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| Well actually there is plenty, just not enough geeks! |
I've written about Infinity.
I've not PLAYED 40k for about 4 weeks.
I've played Infinity.
For me, this is an extremely long absence from the grim dark.
At the start of this year and indeed, for the majority of the last 3 years, I craved games night.
I needed to play 40k.
I was getting in a game or maybe 2 per week on this games night and I spent the free minutes of the following days with ideas literally bouncing from the walls of my feeble brain.
List tweaks, errors in play and what army I wanted to do next...these were the things that fed me until the following Tuesday.
But over the last month, my 40k fervour has waned. This is due to several factors:
- Predictable competition. Not to say boring or stale, simply known. I only really play Bringer of Death/Steve locally now... I need new peeps to play against!
- Burn out? Too much playtesting vs me over summer hols...this means I am confident my Grey Knight and
Space Wolf builds are solid and that I have good experience with them against a variety of forces..
- Lack of inspiration re army choice.I've played pretty much everything. I love a few armies..But I am stuck for an actual FIRM choice.
How did this come about?
One reason.
My own bat cave.
Now, how can this beautiful thing be bad?
The plunge to create my own cave came about from the local GW closing its battle bunker...a room full of 12 tables (plus 3/4 upstairs), wicked terrain and plenty of opposition...
So I refused to play on 4'x4' tables that I had to book...and that of course, the 40-50 odd dudes that were part of our loose community couldnt all play on them, nor even physically fit on the shop floor of the store. (this is not to say that they were there every week..but you get what I am saying...choice of competition)
Now, I've not spoken of this crazy decision, all related to the company policy of chasing the young buck versus the mature stag with money...but I think its time to vent it.
What a fucking stupid decision. Cunts.
I'm also not going to go on about it. This is properly old news now and I imagine the majority of players at the local GW don't even remember a time when there was an open Battle Bunker...
Suffice to say, I took 8 of the tables, almost all of the terrain from the store and set up my own little gaming club.
In my garage.
We only ever had 4 tables set up and it was tight. We filled for a month or two and then it dwindled because I didnt have the location to attract dudes over from the city to my little village location.
The drive was too much.
So it ended up being just 3 of us (Kabalite is away currently but will be back from ToD in a few weeks) and it got challenging.
Stangely, having this amazing little facility available to me has been a principal factor in my current burnt out state.
I am almost a hobby recluse, playing Malifaux with the same 4/5 dudes and 40k with the same 3.
Tournaments are your saviour!
They could have been.
Certainly at the start of this year I had high hopes of making it to a large number of tournaments.
But, over the course of the year, I have simply been unable to make it to a lot.
My real life is full of friends, weddings, stag do's, family and, of course, my beautiful fiance.
This is a good thing.
Last week I saw that South Park episode where they do World of Warcraft...
I fucking lol'd.
Hadn't seen it for ages.
AND I AM SO, SO GLAD THAT IAM NOT THE 'CHARACTER KILLER' IN THAT EPISODE.
(Secretly, I feel that some of our blogging peers may actually be that dude. lol...definately BroLo...I've never seen such a loser ;) x )
But what this means is, I am not getting to loads of tournaments.
Which is not to say that those of us who DO make loads of tournaments are that dude either.. :)
I do not get the variety of opponents that I need from that source..
I find myself almost wanting to go back to GW, booking a 6'x4' (if I can) and playing against a stranger.
I think I also will run Dark Eldar for a while, to try and have a bit of a challenge locally and to avoid playing as MEQ as well as against MEQ..
I hope that I get stomped.
I hope I find out that there is a really good local community still in existence at my local GW.
I hope that by scaling back my 40k to just ONE game a week I will find myself eager to hit the tabletop again and rectify errors or practice a new tactic or idea..
Most of all, I hope that these changes will shake off my 40k blues and that by keeping a strong interest in Infinity and Malifaux, the variety of games systems played will keep them all fresh, avoiding overload in any of them.
