How beardy/cheesy do you play?

When I use my 60 skaven slaves to glue units, I never feel guilty. I painted them all, having modeled them with iron hoops at their wrists for a chain to go when they are being force marched. That much effort removes any guilt when they perform annoyingly on the battlefield.

Yep this entirely. Slaves are there to be thrown at the most horrible unit your opponent can field with weapons teams firing in indiscriminately. It is a very skaveny tactic. Life is cheap or correctly the other Skaven’s life is cheap.

I've seen this in battle reports online, particularly on MWG when then want to mess with someone's Steam Tank. It always seems to be a very selective use of the rule.

I see this as a deliberate misinterpretation for an advantage. You can't claim well the "RAW says 1 inch apart" and completely ignore the fact that it says "This rule is purely for clarity". The clarity is there, there is no mistaking a goblin for a Hellpit. I disagree with the idea that "its a tactic" there is nothing tactical about it, it's manipulating a rule to give you an advantage.

To me this is an outright dick move and I would just refuse to play someone who wants to play this way. I ended my tournament days towards the end of 7th and whenever I see stuff like this I have no regrets about that. We are supposed to be grown ass adults and if someone gets there jollies playing a game like this I want nothing to do with them. I have far better real life things to deal with rather than waste my time playing "a game" against people that would see this as fun.

"I've said my peace and I've counted to three."

I hate railroading. I’d prefer a home rule where by if the unit could beat the other unit one on one, pivoting counts as charging. As if a bloody A-Bomb is going to give 2 shits and one flying pluck about a Goblin on a Wolf.. HE WOULD EAT IT FFS! 🤦🏻‍♂️

There’s reality then there’s taking the piss, if it’s a gobbo next to an A-Bomb, the A-Bomb is gonna chow down.

The point I am about to make doesn't apply to general, standard, one-off game-play, but there is an effective non-cheesy counter against uber-powered cheesiness, and even a game-balancing advantage to the use of cheesy units, when players are operating in a certain way.

In our Tilean campaign, certain people having cheesy monsters brings a necessary balance, whilst still providing challenges and being fun. This is nothing at all to do with 'house rules', fan-made army lists and the like, and would work even if every player in the campaign was using standard army lists.

At the start of the campaign we had one Vampire Count player, one ogre, and 4 human players. The VC was placed far NW and the ogres far NE, as if I had put either of them centrally they would have been surrounded by 4 (almost guaranteed) enemies.

I suggested to the VC player that they should go 'competitive' level with their lists, taking advantage of the monsters etc. Even, perhaps, employ some cheesy units. The humans were encouraged to go with 'themed' Tilean lists (we had a Tilean list they could take units or a whole army from). This would then help balance the fact that if the VC player did not ally with the ogre player (unlikely) he would be outnumbered 5 to 1, or 4 to 1 if the ogre player acted non-aggressively. And if the ogres did ally as the nearest thing to 'evil' then the two of them would still be facing 4 natural enemies.

In play, it turned out that the vampire's armies did present a challenge. The human Tileans (PCs and NPCs) would have to act strategically and ally with each each other, if they were going to re-balance the odds. This, after much wrangling and some treachery, they did, although even then several did not send what they were asked to send, or even what they promised.

As the campaign went on, everything got a lot more complicated, especially as there were disagreements among the allies regarding priorities, and aggression, even open war, between them. Throw religious differences in, including a schism in the dominant church, other threats (currently Sartosan pirates taking advantage of the fact that the soldiers have gone off to war) and it has all got very messy. 

In an early battle, a massive (yet still insufficient to the task) alliance army took on a powerful Undead army. The undead has less points, but were clearly the more dangerous army.  Here is the allied army's left flank ...



Here is the moment from late in a battle just before the allies lost their general, who in his last moments stood transfixed in shock as his army crumbled all around him and the horrors drew very close ...



And from a battle years later, here is the battery that annihilated several giant monsters in the first turn of the game, forcing the undead to retreat to defensible ground. This alliance was the result of several years effort by one player, with 5 states (3 NPC, 2 PC) sending forces, three being merely standing armies consisting of a melee foot, missile foot, a mounted unit and an artillery piece, plus a commander and an engineer. A kind of standard composition which would form the professional core to which mercenaries and militia would be added in times of emergency. But a standard which meant a LOT of artillery (6 great cannons!) and 4 engineers. 





All the players found (and still find) the campaign challenging, for many different reasons. And the cheesy units help keep it so, but not to the point of ruining the experience. 

That’s not necessarily true. A “breakout” of an “encirclement” is a real tactic. Although I’ll grant you it doesn’t work in Warhammer lol. You can’t elect to disengage from CC hah.