Unbound in your area...Abused or not?

[Demonus]

My group is pretty open to Unbound. We have made a house rule to reward "bound" players. For any bound army you may choose your WL trait one of two ways:
- Roll trait, reroll on your chart if you do not like roll #1
- Roll a d6. Pick any WL table you have access to and use that trait

Players must decide which of the 2 options they wish to use before they roll. Most times it lessens the chance you get a crappy result (like Adman Will vs Necrons or Tau...)

Honestly I haven't had Obj Secured play a huge role in the games Ive played. Maybe 1-2 times. Most times the formation bonus I run is better (Necrons/Space Wolves). I haven't faced any super cheesy unbound lists yet. I faced a guy that ran all SM dreadnoughts. Another guy had 10 Lone Wolves and the rest Dreadnoughts. I partnered with a guy last week running all Greater Daemons. Skaarbrand, Fateweaver, Belakor and 2 LoC + his unbound Nurgle CSM vs 6 Imperial Knights w/ 1000pts of Blood Angels. Both sides knew what they were facing ahead of time and the game was very fun.

[DrBored]

So DrBored, because you don't like something, you've decided nobody should.

And people actually play you more than once?

I'm just going to copy paste my previous post:

40k doesn't exist in a vacuum.

Centurions don't exist in a vacuum.

Necrons don't exist in a vacuum.

Unbound as a rule doesn't exist in a vacuum.

In every situation there is a counter, or at the very least, a conversation. Just because the rulebook has Unbound as an OPTION doesn't mean it's going to happen every single time in every circumstance. If I have a mature conversation in the language that my opponent happens to speak, and he responds to me in a way that shows he is a reasonable human being, I have a feeling that we can come to various conclusions about what we would like and not like to play in a game of 40k, and if our opinions seem to differ by a significant margin, then we can go about our business in other ways, or interact in meaningful ways outside of the game of 40k.

[Erik Setzer]

The poll option doesn't quite fit how it works locally. It's allowed by some people, not by others, because they don't want to see what might come out of it, even though I've proved a 1000 point Battle-forged list can still give you a Knight and a Thunderwolf Cavalry block. Some people use it for just fun, fluffy armies (even if that fluff is their own making or just for fun, like a guy converting a sort of Sith-style Dark Eldar army with some Separatist allies in the form of IG, one of whom was converted to a Twi'lek officer).

I'll ask a person their intent before agreeing. If it sounds like a fun match, I'm game with it, but then I go Unbound and do a similar fun list, too.

[Archon Charybdis]

Given how easy it is to make a completely 100% legal objective secured dick list why would anyone even be inclined to do it with unbound?

Exactly so. Last week I brought my TAC Dark Eldar list and faced off against a CAD compliant mechanized list with Chimera Vets for Troops and then Leman Russes for everything else. Wasn't much fun.

On the other hand, I can only recall seeing two Unbound lists in recent months. One was a friend's Illuminor Szeras(?)/Haemonculus Coven list, predicated on the fluff that in his all-consuming quest to restore Necrons to their fleshly form, Szeras overcame aeons of racial enmity and struck an unlikely alliance with the fleshcrafters of Commoragh. The other was my own Coven army featuring a converted Boneripper counts-as Wraithknight, both to make use of a really awesome model and to fill the anti-tank role in my army. Neither were exactly dominating the club.


As someone else mentioned, I think the super crazy lists like all Riptides or Wraithknights etc. are fairly self-regulating, because they're so damn expensive and quite likely to get people to say "Yeah I'm not playing against that."

[DrBored]

As someone else mentioned, I think the super crazy lists like all Riptides or Wraithknights etc. are fairly self-regulating, because they're so damn expensive and quite likely to get people to say "Yeah I'm not playing against that."

I think it's this phenomenon that keeps people from going balls-to-the-wall bonkers with Unbound. Limited funds and limited appeal.

Ok, so let's say you do buy and build and even paint 5 riptides for an Unbound list.

You stomp around, manage to beat everyone in your club one way or another.

Then what? You're done. You've accomplished what you set out to do. You bought, built, and even painted 5 riptides and won a lot. What do you add to that? Where does the army go? What do you do with those five riptides? There are only so many tactical decisions you can make with that sort of an army, and once those are exhausted, or the opponents are exhausted from playing against it, can you really say that it was worth it?

I think subconsciously everyone sort of understands this, that you get diminishing returns as your list gets more and more ridiculous. We all know what, in theory, would happen with those silly lists, so putting it into practice just ends up seeming moot.

It's a lot more fun to have more regulated lists, more 'normal' lists with more variety, with more options that you can practice with on the field, and it feels like you're getting more bang for your buck when you make an army of this style.

[Tim Currey]

Generally at my local GW (where I play most of my games due to their dozen or so tables) it comes down to what you agree with your aponent. Tournaments are generally battle forged armies, however we are playing an "unleashed" tournament next weekend that is basically anything goes. But then it's equal ground coz everyone knows they are gonna face crazy lists. One guy is apparently bringing 10 dread knights....

[JMichael]

This is all great stuff! I think it shows that the majority of players are in it for the fun and fluff.
I play at 3-4 local stores and have found every store has 1-3 WAAC players who tend try to find loopholes, bring the latest net deathstar list, etc.
I'm not finding people regularly trying to bring crazy mashup unbound lists to prove their superiority.
It is usually a "hey, I want to try out this stupid Riptide/WraithKnight/Tyranid/Stompa list. Is that cool?"

The local tournaments I have played in are all Battle-Forged only, and even the leagues that allow Unbound have no real cheese monkeys.

[Renegade]

Unbound is like missions, sometimes you just agree to play a particular one.

Not that many dicks playing in my area as the ones that would have abused it have gone over to things like X Wing, so all is good.

[zerorunner]

If someone wants to play unbound against me, I just say 'OK, here are my 100 individual counts-as Obliterators that I'm going to deep strike, all with Mark of Nurgle.'
.

If you built and painted that instead of counts-as'ed it, I would play against it just to see it on the table..... I'm a bit crazy that way.

[Dave Mcturk]

everyones answer to the 'problem' is different. and its great to see that the overwhelming majority of 'players' are still having fun despite gw [and to be fair because of];

our local solution is to play 'competition' combined scenarios that are common to most tournaments - massively focused unbound lists are unlikely to 'always' get a favourable scenario and so everyone tends to bring more balanced lists.

the issues we are encountering most problems with are the continuing increase in units T values since 5th ed. finding a way to get more high T units that have utility is far more important and therefore game 'breaking' than spamming theoretical 'uber units'.

i would happily play 4 or 5 riptides with my standard ork trukk rush army - [though not so keen on 5 wraithknights !]