List Building & The Razor's Edge

11/24/2011

Considering these posts by Marshal Laeroth and Nikephoros, here is my interpretation: The ideal to achieve while building a list is to be like a battlecruiser which can "out fight what it cannot outrun and outrun what it cannot out fight".

So a list must measure itself against the three phases of the game: movement, shooting, assault. A list needs to be strong in two of the three areas and at least able to hold its own in the third. Remember this is a relative ranking, so Razorspam vs Razorspam Marines aren't "strong" against each other for movement, whereas most DE builds are always strong in movement vs any Marine list, however a mechanized Marine list can hold its own if it is superior in shooting and assault.

NOTE: Remember that shooting & assault can both change these relative scores. If I just killed every vehicle in your list in the first couple of turns, then your movement is now weaker. Similarly if I just shot your rock CC unit to pieces, then it isn't a big CC threat anymore.

What must be avoided is building a list that is intentionally weak in one of the three areas. If you are weak in movement, then a movement army can exploit it and kill you. Actually, I'd say movement is the critical arena, you must NOT be weak in movement vs your opponent. You may be weak in shooting, but with enough speed and CC units you can be in your opponent's face to negate their shooting strength vs you. Similarly, if you are weak in shooting, your speed can save you from facing his CC units until you have weakened them.

Now this does not mean you have to have fast vehicles for every unit. It just means you cannot be weak and stay weak in movement. My Deep Strike list lives to de-mech my opponents to put them on foot. I eliminate their speed advantage by putting them on foot like I am as quickly as possible.

A list on the "razor's edge" is one that is weak somewhere and cannot hide that weakness until it uses its strengths to compensate for its weaknes

3 Comments

Devjon link

11/24/2011 10:10:42 am

The problem with your idea of being strong in two of the three areas is just as you mentioned. You cannot afford to be weak in movement. But more than that, it is more complicated.

You have to have good mobility. However, very good flexibility can reduce this (which is why Drop Pod lists work). So once you have that covered, you need a second ability. You need the ability to kill your opponent.

You can kill your opponent in either shooting or assault (or both), but shooting is always easier (range advantages, easily taken low-AP, high strength, AP1, etc). The greatest advantage from Assaulting comes when you take lots of shooting, the more you get the less valuable it is, just like Typhoons. After the first three you aren't adding cheap units, you're adding more shots (and, while you do have more vehicles, they become less durable and give your opponent the chance to kill two with one Heavy Bolter or Autocannon so two does not equal twice the durability, even though it may be more durable than one). Add a third and you have the same problem, but now your shots are more often wasted as you don't always need six Missiles to kill a Rhino.

So improving your ability to assault throws in another way to deal additional damage in the same way that adding another unit would. It gives you more options and makes you more flexible in most circumstances.

You need a certain minimal ability to kill your opponent, dominated by being able to kill his vehicles but you can't disregard the Infantry. You add up your Shooting ability and your Assaulting ability to see if you have enough, and ideally the more the merrier. But (and this differs from codex to codex), having equal parts may give you a greater net than having two parts shooting and one part assaulting. (Obviously Imperial Guard and Tau are obvious examples of armies that need and do best with far more shooting than assaulting ability while armies like Blood Angels and Space Wolves can afford to have a stronger focus in assaulting. I have my thoughts on where Black Templars stand but I know that you will disagree with it so I'll keep those to myself.)

Algesan link

11/24/2011 10:29:12 pm

Heh, I know we disagree on the Templar's standing, but that is in the "style" area of playing.

Any Reserves heavy list does have a "movement" bonus potential, but with the randomness of the rolls, it may or may not help out. Any such list is automatically "weak" in movement and has to correct it by shooting and/or assault. Quickly.

Devjon link

11/25/2011 05:13:16 am

But it has the flexibility to make up for most of the movement problems, so long as you are Deep-Striking.

Because you can deep-strike you can go where you want, even if the timing may be a little off. Since you can get that, mobility is less important but you can still get by without it.

That's why Foot-Lists are so hard to make well. They usually don't have movement, but neither do they have Flexibility to make up for that. So they have to rely on either serious fire-power to kill the opponent or impressive army-wide durability to survive to reach the opponent with enough units intact to smash him. The biggest problem with this is that, most often, you simply can't get enough durability or fire-power to make up for your bad movement and lack of flexibility.

Drop Pod lists (at the very least for Black Templars) have flexibility, which means that their fire-power or durability is less important (they can be right in the face of the enemy, so you only have to survive 1 round before you can assault, and with the close range you don't have to rely on long-range fire-power and can add in shorter range stuff and assault). Since their is a lower demand on these things, you can achieve them. But if you take away the flexibility (such as by marching on from the board edge or starting on the board and letting the Drop Pods fall empty) then the requirements suddenly need to be much higher, and the Drop Pod lists will begin to fall apart (by Drop Pod I mean to include all Deep-striking things, but Drop Pods tend to form the core).

List Building & The Razor's Edge

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