Saturday, 14 April 2012

Writing Lists

I enjoy most aspects of war gaming, including collecting, assembling, painting, playing and chatting about tactics. However my least favourite gaming associated activity is list writing. The reasons for this fall into 3 broad categories:

1. OVERWHELMENT: When writing a list, particularly an ork list, there are a lot of options. Decisions range from large (‘what heavy support choices should I include?’), medium (‘what unit size works best?’) to relatively small (‘what armour should I equip my character with?’). Generally these choices are obvious, but often there is conflict. I always find choosing my HQ hard. I also find myself being torn between writing a list based on fluff, competency, models I like and price both points and money wise very difficult.

For instance I love Killa kans, both the models and fluff. However the models cost a lot to buy, occupy a heavy support slot AND are (arguably) less effective than a battlewagon with a deff rolla. Killa kans also work best with a Big Mek+Kustom force field, which gobbles up (at least) one HQ choice, but I really like the thought of a Warboss and a Big Mek with a shokk attack gun. So what do I do? Go with what I ‘like the thought of’ or what will synergise most? And what if I have already bought a Wazdakka Gutsmek model off ebay for a bargain price? = Overwhelming.

2. DISAPOINTMENT: That horribly disappointing feeling you get when a list you thought would be really fun/kick ass/evenly matched against army ‘x’ (delete as appropriate), just isn’t. The tankbusta’s really are rubbish compared to lootas’, those nobz you gave heavy armour got smashed by Grey Knights and you regret the lack of cybork armour and in retrospect that massive unit of meganobz on foot are WAY too slow. Although this feeling is generally short lived and the right ‘wow that list was hilariously bad’ attitude/tweaking to your list can remedy it, for me at least, disappointment is still an issue.

3. Finally, JUDGEMENT: This is what generally gets to me the most. I know I shouldn’t care what people think, but the ‘what kind of idiot would include unit ‘x’ in a ‘y’ list?!’ really gets to me. I’m not sure if this results from being female, and feeling the need to prove myself as a capable gamer, or if it’s a widespread feeling, but either way it bugs me. If I want to have 20 gretchin and fork out for 2 Runtherders, I want to do that for a reason (probably one associated with modelling opportunity or fluff). I certainly don’t want people thinking I’m stupid for not taking 19 and saving myself the cost of the extra herder. When I played Space wolves regularly, I would run 2 rune priests only one with living lightning. This wasn’t because I was unaware that living lightning was awesome, but rather I preferred a bit of variety. If I lose a game I have no problem admitting my list might not have helped but I’d don’t want people assuming because I took that list I can’t play 40k and THAT’s why I lost. Judgement narks me.

So, am I the only one out there that feels like this? What aspect of war gaming is your least favourite aspect? I would be really interested in hearing about other people’s opinions on this :)

Also, this is the first ‘opinion’ blog post I’ve done, feedback on if you’ve enjoyed/hated it would also be appreciated.

More soon.

5 comments:

  1. This absolutely sums up my experience with orks.

    It's such a flexible army there's a lot of ways you can go, and the fact that I've bought at least one of everything just makes it even harder to pick.

    The units I like most tend to be the ones that perform least well too, and vice-versa. I don't *like* having a squad of lootas standing still the whole game, but they're pretty damn good. I love the stormboyz models, but they get a bit mullered.

    I don't have a problem with judgement from other people though, my gaming buddies are pretty good like that - even in a game where my entire army died and I literally didn't kill a single enemy model.

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  2. Hi elec.monk,

    Thank you for flying past my blog :)

    It's also nice to hear you identify with my list-writing-stresses! Hopefully when the Ork codex gets redone with tons of viable and equally balanced units (what, I can dream can't I?!) writing lists will be less frustrating!

    Ha! The game you describe (total wipeout!) sounds hilarious! What army where you playing against? I hope all the Orks went out in a bloody blaze of glory!

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  3. Hello! You're welcome - I came here via your Warseer plog, was hoping to find out how your speed painting technique worked. I've spent all tonight painting little silver bits on 10 slugga boyz ...

    A new ork codex would be nice but I think it's a looooong way away. :(

    My wipeout was only a 500pt game, and it was against Dark Eldar. I'd never played against Dark Eldar before and I underestimated how flighty they were. His transports all had something with made them count as being 6" further away than they really were, and the longest range gun I'd taken was a Big Shoota, so he just drove about shooting me whenever I tried to get near him. :(

    Took some lootas in the next game and won - lesson learned! :p

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  4. Dark eldar are really nasty at low point values. I have a pretty awesome mental image of really confused orks getting sniped before they understood what was going on!

    I find base coating the block colours is the long soul destroying bit of batch painting, after that they are done in a blink. I credit black ink, the speed painters dream! Good luck with the boyz :)

    I'm building shoota boyz at the moment, 1 down...only a bazillion left to do...Once their built i might do a painting tutorial :D

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  5. That mental image is pretty close to what happened! That and some light-brigade-esque tactical blundering. "Stay in cover stay in cover! Run at them run at them! Run away run away!"

    That tutorial'd be good, I'll keep an eye out for it! :D

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