Wargaming with a handicap

As I have stated before I have been in and out of the hobby repeatedly over the past decade. A big thing that has changed ever since the last time that I played any sort of tabletop wargame is the fact that I found out I have Asperger’s Syndrome. This, according to most experts, is a high-functioning form of Autism that manifests itself in ways such as having an exceptionally high IQ and being emotionally underdeveloped. To save on writing, feel free to read up on the Wiki page for a general impression of what it is all about.

To most outsiders (and sadly, some people close to me) I changed from a pretty average (if somewhat closed off) teenager into a whiny and dysfunctional adult within the space of a year or two. But what actually happened was that I realized I could finally stop pretending to be like everyone else and act like myself for a change. This meant I could be honest about very much disliking being around strangers (to the point where I will put off doing grocery shopping until there is absolutely no food left in my house), being proud of being a receptacle for the most random bits of knowledge and also feeling horribly awkward in any sort of social gathering involving people other than my father or girlfriend.

As you might imagine, a few of these things clash heavily with the wargaming hobby. One of the things I experienced first-hand was the fact that I now either need to get my father to pick up new stuff at the Games Workshop, or I have to order online. Because the way I get pounced upon by a staffer every time I walk in makes it impossible for me to visit my local Games Workshop store. Or the fact that most wargamers (around here anyway) tend to be slightly socially awkward themselves, making interacting with them in real life an absolute nightmare.

So when I moved out shortly after getting into the hobby again I decided to take matters into my own hands. As my father has shown some interest in Warhammer 40,000 ever since I first started I finally managed to get him to actually collect an army, making sure I always have at least 1 opponent to play against that I feel comfortable being around. And to enable me to play without having to brave the population of my local Games Workshop store I designated one of the spare rooms in my new house as the gaming room, with a sturdy custom-built modular gaming table to play on.

The one problem that this now poses is that I have a difficult time getting comfortable enough with new people to invite them into my house, as I am clinically obsessed with what other people think of me (a non-Asperger’s related and entirely different story). Not to mention that the online Dutch wargaming community is anything but organized. But these are at best small bumps in the road and should not pose a big problem in the long run.

After reading through what I have written above, I do realize that this is a very personal account of wargaming with Asperger’s and I am sure there are plenty of other people that also have Asperger’s that tend to disagree with the points I have put forward. If anyone has any questions regarding the subject, feel free to post them in the comments as I realize this post is anything but complete or even logical.

Open letter to GW

Dear Games Workshop,

After taking a look at the ‘What’s New Today’ post for Friday December 3rd I noticed a small but very telling error. Below a picture that featured several converted Dire Avengers on resin bases by Micro Art Studio it mistakenly said that the bases were made using hacked up bits of Basilica Administratum sprues. While I would like nothing more than to believe this is a genuine error, but this sort of thing has happened before. Like when someone entered a picture of a miniature that was finished with Army Painter Quick Shade and it was featured with a comment along the lines of, ‘this effect was achieved with copious amounts of ink.’

What has become public knowledge within the hobby is that you, the Games Workshop, do not like other companies making money off of your intellectual property. And that this dislike extends to companies that either produce resin bits for basing or entire conversion kits. The fact that most of the time these companies fill a niche that you yourself left open does not seem to factor in to the decision to completely ban any mention of third party components. Do you really think that not mentioning companies like Micro Art Studio will boost sales for your Fantasy and 40,000 basing kits? And what is the big deal if someone buys YOUR miniatures and YOUR paint, but chooses to finish it off with Army Painter Quick Shade? You do not even sell a product that is designed to produce similar results.

Unless you are utterly blind to any form of critique you must surely be aware that the Games Workshop has a less than perfect reputation amongst war gamers. Because for all the talk about loving the hobby and being part of it you tend to run the company with nothing but cold hard cash in mind. Whilst this might be a sound business strategy in some markets, this just does not fly when you try to provide people with an entire hobby to explore. I am not saying you should start promoting third party products yourself, but at least pull your head out of your arse and acknowledge that your consumers (because that is what we are to you nowadays, are we not?) sometimes prefer something a bit different.

In short, what I am trying to say is that if third party components really are a threat to your revenue, ignoring them certainly is not going to help. We are living in the age of the internet and people are going to find out about it one way or another. Would you rather like to hear; ‘the Games Workshop put me onto this Quick Shade stuff, so now I can expand my army even quicker,’ or, ‘I am getting sick of the Games Workshop ignoring large chunks of the hobby, so I am going to ignore them’?

Sincerely,

a Disgruntled Hobbyist.

Tournament killed the casual star

Let me start off by saying the title for this posts could use some work, but for once I’m more interested in getting my point across than trying to be clever. Because ever since I got back into the Warhammer 40,000 hobby earlier this year something has started to bug the crap out of me.

The first time I gave the hobby a whirl was back when the 3rd Edition of Warhammer 40,000 was released (my first ever White Dwarf was the one that came with a free Dark Eldar Warrior). Maybe it was largely because I’m from the Netherlands, but back then there were a few clubs around for the more experienced players whilst most players just met up at their local Games Workshop store on Fridays for free-play against like-minded casual players. It was a nice mix of novice players trying their best and some of the older players that just preferred playing something that had a lot of character but lacked any sort of punch.

I myself was somewhere in between; I had some experience playing the game, but am a big fan of choosing character over functionality. This meant that my armies hardly ever did anything worth mentioning, but I can’t remember a single Friday that I came home feeling like crap because my games blew up in my face. I always had a few moments that made the afternoon worthwhile, like a Space Marine Sergeant killing off a strong character (after said squad had weakened it) in a single round of combat or one of the many occasions where I’d have a small victory in one combat only to be completely wiped out the next minute.

Maybe I’m just a big masochist at heart, but that to me was what the hobby was all about. You pick an army you like, paint up units you like to look at and then try to field them effectively whilst at the same time having a good laugh about it.

Now with 5th Edition whenever I take a look on the internet to find information about the game I keep coming across forums where the discussion has boiled down to percentages and filling your force organisation chart with a single type of unit just because it happens to be “really killy” (even if the fluff says that said unit is extremely rare within the army). And I blame the fact that nowadays there seems to be a tournament of importance every other week.

In a hobby where you tend to pay through your nose for the models you want to field I can understand people not wanting to end up with stuff they’ll never use. But I also feel that if you never look beyond the 1500/1850/2500 points limit for your army list you’re really missing out on something that makes the hobby special.

A good example of this were the Apocalypse armies that Games Workshop recently featured on their website. I might be off by a mile, but I can’t imagine a hard-core tournament player to get the same feeling of utter, utter jealousy that a casual or fluff player gets when they see someone’s full company of Space Marines displayed with pride. Not that we do not admire said army and would like to congratulate the owner, but damn, do we ever wish we were them. Most tournament players will probably scan the pictures, comment on some unwise weapon options and go, ‘impressive, but…’

When you are just playing the game to play the game (if you know what I mean) then why do you even bother using miniatures? I mean, if tournaments started allowing representative tokens, would most tournament players really bother with spending hundreds of dollars on new miniatures? They already playtest their new lists with them, so why not? They already jokingly call the brain-exercises involved in making a new list ‘MathHammer’ so why not just make it an actual separate game using tokens? That way we casual players can just go to non-token events to have fun and leave the competitive stuff to the MathHammer players.

Just to make it clear; I am aware of the huge loss in revenue if Games Workshop were to do the whole token thing. I wasn’t seriously suggesting they’d go down that route, but merely stating that ‘they might as well’ to illustrate my point that tournament players not only play the game differently, they play it so differently that they might as well play a different game altogether.