Post by Haight on Mar 9, 2017 13:04:16 GMT
Hey all,
So i wanted to voice my thoughts on theme lists. I hate them. Spam lists i don't hate so much as i have zero faith in buying into any spam list at all anymore.
So let me explain. I was an Infernal when theme lists idea came around, and i was opposed to them back then as while i liked the idea of "playing things in new ways!", i had a feeling it was going to devolve to very all or nothing mentality when it came to them. In Practice, theme lists tended to do one of two things functionally despite protestations to the contrary - exactly nothing (meaning the benefits were not worth the trade offs), or give a point / model / field advantage such that it translated onto the tabletop in a very meaningful and impactful way. There was almost no in between.
The other larger problem i had/have with theme lists is that if you're going to develop ways to make models "playable" in a way they weren't before, why not just make them flat out playable without the need for a mechanism that dies in between editions? This to me was the fatal flaw in the "best" Theme forces ; they took combinations of models that were not working in lots of cases, and made them work more optimally under the theme than anywhere else.
Unless of course the idea is to churn sales via an additional vector, which to me is both fairly cynical, and not a positive (which is why there was never a public listing of this as a reason, despite many suspicions it was a driving one).
Whether or not that was a real reason aside, here's a reason why i hate theme lists.
Using MK2 as a starting point, i'll use two offenders i bought into and got burned on: Wold War and Fist of Haalak. Now with WW, i didn't go 8+ watchers deep, i kept it to 4, because i actually liked Wold Guardians a lot in both look and play. Still, when MK3 came around and the fangs had been ripped right out of Bradigus, i was a little annoyed because his two signature spells both got extreme downgrades (synergy was still passable, Magic wards or whatever its called got nailed), his ability to pop forests everywhere was largely gone (and this was okay, frankly), inititally 1/4 of his battlegroup options could gain no benefit from his feat (though this was fixed), and in general it just had the overall appearance of a really hamfisted fix for what was in essence a hamfisted theme force running amok.
Okay, that stuff happens, sure i would have preferred a development deployment timeline for Brad that was not measured by a bell curve graph with data points reading "Almost total garbage", "Pants on head with pant legs lit aflame broken", "Pants still on head, but the fires on the legs are out now broken", "What the Firetruck, what in the actual Firetruck did you do to this caster", "Shelf".
Similarly, MK2 Fist clearly was a little over the top, but given the state of skorne ovarall, i think it wasn't ultimately too bad. It was one of very few high functioning Skorne lists, and could be a real bear for people to chew through if unprepared. Still, it could be dealt with, and did not rise to meta-bender, while it usually made a showing at big events, it was rare that it roflstomped through any of them, and it was one of a few non-snowflake Skorne builds. It was also massively expensive.
MK3 flips, and it was no longer possible to put my standard MK2 Fist list into a 75 point MK3 list. Even if it were possible, with the huge changes to 'phracts, and the state of skorne on the whole, it would hardly have been a worthwhile enterprise. I give them a lot of credit for revamping Skorne, that took a lot of guts. However, this was now the second "theme" list i bought into and the second time that Theme lists did not translate across edition lines.
Massively less egregiously, Operating Theatre with my cephalex only necessitated the buying of a second unit of overlords, which i found palatable.
I am sure there are others : Theme lists have had a checkered history (and i'm sure i'm not going to get all of them here), but MK2 Will of the Nine Voices, Body and Soul, Elemental Evolutionism, etc. All of these things have created an extremely negative impression of theme forces to me as a trap to be avoided if they result in skewed purchasing habits, because on a timeline, sometimes not even that long, they're going to be either lessened in effectiveness if not outright invalidated (that second one is much, much rarer, to be fair). When it comes to Theme forces, my trust got eroded by a string of really bad experiences I guess is a good tag line.
And this isn't even touching Spam lists, which is a whole other topic... MK3 has been really rough on those. The Kara Sloan Hunter x million boogeyman never really materialized to the level feared, but i know people that bought into that. Mad Dog spam. Griffon Spam. Etc. I mean, i just have a really hard time justifying abnormal purchase habits due to Theme or Caster Specific incentive to take a certain model type in droves because I have almost no faith that an adjustment isn't coming very soon.
Theme lists frankly I wish would be handled differently than they have in the past (get rid of Free Models or Free Points), and I'm not sure what the answer to Spam Shock is.... I do give PP a lot of credit for coming out and saying 'Hey, Spam is part of our design and its not going away'. At least with Spam lists you sort of have an official caveat emptor on the books now. If you spam you know you're risking it. I have no idea what the fix is with Spam lists, because they aren't going away, neither is FA:U for this edition (though... i will be very curious to see what eventual MK4 brings...). I get it on the business front, but on the consumer front, the tabletop advantage is no longer worth it for me after a couple issues.
(Full disclosure: I should probably note that I bought into Fist very late in MK2, probably 4 months before the edition change announcement. Wold I was into for a little longer. This may have bearing on temporal arguments people might make like "well you got 3 years out of it" or whatever. That is potentially a very valid broad counter-argument, though in my case, not literally true. )
So how about it ? How do you feel about Theme and Spam lists ? Love 'em ? Hate 'em ? Why or why not ? Are you still buying into Theme and Spam lists and if so, why or why not ?
