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)
Call me a resolutioneer or whatever, but I am not messing around with my 1 book per month thing! Here's the latest, fresh off the press ( Dude, that's not how e books work, they...like... whatever ) a book on model assembly. 
