Caution on Listbuilding Articles

[Frosty the Pirate]

I wanted to throw this up because I've noticed a deluge of "advice for list building" articles and youtube videos being published by the 40k community right now.

MANY of these videos are talking about how the top-armies in the competitive scene are focused on passive-scoring, meaning building for and taking secondary objectives that focus on non-interactive armies. This is bad-advice both for your enjoyment of the game, as well as bad advice knowing that the missions are going to completely change in just a few weeks and that Games Workshop is trying to push this passive style of play out of the game with the new mission changes, and force you to fight over the midfield and battle with your opponent.

These articles do genuinely have good advice in them as well that I preach and personally swear by, such as planning your secondaries, having a plan and role for every unit you take, picking units that fit your playstyle, and even advice like avoiding taking meta-units just because they are mathematically best, when they don't actually fit what your army wants to do as a whole.

I know many veteran players take all advice with a grain of salt, but there are a large number of newer players in the community these days who might be more prone to be influenced by all the "internet advice" being offered right now, that may actually be steering you in the wrong direction.

[Jack Shrapnel]

Also it's good to remember that the "competitive GT" advice is for a very distinct meta, which is not really applicable to our local community for the most part as most of the things you need to prepare for just aren't really prevalent here.

[Hi I'm Derek]

I'm not really sure what the thrust of this advice is. A new player won't be able to evaluate units or secondaries without guidance, nor will they be able to discriminate between good and bad authorities or which hot takes are worth noting. 40k is incredibly complex while being simultaneously very shallow- this means the classic "small lies" type of teaching does wonders for boosting one's performance before a player can cram every unit, secondary and stratagem into their head.

In short, don't overthink it. Take oaths of moment, bring a redemptor dread, give your vanvets claw & shield, etc etc. You'll have more fun learning to execute on a list polished by somebody else than you will spending all your time wrestling with the game's byzantine army construction rules.

[Frosty the Pirate]

Dec 14, 2021 11:34:40 GMT -5 Hi I'm Derek said:

I'm not really sure what the thrust of this advice is.

What I'm mostly saying is don't overly listen to these "passive play" army construction videos/articles coming out of all the major youtube 40k channels right now.

A ton of the stuff I'm seeing on youtube right now is pushing the whole "well this is the GT winning list by so-and-so and we are interviewing them because they are someone you should listen to if you play faction X because they won a GT with them", and then the player's #1 advice is always build your army for passive-play-secondary-scoring.

You'll have a much better/enjoyable game experience by actually playing with units you enjoy than trying to build what the youtube community is pushing as the current meta-units your faction "should always take cus they are the best", when really that's loaded advice that only applies to people regularly attending 300 person highly-competitive tournaments

[Hi I'm Derek]

That's fair then, I don't really watch this sort of content so I didn't pick up on it. I do think there's a place for oversimplified direction in army construction but that's a different topic.

And as you say nearly all this content is moments away from being obsolete because of the mission/secondary changes anyway.

[lightcavalier]

There is shockingly little content out there at the beginner level about the off table aspects of the game.

You can find alot of videos breaking down crazy powerful meta lists, but videos that just go over the bare bones basics of building an army and discussing it at a level accessible to people newer to the game.

[Hi I'm Derek]

Midwinter Minis is like the only guy I'm aware of who regularly has content geared in that direction that actually involves playing the game not just like... how to build and paint

[lightcavalier]

Pretty much, its a weird gap

Lots of build/paint, lots of "this is how you play once the game starts", a medium amount of "this is how you deploy/consider terrain/etc"

but next to nothing in the space between actually assembling models and rolling off with your opponent to pick a mission.


One of the things I have really liked with the Warhammer+ battle reports put out by GW was that they included a discussion by both players about what units are in their army, why they picked them, and what purpose they are going to serve in the army's overall design. They also include a really good breakdown of each players game plan at T0. (This is of course in a casually understanding the game concept, not a competitive one)