First off, I feel an introductory post is in order to establish
myself and my incessant wittering regarding wargames and why I do
what I do.
I have been playing a variety of wargames for a good 20 years now
and feel impassioned by the hobby, which I see as wonderful and
beneficial but slowly going to the corporation dogs. By now, you have
probably guessed my interest is primarily in Games Workshop games,
while I have played many others, I keep being pulled back in by their
back ground, artwork and other imagery.
My gaming career started by playing 4th Edition Warhammer Fantasy
Battle and 2nd Edition 40k, around 1995 or so. While I have little
fondness these days for 4th Edition Fantasy (herohammer ahoy), 2nd
Edition 40k is stuck very firmly in my psyche. Don't get me wrong,
its a terribly unbalanced game and can be horrendously abused to
exclude as much fun as possible, but when played in the intended mind set, it opens a huge amount of possibilities.
When you discount the varying power builds, 2nd Edition 40k is relatively robust and very enjoyable; some of my most
cherished/funniest wargaming memories come from playing this game due
to its relative complexity and room for comedy. A perfect example
would be my Spacemarine Captain heroically shooting an Eldar guardian
off his jetbike at close range only to have the bike
itself crash on him and kill my noble captain. Both my opponent and I
were laughing so hard we were pretty the rest of the game is quite a blur. There doesn't seem to be room for this kind of nonsense in the
modern games, which for me is a great shame. Some people complained
that heroes were over powered, in a similar vein to the contemporary
fantasy games. I found that a heavy weapon to the face sorted that
out, something that Fantasy lacked.
The tipping point
As time has rolled on, 40k got simplified in to the horrific
abomination of 3rd edition and has been patched repeatedly since,
making the game progressively more and more playable. I played
through it all, mostly because I found the back ground so engaging (I will get to that bit later).While the rule sets have been getting a
bit better, I think the whole ethos of the game has been going down
the pan. A purchasing arms race has emerged, where if you don't have
X you don't stand a chance vs Y.
When fliers first emerged, I did not want to get one as I find the
concept of air support being present on a field about the size
of a football pitch odd to say the least. Until my first game against
an airborne opponent; a Necron army with three Doom Scythes. They
turned up on my opponent's turn two and by the end of it, all I had
left of a once large army was a combat squad of marines hiding
between a wood and the burnt out hull of their Razorback. The rest
of my army fell prey to death rays and the shooting from the rest of
his army, in one turn. At this point (beginning of my turn three), I
chucked in the towel as five bolters against an entire army is never
going to amount to much.
Afterward we both agreed that the game had not been very fun and
discussed what I could have done to avert the massacre. The only
answer either of us could think of was to buy either fliers of my own
or some AA guns.
So I got a AA gun fortification as a compromise.
Still no fliers but at least some defense against them. This time I
did better, I lasted until my opponent's turn three and even managed
to shoot down one flying croissant. Further analysis found that
neither of us had enjoyed the game again and that I needed to buy a
Storm Raven. In true scientific fashion, we repeated the experiment
using differing armies and terrain lay outs and came to the same
conclusion.
For me this was the NOPE! point. I had played multiple games with
an hour + of set up and just under 30 minutes of actual game play
which had not even been that fun. After lengthy investigation, we had
concluded that the obstacle cannot be over come by strategy and
instead requires quite a bit of money. For me this is when a wargame
breaks, when it no longer depends on the players skill but solely on their
wallets. When I saw the same thing happening with the Titan/large
walkers that came along shortly after, I knew that my interest had
died completely.
So boo fucking hoo, an old man throws his teddies out of his pram
and declares that he is not going to play this game any more in true
nerdite fashion, right? Well, kind of yes to be honest but most
importantly for me, it made me sit back and take stock of the bits I
actually like and want to experience more of.
The root of my addiction
I am a strategy fan, either in physical games or video games. I
love pitting my whits against someone else in a good natured and
gentlemanly fashion. It helps me improve my mind, gives me something
to think about while bored (this happens a lot) and builds
friendships with some noble types. Wargames do this nicely and often
in real life rather than through a screen too.
Art is something I have always been into. Sketching characters,
banging out story boards or just generally shitscribbling is
something I have previously spent a lot of time doing. These days
with a house, a wife and a career, I cannot dedicate as much time as I
want to it to get to a skill level I would be happy at. So for me
miniature painting and scenery building is a nice compromise. Some
nice person has drawn me the picture and I can get my kicks by coloring
it in. There are also lots of very nice video and written tutorials
which I can glance at in breaks between work in a bit of slow
digestion. Thanks to the internet and the general free flowing of
knowledge, my painting skills have really picked up in recent years,
even when not actually painting that much. For me this is a big
improvement over regular drawing which I was beginning to suffer
frustration with.
Storytelling is an essential part of wargaming for me. I'm not
bothered by "My hero is going to go and slap yours after I run
this block in to your chaff and blast the rest with magic."
Although that is a brief and honest description of what may happen, it
doesn't really set my pulse racing. When I start putting names to
faces and plots together in my head, I start enjoying the experience
from a second angle. In my rather deluded head the above passage
would read "While his henchman engage the puny human skirmishers
Davoth Tyr, Captain of the Black Ark will gut your hairy savage as Kelmon the Spirittalker rains death upon you". (Or something to that affect).
It sounds sillier written down than it does in my head but
pleasing my inner twelve year old is quite simple and requires just a
hint of imagination. Stringing games and the characters in them
together again gives me something else to think about when bored and
adds to the vividness of the experience.
In short, there are more aspects to it than just the moving
miniatures around on a table that I enjoy and modern 40k just wasn't
encouraging the things I like, so I needed to readjust my focus and off I go looking for something that
does tick all my boxes.
Oldhammer
About a year ago I discovered that I was not the only one who
longed for days gone by like true old farts and that there are people
out there, still playing game they like because they like them, not
because they are newest and they don't really like them. A new
concept pinged in to being in my mind that I had previously
discounted. I could, you know, choose which games I like to play and
find people to play them with. As I said this had been previously
discounted because I thought everyone still only wanted to play the
newest games and keep up with the masses. Over the last year, I have
been eagerly reading as many Oldhammer related blogs as possible
during my spare time as well as digesting the Warhammer 3rd Edition Rulebook.
And that, dear readers is me. A once cranky old git, reinvigorated and back in love with his favorite past time that will hopefully create some readable content. Maybe. :)
