Chateau Lloyd

I recently purchase a copy of the Bolt Action World War II miniatures rules.  This is published by Warlord Games, which is affiliated with Osprey, one of my favorite publishing houses.

The story behind Bolt Action is kind of interesting.  The game designers started their careers working for Games Workshop, and were involved in the design of Warhammer 40,000, Warhammer Fantasy Battles and other stuff.  For many years they were quite happy with their gig, in part because they had a good amount of creative freedom and the company was growing by leaps and bounds.  From the 80s to through the 90s, there was continuous improvement in both the quality of design and physical appearance of their products.  I am not alone in considering it the Golden Age at GW.

However, by the late 1990s, the management had become more profit-oriented, and this resulted in friction between the designers, who wanted the best possible game design, and the management, that was more concerned with sales than the quality of the rules.

Since the bulk of GW's money came from miniatures sales, it was no longer enough to simply build a good wargaming system and  marketing it, the system itself became a vehicle to boost miniatures sales.  In practical terms, this meant that the rules of their games were altered to make players need to buy more figures either by increasing the scope of the game (requiring more models to play) or changing the rules for various units, requiring new models to remain "current."

As one might expect among creative types, they eventually got tired of this and left, staring various alternative companies.

Warlord Games is one of those successor companies, and the design of Bolt Action is essentially the final form of the earlier 40k system.  It therefore is familiar to me, intuitive, but much simplified and streamlined since it got more playtesting and the designers were freed from the constraints of managers pushing new editions every 3-5 years.

This places me in the unique position of having never played a game, but having a good idea how the game will play because it is so similar. 

The timing for this seems to be just right, as I am taking some time off over Christmas. 

There's something fun and exciting about starting a new game system, and that's definitely in play, even though I've seen much of it before.  I actually have a fair amount of figures already painted up due to my decision many years ago to use historical models for my 40k armies whenever possible.

At the same time, there is also scope for additional collecting (I'm looking at building a Soviet force to fight my existing Germans), which is always enjoyable.

Apparently Warhammer 40,000 is celebrating its tenth edition this year.  I quite during the third edition, which makes me seven editions out of date.

In practical terms, this has saved me hundreds of dollars in what would now be useless rule books.

The game had its debut as Rogue Trader back in 1989, and the first major revision was in 1993.  This is the 2nd edition, which I still play.  The 3rd edition was release in the fall of 1998, and made significant changes.  I stuck with it for a while, but eventually quit, and later picked up 2nd where I left off.

I bring this up because as a game designer, I strive to create a definitive and clear rules set.  The more a system is played, the more problems are identified and subsequently corrected.  What Games Workshop has done is create a situation where the game sees significant revisions every three years.  These are not about correcting mistakes; they sometimes appear to be random design decisions to highlight new tactics or draw attention to new models or factions.

GW can do this because of a near-monopoly position in tabletop gaming, particularly in Europe.  I don't sense anyone else could ever be in that position, and as yet, GW has managed to stay afloat despite these changes.  Apparently, it works for them, though I can't help but wonder how long this will continue.

Gaming companies are uniquely susceptible to sudden failure.  SPI, Avalon Hill, TSR - all of these were industry leaders and are now defunct.  Some years back, I thought GW was close behind them, but so far, I've been wrong.  So maybe they've found the secret sauce.

The change in the weather heralds the arrival of gaming season, a major part of coping through Michigan's long, dark winters.

Over the years, I've noticed there tend to be two types of gamers.  The most common are those who collect to collect - that is to say, as long as they retain interest in their hobby, they never stop adding to their pile of games or figures or whatnot.

Such folks rarely "downsize" the collection, they operate on an all or nothing basis.  They collect right up until the moment they liquidate, and their collections very often include unopened kits.

But there is a second class, and that's the one to which I belong, which collects to a point and then stops.   We may also made a decision to cull the collection in order to focus it, or stick with the parts that we like best.

Another way to describe this is the difference between "getting" and "having."  Much of the joy of collecting comes from the anticipation of the next purchase, and there is always a next purchase.  I enjoy the having much more.  I may teak this item or that, but there's a quiet satisfaction to having a collection come to completion.

