A Train (Wreck) of Thought

One of the interesting side effects of this whole blog thing is the fact that I get a lot of practice writing. Which is great for me, professionally speaking. I feel like I've gotten to be a better of a writer due my practice here. Another bonus of posting a lot is that people tend to recognize that you're busting your hump trying to get articles out and will cut you a little slack on your editing and train of thought.

On to the meanderings:

My fluffy bunny side is constantly at odds with my competitive side. Despite my cribbing of army lists from YTTH, Mind War and the like, there's always this part of my brain that wants to put plasma pistols on Space Marine sergeants and field Marneus Calgar with a full honor guard. Luckily the part of my brain that actually likes to win games has gotten better at heading off my crazy ideas at the pass before they manifest in the 'real' world.

Those sites I mentioned have been real god-sends in terms of making 40k gel for me. Dethtron and I were talking about this - sometimes you really just need someone to hand you a tool so you can go about the business of learning the game. Dethtron (so am I) is befuddled by 8th edition fantasy and I had problems with 40k. The lists I got from YTTH were/are extremely helpful in just getting the game to click for me.

But there's just one catch - while I don't want the fluff bunny side of me to waste all my damn time and money, I don't want to give up that side of my completely. Rarely does Stelek do anything with what would typically called a 'fluff perspective'. And that's totally fine. He has his focus and he pursues it and while he acknowledges all of the other types of gamers and mentalities out there, he isn't all that interested in it. If you ask him for list advice - its always going to be filtered through his particular view point on competitive play.

But for me, not every game has to be played with the high level of seriousness that Stelek has that manifests itself in his lists. Yes I want to win and I want to play a tighter game - but as good as things like the Maximum Overdrive list are, they just don't grab me.

Despite my new found eye toward the competitive, I'm still drawn do things that tickle me in some way - like lots of grav tanks, or things with an element of the ridiculous in them. I want to focus on the ridiculous for a bit. You see, not every game has to be optimized. I don't mind playing games with a gimmicky army or even a wildly unbalanced one. Knowing what I know now, I can go into these kinds of games and just have fun with the business of pushing something weird around the table. Sometimes it doesn't matter if I win, just so long as I have fun doing it.

Some examples:

- The Stegadon herd (RIP): I know in my heart of hearts that there would be many games where I would be straight screwed. But, who cares. No matter what, I'd get to push around 7 large monsters. Ridiculous.

- This crazy fast Daemon list: I know the post title has the word 'competitive' in it, but lets face facts - as cool as Daemons are, their weird collection of rules and shortcomings make them pretty unreliable in a lot of ways. My Vassal experience with this list made it pretty clear that while this list is still full of incredibly random, no shooting daemons, it was hella fun.

- SandyDuncanWyrms Emo-wing: And here we are - the real reason I started this post. For whatever reason, there's just something compelling about a bunch of sad hawk-men. This is the exact kind of list I would push around. This is the kind of thematic craziness that really gets me going. It won't win every game, but it'll have fun doing whatever it does. Chumby had a good one as well, but just doesn't have quite the same level of insanity that SandWrm's has - but it's close. The Emo-wing has more special characters, more nipples and then the Deathmask speeders on top of all that. Sorry Chumbles.

But as a consolation prize, Chumby, I got you a Star Sapphire. Now just because
this is for Chumby doesn't mean we can't all add this to our slide-shows.

This list isn't by any means the ultimate list but its still pretty optimized. Or as optimized as the permise will allow. SandyWyrm even admits that its not perfect. He just wants to push some Sanguinary Guard around the table as best as they can be. And I fully support that. This is the exact kind of list I was talking about earlier.

Bonus points for this being cheap as hell. Assuming a 20% discount on applicable models, I figure this whole thing could be made (including the metal guys) for less than $300. That's a pretty rare feat these days.

Fun, crazy and cheap. The emo-wing is officially on my 'to steal' list. Bravo, good sir.