EDITORIAL: Don’t be Afraid to Experiment
By Reece Robbins
My friends and I often send each other army lists during our work day for critique. I don’t think this is anything particularly unique to us, in fact I assume most people do it. But what I have noticed is that over the years I have moved from posting my lists on the forums to only asking specific individuals for advice on my lists. Recently I wondered why this was and the answer came to me that I gravitate towards these individuals for their opinions because they are intelligent, creative list builders that do not simply repeat what they read on the forums.
If you have haunted the boards for as long as I have, you start to see patterns in the advice people give to each other. Someone posts a list asking for feedback and you see it slowly transformed into a copy of every other list on that particular board. Why is this? People feel secure in sticking to the status quo, and having a majority behind them makes them feel that the ideas they offer must be accurate even if they have not tried them (which I suspect is more common than not) but have read that they are the best way to build a list. People can get downright pushy and condescending in shoving these ideas down someone’s throat that has ideas for a list that fall outside of the box.
Over time, I have quite simply gotten bored with listening to people imitate one another like trained parrots as the advice they give is neither innovative nor constructive. Often times, I know what I will hear before they say it. I have found that talking to someone whose opinion I respect and getting creative feedback away from the mob influence leads to truly unique ideas and tactics that really help you to break away from the competition. Invariably, these are the ideas that prove themselves to be superior and then become mainstream and before long, the majority picks them up and starts to preach them as if they were always the way to play.
When you see someone using a list that seems silly or inefficient to you, instead of mocking the player using it, ask why they made the choices they did. Perhaps they have found a way to succeed where you have not. When reading through your codex, instead of simply dismissing units as terrible, give them a try in a game, even if only proxying the models. You may find that by forcing yourself to do new things, you will change the way you play, or push yourself to a new level of skill. This game does not exist in a vacuum of theory, but in the reality of the table top. There are such a large number of variables in the game that allow for situations in which certain units will shine in actuality that seem to be terrible in theory that you really cannot discount any tactic or unit combo until you have tried it. Now, if you have tried something and found it not to work, well then it is fair to share your opinion with the community and in fact you are doing your fellow gamers a service, but try not to dismiss anything without firsthand experience.
So your mission, if you choose to accept it, is to try something new in your next game. Use a unit that you think looks poor on paper, or use a unit that previously failed for you in a new way. Often something as simple as taking more than one of a unit, or changing the way you look at its role in your list will take it from bad to great. By playing outside of your comfort zone you will often surprise yourself with what you may find and in so doing, pioneer a new and winning tactic to use in your games. And before long you may hear the net bandits spouting your ideas as if they are and always have been the ONLY way to play the game.
Don’t drink the internet kool-aide, be your own gamer. We want to hear about your own secret recipe for tabletop success that flies in the face of internet conventional wisdom.
