Too often the fans and players are the worst thing that could happen to any hobby and usually it revolves around over-using strategies or quirks in rules. I first noticed it 15 years ago in Magic: The Gathering; again 13 years ago in Battletech; then again 10 years ago in 40K.
Because of the mechanics and available, legal cards involved in M:TG, it was possible to have a Black deck beat your opponent in a handful of turns. By the time Urza’s Saga came around in my gaming group, cards that cleared the board were more rare. Get a Cemetery Gate, Pestilence and Urza’s Armor and you have a combo that never dies while destroying everything.
Fans pushed the proliferation of these mega combos were and the eventual response of the game developers and tournament organizers was to ban or restrict cards. This also caused the eventual downturn in my enjoyment of M:TG. WOTC began banning cards while coming out with new editions. Cards were redundant, often replacing older more efficient cards, like Lightning Bolt. The game began teetering under its own weight and the popularity of limited format tournaments took control. The fans are what caused a decently good game to move towards a constantly cycling money sink of competitive play.
Classic Battletech, while suffering from lack of interest in gradually aging players, almost disappeared because of the fans. In the early 90’s, interest in Battletech was waning so FASA came up with the Clan invasion of the Inner Sphere and the peasants rejoiced. Then came the multiple sales of the Battletech IP over several companies. FASA developed the original mechanics for Battletech and they remained largely unchanged. Catalyst Games has recently brought the game back to life but the original death was due to stagnation in the metagame thanks in part to players.
I recall many players using equipment combos like a Targeting Computers and Pulse Lasers as the best way to improve your chances to hit. Rather than playing games with tanks, helicopters and troops in addition to Mechs, players fought mech only battles, holding mech only tournaments and creating situations in which other mech load outs weren’t viable.
Knowing that you rounded all fractions up to the nearest half or whole number, allowed you to do the same with your speed. For a 300 ton naval vehicle, your max speed was 2 with a cruise of 1. So I based my engine tonnage on a movement of .51 (which rounded to a speed of 1) that allowed me to take a drastically lower rated (and equally lower tonnage) engine. Very “cheesy” and shady but with fraction rounding it was legal! Tricks, strategies and combos set in a largely unchanged game mechanic had these shenanigans going for years with players slowly dropping away.
Today, thanks in no small part to Catalyst Game Labs for some slight rules tweaking, Classic Battletech has slowly gained steam and is about to break upon the game market again as a cheaper alternative game that is set in a more richly developed game world than what I see from Games Workshop.
Finally, we come to Warhammer 40,000 and a game world slowly built up over 23 years through a changing cast of creators. Starting as a small back story made by the original game designers for a few decently modeled miniatures the game has snowballed through five rule editions. The third and fourth editions were fueled by making things simpler and streamlined for larger games (so they could sell more models). The latest edition has varied little in scope but still continues to make games require more models.
Strategies such as ”Rhino Rush” or “Herohammer” units jumping from one assault to the next are now gone. With the game designers responding smartly to this, the codex designers made new tactics that see the same amount of over use as their predecessors. Sly Marbo is far to common in Imperial Guard lists around here and Tyranid Nidzilla is back with a vengeance. Due to the nature of having older codices interface with new rules combined with the recent shift of GW into the sales vice-grip model for the hobby market, the fans are left to their own devices.
Since 40K is my main game these days, I’d like to discuss how 40K fans usually fall into one of three opinion camps.
The Black and White: GW (and Black Library) writes the canon of 40K.
The Do It Yourselfer: GW hasn’t got it quite right, so I’ll tweak a few things and write my own fan-dex.
The Shrugger: GW is mostly right, but I’m looking for a good time so I’ll play anyone or anything.
I think that most players that fall into the last group and are the unsung heroes of 40K . Probably other war games as well. They are more interested in fun and comradery than sticking the 40K rule book anyone’s ass. They are also more likely to want to prove that what is in print works rather than of coming up with an undefined version of a “fair” codex.
As someone that has each foot soundly based in groups 2 and 3, I find it particularly hard to accept anyone in group number 1. As 40K is a fan based and largely fan driven hobby, I can not accept anyone telling me that the fluff or back story I create for my little company of Space Marines is wrong because it does not fall into the lines created by some desk jockey in Nottingham. The “Boddington’s Pub Ale swilling desk jockey” (BPASDJ for short) probably doesn’t have a problem with anything I come up with for my Space Marines. The fan he created with his bit of fluff or canon does for some reason. New players of Warhammer 40,000 try to be creative with their army but, according to these ‘Fluff Nazis,’ have only the color they paint their miniatures as an outlet for their creativity.
Ultimately, the fan who abuses the mechanic, strategy or lore of Warhammer 40,000 will be its undoing. With Games Workshop thinking the internet is only good for selling models, the fan made websites are king when it comes to talking up, dragging down or breaking the game. Too many of the popular 40K websites post a partial article on something 40K related then expect the fans to discuss it in more detail. This is a good system if you like to read through 50+ posts talking and replying to each other with the first post proclaiming itself the ‘first post.’ Often these websites are presenting misleading information by not fully exploring the topic they are writing about with the fans. This further adds confusion with their multiple rules interpretations, which are often done simply to “spring” a nasty surprise on your opponent.
