Wargaming Askew: Moving Forward Looking back
Earlier this week you were asked what is the best way to get you to start a new wargame. For this article lets try to dig a bit deeper…
So I been watching Transformers the Movie, no not the soul crushing Micheal Bay two hour long US Armed Forces recruitment videos.
Hmm, I wonder how many times I can make reference to how bad those movies are.
I am talking about the one with Spock and Citizen Kane. It used this thing called animation. After watching it for like the 10th time last Sunday I realize that I should of wore some clothes and I was beginning to wonder just how much of the enjoyment was just nostalgia. Nostalgia had to play a large part? After all I was watching Transformers on a constant loop, wondering why the year 2005 was never as cool as the movie made it out to be. It is amazing to think Transformers the Movie was made in 1986 in a time where anything animated was assumed, only for children.
Looking back this movie represented a quintessential moment in my development. The movie begins with a giant monster planet eating another planet filled with sentient lifeforms. Not even the destruction of Alderon in Star Wars had the same weight watching humanoids robots being sucked into the gaping maw of Unicron. I can remember watching the movie with my brother in a small theater jammed packed with kids my age or younger. Quickly following the planet eating my child mind had to process some of my favorite Autobots being killed to the sound of 80s Metal music. I know some kids were taken crying out of the theater at this point, instead I sat up in my seat gazing up in wonderment at this new spectacle. My sadistic streak aside, I image those kids hauled off crying never ended up playing miniature wargames.
Don’t worry this is not going to become some sad sorry about why the good old days are better then today. God knows I don’t look back with fondness at many of the metal creations Games Workshop put out during the early 90s. Remember their Robots? Also have you looked back at the old Rogue Trader rules lately? This is about how all of us got to the place we our now– through the prism of wargaming. It was three years after watching Transformers the Movie when me and my friend discovered Adeptius Titanicus we were quickly hooked. Adeptius Titanicus was the predecessor to Epic marketed as hot Titan on Titan action. This lead me to Rogue Trader and the rest was history for me.
Games Workshop products had everything I was craving in 1989. A mature setting, a collectible aspect that didn’t involve my toys sealed in their original packaging. The art ascetic that fit nicely into the hormonal creature that is an adolescent boy. It is only with a little perspective can I look back and try to figure out how this all really happened. It all leads back to Transformers the Movie and like GW games I am addicted to highly derivative post-modern trash. I mean trash in the best possible way, like how 30 cent oysters in South Carolina are $100 appetizers in New York City or how what gutter punks wear today will be high fashion in a few years. I guess I can divide my gaming life into post and pre-Transformers the Movie. With the only thing missing from Warhammer 40k is a planet devouring expansion.
What event if any defined you as a Wargamer? What about Wargaming got your hooked? As always visit Blood of Kittens for your daily fix of all things Warhammer.
