# wheres the character in army these days



## Sgt. Mudd (Apr 2, 2010)

I'm tired of looking at this lists and not seeing any character. Ya I'm glad you built a list that cant be bet. But sadly your missing out on 75% of this game. The fun of a characterful army and a characterful game. I saw a list with two frogs a 60 block of saurus and a ton of sallies. Great you hide in a corner and win. But no character, hell it goes against the fluff. Or twenty cannons in a dwarf army and only two block of 20 warriors. Come on people. Finally special characters hate them the most. Ya the models look cool, doesn't mean you cant use one for your own general. Basically what get's me is you go to a tournament and see three people using Archeon and each army is the exact same for the most part.

I don't mind losing in any sense, I played a gobbo army in 7th losing was a winning tradition. But i do prefer losing to an army with character. 

Thats my monthly rant, feel free to post in agreement or disagreement.


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## Masked Jackal (Dec 16, 2009)

Different people get into the hobby for different things, you may like character in your armies, but don't try to set that standard on everyone else. Perhaps they got into the hobby for painting, or gaming purposes, rather than just having a fluffy list.


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## Putch. (Jul 13, 2010)

I agree with you Mudd, but I try to balance my love for a fun fluffy game with my inability to play a game or list, that I dont feel I made to the best of my ability. So while I dont field special characters, or "cheese" armies, I still use builds, or feature army lists that people have called "competetive". 

but as masked Jackal said there are differant draws for differant people, so while some people love a good narrative, others prefer just owning their opponents and making the game miserable for them.  While I agree this is boring, console yourself with the fact that outside of a tourny setting they will be hard pressed to find a repeat opponent outside the tourny circle.


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## Wiccus (Jun 2, 2008)

I agree mostly about the character part. Its important to me. I build lists that are competitive but don't stray into the realm of "that unbeatable list that everyone plays" but I do like to win. 

But as the others have said some people do not care about character. I have met several people that say they got into the game to "play it not paint it". There are power gamers, there are super soft fluffy players, there are those who find a medium between the two. Thats just how the hobby is and as annoying as it may be to see the same power lists over and over again and get your ass stomped by them not every player is like that.

I also think that a lot of the power lists are being used right now to really test the boundaries of 8th. Its a new edition and people want to see if they can break it which is only natural. I imagine that in a years time people will be bored of their list that wins every game and wander into the mysterious realm of fun games.


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## blackspine (Jun 9, 2010)

Interesting point. 

I agree slightly with you and disagree with you.

As far as characters go, there's two (or more) sides. Some characters are amazing, others are 'cheese' as you put them. While I LOVE playing my beastmen characters, many are over-priced for small battles or just don't fit in at ALL to my strategy. Some are amazing and fun no matter what. Others, I build armies around (Kazrak!!!!)

Some characters can be cheese; watching a High Elf army just stomp your face in with Tecilus (spelling) is pretty much the same as those 'cheesy must include auto builds' you speak of. I'm sure there's other characters, but that one comes to mind .

As far as 'building ultimate warriors/ cheese builds', well that's up to everyone differently. Some people really enjoy this aspect of the game, and that's their fun. Just because they don't take characters every time doesn't mean they're doing the game harm.

For me, when I build a Lord/ Hero, they DAMN WELL have a backstory. Do you think K’zhargor, the Iron Spine just walked out of the lands West of Naggarond? No, he fought his way out, conquering herd after herd and honing his skills on the weak fleshed Dark Elves there....while stopping to feast on their flesh.


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## Tim/Steve (Jan 25, 2009)

Special characters are fun to use once in a while, but I rarely build my army around them... but it depends what options I have.
If I can build a decent army withou a SC then I'll do it, occasionally swapping one in just for a fun change. So I'll use Teclis, Caradryan and Skrag once in a while because they arent going to hurt me but they give a different dimension to games... but on the reverse side I'll take SCs that I dont like much too, just because it changes the game a little and makes me think about something new (though currently the only one I have and dont like is Tyrion).

I get a little irritated by SCs that totally alter the way an army works, forcing you to play in certain ways, such as for my WE. You might say that their SC force you into giving character to your army, since 2/3 radically rearrange the army book or force you into certain units while banning others, which to my mind takes out all the character from an army as you are forced into a mold and allows no individuality to be put into teh army.
For example Drycha- if you take her you cannnot have any non-forest spirits. So you can take nobles and highborns but they must be wild riders (and no BSB), you can take spellweavers and spellsingers but they must be glamorweave, you only have 1 core choice: dryads. You can take wild riders or treekin for special and only have the treeman for rare.... you could probably look at 1 drycha army, close your eyes, spin round to another one and nont notice the difference.


