My philosiphy on list tailoring

Ok i have been on some fourms and this is what i know think about list tailoring.

first of all i have found every where to be conflicted some support it some hate it i for one think it is ok to list tailor A LITTLE, first of all lets look at it from a fluff perspective. Every general in history worth a grain of salt had some sort of scouting force, letting him know what he was facing. Say commander jacks force sent scouts to find out what kind of army bill had. the scouts say bill has lots of tanks a small amount of infantry. That is what the scout saw he was not able to see well enough to identify the kinds of tanks, and he could be wrong altogether, the scout being wrong represents your opponent changing armies at the last second or retreating and not facing you at all. (family difficulties car breaking down etc etc). so commander bill says while we need to stay balanced, you never know if you could have just screwed up scouting but i will take you word for it and make a few modifications. This could represent you making a minor change you have a balanced guard force but instead of taking 3 auto cannons you take 3 las cannons. but the general would be foolish to change it all because the scout could be wrong. ex bob took 3 lascannons after finding out he was facing a mech army he took 18 then he found out his opponent could not make it so he instead was facing a gaunt horde nid army. My example is i am facing greg on wensday he is playing foot guard i will not make the huge change of making my battlesuits anti infintry i will keep them anti meq. because greg might not show and i might have to play toms necrons.


in short i chose to list tailor a little

if anyone has an argument ontridicting me please post it.

You have a good argument Ben. I don't see a huge problem with taking gear or units you feel would be useful against opponent X.

The way i do it though is: i pick a theme/unit i want to base my army around. (ex foot guard). I research the stregnths and weaknesses (lots of guns/squishy units). Next i try to maximize my strengths and counter my weaknesses. (i take lots of heavy weapons and create a general tactic to protect my units from possible death). Once i have a core list made up i ask some peeps what they think of the list to find out if i missed something in my planning stage (should take power weapons in guard mobs, commisars prevent losing 30 men to overrun, etc). Now i rewrite my list using the thoughts about what is going to be my weaknesses once again.

And thats it. If you haven't noticed, i never once considered my next opponent. I consider all possible threats to my army and create a plan to deal with them. With my method, i can play 3 or 4 different games with the same list and i've likely thought of a way to deal with possible threats.

Just my thoughts on this argument.

I agree with greg, when making lists I tend to pick units for their role, to increase the strengths or decrease the weaknesses of the list. I generally start with a core theme and then fill out the rest of the points with units I need to support the core of units I want to play. Example, I LOVE robots, kans and dreads for orks, so I'll add as many kans and dreads as my force org allows, now I think, man those units need some support, I need a shoebox full of boyz to hold objectives and I need some long range fire power while I force march across the table with my close combat horde of robotic creations.

I never think, well ben is going to play tau with those quick and punishing tanks, I should use bikes and trukk nobz to hunt down his tanks while I have snikrot sneak up on his gun line from behind and outflank 2 units of defcopta's to catch his slipperly ass suits... and then add in troops with whatever points I can spare. That would be tailoring.

A more relaxed version of tailoring is say I'm going up against space marines so I take two full units of tank busta's to deal with any armoured threats like land raiders, but then for my next game I'm going up against randy's nids where my tank busta's are more likely to be used as hive tyrant tooth paste, so I instead swap out the units for burna boyz in the hopes that I can cut swaths of stealers and gaunts out of my way.

I find option 2 acceptable and intelligent, I find option 1 is not fun because the theme of the list isn't there, it feels more like a random assortments of counter units, and counter counter units.

tom i agrre with option 2 tailor a little but NOT a lot

I would agree on the subject, its ok to have the core of your list set and tailor the last few heavy/special weapons based off of opposing army...

I myself dont like feilding melta over plasma vs Tyranids, but tend to prefer melta most of the rest of the time.

Its another thing completely to come with 2-3 full 2000 point lists ready; one based off of each opponent you plan to face

I have 1 list I can play (due to limitations of models at the moment), but this will change. Then I will list tailor like crazy (but not really). I look forward to the day that I don't have to field a ton of armour to field my guard in a decent sized game. That day coincides with my desire to paint another 60+ guardsmen.