ask them to play a different army? or modify his list? or if you feel like it you could just gang up on him - a 2v1 battle, now that would be epic (pun intended)

bluntness ahead:

the way i deal with anyone taking a cheesy boring haha-no-fun-for-you list, whatever the game system or environment may be, is this. they deploy or otherwise reveal their army. i say "you win." and walk away. if they want to actually have some fun with their army, they should consider that the same may be true for their opponent. I've better things to do with my time than making them feel special, i'm certainly not going to spend two hours with my hand down their metaphorical pants.

[edit] Note: i am not saying that this army would provoke such a reaction from me, but if you're of the opinion that such a list will not be any fun to play against, then why play it? we're there to have fun right?
that being said, engine lists are very hard to deal with, especially for new players, and there really isnt a lot we can do about that. in a tournament situation, you will have to face people who go all out to win, because winning is their idea of fun. how you respond to that is up to you [/edit]

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~Every Tool Is A Weapon, If You Hold It Right~

I'll admit that I have considered banning AMTL for tournaments, at least until we all get more experienced facing it (personally I'll try to get a game against the army asap and see if I can do any better now). It's pretty drastic though, especially given how iconic Titans are for Epic. I'd much prefer it if there were some easy tips to make games against them manageable, I tried giving a few prior to the tournament but failed miserably At least in part because the AMTL player is a lot more experienced playing the army than we are facing it.

I think a better way to be to just hide everything from los and let him sit on the objectives for the first 2 turns. Then on the 3rd turn zoom forward (or teleport or air drop) and contest objectives while denying 'They Shall Not Pass' too. If you've done it with the right amount of stalling then it's too late for a 4th turn. Even works better if you can pick to deploy from corners as the titans are slow (except for the hounds but those you can deal with).

It will be a boring and dull game to be sure, but that also teaches the other player a lesson... whereas walking away might just give him a feeling of superiority.

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it still requires sitting there for 2 hours (and at a convention i'd much rather spend that time looking at shops or other peoples games and armies, or just going off somewhere to read)
I did it once, the game tha catalysed my "screw this" philosophy. it was 40k, my nids vs tau, on a dual kill points mission (primary was '10 kill points divided evenly amongst your troops and HQ' secondary was straight kill points) on a table with a big hill set in one corner for him to hide and jumpshootjump from behind, and huge tracts of swamp, so difficult terrain but no cover for me. his army was quite literally the cheesiest tau army ever. he kept his 2 minimum troops and HQ hidden in the back corner, and JSJed at my big guns on turn 1. turn 2 onwards i spread my models thin, went to ground, and passed. he scored a grand total of 2 KP that game, but i still wasted an hour and a half letting him roll his dice, and he still won. since then, i have decided that my fun is more valuable to me than my spite.

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~Every Tool Is A Weapon, If You Hold It Right~

If you feel That newbies will have a hard time against AMTL in a tournament, dock him 500pts. I don't find that unreasonable.
The other option is to ask him to play Skitarii as that is less of a war engines list.

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Currently doing a plastic scenery kickstarter

This time I said "NetEA approved only", I guess I should have allowed Developmental as well He might very well go for skitarii then.

But even if I think that AMTL is too harsh against newbs, that doesn't mean I'm right.

Am I right?

i think that the best way to convince a new player to give up epic altogether is to put them up against a titan list. (followed by probably a necron list, and maybe a pure air assault/terminator marine list)
its simply something that a new player is unlikely to be equipt to deal with, and will highlight the wrong parts of the gameplay elements

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~Every Tool Is A Weapon, If You Hold It Right~

I agree. I suggest politely asking him to play Skitarii until the local players have learned a bit more.

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Currently doing a plastic scenery kickstarter

Skitarii it is then. He's talked about them before, so hopefully he'll be happy to use them

Regarding Necrons, I did take them to the tournament. Mainly to show off the non-GW exodus wars minis, and show that there is still life in Epic ("There are Necrons in Epic? Wth? Cool!")

Maybe it's because I'm so new to them myself, but this far I've lost one, won one and gotten two draws, mostly against inexperienced players. My impression so far is that the weaknesses of the list are easy to grok, so you have a fighting chance even in your first game against them. Maybe they'll get worse when I learn to hide those weaknesses better.

Well used Necrons are terrifying.

One of the two Necron players we have locally is a prime example. I don't think he's ever lost a game with them, and there are several of us who are pretty experienced players. I'd actually rate 'crons as worse on the "ruin the noob's mojo" scale than ATML, which I've never had terrible problems with. However, fighting ATML is a very different experience than fighting most armies.

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SG

Ghost's Paint Blog, where everything goes that isn't something else.

I completely agree with this, not just because I've gotten my ass handed to me by necrons both times I played against them I wasn't a new player either time, so I have no excuse. (Coincidently, both against guys named Matt, mnb and Matt A, so it wasn't that bad, haha). they behave so differently than other armies, and it's hard for a player to wrap his head around them.

In all seriousness, however, once a player learns about activation count and then learns to think in terms of objectives, facing AMTL becomes much less scary. I would go so far as to say that playing AMTL will "ruin a noob's* mojo" because all those awesome titans tend to underperform (in our area, at least). They just have too few activations in a 3K game to be consistently effective. I love titans, but have relegated my AMTL to mega-battles and other 'special' games. They're slow, and great firepower is a fickle instrument in E:A.


*side note: I hate the word noob. Can we dispense with it? This isn't WoW or some console game, right? (not doing a passive-agressive snipe at you SG, just taking the opportunity for a futile request)

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Let us playtest like the Greeks of old... You know the ones I mean

I'll take the Necron comments to heart and drop them for the next tournament. Hopefully I'll be good enough with them by them that it won't be fair to play them

I'd agree with leaving Necrons out of tournaments where new players are starting out. Getting slammed by the "advance monoliths, shoot, support assault with amped Warrior fm, win combat, Warriors disappear into 2nd portal" repeatedly is not going to make someone want to come back. I'm not saying Necrons are overpowered, they're not, they're just very different to play against, as Captpiett pointed out above.

As for playing against an all Titan list - I'd do my level best, even feigning explosive diarrhea, to avoid playing that game. Even if I won, it'd still be as boring as hell.

CaptPiett: Can I use "noo pl4y3r"? I happen to agree, but was keeping terminology consistent.

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SG

Ghost's Paint Blog, where everything goes that isn't something else.