Now some of you must be wondering, what the hell is a holistic approach and how does this even apply to what I am doing? Well first we must look at the root word of holistic, holism. The general principle of holism was concisely summarized by Aristotle in the Metaphysics: "The whole is more than the sum of its parts", and this is how I tend to go about my armies. How I go about this, you asked. Well, I'll tell you.
The first thing that I tend to do with an army is to imagine how I want it to look on the table, no matter what the hell I am doing or no matter where the hell I am going in order to make it real and tangible. The reason for this is because this army is going to be mine, and mine alone. I hate to be similar to the person next to me, and I find that I have a streak of individualism that I can't ignore inside. Sure I can go and become a normal vanilla Ultramarines or Marines, but without the look no one would even notice that there is something special about these guys. But when I put an army that is dressed and made for the kill, it will turn heads and make them wonder; Woah...who the hell is that guy? You can call this ego, but I call it being the pioneer of playing in style.
The next thing I tend to do is then make them a story that make me want to go about playing these little plastic men more. I am a guy who loves a good story, and I never find it wrong to make some narrative as to what your boys and girls are all about. It makes for a more enjoyable moment when you decided to play around and just pretend that you are indeed in some kind of epic war movie about these men and women in 40k.
A good example of this approach would be my Orks. My ork's background story is that of them being a rather odd bunch of Deffskull grease monkeys whose boss decided to try and loot everything he can get his greasy fingers on, and while he is at it he will play loud percussive sounds for his own enjoyment. So this also gives me a reason to go about modelling all the things that the Orks salvaged or stole from their enemies as with every adventure, they found more people to break their heads and take their vehicles away to Orkify it. At the bottom, you could see what I go about doing to make it fit to the image I want my Orks to be.
Of course, with more games I played with them, my army grew and now it is a rather healthy chunk of at least 2.5k with the burnas, lootas and the warbuggies to make it fit the image of the junkyard warriors I always imagined my Orks to be. In addition, I also intentionally made it a goal that whenever I defeat a foe, I will try to loot something from the range of the army. So far I have failed to win decisively over the Nids, and due to the string of ties I always had with them I am unable to loot that Carnifex for my own army. On the opposite spectrum, I have yet to buy a tau devilfish/hammerhead to loot as I am currently preoccupied with my Dark Eldar not to mention that I want to buy both a devilfish and an ork trukk to make for a devilfish with wheels. So that fluff alone is already a big factor in the choices I made in my army and also it fits in overall with my style; that of playing fast, efficient armies with lots of tricks up its sleeves.
So I guess this is the end of Part 1. More to come in the far (well actually not that far off) future.....
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