Theoryhammer Challenge - Dreadful Focus!

[MaltonNecromancer]

Right, so we all know that every codex has some utterly dreadful units, weapons, and bits. Stuff that we never, ever take, because why on Earth would you?

Herein lies the Theoryhammer Challenge: you must create an army list, optimised to either 1500 or 2000 points (whichever you feel is best). It may include as much spam as you wish; you can repeat units ad infinitum (or until your points run out). It must be competetive, and you must factor in ways that it deals with:

1.) Horde lists.
2.) Mech lists.
3.) Deathstar units.

It must also have a Dreadful Focus. Now, what this means is that the entire army must be built around a dreadful thing chosen from the list below; that doesn't mean you build a competitive list and throw in a single dreadful thing as an afterthought. No, the dreadful thing must be core to your strategies and the army itself. Now, if the dreadful thing is an anti-infantry weapon, you must have an anti-mech thing set-up... but you still have to include a lot of the dreaful anti-infantry weapon in question - it must be THE key component of your anti-infantry units!

Difficult? Therein lies why this is a challenge

So, onto the Dreadful Foci... (And yes, these are primarily subjective - not all of them are truly awful, they're often just units that are sub-optimal/too expensive, but you get the idea...) Oh, and if I've missed any potential dreadful units, please feel free to include them below.

Marines:
Vanguard Veterans.
Honour Guard.
Flamers.

Grey Knights:
Fully kitted-out Dreadknight (Teleporter, at least two additional weapons one of which MUST be a Psilencer- guns or assault weapons)
Solodins (Single Paladin "squads")
Psilencers
Incinerators.

Imperial Guard:
Ogryns.
Conscripts.
Flamers.
Grenade Launchers.

Dark Eldar:
Court of the Archon.
Dais of Destruction.
Mandrakes.
Shredders.

Orks:
Gretchin.

Tyranids:
Lictors.
Pyrovores.
Biovores.

etc...

[SonicPara]

This is a hilarious idea and I'm sure many surprisingly strong lists will come out of it though I do have a suggestion; under Grey Knights switch Incinerators for Psilencers. Incinerators are far more useful, especially a super cheap way to boost the killing power/staying power of assaulting GKTs.

[MaltonNecromancer]

Ooo, I had forgotten all about Psilencers! Completely dreadful! Changes made!

As for Incinerators, you are quite correct... but you never hear about them (as Psycannons are stronger multi-purpose weapons), thus, I feel they should remain. With them, it's more about them being overshadowed, rather than useless.

[Denzark]

MN reckon most people would cheat themselves on this. The fluff beasts will use them already, the WAACs will do what you said not to - competitive with one dreadful unit in it.

[MaltonNecromancer]

Ah, the WAAC are small fish; we throw them back in.

Let's see what people produce before we criticise.

[SotonShades]

Don't forget wierdboys for Orks. I'd also suggest Shokk attak gunz as well. I love them, but I've yet to see one in a tournament list that didn't sit at the bottom of the table all day.

That said, in both cases, you'd only be taking 2, so it's hardly building an army around them :P

Either way, I have wine tasting at work tonight, so I'll get right on it when drunk and see what I come up with

[AbusePuppy]

Pfff, that's easy. I can write two of those lists off the top of my head.

2000pts
1 Draigo
1 Grand Master (Psychotroke, Rad, MC Sword)
5 Purifiers (2 Psycannon) (Psyback)
5 Purifiers (2 Psycannon) (Psyback)
5 Purifiers (2 Psycannon) (Psyback)
1 Paladin
1 Paladin
1 Paladin
1 Paladin
1 Paladin
1 Paladin
5 Interceptors (2 Psycannon)
5 Interceptors (2 Psycannon)
1 Psyfleman
1 Psyfleman

I think that's a little under, so you could buy some fancy stuff for someone. Draigo and the GM pass out special rules to everybody (Scout or scoring to Interceptors, scoring to Dreads, whatever to Purifiers) and keep on the board at all times casting Psychic Communion to keep the Paladins off the board until Turn 5 rolls around, at which point they DS onto myriad objectives and try to claim everything. You can also last minute score/contest with Interceptors, and the rest of the army is just keeping them busy until that critical turn rolls around. I'm sure the list could be improved on, but the concept is there.
Horde Lists: Awesome grenades, Purifiers, and general Grey Knight shooting will easily deal with them.
Mech lists: A bit light on AT, but only by comparison. We still have nine S6, forty S7, and eight TL S8 shots.
Deathstars: Both Draigo and the GM can be pretty fierce against most of them, the former on pure stats, the latter because of his grenades. Force Weapons in general will also wreck a lot of deathstars, especially ones that rely on having wound allocation games. And, of course, when the Paladins drop, they need to be in five or six places at once.

