Pimpcron: Being a Rich Warhammer Player Would Suck
Pimpcron gives you another hard truth you don’t want to hear.
Hey! The guy you love to hate and hate to love is back with more hard-hitting philosophical talk. I know what most of you said when you read this title before clicking, “Pssssh. This has to be a joke. If I was rich my life would be awesome and I’d own every model for every army!”
Little did the reader know at that time, but they were about to be corrected in a tragic way.
Buying Is a Big Part of the “Hobby”
We all know that this is a capitalist game which we spend money to play it and are constantly enticed to buy new models that come out. New, sexy, juicy models with too many skulls and lots of attitude. Our little brains and imaginations just light up whenever we buy a new box of minis. Everyone likes buying things and it makes us feel good; it’s a release. We spend a lot of our life at work doing things we may not care to be doing and the only thing we get in return for it is money. So when we hand over some cash, we are literally handing over our only finite resource we own (our life span) over to the store in exchange for some plastic that our brain thinks we want.
Not only do we like and need to buy new things in order to expand our armies and give us more options on the battlefield, we get a rush when we do it. A sense of exploration can be felt when we make those first steps towards starting a new army, and we follow the itchy urge to expand it because many people want to play bigger games.
That’s Where Having Unlimited Money Would Suck
The long progression of acquiring and expanding armies is enjoyable and is to be savored. The way I came to this realization isn’t because I’m rich, but because my explosive expansion of armies over almost a decade has me at a stopping point as far as purchasing goes. It’s kind of a let down.
I am a casual player and don’t usually own more than one of any unit unless it’s a Troop choice. Occasionally I might own two of the same unit, but not never three. So now that I have nearly every 40k army and many AoS armies, I’m kind of bored as far as army expansion is concerned. Of course, I could start buying multiples of the same unit, but in my Hipster-Casual-Gamer mind that is a bit cheesy. While many of you may not be able to empathize with this feeling, this is a real thing. I walk around my FLGS and look at the shelves, wanting to buy something, and I’m kind of disappointed. They are all either units I don’t want, already have, or for an army I’m not interested in owning. That excitement of buying new models is a bigger part of the hobby than most people realize and I don’t experience that much anymore.
Then Money Ruins the Rest of Your Hobby
I have never had anything commission-painted because I’m too cheap for that, but with unlimited money and crazy-fast army purchasing, most of us would also just have them pro-painted. BOOM. And there goes yet another aspect of this hobby that you could enjoy but your money ruined it.
Let’s take a step forward and be ridiculous to explain a point. You have now purchased every unit for every army, and have paid to have them all commission-painted. Now it is just time to play all of the armies. Which you would still enjoy, of course. But You are missing half of the hobby in not painting your armies and your trips to the friendly local gaming store are pretty un-exciting.
Ah! Then you remember that Forgeworld exists and go off on a tangent there for a couple months. But soon you are at the same spot you were before Forgeworld. You have a room of army transports filled to the gills and still have that emptiness in your soul.
It’s Funny …
The idea of rich people complaining about rich people stuff makes most of roll our eyes, but if you extrapolate this concept to that you can easily see that there is some truth to it. If being poor is playing life on Hardcore Mode, then it could be argued that being filthy rich would be playing the game of life on Super Easy Mode which is not really playing the game at all.
Some of you may not be able to see it, but humans seem to need some sort of challenge in their life to give us something to do at the very least. When you have everything and can buy everything, it has to be boring. No wonder they start going after power rather than material things. Upper Middle class seems to be the sweet spot in life. You can easily pay your bills but many things in life are still out of your reach so that you have something to strive for. Ah well, whether I’m right or wrong, this has been a fun thought experiment.
After writing this, I realize that a possible pro-capitalist or anti-capitalist theme might be taken from this depending on how you look at it. I didn’t intend any political commentary. Let’s just keep talking about Wargaming.
Am I Right, or Way Off Base?
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