Thoughts on the State of Gaming, Part 2

Another point of the Specialist Game Rant the I mentioned in Part 1 is that the purpose of the "side games" was to draw in new blood with the side games, in the hopes of hooking them into playing the more expensive flagship games.  What GW supposedly found was that the veteran players were being pulled away by the specialist games rather than new players being hooked into the hobby by them.


On the other hand, I know several people who are gamers but not miniatures gamers, who stay away from GW stuff simply because they don't want to invest the time and money required to buy and paint an army (this is also a primary reason I don't play MMORPGs).  In such a situation, a smaller game like Battlefleet Gothic would be much more palatable to them, as spending less than $100 can get you a decent fleet that won't even take very long to paint--even though many of the miniatures are still expensive metal. 


But it's a maxim of the business industry that it costs ten times more to attract a new customer than to keep a current one.  Every veteran of Warhammer or Warhammer 40k is going to get burned out eventually, and want to play something else, if only for a while.  If the specialist games exist, the veteran will likely go to those.  Even if the veteran never comes back--they're still playing within the company.  If the specialist games aren't available, then the veteran might just leave the company and play another company's game, like Warmachine.  And then they might like that game better...and never come back.


I find myself in that position right now--after not playing Warhammer 40k for a while, I'm looking at Warhammer a little bit, but it'll be a long time before I can build up a workable army, so my motivation is low.  In such a situation, I'd be interested in checking out some of the other games, for example Warhammer Quest, Man O'War, Mordheim, Necromunda, who knows?  But none of them are readily available. 


The main one that is right now, Battlefleet Gothic, is great, and in fact that's the last game I played.  Many of the people who have read my battle reports have said that they've enjoyed that I've incorporated Battlefleet Gothic games into my 40k mini-campaigns.  With GW support of other games, I could potentially do the same thing with them... (for example, a Mordheim or Man O’ War game incorporated with Warhammer.  How can that not be cool?).  GW would do well to have more cross over campaigns and battle reports.  The intermingling of fans of both games can only serve to increase the popularity of both.

Thoughts on the State of Gaming, Part 1

It's been almost three months since I bought anything GW-related. The reasons are many--but boil down to distractions and discipline, pretty much in that order. As can happen with many hobbies, it's become a situation where I want to get back into it, and even feel a little guilty about not being more into it, but I'm not motivated enough to dive in it yet. Possibly this is related to the fact that I haven't even played a game since early June.



My White Dwarf subscription is nearing expiration, and for a while I was seriously considering not renewing (eventually I think I'll crack).  The battle reports in White Dwarf were the original reason I got into doing up my own battle reports, and were by far the most interesting articles to me. Nowadays, even though their battle reports are little more than showcases for their army of the month, I still find them interesting reads, if only to read about the new armies and what has changed.  Sure, I can probably get more news and battle reports than I know what to do with on the internet, but there's still something about having the magazine in hand that is appealing (much in the same way that holding an actual miniature can in ways be more appealing than just looking at a video game character).


Despite the fact that I haven’t played the games all that much recently, nor have a I painted very diligently recently, I’ve spent plenty of time thinking about it, both the games and the hobby.  What I like about it, what I don’t like, and what I think is missing.  The benefit of being out of the loop is...perspective.


I found an interesting link while surfing recently: It's some generic rants about the state of GW games and the company's marketing practices, and even though they are 5-6 years old, much of it still rings true.


One of the rants in particular talks about the demise of the Specialist Games, which I think is a real tragedy. The short of the story is this: Back in the old days GW had its two flagship games, Warhammer Fantasy Battle and Warhammer 40,000, but also released rules and miniatures for many other games. These other games, while popular with dedicated fanbases, didn't attract quite the same audience as the two main ones. As such, GW has essentially discontinued the specialist games in favor of their "primary" games.


This seems antithetical to the original purpose of Games Workshop. I don't purport to know what GW's original "mission statement" was, if it even had one, but a company that has a name like "Games Workshop" seems to have an implied purpose. Namely, creating games. Creating two games and then sticking with them (albeit with new editions) doesn't fit that title very well. Back in the 90s when there were a dozen games running around, many with their own dedicated miniatures lines, with new games being developed all the time...that when was Games Workshop actually lived up to its name. Even though I'm not interested in playing all of the games available then, I still wish some of them were still around.


One of the major problems I think is maintaining the multiple miniatures lines. With the move to mostly plastic miniatures, I would think that separate miniatures lines would be easier to maintain. I think the market still exists for Epic 40k and Battlefleet Gothic, and probably a smaller market exists on the fantasy side (Warmaster and Man O'War (the latter despite being discontinued)).  The online communities that remain for these games are a testament to this.


