The Philosophical 40k: January 2011

Time for another philosophical post about your favorite game! Today I will be discussing the philosophy of Soren Kierkegaard and how it relates to the building of ones list. The two parts of Kierkegaard's philosophy I will discuss are "The leap of Faith" and "You will regret every decision you make." This guy sounded like a real optimist huh?

Anyways on with the slaughter. For the sake of this I am going to go through my list building process for an upcoming GT. I know the basics of what I want to bring. The core of this army is something I have had a lot of experience with. However I have been working on rotating in new units to fill out my last few points. Here is the Core of the list:

HQ
Rune Priest - 100
- LL + Tempest Storm

Wolf Lord - 255
-T-wolf, TH, SS, SotBear, WTN, WTT

Troops
(3x) 10x Grey Hunters - 615
- 2x Meltagun
- Mark of the Wulfen
- Rhino

Fast Attack

4x Thunder Wolf Cav -255
- 1x SS 1x PF
4x Thunder wolf cav - 250
- 1x SS 1x WC

Heavy Support
6x Long Fangs- 140
- 5x Missile Launchers

The total for the core of this list is 1615. Normally I would add another Wolf Lord, with a Frost Blade, Belt of Russ, Thunder Wolf, and Saga of the Beast slayer for 220 points (he also has WTN and WTT). Now I am up too 1835. After this I will usually add one of two things. Either I will add another Long Fang Squad to increase my ranged firepower or I will add an Iron Priest on a thunder wolf with 4 cyberwolves and a Wolf tooth Necklace. Simple, easy and nasty. However recently I decided to try something different for the upcoming GT.

First after listening to a podcast (I believe Imperial Voxcast) I heard the idea of putting a Wolf Guard Battle leader on a Thunderwolf and giving him Saga of the Hunter so he can outlflank. This trick just sounded all sorts of fun and fits the fluff of my army better. So where does Kierkegaard come in? Well I have played with the Frost Blade Lord at least 2 dozen times. I know what he is capable of. If I switch him out, albeit for a similar unit, I still have to get used to the new unit. I am sure that 2 things will happen because i have read Kierkegaard. For one thing I have to make a leap of faith in the new unit. I have never used it before but I BELIEVE that it will work. That belief, according to Kierkegaard has to override my sense of tradition in the old wolf lord for me to accept the WGBL into my list over the lord. Well I firmly believe that it is going to be fun and effective to have the wolf guard battle leader. So therefore I believe I will take the leap of faith and choose the WGBL. Now that I have made a decision I have to realize something about it: I will regret it.. Eventually I will run into a scenario where I would have preferred to use the Wolf Lord over the Battle Leader. I have to accept this regret, because the reverse would also have been true. Remember: No matter what action you take in list building (and possibly in all aspects of the game and hobby) you will have a regret.

"What About MEEEEEE??????" Leadership 8 bitch...go run off a board edge.

Now lets look at my list with the wolf guard battle leader:

Rune Priest - 100

- LL + Tempest Storm

Wolf Lord - 255

-T-wolf, TH, SS, SotBear, WTN, WTT

Wolf Guard Battle leader - 160

- T-wolf, Frost Blade, WTT, Saga of the Hunter, Meltabombs

Troops

(3x) 10x Grey Hunters - 615

- 2x Meltagun

- Mark of the Wulfen

- Rhino

Fast Attack

4x Thunder Wolf Cav -255

- 1x SS 1x PF

4x Thunder wolf cav - 250

- 1x SS 1x WC

Heavy Support

6x Long Fangs- 140

- 5x Missile Launchers

Now the points cost is 1775. As you can see an added benefit of changing to the Battle Leader is that I have gained 60 more points than if I had used the lord. Now I am already regretting the decision. That is because I have 60 points with no idea what to do with. After thinking I decide to take a leap of faith and not use the long fangs or Iron priest i normally would. Instead I decide to go after more troops. I recently found the parts to make an Assault cannon turret for a Razorback. I love assault cannons. Therefore I make another leap of faith and decide to use the old fall back of a grey hunter squad in a razor back. While I am sure to regret the loss of sheer firepower the long fangs would have given me, or the combat prowess of the Iron priest I will be better off in multiple objective games.

So the final list looks like this: