Coarse or Very Fine? Granularity in List Building

So if you've been reading this blog for a hot minute, you're probably aware that I'm almost exclusively a skirmish gamer. It gives me the ability to indulge my lack of focus, without being too punishing. Do I end up painting an army's worth of miniatures? You bet I do, but they sure as hell aren't the same color scheme.

But one of the contentious topics in skirmish gaming is that of list building. We all like to have our toys and play with them too, so it can be little rough when you are super constrained in that regard. However, there's something to be said for reasonable restrictions that makes the game feel more narrative. Let's take two examples and compare them to see how they compare and if we can learn anything from them.

First, let's take Kill Team. I'm going to cheat a little bit and talk about multiple versions of the game, mainly the 2018 version when it became a standalone, versus the 2021/2024 current system. If you're not aware, in KT18 what you could do was essentially take anything from your faction's roster, whereas in KT 21 and onward you have a few operatives you must take, and then choices for specific slots to fill out the team.

While I enjoy a good bit of choice as much as the next person, my position is that KT18 was a little too free with the list building, and you often had people on the internet who had determined the 'optimal' choices for each faction and just stuffed as many into their list as they possibly could. Sure, it's cool you did the match, but facing down four plasma guns ever game just wasn't interesting.

KT21/24 does this significantly better because while you do get to make thematic choices about what models you are going to bring, each specific kill team feels different from the others, and there's not as much in the way of spam anymore.

Now we can move on to what I believe is the Platonic ideal of a list building game, and to no one's surprise it is Infinity, by Corvus Belli. As an aside, one of my favorite things about the game is that there is an online list builder for it, and that all the rules and unit profiles are freely available. It would be impossible to tally all the time I've spend noodling around in Infinity Army tweaking lists or exploring new factions and sectorials (theme forces).

I think the strongest thing about the game is that you are balancing three separate resources when building a list. There are of course points (300 for a standard sized game, there are the Special Weapon Cost (SWC, 6 for a standard game), and that you are limited to 15 troopers.

There's a delicate balance to be found in getting to the full 15 trooper limit, making sure you have the right profiles to do the objectives, and getting all the cool toys you'd like. And as a bonus there are lots of fun mind games you can play with your choices that will have your opponents sweating the entire game. You only have 14 orders on the board, did you only take 14 troopers, or is there a hidden deployment model somewhere?

Hopefully my rambling has sparked some ideas about your own list building. What's your favorite type of list building, and for which game? Let us know in the comments!