The first style is more prone to hoarding because of course there's no natural end point.  There's always something new to add, even if collection consists of a limited set of items, because if you have them all, you can always buy duplicates or variants.

Indeed, our consumerist society lives to support people like this, and companies like Games Workshop depend to a large extent on never finishing their game systems.  There are always more rules, books or miniatures to buy.

That's one of the reasons I went back to an out-of-print edition, because it is finite.  My collection is not yet complete, but it's getting there.  Certain factions are actually finished, and haven't seen new additions in years. 

This frees me up to enjoy and appreciate the things I have, rather than fixate on what I don't.  I think that's a pretty healthy way to approach life.

Since my military retirement, I've been debating how to bring some of my wargame designs into publication.  Several of them are quite mature, and what I particularly like about them is the ease of setup and rapidity of play.  These were developed to be used to study a conflict area during the lunch break, and they worked very well.

I think they would hit the sweet spot between playing a standard card game and something a little more strategic and elaborate.

One issue is the topic: contemporary/future conflicts.  These were designed as teaching tools, and the general public may not groove to them.  However, yesterday I realized that I could probably adapt the core system into a more popular topic, say the various civil wars in England (obviously including the Wars of the Roses).

A big advantage of this approach is that it has huge growth potential.  I've already built multiple scenarios, which gives the game some "legs" in term of future expansions.

Now if only I could convince my old unit to let me use their plotter to make the maps...

After a brief search, I found that dakkadakka.com is still around and has decent traffic, so I joined.

I think I was a member there 15 years ago or so.  I recall there being a pie fight amongst moderators at Portent or warseer.com and people looking elsewhere, only to come back when things settled down.

Dakkadakka was mostly for orc (and ork) players, but now it seems more open to other points of view.

It is nice being able to talk about apolitical hobbies, and the minutiae of game mechanics.  There was a spirited argument a few days ago about aesthetics of the various Warhammer 40k factions, which was enjoyably trivial.  My first flame war in years.

Society needs more of this.  Everything is political, and people don't debate or even argue, they just insult and cancel.  That's why I've embargoed myself from the news.

The fact is, posting about gaming stuff makes me want to game, and that in turn causes me to work on my collection or come up with new rules.  Conqueror: Fields of Victory was born in a gaming forum, and while it's not a runaway financial success, I enjoyed making it and playing it.

By contrast, nothing positive comes of political or news commentary.  People just get worked up and stressed out. 

It's been a few weeks, and the results are clear: cutting out news makes me more productive around the house and happier in general.

That being said, I'll continue to post columns at bleedingfool.com in part because it's more cultural/entertainment commentary, and often I'm just watching old movies and writing about them.  That's a pretty stress-free environment.

For two decades, I got my 40k fix at one of two discussion sites.  First there was Portent, which started in the 1990s and was for a time the premier news and discussion site for all things Games Workshop.  Sometime in the Aughts, the proprietor had enough, and sold the site to some of the administrators.  That became Warseer.  There was a seamless transition - new accounts were needed but everyone kept their handles and so things went.  I eventually lost interest in being "current" in 40k, but continued to chat with 2nd edition enthusiasts.

I also developed Conqueror: Fields of Victory on Warseer, and the site hosted a "sticky" threat where one could actually read how it came about and discussion about what mechanics it should use.

Alas, a few years ago there was an attack on the site that knocked it down for months and when it came back, most of its users had gone away.  Since then, a few straggled back, but it was mostly a ghost town, a vast site populated with conversations that were frozen in time.

Further complicating efforts to revive it, the site owners refused to authorize a much-needed reorganization, nor were they punctual about updating site credentials, which meant users had to click through warnings to even get there.

It's been down for a bout a week now, and while it has not year reached the "site not found" stage, I fear the end is not far off.

It's a reminder that the internet is by its nature a very temporary thing, and a beloved site with thousands of users can vanish in the blink of an eye.  Warseer may yet come back, but I think it will only continue its zombie existence. 

