05: Exploring Some Do's and Don'ts of List Building (Competitive)

With the rules for The Old World being out and about for awhile now, and with a fantastic community Army Builder available, it's not surprising that players are feeling out army lists. For me, building lists is one of the most fun parts of the hobby and can let a player's personality or approach shine through. This isn't always the case of course, you get net-lists in every game just like net-decks in all CCGs, but for the most part people tend to bring "their" army to a game.

I've noticed in several groups, including my own local meta, that people are all over the ball field when it comes to creating what I'd call a cohesive and serious army list. I'm not saying that everyone needs to show up with a competitive force, even semi-competitive play is not for everyone. Over my time with wargaming I've certainly seen that, anecdotally, most players like to at least try to put some effort in and bring units that will help them win. That's what I'd like to touch on in this article: some things to avoid and some things to make sure of when building your own army. I'm going to approach this with the assumption that 2000 Points is being played as that's the standard and things get very wonky at higher and lower totals.

Do: Bring a Level 4 Wizard (If Possible)

I've discussed this when I approached the topic of Magic but it bears repeating. A Level 4 Wizard is one of my must-have's, unless you're playing Dwarves of course. Magic is a strong factor in tilting the game in a player's advantage, if you don't have a Level 4 and your opponent does then they start with a reliable edge that can be exploited all game long. This seems to be somewhat baked into the game as all these Casters are within a fair point range of each other, across all the core armies. In older Editions the points value of a Level 4 Wizard varied widely, essentially pricing some factions out of taking them, among other concerns.

Slotting in this Character means you have a strong defense against Spells and can threaten your own as well. It also gives you either a decent General, for most armies, or a strong leader for a unit should you need one. For a Lore, pick this last as what Spells you want access to will depend heavily on your overall composition: if you have very little Shooting then aiming for Magic Missiles/Vortexes can be a good idea, as an example. Experimenting with different Lores is also a great idea as an option that looked weak on paper might surprise you in-game.

Don't: Load Up on Magic Items

A trap that many new, and not new, players fall into is taking a lot of Magic Items. A new wrinkle for The Old World is that many Unit Champions can take 25pts in Magic Items and you also have things like expanded allowances for Battle Standard Bearers (BSB). These items can be very strong but they're no substitute for bodies on the table: even in older Editions it wasn't often a good idea to take more than 100-150pts of special wargear.

My advice is to not add Magic Items to a list at all until you're at least 1500pts in, meaning you've spent that much on units and heroes of whatever description. There are exceptions to this rule, perhaps you're basing a unit or even an army around a specific item so it's core to what you want to build. If that's the case, add the absolutely necessities only and then leave it alone until the roster is more filled out.

Another consideration is where are the Magic Items going? Slapping more points onto a single Wound Champion is asking for trouble since that model can easily die, Magic Standards are the same with small units like Heavy Cavalry. If you're going to invest points in items, you want to get a return on that investment. How much deadlier does this choice make the bearer, how much more resilient? Will the cost be justified over the course of a game, or are you getting distracted by a risky plan? That's why I prefer to fill in the last hundred of so points of a roster with items, instead of letting them lead my army choice by the nose.

Do: Take a BSB

Nearly every army should take a BSB with the same level of necessity as a Level 4 Wizard. Re-rolls are hard to come by in The Old World, thankfully, so the one choice you can make to guarantee access to some is an easy one. Panic, Rally, and of course Break Tests decide entire games, it's downright foolish not to give yourself as many do-overs on those rolls as possible. Right now the exception to this is Tomb Kings, and likely Vampire Counts as well, because of their army-wide Unbreakable and Immune to Psychology. From what I can see of Tomb Kings, I'd still opt for a BSB in numerous army builds because it helps keep your models alive from Combat Resolution and Tomb Kings love attrition.

