Goatboy’s 40k – OUCH! Dragon Uppercutting your Army
Goatboy here again and I want to move away from all this tournament nonsense and talk about when terrible things happen to nice miniatures.
I’m thinking about this because this past week I got in a car wreck (I’m fine, car is not) and I had some minis in the car. They didn’t get too busted up and overall it was as ok of a wreck as could be. I have to thank my lucky stars that I wasn’t hurt and even my custom Daemon Princes came out with very little visible damage that could not be repaired.
The models that were in my car were all the new things I have worked on for my Daemon army. In fact all the major pieces were in there and if they were destroyed beyond repair I don’t know what I would have done as these pieces were part of the plans for the Las Vegas and Adepticon GT’s. A lot of time, money, and blood went into the conversions and if they were crushed I might have had to just stop going forward with the army and look at something else. This crushing defeat would have left me lurching more then having to fight 5 games in a row versus that Eldar Revenant while playing 60 scouts with shotguns.
Which then brings the question up: Would I have done something else? I would have obviously kept playing due to buying tickets for events and having a lot of the other parts still playable but I know a lot of times it would have just been ok to quit and take a step back for awhile. Have you the readers had an experience that made you step away for awhile? Some kind of major loss or life change that just leaves this hobby off to the side due to more pressing issues?
I remember the last time I quit playing this game was when I got out of college, met someone who didn’t really approve, and stayed away until that ended and I had my time for the hobby again. Much to the groan of my wife who sees the amount of nonsense I have in the house, a significant other is usually the biggest blockage of hobby time. I am lucky that my second wife is ok with the models and even accepts my comic book habit. I can just make fun of her for her love of Doctor Who to keep me knee deep in plastic bits and glue.
I used to have a rather large Tyranid army I put together as soon as I came back to the game. It was Nidzilla (which was a pain in the ass back in the day – similar to Tau and other options we have now) and I liked putting it together. Gosh who would have thought that I might like painting and building Monstrous Creatures eh? It had a ton of metal pieces and was fragile as all get out. This was before I learned the power of pinning and green stuff reinforcement. This is where it gets bad as this army has been dropped 2 times. I lost most of the big MC’s and watched all my initial conversion get shattered apart. I fixed it once and when the second time happened I shelved the army. It’s still in a toolbox all these years later and I just don’t want to look at the broken mess.
I don’t know how many times I have been to an event and see someone’s army eat it due to a miscalculated movement. The collective groan heard is more then enough to generate some sympathy for even those dirty Riptides shooting off the table top. I think it is the fact we all know the time and money that went into the models and watching it break apart is just a soul crushing experience. I remember watching a buddy’s custom Dread Knight fall down when he let someone else borrow it and I asked – as nicely as I could “Your Dread Knight – is it magnetized?” knowing fully well it wasn’t magnetized in the way it feel apart.
So get down there in the comments and answer these: Have you ever had a project/army just fall apart and you put it in purgatory? When was the last time you gave up playing a miniature war-game for a long time? When was the last time you seriously broke a good portion of your army? How did you recover and come back to gaming?
Next week I want to discuss my hopes for next year with all the new minis, releases, and other options for the upcoming tournament season. I hope everyone has a great Xmas!
