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Essay on the Existence of Cheese - Steve Rose | |
| Cheese, although very much a matter of debate amongst gamers, staff and onlookers, can be said to exist, inasmuch as a tactic which depends on a very extreme selection from an organistion chart or other method of force selection, but is ultimately very successful will tend to be repeated. This is not too much of a problem, as extreme tactics can be easily beaten once a weakness is discovered, but I feel it to be a problem if it encourages people to quit playing otherwise successful forces, especially if this leads to the abandoning of an army wholesale to the latest "bandwagon" army list. An example I've seen quoted is a minimum number of minimally sized units, with a high, or relatively high number of very tough choices from the list - for example, a 1000-1500pts army list with 2 units of five marines or worse, scouts, with three tooled up dreads... The same could be said of a similar Eldar force. For those of you who attended the Doubles tournament in the UK last year, you may have either seen or heard about the "Four Basilisk" force - two 400pt lists with two Basilisks and a platoon of infanty each. I feel this to be of definately coagulated bovine lactation, as this is more than you could legally fit in a single 1000pt list, and that the rules of the tournament were being exploited to allow an exceptionally extreme form of the army list to be selected, which was very difficult to beat, and thus although in keeping with tournament play, not in the spirit of the tournament "fluff", which suggested a "patrolling" force, not a battery of siege guns..... In short, though, I would say that a "cheesy" force is one designed to defeat or destroy opposing forces, rather than one designed to allow a "fair" or "interesting" game, one which will be enjoyable to both (or, in some special cases, all) players. Whilst the person utilising the force which is claimed to be cheesy may enjoy annihilating his or her opponent, it is after all a game and a game should be enjoyable for all participants, and not involve one player exploiting the rules to unfair or undue advantage. (On a separate note, I have some objections to designing a force to take on specific opponents in specific scenarios rather than being a solid all-round force, with elements selected depending on likely opponents over a long night or weekend.) | |
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