Echoing the above Don't, I'm not a big fan of expensive Magic Standards. While BSBs have never been more survivable, it's still a 2 Wound Character with access to 50pts in Magic Items: tough to turn the model into a tank. Paying 25pts for re-rolls, and a +1 Combat Resolution, is good enough for me. Instead I'd rather spend on keeping the BSB around, rather than making his flag do more until he gets skewered. You also want to have a plan for your BSB as to what unit he will go in. Generally this model should be in the center, or near center, of your army so that the benefits it provides go far and wide. That often means needing a unit that can hold the center, if the unit gets beaten up and/or run down then you're in a bad spot.

Don't: Overspecialize

This is another classic trap many players fall into, and with good reason. Overspecialization, or a skew list as I call it, is an army that does one or two things extremely well but suffers at nearly everything else. An example would be an army that spends as many points as possible on War Machines, or only takes units with high Toughness values. These are (sadly) viable strategies in many wargames, but The Old World doesn't appear to be one.

The reason that you want to avoid building a skew list is because while it will flatten certain opponents, you will also get beaten just as badly by other opponents. Take our War Machine example. Against an opponent with lots of Multi-Wound models, or slow Infantry units, such an army would likely do very well. On the other hand, against someone with a lot of Skirmishers, a very fast army, or simply a lot of answers to War Machines, there's nothing to fall back on. You can't pivot your tactics or plan because there's nothing to work with, all your points were spent on this one thing.

By instead taking an army where you focus on a couple of strengths, but also shore up various weaknesses, you always give yourself a chance to win (a chip and a chair as I heard it called long ago). Some games will be uphill battles but you won't feel like there's nothing you can do but throw in the towel and you'll become a better player much more quickly. I always recommend a diverse army to newcomers because that's how you learn what your army can and can't do, that leads to revisions of your army list and it becomes better over time. If all the eggs go in one basket there's very little learning to be had and many matches will feel outright boring.

Do: Learn to Love the "Boring" Units

More than many other games, a humble unit of Infantry is a bedrock of The Old World. It's easy to gloss over Core choices and other "un-sexy" units in favor of Behemoths, Heavy Cavalry, Characters, and so on. All of those choices certainly matter and have their place, but many games are won and lost off the back of your standard, basic unit. Every army has these in some form or fashion and the game helps encourage you to take them with the requirement of 25% Core (at least for Grand Armies). I often take quite a bit more than 25% of my army as Core because I want reliability and redundancy over flash.

Taking Core units is easy as they normally don't have a lot of different options for wargear and other upgrades, even when they do it can be wise to avoid those. Remember, your Core is there to be a main part of your battle line and will see a lot of combat, which means they tend to die off. The more you invest in these units, the more that stings. There's not right or wrong way to approach this, using myself as an example I almost never take Musicians and am often only fifty/fifty on Champions. Paying even more points for Special Rules and so on has to really transform a unit in my eyes, otherwise it's just fluff.

While all armies are a bit different, two or three sizeable units of Core are what I love to put on the table. My current Beastmen list has a unit of 30 Gors, a unit of 30 Ungors, and a unit of 25 Gors. These are meaty units that can take damage without crumbling and allow me to have reliable homes for Characters. Keep your boring units cheap and to the point, they'll rarely let you down.

Don't: Play HeroHammer or Deathstars

Throughout the history of the game there have been many times where players invest in "HeroHammer", extremely expensive Characters who are supposed to win games on their own, or Deathstars, much the same but in unit form and usually packing two or more Characters as well. For various reasons these were at worst viable strategies but much of that has changed with The Old World. Starting with Characters, it's very difficult to create one that can't be killed by an opponent. Even your Chaos Lord on Dragon with all the bells and whistles will fall over to a few unlucky cannonballs or can be severely hampered by a Spell. These souped up heroes can easily cost a quarter of your army which almost always means a loss if they don't deliver.

Deathstars are a little more versatile but just as committal. Typically, a Deathstar requires a few Characters to really cook as well as some Magic Items. Even if they're Cavalry, units heavily telegraph where they want to go and what they want to do while an expensive Character has more freedom of movement. Spells also have a more severe effect on Deathstars, on average, because they can have an important characteristic stripped away in addition to other methods of countering them.

