Theme Based Army Building

In theory, all army building is theme based. Your theme could be "A list that crushes all my opponents before me and makes them cry".

But usually, that's not what people mean when they talk about a theme. When I say that, I'm referring to some aesthetic, artistic, or story-based concept that is applied to a force that usually ties your army together visually as well as tactically.

The most basic of themes is your paint job - making all the units follow a standard color scheme can transform those plain grey & metal figures into a solid representation of a unified force. A good paint job can pull together units that normally might seem odd to be together - but somehow, when they're all painted the same way... ta da! They're an army!

Another type of theme is the "iconic" army - this force is constructed in such a way that others viewing it on the table immediately recognize it for what it is - because not only are the figures from the given army list, but your choices fall in line with the established fluff.

Consider, for a moment, Space Marines. By everything you read, the vast majority of your force should be tacticals (unless you're doing a specialty force, but more on that later). Everything you read about the Emperor's boyz would suggest that most forces are made up of large amounts of your basic line trooper, the tactical marine. This flies in the face of common competitive tactics (considering that tacticals are overpriced and not as flexible as the fluff makes them out to be). But visually, a large number of 10 man tactical squads on the board just screams "Space marines".

Finally, there are the "specialists". Deathwing and Ravenwing. The 10th company. A specific craftworld. Speed Freaks. Armored Fist. These more specific themes can really be evocative and look great on the board - the trick is, to truly represent your theme and not "cheat" by adding some choice units which in theory shouldn't belong ("Why yes, my scout company just happened to be joined by a terminator squad and two riflemen dreads...")

This leads me into my next project, an Imperial Guard army. But I didn't want to just sit down and throw together the usually suspects (Vendettas, MeltaVets, Manticores) - I wanted a theme. So I'm building an Imperial Guard mortar battery. In the next few articles, I'm going to describe how I've planned this out and then blog about my efforts...