Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Cebalrai wrote:

 Eilif wrote:


That's true, but for people who are even remotely interested in the narrative aspect of gaming, having two distinct opposing forces is very appealing.

Assuming you're speaking from the perspective of being the one who provides all the miniatures for a battle then yes, I agree. Otherwise, that's what other people and their armies are for, right?

I'd say both actually. It's very useful for sharing a game with others and that is often front of mind when considering a second army as I host a club, run convention games and provide forces to play against my son.

However, in as much as ones collection is a narrative and reflects interest in the setting , that is also why I usually look at my second (3rd/4th/etc ...) army/force as a chance to deliberately give my first an opponent.

I find SYSTEMS intriguing (armies too, for that matter). But my problem is I buy into things like Legions Imperialis, Oldhammer, and even Conquest and Star Wars Legions, then back off when I realize I can't get a game in the area and the shiny system effect wears off.

Also, I do the thing where I buy for conversion sake rather than army sake.

But as far as intriguing armies - Kharadron Overlords.

Steampunk? Yes
Airships? Yes
Cool gun things? Yes
Unique Aesthetic? Yes

But after building up a handful I went... Ugh. Went with Lumineth instead (and have the same problem!)

Cebalrai wrote:

 Eilif wrote:


That's true, but for people who are even remotely interested in the narrative aspect of gaming, having two distinct opposing forces is very appealing.

Assuming you're speaking from the perspective of being the one who provides all the miniatures for a battle then yes, I agree. Otherwise, that's what other people and their armies are for, right?

Yes.

However, I have an Imperial, Chaos, and Xenos force. When I play at the club, I can switch around based on who else is there. I always have a thematically appropriate game. This was also very helpful during our recent campaign weekends. I could swap as needed.

 blockade23 wrote:
I find SYSTEMS intriguing (armies too, for that matter). But my problem is I buy into things like Legions Imperialis, Oldhammer, and even Conquest and Star Wars Legions, then back off when I realize I can't get a game in the area and the shiny system effect wears off

I was very interested in 3rd ed WHFB until I read the rules and couldn't even figure out how you picked an army.

Always had a springy interest in Tau, whenever I see boxes of em in stores I magnetize toward but never end up buying em.
Don't know what it is about them but they are just so retro with the whole squareish build, like gundam.

Maybe oneday.

 Cap'n Facebeard wrote:
How does everyone feel about the urge to collect an opponent army to your main force?

I've seen it mentioned a bunch. I myself feel like I have so many bad guys that I should have some good guys to oppose them too. And what if I met someone who wanted to play but didn't have an army?

I used to go all in on a single game and hop around factions a lot. These days I'm more inclined to hop around a bunch of games, but stick to a faction. That said, I do really like having two heavily contrasting factions for a lot of reasons. If something I'm playing gets really popular, its fun to be able to swap and inject some variety into the mix. If I get tired of a playstyle, its fun to swap to something wildly different. If one of my armies gets squatted after months of being nerfed into oblivion.... well maybe my other faction survives. If a game dies, I have two opposing forces to play if I like.

At the moment I don't have a huge allure for a new army. Orks were always something of a white whale and finally getting an army painted has me pretty sated. I do oddly feel like I need something for Sigmar. I don't really WANT anythign for Sigmar, but at the moment I feel like I could do without my Sylvaneth and with Squigs being.... bad.... I could maybe get Troggs and have two contrasting armies out of one army? Not sure, I probably should just focus on what I've got.

So I'm leaning further and further towards leaving 40k completely. The silliness of the background, which I used to find charming, is now starting to annoy me. And I feel like the models are slipping more towards an 'action figure' feel that I can't really explain. I just look at the CSM range and generally think they look a bit silly.
I almost posted a kind of cringe thread about it but instead decided I would see what the folks here thought. In your opinion should I drop 40K and gain the room to get more WHFB?

@ Cap'n Facebeard

1) Do whatever will make you happiest....
2) Of course you should play more WHFB/TOW. Was that a trick question?

That said, do you still enjoy playing 40k?
Because if you still enjoy playing it's pretty easy to address the parts that are bugging you.
*Silly background - just ignore it.
For ex: Overall I haven't really given 40ks lore/background/whatever you want to call it more than a cursory glance since somewhere around 4th edition. This has not hindered my enjoyment of building forces & doing battle one bit.
*Not liking current models - well, just don't use them. Continue using the stuff you've got (maybe re-basing as needed). Like new units rules-wise but don't like the models? Just convert your own versions. For ex; I don't really like that new possessed unit - the one with the small & larger possessed. Rules are OK though. So if I ever decide to use them I'm 100% certain I could kitbash a units worth that'll look a damn site better.

And if it is time to take a break from the 41stM? Do you're wallet a favor & stick at least some of your stuff in storage. Because if you eventually decide to come back to the game it'll just be more expensive.

