Warhammer 30k - List Tailoring In Your Community And When The Arms Race Begins

In my local community we have multiple gamer types. Primarily this breaks down to those who collect and collect, never stopping and we have those who got to 3k and decided that was their aim.

Personally, I feel that 30k gets good at the 3k per player mark and starts to become unwieldy at 6k per player. Once you hit around 5k there tends to be a need for a few super heavies to clear the bodies out of the way so I am definitely in the first camp, I have thousands of points for each army and I enjoy that method of collecting.

Regardless of the side of the fence, we have found it difficult to cater for everyone in our gaming sessions. Those of us with larger collections will tend to gravitate towards options that will do well against those with a known and seen list. This is the basics of list tailoring.

For me, that's a battle and hard to prevent. A lot of these gamers with 3k only have maxed out on terminators and so plasma or melta is an obvious choice. while flamers or rotor cannons become pointless. Do you have to take the occasional poor unit to help keep your opponent interested or is it up to them to realise their mistake and buy a little more? It does become an arms race if you follow that route, which in an expensive hobby is not the best option for everyone involved.

However, who has the responsibility to make it a good game for all? It has to be down to both players in my book and both players have to realise what their likely to be playing against and accommodate for it.

If you have a foot slogging marine army and your opponent has plenty of blast weapons with range, who is to blame if the marine player gets tabled? I'd say it's both people's fault for not taking a few minutes before the game to discuss the likely lists. Unless you really enjoy tabling people then you have failed in the social contract but is it fair on the player with the blasts if he or she has plenty of options sitting on the shelf that they are unable to use because of the local meta?

In our small community in the Highlands I find this a very interesting thing to look at because I firmly believe that no one is right. Some players may miss out on more serious games due to their self imposed limits while those who do have more will sometimes have to lower the tone to help not break the spirit of their opponents.

In a tournament of course, all bets are off but I have shied away from them in recent years in order to focus on a more lore based hobby.

Any way, what do you do in these situations? How do you deal with your local meta? I would be very interested to hear.

Talons of the Emperor - Custodes - Imperial Palace Basing

So I've been working away on my Custodes for a while and like many armies I try and have a theme. So the theme for these guys and my Imperial Fists is meant to be defending Terra in the last few days of the Horus Heresy. I always imagined sandstone featuring heavily on the Palace walls and so there's quite a lot of sandy colours on the bases of my Imperial Fists but I couldn't recreate it very well for my Custodes so I opted for a new route. They are inside the Palace fighting all sorts and given their love of grav technology I felt a very simple base would work well.

So I started with several sheets of this stuff  - available from the company in the photo. It's textured plasticard, thin enough to cut and comes in A4 sizes. It's perfect for putting a base down, cutting round it and getting the right size. Then you can file it to fit and remove the rough edges. You'll see on mine that I didn't get it perfect but it doesn't matter from the table top.

Pardon the jeans here! This is the base mounted and sprayed with a quick blast of Army Painter Uniform Grey (a staple of my early Space Wolves) but could easily use any other paint here.

Finally you just need to blast it with nuln oil. It looks cracking once it's all wet but be warned!

The base here is after one blast, it's not totally perfect and it's looking like it needs another coat. I'll probably top these up once I've gotten more progress done. Once I have a painting need I like to ride it all the way as I am not the biggest fan of painting.

WIP shot of my Custodes Contemptor-Galatus. I'm not sure how many more colours I'll add till I say he's tabletop but I do have to go back to all these guys for another detailing session.

Ignore the birthday cake - I was 32 yesterday!

So with a tiny bit of effort you can make some really cool and distinct bases, I would love to hear some of your little wins in that regard. Do you tend to go ornate and fancy and fill the base with loads of detail or do you like the plainer look?

Cheers all

-Kijamon-

Hi Guys! First Post Today - Who/Where/Why/When?

Hi Everyone, I've often thought about doing a hobby blog and never quite got around to it. Unfortunately that means most of what I should be talking about - hobby/building/painting is now behind me as most of my armies are done!

So first of all - who?

Kijamon, a 32 year old wargamer, Massive 30/40k nerd and have been collecting for 20+ years now.

Second of all - why blog?

I've been a wargamer since I was 9, primarily Games Workshop games but I have dabbled in others - this blog will primarly be about those games and systems and particularly the Horus Heresy range because I have fallen for it hard.

Where?

That's easy, I live in the North of Scotland in Inverness! I moved up here for work 4 years ago and haven't looked back.

When?

Ideally I'll update twice a week but it really will depend on time and what I'm up to. No point spamming if I have nothing to say.

I thought it would be a good start to show how serious I am about my GW and 30k collections so here are some cabinets I've put up this week so I can finally start showing everything off.

 First up is a little cabinet with my Specialist Games - Blood Bowl, Necromunda and plenty of Battlefleet Gothic, ready for a Heresy outing soon

Now we get on to my first and truest love - my Space Wolves. These are the vehicles. I've collected them since I was 9 and saw a White Dwarf battle report where the Ultramarines, Space Wolves, Blood Angels and Dark Angels were trying to put down an Imperial Governor turned rogue. It was a MASSIVE game for the time and each chapter sent a land speeder up the flank, only the Space Wolves one made it and killed the Governor with a multi melta. I was hooked from that point on.

There are also my Imperial Fist tanks in there.

Then we have my Imperial Knights from House Cadmus - just before the Games Workshop Knights came out we had a Campaign that we ran called the House of Cadmus. When the Knights appeared and House Cadmus existed in the background, I knew I had to get some. I love coincidences like this and it really helped grab the attention locally when we were all thinking that maybe just maybe that GW had heard about our campaign and ripped it off (of course that's not likely but.. you never know...)

When I first got in to 30k I started with the World Eaters because I loved their fall from grace, I knew out of the four Istvaan legions I'd want those the most. I've gone a bit overboard but it has been well worth it.

These are my Imperial Fist infantry, Death Guard infantry and my Custodes at the bottom. The Custodes are my newest army and I am enjoying piecing them together.

And finally for the displays - Space Wolves and World Eaters infantry. I can see another case needed for these guys as I love the idea of both of these armies having plenty of bodies on the ground.

So hopefully for a first blog post you've seen that I take my hobby quite seriously, luckily I have a very understanding girlfriend (who doesn't mind as long as I keep it out of her way). I'll follow up with some better close up shots over the next few posts.

As always, may your dice roll constant sixes.

- Kijamon -