[ReaverRider]

i find players that have same units but seperates them into different slots reeally annoying.

like have 3 wraith but make them 3 seperate units. are their rules that disallow this or if not should their be?

really annoying if wraiths come up from the side and their is 1 squad thats in range and you can only kill 1. its so annoying.

 

[The Paint Monkey]

No, it's not illegal and yes it can be frustrating. It does mean that they are using all three fast attack slots just for 3 wraiths though and as a result they won't be able to take destroyers or scarab swarms so there is a plus side for you. Note that if they take all three wraiths as one fast attack choice they must be deployed together as with almost any other squad. Check their army structure to make sure you're not being bamboozled.

 

[brushman]

It is perfectly legal; although, it can be good for you as well as him as mentioned in post 2.

 

[adamwelton]

Sadly it's true because some Tyranid creatures can do the same thing such as one Ravener in each Fast slot, and they don't need to deploy together. They're not much cop on their own but all three Deep Striking separately into your deployment zone or onto your support units can get on anyone's nerves, especially when they shoot then assault your Devastator unit that's blazing away at something else entirely, locking them in combat. Don't let them get you this way. It's a classic distraction whilst something big and nasty happens elsewhere. Best to get weak units to deal with this. Your opponent has wasted his Elite slots if you can nail them down for long enough.

The only anti-Necron tactic I can suggest is to wipe out his Warriors as fast as you can. Ignore everything else.

 

[The Paint Monkey]

If the guy has spent all his fast attack on 3 wraiths (these are only T4, 3+ save, 1W) he has no destroyers and no swarms. They will be pretty much the only fast units in his army. Ignore them until you have a reasonable shot then blast them, or as you only need enough firepower to kill a marine use your own fast units to go after them- bikes, speeders, jet bikes etc will run right over them.

 

[ReaverRider]

well he had a tomb spider to get the scarab and he had 2 heavy destroyers in different squads with 1 ts that was his heavy support. and had 2 destroyer lords!!! :realmad: he had his 2 lords and 3 different squads of wraiths coming down the side of the bored, so there was 5 units. that really PO me. and it was a tournament so i doubt he got good points for sportsmanship, and army selection.

 

[adamwelton]

Sadly, 'Ron players don't seem to get sportsmanship points in tourneys, ever. No really, and that's in all four tourneys a year I attend (one at GWHQ, one GW in-store and two local club efforts so a bit of a mix). 'Rons are very Tau, ie very easy to play whoever you are. All for the GW love of cash from such pleasing armies, not necessarily down to the general who wants a different army. However that makes them more of a challenge to eliminate for us non-types. Pick the best from your wargear list and don't worry about wysiwyg as that's where your army building money goes. MORE invisible upgrades, MORE firepower.

 

[Blue Meanie]

I once played a Necron player that used this to really good (bad for me) effect. He had three Heavy Destroyers in three separate Heavy slots, but kept them together. Since I had to target each unit separately, I never managed to kill all three of them in one shooting phase, and he always got his WBB rolls (which he consistently made, of course). It was very frustrating, but I have to hand it to the guy, I wouldn't have thought to run an army that way. At least that meant I wasn't facing a monolith!

 

[Jakel]

I do something like he did all the time, it's just smart. Well, I wouldn't say playing 3 wraiths with no swarms or destroyers was smart, but making it 3 seperate units was. In my Dark Angel's army, rather than running 2 Landspeeders in one squad, I split them into 2 seperate units. In my Iron Warriors army, I run 3 obliterators as 3 seperate elite choices. It gives you more scoring units, and causes your opponent to have to target each one seperately instead of wiping out the unit with something like 18 star cannon shots from a squad of war walkers.

 

[tarzen]

Lets put it in terms that most can understand...

Its not cheese, its not against the rules, its not unfair, it's simply playing tactically.

It's like marines putting their landspeeders in seperate squads, or eldar and vypers, or tau and suits, or DE and transprots, or IG with sentinals, or orcs and buggies, and on, and on.

