Choosing the Army: Part 1: The Story

Choosing your own army is a daunting task, especially when it’s your first army and you’re just starting out. And it’s also a financially weighty task. Make the wrong choice and you can end up plunking a few hundred dollars on something that you’re not going to end up wanting to play. I’m going to try and break down some of the factors that could affect your decision over the course of a couple of mini articles. There are a lot of variables that could sway you one way or the other.

For me, I’m starting to think I made the wrong choice initially. I went with Tyranids, as you might notice if you read my blog at all. I loved the models and I honestly think their models represent some of the best in the game. They’re dynamic, gruesome and fairly easy to paint.

But for a first time army, there are a few problems. A Tyranid army means a lot of models, especially if you’re going to use the Tervigon at all. That’s a lot of termagants to paint and, after a while, no matter how easy it is to paint something, it gets really tedious, really fast. There’s also the issue of character. I love crafting a story behind my army. I want to be able to use the models and the individuals in the army to help tell a story; whether it’s one of righteous victory or utter defeat.

With the ‘nids, it’s hard to create that story. The Tyranids are a force driven by a single hive mind that has one goal: to devour everything in its path. There are not heroes, no great ‘nids who rise up. All the characters in the Tyranid codex are organic templates that can be churned out on a factory line. The Swarm Lord can be destroyed, subsumed back into the pool and then remade again to fight again.

There is a story there: you’re playing the dragons in the phrase “here be dragons”.  You’re the monster that lurks in the shadows, waiting, lurking. You’re the mythical creature that ruins whole worlds and the great beast the knights must bring down. For me, that’s not what I want. It’s not enough to keep me pushing through another fifty bug swarm of gants.

When you’re making your army choice, it should be something you consider. Is the fluff behind the army enough to keep you invested? Are you going to be able to tell the story you want to tell with you army? Can you get excited about that one space marine captain or that one ratling sniper?

While this might seem silly to those of you who are just looking to play a wargame and blow some stuff up, in the end, having an army where you identify with the characters and really get into the background can help increase the longevity of the game and keep you invested in a hobby that you’re already heavily invested in.

Go through the back grounds of the different armies and quickly ignore the ones that you have little interest in the background. Necrons might look cool at first, but maybe the whole undead robot thing will wear thin after a while.  Focus on the fluff, not the background or the rules. What draws you in?

After that, it’s time to go deeper…

-D-

Study Session

I have a confession to make: I haven’t gotten past the assault rules in the rule book.

I’ve never been great at rule books and instructions. Once I hit the second sentence explaining, in detail, the minutia behind how to do something, my eyes start to glaze over and I find my attention wandering. I much prefer to learn by doing. Unfortunately, seeing as how I don’t have a standing army, that’s going to be pretty hard for me to do.

Today, I settled onto the couch, hellbent on getting through at least the assault section, but midway through the bit about a model charging through difficult terrain I flipped to the back of the book and began to read about the Imperium instead. I flipped some more and read the bits about Orks. Did some writing on the computer. Made some lunch while listening to The Overlords (Good podcast. At least, two years ago it was. Still in 2011 at the moment.). And now it’s 8:30 and all I really know about assault is that I think the Roll to Hit, Roll to Wound mechanic is absolutely absurd.

I want someone to explain why those two rolls can’t be reduced to a single roll, with the defending model taking an armor save after a successful hit to see if they take a wound. You can get rid of the toughness stat completely. In Dungeons and Dragons the two rolls make sense because the second roll determines how much damage the critter takes, not whether it takes a wound or not. Since the number of wounds in 40K is pre-determined, can’t they just make it a single roll to hit?

Anyway, I’m assuming I’m missing something. Hell, I haven’t even finished the rule book.

Hopefully, by the time I’ve finished building a playable army, I’ll have waded through the rules. And my Codex, which I’ve at least skimmed through once or twice AND printed out the FAQ from Games Workshop.

Oh, other new players, you’ll find that if your codex hasn’t been updated since Sixth Edition has come out that Games Workshop has released a FAQ that corrects and amends the rules in your codex. Go here to find your codex’s corrections.

Tomorrow, I’ll try and put up a painting guide on my new genestealers.

-D-

Building an Army from the Ground Up (Part I)

Perhaps the hardest thing to do when you first start playing Warhammer 40K is choosing the units for your army. Even after you pick your army, you still have a lot of options for units per slot. There are a lot of resources at your disposal to determine what units are the best: forums, blogs, podcasts, fellow gamers at the store. It’s entirely possible you’re going to be overwhelmed by the sheer number of opinions that will be flung at you and rarely will you find two people that agree on the best options to take.

If you’re new, like I am, it might be best to take a deep breath and keep it simple.

Let’s start from the beginning.

In your codex and in the rule book (page 109) is the force organization chart (usually shortened to “force org”). You are required, at the minimum, to have two troop choices and an HQ, so let’s start there.

I’m assuming that if you’re new, you have no idea what your play style is, but you can take a good guess. Do you think you’ll be more aggressive? Do you want to be more shooty or more stabby or a mixture of both? Are you concerned more with winning games or with building a narrative with your army?

For my ‘nids, I’ve done a fair amount of research for troops and there aren’t a lot of people saying that you should take genestealers. Most people say to use termagants instead. But I love the fluff behind Warhammer 40K and I think a Tyranid army without a genestealer brood is hardly a Tyranid army at all. So boom, one genestealer brood with a termagant brood to start.

