At the end of the day, this hobby is about you and your enjoyment. It is also about how you play, how you react to situations, and how you like to see battles unfold.
I am a reasonable Orks player. I am not the best, but I find that I definitely win more than I lose.
I am a terrible Space Marine player. I have a reasonable army, but my style just doesn't work with the army. Playing them the way that I am told to play them means I win more games, and changing the list to suit my style means I win more games, but at the end of the day, what people tell me to do isn't right for me.
This is a lesson learnt from the Nova Event I ran, Centurion.
You need to, as a player, assess what each unit does beyond what Kirby, Stelek, Me, and everyone else tells you they should do.
Case in point.
With Orks, my play style is very aggressive, and very horde-ish. I run at you as fast as possible, giggling when unfortunate things happen, then generally breaking your army under a weight of attacks. Yes, I play Horde Orks. Yes, they work. Yes, I win. Internet says No.
When I had loaned my army to Archnomad, he showed me, through his play style, a completely new concept for Ork game play. If you play a reserved game (not Reserves as in deployment, but "not aggressive mayhem" reserved), the army functions completely differently. The units that you would use in a meat grinder become more effective as a deterrent. If the opponent isn't focused on killing and separating the army, because they physically can't, most generals will not be able to destroy you the way they normally would. Billy played the current #1 Australian player and only lost because he lost sight of the primary win condition. He didn't do his movement correctly and lost the game. Simple mistake he will never forget. The army was still standing at 60% capacity at Turn 5. The Internet says you will be tabled at Turn 3. Why is this so?
Because of the way that people think, and the mindsets that they have, opinions and play styles are naturally skewed to what works for them.
Now as players, look at your army, and consider what you can try that contravenes all that you know and understand about your game play, but might actually make you more successful.
For instance: (YMMV on these ideas)
- Dual Autarch with Fusion Guns in a Mechdar list.
- Kustom Mega Blasta spam Orks
- Buying a cheap-ass HQ instead of the "standard build HQ" - eg: just a single barebones inquisitor in a GK list to save the 150 points for another GKSS squad
- Running mass scouts in a C:SM army to save points for more toys
- Working with Infiltrate units as force multipliers instead of killing machines.
And many more.
These are all ideas that the internet will laugh at me for, and you will get into endless arguements on maths if they happen to work for you, but all of these are worth the investigation.
Read, learn, conceptualise from the e-celeb big guns, but their word is not gospel. The list that won Adepticon would not have been approved by any of the e-celebs, but look where it ended up. Your own understanding needs to be part of your gaming process.
*note : for new players, reading and understanding and playing good armies comes first, testing comes second. There is no point in trying out infiltrating Orks as a deterrant before you really understand how the army functions as a codex*
