Monday, April 23, 2012

What I Like About You (if you were my army)



I was musing today about what it is that I like about various armies, why I pick certain armies and avoid others.  Here's the result of my introspection.



First of all, a list of my current armies:

  • Space Marines (Silver Skulls)
  • Space Marines (Space Sharks, including counts-as Deathwing force)
  • Chaos Marines (Hell Hounds Word Bearers)
  • Chaos Marines (Sons of Horus, planning to redo)
  • Orks (Blood Axes desert mech force)
  • Imperial Guard (Merkan 76th foot horde with tank backup)
  • Imperial Guard (Scythiak Usurpation chaos guard foot horde with tank backup)

And armies I've had in the past but have gotten rid of:

  • Space Marines (Praetorians)
  • Chaos Marines (World Eaters)
  • Eldar (Biel-tan swordwind)
  • Tau (twice - one all-jump/skimmer army, second ambush no-crisis-no-vehicles)
  • (Tyranids) -briefly tried but stopped partway through building
  • Lost and the Damned - I didn't give up on them, but they got phased out

So, things I like:

  • Lots of relatively normal joes (two foot guard armies)
  • Elite guys in battlesuits (many power armor armies, Tau)
  • Some barbarism and brutality mixed with the high tech (Chaos, Scythiak, Orks, Space Sharks)
  • Monsters (Orks, daemons, daemon princes, Ogryn, big nid bugs appealed but army as a whole didn't)
  • Unusual or ramshackle vehicles, walkers - (Dreads, Sentinels, Defilers, Orky and Orky-style vehicles)
  • Non-linear deployment options (drop pods, deep strike, summoning, infiltration, outflank, etc.)

Looking at the armies I parted ways with:

  • Praetorian SM - very linear, upright eagles-and-sigils style marines.  Played fine, but not as fun to me as podding down from orbit and a bit too goody-two-shoes for my genetically engineered killing machines.
  • World Eaters - didn't really get rid of them, just a few units and put the rest in storage while concentrating on other CSM armies.
  • Eldar - too clean, very fast but still mostly linear, no real elements of barbarism
  • Tau - similar to Eldar.  Last version had more non-linear aspects, some barbarism with kroot, would have kept but the stable was pretty crowded and other armies hit more of the buttons.
  • Tyranids - monsters, but that's about it.  Not enough buttons.

Lost and the Damned really does hit my buttons.  Normal mooks, elite power armored guys, monsters, summoning and other sneakiness, barbarism and brutality, weird/ramshackle/looted vehicles.  If I had to pare down to one army, but could make it big and full of options, I think I could be satisfied with a Lost and the Damned type force.  Here's hoping that the next Chaos book allows for all that!

What are your buttons, what do you like about the armies you have?  What makes you keep them over others you've rejected?


16 comments:

  1. Guns, guns and more guns. The higher the Strength with a high rate of fire. I enjoy breaking light armour round 1 on the table.

    This has led me to love things like Hydra Flak Tanks, Psycannons, Infiltrating Autocannons. As far as my dark eldar go, I think of them as the ultimate challenge to play and be successful, so i love them for a completely different reason than how their army currently plays.

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    1. Let 'er rip! For all that I enjoy chopping stuff up, I can certainly appreciate the dakka!

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  2. My likes are almost entirely cosmetic as I don't play 40K, rather I'm more into the fluff and background that I've loved since Rogue Trader first came out.

    Originally Squats were my #1 force. I used to be a mega dwarf lover back from D&D 2nd Ed and finding such funa nd characterful stunties in a space setting just sold them for me. I was the saddest panda when GW decided they'd get rid of them cos "Space Dwarves are silly" even though Space Elves, Halflings and Ogres are just fine and dandy. (Rant over. :P )

    #2 would also be a similar choice to your own Lost and Damned, though my Lost and Damned were from the original Real of Chaos books, namely Nurgle, that I'd first started playing Chaos warbands with. The random rolls, mutations, etc were so much fun and it was great to face off against likewise random warbands. This lead to me devouring the chance to collect Plague Marines and I was a happy gamer.
    Last one are my Raven Guard. I always prefered Space Sharks to all chapters after seeing the original Badab (What 2 pages? Heh) entry in the Compendium or Compilation or whatever, but I painted my Nurgle Marines grey and really didn't feel like starting up yet another grey marine collection. So 2nd best, Raven Guard, which at the time had Shrike as their fluff and that's it. I love Assault marines, but don't like Wolves or Angels and loyalist-wise, RG fit the bill. Jump packs for everyone!

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    1. (Gawds forgive my horrid spelling, I had no time to review before hitting "Publish".... *~_~*)

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    2. Good stuff, thanks for sharing! Yeah, that old Badab bit was my favorite too, loved the old color scheme pages. It was almost Sharks for me when I re-started a while back, but I'm finally getting to them!

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  3. I talked a little about this some time ago, but I love very guys with balls. Orks and BT might not seem similar, but the whole "we're coming for you" attitudes really hit my buttons. I also enjoy the overall lack of psychic abilities (I know Orks have them, but they're not very good or reliable so I never used them). I don't want fancy powers, I want guys kicking you in the teeth!

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    1. I see a Khorne army in your future...

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    2. Chaos appeals to me so much on a visual scale.... I have never looked at the rules, though.

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    3. Well, Khorne's all about kicking you in the teeth. They don't use psychic powers, and some Khornate units/characters even have special defenses against enemy psychic powers.

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    4. OOH! DEFENSES! Neat. But Khorne are the guys with the horns, right? Not spiky, but horns?

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    5. They can have horns and spikes, but it's not required. The World Eaters (main Khorne CSM, but certainly not the only ones) are notable for their fearsome "bunny-ear" helmets.

      http://www.games-workshop.com/gws/catalog/productDetail.jsp?catId=cat440207a&prodId=prod1090224

      http://www.games-workshop.com/gws/catalog/productDetail.jsp?catId=cat440209a&prodId=prod1090241

      http://www.games-workshop.com/gws/catalog/productDetail.jsp?catId=cat440209a&prodId=prod1095443

      There are Khorne Daemons too.

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  4. I love the idea of "Grand Tactics" a sense where i have the man power to complete an objective but the tactical know how to make sure as few of them die as possible.

    I love Grit, i can't stand the bright and clean things unless its in a more jovial atmosphere ie. VSF

    The organization really gets me too, I love hearing about regimental exploits. like "6th foot guard stormed the ramparts in this battle and did this in another"

    I want to understand why my troops are fighting on a more personal level, i figure that if i spend an hour assembling/painting/modelling i should understand why it wants to fight in the first place.

    The army needs to look Cinematic on the table.

    If at all possible, be challanging AND fun to play at the same time

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    1. Ah, the story. I'd imagine that you could get that from many different armies.

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  5. Looks like you were spotted deep in thought while wearing your Sunday Best this week. Hope you don't mind me giving your thoughts a shout out on my weekly themed top-x. I enjoyed your post so much that I plan on publishing a post that answers this very question on my armies. Cheers and thanks for sharing.

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    1. Happy to have been found worthy of your notice O Infernal Panda.

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