While it does create a little pickle for ya, it also makes it that much easier (as mentioned) to wipe his small little units off the board permanently. In CC, if you beat his whole team by 1 single wound, they must all test, and each must flee if they fail. So, for a CC style unit, you've actually got a pretty big advantage that he's just given you. Further, since he's grouped with the lords, it just cries out for templetes of death, barrage, blast, and ordinance fire. Kill lords, then wraiths. 5 units of shooting with each needing to kill one and only one model shouldn't have too hard a problem. If the lords die first, and then you wipe the wraiths, they don't get a wbb even with the spider on the board. Just a thought.

 

[Laplace]

Lets put it in terms that most can understand...

Its not cheese, its not against the rules, its not unfair, it's simply playing tactically.

It's like marines putting their landspeeders in seperate squads, or eldar and vypers, or tau and suits, or DE and transprots, or IG with sentinals, or orcs and buggies, and on, and on.

While it does create a little pickle for ya, it also makes it that much easier (as mentioned) to wipe his small little units off the board permanently. In CC, if you beat his whole team by 1 single wound, they must all test, and each must flee if they fail. So, for a CC style unit, you've actually got a pretty big advantage that he's just given you. Further, since he's grouped with the lords, it just cries out for templetes of death, barrage, blast, and ordinance fire. Kill lords, then wraiths. 5 units of shooting with each needing to kill one and only one model shouldn't have too hard a problem. If the lords die first, and then you wipe the wraiths, they don't get a wbb even with the spider on the board. Just a thought.

Well, it may be a just a tad bit cheesy, but I agree it's just plain smart.

The biggest plus is that you now have 3 scoring units instead of 1. Say you had three 40pt Raveners that you just keep in the back. That's three scoring units right there for 120 points! If the mission involved Seek and Destroy or having more scoring units in some way, you have a significant advantage.

 

[tarzen]

Well, it may be a just a tad bit cheesy, but I agree it's just plain smart.

The biggest plus is that you now have 3 scoring units instead of 1. Say you had three 40pt Raveners that you just keep in the back. That's three scoring units right there for 120 points! If the mission involved Seek and Destroy or having more scoring units in some way, you have a significant advantage.

Same holds true for all the units I mentioned. Many a time I've disputed a peice of terrain with a 50pt vyper after moving it into a corner on turn 6 with a fast move.

As to the cheese-not really the place (since I believe it doesn't exist), but each and every single army can do it with something. sentinal for 45, vyper for 50, landspeeder 50, ravager...

If you play with these frail sized units, you also will lose them to fire. A squad of vypers won't hold up as well as 3 squads of vypers, but 5 wraiths will hold up better than a squad of 2 and 3, as the leadership check wont happen for each casualty, and each squad won't have to test for man alone and be at a huge leadership penalty for cc if they lose.

As mentioned, the sacrifice for this is that you use up your squads in your FOC. If I could field 9 single vypers in a standard vanilla eldar that would be great, but for now, I have to give up my exarch delivery system (no biggy for me, don't like it anyways). Necrons loose thier scarabs (and speed on the scarabs if with a spider) and destroyers. Marines lose thier assault squads, and on and on. There are plus and minus to each position, just depends on your play style.

But if I were him, I'd play them split up. If I were you, I'd blast and templete him to death.

 

[LordCreampuff]

The main reason for splitting up units into minimum sizes is also for protection. I play both Tyranids and Necron and both armies benefit from splitting their units. I would always take two units of 3 & 2 destroyers over a single unit of 5 as it prevents all of them from being wiped out in a single turn of shooting. I typically split my heavy destroyers into groups of one. I also do this with my raveners with my Tyranids also.

I prefer units of one as they never have to make morale checks due to casualties.

There are times where people take the minimum squad size to maximize heavy weapons or special abilities and I feel this use plays against the balance of the game. However cheesy we may feel thee tactics are as long as no rules are borken all we can do is complain about them.

