Topic: 2k tourney that was called cheesy please help

[adalbrecht_lefferhof]

At a tournament I played earlier this year I fielded this following army. Of my 5 opponents (drew 1, won 1 lost 3) 2 of the 3 that beat me claimed this army was unbalanced and cheesy. Being my first tournament ever I had tried to go for a fairly neutral list without monsters, stanks etc. It looked ok to me, so can anyone who is a regular tournament player point out anything that may be considered bad form please.

Lords
190 - General of the Empire: AoMI, Holy Relic, IoM, Great Weapon, Pistol

Heroes
130 - Battle Wizard: L2, RoP
112 - Warrior Priest: Barded Horse, Great Weapon, Heavy Armour
128 - Warrior Priest: Great Weapon, Heavy Armour, Doomfire Ring

Core
279 - 29 Spearmen: Full Command, Shields, 9 Halberdiers, 5 Handgunners
279 - 29 Spearmen: Full Command, Shields, 9 Halberdiers, 5 Handgunners
254 - 24 Swordsmen: Full Command, 9 Free Company, 5 Handgunners
115 - 5 Knights

Special
100 - Great Cannon
100 - Great Cannon
75  -  Mortar
114 - 5 Pistoliers: Musician, Champion w/repeater pistol

Rare
115 - Helstorm

I fielded the General in the Swordsmen, a wizard with 1 spearmen unit, the foot priest in the other and the mounted priest in the knights or pistoliers depending on the battle. Any help as to why this might not be considered balanced for a tourney would be appreciated

[cisse]

Unbalanced? Cheesy? Huh don't understand that at all, it's in fact a very nice and balanced list. Lots of infantry (not even all swordsmen!), no STank, not even an AL on WA... Shooting isn't too much either, you didn't go for the artillery+knights combo, and even your magic phase is very light. In short, your list has none of the builds that are typical for a hard tournament army, and is indeed very friendly. What did they call cheesy about this?

Anyway, in short, the problem lies with those morons, not with your list. It's fine.

[adalbrecht_lefferhof]

nobody had specified exactly what was cheesy about and we were quite rushed so I never got a chance to catch up with them and ask, I thought perhaps 4 artillery pieces and 2 wp + wizard was considered a bit much.

[Dihenydd]

nobody had specified exactly what was cheesy about and we were quite rushed so I never got a chance to catch up with them and ask, I thought perhaps 4 artillery pieces and 2 wp + wizard was considered a bit much.

I hear this whinge a lot too, although its actually rather fair, its the 'perception' of cheese with all those WM and spells AND you still get 3 blocks.  Yet they never seem to take it back after they win.  Its just inexperienced players.  For a tourney army I'd say its a little anti-cheese in actuality.

[Perambulator]

I would agree with cisse and Dihenydd. I think they were just trying to rile you up. In fact you didn't even give one of the blocks a banner as allowed with the general and your knights don't even have a musician.

[dabber]

I see the cheese argument, but it depends on the scale of cheese.  Are the infantry blocks expected to accomplish anything?  Are they serious capable of accomplishing anything?  Is victory against everything entirely linked to the artillery?  Spending all your specials and rares on shooting is an obvious red flag to me.  You've got one open, which helps, and pistoliers instead of outriders helps too (pistoliers move which is more interesting), but it still might be anti-combat.

That said, I wouldn't say anything bad about this list.  I'm in a relatively friendly list part of the world and I'm willing to mark down comp scores more easily than most people, but I wouldn't mark this down.  No Popemobile, no archlector, no speculum, no STANK, medium magic, ~500 pts in shooting, few knights ... it isn't rude.

By my definition of "unbalanced", there is absolutely no way to apply that here.  You act in all phases, you aren't obviously committed to any one thing, you don't have obvious rock-paper-scissors matchups.  "unbalanced" means a list is "rude", but "balanced" does not always mean "nice".

[Folken]

This is a fairly balanced list though IMHO a little light on cavalry.  It makes high use of the Empire special rules which they don't like.  But that is the whole point of playing any army so nuts to them.  Show me a Deep Thought(Brentonia) player who doesn't use lance formation or High Elves that don't make use of ASF then we can talk.

