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I have an interest in military history (though I doubt I'm anywhere near as knowledgeable as many in this thread), though I lean more towards medieval history than more modern conflicts (WW2 being the only exception).

In terms of playstyle, I'd describe myself as semi-competitive. I'll take some fluffy options - especially on characters and will try to squeeze in at least most of the units I want to play (regardless of their quality), but I also try to ensure that my list is at least reasonably competitive.

I don't mind playing narrative games, or at the very least games with uneven objectives (e.g. a clear attacker and defender or one army trying to protect something and the other trying to destroy it; as opposed to both sides scrounging after vague "objectives"). However, since these tend to require a bit more organising, I tend to just play the standard games.

In terms of being behind, I don't mind when it happens naturally (one of my favourite games was when my DE rolled horribly and ended up being overrun by Orks, with a handful of forces fighting desperately to hold off the tide), but it's not something I'd want to engineer by playing a terrible list.

 Elbows wrote:
I build armies based on fluff/theme because that's how they would be in the "real/fake" universe. I even have "battle fatigued" tables we used when we play games locally.

I don't believe 40K is very suited to this - at all, thus why I don't enjoy 40K as much as I'd like. I'd actually 100% enjoy fake historical campaign books with pre-determined army lists (much as you get when playing historical scenarios in a WW2 game, etc.). My buddies always say "why don't you take this", and my response is "Well, story-wise, as I've developed this Renegade chapter they don't use or have access to those, or they don't worship that God, etc.). It penalizes me in games on occasion, but I enjoy the structure behind the game that's occuring almost more than the game itself.

Would you mind sharing one of your fluffy lists? I'm quite curious as to what story-based decisions you've made with regard to list-building.

 wuestenfux wrote:

Banville wrote:

 wuestenfux wrote:
Military history is very interesting.
But when it comes to table top, not very much you can infer from military strategies.
The best one is the Lanchester square law!!!

If you can pull it off, the ol' refused flank does actually work.

What I actually meant is the law that doubling the number of tanks means four-folding the number of anti-tank weapons.
This law was heavily used in WWII.
It particularly works well in small pt games.

Could you explain this one to me?

Elbows

Thanks for the detailed reply.

I have to say, I really like the sound of a lot of what you've suggested here.

To be honest, I'd like to create a stronger theme for some of my armies, naming my characters (maybe even my units), creating fluff for them etc. It seems like a good way to help me get more invested in them and also to stick to a theme.

I also love a lot of the scenario ideas you've presented. Having to have everything flying, in transports (or, presumably, deep striking?) is an interesting requirement. Same goes for characters having to skip a game to recover if they get 'killed'.

Might see if any of my friends want to try something along these lines when we next play.

Your deployment cards also look like a lot of fun. Can I ask how the one in the top right works? Does the defender have to split his forces between the two red zones or is he allowed to just use the larger one?

 Elbows wrote:
Vip,

Yeah for the deployment cards the army is allowed to deploy any of the coloured zones which are his/hers. We also have a deck of 6 or 8 three-person deployments, and a deck of post-game storyline cards which are used to "suggest" future games (though these are new and we haven't used them yet!)





You can see I'm a game tinkerer/game designer as a hobby so I enjoy this gak more than playing the game sometimes

I have to say, I applaud your work on those cards. They look really professional.