Re: [Epic] The return of Looney Rants!

From: David Lado <lado_at_...>
Date: Thu, 8 May 1997 16:40:44 -0400 (EDT)

>David Lado wrote:
>>
>> >> 5. Plague marines in THWgunships- I land next to you, fart
>> >>(summon plague wind), and half your army dies.
>> >
>> >Yep, I'd be lookin' at limiting my oponants targets if I were you...
>> >Snapfire weapons help, although the invisibilty chaos card will hurt you
>> >badly... (Chaos is like that - scissors, paper, rock, plaguewind!)
>>
>> That's fairly impossible with some armies, particularly orks, which *must*
>> field their infantry companies. Of all the armies in the game, I disliked
>> chaos the most. They were all over-priced units balanced by increadibly
>> cheesy-annoying special powers.
>
> I'd hardly call the chaos cards 'incredibly cheesy.'
>At least half of them are useless or not very powerful, and
>another portion are only useful against certain armies (like
>the morale check cards, totally useless against marines, squats
>or the bugs). A handful are pretty good but hardly show
>stopping.

I would consider the ability to destroy a 650 pt goff mob before it even
makes it's first move both increadibly cheesy and show stopping. It
works very easily. Take the Slaneeshi marines, load them on THs. If
you win inititative, land them by the Goff boyz and take them over.
The Goff boyz charge the Goff Nobz. The ensueing melee will kill about
16 goffs (boyz and nobz) which will cripple a heavily reinforced mob
and break a smaller mob (the base BP of the goffs is 12). There is
almost nothing an ork player can do to stop it.

If you don't like that, just run some nurgle marines forward in rhinos.
When you get close enough, telekenese one into the nearest mob of ork
boyz or vehicles and and roll a bunch of dice. Remove 6-10 units
(or more if the ork player was lax and didn't spread his units out)
This trick works with mortarion too.

In addition to the problem of having to field infantry, the orks also
face other big problems against chaos. In particular, they have to
field big units, which makes them susceptable to nurgle and slaneesh
powers. Also, their morale sucks, which makes them vulnerable to
fear and chaos cards (a double hit has a 50% chance of breaking a
15 stand unit, and a 25% chance of completely wiping it out, which
ain't too shabby), or forces them to field gargants (which is not
desirable in small battles).

Sure, most chaos cards are useless, but if you have a card that can
potentially kill 10-20 units, you don't need very many for them to make
a major impact on the game. Even the most honerable of chaos players
(or is that an oxymoron? ;) cannot escape the fact that he must field
greater demons and he must use his chaos cards if he wants an even
chance at winning

> I don't agree with this at all. But then, I'm a
>chaos player so I must obviously know nothing about strategy,
>correct?

Magic the gathering has strategy too, that doesn't mean I want to
play it when I thought I'd be playing space-marine. My experience
with chaos is that half my loses result directly from cards
such as burning body, or lure of slaneesh, or from mortarions fart.
I don't consider this out-thinking an opponent, because what your
opponent is thinking and doing has no real effect on your ability
to use these powers.

And I don't want to single out chaos either. All the armys had the
potential to set up armies that could annoy the hell out of opposing
players. Before the Q&As, a single detatchment of shokk attakk gunz
could prevent a warlord titan from firing for the turn. Some people
considered the command rules, particularly as they applied to nobz,
to be cheesy. Fielding an army with 20 wave serpents requires
strategy of a sort, but it's still annoying, even if you win. Some
people may not consider Ghaz "increadibly cheesy" or "a show stopper",
be he sure kicked alot of ass when I fielded him.

I call these things "cheesy" not because they are unfair, but because
they make the game less fun. They cause arguements and generally
detract from the game. I loved my shokk attakk gunz and dragstas,
but they caused constant arguements, as did warlocks, holofields,
ordinati, deathstrikes, doomweavers, knight shields, and so on.
Even though these were perfectly fair and balanced units, I still
consider them "cheese" in the broad sense (i.e. they are units
who stregnth lies in the fact they create special rules exceptions).
Doomweavers are a perfect example: what was the point of all the
special rules for doomweavers? Why not just say they are 5 point
barrages, -6 save mod, and ignore terrain. What was the point of
having them "drift down slowly" or of using special templates?
As far as I'm concerned, it's just dumb, pointless, cheese. I'm
not saying that eldar players who fielded doomseavers were being
cheesy; when I played eldar, I fielded them too. I'm just saying
that the multiple rules exceptions they created caused hordes of
arguements, detracted from the fun, and really didn't add anything
to the game.

It was not a slur against chaos players (don't be so sensitive). I
think it is the very nature of the chaos army that they can't win
w/o using their chaos cards (and yes, I think hive mind cards are
just as bad). If you take away the chaos cards, are any of the
greater demons worth 300 pts? Not by a long shot. And chaos is
forced to field greater demons, so they have no choice but to use
the cards or they shoot themselves in the foot. It's not a curse
against chaos players, but it's still annoying to know that the
only recourse I have against this sort of "strategy" is to warm up
my dice and hope that 6 shows up sooner rather than later.

David
Received on Thu May 08 1997 - 20:40:44 UTC