Army starting insight

Keeper of the Fortress

Hello again. As promised I will share my opinions on some things. Firstly I will be discussing my views on building an army. Now there are two way you can build your army: Planned and build as you go. Both have there merits and both can be hard especially for someone new.

With the random 40k Event my friends and I are doing i started thinking about how to build up an army which involves the army list and the two ways mentioned above came to mind.

Firstly Planned. This means that you sit down with your codex and write out the blueprints of your army aka the Army List. You may work on it and change it a bit but he final product is more or less what you want to build. From there you make your army. I find this works well with armies like Space Marines, Chaos, Eldar, and Orks for example. Why these army types? Well because with space marines for example if you model the marine with a plasmagun or heavy weapon then that is what the marine is stuck with unless you remove it and replace it. (I am not going to touch the subject of proxies at all.) With Chaos and eldar it is a similar thing. A howling banshee can only represent a banshee and a berserker cannot represent a plague marine for example. With Orks you can have slugga boyz but to represent shoota boyz you would need more models. Get my meaning? The planned army list is best with these armies and armies like them.

Build as you go: This is where you find a cool model or unit and you buy it and then factor it into your army. With this style of army building you have to be careful because you could change your mind and not need that unit. Now of course we all have bought something because it looks so cool and rarely get to use it. The two armies that I feel can work the best with this are Necrons and Imperial Guard. Why? Well with Necrons there are no real unit upgrades that you need to model with the exception being your Lord. Everything else in the army has equipment that does not change. You still have to keep them specific so immortals only represent immortals but its easier then the other armies listed above. Why Imperial Guard you may wonder? Well a chimera can be use by a lot of units. Guardsmen can represent a variety of units from conscripts to command squad. Heavy weapon teams can be used as support squads there own heavy weapon unit or to represent a heavy weapon in a squad of guardsmen. Sentinels can be fast attack or part of the command platoon thing. Essentially its easy to fit in units to these types of armies.

Now neither method is better then the other. I find that an army that you really enjoy (For example Dark Angels for me) that either method works as you wont mind having extra models. Essentially you want to build up and own as much as you can for that army. If you are going to branch out into new armies i find the planned method works best as you will have a solid idea of what exactly you need.

Now for New players my best suggestion would be to mix the two approaches. Establish a core which would be an HQ that you like configured how you want and 2 or 3 troop choices configured however you want them to legally be. From there as you learn the rules you can make easier tweaks to the army and impulse buys may fit better as you ll have a strong core already.

Hope that insight was helpful to people. Many of us know this already but we don't always follow it.

So what do you do when you build your armies? I personally do both. If I am trying to make a tough as nails list ill strictly plan.

More stuff to come in the future.