list tayloring vs balanced lists for friendly games

[knas ser]

I think it's ok to tailor to the army you're going to be playing against to an extent but not to their list.

That's how I see it. The former is normal to me - nothing to be remarked upon at all. The latter is tantamount to cheating to me. I mean if it's a regular opponent always using the same things and they obviously don't care, then whatever. But advance knowledge of someone's actual list by one party over the other, is clearly unfair and thus wrong in a game.

[Col Penny]

There is nothing wrong with list tailoring as this is exactly how a real general would fight a battle, he would choose specific units to combat whatever threat his intel told him about his foe, as long as there is no sneaky peek to see what your opponent has specifically then I don't see the problem

[SON OF ROMULOUS]

I think that some confusion has come up a bit in this discussion. It's concensus that if you tailor to a specific list then there is a problem. everyone seems to be okay with tailoring a specific opponent if you have knowledge of his play style or what he is likely to bring. What most have stated is that they are not okay if some one builds a list on the spot after looking at what you have written up in your list.

I know i saw this happen at a tournament before hand it was dirty and underhanded. A tyranid player before they even exchanged lists which he did last minute and after deployment had started. The guy pulled up what looked like an 1850 list waited for my buddy to deploy his dark eldar and then started to pack away all of his big bugs... so no mawlocks no fex's ended up being a drastially different army then when your suddenly facing tervigons the swarm lord and a flyrant and an endelss sea of little gribbles.... needeless to say i am glad it was not my game as i for one have mentioned multiple times i am a very nice fellow until you are a dick... then mr hyde comes up to play, and he doesn't mess around.

[YourSwordisMine]

List tailoring is the biggest blight on the modern minis wargaming hobby... And this comes from 23 years of experience.

I have never, and will never do so...

Nor will I play with anyone who does it...

People who think its ok need to be taken out back of the game shop and beaten with a sock filled with dice...

[biffster666]

1) the PUG - or pick-up game
2) pre-determined game

For the Pug it's an all comers army, in the pre-determined game I'll 'list build' more based on the army I'm going up against. I have been known to open up battlescribe and build a few lists ...for three to four hours It's just so easy!

[Crewgar]

For me, like a bunch of people here, it depends on the type of game that I'm looking for and what I've agreed with my opponent. I generally play at local stores, and have a few generic lists that I rotate between on a nightly basis, something that I pick out ahead of time based on what I feel like playing. That being said against some of my most regular opponents I will sometimes pick a list or even ask them which of my lists they'd prefer facing based on what I think will be more fun. If my regular dwarf list has lost it's last three games against the same opponent, I'll take a 'harder' list that might not be as fun, if we've played the last few weeks in a row, I'll ask the opponent what they want to face, as then they might get a different game or a more fun one. Now this is also before I know what they'll be fielding, just a general guess based upon what they usually play.

As well I've also had a lot of fun with some larger games were we do build the lists in front of each other.. This has led to wacky things such as a huge Honor Guard unit, Marneus Calgar and a Landraider vs a Huge (12+ model) Thunderwolf Unit with characters face off, because we thought it'd be cool and fun.

All three ways were a lot of fun because they were agreed upon by both sides though. I've also seen the other side of the coin, what I think a lot of the anti-tailoring players fear, where we had one player, who played Dwarfs (which can be brutal if allowed to customize war machines and runes to exactly what they are facing) swapping out units based on what his opponent put on the table... This wasn't something that was agreed upon, and where he had just asked for a pick up game. The third time he did this, he had players asking him to put out his army first and leave it out, or in one case a player with multiple armies kept switching between them in front of him every time he modified his army, with two very different races. The player never seemed to get the point and started doing the same thing to new players, and then eventually left. While that's a shame, it is also not cool to be trying to tailor your army to your opponent's exact army when you're just playing a random game, especially if you get annoyed when your opponent does it to you.

So what I think on the issue, and what seems to be the general consensus, is that what is really important is talking to your opponent! List building is definitely part of the game and an important part, but while building a tailor built list to fight an army, an opponent or even a specific list is fun and challenging, so too is trying to build an army well rounded enough to take on almost anyone, and it also really prepares your for tournaments, where (at least in my experience) you have to have a single list for the day and stick with it no matter who you face. Both are challenging and fun aspects of the game, but as it is a game the important thing is that both sides have a good time, and both players have an idea of what they;re getting into!

Or at least that's my three cents (I'm Canadian, so two cents would round down to nothing now, while three rounds up )

[Kaptain Badrukk]

I think if two players have agreed to tailor, OR if you've made some kind of arrangement beforehand then fine.
For PUGs it's just not cool.

[Wolfshade]

List tailoring is the biggest blight on the modern minis wargaming hobby... And this comes from 23 years of experience.

I have never, and will never do so...

Nor will I play with anyone who does it...

People who think its ok need to be taken out back of the game shop and beaten with a sock filled with dice...

No!

You are only seeing the negatives. A friend of mine just got back into the hobby and had a pure infantry army about 1000pts, but no way to deal with armor or flyers, so do I take my normal pick up and play list that has both or do I tailor my list to remove those elements to make it more balanced?

I tailor my list knowing the limitations of his collection to try and restore some balance. I could run my "normal" list but he would have no chance and that wouldn't be fun. As his collection grows so I open up options I have restricted myself from taking.

More generally in this thread I have a slight issue with the presumption that people play with a list. I have a collection and every game I play I pick a new army, yes quite often there are items I normally will include but each army is tailored, based on how well things worked in the previous game and assumptions about what my enemy is bringing. There is little point in having magna-grapples and other specific anti-armour weapons when playing bugs.

If you never tailor your list then you never apply the knowledge and experiance that you have gained in previous games. For instance if I had a lone captain who never killed anything and was always being killed in the first turn and I kept taking him why would I keep using that item like that continually. Instead, I would consider maybe putting him in a retinue, or changing his equipment, or consider if a chaplain or librarian would be better?

[Xenith]

*tailoring

[knas ser]

It is clear to me that we need two terms here, not just one. There are two things being described which are separate.

• Adjusting your list from game to game, possibly based on what you expect to face in general terms, e.g. army type.
• Adjusting your list from game to game based on foreknowledge of the specific list you are to face that game, e.g. which units, which weapons a specific opponent will be fielding this battle.

I would call the former Forecasting and the latter Foreknowledge.

It seems that most of us are okay to good with Forecasting, and we're pretty much all against Foreknowledge.

It's pretty clear that as long as we keep talking about "list tailoring" when there's this clear division of context, we'll have a lot of needless repetition and confusion.