As to scoring units for victory points taking small units typically hurts more than it helps. Small units are more likely to award full points when they take wounds instead of 50% as they can be wiped out easier. Sure you can send multiple units to claim objectives on turn 6 but any seasoned player is already expecting this tactic. If they don't then they deserve the surprise as we all have at one time or another.

 

[tarzen]

There are times where people take the minimum squad size to maximize heavy weapons or special abilities and I feel this use plays against the balance of the game. However cheesy we may feel thee tactics are as long as no rules are borken all we can do is complain about them.

Sorry, a bit of a step side ways, but you feel it's cheese to min squads for guns but that it's perfectly ok to do it for protection? Cheesewiz man, cheese wiz. You're just as guilty of cheese as those you're complaining about.
So if I take a squad of 5 guardians and a platform to shoot at your 2 squads of ravaners, which is really the cheese? Not to even get into the points diff and how my guardians will get chewed to bits.

Just two sides of the same coin if you ask me. If you put a single vyper in a squad for protection it's the exact same thing as 2 squads of 5 guardians with 2 platforms instead of one squad of 18 with one platform. Again, a playstyle thing, but absolutely nothing to do with dairy. It's simply playing by the rules we have.
If you could field 12 singled oblits, I'm sure you would, just as I would field 12 starcannons w/o crew and a single gunner if I could. But then, after I'd shown that the army can work, I'd go back to playing a nearly all guardian horde army with minimum platforms. 5 platforms in 120 guardians ain't too bad, yet I hear cries of cheese all the time since I outnumber everyone (including some orcs=)

 

[Ostsol]

Small squads (of more than one model) for maximizing heavy weapons doesn't actually lend any additional protection, actually. . . It just makes it easier to force a morale test. If anything, it places higher emphasis on the first turn -- or rather, the first shots.

 

[tarzen]

Small squads (of more than one model) for maximizing heavy weapons doesn't actually lend any additional protection, actually. . . It just makes it easier to force a morale test. If anything, it places higher emphasis on the first turn -- or rather, the first shots.

agreed, but to call that cheese (to get more weapons) and then turn around and run min'ed squads to protect your squads from single units (by spliting fire into each seperate squad) just seems a bit hypocritical to me.

As to the min'd squads: you suffer a lot of problems, pin tests, casualty tests, cc tests, outnumbering wounds on fearless units, multiple break tests in CC, loss of scoring capability with only nominal wounds.

But you do gain some: splitting fire into multiple squads, protection from wrap around wounding, forcing priority checks for shooting, tying up units with one squad while the other still does it's thing, more scoring units, more units to place during deployment.

Again, comes down to playstyle. If it works for you, go for it.

As to if it's unfair or cheese, cheese is in the toes of the beholder. Me, I get called cheese for everything:
My guardians beat genestealers in cc with the help of a WL-cheese
My guardians outnumber greyknights-cheese
My starcannon kills marines-cheese (despite him having 5 asscans)
My vypers in single squads-cheese
My farseer mindwaring a librarian and killing him after having fortuned stopped 4 times in a row-cheese
My guardians having haywire grenades at 3pts each in a squad of 20-cheese
My banshees killing marines despite having the same WS and a really really crappy strength and toughness and crappy armour-cheese
My scorpions infiltrating in missions that allow, unlike every other army that get's to always infiltrate or deepstrike-cheese
My falcon that costs 200 bones, and has a bs of an orc with a targeter-cheese
My avatar that moves 6" a turn and still misses 1/3 cc attacks, and has a worse save than any demon in the game-cheese
My CTMs that cost 30pts and allow my skimmer to hide after shooting, unlike most every single tau unit/model-cheese

As to anything that anyone does, cheese is simply a whiners way of not tactically solving a problem. If you can't bring down a monolith go for phase out, if I have a ton of cc troops, stay away and outshoot me or take the objectives. Each and every army in the game has a specific weakness and a way to beat it in any game. If you plan a siren bomb army and I happen to have ctms and gun you down, that ain't cheese, that's being prepared. If I go all guardians and leave the singing spears at home and you go armoured company, guess what, I'm gonna get trounced, my bad.