The example set by Gorkamorka was a bad move in my opinion.  while the miniatures themselves were cool and usable in 40k, why the switch to different bases? The only reason I can think of to do it is to provide some distance from 40k and emphasize the game’s differences.  But why would you want to do that?  Perhaps the fear was that people would think the game was essentially the same as 40k, and so there was no reason to get it.  But it’s well known that many players buy the various boxed games because they just want the miniatures.  By having a different basing style, it’s an immediate turn off.


The current method of revitalizing The Lord of the Rings line by making The War of the Ring game is a better approach. Yes, The War of the Ring uses additional bases, but you don't have to re-base the existing models you have--you just plop them into the new, large bases. 



Space Hulk is an anomaly--which makes me think it was an experiment to test the waters.  From the beginning GW said it was a one-shot deal-- (although this has generated no end of skepticism by the cynical, who assumed that it was just a marketing ploy, and that it would remain in production indefinitely).  As a one-shot, the fact that most of the miniatures can’t be used in 40k without modification to their bases isn’t as much of a problem.  But still...I’m hoping that Space Hulk was just a “one shot” in that it they won’t support it beyond the initial release, and not that it was the only “old school” game that they ever intend to re-release.

Medic!

When you get wounded on the battlefield, especially one as brutal as the 40k battlefield, you'd like to think that your side cares enough about you that they'll try to treat your wounds, and possibly even save your life.  The Space Marines have their Apothecaries, whose primary duty is to care for the chapter's geneseed, but also to treat injured Space Marines so they can fight again.  The Imperial Guard, in an attempt to maintain some humanity in the uncaring grinding death machine of the Imperium, have medics to treat their injured guardsmen.  Even orks, after a fashion, have their medics, known as painboyz.  Their treatments might be more dubious, but orks medics exist nonetheless.

But what about the other races?  There's no mention of medical personnel.  Now I wouldn't expect a race like the Necrons to have medics...  And being treated by a medic in the forces of Chaos or Dark Eldar might be considered a fate worse than death.  But there are two other races, for example Eldar and Tau, that you might expect care enough about their own troops to try to salvage them from lingering death on the battlefield.

So here's my Tau Medic.  Keeping my Fire Warriors alive to fight another day.

Space Hulk Genestealer

Finished my first attempt at a Space Hulk Genestealer.  I don't think the above photo really does it justice.  I put gloss varnish on the claws, armor plates, and tongue, but it doesn't show up in the picture.  The highlights are a little more vivid as well on what is mainly a very dark model, but those are hard to see as well. 

Anyway, the color scheme is a reversal of my 40k genestealers.  I wanted something even darker and more sinister looking.

In any even, I'm so behind in painting miniatures that anything at all that I complete is a step in the right direction, hence this post.

Still here...

The past month or so has not been so friendly to me with regards to either blogging or playing 40k (or anything miniature related).

Fun-wise, I've done paintball twice in the past month:

You might think that a significant portion of my time would be taken up by playing this...

...but you would be wrong.

For the most part I've been busy with the backlog of chores and other jobs around the house that have piled up. Every time I think I'll get back into painting something, another distraction comes along. I still have hope though that in the near future I'll be able to find some time to do some painting.

One of my big chores is to reorganize all my storage--since my daughter has been born, baby stuff has been displacing everything else in the house, and the clutter has been piling up in a rather disorganized, space-inefficient manner. So I've had to move lots of crap around, while throwing away lots of stuff that I no longer need. In the midst of this I had to make a heartbreaking decision. My garage has long been the home of lots of my 40k scenery, including a bunch of cityfight terrain, featured in multiple battle reports, for example:

• Orks vs. Space Wolves Meeting Engagement
• Orks vs. Lanterns Meeting Engagement
• Eldar vs. Tau Meeting Engagement
• Eldar vs. Tyranids Meeting Engagement
• Imperial Guard vs. Tyranids Meeting Engagement
• Tyranids vs. Orks Coup de Main
• Brazen Claw vs. Orks Meeting Engagement

Well, the cityfight terrain has been sitting on valuable shelf space for years now, and so I had to make the decision to destroy the city. I hadn't had the chance to use it in years, and when I examined it, it was covered with a thick layer of dust, cobwebs, and other detritus.  While I liked the terrain, it was just way too bulky and underused so I couldn't justify keeping it.  Someday, when I have more room, I'll have to rebuild my terrain collection, and I think my terrain building ability has improved somewhat, so I'll probably be able to do a better job. At least, that's what I keep telling myself.

I do have several blog articles that I've worked on sporadically, but none of them are finished yet. Chances are I'll be able to finish one or more of those and post those before I'm able to get back into painting.

So anyway...I'm posting this update to try to tell myself that there's a light at the end of the tunnel, and that soon I'll be able to get back into painting etc.