The HQ choice is a lot harder to make given the sheer number of powerful abilities and wargear options you can take for a standard HQ unit. In my case, I’m having trouble between choosing a Tervigon or a Hive Tyrant as my initial HQ. The Tervigon can be very useful, but only if you have a metric crapton of termagants to make use of the Spawn Termagants ability. In the end, finances are going to end up choosing my HQ for me as I don’t think I can just up and buy 30 termagants without starving to death on the street.

And really, time and money are the two biggest reasons why you should take care in your choices. You don’t want to spend a lot of time building and painting an expensive chunk of your army only to find out they either don’t perform well on the table or that you don’t like playing with that style of unit.

Look at your force org, start small with just the basic selections and work your way out from there. Don’t go overboard with a bunch of elites, heavy support and fast attack choices.

Later this week, I’ll talk about how I’m choosing the other elements of my army; the elites, heavy support and fast attack choices. Because I’m a goddamn hypocrite.

-D-

Don’t Know Where to Start

Warhammer 40K is a daunting game. There are so many armies to choose from, so many builds to choose for each army and so many ways to play the builds. I can’t tell you the best way to build a list or the best lists. All I can tell you is how I’m going to build up my first Tyranid list.

And, in general, it’s a good idea to realize that nothing I say is the gospel truth. The whole point of this blog is that I personally realize how intimidating it can be to jump into this game. The best thing I can do is to show you what I’m going to do and that will hopefully give you an idea of how to go about doing things your own way.

There are a lot of resources on the Net already available for newcomers. DakkaDakka is a forum that’s good for both rules and hobby discussion and I often go through the galleries for painting inspirations. There are also forums that are available depending on your choice of army. For example, The Tyranid Hive is good for those who are starting a Tyranid army (obviously).

If you’re not big on forums, there’s Bell of Lost Souls, a blog devoted to wargaming in general, but with a lot to offer on tactics, rumors and other resources for 40K. There’s also Blood of Kittens, a hub of blogs focusing on wargaming, giving you ready access to a library of bloggers.

If forums and reading are out, you can always listen to podcasts. I personally listen to The 11th Company a lot, which is a great tactics podcast. They also have forums available. And there is The Screaming Heretic podcast, which focuses more on the hobby side of things.

And this is just a small sample of the resources that are available to you, most of them filled with people who are more than happy to give you their opinion. Every week, I’ll poke around the internet and try and share a new resource for you trying to focus on a new aspect on the hobby.

Come back Friday, when I’m going to demonstrate feathering! On a pyrovore. We’re all…very excited.

-D-

Keepin’ It WYSIWYG

It has been so long since I’ve opened up a codex and actually sat down to read the rules, but it all came flooding back to me just how daunting it is to be confronted with all those pages of text and trying to figure out which units you want to take, with which pieces of wargear in how many units of which size.

The hormagaunts are easy in that they only come with two pieces of wargear. No need to choose, decision has been made for you in that regard. But with the genestealers (which I just picked up today at Pandemonium Books and Games {support your local store}) there are rending claws, adrenal glands, toxin sacs, and I-don’t-know-whats. And some of these can be shown on the model, so I need to make sure that the models are WYSIWYG.

When I built my first squad of Catachan troopers, I made them fun. There was Screaming Dan, the guy with the broken vox, so he ran screaming to communicate orders. There was Sideways Stan who held his flamer sideways because I needed him to hold the flamer in the wrong hand. There was Drama Queen Steve, who held the head of one of his fallen comrades. And so on.

But once I started building my Cadian squads, that all changed. Everyone model fell into line and nothing is out of order. Gone are the poses and weird antics and goofy shenanigans. WYSIWYG!

I want something in-between with my new Tyranid army. I want them to be able to take them about town and play games without some rules lawyer pointing out that none of my genestealers actually have venom sacs. But, as you’ll see with my hormagaunts once I steal my girlfriend’s camera, I’m doing my best to pose them and paint them in vivid and interesting ways. I want an army with personality and pizzazz that still follows the letter of the law. Yes, they will have reinforced chitin modeled correctly, but they will sparkle.

-D-

The Army

As part of this project, I decided I want to start fresh with a whole new army. I did not want to play Guard. In any game I play, I always pick the most boring character. Case in point: My first character in World of Warcraft was a Human warrior. You cannot get more vanilla than that.

So I’m going to build an army that is not vanilla. It will not be human or Astartes or Inquisition or anything Imperial. That means Xenos or pure demon. Demons and dark eldar strike me as way too goth and way too emo, respectively. Necrons are cool looking, but I have no interest in painting them. Eldar are elves and elves don’t interest me even when they’re elves. And I don’t want to play Tau. From what I’ve heard of their play style, I’d be terrible at them.

That leaves Tyranids.

Tyranids intimidate me. The painting, specifically. While I can do a decent job of painting guard, they’re easy. Armor and clothing aren’t too difficult. But the Tyranids have a whole different organic feel to them. I’m going to have to learn a whole set of new techniques (feathering, getting better at dry brushing). But they’re also much more freeing to paint. I see no reason that they need to all look exactly the same. They’re animals, not manufactured in a factory like a Cadian guardsmen uniform. And there’s so much potential to add splashes of color and personality. I think it can be a really bright and vivid army.

So! Before I get started in earnest, I need to figure out what units to take. I need to avoid wasting money on units that I can’t actually use in the army. I’ve already goofed. In a moment of weakness, I bought a pyrovore. From what I’ve heard, this was a cataclysmic waste of 30 dollars. But I’m going to paint it anyway. Practice.

Once I start choosing units and building my list, I’ll talk about what I picked and why and then we’ll commence to building.

-D-