Warhammer Has Ruined Other Games For Me
Pimpcron has a confession to make.
Hi ya peeps! It’s confession time for the Pimpcron, and wait until I tell you about all of those suppressed memories from summer camp! You’ll laugh, you’ll cry … mostly laugh. I’ll do the crying [sob]. The doctor said they’ve never seen so much damage to a large intestine.
Burrito night went south real quick.
I just crapped my power armor.
But For Real Though
My background as a gamer is thus: I have been making board games and card games since as far back as I can remember. I have always been fascinating with the rules of games, and collect game rulebooks just to see how it works. I have a stack of RPG rulebooks that I have never played but cannibalized rules from to make my own stuff.
Back when I had a regular group of non-Warhammer friends to hang with, we literally had weekly board game nights. I have some board games I purchased, but mostly it was ones that I made. I loved board games and card games. I loved the competition, and the strategy.
But I ended up abandoning them, just like my normal friends. I no longer had use for my board games when I met 40k, just like my normal friends. I rounded all of my board games up in my car, drove about two states over, and left them for dead in the middle of a State Park; just like I did with my normal friends.
I’ve Been Scarred By 40k
I know this is going to come off as fanboyism, and … whatever I guess. I don’t mean for it to be, but once I started playing 40k years ago, everything changed. I loved how I could create my own characters, chapters, and backstories. There is a sense of continuity from game to game as my beleaguered army of [insert race here] was going from one battle to another in this terrible yet fascinating setting. The narrative aspects and the hobby made my games more meaningful.
Maybe not scarred that bad.
I try to go back and play board games now, and I’m like, “What’s the point?” Every game is a one-off with no effect on any subsequent game, and I can’t customize my army. I’ve found that these games are only time wasters. If you have a bunch of non-wargaming friends, also known as Heretics, you can break out the board games and let the “Normies” play with it. But the sheer depth and strategy of wargames makes perfecting your pizza recipe, or mapping a highway system in a game, kind of weak.
You can settle Catan all you want man, but next time you break it out, it’ll need settling again. Like seriously though, who keeps unsettling my Catan? A mystery for another time I suppose.
Even Other Wargames Don’t Hold My Interest
I won’t name names because of my far-reaching and ever-powerful blogging influence. I know that most of you devout Pimpcron followers would instantly set fire to the miniatures of any game I didn’t like. Even as tears streamed down your face and you watched as your favorite minis were consumed by hungry flame.
And that one Guardsman looks at you like, “What have you done?!”
So I won’t name names. But I’ve played a great many wargames besides Warhammer iterations. And most of them fall into a couple categories.
No Customization
You pick an army of nearly all named-characters and play. What if I want to make my own character and backstory? Too bad, I’ve been pigeon holed into just named characters that already have established backstories. I was pigeon-holed for real back at summer camp, and I don’t want to talk about it.
And the lack of options in many games makes everyone’s army of “So-and-so” the exact same.
Hero Hammer
I didn’t play back in the days of 40k and fantasy Hero Hammer, but I heard it wasn’t that great. You’re HQ was nearly a god, and your troops were just meaty little speed bumps for him. I have found a certain other game to be very much like that, and I don’t like it. I want all of my troops to have an important role, not just my leader. Who, chances are, is already named for me and I can’t even customize.
Snu-snu!
No Backstory At All
You crack open a new wargame rulebook:
“Once, there was a place. But not just any place; a place where things happened to people sometimes. Other times it was fine there. But this is not one of those tolerable times I just mentioned. At this moment, terrible things are happening to people and things that would rather not have it happen to them. They’re all like ‘Oh no! Stop doing that thing that I don’t prefer to me and my possessions!’ But the perpetrators just wouldn’t stop. For like a moment, they paused and thought about stopping but then decided against it. And thus, it began …”
So why are we fighting? Like, what’s my motivation here?
~How Can You Live With Yourself When You Play Board Games After Being Exposed To Warhammer?
