Know Yourself

No, this isn't going to be another of those daft articles about trying to use the teachings of Sun Tzu in relation to pushing our toy soldiers round. However, I am going to talk about how important it is to know your army. I'm going to very briefly talk about why I personally think that Tony's Nova Con winning army is "sub optimal" and then why it doesn't matter.

Now, I like Njal but I just find him far too expensive at 240 points. Yes, he can cast two powers per turn (ie a shooty one and then Stormcaller) and he cancels out other psykers on a 3+ but Lord of the Tempests really relies on going first or else the first couple of powers have no effect. Then taking a Thunderwolf Lord AND another Rune Priest seems a bit like overkill. As I said in the comments, I think the list is a bit top heavy. I'd also worry that T4 W2 and no invulnerable save, Njal looks like 240 gift wrapped VPs. The rest of the list is pretty solid though and even though I personally don't really like Mark of the Wulfen and Wolf Standards, I can see that they do have their uses.

So, there we go the guy who's only been playing the game for 9 months and who has never entered a tournament is ripping apart the guy's list that just won what is being considered to be the most competitive 40K event in America. Well, yes, but here's why the list isn't that important. The key thing is knowing your army. Clearly, Tony must know the ins and outs of his force and how each unit interacts with the others. It's this knowledge and experience that makes an army more than the sum of the parts that are on the list. This is one of the blessings and curses of the internet. It's now really easy to go to a blog or a forum and find really good army lists. However, if you don't put the time in learning how to play that list you'll never have the same kind of success that Tony has had with his. In that regard, my advice would be use the thinking behind how the lists are built to build your own and then tweak it based on your own experiences of that list in games.

Anyway congratulations to Tony, although seeing a Space Wolf army win will only fuel Andy's claims that it's a broken codex...