I was reading an Adepticon report last night and one thing that pricked my notice was around “counts as” army requests in the 40k Open tournament.
It appears that the TOs received 40 requests to use one army as another in the Open, and 38 of these were to “counts as” Space Wolves!
I was talking to Charlie last night and he reckoned that a lot of these would be seeking permission to use other units e.g. Juggernauts as Thunderwolf cavalry. I’m not so sure that I’m drinking that Kool-Aid….call me cynical but I suspect the requests were for a little more than that.
The other interesting observation was the relative popularity of the various armies. The big five were in order:
• Space Wolves - 43 (I hope 38 weren’t “counts as” )
• Blood Angels - 40 odd
• Imperial Guard – high 30’s
• Orks/Space Marines – low 30s
Last year Guard were the biggest representation with 60+ so it looks like the two marine variants are army de jour at least in American non-comp events. Interestingly only 6 Dark Eldar (the last new book) were there.
Oh dont get me wrong Pete, most of those would have been C:SM and C:CSM players trying to jump ship. Just not all 38.
ReplyDeletePrime example would be when I wanted to do space sharks counts as space wolves, so that I could field thundershark cav flapping about on land :D
That kind of thing will make up the minority of the 38 requests though.
In truth the biggest reason I'm not doing "counts as" for my wolves now is only because I like the SW specific bits too much, and the gray is a great opportunity o make the most out of battle damage painting.
My comments aren't really directed at Space Wolves, rather what tends to happen in a no-comp, no real soft score environment.
ReplyDeleteThat is, you'll get a tsuanmi like drift to what is perceived as the most efficient (competitive) army.
If I was playing in the US tourney scene and I wanted max flexibility I'd be building a generic SM army and morphing as circumstances change.
As for Space Wolves from an aesthetic viewpoint? Why build vanilla marines when you can build one of the variants when they have much cooler figures. If I didn't hate imperials (and sW in particular) so much i'd be building them for the figures.
I think the expected/traditional level of terrain at US tourneys is a big reason for people avoiding Dark Eldar. They really need the rulebook-prescribed amount of terrain (and some of that LOS blocking) to keep up with the IG/SW
ReplyDeleteInterestingly enough, dark elder performed better than most armies when you average the battle points each race received.
ReplyDelete