Soup is overrated...mostly

Well, there's this fella named Karru who comments a lot on the Bell of Lost Souls. Some of his points are valid, but he has a major bias against soup. He simplifies the problem as Soup allowing people to cherry-pick and take the best units in each faction, and then produce "overpowered" lists. He claims that mono-faction lists such as T'au, Necrons and Orks are not viable, and that Soup must be nerfed to achieve a balanced game.

Tempestus regiment...Kamikaze Troopers. YOU FAILED ME!!!! Well, at least they took out 2 Predators and an Intercessor squad...

I've been trying out with many games, and my experience seems contrary to his claims. Granted, I'm a terrible player with no skill or tactical nous whatsoever, I have the worst luck in rolling dice, my lists are inefficient, not optimized and downright awful, but I find mono-faction lists more viable than Soup. At least in my not-tournament setting and experience.

I have tried playing Imperial Guard with Imperial Knights. Nope, that was disastrous. Today, I played Militarum Tempestus Scions with a Spearhead detachment of Space Marines. Now I know why nobody plays mechanized Space Marines or Adeptus Astartes armor. If I want tanks and armor, the Imperial Guard simply does it much better. Ugh. There was one time I played Thousand Sons with Alpha Legion allies just for anti-tank, and my Thousand Sons list just didn't have the psychic potential that I needed because I took out at least one Sorcerer to put in the Havocs. The thing is that you need to build your list around a single theme, for example, psychic or tanks. Trying to mix it up with allies to shore up your weaknesses will reduce that theme drastically, like how the Alpha Legion ruined my psychic stuff for Thousand Sons by taking up a huge number of points. It just didn't work out very well for me. The same goes for Imperial Guard. Every time I try to bring allies, it just doesn't quite work out. Today, my heavy armor Space Marines got torn apart, and even though my Tempestus Scions did a lot of damage, the better part of my army was destroyed. I couldn't even kill my opponent's Knight despite having 9 lascannons (4 on my Mortis Contemptor Dreadnought and 4 on the Devastators, but 2 died before they could fire). Not only that, I was rolling so horribly I might as well just concede. My melta Tempestus squad rolled 3 2s and 1 one, and even with the Take Aim! order, I re-rolled the one to get a second one. Evidently the Emperor did not wish me to win today.

Kasrkins

Normally, my mono-faction list beats soup lists, unless it's unfairly gimped (like the time I played Thousand Sons against Space Marines and a Baneblade without any anti-tank weaponry). Okay, Thousand Sons beating World Eaters and Black Legion soup was just sheer luck. But normally mono-faction lists seem to have an advantage over soup. Or maybe I'm playing Soup wrong. I thought with the Space Marine providing anti-armor and anti-tank support, my Militarum Tempestus Scions could perform surgical strikes and take out key units. I was wrong. So that's why people hardly play Adeptus Astartes armor or Heavy Support. Just so you know, I brought a Spearhead Detachment of Primaris Captain in Gravis Armor, Company Veterans with plasma guns, Relic Deredeo Dreadnought, Mortis Contemptor Dreadnought with 2 twin lascannons, Mortis Contemptor Dreadnought with 2 twin autocannons, Devastators with 4 lascannons. With that amount of firepower, I thought they could take out a Knight, but nope...they couldn't even take out a Knight before they got utterly destroyed. Furthermore, my opponent also had 2 Predator Annihilators. At least my Tempestus Scions took out those 2 Predators with their plasma guns and meltaguns, but even then they were in danger of getting wiped out with the Knight still stomping around on the table. Do I really have to play Imperial Guard with Shadowsword just to take out a Knight? And even then my Shadowsword usually is unable to take out a Knight. Ouch. I mean, my rolls are horrible, and I mean really horrible that they are unbelievable. Statistically-wise, you would expect a Shadowsword to be able to take out a Knight, but...nope, I end up relying on my Leman Russ Annihilator tanks or other anti-tank stuff to take out a Knight (which never happens, I can't remember the last time I destroyed a Knight). Oh, right, against an opponent who brought 3 Knights, Adeptus Mechanicus and a random Imperial Guard Battalion. Another fine example of how soup does not always work.

Yeah, that Knight us unkillable...

Now, am I saying soup is bad? No, I am not. Soup can be awesome if you know how to soup up and use the different units properly. But it is far from being the only viable way to play, as Karru loves to claim. Mono-factions can be very competitive, as my Imperial Guard and Thousand Sons have shown. Of course, my Guard always get decimated (as does my Thousand Sons), but they have awesome tools to capture objectives and win by playing to the mission. Guard, particularly, is strong in that it's pretty hard to mow down every single infantry model with the sheer numbers you can put on the table. Will Guard be tabling opponents and wiping out armies from the table with sheer firepower? Probably not. But in my experience, they are durable and hardy enough to dig in and survive until the end of the game to capture vital Objectives and win the mission. Come to think of it, that's always what happens to the Imperial Guard in the fluff, doesn't it? We never win a direct battle by wiping out the army. Our only victories often come through obscure objectives, taking out an enemy commander or destroying some key installation to throw the foes - who outnumber us and are massacring us - into chaos. So that's how we're supposed to play them, huh...

Sanguinary Guard...yay. Extremely powerful.

Anyway, bottomline is that stop blaming Soup for being imbalanced and question yourself on how you really want your army to play. Don't soup just for the sake of it, or because you're trying to plug a hole in your army. You risk upsetting your overspecialization or themes - like how Alpha Legion gimped my Thousand Sons's psychic stuff. In today's case, I didn't even build around a theme - or if I did, I guess I built the army around the Space Marine Forge World Dreadnoughts - 2 Mortis Contemptor Dreadnoughts and 1 Deredeo Dreadnought, and just brought Militarum Tempestus Scions because why the hell not? My idea was that with the Space Marines being a static gunline, I would need mobile units like the Tempestus Scions Deep Striking wherever I needed them to - especially in my opponent's backline or something, to deal maximum damage to their gunline. Well, as you saw, it didn't quite work out. Or maybe I need to play a few more games to work it out, but nah, I'm sticking with my Imperial Guard list or Thousand Sons. I don't really fancy Space Marines that much anyway. The Company Veterans, particularly, were outshone by the Militarum Tempestus command squads in terms of plasma and damage dealt, and they failed spectacularly in combat despite having chainswords. Ouch.

The Adeptus Astartes armored/mechanized division. YOU FAILED ME!!!!!

So Karru, stop whining about Soup. Soup is not imbalanced. Just as there are ways to build Soup and field either extremely strong Soup lists or pathetic Soup lists that are outright terrible, it's the same way with mono-factions. They are viable and are often more viable than Soup lists, especially if you're extremely familiar with how the army plays, their strengths, their weaknesses and what they can do. Abusing soup to plug those weaknesses do not always work and are not always the right solution. Moreover, there are ways to work around and mitigate those weaknesses for mono-factions without automatically turning to allies. It's not as simple as "allies remove weaknesses and plug holes inn your list" or "cherry-picking the best units from each faction". If you put in allies, you're basically removing a big portion of your original list - like for Thousand Sons, if you put in Havocs for anti-tank, you're removing a Detachment that would allow you more Sorcerers, Daemons and other psykers. You're giving up a big part of your specialization to cater to threats.

That doesn't mean I'll only play mono-faction. I'll continue to experiment and see how I can come up with more interesting lists that are both fluffy and thematic, yet not as awful as my attempts at Soup thus far. Maybe Deathwatch with an armored Imperial Guard list might be more viable than an armored Adeptus Astartes with Militarum Tempestus support (actually, the Militarum Tempestus was my main detachment, but never mind).