These kinds of threats are very effective against less experienced players because they don't have the game-knowledge to defeat them, a veteran player will. I won't detail every possible way to beat these monstrosities but it usually involves feeding them a cheap unit while beating up on the rest of the army, taking them out of their element with Magic, Items, or Special Rules, forcing them to navigate terrain, and so on. Just as overspecializing can come back to bite you, playing against someone who knows the way around your centerpiece can do just the same. Playing with a diverse number of threats instead allows you to control more of the battlefield and vary your options which is usually more powerful in the long-run.

Do: Ask Yourself Hard Questions

Our last Do is a little more advanced but can be quickly picked up on as you learn the game. Asking yourself hard questions is something to be done when your roster is all finished and ready to hit the table, it's your final step before theory meets opposition. I have a pretty simple list of questions but everyone has their own:

• Can my Army kill or neutralize a Behemoth? What about two?
• Can my Army kill or neutralize several War Machines or other heavy Shooting?
• Can my Army force a unit to Flee from combat in a single Turn? How reliable is this?
• Can my Army kill or neutralize Skirmishers or fast lone models? How is this done?
• Can my Army overcome the loss of any single unit or do I need redundancy?
• Can my Army play any of the Core Rulebook Scenarios reasonably well?

I think of these questions as a final reminder to myself for checking if anything important is missing. While making my Beastmen list, I realized I had very little answers for Behemoths and would struggle against an army that leaned on the unit type. This caused me to move some things around and make sure I had adequate answers, otherwise I risk not having the right tool for the job at hand. My questions are by no means exhaustive or the final word in this manner, they just work for me and how I like to play. You'll likely have some of your own which may relate to a theme you've chosen or maybe just something you loathe losing to.

If I were to recommend porting over anything from my assortment of questions, I'd always go with the final one. Scenarios in The Old World are quite varied, which is good because even with the same two armies you can have a very different game. Take a look at the Deployment types, you might be fantastic at Meeting Engagement with your slow melee force but struggle with the same army in Flank Attack because you can't reposition. While Victory Points are the common denominator for Scenarios, you can't earn those VPs if your army can't overcome what's asked of it.

Don't: Make Hasty Changes to your Army

As my final recommendation, don't scurry home from a bad loss and change up the army you worked so hard to build. The Old World is a game and in all games, losses happen. It's human to want to immediately fix perceived deficiencies when you just got smacked in the mouth (hopefully figuratively) but those moments are when we don't engage critical thinking skills. It's very likely that reconfiguring your list because of a loss, even a few losses, will lead to an over-correction and dig a deeper hole. Instead, try to reflect on the game and what actually happened, don't lie to yourself. Were some critical dice rolls to blame? If so, that's luck, and you can't do much about that. Did you make a mistake that you can learn from? Take that knowledge and do better next time, don't blame your plastic soldiers.

Evaluating losses is a skill that's difficult to acquire: wargames are often a battle of wits and when we feel outsmarted it's hard to accept. Consider giving yourself a day to distance yourself from feeling sad or angry about the outcome of a game, then try to think it over and figure out where everything went wrong. Some armies, even units or models, have a high learning curve. If you don't get what you want out of them, give it another try or two before considering a change. If you constantly swap your composition around it's harder to get a feel for your army and how it functions, you'll be back at square one over and over.

Iteration, not revolution, is usually friendly to a wargaming general. Perhaps that combination of Magic Items isn't working out for your Characters, but that's no reason to overhaul everything. Small, focused changes will yield better rewards in the long-run and you'll be able to spend more time considering how to get the most out of what you have, rather than obsessing about how to get everything perfect. The player and their familiarity or mindset with their army at hand, rather than the army itself, wins more games than you might expect.

Closing

Those are a few of my tips or recommendations to any player, new or old, and hopefully it wasn't too long-winded. I'm always curious to hear how other players approach these and other topics: do you strongly disagree or agree with anything I've said? Why? There's no one right or wrong way to approach The Old World, even if you're competitively minded, and being open to new ways of thinking is often a strength.

While many of the bones of The Old World are old and known, this is still a new game with new ideas and strategies to explore. Try to approach your army with an open mind, be willing to try new ideas, and don't get discouraged. I hope you enjoyed reading, back to the Army Builder for me!