A large part of the problem is the competition by facebook (the site has a page) but I have no interest in giving my content to tech billionaires.  I guess I should check to see if any of the other contemporaries are still out there.

For reasons known only to themselves, during the 1990s the Games Workshop design team decided that both their flagship fantasy battle game and their rising space opera spin0ff, Warhammer 40,000, needed to use the same sort of card-based magic system.  For the 40k version, the term "magic" was discarded in favor of "psionics" or "psykers."

It was not popular.  During the entire time Warhammer 40k 2nd Edition was current, I only used the psyker rules twice, both against the same Eldar player.

It really came down to efficiency.  The psyker rules added a lot of complexity to the game with little to show for it.  In a medieval fantasy environment, throwing fireballs is a big deal; in a game with tanks, rocket launchers,  and flamethrowers, a fireball is just another hand grenade.

I should add that in both 40k games where psykers were used, they were ineffective.  Again, D&D style magic doesn't make much of an impression on people throwing miniature black holes around the battlefield.

[The opposite was true in the 5th edition of Warhammer Fantasy Battles, where magic came to dominate the game - much to its detriment.]

So why am I taking a second look after all of these years? 

The answer is that there are technically two sets of psyker rules for 40k 2nd edition.  The deluxe set with all the cards does not interest me, but in the core rule book, there is a simplified system that would add minimal complexity but allow psyker characters to assume a battlefield role.  That's why I'm interested.

You see, as the years have passed, I've gotten interested in exploring more aspects of the game.  One area that I've never even touched on is using the basic psyker rules.  I don't think these will make much of an impact on game play, but I like the idea of it adding some color to the campaigns we run.

It also presents the opportunity to use previously sidelined unit and character choices.  Many of these had aspects beyond psionic use, but since they were priced with psyker abilities in mind, they've been idle.  This provides a chance to expand my battlefield options a bit. 

Yes, it also opens some space to collect a few additional models, but that's not much of an issue.  I generally don't use GW models and I've got so much stuff kicking around the collection that I don't think it will amount to much.  The most likely impact is that I will get out some of the unfinished stuff and repurpose it as psykers. 

The longer one collects, the larger that 'reserve' becomes.  Mine is not as big as 25 years of collecting would indicate because when we moved into our present house, I sold off a lot of the excess.  Indeed, I've continued to do that periodically as part of my drive to reduce clutter.

In any event, I think it offers some interesting possibilities and look forward to seeing what happens.

Over the course of watching the various Mad Max films, I've noticed a peculiar shift.

The aesthetic in the 1980s was one of biker junkyard tribal punks - spiked mohawks, salvaged hotrods and a callous, barfight-level ethos.  The villains in both The Road Warrior and Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome are brutal, but not particularly sinister.  They laugh when the other side is hurt, but they laugh when their own lads get smashed.  All in good fun, mate.

They consciously copy J.R.R. Tolkien's visions of orcs as callous, bullying Cockney louts.  There is a scene in Lord of the Rings where one orc leader tells his counterpart about a time they thought one of their soldiers had been killed by Shelob, only to find him quite alive, but hanging in a web.  Oh how they laughed, and of course they left him there because they are callous, cruel and also cowardly. 

This vision clearly informed Games Workshop's background for Warhammer 40,000.  The space orks (note the spelling) are entirely based on the biker types from the Mad Max films.  In fact, GW goes even farther, with wildly improbable machines, all described in Cockney terms.

With Mad Max Fury Road, the aesthetic changed sharply.  The vehicles are still modified, but they are built with a far more sinister purpose, and instead of tribal warriors with strong individual identities, one sees homogenous shaven-headed dark-eyed fanatics serving a skull-mask wearing leader. 

Or, as anyone familiar with 40k would say: a Chaos Lord.

Indeed, there is a vehicle in Fury Road that could have been cribbled from one of the Chaos rulebooks - I'm speaking of the vehicle with a helmeted guitar player surrounded by a wall of speakers wielding a flame-throwing instrument.  If this guy isn't a Champion of Slaanesh, I don't know what is.

Is George Miller a 40k fan, or is it mere coincidence?  I have no idea, but I find the similarities to be striking.

