To be or not to be. Fluffy.

Simple concept really, we all enjoy different types of game, I was just curious to see if, when pushed, youd consider yourself a fluffy player or a competitive type. Thought it might be interesting to see what the membership make-up was like.
No sitting on the fence, so a couple of definitions/examples.

Fluffy Player: You take a unit that you know is ineffective (Mandrakes...?) simply because it fits with the background for your kabal / you like the models
Competitive Player: Your usual list has 3 ravagers on it with dark lances, 3 units of blasterborn, several carbon copy troops units, probably 5 warriors with a blaster in a raider with a dark lance or a venom with dual cannons

Fluffy, first off I love my mandrakes and do use them in 1750+.

Duke Sliscus with Sybarite in the kabalite warriors armed with venom blades. 10 man squads to show his strength in recruiting more of his pirate raiders. I beeline for he biggest baddest unit across from me, launching everything I have at it in order to kill/ blow it up.

Fluffy. We have too many greta minis. To not use them is a crime I must add that I have never played in a tournament.

Luckily we are not Space Marines or God Forbid Chaos Space Marines, pretty much any combination or units we can take is a fluffy and competetive list. (except for Mandrakes).

By fluffy i understand take units that you really want to use and make most effective list possible with them, its ok that those units may not be best possible choices, but you make and play best with what you get.

Completely agree with Asdrubael. It's pretty hard to make a truly bad Dark Eldar list.

Competitive. With the occasional fluff indulgence.

Fluffy. I love pimping out my HQs with the most expensive crap I can simply 'cause it fits. I love silly upgrades that aren't necessarily competitive. I try to make a different list every time, if possible. Some units are staple, some - shift around based on what I'm going for.

I'm a fluff-bunny. I just love the coven models too much to not take them. I took Grotesques AND a fricking Cronos to the last tournament that I went to because I loved the model and thought that my Talos might get lonely coming out of the WWP.

Fluffy. I'm currently attempting to design a purely Wych Cult list, that won't fold at the first sight of a bolter.

I tend towards making competive lists, but I also get annoyed if I can't play a list that is both competive and fun to play and fits the army theme. In thta regard Dark Eldar are great. Compare the fluff of some armies with the most popular lists:

Imperial Guard: Fluff: typically large amounts of relatively poorly trained and equipped infantry supported by heavy tanks. Typical list: everybody is a veteran equipped with melta and plasma weapons, supported by soem of the best skimmers in game.
Space Wolves: Fluff: a melee-focused chapter that chargest at the enemy and tears them apart in close combat. Disdains psykers. Typical list: everybody eighter sits inside Razorbacks or carries missile launchers and waits the enemy to charge them so they can use counter-charge. Army contains atleast two powerful psykers.
Dark Eldar: Fluff: Extremely fast but fragile, with tons of firepower in form of lances and splinter weaponry. Typical list: Extremely fast but fragile, with tons of firepower in form of lances and splinter weaponry.

I quess fluff-vise Raiders are our most common vehicles, while competive lists contain mostly Venoms, but other than that I'd say even minmaxed DE list fit the fluff quite well.

Hmmm, I'd say fluffy with a competitive twist or is that competitive with a fluffy twist?

My original ideas for my army was a solid theme with three origins of choices: what I liked the idea of and fitted the theme, what I wanted to make and paint and then what was good. This rounded the army out quite well but after playtesting and to find my local meta rather competitive I started to cut and change.

Now I have met myself in the middle. I will always take Duke Sliscus because he is awesome and I've kept my Razorwing but out go the Hellions and in come the Blasterborn.

I also make my army fluffy by how I convert and paint my models. For example I have a unit of Eldar Corsairs armed with Fusion Guns made from the FW Corsairs and a Venom kitbashed out of a Vyper. Fluffwise they are outcasts that follow the Duke around for the lulz, day by day falling into the dark. Gamewise, 3 Trueborn with Blasters in a Venom = competitive.

That's interesting, a much higher proportion of fluffy players than I'd have expected. You may have gathered from the title that I'm much more a fluffy player than a competitive type so it's nice to know I'm not in the minority, though I guess as a couple of the comments suggest, the fact that DE are relatively competitive in their fluffy state definitely helps.

As a new archon starting out learning the game I can definitely identify with Sky's comment. I've got my collection of what I want to use, and i can see that as i get games under my belt i'll change and adapt in tactics, wargear and eventually unit choices, hopefully ending up with something that can hold its own in most situations but fits my idea of fluff nicely. The intention is to gradually add to my Archon's back story as each game goes by, win or lose, writing in background as to why i make changes to what units i take. I've adapted the post game campaign injury table from necromunda (and simplified it a lot) so that for each casualty I cause, I can make a record as to whether they died, escaped or were captured. The captures and wounded will work their way into the background as slaves to be sold, traded or used in the arenas of my cult elements.