1500
1 Tervigon (Catalyst)
3 Hive Guard
3 Hive Guard
3 Hive Guard
10 Termagants
1 Tervigon (Catalyst, Regen)
1 Harpy (HVC, Regen)
3 Biovores
3 Biovores
3 Biovores

Biovores are actually fairly dangerous to disembarked troops, especially non-MEQ ones. So you take all the Hive Guard you can to get people out of their stupid metal boxes and then you bomb them to death with spore mines. The Harpy helps keep tanks silent and can provide cover to the Tervigons in a pinch. (Tervis are basically just there to score objectives, because you still need to do that.)
Hordes: Hahahahahahahahahaha. Twelve large blasts per turn, most of them Barrage, will wreck most horde armies in short order.
Mech: Well, this is about as good as Tyranids ever get. At 1500, nine HG + Harpy should be able to at least control some of the enemy armor.
Deathstars: If Nobz and other multiwound tend to hate Hive Guard; otherwise, you can try and scatter Spore Mines in front of them and use those plus Termagants to block charges. You're pretty much playing the attrition game here.

I'm not going to even bother doing IG Flamers because the CCS/PCS with 2x or 4x Flamers in it is a pretty standard thing these days.

Shredders in DE are something you take on 5man squads because what else are you going to give them? Blasters are expensive and shorter range. It's a "good enough" gun that maybe gets you a casualty or two when you disembark some guys in a tight formation. You only have so many Splinter Cannons, you gotta be careful what aims at what.

Mandrakes and Court are likewise entirely useable, they just need armies built around them. As soon as the 'Drakes have a Pain Token, they become reasonable at shooting and are REALLY hard to kill (3+ cover, 5++, FNP). The Court can be pretty strong in melee if you focus on the Slyths and Ur-Ghouls.

Also if you were trying to pick "bad" units, you missed Techmarines (BA and SM), every kind of Blood Claw, Land Speeder Storms, Rippers/Sky-Slashers, Deathstrike Missiles, several of the henchmen. etc. And that's only from the 5E codices

[faolan]

I can't participate in this - calling flamers for Marines or Guard dreadful is like saying that a 2+ armour save for 5 points is terrible, or that having a well painted army is a bad thing :P

[darkeldardenny]

170 pts Archon: shadow blade combat drugs, huskblade, soul trap, phantasm grenade launcher
225 pts Court 3 sslyth, 1 ur-ghuls, 2 medusae, 1 lhamaean Raider Flicker

146 pts 3x Trueborn: 3x blasters, Venom: 2x Cannon
146 pts 3x Trueborn: 3x blasters, Venom: 2x Cannon
146 pts 3x Trueborn: 3x blasters, Venom: 2x Cannon

175 pts 10x Warriors: Blaster, Cannon, Raider Flicker
175 pts 10x Warriors: Blaster, Cannon, Raider Flicker
175 pts 10x Warriors: Blaster, Cannon, Raider Flicker
175 pts 10x Warriors: Blaster, Cannon, Raider Flicker

78 pts 3 reavers: Heat Lance,

115 pts Ravager: Flicker
115 pts Ravager: Flicker
115 pts Ravager: Flicker

Total
1996

Horde: The court has the medusae with the eye burst and ssylyth to try to weaken units before they charge. If its horde then there aren't alot of tanks so DL start dropping troops. Good amount of splinter weaponry to deal.
Mech: DL and blasters. Court runs down things that pop out.
Deathstar: DL and blasters focus fire on unit. If the Deathstar unit gets too close, use the court as a screen/ buffer for the opponent to charge and continue fire after.

Basically traded a wych unit for the court. They are the CC unit mob and the rest is a very shooty list to take out whatever excess is needed.

[MaltonNecromancer]

I can't participate in this - calling flamers for Marines or Guard dreadful is like saying that a 2+ armour save for 5 points is terrible, or that having a well painted army is a bad thing :P

Heavens to Mergatroid, did you not read the part where I said

these are primarily subjective - not all of them are truly awful

Sweet Christmas. If I could make the words "primarily subjective" flash with honking great bells on them, I would.

Honestly: I am fully aware flamers are pretty good, but all I ever hear about is "melta melta melta mech metagame melta melta". No-one ever raves about flamers (because the current meta favours tanks). But that doesn't mean I don't know flamers can be good. The point of this isn't to go "Meh, you made a subjective opinion that I disagree with!"; it's to go "I have created this army list based around this unit, which I believe is sub-optimal. This list deals with that unit through clever strategy/tactics that no-one else has thought of yet."

In short this is an exercise in (what seems to be an unfamiliar idea called) creative thinking, rather than hearing the same tedious belching on every tactics column about how "unit X is the only one you should take". Ignore the metagame, ignore the same old stuff everyone else agrees with over the gaming campfire, yes we know melta is good, if you're so clever, why can't you do something to make these awful units awesome, eh? They must have been included in the codex for some reason, let's see you work it out.

If you don't want to play this game, all well and good. If you do, choose a unit that you personally think in your own personal opinion is complete and utter rubbish, and see if you can polish that turd until it shines.

You know, the spirit of the challenge, rather than the exact wording.