The complete guide to winning (losing) better

The store is running a very funky tournament in February, and because the french article I wrote about it is pretty nice ( stay modest, frenchie), here’s the translated version, along with a more detailed explanation of the rules.

The tournament :

Here’s my Army, Loser!

At the beginning of the round, you swap your list and army with your opponent. He is forced to play yours, and vice versa. The idea is then to make a truly terrible list. A couple of rules for ease of play :

1- You will be asked to leave if you are not careful handling other player’s models. This is the most important rule.

2- 1490-1500 points, single CAD comp. This is to keep things simple for everyone through list building and playing with a foreign- and bad- army.

3- You cannot make an auto lose army. Something that can’t have models on the board turn one for example.

4- You must have a clear and printed list. Again, this is to keep everything simple for everyone.

5- No proxies. Yes, if the only army you own is the eldar Spider spam, this tournament might not be for you. If you collect Space Marines since 1992, chances are you have the perfect models to make an awesome (terrible) list.

Now, the fun part : Building your truly terrible list. Readers of this blog know that I am somewhat an expert in the build weird random armies genre, as such, here’s a few things to help you make the most (less) out of your list!

The first thing to note is that units that seem bad are not sometime in fact bad. HAHAHA, I’ll give give him 60 tactical marines with no weapons. Looks bad, but what you are giving him is 12 Objective secured units that most likely have a better statline and gun than the crap models he’s giving you. HA! I’ll gove him scouts then. Same problem, but now you’ve given him outflank and infiltrate on 12 obsec units. DAMMIT! Don’t even get me started on giving your opponent psychic powers…

The second thing is point sinks. This is the key here : units that are sometimes ignored in regular game because they take up so much points. Spending 60 points for 2 thunderhammers on a space marine sarge that most likely will never make it in combat sure looks nice. Now if you can do this to the whole squad…

So with this in mind, here’s 4 top contender for best (worst) lists, and a few ideas using other books.

Anti-nergy Daemons

Demons have a lot of synergy between them. What they also have is rules that prevent them for interacting with each other. Here’s a fun list :

Daemon Prince of Nurgle, Grotti the nurgling, no other wargear. Possibly 5 lesser rewards, that’s a lot of points for not much results. So this guy moves 6, can’t run and gives -1T to all non-nurgle models around him. He’s basically Amumu from LoL, crying alone in his corner of the board.

Herald of Khorne, no wargear. Warlord. Now the best part, the warlord is a T3, 2W model that can’t be in a unit, because we won’t have other khorne units for him to join.

Daemons troops are all pretty good or at least decent. 2X 3 Nurglings is our best bet here.

Good (bad) stuff : 60 Furries, 3 canons of Khorne, Fiends of Slanesh, in small units.

Crap-a-manders

Classic Space Marines, we’re using salamaders because we won’t make use of their chapter tactic, except maybe getting flamer-ed to the face. The magic number here is 9, because it takes up a lot of point and can’t combat squad.

HQ- Captain, plasma pistol, Melta Bomb. We want to run 2 of this guy, he’s the best (worst)

Troops : 2x 9 Space Marines, Sarge with Melta Bomb, Plasma Pistol and combi-plasma.

Heavy : Our point fillers are devastators, because we can run them the same as out troops, but they don’t have objective secured. Much better.

Heavy-hitters (not)

Command Squad and 9 Vanguard Veterans without Jump Packs. You can go Plasma Pistol and thnderhammer, or 2x Thunderhammer per model on everysingle dude here. Guys that walk 6 and run. And cost 70+ points each.

Pale Grey Legion

CSM players have been whinning for years that their book was the worst, well now’s the chance to share that pain with others. A lot like our Space Marines List, however CSM do it better (worst) because they have more fun options.

Note that every model that can do so will take Mark of Slaanesh and Veterans of the long War. Because overall it’s a lot of points and not really anything deece rulewise.

Lord, plasma pistol, Mark of Khorne, Melta Bomb, VotLW. He’s the MVP of this list, so we’ll run 2. Mark of Khorne means he can’t be with any unit from our army except the other lord.

Troops : Classic Chaos space marines, minimal numbers, with plasma pistols. We want to max out the points on these but take as few as possible, because obsec, and we have a squad that does exactly like this, but better (worse)

Havocs. The exact same unit as the troops, but not Obsec, hallelujathankyoujesus MVP again.

Our best (worst) unit : Chosen. Much like the vanguard veterans, these guy can take basically infinite wargear that doesn’t do much of dudes walking. Spend as much on these guys as you have remaining.

Wargear Enclave

Tau take the top spot for truly awesome (terrible) list. Tau are annoying because they have OP options on every model. The good thing about this, is that they also have terrible option on every models. SO WE WILL FIELD ALL THE OPTIONS.

Now the best wargear in the whole book is a Velocity tracker – it gives Skyfire for 20 pts. Why is it the best option? Because no model with this will have a gun.

Commander : Velocity Tracker, EarthCast Pilot, That thing that gives extra dispel dice. A lot of point that give 0 value ( we’re assuming we don’t get to play psykers, and either case, the anti-psyker upgrade is bad at stopping powers anyway)

Elites : Crisis Bodyguard. 9 not scoring crisis with infinite wargear and no guns. THE BEST (worst) unit.

Troops : 2x 1 Crisis, no gun, velocity tracker.

Another thing that’s great is Markerlights, as they boost Tau shooting. Good thing we don’t have any, this means we can play a unit of Pathfinders that will do diddly-squat.

Vespid are kind of nice, but they happen to have a pretty decent gun in a bad format. Close Quarter crisis units with shooty upgrades are better imo.

Some other fun stuff

Astra Militarum are hard to field, because 50 guardsmen is still nasty. However, shout out to the 15 Sentinels with a lot of wargear and no range weapon.

GK and Sisters are also weird, because with their lack of options, they can’t make really bad armies. They even suck at being bad.

Eldars are also one of those army that event with the bad stuff, they are still bretty decent. Banshees are nasty because thay have mobility and decent CC ( in a land of bad cc units ), their troop choices are not terrible and the Wraithlord won’t be wounded by most weapons in a bad list so it’s tricky.

Orks : Besides taking 120+ points Fast Attack Trukks, Orks don’t have much truly terrible stuff. The worst units are standard orks with no nobs, or nobs with no wargear ( you can’t point sink in these becasue they will reach combat eventually )

Dark Eldars, another weird army because even by spamming their best (worse) unit, 60 whych with no transport, you have too many points to spend elswhere. Even a Talos at T7 is going to be nasty to deal with. Weaponless Scourges are an option but they don’t take a lot of points either.

Nids are also a weird choice, because even by spamming their best (worst) unit, the pyrovore, you don’t get much points filled, and these dudes are actually decent at killing bad troops – something we are very likely to play. The other problem is that even with bad options, monstrous creatures with T6 and 6W are a pain. I would however try to squeeze is as many troops with no synapse as possible, just to see if it works (poorly).

Now, may the least terrible man win!

If you have a truly devastating wombo-combo I might've missed, be sure to drop a line below, I'm always looking at new ways to win (lose)