I am currently catching up on writing some The Old World battle reports and my army composition got me thinking about “Stillmania” and the spirit of the game. Stillmania is a classic article from White Dwarf about how one of the hobby greats, Nigel Stillman, played Warhammer back in the day. Below is a list of Stillman’s thoughts on how to lay in the spirit of the game.
I realize I have followed a good number of these points, often to my detriment, throughout my gaming career. While I don’t name my characters and regiments, and I don’t use gloss coat I rarely change my army. While I don’t paint just 2,000 points I have always painted to whatever the editions army size was, plus a few hundred points more, and rarely, if ever change my list. Since The Old World game out I have only used two variants on my Nurgle Daemon army, which is really what got me to think about this topic!
If you’ve been reading my battle reports you’ll know this is my typical Nurgle Daemon army, of which I have only made a few changes.
While I can’t say I don’t have extra units I can say I have a custom carrying case, and the extra units come from different editions of the army!
My opponents all know what I’m going to bring to each game, in fact we even skip the “what does this unit have” phase of the game because it’s always the same! I certainly don’t care if my opponent knows the exact composition of my army!
Over the years I have painted most of my armies to just about 2,000 points, unless the editions standard game was more than 2,000 points, before moving on to my next army. This has allowed me to paint more armies, but the problem is when the points value changes, or the editions meta changes I’m stuck behind the power curve. For example, my Tomb Kings were painted when the army first came out to 2,000 points and then never updated. At this point if I wanted to use them I probably don’t have enough points, and even if I did I don’t have any of the cool new toys. While not caring about this is peak Stillmania I think updating the army to have the new units would be acceptable twenty years later!
Do you subscribe to Stillmania principles? I’d like to think at the very least we are all focusing on having fun whether we win or lose!
-Wachtmeister
The Wachtmeister's Patrol 