Freakshows--cheesy?

If you're familiar with my Freakshow tactical articles, I have a question.  (If you aren't, there are links at the bottom of this post.)  (If you refuse to read them, Freakshow lists are based around stacking Leadership negatives and then hitting your enemies with attacks like Soulfright weapons, Psychic Shriek, or Death Jesters with the Death is Not Enough! rule.)

I have been told by a couple people that my Freakshow lists are 'total cheese.'  What do you guys think?  Pitch in if you have an opinion here, by all means, but I thought the DE community might tend towards bias, so I started a poll thread on the other forum I frequent.  If you'd like to vote there, feel free.

https://www.thedarkcity.net/t12080-freakshow-tactica-part-1
https://www.thedarkcity.net/t12088-freakshow-tactica-part-2
https://www.thedarkcity.net/t12109-freakshow-tactica-part-3-this-is-how-the-world-ends

Attacks that target leadership feel 100% Dark Eldar to me. Who better to use fear as a weapon besides the true kin? No different than bug players screaming cheese when their MC list run into hordes of poison shots. We fight uniquely I very much enjoyed your list ideas and was planning on stealing some ideas for myself.

If the definition of cheese is "build a lot of expensive units to form synergies that do not have a huge effect on most armies", yes... then they are cheesy.
Especially when it is way easier to build that -Ld with Eldar/Quins AND capitalize on it big time.

Cheese is a definition that depends on gaming social contract and the environment in which the game is played, so it is a hard question to answer. That always has to frame the answer. In my opinion, in a tournament like environment it is no different than Tau focusing on shooting, grey knights focusing on psykers, etc., with a possible exception that to do it optimally, freakshow generally can/will pull from so many different sources to pull it off, and more sources adds to the cheese stigma.

If it were DE alone, it would be interpreted like our poison weapons.


FWIW my own personal misgiving with it is that I'm concerned that Eldar+Harlequins generally "do it [freakshow] better" than pure DE or DE + harlequins alone would (essentially adding insult to injury with the other things they do quite well). It miffs me that DE are essentially a glorified WWP + LD aura caddy. Given how available telepathy is to Eldar, did they really need the ATSKNF exception on soulfright? Really?

Yeah, I've never, in any of the posts, advocated mono-DE. Harlies can do it with DE/HC support pretty well.

@Klaivex Charondyr wrote:

If the definition of cheese is "build a lot of expensive units to form synergies that do not have a huge effect on most armies", yes... then they are cheesy.
Especially when it is way easier to build that -Ld with Eldar/Quins AND capitalize on it big time.

Ouch.

It's conditionally cheesy - and thus, probably not really cheesy.