Revisiting Play Styles Part 1: The Collection Playstyle

Hey Reader!

Welcome back to the blog! Tiberius wrote a blog post recently about list building for beginners, based on a 2015 post I made talking about the seven list building play styles I noticed at the time (during "The Dark Age" when we were not getting a lot of new content for the game). This post, which will be the first in a series on different playstyles, is designed to revisit, flesh out, and update my thoughts from 2015 as I've progressed as a strategy war gamer, and follow-up on Tiberius's post as a "next step" for beginners as you begin thinking through list building for more competitive play.

Quick disclaimer: if you don't care that much about matched play and just love collecting, then I've done my best to include some of my most beautiful* models for your viewing pleasure, but this will probably not be the best article for you. I'm sorry. 

(* - Centaur's models are not that beautiful. He's aware of this and wrote this note. So don't expect the sun, moon, and stars in what follows, :P)

This post is more for those who have played some matched games, have found that they tend to like running specific models, and want to up their game so that they can place higher at a tournament. I hope this post is helpful for you, :)

I.  The Collection Playstyle: "Current Models"

A small band of Centaur's Azog's Hunters, one of his favorite evil armies

The first playstyle we will look at is what I'm calling the "Collection" playstyle, as frankly it's the easiest one to address, and I suspect it's where most people start when they join the hobby. Back in 2015 I called this the, "Current Models" style of play, where you look at the models that you own and that's how you build your army.

Now, I have to say, as someone who started with this playstyle in 2010 when I joined the hobby, I still use this style to this day over ten years later. Sometimes I don't want to put in an order for 1-2 new heroes and paint them up before a tournament because life is busy (let alone whole sprues of new warriors that will also need storage space once assembled and painted), so even as a veteran player of the game I will sometimes default to this style of play.

So I want to start off by debunking the idea (in case you have it) that this is a "starter playstyle" because it's not: it's a practical playstyle, looking at what you own and building lists from there.

Some may also think it's not as competitive as, say, the Min/Max playstyle (which we will talk about in a few weeks), as it's not per se maximizing the points for the army toward the "best warriors" in the army. It may have some of them because you might have collected, say, mounted Rohan Royal Guards for your Rohan army (because they look cool, or you heard they were really good and out of stock so once they went back in stock you grabbed like 20 of them, etc.), but if you don't happen to own any that's fine - you'll forego running them if you use this playstyle because they're not part of your collection.

I don't run many mounted hunter orcs because 1) I like the extra
attacks of two infantry, and 2) I only own six, so I only run six.

But that's the thing about Collection playstyles: if you like collecting models that are highly competitive (and in recent years they are getting fantastic sculpts, so the chance that you're collecting meta-competitive models is going up with every passing year purely because they are beautiful models), you actually can have a very strong list using this playstyle. Of course, you could also have a very poor army list, but in my experience a person's collection will include a few iconic heroes and/or a hero blister (which are all average to good in quality from a meta perspective), some "core troops" to use an old Warhamer Fantasy 8th Edition term (like Rohan Warriors or Riders of Rohan) which are typically decent if not great, and a few elite troops to round it out (which are typically pretty good). 

So on the whole, I think you actually start with a decent set of models with this playstyle: I don't think you're at a disadvantage when running it.

So what we'll do next is we will talk about how to make the most of your list building style to both increase your chances of doing well in competitive play, as well as highlight factions that will play well with this playstyle (as different factions play better or worse with different list building strategies).

II.  Maximizing the Collection Playstyle's Potential

So if you tend toward a Collection playstyle, how can you maximize your potential in competitive play? A few thoughts.

First, since your only limitation is, "Whatever you own you can use," good news: you can just buy whatever you want! :P But we won't leave it there, because that's 1) too easy and 2) not helpful. But keep in mind that if you hear good things about a model and you like what it looks like, you can add it to your collection and boom: access to a new model for your list building.

Why do I run Fimbul? Because he's awesome.
Why don't I own Yazneg? Because he's not, :P

Second, try proxying models before you buy them. This way you can test out whether it's worth adding them to your collection, and whether you want to prioritize it in your budget, shelf space, etc. Does a sculpt look great? Cool - what does it do, and is it absolutely necessary to add it to your collection now or later? Take that into consideration.