In summary, Magic: The Gathering and Battletech fell in popularity in my group through the vices of their own fans. Warhammer 40,000 is slowly going down that trail. Will you be the one to single handedly save it? Probably not, but if we all set a good example for our fellow players and influence those in your local gaming scene, eventually the torch bearing horde we create will smoke out those that are bad for this hobby.
Did I get your attention? I know what you’re thinking (cus I’m psychic) but don’t worry, I’m not making fun of 40k, I’m actually applauding it.
Life is rough for us gamer girls. At every game store you can find another girl either ranting about how girls are SO unrealistic in modern media or some girl who has no business cosplaying anything except Jabba the Hutt wearing bikini-mail. We spend our time jumping between extremes of sexual imagery in all our games. Be it “Dominatrix Assassin” or “Helpless Damsel” there isn’t a single character in modern gaming that isn’t really just a trope translated to the current media.
Before I continue let me say that I KNOW guys aren’t immune to this. Even the wizards in most fiction are rippling with muscles ready to tear a phone book in half using nothing but their abs. This is just a factor in genre literature and film, it’s part of what makes fantasy and sci-fi just that.
There are dozens of games that allow girls to make more realistic characters. Any roleplaying game will typically have a setting that makes this perfectly possible with a few notable exceptions. Star Wars, D&D and many others have miniatures available that don’t portray women as stereotypes. But it wasn’t always that way. For a long time we only had barbarian women in fur bikini’s, wizards in silk bikini’s and knightly gals in metal bikini’s.
But there has been the Sister of Battle for a long time. In general there is so much horrible shit in the 40k universe that nobody has time to be sexist. Sure many of the units are all male but that’s just realistic. Are there women in power? Sure, female Commissars and Inquisitors wield actual power in the game world. Is there an “all girl” army choice? Sure, if you really want to be a “no boys” club you can have an entire force of well armored women. The models are even distinctly female without being in bikinis… again with a notable exception.
Sure it isn’t perfect, but I don’t need perfect. I like that the game still has room for misogynists and stereotypes. I like that I have the option to field a sexy dominatrix assassin in the same army as a smart independent Lord Commissar. There will always be people out there who want to complain about the lack of “female space marines” and will slave over models and green stuff for hours on end. On the other hand, there are a lot of us hobbyists out there happy that 40k. Eldar, Necrons, Tyranids and Tau all offer sexless or multi-gender armies.
It’s nice to find a game with models that have stereotypes and realistic characters. None of this matters though… cus I play Orks.
I was planning on writing a simple how – to on building a magnet board to display your mini’s on during a tournament… but the board hasn’t come yet! I got my magnets in the mail right away, but the board itself is taking much longer!
Instead I’m going to talk about cheap terrain. With 5th Edition many of us needed to add more line of site blocking terrain to our tables. This is going to be useless for SOME of you… sense you have battle bunkers to go too. This will be a revelation for others, as I have been to game stores with some pretty bad terrain!
Terrain is one of those things that is surprisingly easy to do. New players can make some fantastic looking terrain and practice their dry-brush skills all at the same time! It’s also really cheap. If you have $20 to spend why blow it on a brush and 3 paints when you can get creative around the house and build yourself a ton of new terrain!
The first step in building easy terrain at home is to have something to put it on. I don’t mean a table, I mean the base the terrain will sit on. Loose towers and forests are hard to manage and tend to fall over a lot. Even patches of rubble do much better with press board under them. Balsa Wood sheets work just fine for this task. They won’t stand up to rough treatment but if you store them with care they will last a long time. This sheet can make enough terrain plates for 5 or 6 pieces. Use PVA glue and patches of modelling sand to give the base a rougher texture. A sturdier base can be made out of lynolium or ceramic tiles, but this adds quite a bit of weight to the terrain.
Next you need junk. Empty large Monster Energy Drink cans make great silos. An over turned plastic plate or bowl and make some hills. Look at the shapes of things, try to imagine them as grey plastic. You will also need to file some things down, like mold nubs on cheap plastic wear. You might want to try a couple different tricks to getting your objects to stick to the base. I find Gorilla Glue is cheap, fast and sturdy.
If you want to spend a little more money you can also build up hills and terrain using foam. A cheap foam cutter and foam gets you some great hills and ruins with little effort. Got some old legos? BAM you’re good to go there!
With this junk in play now you have to rough it up a little so it takes paint well. Take some sand paper or steel wool and just scrub the surfaces down. Then use a cheap spray paint (such as Krylon’s Gray Primer) to coat the terrain. You want to use the cheap stuff because it will help obscure some of the details of the original object.
Now it’s painting time. Use large dry brushes and multiple coats. It doesn’t take to long to get everything “the right color”. Steal pipes and silos, grey stone bricks and dirt can all be built up very quickly from a gray primer base. If you want things to have a different tint try brown or black primer.
It really is that easy and if you get several people from your gaming group together you can put terrain on several tables very cheaply!
For other terrain ideas check out these websites:
Space Wolves Land Raider
This is a reposting of my Space Wolves Land Raider article. It’s pretty long and involved but it certainly fits the bill for our new Wednesday Hobby Talk format! Next week I hope to have a fresh new article up for your enjoyment. I’ll be building a simple magnet display board!
Land Raider Part 1: Assembly
Land Raider Part 2: Undercoat and Basecoat
Land Raider Part 3: Inner Detail & Assembly
Land Raider Part 4: Sponsons
Land Raider Part 5: Finished Product
