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The subject title states the the main idea of what the thread is based for. There are many players out there from every race within the 40k universe that tend to play "other than" Codex Recognized Armies, aka "custom" schemes. Now I understand alot of people choose to do so, simply do to the fact that they dont like any currently recognized schemes, and wish to do their own, and others (such as myself) like to do a custom army to give its back ground a new flavor or a story of its own. And so as the question goes, how important is your amry's fluff? Do you like to make up rich background stories for your army, key charactors, battles they have fought, enemies they hate or like...stuff like that. Feel free to explain your opinion on the subject.

I guess, for me, it depends on each army I have. My SM's are Luna Wolves so fluff is pretty important. My CSM are Black Legion, again fluff is important. My Eldar are a DIY craftworld so fluff is unimportant. My Tyranids are painted in the "Aliens" scheme so fluff is also unimportant.


Darrian

Wow...dont go crazy on me now...SLOW DOWN!! Too much info!! lol jk

all my armies have fluff, written for them, and it often effects how i collect the armies,

My space amrine sare cursed founding, so retrcited as to what i can take. My Imperial guard are Urban fighters so they have urban colour shceme shotguns and arbites attatched.

Chaos are Iron Warriors, they have no fluff yet.

new marine chapter i am working on will need fluf written fo rthem, but meh

I guess, for me, the measure of a players commitment to fluff is how restictive he chooses to be with his unit/weapon selection in order to maintain fluff. For instance, will a player building a pre-heresy Ultramarine army use librarians? If so, he is playing to win, if no he is playing for fluff. I fail this test miserably with my Luna Wolves army. I often use librarians, assault cannons, and even a chaplain. These are not pre heresy fluff but they are damn effective.

Darrian

I like fluff, but I make it serve the list. The point, for me, is to use imaginary backstory to make pushing bits of plastic around more fun, not tthe other way around.

Yep. The "official" fluff has been changed, ba*dized (read "star" for "*") and is basically a derivative of isaac asimov's second foundation book influenced by 1980s metal head artwork anyways, so my point of view is that you can write any fluff you want to justify taking, painting, converting or abusing absolutely any of the products for which you shelled out hard-earned cash. fluff is like a buffet - there's a lot of crap on the table but you don't have to lick it all up.

lol thats an interesting way to put it widow...

Fluff is very importants for my SW and i have been lucky that their is enough of it for my boys.

For Chapters I invent fluff is very important to me but for my ultramarines I just say they're ultramarine 2nd company marines. What fluff can I really write for them.

My black legion marines have more fluff just cause I find chaos to have more opportunities for fluff than SM cause they're not as organized.

My next project may well be pimp marines(I read the create a chapter thread) and they will need some serious fluff.

Your pimp marines HAVE to have a Squat Commander. They say he walks with a limp. They call him Shorty, the Pimp.

Seriously, I am not much of one to follow fluff for fluff's sake. It has ALWAYS had a very large impact on my army builds with my BA. In one of the standard bearer WD articles that came out with the new BA codex, Jervis refers to the BA and DA as "basically Codex Chapters", witha few special units and rules. Well, that's his vision, and I'm not exactly in agreeance. I had a different vision of my BA, that was always much closer to the Flesh Tearers than Ultramarines. I always played swarms (relative word use there) of jump marines with just enough foot sloggers to make the chart happy. I brought lots of jump marines to the tourney, b/c that is what the fluff meant to me, always a description of this army making it's points in H2H. Now, any decent gamer can start to see the gaping holes in my TO&E at this point, but I played, I won more than I lost, and I had fun. And so did my opponents.

Same thing with my bugs. I had a vision. That vision was not codex optimized, but it worked on the table top. For a while it kicked but then the rules changed. THat's what GW does, change the rules on us. So off to the store to buy more extrordinarily expensive chess pieces, b/c that's all these models are to me (no disrespect to the talented painters and converters out there, it's just me opinion).

I like fluff, as long as it's good, so yeah fluff is important.

Not really.

I like concepts rather than details. I feel like they're all
going to die when they hit the table anyway.

Malfred's got a good point. I pour a lot of time into the fluff for an army, and then they end up dying in embarassingly pathetic displays on the field.

On the other hand, fluff's kind of the reason I'm not all that interested in War Machine over 40k. Warmachine doesn't (as far as I can tell) let you come up with your own characters and there's something lost there for me. How many times can I see the same schmoe walking across the field, you know?

RZ

Red_Zeke wrote:.Warmachine doesn't (as far as I can tell) let you come up with your own characters and there's something lost there for me. How many times can I see the same schmoe walking across the field, you know?

RZ

I can see that. It's also funny how often the commanders
die given that warcaster/warlock kills = end game.

Different kind of game. I think Warmachine would lose a lot
of flavor with generic casters and characters. One of the draws
is that it comes with these larger than life characters, and so it's
really great that you can only field them in an army once.

So instead of TWO chaplains or whatever, you have your Major
This or That who fought at Sul and toppled the towers of Ilium...

etc. etc.

My Eldar are a DIY craftworld so fluff is unimportant

Interesting, I'd argue the opposite. Established, official Chapters, Craftworlds, etc already have a reams of pre-made fluff for you to just say 'Yeah, I play Ultramarines- here read this book.'

A DIY version requires a lot more work, and is ultimately rewarding for it, because it is unique, original, yours.

To that end the fluff of my Shadow Scorpions Chapter is very important- when I was younger I wrote pages of fluff, their history, their style of combat, famous characters, unique units, etc, etc. I haven't wrote much fluff over the passed 1-2yrs, partly because I've got much of the Shadow Scorpion lore written down already, partly because the direction of 40k game-wise doesn't inspire me to put as much time into it fluff-wise.

My gaming group isn't known for bothering with fluff, the closest most get is to call their HQ's Mr.Knuckles (meaning bare bones wargear selection)- the rest is Mathshammer, statistics and in-game rules discussions. So the fact most of them refer to Jeridian (my Captain model) by name when targeting him, rather than as "shoot that Captain model" is what makes fluff worth it for me.
That he invariably dies to a hidden power fist, or a Railgun snipe despite his centuries of experience and mastery of combat....well, I can always say he was just very badly injured and crawled away for another go.

Just model a spirit stone somewhere on the armor and
call him a Phoenix Lord and you're good to go.

I've developed a lot of fluff for the Diamondbacks over ther years; a lot of it is kind of outside-the-box, kind of truths within truths. For example: the Diamondbacks seem to be a Codex chapter, but in actuality they number way over the standard 1000 Marines. I regularly field the 3rd Company in games... but the chapter has multiple 3rd Companies as well as multiples of the other formations, all with their own command structures. According to their history, "Diamondbacks" isn't even their original name; they were originally the Scions of Set... and they were one of the deleted Legions. As a chameleon-like force, they imitate the current state of relations between Space Marine chapters and the Imperium, but are free to act in their own interests if local Imperial interests run counter to theirs.

I designed the fluff both because it entertained me, and because it left me the flexibility to play the army as I like, using my full collection rather than being limited by a certain style and set of tactics. It also allows the inevitable Imperial-vs.-Imperial fights without claiming the old "training battle" chestnut.

My current IG army is heavily fluff based, to the point where i'm green-stuffing chains over every single infantry-men's face and glueing strips of paper on to each of their legs, fielding a unit of ogryns that are just going to march across the field and get anniliated and a few mortar heavy weapon teams that will be lucky to ever envoke the fear of a pinning test againt any self respecting space marine.

eh... Losing is not a big problem for me, it happens (alot, actually -sigh-), and like-wise, It's incorperated into my fluff, as an important tactic used by the Imperial Black Eagles to force enemies to face each other instead of them.

Almost all my armies start as a great idea (to me at least) then become a heavily themed army. I enjoy the modeling aspect probably more than the actual gameplay nowadays so my stuff is heavily theme and fluff based.

That said, many fluff based lists are generally lacking and my play style for any army i start will slowly shift to a more competition list inevitably. I try to maintain a happy medium between fluff and kickery.

fluff plays a massive part in my armys, it gives you a reason to collect. i have two armies, on latd and ig, they are the same "army" as such, but their planet had a massive civil war.. and you can make you the rest

I take my fluff pretty seriously, altho I have to admit it usually goes cool minis/ cool rules then fluff to justisfy. I like to glorify units that I've had success with ie Scorpions and Warlocks for me, which I would then tend to use more often, making it 'my' Eldar army.

if I can't decide what to do or buy I'll go with "cool fluff" idea. So I'm collecting stuff to be Chaos Orks/ LatD/ maybe Inquisition and I'm trying to find a way fluff-wise to get both Mega Nobz and a Warp Head in on it.

The fluff is very important for me. My first army, a DIY chapter called the Sunhawks, had nearly 70 pages of background that drifted into storyline and back. I know looking back that I tried to stuff far too many things into it and it came off as WAY over the top. Someday I need to clean it up. The storyline for my Loyalist Emperors Children is even more important to me. I've got the concept for their existence very well blocked out but I've never written it up for presentation because there are too many people on too many occasions that have proudly showed off their blinders regarding this concept. Maybe someday. I have some ideas for my next chapter(currently on hold), the Storm Riders, but I don't have them fleshed out yet. The same is true of my American Civil War themed IG army that is currently being painted, the the 7th Bellum.

I used to develop lots of army background, especially in RT and 2nd edition. Now I frankly can't care less. Seeing uber-sergeant Ezekial die for the 3rd game in a row doesn't help.

While I enjoy the 40K background for the most part, it doesn't guide me in making armies for play. the 40K background is macro level and a player's army is generally micro level. If I want to develop a character or group I'll go back to D&D.

I design an army to be effective in battle, and also according to the style I like to play, i build fluff around them, but don't limit my options too much.

st.germaine I'm sure you know this, but bellum means war. So your regiment has a rather strange name.

Fluff doesn't mean squat (not the race... or non-race) to me.
To me, fluff is only as important as the fact that it explains why I use Raptor Iconography (The Iron Griffons), but not their color scheme (they're not Raptors).

So, that's my fluff:

"The Iron Griffons. They're not Raptors."
-the end

I come to play the game, convert models and socialize.

If you want more, that's cool. But that's all I need.



Eric

I generally start with a basic background ("Hallo. This are Razgut. He are an Ork Warboss wot likes ta loot stuff") and then slowly build up a story (Razgut got in lots of fights wif dem gribbly tings. He got et a lot.), and maybe do a bit of converting (Razgut is a cybork now cos a carnifex et his arms an' legs) and so on. This is fun for me and my opponents as I lament the progress or lack thereof of my warboss and they get to feel a sense of achievement for adding to his saga. Same goes for my fantasy armies. (Which is where the "Da Boss" name comes from, i liked the idea of a boss so surly no one would ask him his name).

But at the end of the day it's just a little bit of fun.
In terms of army selection, background, models and tactical style all play equal parts.