40K: Remembering Who We Are

40K: Remembering Who We Are

I see the armies on the tabletop and have a deep sense of dread come upon me. I feel we as players have lost our way...

I saw a thread on the interwebs a few days ago that had to deal with creativity and army list construction. I'm not going to go into too much detail on the thread itself, but the gist of it is this: Creativity is dead and everything these days looks like a copy and paste of each other. I, for one, agree with this statement. Just the other day I found myself nerd-raging in a thread about Razorback spam because I think they're lame. Wait a minute, something doesn't add up here..

Before I go on, I'd like to mention that I run a competitive minis blog that covers a lot of armies. A lot of these armies I own, but I also cover armies that I don't own because I love being in the know. I do a lot of codex/army book reviews and I normally get sneak peaks at a lot of new releases. This brings up one of the more soul-searching questions I've asked myself lately: How can a player that has a competitive gaming blog dedicated to min-maxing armies complain about Razorback spam? Isn't that in itself a paradox? Yes, but let's continue..

As much as I like min-maxing the living crap out of army books and telling players what the most point effective choices are, I love armies with themes. To take this a little further, I love playing an army the way they're designed; the way they're meant to be played. What do I mean by this? I'll provide some examples below to show off I mean (keep in mind this is a generalization):

How Space Wolves are meant to be played:

•Courage, honor and a glorious death in the battlefield
•Frost axe to the face, aggression, adrenaline-pumped melee
•Prefer the crucible of melee with ranged support
•Mighty warriors, epic sagas, tales of greatness and glory
How they are being played:

•Max Long Fangs and Razorbacks
•Min melee, max long-range firepower, are we playing Wolves or Tau?
•Individually configed Thunderwolves for the purpose of wound allocation
•Inexcusable and lazy bunker sitting pups, no epic sagas4u


How Blood Angels are meant to be played:

•The Angels of Death, Descend from the Heavens, Rage Incarnate
•Speed, ferocity and unmatched martial prowness
•Close combat comparable to the World Eaters
•Epic heroes leading a dying Chapter through the annals of history
How they are being played:

•Max Preds, max Razorbacks, Fast tanks = happy shooting
•Who cares about melee, let's shoot them to death
•Jump infantry is for suckers, let's stay in our Razorbacks
•Heroic acts on angelic wings? Nah, I'm fine back here.


And then I guess we'll close it off with IG:

•Expendable, billions of men armed with lasguns
•Commisars, unbreakable morale and faith, serious artillery support
•Strength in numbers, the Hammer of the Emperor, a few good men
•Combined arms, infantry, vehicles, artillery, the works
What actually happened:

•You're Steel Legion? Me too! Oh, and everyone's a veteran.

Now I don't know about you guys or when you started playing, but I started at the end of 3rd. The armies I got into and the reasons why are quite obvious. What really gets me confused is that the lore and fluff of all the armies I listed above support the way the army is designed to play. Phil Kelly writes about how the glory of the wolves is to obtained the same way Mat Ward writes about the heroism of the Blood Angels. Robin Cruddace does the same thing for the Imperial Guard and so on and so forth. How it actually plays out on the tabletop is quite different from the fluff and the lore. Is it a game design problem? Or is it just the current edition of 5th Ed. mech? Or is it.. (dramatic music) the internet telling players to play a certain way?

I'm as far away as a fluff bunny as you can get with all my rants about taking effective units. However, if there's one thing that irks me more than anything in this hobby are armies built without the the principalities that makes the army truly unique. The army you build must have soul, theme, ideals and purpose. I can't tell you how to spend your cash and you can do whatever you want with it at the end of the day. I just want to take a minute and remind you all who you really are and why you got the armies you have in the first place.

I have found that in the past few years this is very true. The fluff in a tourney setting is gone. It is all about power listing or spamming or what ever you want to call it. If you bring a nice themed army, "the way they are story lined", you will get crushed by the power listers. It would be great to go back to nice balanced lists but it can only happen in nice friendly games in someones war room, after you have both agreed not to spam you lists. Those games are fun to play because it forces you to use units you wouldn't normally bring and nothing is over powered. But these days it is all about over powered victory. I know because I do both!!!!!

I would agree Wayno, but you might be hard pressed to find the odd unit inplayer's armies. If they're spamming their lists with power units, then they more than likely didn't even purchase those types of units in the first place. I for one have gotten rid of all the fluff units for my chaos or even my bugs to keep the army competative in a tourney setting, using the $ to purchase other figs to fit into said armies.

I think it would be difficult to run a tourney in which lists couldn't be spammed, but it would be fun. Maybe an idea for ML Con?

I think a restrictive tourney for the next ML Con would be a good idea.

No special characters, max 2 slots except for Troops...Troops must be different. All units must be different.

Granted some Codices can't do this effectively.

Yep. It seems to be a failure of codex design more then anything else. There are lots of restrictive 'competitive' builds for certain armies. I think it is purposeful restructuring of the game by GW to keep people buying products...can you say 5th edition mech armies anyone (besides you crazy daemon players)?

Edge wrote:

No special characters.

That can actually KILL some armies...thus, a stricture I don't agree with...(Deathwing/Ravenwing come to mind off the top...no bias or nuffin!)


otherwise, yes...I like the idea of anti-spam.
The other option, which would make it feasible if this was an ML only event (as we would need to be all on the same page)...

Institute an old version of 'comp' (dirty word though it may be).
Again this would only work amongst a group that had the same mindset...and make it a part of the scoring.
an agreed upon non-checklist based scoring, and allow it to be discussed/debated post game (avoiding someone not understanding an armies fluff/strategies...which would grant an explanation of background where it appears to be min-max vs actual intent).

ML Con will be strictly a club event. Food, beer, gaming and commrodery....

I think between all of us we can come up with a singular mindset about how we want to run it.

I think it is pretty impossible to bring a "fluffy" list. More that it would be impossible to bring a list that everyone thinks is "fluffy". Some books just don't have a lot of good stuff in them, and some just don't have a lot of crap in them (cough demons, cough cough space wolves).

I mean seriously, a fluffy Deamon list is going to kick the shit out of a fluffy Necron list.

It really is the unfortunate position that GW has put us in with the current Codices.

You almost have to bring the cheesiest, min/maxed list you can just so you know both players are on more of a level playing field.

We could do something like the Adepticon team list builds. Something like 4 or 5 games of 1250 pts no more than one of each selection except troops. And you could select one extra of either HQ,E,FA, or H. Just a thought.