Keeping the List, Testing the Theory
Small army-building decisions, big hobby energy
Sometimes the most fun part of army-building is not rewriting the whole list after every bit of advice. This time we landed exactly in that place.
We were talking through a small list tweak and the conclusion was beautifully simple: if one of us is not changing anything, the other is staying stubborn too. So the plan survived contact with chat, AI hot takes, and our usual second-guessing.
Stas decided to keep his setup as it was, even after hearing the classic warning that 8 Black Orcs might be too few to work as a proper anvil. Naturally, that only made the idea more tempting.
“Gemini says 8 Black Orcs is too few for an effective anvil. I want to test that :)”
And honestly, that is the exact kind of energy we respect. Sometimes theoryhammer is useful, but sometimes you just want to put the unit on the table and see whether it holds, bounces, or explodes gloriously.
On the other side, Michał mentioned a similar problem from his own list-building:
“GPT also says 10 Infernal [Guard] is trash and there is no point taking that many, but we’ll see :)”
So that became the theme of the conversation: the list stays, the experiment goes ahead.
Why we like this approach
There is something very satisfying about testing units that the internet, list tools, or AI assistants are not fully sold on. Not because every odd choice is secretly amazing, but because Warhammer gets much more interesting when we actually verify these opinions in real games.
Maybe 8 Black Orcs really is too thin to anchor a fight. Maybe 10 Infernals really is awkward and inefficient. Or maybe, in the context of a specific list, local meta, scenario, or just a player’s style, those units do exactly enough.
That is the kind of thing we love checking for ourselves.
A bit of real life in the background
This whole exchange also had a very normal pre-game vibe to it. Stas mentioned he had started sniffling a bit, but only lightly, and had already been to the doctor. According to the doctor, everything should be fine — so hopefully nothing gets in the way of actually putting these theories on the table.
Because really, that is the key point here: army-building only gets interesting when it leaves the document and reaches the battlefield.
What we want to see on the table
For the next games, we are especially curious about two things:
- whether 8 Black Orcs can actually function as a dependable anvil,
- whether a unit of 10 Infernals can justify its place despite all the warnings.
Not every test needs to begin with confidence. Sometimes “we’ll see” is more than enough.
Hobby takeaway
This was one of those tiny conversations that says a lot about how we like to build armies. We do listen to advice. We do read opinions. We do occasionally ask machines what they think.
But in the end, we still want to roll dice and find out ourselves.
And honestly? That is probably the healthiest version of army-building there is.
If these units get their battlefield trial soon, we will definitely want to come back with a follow-up and see whether the doubters were right.