So i wanted to voice my thoughts on theme lists. I hate them. Spam lists i don't hate so much as i have zero faith in buying into any spam list at all anymore.
So let me explain. I was an Infernal when theme lists idea came around, and i was opposed to them back then as while i liked the idea of "playing things in new ways!", i had a feeling it was going to devolve to very all or nothing mentality when it came to them. In Practice, theme lists tended to do one of two things functionally despite protestations to the contrary - exactly nothing (meaning the benefits were not worth the trade offs), or give a point / model / field advantage such that it translated onto the tabletop in a very meaningful and impactful way. There was almost no in between.
The other larger problem i had/have with theme lists is that if you're going to develop ways to make models "playable" in a way they weren't before, why not just make them flat out playable without the need for a mechanism that dies in between editions? This to me was the fatal flaw in the "best" Theme forces ; they took combinations of models that were not working in lots of cases, and made them work more optimally under the theme than anywhere else.
Unless of course the idea is to churn sales via an additional vector, which to me is both fairly cynical, and not a positive (which is why there was never a public listing of this as a reason, despite many suspicions it was a driving one).
Whether or not that was a real reason aside, here's a reason why i hate theme lists.
Using MK2 as a starting point, i'll use two offenders i bought into and got burned on: Wold War and Fist of Haalak. Now with WW, i didn't go 8+ watchers deep, i kept it to 4, because i actually liked Wold Guardians a lot in both look and play. Still, when MK3 came around and the fangs had been ripped right out of Bradigus, i was a little annoyed because his two signature spells both got extreme downgrades (synergy was still passable, Magic wards or whatever its called got nailed), his ability to pop forests everywhere was largely gone (and this was okay, frankly), inititally 1/4 of his battlegroup options could gain no benefit from his feat (though this was fixed), and in general it just had the overall appearance of a really hamfisted fix for what was in essence a hamfisted theme force running amok.
Okay, that stuff happens, sure i would have preferred a development deployment timeline for Brad that was not measured by a bell curve graph with data points reading "Almost total garbage", "Pants on head with pant legs lit aflame broken", "Pants still on head, but the fires on the legs are out now broken", "What the Firetruck, what in the actual Firetruck did you do to this caster", "Shelf".
Similarly, MK2 Fist clearly was a little over the top, but given the state of skorne ovarall, i think it wasn't ultimately too bad. It was one of very few high functioning Skorne lists, and could be a real bear for people to chew through if unprepared. Still, it could be dealt with, and did not rise to meta-bender, while it usually made a showing at big events, it was rare that it roflstomped through any of them, and it was one of a few non-snowflake Skorne builds. It was also massively expensive.
MK3 flips, and it was no longer possible to put my standard MK2 Fist list into a 75 point MK3 list. Even if it were possible, with the huge changes to 'phracts, and the state of skorne on the whole, it would hardly have been a worthwhile enterprise. I give them a lot of credit for revamping Skorne, that took a lot of guts. However, this was now the second "theme" list i bought into and the second time that Theme lists did not translate across edition lines.
Massively less egregiously, Operating Theatre with my cephalex only necessitated the buying of a second unit of overlords, which i found palatable.
I am sure there are others : Theme lists have had a checkered history (and i'm sure i'm not going to get all of them here), but MK2 Will of the Nine Voices, Body and Soul, Elemental Evolutionism, etc. All of these things have created an extremely negative impression of theme forces to me as a trap to be avoided if they result in skewed purchasing habits, because on a timeline, sometimes not even that long, they're going to be either lessened in effectiveness if not outright invalidated (that second one is much, much rarer, to be fair). When it comes to Theme forces, my trust got eroded by a string of really bad experiences I guess is a good tag line.
And this isn't even touching Spam lists, which is a whole other topic... MK3 has been really rough on those. The Kara Sloan Hunter x million boogeyman never really materialized to the level feared, but i know people that bought into that. Mad Dog spam. Griffon Spam. Etc. I mean, i just have a really hard time justifying abnormal purchase habits due to Theme or Caster Specific incentive to take a certain model type in droves because I have almost no faith that an adjustment isn't coming very soon.
Theme lists frankly I wish would be handled differently than they have in the past (get rid of Free Models or Free Points), and I'm not sure what the answer to Spam Shock is.... I do give PP a lot of credit for coming out and saying 'Hey, Spam is part of our design and its not going away'. At least with Spam lists you sort of have an official caveat emptor on the books now. If you spam you know you're risking it. I have no idea what the fix is with Spam lists, because they aren't going away, neither is FA:U for this edition (though... i will be very curious to see what eventual MK4 brings...). I get it on the business front, but on the consumer front, the tabletop advantage is no longer worth it for me after a couple issues.
(Full disclosure: I should probably note that I bought into Fist very late in MK2, probably 4 months before the edition change announcement. Wold I was into for a little longer. This may have bearing on temporal arguments people might make like "well you got 3 years out of it" or whatever. That is potentially a very valid broad counter-argument, though in my case, not literally true. )
So how about it ? How do you feel about Theme and Spam lists ? Love 'em ? Hate 'em ? Why or why not ? Are you still buying into Theme and Spam lists and if so, why or why not ?
