Ah, list-building. It may look like the feverish scrawling and scribbling of a lunatic, but there’s method in that madness. Well, I hope there is anyway. And Geoff, the fluorescent marmoset who sits on my shoulder and whispers things to me in the night assures me that my list-building is not a symptom of my delusions, but rather a fun and essential part of the hobby.

As many of you regular readers will know, I am embarking on a Space Marine’s army project with my Mortifactors. I’m not solely focussed on it – I believe in keeping my hobby activities varied to maintain my relatively short atten- ooh, look! A dog with a puffy tail! …as I was saying, variety is the spice of life and I don’t believe in forcing myself to paint something if I’m not in the mood. The words ‘have to’ are not in my hobbyist lexicon, and I really don’t mind if it take me all year to get this done.

But, by the same token, I do think it’s important to have a plan, even if it’s one that you don’t mind changing a little bit later on. For that reason (and because it’s quite fun to do in and of itself) I have been trying to pin down my desired Army List.

I am not a power gamer. Nor am I a purely fluffy gamer. The things that are priorities for me are: minis I want to paint, units that work with the fluff (as opposed to rigidly representing the convention), some units that will give me a chance of winning, and, most importantly, things that will be fun to play with. And I always work to the idea of a 1999+1 list, (which for those amongst you who may not be familiar with the term, is a single FoC chart 2000pt army). I don’t know why, but that’s always the number I work to. Every time I build an army, the first milestone after the mandatories (1 HQ, 2 Troops), is 2000pts. It allows you to play the larger games and it means that you should have plenty of options for smaller games too.

However, I digress. Last night, I cracked on with the list, and basically got in all the things that i really want to include that will make this a fun, some-what fluffy, hopefully well painted army that won’t get tabled in every single game. Then I totted up the points and to my delight, realised that I still had 311pts to spend! Huzzah, etc.

Delight quickly turned to despair though (well, ‘despair’ might be too strong a word – it was more of a confused, sleepy nonplussedness). It’s like one of those apocryphal children’s stories. I have all the choice I could want or need, and yet, I can make no decisions. It’s like being a kid in a power-armoured candy store. My Gamer’s OCD means that I HAVE TO (shut up, I know what I said) get to 2000pts or I’ll go slightly mad.

Now, to the crux of this story; I want your help. I want you to help me choose what to include in my army. You’ve got 311pts to play with and you can really pick anything. There are two free slots in Heavy Support, one in Elites, one in fast attack and three troop spots open for you. And to make this a little purer, I’m not going to tell you what else is in the list. Yes, you could squint at the photo at the top of this post, but I’d rather you just stated what you would choose to fill one or more of those slots with the points available. I don’t care if you come at it from a ‘that model looks cool’ perspective, or a ‘you have to have at least one of these if you want to win’ POV. Oh, and I’m totally fine with Forge World units being in there as long as they have the 40k stamp of approval.

So, stick your comments below and tell me what you would include. Then, in a later post, I’ll reveal the whole list and we’ll see what you think! Onwards!

Here, puff puff!