all comers and wind up with a list that has no weaknesses per se, but no strengths either. Part of the calculus for me is knowing which lists you can ignore de facto - for instance, a list might be "weak against Knights" in that it has no way to reliably destroy one... but if it has enough durability shenanigans and objective control, it's likely to win the game without destroying anything anyway.

I'm also... puzzled by the way he coupled Thousand Sons, Grey Knights, and Black Templars together. One of these is most certainly not like the others.

[Frosty the Pirate]

Nov 4, 2021 17:55:04 GMT -5 Typhus said:

I'm also... puzzled by the way he coupled Thousand Sons, Grey Knights, and Black Templars together. One of these is most certainly not like the others.

Yeah, I'm going to ignore that and not touch it with a 10 foot pole. At this point I think the magical-facade one of these factions has going atm that has people thinking it's amazeballs is about to wear off, and reality is going to set in.

I suspect you know as well as I do which one I'm talking about.

[Jack Shrapnel]

With building a list I'm a fan of leaning into what the missions will entail rather than specific army counters. Much like what Kevin refers to above, leaning into what your army does well goes a lot further than trying to spec your army to kill every possible threat. No army really can do that entirely.

As well worrying about skew builds such as the squigbuggy freebootaz current scary monster, is probably not worth worrying about as a long term strategy because as GW have shown (dark technomancers, lucius horde etc.) they will nerf something if it becomes a problem.

[Hi I'm Derek]

I think everyone paying attention will be aware GW is big on the nerf bat when something is seriously overrepresented at the high level, but at the same time in my experience I think it's overly optimistic to expect it to be timely. The Ork book is recent enough (and their wave release sufficiently delayed) it may squeak by without any nerfs for quite a long time and if the other outstanding books get some (well deserved) nerfs we may be in for an extended Orky reign of terror. Same goes for GSC and Custodes if one of them is a metabuster.

I for one welcome our new green-skinned overlords.