The thing I have always been useless about with 40k is actually playing. I can buy models, paint them and read the books but there’s never enough space for a table or enough time to play. Because of this I’ve started playing weekly games on a table I’ve set up permanently in the garage so that I have zero excuses.
Having the foundations of several armies including marines, necrons and grey knights I of course decided that Dark Eldar were the best for me to learn the game with. My regular opponent picked my Orks and we set about learning the game properly at the princely level of 500 point games.
That level seemed to be a good idea to me and I have to say it’s all worked out how I thought. It’s a small enough number of units (3 + HQ) as to keep the games manageable. It’s also a manageable amount of painting so we don’t get swamped. I can imagine starting at 1750 or higher would result in a serious painting motivational issue, especially for Orks.
Along the way we have learnt a couple of things. Dark Eldar don’t like getting charged by a 30man slugga boy squad for instance, and Orks don’t like 4+ poisoned guns. Five man units of stormboyz don’t do much if they get shot before they attack and 10 man squads of boyz are a bad idea if you are on foot. There’s also some clever tricks using the Baron and a squad of Hellions that I’m slowly learning that would perhaps work better on an army other than Orks. Hit and running to get extra movement is all well and good, but when you have that many attacks coming back at you even though you struck first you tend to run out of squad members quite quickly.
Our next options are to swap sides in order to get a bit of experience of the other play style, and then to move up to 750 points. I’m going to add in some vehicles for the DE so they have more movement, and the Orks can make do with another 20man boyz mob and a battlewagon to transport them. Well my lances have to be good for something other than instakilling Nobz, right?
The problem is that I’m getting restless already. What would Tyranids do to those Orks? How about Necrons… So many playable armies on my shelf (at last at those points levels), so little focus.
