If your Codex isn't the best right now than good. it turns out that's not such a bad thing? You just need to learn to take the punch
For the last 6 months or so there has been a thought growing
in the back of my mind about the true nature of who I am as a person that I’ve
been ashamed to admit. It’s an ugly truth but looking back over that time
period and frankly even over years of my life there is now just too much empirical
evidence before me to deny it. I like playing Bad 40k armies. Still worse I like
to feel good when I beat people with them. There I said it, you can now call me
a bad person, but the reality of the situation is that I love to try to win
with armies people tell me are bad. Now, I’m not going to stand here and tell
you I play with a pile of crappy units at every local tournament because I
don’t I try to bring what’s good in my codex like everyone else. I just am
addicted to making bad codices good.
Back in August we had two codices come out in the same month
(Gray Knights and Space Wolves). Let me say that again this time with the appropriate
amount of capitalization, TWO IN ONE MONTH. Just a couple of years ago in the
heyday of 5th edition this would have been completely inconceivable.
At the rate Games Workshop is putting out books everybody will have a new hardback
book by early next year, we as players have never been so spoiled for new
content as we are now. Regardless of how you feel about this breakneck pace
(and I know there are varying opinions) we see the same reaction every time one
of these new books comes out. It goes something like this; “This item is over/under
powered, that unit is now a must take/never going to see play, this codex is
awesome/ how many years until the next update“. Here’s my advice if you’re on
the wrong end of this don’t fight it embrace it.
Remember how awful everyone thought the Tyranid book was
when it came out in January, people hated it.
It was panned on every podcast, eBay was flooded
with the Gaunts of every Nid player who vowed to switch to Tau, and those who
stuck it out were forming support groups
where like hive-minded people could cry on each others shoulders. While we
will have to see how some of the new units they’ve been given perform
competitively in the months since its release the Tyranid codex while not great
has proven to be better than most originally thought (11th Company GT winning list here) The people who stuck it out are now reaping
the rewards that come with mastering a codex, while those who jumped ship to
Tau are trying to understand why their buff commander will no longer adhere to
their Riptides. In the last 7 months
every Tyranid player I know has become a better 40k player because they stuck
it out. The same can be said for any player how ever loved a subpar codex.
As a
long time Codex Space Marine player I can say that the thing that helped me the
most as a competitive player was the 5th edition space wolf codex.
When that book came out I threw a fit, at the time I thought that they did
everything my Codex Marines did but they did it better and for less points (I
was right). I would jump up and down and
shout “That’s not fair, That’s not fair, That’s not fair” in the hopes that somewhere
in Nottingham mommy Jervis would hear me, give Logan Grimnar a timeout and tell
him to share his toys with his little red headed brothers the Codex Marines. He
didn’t. At first I just complained, then I started trying to avoid playing
against wolves when and where I could. Reality did eventually catch up to me, Wolves
where probably the most popular army in my meta and try as I did I could not
completely avoid them, so I had no choice but to fight them and I did. I lost,
a lot. I remember one night being so tired of wolves that I built an army specifically
designed to kill power armor, somehow I got paired up against the one Ork
player at the store that night and lost. I had had it even when I wasn’t
playing against Space Wolves I was losing because of Space Wolves. I was so
frustrated I started coming to the local game nights less and less, and that’s when
Ben Mohile saved my 40k life.
 |
| Logan Grimnar was my Dolph Lundgren |
I want to make it clear I’ve never meet Ben Mohile and I can
say with some certainty that he has no idea who I am. But one cold winter night
back in the days of 5th edition I was trying to write a paper for an
American history class. In between paragraphs I was browsing 40k forums and
found a battle report, it was Ben Mohile (of whom I’d never heard) and his
Salamander Marines playing against a Space Wolf player (whose name I had also
never heard and can’t now remember) at the ETC. I glanced at the armies and
assumed the outcome before scrolling down to the bottom of the page in order to
have my suspicions confirmed only to find when I got there that the world had
turned upside down and it was the Marine player who had won the matchup. I
immediately scrolled back up to make sure they were playing the same number of
points. I carefully picked my way through the marine army list looking for what
magical combination of units or items had lead to this turn of events only to
find that the marine list in question was remarkably similar to those that I
had been using for the last several months. I read through the report that
turned out to have been written by Mohile. I read it again the next day, still
searching for the secret strategy that beat the Wolves, I found it. Ben Mohile
was a better 40k player than his opponent, he was also a better 40k player than
me. He didn’t waste time and energy complaining about how much better Gray Hunters
were than Tactical Marines he simply acknowledged the deficiency, adjusted his
strategy accordingly and moved on. Several days later armed with this new found
mentality I walked into my weekly game night sought out a wolf player, challenged
him and promptly got my ass handed to me.
Like a Rocky montage I repeated the
exercise the following week and the one following that using the same list each
time. Eventually I started winning. In
fact by the end of 5th edition I had reached a point where I
actually felt good about my chances against Wolves because I knew I was just
better at that particular matchup than anyone else in town.
Fast forward a year or two later and the 6th
edition Marine book is just out. White Scars bikes are all the rage and people
can’t walk into a tournament without tripping over a grav gun. I’m playing a Saturday afternoon game at my
local game store but all of my marines are on a shelf at home. In a world of Heldrakes,
Riptides and Wave Serpents I’m pushing Reaver Jetbikes around the table. I had
just bought a Dark Elder army and was doing everything in my power to win with
it despite the fact that people were telling me it wasn’t good. No, scratch
that… because of the fact that people where telling me it wasn’t good. I had
become addicted to winning with a bad army I wanted to be the guy who won a
tournament with an army that made everybody question their understanding of the
game. I had become a 40k hipster and it had made me a better player.
So Tyranid players rejoice, you too Sisters of Battle, Dark
Angels, Orks, and Chaos Marine players people think your armies suck. Good. If
they do in fact suck then the effort you put in to winning with them will make
you a better player. Think of it like playing a video game on the hardest
setting for 4 years and then turning it back to easy (when you get your new
book). And the best part is when you do win with the worst army in the game people
will be even more impressed, your victories can’t be duplicated simply by doing
a copy and paste on the list. Victories with bad armies have to be earned and
that makes them so much sweeter.
Mail bag
Once again if you've hated everything I've had to say or if you have a 40k related question or comment of any type please send it to me at doctorz.evil@gmail.com and I may just but it in my impending mailbag column.
Do you get a kick out of being a gaming underdog? do you hate rock movies?
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