So in my "getting back into 40K" attempt, I've fallen in with an escalation league that is designed to jump start newer players. For the most part, it has been lots of fun. However, I'm also running into the culture of people constantly trading in their armies for a "better" one, meaning one they can win with before the game even starts.
Last week I played a kid who was running Ravenwing, all bikes and speeders, with a couple of named characters to boot. He'd managed to give his ENTIRE army a +2 to their cover saves, which meant that when they jinked, which they did every time they were shot at, they got a 2+ cover save.
His plan was to zip across the board and charge into combat on turn two, counting on cover and over-watch needing 6's to hit to guarantee he got into combat before he could get shot to pieces. That part of his plan worked really well. He explained that this was just being "fluffy" and was not, in fact, gaming the system. (BTW, he started that conversation, not me.)
Once he started wounding models, the whining began. Necrons getting a 5+ resurrection protocol save was just not fair. Neither was boosting it to 4+ with a cryptek. It also wasn't fair that my base troop toughness was 4 (like his) or that I had a flyer. It wasn't fair that my flyer used a template that scattered or that my monolith did as well. Deathmarks? Not fair either because they are snipers and wound on 4's, except that one unit they can wound on 2's. None of it was fair.
Charging bikes up to the second and third floor of ruins. Totally fair. Gunning them down with overwatch? Not fair. 3+ armor saves on the immortals, totally not fair. S5 shooting? not fair either. And what the hell? Gauss cannons are AP3? How can that POSSIBLY be fair?
My favorite whine was that the when I told him the speeder I'd just immobilized with the previous volley of shooting could not suddenly declare a jink against the next volley of shooting. Not fair. Especially when the buddies he appealed to agreed with me.
The best part of the whole thing was that he whined so very much while winning the game, which was never much in doubt because he got into close-combat on turn two.
Last bit of whining? Once his bikes grabbed the objective, he couldn't ride off with it because of the rule limiting how fast the unit with it could travel. TOTALLY NOT FAIR.
Did I mention that giving the entire army a 2+ cover save is totally fluffy? I should, just in case, because he mentioned it every time he rolled a cover save and a few more times when he bemoaned losing it after a S10 AP1 template scattered onto the model giving the bonus.
Yeah.
