Always going for the Elites and the best?

[Blackcloud6]

I notice in our gaming group, that many of the players get the best troops that money can buy. One guy just started Grey Knights as an ally force for his IG Army. When I mentioned that I was going to do Crimson Fists as a small ally for my Sisters, many said “no, do Grey Knights, they are bad *****." I chose the Fist because they would more likely work as allies to the Sisters. When playing, I always see the points spent on the most lethal weapons, not on the run of the mil stuff.

Is this common in other groups too? Does the point system balance this out in a game? or is the Army that goes for quantity over quality at a disadvantage?

What do you think?

[Learn2Eel]

To be honest, I find quantity wins most games that I've seen. Though it depends. My Tyranids, for example, have quantity in the number of Termagants and monstrous creatures I have - but with the right upgrades, they are quality too. Imperial Guard win most games where the person running the army has a lot of money to make it.
To cut it back to simplicity though, the game is about rolling dice. Generally, rolling more dice works better than relying on small numbers of more easily influenced dice.
It also comes down to what the army is and what it is facing. Take Grey Knights for example. Having a Paladin-heavy army can give certain opponents nightmares, but other armies (particularly Imperial Guard) will laugh whilst blowing it off the face of the planet.
Nidzilla can work really well if used right, but it will fall in a heap once it comes up against an army with either lots of high strength weaponry (Tau) or mass poisoned weaponry (Dark Eldar).

[Wolfshade]

Given how wide the army ranges are it is very good how they do manage to keep things balanced.

My Ork army runs on the simple premise of "Boyz before Toyz", it tends to run as man 30 man boyz mobz as I can get. Either with shootas or sluggas and choppas. It works on the principle if you roll enough dice someone will fail the amour save.

But then you can look at Grey Knights and they are the opposite very minimal in everything, but does mean that you can try and tar pit them so their 250pt Terminator squad spends turns battling through consecutive cheaper squads.

From my own stand point, picking an army because "its teh best!" is the worst reason to pick one after all rules and advantages are only temporary. The best reason imo is because you like the fluff and models.

[-Tom-]

My Ork army runs on the simple premise of "Boyz before Toyz", it tends to run as man 30 man boyz mobz as I can get. Either with shootas or sluggas and choppas. It works on the principle if you roll enough dice someone will fail the amour save.


This is pretty much what I was going to say - (I've not played much 6th, having had a long break from 40K since 3rd was released, but it had already occurred to me that the changes to the way armour saves go with just either getting it or not rather than modifiers to it would mean that my Eldar may have worse problems against Terminators than a mob of Boyz would)

So, I guess you can either play it by the numbers with "Cheap and rubbish, but plenty of them." - roll more dice, get more hits/fail more saves, or you can go for elites/best, but run the risk of good not being good enough.

[imperialpower]

In my opinion using an army of elite troops is les forgiving if you loose an expensive squad because of a mistake you made it will hurt you more than if you were using a nice cheap army, although I do see alot of people 'cherry picking' the best units from one army to fill a tactical void in their own force rather than picking an allie for the fluff or just because they like the army.

[Lost Vyper]

Especially with army like Eldar, who cannot "upgrade" Elites to troops, i tend to use maybe 1 or max. 2 Elites in a game. I rather spend points on Walkers with Scatter Lasers to get LOADS of dice rollin...Best way to kill anything, but yeah, they get the 2+ (Grey Knight Termies) armor save, but it´ll cut dem down little by little...and then my Hornets swoop in with Pulse Lasers and it´s game over for the termies :)

[Mr Mystery]

Make them play the missions.

Where people demand annihilation games only, then yes beardy armies will often carry the day. But as soon as it comes down to holding objectives, or in the case of Relic, legging it with the objective they tend to be at a disadvantage.

[Blackcloud6]

Make them play the missions.



That is a very good point.