A tale of OG Gamers Blog 1: A Tale of OG Gamers

A week or two ago, I noticed a thread started on the OG Forum. It was looking for interest in a ‘Tale of Gamers’. Whilst I had promised myself not to spend much more on plastic crack over the next year or so, I’ve been longing to go to town on an army with a lot of customisation and personalisation potential, some great background and lovely models. Doing this at stages of 250pts a month would be one way of doing this. I’m also managed to con myself that if I start an army now I don’t have to go nuts when the new Dangles arrive, as I’ll be focussing on another project.

Once I’d justified taking part, the first obvious thing to do was to decide which army I was going to build. To help me decide, I came up with the following five criteria to inform my choice:

A new army to me. I cannot have this army or played it before as I want to do something different. This rules out Dark Angels, Daemons and ‘Nids. I also decided to leave other loyalist marines chapters alone, as they are pretty similar to the Dangles. Whilst I toyed with the idea of Necrons, (I have always have regretted selling my army) and love some of the stuff in the new Necron codex, I thought I’d go for something I’ve not gone anywhere near before.

Background I love. The 40k Universe has such an awesome background, but there are some races/codices that don’t appeal. I’m not sold on the Grey Knights background (plus lots of terminators is too close to my Deathwing). After thinking about this, I decided I wanted to do something Evil (with a capital ‘E’); although given how fascist and fanatical the Imperium is, it really is a matter of perspective.

A wide range of custom bits and conversion opportunities.  One day I’d love to build a Sisters army, but given the limited support for the range currently, now probably isn't the best time. Similarly, if I was to do Eldar it’d have to be an Iyanden army – but I don’t want to make an army with the majority of models being citadel miscast.

No new rumoured codex on the horizon. I don’t want to spend a lot of time and effort building an army which will need big changes within a few months of completion. As the meta changes over time I’m happy to add the odd unit here or there, but a new codex is highly likely to mean vast changes to the army I’m putting together. Whilst there are certain aspects of the Tau that grab me (Battlesuits are cool, as are Fire Warriors), a codex is rumoured to be within the year – maybe they’re an army for the future.

Not too large a model count. Most of my wargaming space has been taken up, and time to get my 250pts built and painted each month is going to be tight, particularly with the customisation work I’d like to do. For these reasons, I’m put off from building an Imperial Guard army.

This left me with three options which broadly fitted my initial criteria – Chaos Marines, Dark Eldar and Orks. I then compared the pros and cons of each race against five additional criteria:

Criteria	Chaos Marines	Dark Eldar	Orks
Do I already own the codex?	Yes	Yes	No
Do I have any models to get me started?	Those from the Dark Vengeance set	5 Wracks and 10 Warriors	No
Customisation Opportunity?	High	Medium	Very High
Ally with armies I already own?	Daemons	Daemons	All except Nids
Storage Space Required	Low-mid (depends on list)	Mid-High (lots of transports necessary)	High – huge mobs!

On the balance of these factors, I’ve concluded that Chaos would be the best army for me to go with. They’ve got a new Codex (which I must add, is beautiful), a wide range of custom/conversion/Forgeworld pieces and they’ve got the ability to ally with my Daemons (which can get the models used in bigger battles sooner) without too much of a leap of imagination (Blood Angels and Necrons, really!?). I always have the option of chucking in some Orks later on, should I feel that way inclined. I also already have some models to start me off given I recently bought the new Dark Vengeance set for the Dangles and the mini-rulebook.

Chaos Marines are also an incredibly diverse army list; given that there will be a number of other players (who may also feel the lure of Chaos) – hopefully this can mean less likelihood of me running a similar list to another person taking part, despite them being so popular with a new book and all.

Inevitably, solving one problem can lead to another. Chaos marines are a very diverse list, and which flavour of chaos to go for is my next decision to make…