What is the best army without taking cheese?

[Siphen]

There are already a ton of threads talking about the best and worst armies. I'd just like to know what the rankings would look like without taking the cheesy, WAAC characters or units or items.

Skaven are clearly one of the top armies. How good are they without multiple Hellpit Abominations and tons of slaves?
How good are High Elves without Teclis?
How good are Daemons without Kairos Fateweaver and tons of Flamers?
How good are Warriors of Chaos without the Chosenstar?

Not to start a separate discussion, but it seems to be that the "best" armies are only the best because of a few key things. If you take those things away (think a semi-competitive or casual game), what happens? Does a mid-tier army like Dwarfs or Vampire Counts shoot up to the top? Or are High Elves always going to be good, no matter what you do with them (for example)?

[TheCaptain]

I tend to only run 1 unit of 40 slaves and 1 HPA and tend to do okay, comes down to the player really. my clan rats tend to out number the slaves 2-3 to 1

[pippin_nl]

Defining units as cheesy is a slippery slope. What's cheesy and what's just good? Do 8th edition armies have cheese (with the exception of Chaos Dwarfs)? My answer would be a resounding no! It's just the 7th edition armies that have it...But still is a dispel scroll cheesy or just very good, crown of command?

[Balerion]

Skaven are clearly one of the top armies. How good are they without multiple Hellpit Abominations and tons of slaves?

They remain a very powerful army until you start deliberately loading up on subpar units (for example, using lots of Night Runners/Censer Bearers/Globadiers & Jezzails, etc. in service of an Eshin/Pestilens/Skryre theme).

Clanrats can do exactly what Slaves do, just less cost efficiently. And there aren't many choices in the book that are simply "good" as opposed to "great", so it's rather challenging to field a list that doesn't have one or two units capable of dealing massive, crushing damage.

How good are High Elves without Teclis?

I think they would prove to be very strong against other armies of this ilk (ie. balanced, non-optimized lists). That's because their chief advantage is a race-wide special rule, and it really starts to shine once they're fighting grunts instead of fine-tuned killer elites.

[Askari]

It's quite difficult to make a Skaven list which isn't powerful, so by that standard I'd say them.

[DaemonReign]

As for Daemons.. I've always interpreted them as quite balanced in my local games, and we don't use any Special Characters - so that may be an indication..

Although I have to say that the Masque jumps out at me as much more undercosted/OTT compared to Kairos, but like I said we don't even use Karanak so it's moot..

[Duke Ramulots]

Isnt cheese just what people call something when it beats them soundly?


Ive had a unit of grail knights that I run 11 strong with a level 4 life called cheesy every time they run through the opposition, then when they rubberlance the same guys says they're overcosted and need a buff. Same goes for savage orc big unz.

[brother_maynard]

Skaven are clearly one of the top armies. How good are they without multiple Hellpit Abominations and tons of slaves?
How good are High Elves without Teclis?
How good are Daemons without Kairos Fateweaver and tons of Flamers?
How good are Warriors of Chaos without the Chosenstar?

the real strength of those books (HE is debatable, sorry guys i love you but its true!) is that even if you take out the heinous "cheese" that you listed, they are all top performers. so i think you answered your own question, all of those armies have the tools to be powerful even if you take away all of their toys (as seen from their performance even under harshly comped events).

[The Low King]

Cheese is impossible to define. In generally means something that is OTT, way underpriced or just broken.....

So, chosen deathstar is cheesey right? Puppet is? what about chaos warriors with halberds and MoK? marauders?
Lets look at skaven...take away slaves and Abomb....oh but clanrats are still underpriced. Doomrocket? WLCs?

What about warmachines in general? ive seen cannons being called cheesey, Organ guns..what about 'lazer guided stone throwers'?

Magic? Uberspells cheesey? right, lets remove all access to those spells, mindrazor included?

makes a huge difference.

[Montegue]

Cheese is like obscenity. You know it when you see it.

[DaemonReign]

Cheese is like obscenity. You know it when you see it.

If you're of the typically senior part of the population with old-fashioned 'values' that has a penchant for seeing 'obscenity' around every corner, be it advertisement, movies, music..

Personally I'm not Amish nor Mormon or anything like that though.. With respect to the limited number of armies I have experience of (DE, VC, OnG, DoC, Dwarves, Empire) I've seen every single on of the reportedly 'cheesy' items/builds get defanged and dismantled enough times to know my own standing on this subject in general.

But yeah.. We've never used Special Characters. Then again, aside of [maybe] Teclis and the Masque I'm pretty sure my 'thesis' would hold up rather well.

I'll agree that you know a fortunate dice-roll when you see it.

EDIT
by the way I didn't mean to call you out or nitpick.. In hindsight this was a pretty unecessary post.. Sorry.
It's just my own associations started runnig amock with the way you worded that bit.. 'obscenity'..
So.. well.. I type faster than I think sometimes..

[mistrmoon]

Deamons,skaven and lizardmen are all still quite good as are de he and woc. they mostly get by on the strength of their solid troopers if u take away their shiny toys. without a lot of the broken goodness in the game dwarfs actually can hold their own against most anything.

Im going to have to disagree about their being no cheese in the new books. ogres can be quite ridiculous in the hands of a cokpetent general.

As for those who think there is no such thing as cheese: normally i think everyone is entitled to their opinion but you're straight up wrong on this one.

[Ebon]

There's a good argument that the pre-hardcover armies have something of an advantage simply because they tend to have several dozen magic items where the hardcover armies only have a dozen if they're lucky.
That said, depends what you define as "cheesy". Skaven are very strong simply because the current rules set emphasises large units of infantry and Skaven excel at that. WoC are just a very nasty army (as they should be) as are Daemons. High Elves have an army wide special rule that means virtually nothing gets into combat with them without taking damage (and still have a plethora of magic items).

[GodlessM]

This is all very dependent on what you class as cheesy? Is a Slann cheesy? If so, then Lizardmen don't class, whereas if not they do, for example. I think Warriors are a solid army though even without Chosen though.

[Urgat]

I like this question. To me it sounds like "how to be cheesy w/o looking like it?"

[Kaapeli]

I think dwarfs can be quite tough in balanced armies and don't have that many cheesy choices.
- Dwarfs have no insane magic to exploit.
- While runes are good there aren't really any that could be considered broken for their price and effects.
- No monsters, monstrous infantry, insane saves, frenzy...
- All infantry units are solid but with a balanced price and almost no exploitable special rules.
- Dwarfs really have no "trick units" like ethereals, flying circus, regenerating supermonsters, warp powered wm's or endless cheap tarpit regiments.

There's really only one clearly cheesy choice for dwarfs that I can think of: grudgethrower and artillery spam.
But a balanced dwarf army is competitive even without exploiting their war machines in large numbers.

[Kaapeli]

I think Warriors are a solid army though even without Chosen though.

The chosen are usually just the one unit. But several GW marauder hordes with frenzy that cost the same as poor Empire state troops... That's bad.