Let's Talk 'Pivot & Sweep'

Sorry terminology upsets you so, but i don't see it as that big of a deal. Now if you'd like to sell your own terminology start marketing.

I'm more interested in discussing Khador pairing design. We can refer to your hard hitting list as Grey Goose and your cover list as Dos Equis if that's more soothing.

Right, tea in hand.

Basically, this is a very complex tactical game that we're involved in, and I dislike this continual effort to dumb it down to catchphrases and simple philosophies. I feel like you are intentionally limiting your own listbuilding by doing so.

And on top of that, I find the idea that covering the weakness of a list with a different list is inherently flawed. A pivot works in pokemon because you can switch them in. It doesn't work in WM/H because you can't. You don't get to see which of the two lists your opponent is going to play, so you end up in the whole list-chicken situation. If you over-specialise your lists, sometimes you'll just call the coin-flip wrong and lose.

Look at the examples you've given. All of them except V2 AC are spam lists. You could also call them 'question lists' if you wanted to use another bit of terminology I dislike. What do you do if your opponent has an answer to your spam/question? Chances are, you lose, particularly if your opponent has flexible lists.

The exception there is V2 AC; I would actually argue that it's Armoured Corps in general. I believe the reason that it's so popular is not that it 'asks questions' or anything; it's that Armoured Corps doesn't insta-lose to much. It's a melee list with really good shooting. It's a slow list that's fast enough to not get jammed out of scenario. It's an infantry list that is immune to most infantry hate by dint of being multi-wound.

So many of its weaknesses can be answered by list options instead of casters, which means it has a very wide stable of casters that can run it.

That's also the reason I think WGK is a better jack theme than Jaws: The weaknesses of Khador jack spam is that they're slow, liable to get swarmed, and we tend to be light on focus. WGK gives you both juniors, incredible infantry hate, and advanced moves. On top of that it makes your caster even harder to kill.

So as to the actual topic of pivots and sweepers; don't. Just make flexible lists. Spam might make you win some matches before the models even hit the table, but you'll lose some in the same way.

I genuinely believe you'll do better if you try to cover weaknesses of a list with the list itself. Some lists will always be stronger than others at certain things, but as long as you remove as many auto-lose conditions as you can you'll do fine.