Is spam bad?
No. It's particularly nice when cut into thin slices and fried in really hot oil so that it gets nice and crispy on the outside.
Either that or as a Spam Fritter. Does nothing for your arteries, but it's damn good.
Ok, enough of the culinary nonsense and back to the matter in hand. Spam in 40k army lists.
Well, as with most things in life, there are different ways of looking at a list that spams a particular unit, whether it's Space Marines and Razorbacks, or an Eldar list that's spamming Wave Serpents.
The first way of looking at it, and one that is always leveled at people who play this type of list, is that it's unimaginative. Well, I suppose that there is a certain lack of imagination in this type of build, it's one that has multiple of the same unit and probably the hardest thing about putting forward a list that spams is counting the points to make sure that you're not over.
But if we cut through the bullshit the real reason that people hate these armies is because they're hard to break down. If I put six twin-linked lascannon Razorbacks with a five man Tac squad inside each of them on the table, that's 870 points before I add any special or heavy weapons.
That's twelve units, six of them scoring. It doesn't matter if you take out my Razorback, there's still a good chance that the unit inside will survive. They might not, but if they do, then that's another unit shooting into them to destroy them, or another round of shooting.
It's also only 58% of the points in a 1500 point list. Take the cheapest HQ choice in the SM codex, a Librarian, and that puts you to just over 62%, leaving a lot of points for you to beef your list up. I don't know the Eldar points or percentages, but the reasoning behind Wave Serpent spam has to similar.
So is spam bad?
No. It makes complete and utter sense. Multiple, cheap, effective units will boost your army's ability to survive. Add in some decent firepower, and you're raising your chances of taking out high points value targets in your opponent's army. It doesn't really matter if you lose one or two, or even three of your spammed units, there's still more there for your opponent to think about.
Here's Durham Red, just in case you were wondering why I've been putting hot, scantily clad vampire babes in my posts.
