Tyranids: Forging a Fail

Just a heads up everyone, I have my first post up as a contributor at Talk Wargaming.

You can check it out here; http://www.talkwargaming.com/2014/03/tyranids-failing-at-forging-narrative.html

Fluff and Crunch: Or, Why Stories Matter to Our Games

The Intersection of Fluff and Crunch: Or, Why Stories Matter to Our Games

Miniatures game systems are composed of two major parts. The fluff; which is the storyline, the character biographies, and even the aesthetic design of the models, and the Crunch; the actual rules of the game. On the internet, especially around some of the more tournament centred blogs, we tend to forget the importance of fluff is to at all levels of play.

Stop for a moment and consider the miniature games you play. Do you play Warhammer 40k or WarmaHordes? Infinity or Malifaux? Kings of War or Warhammer? Within those games why did you choose the faction that you did, especially the first one you chose, before you knew the system all that well.

For myself my first game was 40k, and my first faction was Necrons. I chose Necrons because I loved the Terminator-style look of them mixed with the undead army reborn theme of the fluff. Later on I expanded to Tyranids in 4th edition because they looked awesome, but also because the lack of any form of customization in the Necron force was getting repetitive, and the Tyranid 4th ed book had a smorgasbord of options for almost every single unit.

Now this may just be my friends and I, but, I suspect this is the pattern for most wargamers. It's why we play miniature games instead of, say, chess (well, one of the reasons). You start out with an army that you choose for aesthetic or story reasons, and then if you stay invested in the game you tend to expand towards armies that have a play style you're more interested in.

It's a Guide for New Players.

For new players, who haven't had a chance to get familiar with the rules yet (especially the myriad special and unit rules), the fluff should serve as a guide for what they want. When a new player reads through their book, full of stories and unit biographies, they should be able to choose units based on how their described. If a unit is described in the fluff as stealthy and striking from the shadows then it should probably have rules that represent that (in 40k Stealth and Infiltrate at a minimum). If the unit is described as being vicious in close combat in all of it's stories it should probably, y'know, be at least decently deadly in combat. Probably it should not constantly get torn to shreds by even the simplest opposition. **cough** Howling Banshees **cough**

Now not only should the fluff be an accurate guide but...

The Coolest Rules Come Out of the Fluff.

One of the biggest loses I think Necrons took when their ancient Codex was finally updated was the loss of Phase Out. In their original form the Necrons were like ghosts (really, really durable ghosts), silently appearing, causing untold havoc, and then fading away in a burst of emerald light. The few Necrons who did fallen in battle would often spontaneously repair themselves, as if the damage didn't even matter.

To represent this on the table top the 3rd Edition Necron Codex had a number of cheeky shenanigans that allowed them to zip around the battlefield. Several of their units could Deep strike. Once the army was deployed on the board the Veil of Darkness, and the Monolith Portal could teleport them around even more, most frustratingly for opponents even if they were locked in combat. In addition they had the infamous We'll Be Back special rule that allowed dead models to return to battle (essentially Reanimation Protocols but better, 4+ instead of 5+, yet worse at the same time as it was cumbersome as all hell with an abundance of caveats and weird circumstances). Even better these rules often interacted; a unit that used a Monolith Portal could re-roll failed We'll Be Back rolls from that turn.

The flip side was that the Necrons never fought to extinction. If they took enough causalities the remaining army would simply teleport home, or Phase Out as it was called, disappearing from the battlefield to fight again another day (and granting an automatic victory to their opponent). Now by the tail end of 5th Edition, when the army finally got updated, the rules certainly needed updating (We'll Be Back was extremely cumbersome, and Phase Out no longer worked as intended anymore), but the wholesale removing of Phase Out, instead of revamping it, was unfortunate.

There are a plethora of great examples of amazing, fluffy, rules left today. The new Chapter Tactics for Space Marines are incredible, allowing you to tailor nearly your entire army towards your favourite Chapter from the Black Library novels. Supporting Fire with Tau. Or everyone's favourite fluff based rule Waaagh!!! Heck the entire Ork Codex is a smorgasbord of wicked fluffy rules.

You see the fluff influences how the designers build the armies, and is what gives us such a diversity of armies and play styles. It is instrumental to crafting a varied and interesting game. As opposed to a game of really complicated chess.

Which leads me to my last point...

Without it We're Just Doing Recreational Math.

Let's be real honest for a minute; without the context that the fluff and stories provide we'd just be showing up at our friendly local gaming store, or getting together in each others basements, and doing a bunch of extremely repetitive probability experiments.

So the next time you are building a list, and decide to take Terminators, or a Carnivean, instead of 'Melee Unit 5', or Firewarriors instead of 'Ranged Unit 2', you should probably mutter a quick prayer to the Dice Gods in thanks for the fluff.