Is is "Cheese" to not play Kabalite warriors

so I just had a pretty long debate with my buddy over our army lists. it started with me saying that in the tournament, that we will play on Monday, I'll be playing Dark Eldar and that I won't take any standards into my list. He told me that wouldn't be possible and i told him about the different detachments. He told me it would be cheese to not play Kabalite warriors because only playing Elites like I do would be well Cheese. I said I won't handicap myself by picking stuff that isn't good in our army.
so is it Cheese to not play Kabalites?

Huh?

Kabalite Warriors are GOOD. They're a decent, solid unit.

To be honest, I think you hinder yourself by not taking them.

You play whatever the heck you want.
Bonus points if you play fluffy and interesting lists. If you want to go full Incubi, go full Incubi.

Squidmaster wrote:

Huh?

Kabalite Warriors are GOOD. They're a decent, solid unit.

To be honest, I think you hinder yourself by not taking them.

I have 3x5 Blasterborn
I don't think they are good tbh, in the meta right now at least
I don't really need them all that much

Yeah there is nothing cheese about an Elite heavy Drukhari army, you're paying similar points for about half as many models without ObSec who punch harder.

Not NECESSARILY better or worse than twice Kabalites really but definitely costed in a way that makes it pretty hard to call cheese.

But Kabalites are good, they just fulfill a different role than Blasterborn and Incubi and Mandrakes.

No offense but your buddy doesn't know what he's talking about. Besides, it's a tournament - is he really trying to get you to not bring a list that gives you the best chance of winning?

It sounds like your friend is not only unfamiliar with the mechanics of the game but also the purpose of a tournament. Running Troops-less armies has been a thing since at least 4th ed (or else changing Elites/Heavy Support into Troops which is much the same thing). The various different detachments are just the current face of that type of mechanics, they are part of the core rules, and they come with their own drawbacks and advantages compared to a Battalion.

Warriors are pretty "eh", so dropping them (and a couple CP) to take the better performing units in our list is just making a strategic decision and attempting to bring your A game. That's the whole point of a tournament. Besides, while DE have a handful of fairly strong units there's nothing I'd consider particularly cheesy.

well, my friend is a Necron player so he isn't the smartest one...










(jk)

Deris87 wrote:

It sounds like your friend is not only unfamiliar with the mechanics of the game but also the purpose of a tournament. Running Troops-less armies has been a thing since at least 4th ed (or else changing Elites/Heavy Support into Troops which is much the same thing). The various different detachments are just the current  face of that type of mechanics, they are part of the core rules, and they come with their own drawbacks and advantages compared to a Battalion.

Warriors are pretty "eh", so dropping them (and a couple CP) to take the better performing units in our list is just making a strategic decision and attempting to bring your A game. That's the whole point of a tournament. Besides, while DE have a handful of fairly strong units there's nothing I'd consider particularly cheesy.

that's what I told him too, but he said it is cheesy to just pick out the strong units

I mean, if you're picking out solely the strongest units, that does make for a cheesy army.

It's just that cheese is what wins tournaments.

Burnage wrote:

I mean, if you're picking out solely the strongest units, that does make for a cheesy army.

It's just that cheese is what wins tournaments.

the thing im not
I only don't play Kabalites

Who even cares? "Cheese" is a vacuous, loaded word and this whole community would be better if nobody used it. There is no definition of "cheese". Any army is cheese or not cheese depending on who you ask. When you say "this is cheese" you are not communicating any information. You are only sounding a dog whistle, triggering a comparison of it to other disliked things about the game. Anything Xenos do is cheese anyway, if you visit other boards.

Just play whatever you want and be how competitive you want. And if you have friends that complain about balance a lot, just know that your games will be a LOT better if you decide to stop it. It is good for nothing except ruining good fun. If you are concerned about balance then have a reasonable discussion and make some ground rules together beforehand.

/rant. But FWIW things got a lot better in our friendly games when I started saying, stop talking about balance, complaining won't change it but will ruin our games.

For me, cheese is something like this : It's a tactic/strategy that respects most of the following traits.
- It aims meta-game efficiency (this is not bad at all. This is a competitive game, and wanting to win is normal).
- It fonctions through the application and exploitation of a small number of flawed and poorly designed game elements (e. g. spamming an undercosted unit, playing an army made of HQs because of the Character targeting rule, etc.)
- It makes no sense fluff-wise, and it looks silly.

But even then, it's not a bad thing... again, this is a competitive game, or at least it can be. The problem is when a player tries some cheese when playing against a player that cares about the narrative and the fluff. But in a tourney, cheese is the norme anyway...

Cheese is always an odd concept - in a game where we are aiming to win, taking something that makes it easy to win makes sense. The concept really shouldn't exist.

An army with no Troops would have been a little confronting a few editions ago, but with the formations based lists from 7th, it should feel fairly normal to most players by now.

@Mppqmld the main issue that makes using the word "cheese" a detriment is that there is no shared definition. Some might call maximally competitive strategies "cheese" as you aim to. At the same time OP's friend calls using detachments cheese. Some call the whole Eldar race cheese. (and we do always lose to like 5 marines in the fluff, so it's dumb we don't on tabletop, right? probably because we cheesed)

It would be better to just kill the whole word off because approximately in general use it just means "I don't like this" but with an insult specific to the community that gets more of a reaction. If a person feels the opponent shouldn't have brought such a min-max list to a role-playing game and it's kind of rude then why not just say that with those words, then the actual problem and steps to fix it have come out.

Notice that even your definition is subjective: it references "poorly designed game elements" and "looks silly". The reality is we don't know the designers' intentions, except when they have been published, so this is subjective. It actually then depends on what the person speaking believes the game should be like, which is a problem because your opponent may not share that idea. We humans have a tendency to believe our side in the right, our side is reasonable, and the other side is in the wrong and unreasonable - but the opponent, also a person, has a similar tendency. If you use the word cheese, instead of saying what you feel the game should be like, you are using this ambiguous but much-hated word that causes a reaction instead of thought.

Finally, focusing on what the game "should" be detracts from what the game is. Every game must have weaker and stronger strategies, else there would be no point to strategizing. If it's speculated that it was a designer mistake that is being exploited every time a strong strategy is found, that makes the finder an exploiter (or "cheesemonger") instead of a good competitive player. When expanded to the level seen in OP's post (and I've heard this too eg. Raider Open-topped rule being called cheese outright even though the person themselves later admitted it is not that good) then it means that winning a competitive game was not the winner's achievement but the designers' mistake. This is properly called poor sportsmanship, and should be called so; but when the person says it circumlocutiously saying "I lost to cheese" it somehow becomes acceptable.

All smart players should cease use of this word ASAP because it has literally no use where it does more good than harm or creates more clarity than argument.

Even compared to loosest definition of "cheese" I fail to identify any unit or combination of units with DE that are significantly above average, much less overpowered. The closest I can discern is if you build a DL spam list against an exclusively mechanized army. And that's less overpowered and more providing a hard counter to a specific niche list.

Honestly your friend has no understanding of Dark Eldar then and should stick to his Necrons... As others have said cheese is a matter of perspective and if you are going to a tournament then there is going to be far worse "cheese" lists then your Dark Eldar populating the tables... haha