Competitive, I'm a newer player so I tend to lean towards optimal choices. But, I don't like boring armies which is why I play Dark Eldar. The minis are cool looking even for the optimal choices. Maybe as I become better I will field fluffy and funny choices that are generally bad. (Like "Captain Space Pimp, with Overpriced Transport(Azdruebael Vect with the Dais of destruction)").

I guess we are fluffy players per definition. Else we would've chosen to play a power armour army.

So I must add myself to this line. I'm in essence a fluffy player, but i do like to win... So I add and substract accordingly.

I am a competitive player through and through. I guess it comes from playing our old Codex for so long that its ingrained into me the need to take optimized lists. But that doesnt mean I dont take the oddball choices every now and then (I am famous for running an all coven lists... man do I love me some coven) But most of my games you will see me fine-tuning my latest tournament list (right now I have mine down pat, just waiting for my pieces to convert my Baron)

Well, in the fluff Dark Eldar always do what it takes to win so I suppose you could take the cheiest list possible and still say its fluffy.

Our fluff is just so cool it's hard not to be a fluffy player. We don't have any greater good or hive mind directive, no rotting carcass to sacrifice psykers too and no sad fall from grace. We owe allegiance to no-one,we are what we are and make no excuses for it. In fact we revel in it!

Add to that no T4/3+ save to rely on,army buffs you have to generate in game not just pay 5 points for, and a very unforgiving ( double entendre intended ) army to play, and you have a unique appeal in the 40K universe.

Dark Eldar, the ultimate individualists!

I question the efficacy of asking people to place themselves in one "camp" or the other. It's false dilemma that sort of skips around a more broad question, "Why do you play and think about and write about this game so much?" That answer is almost certain to be complex, so saying "No sitting on the fence" is goofy at best. I don't want to badmouth you or derail the thread, but do you see where I'm coming from?

As I have to pick one, I would pick competitive. I want an army that I can brag about, and bring a lot of play to the table to have an exciting game. Most of the people in my gaming club wouldn't ask about or care about the stories I am writing about my force, so the only way to show them how awesome they are is to smash face. They would be more sympathetic to "I bought a Razorwing because OMG IT LOOKS SO COOL". But, if I hadn't read that the Razorwing is competitively situated, I might not have even bought it. I can't say for sure.

this is why I love the DE codex, it is easy to put together a competitive fluffy list that is fun to play with and against. Kudos to Phil ... it is also why I dont see any need for DE spam.

Since i joined i havent said much at all, mainly because i only have a 500pt dark eldar army at the mo (im a painting perfectionist) and there was a fantasy campain starting which i was using my first army (wood elves rock, woot woot!!!) But id like to put it forward that if you have a compettitive list and base fluff around it, could it be fluffy if you stick with a list like it no matter who you play?

Show me a DE list and explain why it's not fluffy and then I'll answer the question - I never really thought our fluff was defined enough in a build sense to be able to say.

I would say I build competitive and consider my builds fluffy...but I admit I don't think any DE build is unfluffy unless you include special characters...and even then there's a lot of leeway.

I play to the fluff first and foremost.

I really don't enjoy some of the choices I make in my army, but I feel compelled to do so, because I've not won a single game since I've started. (I've played.... 6-7 times tops?)

I feel some strain to do one or the other. I love wyches and wych cults. I hate coven, and their models. (Not that they aren't pretty, they're darn good models, but I don't care for the aesthetic.) I recently purged my Harlequins, but I'm debating on adding them back into the fray solely as a "I'm tired of playing Blasterborn already... especially since I don't even run the Duke anymore.)

I blame my lack of skill more than anything to my loses though.

Competitive casual fluffy bunny.

I play hard lists, but I am willing to have a good time as well in all my matches by joking around and doing stuff that are not optimal in a tournament situation such as letting my HQ fight against another HQ in one-on-one (Draigo and my Archon for example) and I tend to love writing fluffs for my battles as well.

I am fluff all the way.

I don't get to play much anymore so what I did with my Dark Eldar was plan out a background story for my army army and how it opperates, then built it up from there based on the story.

I'm very much for the fluff, but then again, I don't think fluffy should necessarily mean "deliberately gimp myself with no hope of winning". I like to stay true to the fluff, but I don't like losing.

I must say though, my favourite moment yet in 40k was part of a web-based campaign, similar to the Eye of Terror. This was back in my Night Lord days, and I had the pleasure of commanding most of the Night Lord players on our "side". Nothing in competetive playing will ever be able to match the indescribably feeling of giving the order to commit genocide on an entire continent. On one hand, you know it's just made up, and that it isn't real. On the other... there was a real sense of gravitas to the moment, that I'd just given the order to wipe out millions of innocent civilians. Competetive play will never even come close to matching that feeling... That is what I play 40k for, and I only hope I can be a part of similar campaigns in the future.