WAAC: Why I loathe it. Part 2 of ?

Greetings,

It's been a while and I will apologise for this is not meant to be a rant, although again it will end up being so. I know this for a fact.

In my last WAAC post I talked about my first experience of dealing with WAAC players en mass. It wasn't a pleasant experience for myself nor for those who were used to playing to the fluff or for fun.

More recently I have seen people who do WAAC for pick-up games. Normally they don't have a list prepared and then once they have seen the enemy army or list they prepare one to counter it. the writing of the list is normally accompanied by some of the following;

• It's written at the gaming venue.
• It takes about an hour.
• It can't be understood unless you know half a dozen dead languages and have three PhD's in cryptography and having grown up in Bletchley Park*1.
• It is written while they are constantly bitching about their opponent's list.
• They always asking for more points.
• They are always complaining if any restrictions are in place.
• They want to proxy miniatures because of a specific rule they have works amazingly effectively against your army.
• Their armies are often poorly painted.
• They are literally just thrown into or tipped out of a box.
• They look like they have been put together by someone sneezing over the miniature when they have a cold and shoving the rest of the parts at it, hoping that they'd stick.
• Finally they always say 'It's not the best list I can come up with.'

Normally people with lists like this aren't fun to play against. If something goes wrong they blame everything but themselves.

• 'It's not a good list.'
• 'I didn't have enough points.'
• 'I can't win the game unless I kill every model of yours.'
• 'I don't do objectives.' - I swear I was going to kill this guy...
• 'I haven't had time to make a good list.'
• 'Are we using the latest FAQ?' - I nearly DID kill this guy.

Even throughout all of these excuses and attempts to have a good game, I have often felt as if I'd just been in a WAAC tournament. It's not a feeling I like.

I actually have a few lists for each of my armies upon my person when I'm gaming. I can throw together a list in about 15 minutes, no matter the restrictions. As far as my armies for Warhammer go I have Ogres (apparently good in 8th, but one of the weakest in 7th), Bretonnia (see the comment about Ogres) and Lizardmen.

Now Lizardmen were got before the newer Army book came out. They were faring rather poorly on the power scale. Saurus were over-priced. Armies were small and under-powered, unless you went with one of the few internet lists available. Then along came the new army book. Nearly everything got a boost AND they got new shiny things. A horde of Stegadons crashed through the undergrowth, Skinks appeared in even greater numbers and the Slann were insane in the magic phase if upgraded properly. New plastics made them more affordable too.

I played them under the new army book for a bit. I was scared at how many more of the Lizardmen you could fit in an army. For myself I always like to take thematic armies. So I tried the Saurus Horde. Using only models with Saurus on them. I had 3 blocks of Saurus Warriors with spears, a big unit of Cold one cavalry, a Carnosaur Lord and two other Saurus heroes. I ended up just marching up the field and eating an Empire artillery army. I had managed to crush them in four turns. After this game I stopped playing Lizardmen for months. My opponent didn't even manage to destroy a single unit. This wasn't for lack of trying though.

I went back to my Ogres and a few months later picked up Bretonnians. I was going again for a thematic list. All cavalry. Sounded good. The main issue with the Bretonnian cavalry that they can't do anything if they don't break the enemy on the charge. So I bulked up my army with Peasants. Nothing too severe. Just made it more like an actual army. Knights were more or less ALWAYS in the majority. It was always the poor sods in the infantry who outnumbered them 270 to 1. I actually started having a chance at winning a game. The knights died in a multitude of horrible ways, but the Peasants normally survived. Ummm... sorry for rambling...

My main point is that just because it is a pick up game, doesn't mean that you should treat it as a tournament or bitch, whinge and whine if it doesn't happen according to plan.

It's a one off.

Apart from the 'I must win every game,' attitude playing a WAAC at a pick up game is not an occurrence that happens too often. People who do WAAC refuse to play it as a GAME. They, again, treat it as a job and it takes the fun out of it for people who don't do similar.

