40k Zen – Change Your List, Not Your Army

Eventually the time comes when you sit down to get ready for a game and you realize that all your lists are starting to look pretty similar. Why not just use the one from last week? All that’s different is a bit of wargear here and there and plus or minus a dude or two in the squads. It wasn’t all that fun last week though, and it probably won’t be again. This is boring, you start to tell yourself; it’s the same thing, over and over. The conclusion? Time for a new army!

I see it often enough. A guy I know is a devout player of army X walking uncertainly around the store with an armload of boxes from army Y. No, it’s not a present, he tells me; it’s something new he’s trying out. There might be a reason, there might not; but in the end a smouldering, freshly-burned credit card goes back in a wallet as the receipt printer screams for naught, when just changing up the tired old list can save plenty of money, sanity, and safeguard against the dreaded Plastic Burnout.

There are plenty of reasons to jump ship on a given army. I hear all kinds, but the most common are variants of one of the following themes:

Can’t Buy a Win – If your army’s not winning, it’s really hard to get any motivation to even play it, let alone paint it. Maybe it's a themed list that's just not competitive, or an older list that hasn't been updated in a while. Either way, most of us play to have fun and win sometimes too, so if you're not pulling Ws with your list it's going to get frustrating.

Uberlist That’s Not Your Style – Regardless of performance at big tournaments or rousing online support, or even simply the positive consensus of your gaming peers, most of us have a play-style we unconsciously gravitate towards and are comfortable with. Trying to play a list, or slight variant thereof, that doesn’t fit with that style will just seem wrong, like writing with your off-hand.

It’s a Lemon! – Sometimes it certainly does suck, Wayne. Maybe it was cobbled together from odds and ends that don’t really work together, or it’s whatever was in the case when you made a trade, but it’s really just a bunch of components that don’t add up to anything.

Any of which, among other things, can lead to the last step before a ‘new army’:

General Malaise – All of us have Gamer ADD, and it’s easy to lose interest. I’ve started new armies simply because I had nothing at hand to read on a lunch break other than this or that codex! Before you know it, all the fire you had to build the army you’ve got is gone, eclipsed by newer and brighter lights.

Is this really all that bad? Maybe not, and there’s plenty to be said for any of the above reasons being completely legit. But I’ve seen plastic overload and the inevitable burnout more times than I can count, and it was always born in the pursuit of the ‘new army’. Much like a yo-yo diet or a love life based on rebounds, each ‘new army’ is just a stepping stone on the path to the next loss of interest and subsequent ‘new army’.

So what to do? Change the list.

If your army can’t buy a win with cash money, or you're just tired of it, and its making you resent your current little plastic mens and wish they were other little plastic mens, change your list! Any of the problems above can be addressed without stacking up the new boxes. Maybe it’s time to embrace the inner competitor and find some builds of your army that are winning, then start adding some of those power pieces to your army. Being in theme is great and it’s a lot of fun, but winning is fun, too. If your netlist or the uberlist your friend put together for you just isn’t working out, you’ve probably already got most of the goods from your book, so swapping out some of the power pieces for stuff that’s more your style won’t be any trouble. And if your army really is a Lemon you might have a ‘new army’ already in your figure case. Depending on how much work needs to be done to bring your collection up to fighting strength, you may have more than enough than you need to satisfy any lingering jones for plastic you’ve got, and by the time you’re done with the renovation, it’ll seem like you have a whole new army.

After all that, you should be able to avoid General Malaise. Other things you can do to help stick to your guns, bolt or otherwise, are even easier. Read a book about your army. There’s fluff out there for pretty much everyone, and nothing keeps the fires lit under an army than reading about how awesome they are. Keep your codex with you, so that when you have a spare moment you can break it out and comb it for new ideas. Why sit for an hour and bitch about how much work sucks when you can read about things blowing up? And the most influential of all: paint your models. Seeing your boys come to life on the painting desk is the single best thing for army fidelity; the more time you invest, the less likely you are to jump ship.

All of us want to be the grizzled veterans of a thousand battles with beards down to our well-worn boots, at whose feet neophytes sit to learn the rites of battle. Or we may just want to have enough models to play a cool looking Apocalypse game! Sticking with an army, and taking just a few extra steps to change up the list with a new unit or model here and there, will go a long way to increase your enjoyment of that army and the game. If nothing else, you’ll have an ‘old reliable’ to fall back on if your dabbling in other armies is unsuccessful.

-OM!-

-Dis.