Just as the Title says...

In a tournament setting, would it be more prudent to focus on building your force to achieve a "all comers" list or would you build your force to focus on winning certain victory conditions and not worry so much as to what's lined up against you on the other side of the board?

Is this train of thought not very sportsman like?

[quote="EpicBattleBaggz"]Just as the Title says...

In a tournament setting, would it be more prudent to focus on building your force to achieve a "all comers" listt[/quote
This everytime, a mix of scouts, ground holders, speed, AA, offensive 'hammers' and activations

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www.epic-uk.co.uk
NetEA NetERC Human Lists Chair
NetEA Chaos + Black Legion Champion

I think you have to have an all-comers. You can't really focus on particular goals because you can't tell if the other army will completely stuff that option. It's extremely hard to get BTS against a Great Gargant. It's nearly impossible to get TSNP against Eldar. A siege force with a castle on the Blitz is going to be a bear to clear. Flexibility is a must.

I agree. When you focus on a specific type of strategy, you might get lucky. In a one-off game against a buddy it is easy to do an all drop army or an all bike army or a super high activation army or field a bunch of War Engines and fluster your opponent. However I think your odds of pulling that off in a tournament greatly diminish as you fight against a variety of opponents. Odds are one or more players are going to pound you.

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author of Syncing Forward and other stories...

It's a dog-eat-dog world, and I've got my Milkbone underwear on.

There are certain lists that more or less preclude cetain VCs - slower lists and Blitzkreig being the most common example. However within those constraints you should allow for the acheivement of each likely VC, as well as having a plan of attack for the denial of opposing VCs. Concentrating on certain VCs is dangerous because an opponent with the right build and strategy can make it very hard to acheive any given VC; if you are not placed optimally to acheive all conditions, you run the risk of not acheiving any.

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SG

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

Whilst you can't plan for what your opponent is going to take in a tournament, although if you play enough tournaments against the same people you can get a feel for it, you should always have a plan of what you wish to do with your army. This helps in two ways, you are not trying to think of what you are doing whilst you play and your games go faster.

Of course your opponent will always have a say in how you play, but I find that if I have a plan and get my opponent to have to react to it instead of his plan the game goes better for it.

Then you want to look at the army that you are taking, does this fit your plan? If not then change it or work up a new plan.

With my last tournament I took Feral Orks. Here I had several small formations of Boarboyz and three formations of Wildboyz riding on orkeosaurus. I wanted to try and box in my opponent so that the Orkeosaurus could hit them. Didn't always work, but my opponents were having to deal with my smaller formations rather than targeting my main force.

As Tim says, while most / all lists in the E-UK tournaments are built to meet all-comers, they are also generally built to support a preferred strategy. The key is to build in the flexibility that permits the army to fight in several ways depending on the shape and composition of the opponents army. In that respect, the hallmark of a better player / general is the ability to overcome the apparent difficulties presented by apparent mismatches; eg winning with Tyranids against a 'skimmer' army.