Like many of my fellow gamers I'm an avid reader of white dwarf. Also like many of my fellow gamers I'm also loath to throw anything out in case I need it at a later date. For those of you that can't see where this is going, this means I now have quite the stack of old White Dwarf magazines.
Anyway, the other sag I was going through some of the oldest one's in my collection and came across an article in issue 290 (old numbering before the mag was rebooted) called "The Narrative Approach" written by one Paul Gaynor. I'd actually go so far to say as this is my favourite white dwarf article of all time looking back. In it Paul talks about creating themed armies in Warhammer fantasy, using his own army of Night Goblins led by scrap collector Ma the Grub as an example (as well as showcasing some other very cool armies also). He talks about building an army around a central theme and the importance of sticking to that theme rather than just picking the best units/combos etc in a list.
All of this got me thinking about both my own list building and also that of the rest of my regular gaming group's, when it comes to Age of Sigmar and 40k currently. I realised I've become a little obsessed lately with squeezing the best possible combos and units into my lists, reading up on the best units etc... to use in the hope of getting one up on my fellow gamers in our semi regular game sessions. This has resulted, in my opinion, me starting to lose appreciation for an element of what got me into the hobby in the first place, namely the fluff behind the armies I collect. It's also led to me being a bit more over competitive in my games than I ever used to be and perhaps even a little bit "sulky" at times when games werent going how I thought despite all the work I'd put into my lists. (Leading me on to my second favorite WD article about "The Face" written by Jervis Johnson).
Ultimately it meant that when it came to lists building I was ending up building very samey lists that we're boring me and then subsequently not enjoying the games i was playing with my friends.
This isn't good! After reading that article several times over the last few days i think I'm ready to take it's message to heart. Starting with my wood elves I'm going to review my original list and go back to the drawing board. My intention is to come up with strong theme to base them around in the age of Sigmar and then to use this blog to document their story.
Hopefully this will mean I can take a little more enjoyment out of my games going forward and spend a little less time trying to min/max my lists.
Anyway, let me know what you think. Do you have a similar issue to me that's affecting your enjoyment of the hobby?
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