[Perambulator]

None of our artillery are by themselves game changing. Yes, they are all powerful, but a cannon can only do so much damage and a single helstorm isn't really playing the odds either - as dabber noted, he still has one rare slot he didn't fill. This list requires the infantry blocks to win, because there's nothing else to seal the deal. The pistoliers are not the most powerful ranged attack unit in the game either and I'm not sure they qualify as "shooting" units. The magic is strong but isn't all that powerful either. This is a balanced list with many drawbacks that could be improved on. His opponents were not giving realistic assessments. That or they were trying to psych themselves out or make adalbrecht_lefferhof feel overconfident.

[Gneisenau]

The list is fine. You even included a General of the Empire.

Your opponents were idiots who had too little egos to lose like men.

Do you have their lists, by chance?

[Folken]

Of my 5 opponents (drew 1, won 1 lost 3) 2 of the 3 that beat me claimed this army was unbalanced and cheesy.

Your opponents were idiots who had too little egos to lose like men.

They whined when they won?

[Gneisenau]

Whoops, good point.

Guess I'm just annoyed about the inflationary accusation of something being "cheesy".

[adalbrecht_lefferhof]

cheers for the ideas, I am glad my original thoughts were fairly accurate and not too cheesy. One thing I hadn't realised was that filling special and rares or plenty of artillery would be seen that way.

Yes, the only two that made any comments were the ones that beat me, a Bret player (who demanded to read my list and army book before we started) who claimed cheese after we deployed and a chaos player (9 chosen knights of khorne + exalted champion) who claimed cheese after the battle, i suspect that was because his exalted daemon thing of khorne ran towards my cannons and got splattered with one hit.

I cannot remember the lists exactly but I think the bret had 3x 9 KoTR, pegasus lord, BSB, 2x Damsels, 2x 5 PK and some other stuff, each lance had at least 1 character in it and the damsels made it hard to target them with magic, the chaos player had a unit of 9 Chosen knights of khorne + exalted champion, 2x 20 warriors, a sorcerer and some ogres/trolls can't remember which. Neither of the lists was particularly nice to play against.

[Stonecutter]

I agree with everyone else - the problem is your opponent(s) and not your list. Perhaps next time your should go with 2 stanks, AL Popemobile, 3 wizards with bound items + RP, huge block of flagellants, some IC knights, outriders and minimal core (all shooters, of course). At least then they could justifiably say cheese!!

[Folken]

This is why my gaming group refers to Brentonia as Deep Thought.  The only tactic I see from them is just direct charging the front.    stupid point and click armies  Next they are crying and begging the lady to stop the two handed sword of the empire elite.  Best fun I ever had against Deep Thought was they hit the front of my greatswords who held naturally then got flanked on my turn by a unit of 10 flaggelants.  Something ever so pleasant about pompous knights being routed by soldiers and crazy folk.

[Von Kurst]

I will add my vote to the your list is not cheese faction.

Welcome to the world of competitive gaming where players seek to win through every means.  If making you feel bad about your choices makes you tentative during your phase, so much the better for them.  I have a regular opponent who begins complaining about his army's weaknesses during deployment and doesn't stop until victory points are counted.  His victories sound the same as his defeats.  But lots of players will pull their punches because he has it so hard.

Take things with a grain of salt.  You play Empire for god's sake, our cheese isn't too hard to counter.

js

[Finlay]

you use a freaking GotE, no popemobile and no stank, how is this even remotely cheesy?

[caseyc]

Your army is about as far from cheese as empire tourney armies get. Anyone who calls cheese on this list is inexperienced or just plain retarded (or both).

[cal von random]

To be honest this is actually a fairly weak list compared to what Ive seen at tourneys, ah well. I applaud you for not using the Stink and his poped out buddy.

[Pavano]

This is one of the best Empire tournament list I have ever seen. Not cheesy but fluffy and strong. You are playing against the wrong people.

 

P.

[Acadian]

not cheesy at all.