I guess I just want internet people to validate my wishes

I don't actually play, I don't know anybody who does. I don't have any real world folks to bounce ideas off

I'm really just a collector / modeller with good but limited space. If I was to sell the fragmentary forces I have for 40K, I would be able to collect maybe 2 more armies for 6-8th WHFB. Its very tempting.

I'm also primarily a collector now, so pay little heed to current rules. It also means I can firmly choose when and where to set my forces, avoiding issues about gakky lore by choosing a campaign that avoids it.

So if you like the models, build them to old lore you do like. Mine are based around the 3rd War for Armageddon, using 3rd/4th edition rules as a guide for army composition. Then I can feel happy looking at them on the shelf.

 Cap'n Facebeard wrote:
So I'm leaning further and further towards leaving 40k completely. The silliness of the background, which I used to find charming, is now starting to annoy me. And I feel like the models are slipping more towards an 'action figure' feel that I can't really explain. I just look at the CSM range and generally think they look a bit silly.
I almost posted a kind of cringe thread about it but instead decided I would see what the folks here thought. In your opinion should I drop 40K and gain the room to get more WHFB?

I've never understood why people like the 40k setting so much.
I don't mind the setting if I'm having fun with the game though.

I stopped playing 40k because I got fed up with GW and stopped playing GW games in general.
There are other companies with better games and more customer friendly buidness models.

The models are rather much.
My main gripe with GW models is that they're terrible game pieces.
They're too expensive and fragile to transport and push around on a table. There's more detail that I want to paint.
It's like getting groceries in a Porsch or Ferrari.
Yea it's a great car, but it's not a good choice for my needs.

After turning back to historical gaming for a while, I find it hard to justify models that are for only one game. More so if models can potentially become outdated, which is ridiculous.

 Cap'n Facebeard wrote:
So I'm leaning further and further towards leaving 40k completely. The silliness of the background, which I used to find charming, is now starting to annoy me. And I feel like the models are slipping more towards an 'action figure' feel that I can't really explain. I just look at the CSM range and generally think they look a bit silly.
I almost posted a kind of cringe thread about it but instead decided I would see what the folks here thought. In your opinion should I drop 40K and gain the room to get more WHFB?

Man I get what you are saying as I look at my closet full of shame. Were I to re-write the background it would take a whole different feel. Still just as grim-dark, but with a whole different organization of how the factions interact. I am specifically collecting older miniatures, partially for the same issue that you are complaining about when it comes to the new models. Playability has always been to taste, but I do prefer an older edition of both 40K and WFB so much that I started my own forum.(Link in my sig)

As far as if you should drop 40K, I would say that it depends on your inventory and you. From other posts it seems that you are more of a collector rather than a player, and you mentioned that your CSM inventory is turning you off. Well, that would be a reason to put them on e-Bay if they are annoying you that much. If you have some partial armies or units that you know that you won't ever collect again, then by all means it is time to sell, especially if they are still in the box. If you have a collection that you like, keep it. One word of caution, I have seen far too many people complain here and other forums that they wish that they never sold their armies for one reason or another, so if you are on the fence for one faction or another, then I would sleep on it. Regardless I would definitely put a hold on any new 40K orders until you sort out what you want to collect.

TinyLegions wrote:

One word of caution, I have seen far too many people complain here and other forums that they wish that they never sold their armies for one reason or another, so if you are on the fence for one faction or another, then I would sleep on it.

It's also worth noting that you don't need to get rid of your models if you stop playing 40k.

If you like the models then there is almost certainly something similar in another game or setting. Troops in power armour are not unique to 40k.
If you don't like any of your models anymore then why keep them.

I would love to have painted, playable forces for just about all the factions for Confrontation. Especially the Cynwalls.

 youwashock wrote:
I would love to have painted, playable forces for just about all the factions for Confrontation. Especially the Cynwalls.

Had to look them up, but the Cynwalls constructs are very cool, so I understand your interest.

That segues into another question: the urge to collect EVERY faction in a game. I feel this strongly for 6-7th ed WHFB. Is it madness? Ambition? Both?

I noticed a guy in the Plogs is doing it for every 40K army. Does anyone else collect EVERYONE in a game?

I would like to but I'm not quite there for 40k.

Sort of, though I don't feel the need to follow the official armies from any company. For 40k I will do Space Marines, Imperial Guard, Chaos Mortals, Chaos Daemons, Necrons, Tau, Orks, Tyranids, Dark Eldar and Demiurg as full forces, with some genestealer cult and mechanicus units but not a full army.

For middle earth I am doing a bit of everything but basing it on the books rather than the films. That is much closer to doing 'everything' than my approach to 40k but there are also fewer factions.

