40K Editorial: I Don’t Want to Play My Own Army – They’re TOO Good

Strap yourselves in folks, this is gonna be another wierd one.

A bit of background. I play 4 armies in 40K; I’ve played Eldar since the middle of 4th, Tau since just before 5th, Dark Eldar when they got re-released and picked up a Chaos Marine army when the starter box for 6th showed up.

In 6 odd years that I’ve been playing I’d never had an existing army that’s been updated. Then the last 6 months happened and 2 of my armies got redone. My Tau and my beloved Eldar have been tidied up and updated recently

It’s not that they’re bad. It’s not that I don’t like the new models. It’s not that I haven’t got good lists to play with them. It’s that everyone is playing them and everyone else just rolls their eyes and complains if you put your army down opposite them. 

A local, large scale competition occurred around here recently. Out of 38 armies, 17 (that’s 44%) featured Eldar as either the primary force or the allies and 14 (36%) of all players had at least 1 Tau model on the table.

I Just Gotta Be Me
I don’t mind not being unique. I don’t mind if other people use the same army as me. But when every other army is the same? Then you’ve got problems.

I try to counter this by writing fairly unique lists. Spammy in some cases, but lists that I’ve never seen anyone else take. And I do pretty well. Not “top table in a competition” well, but I win more than I lose. However to write those lists I have to work hard to not take the units that people will just whinge are broken, or I feel dejected after a game. The “you only won cos X unit is broken and the codex is new!” mentality a lot of people have is just unpleasant. 

In some cases it’s just not possible to avoid these units. Make an Eldar army without Wave Serpents or Jetbikes. Make a Tau army without a Riptide or Broadsides.

So instead of jumping on the bandwagon, I’m jumping off it. I won’t part with any of my armies unless I permanently quit for some reason, but I don’t think I can see myself playing my Tau for a while. It’s just not a lot of fun to play when your opponent and/or onlookers are berating you for taking the new stuff. With my Eldar list I’m having a lot of successes with an army that doesn’t spam, nor is it played by many other people, but that doesn’t stop them rolling their eyes when they see you put a second Wave Serpent on the table.

What’s the alternative? I enjoy playing Chaos and am running a very wierd “Circus Freak” list at present (15 Spawn + 3 FW Spawn and zero Helldrakes in 1500 points :P) that is unique and fun, but hard to win with. My Dark Eldar haven’t seen the table top in 6th, and with so much high strength, ignores cover weaponry being run by over 60% of players, its hard to find something that’s got much hope in winning. I’m seriously eyeing up an Ork army, just as something different. but I know when their book rolls around people will complain that I’m just using OP units, despite owning them a year before the book came out. Or if someone wants to give me a £1000 I want a nice pre-Heresy army.