It has taken me a while, honestly. I haven't played 40k
in years and when I agreed to take part in Dave's campaign it was
more to make up the numbers and be sociable than actually wanting to.
I put myself down to play Orks because I had the models sitting in a
box, unmade and unused and that felt wrong. I've been dragging my
feet on building them just because I didn't have the enthusiasm.
Now I do, thank goodness. My newfound enthusiasm comes
from two factors:
The first is that Matt and Ian had a game on Sunday and
I was invited over for company and to handle the rulebook. Both were
playing Battle Forged Imperial Guard lists (or Astra Militarum, if
you insist), though Matt's are built and converted as Traitor Guard.
Still, it was a game between two of the same army and yet it wasn't
at all boring. I suppose my problems with old 40k aren't uncommon: I
found it too easy to predict what was going to happen in a game, the
winner was often obvious from turn two and had very little to do with
tactics.
This game, though? Random charge lengths stopped the
movement progression from being as logarithmic as it was back in
fourth edition when I last played regularly and the Tactical
Objective system meant that both players were forced to make choices,
again something I thought the game lacked before.
Matt
made a choice to basically remove his largest unit (40 Conscripts and
a Ministorum Priest) from play to hunker down on Objective 2 in case
he drew that card later in the game. Ian made a choice to throw his
deep striking Tempestus Scions into a suicide mission to take out
Matt's Warlord to potentially grab two objective points for killing
the Warlord and
killing a character. Both also had to choose at various points
whether to ignore an objective they could take but that that might
harm their army in the long run.
And the winner just plain made better choices on what
objectives to go after. Luck was involved, it always is when random
mechanics come into play, but so did tactics. It wasn't just a matter
of spamming the enemy with the “best” units or using a tournament
list. It was a genuinely fun game to watch and made me want to play
it myself.
Of course, I'm going to need an army for that and the
other thing that rekindled my enthusiasm was that I came up with some
sketchy background for my Orks. Nothing too definite, just some names
and basic personalities because I mostly want it to be determined by
what happens in-game but it is amazing how much more I care about
this campaign now I have some characters to play with.
Now, instead of taking “my Ork army” to this
campaign I'll be bringing the mercenary Freebooterz of Kaptin
Thunderguts Snarla (yes, I love the Navy Lark), (un)ably assisted by
his first mate Mistah Krumpins and his trio of incompetent Meks Owzat
Gubbinz, Krakka Muggs and Chub. Also, for comedy purpose, the
Gretchin crewing one of my Zzap Gunz will be based on the Marx
Brothers (Grubba, Chugga, Hurla and Zero).
Now its just a matter of building the bloody army before
February. I'm going for a theme that's heavy on the gubbinz, heavy on
the dakka so that should save me from having to build too many
models. Now I just need an army list, some idea of what I have and
what I need, and away we go.
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