Generals Matter

There are a number (and it's growing) of what I call NetListers:  People who put lists up and not only haven't tried them, nor do they even typically play that army, but yet are willing to tell you that any way but there's is the wrong way for that army to be built.  Sometimes they might be right.  Sometimes.

The trouble here isn't the lists.  Sharing lists and commenting on them is a fun pastime.  What I bristle at is the underlying assumption that comes across loud and clear:  the List wins or loses you the game and the General is accounted little respect.  If you won with an "unoptimized" list it was "because the other General sucked".  If you lose its because "the list sucked like we said"...but if you think about it, that really just means in both cases that they thought the list was the issue, and they accord you yourself no recognition at all.


Only a blind man would suggest that the list doesn't matter.  But really, how much does it matter? 

I know this:  Generals matter more.  Terrain, dice, opponents and enemy army lists are random factors that create a multiplicity of game situations that one cannot fully anticipate, yet the list requires you to try!  That requires you to consider points denial, sacrificial units, terrain issues, line of sight issues, range banding and likely counter measures the enemy may take plus a bevy of other considerations.  In fact, it is the countermeasures issue that I get into such heated debates online about.  As I mentioned, the NetListers of the world think that their unit is in a vacuum and will never be countered effectively and they like to claim that only a "Bad General" would counter their super unit with a lesser unit..  That hubris drives a lot of lists and list discussions and of course it ends as badly as you might imagine on the field of actual battle. 

The goal here will be to talk tactics as a result of list building, tactical deployment and fitting your armies components to the kind of General you really are.  It will be about the strategy as well.  A lot of new generals look around in confusion after every loss and wonder what they are doing wrong, but really, it's that they don't have a plan to execute nor a framework to really form one.  They know they have the "good units" they've read about and heard analyzed in their list but they haven't any idea what the enemy is thinking about doing to nullify them until its too late.  Anticipating countermeasures and respecting the skill level of the opponent enough to think they will actually do it is important.  Some of that comes from knowing the enemy codex's reasonably well, but a lot of it is just simple foresight.  I am hoping what I write will help on those things.

Your comments are appreciated on whether this kind of focus for the Blog would be of interest to you.