Uber lists which just beat everyone belong in tournaments or agreed on 'competetive' games. In friendlies they are just evil, and I wouldnt play them... then again I know full well that when I create an army list I make it as nasty as I can, which is why I choose the weakest armies around and have fun making them win (and why my HE tend to stay in a cupboard, and why all my daemons have round bases).


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## BioCreed (Jun 8, 2010)

I like a good fluffy army but sometimes even a fluffy one can be pretty tough to win agianst. Like my beastmen i got one beastlord and great bray shaman for lords and a gorebull bsb. The rest of the army is filled out with herds of gors and raiders. With one unit of minotaurs and one unit of bestagors for my beastlord to hide in,now theres nothing to intence about that and people still think its over powered and no fun when they keep losing to it. They can all shut up because at least their armies have armour saves.


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## VeronaKid (Jan 7, 2010)

I suppose that I can see both sides of this argument. I mean, I can absolutely understand that there are _other people_ that get into this hobby for the power gaming aspect. If they've been brought up on video games and Magic card games, then it's completely understandable.

What really gets under my skin, unfortunately, is that the "power gaming crowd," for lack of a better term, tends to force the hand of those of us that don't want to game that way. For example, I was REALLY into 40K just a year ago. Then, our local gaming environment had a small turnover, and a few newer people showed up with very powerful builds; the type of lists that really are not very much fun to play against, and require you to completely re-vamp your army just to not get wiped. My LGS doesn't really have enough regulars that I can play against to just ignore this type of player, so it's either play them or don't play week-to-week. 40K has now become all about writing a killer list locally; it has really sucked the fun out of the game.

Now, I'm hoping that the same thing doesn't happen to WHFB.


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## blackspine (Jun 9, 2010)

There may be some nasty lists, but for the most part I've only played friendly competitive games. Everyone brings a good list/build/army, but nothing that's supposed to be a 'I win!' build.
except high elves.
And the guy who plays them in small LGS games, tourneys is known. Perhaps it's karma that not many people play him and his HE are shelved.

There's lots of armies out there and many strengths to them. I feel the WHFB players are a wider age range at my LGS. Many people I play with are between 25-45. It's always fun.
_
Some days you get the bear, other days the bear flank charges you and wipes out your BSB and overruns into your Rare units._


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## Whizzwang (Dec 31, 2008)

Sgt. Mudd said:


> I saw a list with two frogs a 60 block of saurus and a ton of sallies. Great you hide in a corner and win. But no character, hell it goes against the fluff.


Yep, that's my Liz army. so what if it goes against the fluff, it was designed and built around "How far do you have to go to break the new rules" the answer is pretty far. 

That's my powerhouse list, it was built to be near unbeatable, I liek to stress test new systems. To me that's fun.

For fun I play with 500 Night Goblins, as many squigs and fanatics as I can lay my hands on and unleash all manner of randomized hell. Or how about my non-knight Bret army, that's FAR FAR FAR from broken, hell I'm lucky if it survives past turn 3.

It's my hobby and I'll do what I damn well please with it thankyouverymuch. I suspect everyone else is the same.

So I suppose my rant is this, you don't like a paticular list, that's fine, you don't have to. HOwever it's a bit nazi like to decry it for bing "against 75% of the game" Especially when trying to build higly specialised synergetic armies is my (and a fair few others) idea of fun. You should never EVER impose your idea of the hobby on someone else. if you don't like an army, you have every right to refuse to play it, nobody is forcing you to play against anyone else unless of course you're in a competitive environment, where frankly, fluff means fuck all.


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## olderplayer (Dec 11, 2009)

