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You notice someone at the shop is building the same army as you... ie same color scheme and pretty much the same build.

Do you:

A) Repaint your guys to be a different company.

B) Follow him into the parking lot, knock him over the head (ie with a Dreadsock) and incorporate all those lookalikes into your force.

C) Threaten him to change his force, because you had the idea first.

D) Finish your force first so you can call him out as a copycat.

E) Badmouth him online behind a shield of anonymity.

F) Compliment him on choosing a cool theme.

G) Personally crush him in every game.

H) Refer to his army as a bunch of Alpha Legionnaires in disguise (Even if you are both playing Tau).

I) Try to talk him out of it/Get him to make changes

J) Sulk.

K) Refuse to play him.

L) OTHER

M) ALL OF THE ABOVE

N) NONE OF THE ABOVE

I realize that this is likely to happen if I choose to play marines.

And then I choose not to play them.

Sarge said it's F. And be happy someone play on foot mass infantry guards...

F.

For whatever reason GW like to make the armies I play the poster boys, so there are a lot of similar armies out there. Although most Ultras are 2nd company, and not the 3rd.

F- all the way. Happily play against them - it’s a training exercise.Trade painting/ hobby tips along with tactics and lists. Complain together about how GW has screwed our faction (even if we really have nothing to complain about.)

Do people actually care about other people having the same army?These aren’t prom dresses (that is a serious matter).

F, for sure.

Two out of three times I bought their army later when they quit the game. It was already painted in the correct way


Automatically Appended Next Post:

TangoTwoBravo wrote:
Do people actually care about other people having the same army?These aren’t prom dresses (that is a serious matter).

Yeah, especially veterans are really weird about this. In know people who literally sold armies so someone else could start them. Quite a few people have told me that they would not start orks because I already play them

 Jidmah wrote:

Yeah, especially veterans are really weird about this. In know people who literally sold armies so someone else could start them. Quite a few people have told me that they would not start orks because I already play them

it's hilarious. i can recall plaing apoc with all guards painted same. from 4 people. can't imagine someone don't want play the race cause someone in group plays it already

Some people want to stand out in a crowd.
Or they want to avoid "everyone playing the same army because of the meta"
Or they want to see "every faction in the game being played"


So for whatever reason they really try hard to avoid duplicate armies at the club. Personally I've never understood it either; esp when you consider that, esp in 40K, most armies are big enough that they've several major different themed forces you could run with them that will each look very different. I'd certainly not sell an army I'd paid money and put time into building just because someone else ran a similar army at the club I started going too.

Eg Tyranids you could run a mix; all monsters; all gaunts; warriors etc.... That's 4 different basic themes and that's just picking model type size not actually digging into if its close combat or ranged focused etc...





For me I don't care.
If someone is running the same army as me - cool; if they are running different, also cool.
Now if every single person was running exactly the same army with the same paint scheme - that's probably going to be a little strange; but eh if it happens it happens and chances are they've got other armies and everyone is just hyped up about something really awesome and sharing in that awesome.





Also another random thought - many of us on Dakka are the kind of people who buy, build and paint and often custom stuff into our armies. Some people the game or standing out are more important than the model hobby experience and they might well commission someone or buy models 2nd hand (whole armies). So they might not have that very same time investment in building things up. So they can more likely on a whim decide to sell off and buy another army because its not months/years of building and painting ahead of them - its time scouring ebay/fb/etc... for a new army to buy up and field.

kabaakaba wrote:
it's hilarious. i can recall plaing apoc with all guards painted same. from 4 people. can't imagine someone don't want play the race cause someone in group plays it already

I'm kind of that person.
I think it depends on how big your circle of players is. If you are showing up in a store and you are going to play 10-20 regular people, odds are there's going to be a matches for the more popular factions.

But equally if you regularly play with say 3-4 friends, and one of them really wants to collect Sisters of Battle, it would seem weird to me to also go for Sisters of Battle.

I've kind of always thought this - I think dating back to around 2000 when at school. I remember the WHFB Vampire Counts army book came out, and perhaps inevitably being edgelords, everyone wanted to collect and play them. Which would be fine. But you don't have to all go with a cookie cutter Blood Dragon. Just like how every Chaos player was cookie cutter Khorne.

As my son has basically stopped playing now I only play against one friend, so him collecting a particular army would largely put me off it. Fortunately he's largely into space marines and I like the bad guys, CSMs and Dark Eldar, so it doesn't really come up. He also trades armies in and out regularly (I'm a lot slower at building and painting) so we keep some variety going.

We have a very small gaming group so I wouldn't start an army soneone else already plays, however, if someone started the same army I already have I'll be totally up for some Apocalypse or 2v2 Action. The 2 Space Wolves players we have avoid playing the same factions against each other and I'd try to do the same. Since we're usually doing scenario/ narrative play we know who's playing which faction.

It happens, particularly since GW hypes a specific army at a time, which causes people to jump that way all at once. Generally you have a situation where one player will emerge as the player who primarily identifies with that army where it's not the only army for others who will drift to other things to focus on.

Even when they don't, it usually turns into a brothers in arms situation. Particularly if you've got a decent sized playgroup there's naturally players that root for one another and having the same army is definitely part of that. Even if its same scheme I can't say I've ever felt two players have the "same" army in any regard.

Oh this is easy, F. Then G

L: time to combine our forces to make a 4000 point army and find two other people to fight against in a mega fight!

N: None of the above.

I don't care if others are building/playing the same things as I am.
And I don't bother to check with anyone (save my Hobby Budget) when an idea for a new force pops into my head.

In Leagues/Crusades? I flat out tell people not to worry about duplicating me. I've been doing this for 35 years. I have A LOT of armies in my basement.... Odds are, no matter what I pick to play, someone else will be playing the same faction* as I am. So play whatever you want!

*Note that I said FACTION. Faction =/= same list. Sure, we might both be playing World Eaters, but I bet mine is considerably different than yours.

H and L: Play him often to become familiar with how your army feels to play against. Maybe identify some weaknesses.

I don't have this problem in a 40k context as I don't play it anymore, and certainly not in terms of identical builds. However in general, I do try to avoid doubling armies with my games group if I can avoid it. It's a relatively small group of people and I think in general it's more fun to have varied armies whenever possible.

We play alot of Grimdark future and without any discussion we all settled into different armies. However there have been times I deliberately went a different way.

A friend of mine has been building a Neo-Soviet army for a variety of games for over a decade. I looked seriously at starting one when AT43 died as the figs and designs were great looking and cheap, but I decided against it, not wanting to double up.

Another member of the club and I both have Fantasy Chaos armies, but he had been doing Slaanesh since the 90's and I went Khorne.

When we went into K47, I went British, both because I liked it and because Americans, Soviets and Germans had interested players. If someone else had wanted British I probably would have chosen something else.

Lastly, there's so many great options for armies and warbands out there that I generally find it's no bad thing to shorten the list by knocking off anything that my friends are already playing.