[Survey] How do you feel playing the same army that your gaming partner ?

[Jeremierty]

 

[Juicy]

i really hate mirror matches.. There are so many cool armies out there. Every time i go to a 5 game tournament i hate to play a mirror. Even when the armies are totally differant.. Just feels for a bad story at most of the times. 
im really happy if i can play other armies and love to play armies that i hardly play. 
With my local gameclub i try to avoid the mirror if possible and i know most of us dont like to play it. 
If you got a small group of friends its so much more cool to play differant armies.

[KingBrodd]

I'm not too big into the gaming side of the hobby but for narrative, lore and just general funsies I'd prefer to play against a different Faction. 

[Jator]

14 minutes ago, KingBrodd said:

I'm not too big into the gaming side of the hobby but for narrative, lore and just general funsies I'd prefer to play against a different Faction. 

To be fair, from a lore perspective many factions love to fight among themselves. Skaven call that Tuesday.

[PraetorDragoon]

I prefer not having mirror matches. It can be interesting once in a while, but not too often.

[Clan's Cynic]

For me unfluffy mirror matchups is one of several reasons I've moved away from 40k. I've always been a Guard player, but when the majority of my matches are inevitably going to be fighting against other Imperial armies, most likely Space Marines, there's only so far that the narrative suspension of disbelief will stretch to. My Cadian models have killed more loyalist Marines than they have Chaos.

AoS I've found is a lot better about this kind of thing and it does seem like GW is consciously aware of it, although it still does depend on the exact matchup:

EG Chaos vs Chaos? Absolutely fine. Even those worshipping the same god fight one another. 

Cities of Sigmar vs Stormcast? That's when I don't like it, because although you can handwave 'Stormcast come to purge the City and they don't want to get butchered by them' it's still not really the narrative I want for my City army to have to go through, especially when afterwards it would reasonably have made them pariahs. Stormcast aren't nearly as popular/dominant as Marines are so this crops up a lot less. but both they and CoS are among the most popular factions so it's still pretty common. Compare that with say... Fyreslayers, who you can handwave it as being paid off enough to 'justify' fighting most Order armies (assuming it's not Idoneth just after their souls, DoK after sacrifices, Sylvaneth having a fit for territorial reasons, etc).

Edited March 6, 2021 by Clan's Cynic

[Overread]

My hobby my army

Their hobby their army

That's my view, I don't mind if it results in mirror matches or not. The key is that each person builds and plays the army(ies) they want too. In the end mirror matches are no more nor less of a problem than lore friendly matches if your hobby group never has any "new" armies to play with (players starting new ones and/or people joining with new armies) then stagnation will set in at some point. 

 

I think that the only issue is when the games internal balance is so poor that some armies are "auto win" and some "auto lose" when built to a good standard army composition wise. That can result in everyone gravitating toward armies that win and away from armies that lose at the mechanical level because; despite winning not being everything, people like to win. 

 

In the end that's where I'd take issue and it can result in some of the 40K "every army is a marine force" at times. 

[OkayestDM]

I don't mind mirror matches in principal, though I will admit as I play exclusively with friends and we all collect different armies, it isn't something that ever comes up. 

I agree with @Clan's Cynic in that I prefer the matchup to make plausible sense.

That said, I've taught a couple people how to play, and I have friends who are still collecting new armies. When teaching, I worry more about ensuring that the army they face helps them learn different aspects of the game rather than match lore. When a friend is trying to learn a new army, I just ask them what they want to fight and bring that, regardless of whether or not it result in a mirror or "unloreful" matchup.

 

[Zeblasky]

Nurgle mirror matches are the best. Greatly balanced, very friendly and caring.

Edited March 6, 2021 by Zeblasky

[Fairbanks]

44 minutes ago, Overread said:

My hobby my army

Their hobby their army

While I agree with this sentiment, the question implies a lot that makes me say No.

When I hear the word “Play” I don’t just think “As an Opponent in a game”. I think “Collects, Builds, and Plays.” And when I read “Gaming Partner”, I don’t think “My Opponent for this match.” I think “My friend, whom I play weekly and talk with daily.”

If they want to play the Army I collect, build, paint and play with, I’m sliding mine across the table for them to use. If they want a mirror match, I’m grabbing another 2000 points. If they really want to own that army for themselves, I’ll probably sell it to them and buy a different one.

It’s not “This is my turf, stay off.” It’s more “We share this turf, why do we need more of the same?”

[Angela]

I really like the occasional mirror match.  I like large armies, so every mirror match I've ever played has been dividing my army in two and playing against my husband. It can be a very balanced game.