Sorry again for meandering. Just trying to let ya know that it all boils down to perspective, and not everyone shares a common vantage point.

 

[LordCreampuff]

Sorry, a bit of a step side ways, but you feel it's cheese to min squads for guns but that it's perfectly ok to do it for protection? Cheesewiz man, cheese wiz. You're just as guilty of cheese as those you're complaining about.
So if I take a squad of 5 guardians and a platform to shoot at your 2 squads of ravaners, which is really the cheese? Not to even get into the points diff and how my guardians will get chewed to bits.

Just two sides of the same coin if you ask me. If you put a single vyper in a squad for protection it's the exact same thing as 2 squads of 5 guardians with 2 platforms instead of one squad of 18 with one platform. Again, a playstyle thing, but absolutely nothing to do with dairy. It's simply playing by the rules we have.
If you could field 12 singled oblits, I'm sure you would, just as I would field 12 starcannons w/o crew and a single gunner if I could. But then, after I'd shown that the army can work, I'd go back to playing a nearly all guardian horde army with minimum platforms. 5 platforms in 120 guardians ain't too bad, yet I hear cries of cheese all the time since I outnumber everyone (including some orcs=)

You misunderstood what I was saying, or more likely I failed to explain myself clearly. I have no problem with players taking the minimum number in a squad to get more heavy weapons as long as they're not doing it to take advantage of an anomoly in the codex. There are tactical decisions and powergaming decisions made when creating an army list. I will never fault anyone for making tactical decisions but powergaming ones can make the game less enjoyable for everyone.

I can easily make a Necron list with three monoliths with a lord that simply VoDs a squad to the far end of the board to prevent phase-out. It's within the rules of the game and not technically illegal but it wouldn't be fun to play against.

After reading your rebuttal I can honestly agree against the cries of cheese. I don't really believe there is such a thing. If it's within the rules then you should be able to do it. The problem is the rules aren't perfect. There are mispriced units and inconsistencies galore. Taking advantage of these is the crux of the problem. This game is about strategy and tactics, both when building your army and utilizing it. But this is a game to be enjoyed. If my opponent is taking advantage of inconsistencies in the rules instead of using tactics then it is no longer enjoyable and I will simply refuse to play against him.

 

[tarzen]

You misunderstood what I was saying, or more likely I failed to explain myself clearly. I have no problem with players taking the minimum number in a squad to get more heavy weapons as long as they're not doing it to take advantage of an anomoly in the codex. There are tactical decisions and powergaming decisions made when creating an army list. I will never fault anyone for making tactical decisions but powergaming ones can make the game less enjoyable for everyone.

I can easily make a Necron list with three monoliths with a lord that simply VoDs a squad to the far end of the board to prevent phase-out. It's within the rules of the game and not technically illegal but it wouldn't be fun to play against.

After reading your rebuttal I can honestly agree against the cries of cheese. I don't really believe there is such a thing. If it's within the rules then you should be able to do it. The problem is the rules aren't perfect. There are mispriced units and inconsistencies galore. Taking advantage of these is the crux of the problem. This game is about strategy and tactics, both when building your army and utilizing it. But this is a game to be enjoyed. If my opponent is taking advantage of inconsistencies in the rules instead of using tactics then it is no longer enjoyable and I will simply refuse to play against him.

Agreed. But with this stipulation, if I'm not having fun, whether its his interpretation of the rules, his style of play, or because he has a funky stank to him, I may choose to not play against him. These are only some of the things that make a game unfun to me, not necessarily winning (which I try to do every game except vs noobs)

As to the necrons, 3 monos aren't bad at all, try an all warrior army. 100+ necrons that get back up in a 2000pt game, oh, and have a lord with a res orb to effect 2-4 squads. Now that's just mean. I prefer when necron take big point units, mono's, destroyers, and the such, as it means less warriors and easier phase out. But that's me.