Lizardmen. Specifically WHFB/TOW Lizardmen and NOT Seraphon. The few times I've been tempted to play Fantasy it'd be with Lizardmen.

I also have intermittent periods of wanting a Halfling or Lizardman Blood Bowl team, but that passes.

I used to want a Spyrer gang for Necromunda, but since they changed the background of them they've become a lot less interesting to me

 Cap'n Facebeard wrote:

 youwashock wrote:
I would love to have painted, playable forces for just about all the factions for Confrontation. Especially the Cynwalls.

Had to look them up, but the Cynwalls constructs are very cool, so I understand your interest.

That segues into another question: the urge to collect EVERY faction in a game. I feel this strongly for 6-7th ed WHFB. Is it madness? Ambition? Both?

I noticed a guy in the Plogs is doing it for every 40K army. Does anyone else collect EVERYONE in a game?

Yes. But if GW stays strong with Spearhead and Combat Patrol I'll collect every faction in those. It would be really easy if the Combat Patrol transitions to something like Spearhead where all the forces are in one book.

 Cap'n Facebeard wrote:


That segues into another question: the urge to collect EVERY faction in a game. I feel this strongly for 6-7th ed WHFB. Is it madness? Ambition? Both?

I noticed a guy in the Plogs is doing it for every 40K army. Does anyone else collect EVERYONE in a game?

Sort of? Though not actually by intent.
I've been doing this (miniature wargaming) for a looong time (since summer of '89), like how many forces play, like the minis ranges for many, & like to build models/armies. This has naturally resulted in a massive collection.....

For WHFB/Old World I have:
High Elves, Wood Elves, Dark Elves, Empire/Dogs of War, Dwarves, Lizardmen, chaos warriors/chaos/Slaves to Darkness (whatever name these go by edition to edition), Chaos Dwarves, Demons of Khorne, Orcs/Goblins (90% goblins), Beasts of Chaos, Tomb Kings, Vampire Counts, & Skaven.
I'm only really missing Brettonians.
(Though I guess you could also count Femir, Tamurekhans Hoard, Slann (from way back in 3e) & Ogres (were ofe kingdoms a thing in 8e? I forget) as missing....)
So not quite all of them, but damned close.

For Sigmar?
Cities, Lumineth, fire slayers, stormcast, Seraphon, Ogres, Daughters of Khain, skaven, sons of Behemet, blades of Khorne, vampire counts, Bone Reapers. Gloomspite, Beasts of Chaos, Slaves to Darkness & Kharodon.
Again, not quite all of them as I'm lacking 3/4 of the Chaos God specifics....

For 15mm WWII games?
I've got extensive forces of US, Soviets/Russians, Germans, Finland, Japanese, British, Italians, & Australians.
I can do any theatre, any era of the war - so long as it's ground based (I'm not into boats)
Definitely not ALL the nation's that fought, but all the major ones + Finland & and the Australian 9th is still a good spread.

Cripes ccs, and here's me feeling scarey darey for wanting all the 6th ed WHFB armies

I think it's also what you consider an army - for me, about 50-60 troops, a couple of vehicles and a walker or monster is pretty much what I consider an army for 40K. MESBG is not that different, though I often go bigger in that arena because I like to have lots of troops for that fantasy feel.

WFB is pretty much automatically up in the 80+ region for a full army, and that makes a big difference.

I always kinda wanted a regular goblin army for WHFB with multiple reasons as to why i never got into it. Money beeing at the time the main one, next to lackluster normal goblins in regards to modelling and missing a type of heavier gobbo infantry.

Same with chaos warriors which i do own a decent ammount of, but lacking for a long time the support of barbarians... and now that the support would be there the barbarian models still mostly suck and once again GW failed to make medium infantry a thing aswell.

I now find myself thinking about which 40k forces I have. Most of these are quite modest and would amount to ~500-1000 points in most editions.

Imperial Guard (including Steel Legion, Cadians, Valhallans, Scions/Stormtroopers, a small force of Vostroyans, and a handful of Catachans, Krieg, and some WIP converted units like Savlar and Athonians)
Codex Space Marines
Blood Angels
Dark Angels
Orks
Tau
Tyranids
Necrons
Chaos Space Marines (really more of a Lost and the Damned force with CSM support)
Death Guard

The following I have a single unit/character or so:
Craftworld Eldar
Space Wolves
Thousand Sons
Sisters of Battle
Assassins
Inquisition
Sisters of Silence
World Eaters

Don't have any Harlequins, Dark Eldar, Mechanicus, GSC (except some neophytes used for Imperials and parts), Votann, Kroot, Chaos Daemons, Grey Knights, Deathwatch, Custodes, or Arbites. Yet...

Probably missing some factions.