Third, enjoy the painting process! Some tournaments give awards for best painted army, and since these models are being added to your collection, focus on painting these beautiful models well. It will make you happy, and it might help you in a tournament scene.

And finally, practice with the army. You'd be surprised how many things you can learn about your army just by playing with it. Classic example: did you know that if you are running Malbeth the Seer you should actually keep your allies within 7" of Malbeth and still get the save? It's true! This does two things: 1) it keeps those pesky throwing weapons and Balrog whips from hitting Malbeth, and 2) if you lose (which is really the only time you'll need to make saves) you'll back up 1" and then suffer your wounds, so when you suffer the wound you're now within 6" of him, so you get your 5+ save. 

Now you have to be careful of Paralyze spells and other ways models can be knocked prone and suffer wounds where they stand without backing up, but otherwise you're golden. Wouldn't have known this had I not played with that army every week for several months.

Practice does not make perfect, because this is a dice-based game: bad rolls happen. But practice does make better, so practice with the army.

III.  Factions to Consider 

Some factions play better with specific playstyles, and that is also true for Collection players. A few ideas for factions that will meet with decent to good performance if you have this mindset.

• Riders in Black: If you own them, good news: you're in luck! This legendary legion is very good, and all you need for it is about 5-9 riders. So if you've painted up these guys, consider playing them and giving them some table time.
• Champions of Erebor: These are beautiful models, very fun to collect, and dangerous at close quarters. You get so much Might, have high Defense on everyone, and a lot of them are good at killing things. And if you like the sound of all of that, extra points if you take a chariot. Throw in some Iron Hills dwarves, maybe ally in some elves or men that you like, and boom: you're golden. Really good army in a lot of options for various objectives.
• Assault on Helm's Deep: Do you like collecting beautiful hordes of pikes and swordsmen? Do you like cool ballistas and demolition teams? This is for you: an army that looks beautiful in a display case and hits like a train in battle. And added bonus: you can typically find some of these models going for decent prices on eBay and the like, so it can save you money.
• The Fellowship: You probably own these models, and you have multiple ways you can play them between the standard Fellowship list and the Breaking of the Fellowship legendary legion. While it's a small army it has a lot of tools in it, so you can deal with a lot of threats with various answers at a wide range of point limits.
• Mordor: Turns out the really awesome looking models - ringwraiths on fell beast, trolls, war beasts, siege weapons - are actually really good, especially when you accompany them with orcs of various strains which are easy to acquire. And while not the most meta army currently they have some pretty nice hard counters to other armies (Sap Will went up in stock with the new Vanquishers of the Necromancer legendary legion, as it can reliably shut down Saruman, Gandalf, and Elrond's magic).
• Fangorn: If you own Treebeard, a few ents, and maybe Quickbeam and/or a homemade Beechbone, boorarum: you're there! The lack of model options is a bit concerning (which is why we're testing some new options for Fangorn here at TMAT - you can find some of the ideas here), but it does make it easy to collect the best models for list building.

You can collect any army you'd like, so technically all armies work with this playstyle. But if you already happen to have these models, you're in luck: they work really well, so bring them to your game table!

Conclusion

I know some people will say that this isn't even a playstyle - it's just "starting out in the game." But as someone who has randomly collected models and then later built armies around them, I can tell you this (and reiterate something I mentioned back in 2015): metas change. We've seen this with rules changes of various kinds (none of which I mind, and I actually praise the rules team for this), people in your local area figuring out new ways to defeat common tactics, new models being released, etc. So what is "strong" today may not be strong 1-2 years from now. So good news to Collection players: what's in your collection right now may be solid gold in a few years. So collect what you love, then find a way to make it work.

Next time we'll be talking about themed armies, one of my favorite army lists to build. Until next time, you know where to find me,

Watching the stars,

Centaur

"Firenze!  What are you doing?  You have a human on your back!  Have you no shame?  Are you a common mule?" ~ Bane, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone