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Well, that's the question. What do you feel is important for your army? That you have made good fluff? That you have painted it well? That it is highly competetive?


IMHO, competetiveness does not matter to an army at all. I played an casual ork army, and i won all the time. I will likely to do the same with my (if possible) even less competetive CSM army. Background is quite important; you do not fight over a piece of scrap. A well painted army is also good. i can imagine to fight against unpainted or lazily painted army, but it is not the same.

What do you think?

I am obviously posting this in both WHFB and 40k sub-forums.

I think it's a mix.
I like cool fluff, cool models, nicely painted models and a nit of competitiveness to add a little something.

If you get the mix right you should enjoy your army.

I have to write in other, as ticking only one of those boxes is hard for me. A few things are a must for me to collect an army!

I need to be able to feel the armies theme, having a jack of all trades force for me is a no no so the army needs to have a nice bit of fluff to it to entice me and models to match

I'm a pretty aesthetic focus'd player when it comes to things, while I do value a good paint scheme, mine are always as good as I can make it and while I take a long time to paint I can't really say it would be a factor as to how I pick my army BUT the models within the army are!

Competitiveness for me come in after the above two. I need to like the models I'm using and the army itself/fluff then with what I have gained from that I will attempt to use competetively. I.e my Skyre, I could easily throw in t4 plague monk blocks or a variety of diff things if I weren't skryre oriented in having weapons teams, warmachines and skryre like units.

Granted thats what makes me choose an army, what I feel is important within my army once I've chosen it would have to be Models>Painting>Competetive/fluff. I'm still in the process of writting my 'own' fluff, having chosen my army already on the fluff at hand I've shelled this alongside competetive simply because I like to have both merely so I can enjoy playing. You state your casual army wins a lot. I picture a different opinion if you knew every time you put them on the table you were just going to be taking them all right back off xP That would bother me. But I am a sucker for looks so I've put those aesthetic options in first but generally ALL are very important to me.


Oh OH! And how long ago the last army update was. I currently haven't opted out of taking dwarves over the fact I don't think there models and book have been properly updated in a long time.

The only painted army I have played was my friend proxying a GW manager's army.

In my opinion it is a mix of all three

To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, hear the lamentation of their women.

DukeRustfield wrote:To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, hear the lamentation of their women.

That is what is good in life!

I'm a fluff nut, take a guess

Fluff is definitly one of the most important things in a good army. I also like to see a good paint job on a army

Fluff and models (both the actual quality of sculpting and quality of paint job) matter most to me.

Competitiveness is a tricky one. It's important, however, I wouldn't mind the challenge of playing an underpowered/lower-tier army like WE or Brets (I used to play old Necrons for crying out loud!)...as long as I had unlimited funds to continue to improve it (I don't mind the challenge, but I also still try to field the best list possible so I can win. The point of playing the game). And at the same time, playing an upper-tier army (like my DE) really isn't anything I specifically look forward to if I can't relate or enjoy the fluff. I actually enjoy playing my Dwarfs more, despite having a lower win rate, b/c I just enjoy their fluff and personality way more than DE (although the DE have some great history/stories, but their actual personality is just... ).

This is all luckily due to the fact that WHFB is actually balanced (or at least a lot more than 40k). If WHFB's top-tier to lower-tier armies had the same disparity curve that 40k had when I played, then yes, competitiveness would be a lot more important. Knowing that my Necrons had 0.001% chance to win is part of the reason I began to not want to play 40k (even though I still had Orks to make me feel better w/ some wins).

For me, the paintjob is the single most important thing. I'm not the best painter, but I'm fairly good and take pride in fielding painted units. I spend a lot of time painting my models.

I'm a painter first and a gamer second.

After painting, the army fluff is what I choose an army based on, then design it to be somewhat competitive while still using units that I like(sometimes to a disadvantage in winning).

Any army can be made competitive with the right combination of units, even Wood Elves(I'm just not good enough of a general to pull it off )

Army background first for me, then models. I may like some high elf models but their fluff puts me to sleep so therefore I won't play them. I picked ogres a while back because of their fluff.