A lot of this is the fault of Games Workshop not properly play-testing and considering balance issues when printing new army books and then not issuing erratas to revise points/limit models when clearly under or over-pointed characters, models, units or magic items/banners are subject to abuse or not worth playing. It drives me crazy. Magic-The-Gathering, for example, has been known to limit or ban or errata playing cards that threatened the game; why can't GW do the same? MTG promotes and has a successful tournament system. GW can't seem to even run decent tournaments in the US, which led to the development of Indy GTs in my region of the US (Even the Ard Boys rules for WHFB in 2010 have inconsistent victory conditions.). Most of the experienced players I know can look at a new book and within a week or two, if not on the first reading, will instinctively know when a particular model or item or upgrade is significantly over or under pointed. Why can't GW book designers apparently do the same thing? The excuse from GW people that WHFB is supposed to be fun and it not intended to be balanced has cost GW a lot of players and a lot of revenue and money over the years. From that perspective, GW is simply being stubborn and stupid, as it serves no purpose and actually damages its long-term franchise value. There should be no need for hard comp systems (which are flawed as well) such as WPS and ETC; and the existence of such comp systems is proof GW has done a bad job of designing balance into its army books as it has rolled them out. One would think that they would have a group of experienced players proxy and simulate playing a new army book before publishing it and revise the points until one is faced with lots of interesting choices and trade-offs such that a single army is almost never played the exact same way by two diffeerent players. The stock GW response that WHFB is meant to be a fun game played fair doesn't stop us from being naturally competitive and does not stop the jerks from threatening to ruin the game. The real answer is to consistently monitor and test units and set the points costs correctly at the outset and admit when an errata or nerf is needed to restore balance. Some of us have the ability to run computer simulations of battles and shooting on a unit against unit basis and to assess units and items accordingly. Why can't GW do the same? Instead, we get White Dwarf discussions and GW Internet discussions suggesting running armies and units that don't make sense or are even not consistent with the rules. 

Part of the game is having fun and allowing the opposing player to have fun and to play competitive armies that reward skill and a bit of luck. On the other hand, only a few players want to run an army that gets beat all the time. We lose too many players too early when people are not mentored, pick a disadvantaged army, and are not carefully educated and brought along to have fun and play decent games. I was lucky enough to have some unusual income and to buy armies and models over the past year plus to allow us to play fully eight of the 18 army types and to make sure my son and I got good advice and mentoring. 

For that reason, I like playing in the Indy GT's in my region of the US (Texas and Arkansas have a nice group of weekend tourneys and a compliment of local one day tourneys at independent retailers in Houston, Dallas-Fort Worth, and Austin) precisely because they reward a combination of sportsmanship, composition, generalship and painting (although I personally don't paint well and find little personal reward in it). The most recent tourney I played reviewed and limited armies before the tourney and then included a comp points system (based on the rankings of players played during the tourney from toughest to easiest army) and that resulted in a wide variety of armies being successfully played. It is a more mature group of players (my 15 year old son is consistently the youngest player and most players are post-college age). If you play a broken army, you risk getting "bad game" votes from your opponent at these tourneys and won't get much respect. 

One of the US players playing at the recent world ETC found the hard comp system, as flawed and arbitrary and complicated as the ETC comp rules are, to be refreshing. The new 8th edition rules make some of the broken armies and rules less breakable but also still allow for some abuses and boring games (a dwarf army with re-rollable war machine shooting and horde blocks that are steadfast to protect them is awfully boring and frustrating to play). 

As for the post defending broken armies: get a life. I'm about as competitive as one can be but still understand the need to respect others and not play an army that is boring to play. The world is not just about winning and not giving a damn about anybody but yourself. Designing an army no one wants to play just destroys the game and makes it harder to arrange games to play with others over time. We realized that the hard way when my son showed up for a one-day WOTR army with an army he had figured out and proved to be so broken no one lasted past the third full turn. The next month no one showed up for a one day tourney and the small local community of LOTR/WOTR players we'd been trying to develop and that had developed over a few years quickly largely disappeared. It is mostly GW's fault for screwing up and then pushing WOTR last year over LOTR without properly play-testing it and thinking logically about it. By not adequately testing the rules and not thinking systematically about points costs and balancing the armies accordingly with appropriate and diverse model choices, GW has substantially diminished one of its three franchise game lines in our area when WOTR/LOTR had the mechanics for interesting and fun games strategic games.


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## Captain Galus (Jan 2, 2008)

Fluff is 80% of the reason I play both Warhammers, with winning being 15% and painting/modeling being 5%. That having been said, I only put Teclis in my list when I play against someone who I know is taking an equally beasting character. Personally, I prefer taking vanilla characters and kitting them out my way, but sometimes I take the cheesy way out and grab an Archmage with the Book of Win if I'm feeling like a bastard.


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## Barnster (Feb 11, 2010)

I like special characters, but i don't think their the reason people can blame army lists for being broken. I think the new edition is going to see the death of on type of powergamer list simply to be replaced by another.

the cap on identical units is a good thing but will only really affect empire and dwarf artillery, as they were the only specials that were spammed.

If people want to see characterful and fun lists then avoid going to proper tournies, obviously all people are doing there is trying to find the most broken list they can so they can win.


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## Sethis (Jun 4, 2009)

You get power gamers in every edition of every game. I remember people bitching about it in 5th Ed... Everything changes and everything stays the same. Except the prices, which continue to rise. :laugh:


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