What I'd like to see is people playing smaller games, or playing under limits as to what they can use. For example in 40K only using 1 HQ and Troops choices without vehicles, special or heavy weapons, for Warhammer having one hero and only using Core choices.

Simple things to make gamers think on how to use their armies effectively without having to resort to an internet list from BOLS, Warseer or Bolter and Chainsword. I know there will always be some people who won't like it, but if some people can start playing outside of their comfort zone they will, hopefully, become a better person to game against for those who don't play as competitively as them.

Regards,

English Pillocket

*1- Bletchley Park was the place in England where the German Enigma machine code, Italian Air and Naval codes, and most of the Japanese Military codes were cracked during WWII. It is now the National Museum of Computing as well as being used half a dozen other roles.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bletchley_Park

Bretonnian peasants...

Greetings,

Now I know that a lot of people have given me a lot of abuse for how quickly I can throw an army together and my Bretonnians were definitely a major area of annoyance from my friends and fellow gamers. I know that they aren't the best and I don't say that I'm proud of them. The only thing I'm proud of is that I did 40 in about a week or so. The archers were done over two weeks, but I did all of the commands in that time-frame too.

The way that I painted my Bretonnians is definitely a lazy way of doing it. It is fast, and it most definitely isn't pretty, but if you want a vast mob of dishevelled scum in a short space of time, this is one of the routes you should follow.

I used the following GW paints and inks; Dehneb Stone, Tallarn Flesh, Chainmail, Boltgun Metal, Badab Black, Gryphonne Sepia, and Devlan Mud.

1. Remove the models from the sprue -duh!
2. Glue the body centrally onto the base. Check for possible ranking issues at this stage. If you mess up for ranking up here you might be able to sort it out later on but it is best caught early.
3. Glue the heads and weapon arms onto the body.
4. Give the model a generous basecoat of Dehneb Stone. Make sure you get everywhere apart from all of the shield arm socket. This needs to be left clear so the plastic glue adheres to it properly.
5. Paint all of the flesh Tallarn Flesh. There isn't a lot so don't go overboard or you will have a lot of cleaning up to do.
6. Once the Dehneb and Tallarn is dry go over the paint with a heavy coat of Gryphonne Sepia. This gives the model a good base-colour as it looks slightly like leather, especially when used in conjunction with other washes.
7. Paint all of the metal items on the model with Chainmail or Boltgun metal. Boltgun is darker than Chainmail, but you can alter their appearance with the other inks that I used for their colour scheme. Again be carfeul with the problem of accidently painting over areas that have already been done so.
8. The spear or halberd staff should be neatened up with Dehneb stone to neaten up what the ink has potentially done with the heavy coat of ink.
9. The shield should be coated with Dehneb and the metal trim is gone over with one of the metallics.
10. When it is dry go over the shield with Badab Black. The rest of the peasants can be coated with either Gryphonne, Devlan or Badab. The use of layering these washes changes the way that the models look and they still have a coherent look about them. The metals can be gone over with the three different washes, but be careful that they don't look too different, unless you want different ones for different units.
11. The shields just had a heavy coat of Badab Black, which collected near the bottom and gave them some interesting effects due to the shields design and their casting.
12. You can also go over one of the previous washes with a drybruhing of Deneb Stone then a single wash to create more variants of the paint scheme. This is especially effective for the archer with the furs.
13. The bases of mine have just been painted snot green as I haven't yet gotten around to putting flock on their bases. But following your normal basing routine sould be fine.

The command groups have the same basic paint scheme on them, but the banner bearers have had one of the GW Foundation paints painted on the background with the shield painted black. These were then gone over with Gryphonne Sepia to give the off-beige colour.

You can also do similar with the archers. These models are great for playing about with the inks due to the detailing of their casts. The banners will need pinning though, as you get next to nothing to affix it to. You can see how this worked with the step-by-step Bowmen in the above image.

I hope you will find this helpful. I did a similar thing with my Bretonnian Knights, but I'll show them at a later date.

Regards,

English Pillock