Dispositions and army building

[Valkyrion]

I'm at a bit of an impasse as my hobby butterfly flits from idea to idea before I properly start 11th.

 

Option A - go all in on one disposition and ignore the rest;

e.g Space Marines could be Purge the Foe, so collect around 3000 points to give plenty of unit options but lean in to what that disposition does.

Same applies to my Tyranids and any other army I end up playing. So when I play, I play Purge but you don't know the faction

Pros:

Allows for my hobby butterfly to migrate to different factions when ebay throws up a deal too good to pass up.

I'll learn how to play one type of way very well.

Cons:

I'll only learn how to play one type of way.

My gaming butterfly might get bored and want to switch once I've already over-committed. 

 

Option B - go all in one faction but have an army for each disposition;

e.g, have a 1500 point core of space marines then 500 points of each disposition to slot in. So when I play, I play Space Marines but you don't know the disposition.

Pros:

I'll learn to play one faction very well

Multiple gaming modes

Cons:

I'll only learn how to play one faction.

My hobby butterfly might get bored and want to switch once I've already over-committed. 

 

Option C - one army per disposition;

e.g, 2000 points of Purge Marines, 2000 points of Asset Custodes, Recon Nids, Hold Orks and Disruption Eldar.

Don't change lists, just swap out the entire faction and disposition. So when I play, you don't know what faction or disposition to budget for, but my list will be basically set in stone for each faction for the entire edition. 

Pros:

Lots of choices which soothes my hobby butterfly.

Can tailor a specific faction to what it's good at

Cons:

Too many choices to properly learn anything - 5 factions, 5 dispositions, 5 missions per disposition - higher mental load. 

Most expensive option in terms of time and money. 

 

I'm almost certainly over thinking it - do the action based dispositions really require that much differentiation between army builds? Does Purge and Hold really play that differently?

 

What are you guys doing?

 

 

 

 

[Tawnis]

I think you're focusing on the dispositions too much. Especially after the update yesterday where they changed a bunch of them. 

 

If you're going to focus on building up a specific style of the faction, you should focus on a specific detachment (which may change dispositions through the edition). You could say a specific detachment pairing... but DP points could change, so if you do that, lean more heavily into the 2DP version in case it gets increased to 3 at some point. The detachment rules are going to steer the direction of your build more than the disposition which you may modify some things here and there for, but the overall functionality of the army will still remain the same. 

For example, if you are playing StormLance Task Force, you're going to be running a lot of bikers and Assault marines in the army regardless of you disposition. It's currently Disruption, so you might want a couple smaller action units, but that's not the core of what you're building. If it changed to say Purge The Foe later in the edition, you might cut the smaller action units for a big Dread or something, but the core of the army stays the same because the Advance/Fall Back and Charge as well as the strats you get contribute to the playstyle far more than the force disposition does. 

Edited 8 hours ago by Tawnis