I started playing Warhammer 40,000 back in the 1990s.  In those distant halcyon days, one could buy the Warhammer 40,000 starter boxed set and the included figures were a good start on a combat-ready army.

In fact, if you and a friend both went in on boxes, you could trade the figures and each would have a pretty decent force.  Buy a few extras, maybe a tank, and you were ready to go!

Plastic Space Marines ran about a dollar a figure back then, and I remember my disgust when Games Workshop raised the prices until they reached $2 each.  When the price hit $3, I was done with the game, which was not only expensive but devolving into a never-ending upgrade cycle.

I see now that the marines are $5.50 each, and while one is tempted to blame overall inflation, this is pure greed on the part of GW.

A clear indicator of this is that as the rules continue to churn every 3 years, new units are created and old units are rendered obsolete.  It's like buying vaporware that never finishes getting upgraded.

A major reason I stick with 2nd Edition is that I no longer care about the current rules cycle.  I own the rules outright.  Similarly, I developed Conqueror: Fields of Victory as a way to getting off the upgrade treadmill.

I mention this because I've decided to part with some of my 40k figures which have seen zero use over many years and are better off in someone else's home.

I'm still building armies, but I prefer out of print figures on the secondary market and I'm happy to use ones that don't originate from Games Workshop.

Anyone interested in picking them up?  Keep your eyes peeled on ebay for some Blood Angels in varying stages of completion.

A few weeks ago I noted that I was rediscovering my interest in Warhammer 40,000.   The necessary first step was revisiting the baseline post for the game on this site, which includes a series of rules changes/clarifications that improve what I consider to be the definitive edition, the 2nd.

I should clarify that I'm not one of those people that enjoy painting miniatures for their own sake.  I paint to play, period.  Absent a gaming environment, I wouldn't own any models at all.  The only model kits I retain from my childhood are the ones I adapted to use in wargaming.

That being said, if I know a game is coming up, I will throw myself into the act of creation and few things bring me more joy that watching a unit go through the process of acquisition, assembly, priming, painting and final finishing.  My painting table had languished for months, collecting various sundry items I was too lazy to put elsewhere, but now the main space is cleared and groups of models are staged around it, waiting their turn.

Amidst the current turmoil, it's a welcome escape to put on some music and focus my thoughts entirely on what shade of blue will suit the unit of Swooping Hawks I am working on.  Yes, the Eldar army is my current focus.  While I remain a 2nd ed. loyalist, I have no particularly affinity for Games Workshop's overpriced kits.  Many of my armies are built around equivalent figures from other manufacturers.

For example, my Imperial Guard is largely WW II historical models, and I've used some creative color choices on weapons finish and the rim of the base to indicate weapon types in the 40k environment.  The armored vehicles are modified Tamiya kits and these have been more extensively altered to feature weapon sponsons, crash bars and other features necessary for combat ops in the Grim Dark Future.

The determinative factors for me are cost and aesthetic.  For example, my Tyranid army is only a few years old, the last one I collected.  It is exclusively made of GW figures because these fit the bill and older kits are now selling for very reasonable prices.  My Eldar, on the other hand, is almost entirely Void models. 

Void was a short-lived competitor to Warhammer 40,000 that collapsed after a very ambitious launch sometime in the Aughts.  The parent company's demise (i-kore) coincided with worsening economic conditions in Michigan, and the result was many of the independent hobby stores went out of business.  As a result, I was able to buy a huge collection of figures for pennies on the dollar.  The Void aesthetic was more streamlined and less steampunk than GW's, so these models worked well as the advanced but declining Eldar. 

In fact, I only recently bought some actual Eldar models (jet bikes).  Again, prices for older edition kits are now quite reasonable, even as the current game's prices soar.

It's axiomatic that miniatures collections are never "finished."  People might sell them off, or they might stop using them, but no one ever proclaims the thing complete.   There's always room for one more model - and in fact, there's probably more than one model that still needs to be assembled or painted at any given time.

This means that if you take a month or a year off, when you come back, there's something ready and waiting for you to work on, which is nice.