Army Lists & Game Philosophy

The fluff continues – as the Soviet attack bogs down in the face of increasingly severe Allied resistance, the war begins to widen as all sides look around themselves for new allies and new enemies make their presence felt.

This is it folks, this is where the Second European War becomes the First World War and all hell breaks loose... (cue demonic laughter from the bowels of the development studio)

So, as the fluff begins to draw to a close, leaving our tortured planet wracked by conflict and detruction, I now begin to turn my attention to the army list section – now, I may be being over ambitious (no, surely not?) but I'm hoping to include a basic list for the Holy Soviet Empire, the Atlantic Alliance and the European League, as well as the Jihad Pact, FutureCorp and The Brotherhood.

Each list will include three different infantry and vehicle tiers as well as one or two special units. Are there any suggestions that you guys would like to make? The aim is for every faction to play differently...

...whilst keeping things cheap and simple and fast. A usable balanced Apocalypse: Earth army should cost a player no more than £20 or so, while the average game should be 3 hours max.

As a former WH40K junkie, I came to the conclusion that very few players actually play the game – GW products seem to me to have become beautifully crafted display pieces and the rules themselves bogged down by special rules and unit profiles. Good ideas become bloated and sadly impractical, slowing the pace of the games and losing the excitement.. A:E is designed to be the antithesis of this- quick, cheap, dirty and lethal, with the “Fortunes Of War” cards there to introduce a “sh*t happens” aspect to the game

So I put the question out there – all wargamers, how much time do you spend playing the games you own as opposed to collecting, painting and modelling? I ask this not as a criticism, but out of genuine interest- how many play the games over and over, how many prioritise rulesets against miniatures and fluff? How many hours do you spend painting, basing and modelling against actually putting your armies in harm's way? Do you like the idea of a simple “pick up and go” philosphy, or do you prefer your games to have more of a sense of occasion about them?