 Cap'n Facebeard wrote:
So I'm leaning further and further towards leaving 40k completely. The silliness of the background, which I used to find charming, is now starting to annoy me. And I feel like the models are slipping more towards an 'action figure' feel that I can't really explain. I just look at the CSM range and generally think they look a bit silly.
I almost posted a kind of cringe thread about it but instead decided I would see what the folks here thought. In your opinion should I drop 40K and gain the room to get more WHFB?

I missed this earlier on, I'm very much in the same page as you but my approach is just to ignore all the stuff I dislike and also to ignore models I don't like. When building my CSM for example I agreed with you so I specifically went looking for the older models and got them cheaper on Ebay. Same with Kroot - I got the older models. I ignore whole factions I don't like as well. I use One Page Rules for my rules and also don't feel the need to refrain from altering rules I don't like.

I love 40K but I don't feel the need to stick to what GW does.

Decided to update my earlier response. I am also highly tempted by armies in other eras (do we count 40k as an era?) more specifically like WW2 (Between Bolt action and Konflict 47, I enjoy both sets of minis and already have painted up a small Italian force but am also smart enough to not buy more without having someone to play against). I'm currently tempted by the chaos maurader style army for WTOW, but since I haven't even assembled the brettonian army I have, looks like that will have to wait.

I've always been intrigued by many of the WFB / Old World armies, especially Undead, Lizardmen and Daemons. And by the game as a whole. But I can't ever get to the point of having a playable army. Once in a while I manage to assemble a single regiment, sit back to admire it ... and then inevitably give it away or cannibalise it for parts.

My problem is simple: I can't cope with rank and flank at 28mm scale. My brain just won't accept it. It goes, "Twenty guys marching around in a neat rectangular block? Oh come on." Two hundred guys, or two thousand guys, fine. But not twenty. Let alone three well-behaved trolls standing in a row, or whatever. To say nothing of the weird look of things when you're using a movement tray and half the guys are dead, so there's a big empty flatbed behind your remaining minis.

I know WFB is really supposed to be abstract and each of those figures is meant to represent ten or 100 troops (it says so in the back of the 5th ed rulebook). But again, my brain won't accept that kind of abstraction at 28mm scale. One guy is one guy. I can't 'see' it any other way. Might have something to do with growing up with 1:1 scale games like Heroquest rather than with historical wargames. (At 10mm scale, e.g. Warmaster, or smaller, it's another story. I can visualise the abstraction in that case.)

Actually there's another problem, which is that I instinctively feel like I have fewer playing pieces in rank-and-flank than I do in a game with individually moving models. If I have two squads in 40K, they may function in practice as two blobs, but I feel like I'm moving each of the 10-20 models onto its own spot on a rock or behind a wall or what have you. Meanwhile, if I have two regiments in WFB, I feel like I have ... just two models. Two large, rectangular models. Feels like too much effort to paint 20 minis for the sake of one actual playing piece. It's possible that that's actually superior in gameplay terms, but I can't get over the mental hurdle to find out.

Funny how odd psychological blocks like this can get in the way of enjoying a game. At least old school Warhammer Quest gave me an excuse to collect some fantasy minis that I actually ended up using. I've got skeletons for days. I mean nights.

 Cap'n Facebeard wrote:
Cripes ccs, and here's me feeling scarey darey for wanting all the 6th ed WHFB armies

You have to bear in mind that represents 35 years of building armies. I didn't just amass this hoard yesterday.
And unlike others I've A) never needed to sell off an army to build another, B) have always had sufficient storage space

And not all of these armies are massive. My Stormcast? I only own 8 dragons & about 15 models on foot (mostly to act as pt fillers in various sizes of games or when GW screws with pts)
Also, a good # of my WHFB/Old World/Sigmar forces are the same army - I'm not rebasing hundreds of Goblins & Skaven. Square bases work just fine in casual Sigmar & movement trays work equally well for ranking up square or round bases.

 Da Boss wrote:
I missed this earlier on, I'm very much in the same page as you but my approach is just to ignore all the stuff I dislike and also to ignore models I don't like.

I had this intrusive thought earlier this year where my brain created the image of space marines hitting each other with cheese-grater (instead of chainsaw) swords and now I can't unthink it.

 Cap'n Facebeard wrote:
I guess I just want internet people to validate my wishes

I don't actually play, I don't know anybody who does. I don't have any real world folks to bounce ideas off

I'm really just a collector / modeller with good but limited space. If I was to sell the fragmentary forces I have for 40K, I would be able to collect maybe 2 more armies for 6-8th WHFB. Its very tempting.

If you don't play, there's zero reason to collect armies you don't like .

The Miniatures world is vast. Buy what you know you like or cast a wider net. We're living in an absolute Golden Age for the modeler., inside and outside of the GW. bubble..

If you had your way what kind of minutes would you collect.