[Beer & Pretzels Gamer]

Generally there’s enough armies in rotation that this doesn’t come up except at tournaments for me.  There of course I’m hoping to play armies I’ve never played before but accept that it won’t always work out.

On general principle though I both appreciate seeing how another opponent plays my army and trying to solve the problems my army creates.  Almost always learn something.

Appreciate the lore perspective as I’m a big narrative gamer but in AoS think it is easier.

And agree wording of poll a bit awkward (know how hard this can be to write so just a soft constructive critique here) so of course I wouldn’t want a majority of matches to be mirrors (if that was what was implied).  Variety is a vital spice to a tasty game.

[Neverchosen]

For me it is less about narrative or style but simply army variations. I would love to test my Slaves to Darkness army out against a Marauder heavy, or Everchosen list. My Ogors are mostly Beastclaw Raiders so I would have fun going up against some footsloggers. But I would be less inclined to have a mirror match for Fyreslayers, IDK or DoK. 

This is why I am a huge advocate for Subfactions it gives more variation to armies and makes mirror matches more interesting and dynamic. 

[Dracan]

As I am fortunate enough to own multiple armies  i really dont mind my friends are collecting or playing the same faction. But if we are having friendlies I'd make sure to play something else than the mirror. In tournaments I don't really mind as there is little choice and the chances of an exzact army much is minimal.

[MitGas]

I chose the first option... it's less that I dislike playing against my own army (from a background POV it could work with Tzeentch), but I do prefer playing against any other army. That said, as a high-ranking member of the cult of Tzeentch, I welcome if more people convert and play Disciples/Thousand Sons/Tzaangors/Whatever Else Tzeentch. Cause we all know that Tzeentch is best*! 🥰

*you might not know it YET. 

Edited March 6, 2021 by MitGas

[Doko]

My first army was stormcast,then many new players started to play and got stormcast as i did because was the cheap miney wise army.

Rigth now with mortal realm collection everyone where i play have stormcat.

I havent played stormcast in the last 2 years due to this,i hate mirrors and when both have our armys in grey unpainted  and playing the same models is worse even

[Noserenda]

I think everybody is usually happier collecting the things they want rather than working off everyone else's expectations. 

Im not so boned up on AoS fluff but 40k is fairly good at providing plentiful examples of civil wars and misunderstandings to explain why any given force is battling itself, i cant imagine its much different? 

Tbh its more tedious fighting the same army over and over if there isnt great internal balance, i know one of the 30k events i went to i ended up playing Mechanicum in every single game and it got a bit tedious, much more than playing against the same army list, even when that was fairly limited.

[Neil Arthur Hotep]

Although I value having a narrative for why two armies would fight, I feel like the mortal realms are large enough to narratively handle mirror matches or infighting within a Grand Alliance. It's really only in the case of GA: Death that it's a bit harder to justify sometimes. Something  that takes me out of the fiction, though, is having multiple of the same named character on the board. But I guess that is hard to avoid if you want the game to have named characters at all. I guess you can always go the route of framing it as "Let's see who's the imposter and who is the REAL Nagash!" .

[Televiper11]

You can learn a lot from a mirror match so I don’t mind them on occasion.

[Shearl]

I don't mind playing a mirror match here and there, but if my gaming group was comprised of only a few people I would most likely pick a force no one else is playing.

When I decided to pick a Necromunda gang I asked my flg which gangs people are playing the least, and picked one of them (naturally I did this right before covid so my poor Delaques haven't seen use).

[Charleston]

Why mirror matches are no issue to me, I tend to avoid collecting factions I know beeing already played in my group

 

[zilberfrid]

Kharadron: Trade dispute gets a bit heated.

Cities: Either a tournament in Ghyran where the fallen will get back up again, or dispute between some Slaves of Sigmar and a sensible city that isn't shackled to a god.

[DoctorPerils]

While I'd _prefer_ to avoid mirror matches when possible, I've grown to not mind them once in a while.

I haven't really got enough local players to be picky for one thing, but also I like the concept (in lore) of civil wars. It makes these super-factions feel less monolithic, and therefore perhaps more grounded? Like a battle for the soul of the faction

[Beastmaster]

We know us humans for sure are quite happy to go to war with each other. Why should this be any different among orcs, dwarfs or skeletons? 😄

There are also so many ways to build an army, play and paint and style it that optical and tactical diversity on the table should not suffer too much from some mirror-match once in a while. It may be a problem though if half the players would play one single distinct faction with limited competitive builds. But that’s not where we are in the current AoS.

[dekay]

Depends on an army. The more unit choices a faction has, the better mirror matches are. You can do, say Skaven v. Skaven with no units duplicated between the sides, while with Fyreslayers the entire armies will be almost identical. One of those can be fun, other less so.