Now, I am not given to introspection or pieces filled with personal insight, so this may be a load of rambling rubbish, some of you may appreciate what I am talking about and from reading around the blogosphere I think this is true for at least a percentage of us.. some may not get a game in per month and wonder what the hell my issue is...
But I am experiencing a little rebirth.. the plan is:
- Plan a 1500 and 1750 Dark Eldar list (1750 will just be the Blog Wars army)
- Ensure said list is painted (it's 3 colour min from Blog Wars...and PINK!)
- Take list to Games Workshop Cambridge NEXT Tuesday and play a game
- Spend a week tweaking and adjusting
- rinse and repeat the last 2 steps!
LET'S GET ON IT!
as you know, i experienced the same thing a few months ago. i decided to largely leave 40k alltogheter for a month or two and it was all i needed. i am now back playing and and modeling and planning with the best of them. Blogging is another matter, but i do have a few posts in the works, so stay tuned.
ReplyDeletebasically, take a break if you feel you need one, and if you come back, you come back, if you don't, you don't. as you say, there are (sometimes) more important things in life!
I took about six months off in order to purchase a house and move. Reading your blog post has me thanking the stars that I have an independant LGS with a huge amount of space, and a huge selection of players of varying skill to play against.
ReplyDeleteI got to where you are Ven about 2 years ago now. I just got so darn tired of WFB and 40k that I walked away from both for about 6 months. I'd always played games systems by other companies but WFB was my main game and 40k a close second, primarily I think now because I didn't have opponents in other game systems... then something weird happened. People started asking me to run them intro games of infinity and Malifaux and asking me about all sorts of different games. All of a sudden my 8' by 4' gaming table in my man den (the loft room) was having visitors over almost every night, but never to play GW games. I did go back to GW games but sporadically as now I don't need to play them to get my gaming fix. 8th ed has killed WFB off for me totally and I hope 6th Ed doesn't do the same to 40k because at the moment that's the only GW product I still have a passing interest in. I'm currently working up another opinion piece on the GW and where I stand with them myself because people keep pestering me to let rip fully... out of interest which battle bunker did you go to?
ReplyDeleteI'll probably take a break in the new year myself, sometimes you can just plain burn out.
ReplyDeleteyou know, i do wonder about something else here. you like the 'fluff' that goes with most of 40k, i know that, but you never struck me as being remotely bothered by implementing that in your games. yet you seem to enjoy the story aspect of other games, malifaux and infinity etc.
ReplyDeletein all these games however, you have always seemed more concerned with min/maxing than the actual story telling, as if this second aspect was just incidental - stuff that happened in game enabled the story, if applicable, not the story enabling you to move here, fire here etc.
this leads me to wonder if a fundamental weakness of 40k is that it does not tell stories well enough. to me, regardless of how competitive i am (and you know i am), these 'fluff' aspects are the hook which keeps me coming back. it is what keeps me interested game after game and project after slow project. however, i rely on my armies to tell the story, not what happens in the game itself. i have never had this issue with other games i have played, where the mechanics and the story mesh much more effortlessly.
anyway, long reply, if it makes sense to anyone at all, please let me know xD
@Andy, my response became a blog post... :)
ReplyDelete@Frontline..I play in cambridge. It was that GW... Not having to play GW to get a gaming fix is great..but I WANT to play! I WANT to enjoy it...I'm just in a dark place with it! lol
@Atreides, when I worked for the GW we had a massive discussion about the disconnect between the fluff and the game of 40k. I could go into a huge tirade about how the one really is represented in the other and vice versa, but we all know it to be true. Its not a bad thing but when fluffy players tell me I'm playing 40k wrong and I should write 'fluffy' armies they forget that Space Marines should be able to take of a 100 guardsmen and Eldar should be unbelievably skilled ... but they're not. Tau should pound the hell outta the enemy nids should get never ending reserves and if it all looks like its going a bit wrong for the Imperium they'd just nuke the planet from orbit... I'll stop there because it could turn into a huge rant. I'll read the books, but I try to shove all that to the back of my mind when playing because the game is so divorced from the fluff now that it could almost be two different universes.
ReplyDelete