Control: 40k Blues, Redux

I, Dalton Lewis, love the wargaming miniatures game Warhammer 40k. It’s a game in which one puts together and paints toys and then plays a dice game with them — like a strategy game with very expensive pieces. I have played pretty much every faction at one point or another and want to figure out which faction to play now.

I’m not playing marines, the best faction. Why not? Everyone is playing marines, and I want to play the underdog and not the bully. They are getting a unit that has two multi-melta type shots apiece that wreck people. They have aggressors getting thirty shots or more. They have a tank with half a dozen guns that can kill multiple units a turn. A new tank is coming out with four multi-meltas and two lascannons. That will kill anything that is big and bulky. I don’t want to play as the bully; I want to stand up to the bully. There has to be a quality army to beat marines: I just have to find it.

Chaos Marines have similar models to the traditional Space Marines — only not as good. They are traditionally seen as the bad guys, worshiping daemons and trying to take over. The Space Marines got a line of models called Primaris, which are basically super-Space Marines. Their marines have two or three wounds whereas chaos have one. They have more attacks and weapons with better armor penetration. With this line the Space Marines became far and away the most powerful faction. A lot of players like this and embrace this — but not me, not now.

They aren’t guaranteeing you a victory, see — the players who focus on one faction regardless of the meta do better than the people chasing the most overpowered list. I know a guy who plays Sisters of Battle, and he can beat most — if not all — of the lists that are in the current meta. I know another guy who plays chaos exclusively who can win major tournaments with chaos forces.

What does that mean? I should stick to one faction. What have I been playing most of the time? Chaos. Should that be the main army? I don’t know. This summer was spent building up ad mech and Space Marine forces, forces that I should use. Here’s the catch: I also love ad mech, the good guy AI forces. I really like them, really really like them. Giving them a chance seems like the best choice.

I think that I loved a lie about the chaos marines: that they worship good daemons and are good people and standing up to an Emperor who hates daemons. I think that such a viewpoint turns out to be naive: the chaos marines and the space marines are both jealous, angry men fighting each other in a stupid war for conquest. I’d rather join with the ad mech. They seem to be fighting for the Omnissiah, for the machine spirit, and that sounds better than marine work.

Make Mine Ad Mech — for now.

Thanks, and take care, friends.