‘Why would anyone play games like this?’

‘I’d rather have friends.’

‘That army makes no sense, that would never happen’

I’m no stranger to statements like the above when it comes to Warhammer 40,000. There’s a certain mentality that likes to poke its head up whenever someone starts talking about playing competitively, and it’s one that seeks to point out the flaws in people’s way of enjoying the game. One of the players in my Local Playgroup (Dundee Wargames Club) has a blog, and I’ve shown up on that blog a couple of times now, to more or less the same reaction time in and time out. People don’t like the way I play. And I get it, sort of. Not everybody wants to play cut-throat games of 40k that end on turn 1, need a 80+ Page FAQ document (ETC FAQ) to make work, and where even the least lore-abiding citizen’s wildest dreams are a reality. Michael’s most recent post (Found Here) features him playing at Caledonian Revolution, a 2 Day, 5 Game tournament which we both attended. The army he played against was 6 Riptides, 2 Dreadknights, a Culexus and some ancillaries. I’ll allow you to read the comments there yourself, but I feel like they’re the prime examples of exactly what I want to talk about, and the reason I decided to write this post.

When you design a list, how do you go about it? Do you read some awesome lore, and go out and sit with the book, thinking how to best represent the battle scene you just read? Do you mash together all the units you have available to you until they fit the points limit? Both of these are valid ways to write a list, but I think that they have a fundamental mentality underlying them, which makes people who write lists in this manner miss the point of what a Tournament List is (or should) be trying to achieve, which is the best list to win any given match.

If you show up to a tournament of 5 or 6 rounds, odds are you’re going to play a pretty decent spread of armies. At Caledonian Revolution I played against War Convocation, Iron Hands + Inquisition + Sisters of Battle Death Star, Tau (3 Riptides, 3 Ghostkeels, 1 Stormsurge), War Convocation, and Screamer Council + Seer Council. I’d say that I pulled a pretty decent spread of armies, 2 MSU High Shooting Armies, 1 Pure Deathstar, 1 Split Deathstar (The Councils List) and 1 Low Model Count High Damage Output. I was playing the same list from my previous Tournament (Found Here). What do you think it did well against? Which would you say were bad match-ups and which were good? I’ll be posting a full report of the event later this week, so give yourselves marks out of 10 when that comes out. (1 point for correct Good/Bad Match-up, 1 point for correctly guessing win or loss)

What I’m trying to say is that at any given event you need to be prepared to play against a huge possibility of lists, and that means that you had better god damn optimize what you’re running. Running through the list pack for Caledonian Revolution you’d be hard pressed to find more than a couple of lists that you couldn’t say ‘Yeah that could win the event’. That’s because (most of the ) lists are written in such a way that they don’t take into account what book something’s from, or whether it makes sense. The only concern is how good the unit is for how many points it costs.

This leads to situations where it’s very easy to end up with 12 different codices (particularly us Imperial fellows), and that’s why detachment limitations exist.

Why are Sisters of Battle so good for Deathstars? Why did Fenrisian Wolves + Azrael and all the Psykers in the Imperium show up 3 times in the list pack and all end up in the top 15? Because they manage to take disparate elements of codexes that maybe aren’t great in isolation, but end up being massive force multipliers when combined.

Saint Celestine is 135 points. In the Sisters of Battle Codex she’s great because she drops in with a unit of Seraphim and incinerates a unit with all the flamers in the world. In a Deathstar, she’s even better, because she provides Hit and Run at 55 points cheaper than Cypher, and without having to go for White Scars Chapter Tactics. She also allows you to take up to 3 Priests, one of whom buys the Litanies of Faith, and now for 260 Points in an Allied Detachment you have 3 independent characters, who provide your Deathstar with Hit and Run, Zealot, and automatic, guaranteed Re-Rolls to Wound and to Save in Close Combat. It also provides as an ObSec unit with 3+ Armour that can hide at the back of the board. Add that to your Iron Hands Command Squad and watch that Veteran with his 3+ Rerollable invulnerable save and 4+ Feel No Pain. Now try and kill 4 of them, and the 6 Librarians, 2 Techmarines and the Chapter Master. Oh and there’s an Inquisitor.

How awesome would it be if you could fire 6D6 Strength 7 Tesla Shots with Re-Rolls to Hit, Wound, Ignores Cover and Rending, from inside a 50+ Wound Model that covers 3′ Square of the Board? That’s what Wolfkin does. 50 Fenrisian Wolves, one unit with Azrael (Confers 4+ Invulnerable Save to his unit, and 5+ Feel No Pain when within 3” of an objective). Add a Wolf Priest with the Helm of Durfast in a Wyrdstorm Brotherhood, and the Monster Hunter from the Wolfkin Formation, then Misfortune that poor Wraithknight to death. Now sit on 6 Objectives for the entire game multi-charging opposite ends of the board, all you have to do is keep coherency and Hit and Run!

Why do Riptides and Dreadknights show up on the same army? Because they complement each other. Riptides don’t like being Charged, and they don’t like Psychic Powers. So take stuff that stops that. Simple is as simple does.

Seer Councils provide a hell of a lot of dice for you to use with Fateweaver and a Screamer Council. Wyrdvane Psykers in a Psykana Division are amazing at shitting out Daemons so your Flying Hive Tyrants don’t have to come onto the ground to hold objectives or so that your Knights can run around hitting stuff without worrying about holding the relic.

I think this is the core disjoint in mentalities between both sides of the argument. It’s not that we’re killing the fluff, it just doesn’t come into consideration. If I need a way to make sure my Tau Army can survive your Wolfstar, the easiest way is to stick a Culexus Assassin 6” behind it so the second you charge it you lose all of your buffs. Not every army has a way to deal with every other army. But most armies have something that deals with something else. The trade-offs we have to make can be minimal, if you just want to plug and play a formation like Riptide Wing or a Psykana Division, or quite large, like having to take two extra Scout Squads or a Grey Knight Strike Squad.

For me, list building is the part of the hobby, other than the actual game itself, that I most enjoy. There’s something amazing in coming up with a combo that breaks the game apart, match ups that shouldn’t be winnable for your army suddenly becoming 20-0 swings because of 1 character or piece of Wargear from a forgotten book. Is that a problem with 40k? That match-ups can be so Rock/Paper/Scissors as to swing with one item? Maybe it is. We’re seeing a big switch towards Deathstars in the UK Scene, even Eldar, traditionally a bastion of the MSU Warp Spiders/Scatter Bikes is moving towards the Wraithbomb (See Jordan Clifford or Brett Armitage’ armies in the list document), even prior to the introduction of the Eldar Erratas.

Building a list to play into any match-up that a tournament could throw at you needs a different mindset to building an army for a ++Casual++ game, but for those of us who’re that way inclined, it can also be a massive part of the fun.

What’s your take on the issue? Is this an issue or am I just spouting a load of shit? Thanks for taking the time to read – Innes

Changed Fun to Casual, not fair to use that term