Wow, rep for the long post, I agree with practically everything. But I have something to add as well- going back to the first post and the cries of "Cheese" on all the good armies.
If feel:
There is a line between what is and is not cheese. ALL tournament armies are cheese. It's that simple, they are WAAC armies, and they should be, because if you aren't there to compete you just wasted all the entrance money and sombebody else's time.
However, when playing for fun, I agree that you should always play to win. But you should never play to dominate. Against some of my closest friends and best gaming buddies, I have never lost a game. They make decent lists, but they aren't strong players. I know what it will take to beat them, so whenever I make an army I ONLY try to beat them. Sure, my friend is crushed by any kinds of monstrous mount- but that doesn't mean that I play my HE as Dragon-Heavy just to make sure I win. Instead, I play with maybe 1 dragon, so that I'm 80% positive that I'll win but also make the game close and enjoyable FOR BOTH PLAYERS.
So, if you are taking 20PD when you could win with just 5, yeah- that's probably cheese. When you take nothing but handgunners, cannons, helstorm rockets, and mount all your heroes on Pegasi to marchblock- that's gonna be cheese.
But when you take nothing but gunners and slaves in your skaven army BECAUSE YOU HAVE TO, then it's okay.
See, looking at a list is not enough to call it cheese. You have to look at what the list is up against, and how well prepared (or overly prepared) it is to fight the opponent.
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