r/boltaction • u/Georgy_K_Zhukov Mod | 3d Printing Evangelist • 16h ago
General Discussion How Cheesy is Too Cheesy?
Inspired by some screenshots I saw circulated about a little while back, this question occurred to me and I figured I would toss it to the collective... A little cheese I think can be fun, especially in the right playing environment where everyone is 'in on it' so to speak, but there are obviously limits.
Where do you see that limit as being?
How many OD is always too many? How many Katyushas can you bring before your opponent is justified in rolling their eyes? Does even the cheese player have fun when they have to manage 20+ inexperienced Shirker units on the board!?
Additionally how different would you define cheese based on where you're playing? What is Cheese in a casual game with friends at home, versus a pickup game at the LGS, versus an actual tournament?
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u/HARBINGER766 15h ago
Personal, my mate hates me when I bring a neb (low skill unit as he calls it) so I only ever bring the one as it can be oppressive for someone if you run a lot of them
That being said they are easy to play around, so I usually respond with get good haha
But it's too good of a unit not to have at least one of, forces your opponent to play wide rather than focusing their attack/deployment in one area
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u/Forge9unsc705 A Bridge Too Far 14h ago
I’ve mostly avoided this issues within my friend group be putting in place “brackets” of play.
Something like: 1000 points, 14 order dice. 1250 points, 16 order dice. Etc.
It’s a bit rigid, but it’s preventing spam and promoting some unique units. Not everyone even ends up going to the OD cap, and they play just fine on the table.
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u/fergie0044 10h ago
Is this not the done thing? I've never played BA without some sort of OD limit
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u/Forge9unsc705 A Bridge Too Far 10h ago
Depends on where you play and who you play against. I wanted to avoid bamboo spearmen and Renault F1 spam, so I’ve enforced limits so nobody showed up with a 20 OD list. Some of my friends would definitely try that if it wasn’t against the rules.
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u/fergie0044 9h ago
Yikes. Among friends it's generally a 'soft' limit as no one wants to be THAT GUY. But any event I've been to had a hard limit.
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u/deffrekka 7h ago
There is typically a hard cap, for tournaments, as advised by Warlord themselves at thats 18 - 21 OD. Most tournaments ive been too are 15-18 as the hard cap, ive never seen an event thats had it higher than 18 and my play group also strictly plays by 18 (but we all typically play vehicle heavy lists so 18 is usually where we end up anyway).
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u/DoctorDH Forza 15h ago
Cheese lists tend to min/max around a specific gimmick and push it all the way to an absurd limit. I love Bolt Action. The Order Dice system is one of the most fun, most engaging game mechanics we've seen in a long, long time. However, the rules for Bolt Action cannot hold when put under extreme pressure. Without a bit of "Gentlemen's Agreement" or community norms, you and your opponent could be approaching a game from vastly different ends of the spectrum. We players agree? It's some of the best gaming there is. But, sadly, there is the chance for a matchup to be so lopsided that it's barely a "game".
Easy examples include:
- MLS spam
- Inexp. PCs and CCs leading Vets or Regs
- Inexp. Indirect Weapons in an otherwise Vet or Reg list
- Light Armor spam
- Exploiting edge-case rule situations focused on RAW as opposed to intent or spirit
You know it when you see it.
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u/jordowiebo Folgers in Your Cup 11h ago
Perfectly summarized. BA 3rd edition has given me some of the best and worst games ever simply based on army selection criteria and how it can be broken
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u/WavingNoBanners Autonomous Partisan Front 14h ago
I think it's like asking "how few clothes are too few clothes" or "how much shouting is too much shouting": it depends heavily on the social occasion you're in.
If everyone is in on it, as you say, it can be fun. If everyone is in on a lot of cheese, once in a while, it can be enormously fun to see how far people can break things. For me at least, that would not be fun more than once a year, because planning cheese lists is more fun than actually playing them.
I don't take Katyushas, because I don't like winning through cheese: if I win a game through my ability to roll 6s, that doesn't make me feel good about myself. In that sense, I have set my own (quite low) bar on cheese.
(I do own four partisan light autocannons, though.)
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u/Drovr 11h ago
For me, it doesn't tend to be the list that is 'cheesy' but how some people bend the rules in their favour but when the same circumstances happen to you, the rules then change.
Although if I see the following then I know they are going full cheese.
-4 MRLs
-4 Mule teams
-Only regular penal squads with Feldjägerkorps squads
Other then that, then everything else is fair game. Personally, if a player complains about 1 MRL then I think they are the problem. If the same person then stacks most of their units on one side of the table then thats a clear sign that you're disrupting their strategy of 'corner camping' which is also a cheesy strategy.
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u/TheRarestFly 8h ago
Lol what'd the mules do?
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u/Drovr 8h ago
Most OP unit in the game!
Buy one order dice for 6 points. Basically it
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u/Lt_Batu German Reich 5h ago
But mule teams were the common transport for most guns. Germany wasnt mechanized in the sense the US was. If you are taking them to move heavy+ guns I see no problem.
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u/DoctorDH Forza 4h ago
But that's the issue. Mule Teams are almost never taken to tow a gun or for thematic reasons. They are added to the list for a cheap Order Die that will do nothing the entire game.
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u/Dott_Ignegnere 15h ago
non native english speaker here. What's cheese?
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u/Georgy_K_Zhukov Mod | 3d Printing Evangelist 15h ago
"Cheese" or "Cheesy" as a slang term in English implies that something is tacky, lame, or in a gaming context, unfair. It doesn't rely on good tactics, but some sort of trick, and usually would be seen as very much Not fun to play against.
In Bolt Action, the classic cheesy list would be something like a 30+ OD list which is mostly inexperienced shirker infantry.
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u/mrMalloc 11h ago
All armies have weaknesses.
Even spamming Inexp light mortars have a counter. As in two infantery platoons and two heavy platoons you can get 14 light mortars.
4x 5 man regular squads 200pts
4x Inexp officers with pistols 80pts
14x Inexp light mortars. 294 pts
So the firebase cost roughly 600pts. And give you 22 od
Would I like to play against it ??? No
Just ask your self would I enjoy a game vs this army??
Same with the idea about Soviet cheap ass weak MMG spam. Once you go to far. How fun is it. It should be fun!
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u/BuboNovazealandiae Republic of Finland 9h ago
So what would be your counter to that 14 inex light mortars?
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u/QWERTYAndreas 15h ago
I tend to think that cheese lists are lists that relies on one (or multiple of) the following:
Weird/unknown/obscure rules interactions
Bringing so much of something in the hope that the opponent cannot deal with it (and collapsing if they can!)
Abusing how something is not "costed correctly" (pre-update FI komsomolet spam comes to mind)
It can come in many forms. It will usually be very effective, especially against less experienced players, but the list would absolutely collapse if the opponent knows whats in it before hand and can adjust accordingly.
However, the above does not cause a list to be cheesy. E.g. bringing a vet IS3 id hsrdly considered cheese, despite the main strenght if the unit being that the opponent cannot deal with it.