John Zeitler

Opponent: “So, you’re a Mechanized Guard player. That implies you have a higher valuing of human life than the average Imperial Guard commander.”
Me: “Or it means I just like having a crapton of tanks on the board.”
Opponent: “…..”
Me: (huge grin)

Warhammer 40,000 has been around for the better part of two decades now, and its players are varied in their ages. Having just turned 30 myself, I’d have to guess that I’m about in the middle of the pack in terms of age, even though I’ve only been in the hobby for about a year, and only seriously playing for eight months or so. However, there’s something universal about the game that appeals to a wide range of folks, and even though the crowds I hang out with tend to skew a little bit older, once in a while, I’m not the newbie.

Roughly three or four months ago, I took part in a “new players” tournament, the second time I’d been playing, and the first time I’d brought out my Space Marines chapter, not even half-painted at the time, but at least colored almost in my team hues. At that time I met Luke, a kid of about eleven or twelve who was bringing out his Orks for the first time. (Due to his age, I’m going to use an alias for him.) He’d conviced his parents to let him participate in the tournament, and there was a little friction when he explained to his mother that the event would run five or six hours. I was matched against Luke in the first round, and as a result I overheard everything.

There’s a bit of a stereotype of gaming and comics shops being seedy joints in darkness where youths waste days at a time, accomplishing nothing and possibly using the shop as a cover for less wholesome activities than, for example, tabletop warfare. I can say with conviction that I have never encountered one of these kinds of shops in reality. My current haunt, Legions Games, is probably the most well-maintained shop I’ve seen, and the players and staff are to a man among the nicest people I’ve ever faced. So, I felt it necessary to step in and let Luke’s mom know that he was perfectly safe in the store, and that if there were any problems, he could use my phone to call her. It took a little more discussion, but eventually, she relented, and the match went on as scheduled.

I won that round, but if you think I went easy on him, you’re wrong. He put up a good fight, and the scenario was the standard Assault on Black Reach setup (Orks vs. Space Marines, pretty much a wash if all else is equal), so there weren’t any inherent advantages or disadvantages to either of us. We were learning our armies as well, and I had the slight tactical avantage of having played as the Orks before. The point being, we had a good match, and Luke was really enjoying himself. I came away with the thought burning through my brain: “Luke’s a good kid.”

Flash forward to last night, then. My Imperial Guard army’s been assembled for weeks now, and painting it up is a slow but steady process. I went to the shop last night to try to get a couple short games in for the escalation campaign, when Luke saw me and said hello. I hadn’t seen him since the new-player tournament. He was eager to get a game in before he had to go home, and so I obliged him. We set up, and I saw that he was playing Space Marines this time around… kind of a reversal for us, really. He hadn’t played against the Guard before, so I gave him a few tactical pointers here and there (“Are you sure you want to shoot those? This tank’s a far more dangerous target for you right now…”), but again, I didn’t go easy or let up at all. He didn’t either, though it still felt like he was getting used to his army and their style; the Space Marines are average at everything, really, so tactics for them boil down to “know your enemy’s weakness and exploit that”. Again, we had fun, and this time it came down to a draw– a very, very narrow draw, as he got luckier with some rolls than I did.

And again, as I was driving home, the thought came to me. “Luke’s a good kid.” He was polite, amicable, and a little on-edge but still okay– I think he was just nervous playing against older opponents, which can be intimidating to anyone. When his dad came to pick him up, the two of us were going over the battle, noting what we could have done better and what worked well for us. He also signed up for the escalation campaign, so we’ll likely be playing more often– but as allies, since we’re both on the Imperial side.

It can get a little discouraging at times when all you seem to hear about is gamers going nuts or people doing stupid things over their games. I’ve lost track of how many dumb crimes were committed over XBoxes, or cards, or other amusements. But, knowing that people like Luke are playing, and learning good sportsmanship and good thinking skills– that makes me smile every time. And if I have to lose a thousand matches to get more players like Luke into gaming, then I’ll lose a thousand, and a thousand more for good measure, because in the end, everyone wins.

Had a great day, and a good evening that ended with a really interesting situation regarding Warhammer 40K. It’ll have to wait for the morning, though (I’m such a huge tease).

Also, go read Winter Melody. It bears repeating.

I know I’ve been saying that I’ve been tired for a while now, but really it’s just the last few weeks’ worth of constant activity catching up to me. Fortunately I have a pretty peaceful weekend coming up, where I should be able to take it easy for a little while at least.

On a very slightly related note, I’m thinking about expanding some of the fluff work I’ve been doing for the Warhammer 40K campaign into a short series, probably to run on the blog hosting the campaign. We’ll see– I’d want to talk to the group leaders first before making any commitments, but I’ll be honest, writing for the Imperial Guard has really been a lot of fun.

I kind of have my work cut out for me. I have a few battles tonight for the 40K Escalation Campaign, and tomorrow is GASP Games Day. I’d be spending nearly 24 straight hours at Legions, if I didn’t have to get my driver’s license renewed tomorrow morning.

In game terms, I’m ready for the campaign, and I’ve been looking forward to returning to GASP for a while (I hated having to miss March and April). I haven’t yet got the 500-point set of Imperial Guard painted up properly, but they’re close; only some detailing and cleanup work really needs to be done for the infantry, and the tank is completely base-coated. I won’t be able to play next week, so I’ll have two weeks to get them done and get a head start on the next 500 points– which, let’s be honest, are just gonna be a couple more tanks. Possibly also some Chimeras to give my troops a bit more cover.

My name is John, and… I’m addicted to explosions.

It started off simple… I was playing as the Orks and getting a few kills here and there, but other people were able to throw lots of wounds at me, and I wasn’t able to save against them. It always starts that way– the first few shells of ordnance are always free. If I’d only known what it would lead to…

Now it seems like I can’t even take my movement phase at the beginning of the turn without wanting a sweet, sweet, awesome explosion to happen instead. I’ll sit there as the Imperial Guard for the entire game, not moving, just raining fire down on everyone around me, simply blowing %$#% up for the hell of it. My entire tactical manual is a book on tape, and it’s just ten hours straight of maniacal laughter punctuated by thunderous KABOOMs.

I’m so glad I have a place where I can go to… wait, what the hell am I saying?! Explosions fix everything! Screw rehab, I’ma go get me more tanks!

Had a long day out tonight, folks, due to hearing that the power had gone out– there was simply no need for me to rush home to darkness. Before that, though, I picked up two vehicle models for the ol’ 40K. I just now discovered that, when the guys at the shop suggested painting it before assembly, they weren’t quite suggesting it so much as telling me that that’s pretty much what I’d have to do. Which means it’s time for me to start priming up some guys and settling on a color scheme for the Imperial Guard army.

This weekend is going to be… interesting.

Just getting out of my first play of the Imperial Guard army. I did remarkably well. Details will have to wait for a bit, probably tomorrow.

I lied, yesterday, when I said I’d have FF13 thoughts. Today was busy, and apparently I hadn’t quite beaten all of the whatever-pestilence-Grandfather-Nurgle-’blessed’-me-with, which means that in about an hour I’m going to take some NyQuil and time-travel to tomorrow morning. But I can talk a little bit about the game I played last night… a pretty basic 1400-point Space Marine on Space Marine battle. Nothing particularly interesting in and of itself; we played a scenario from the Battle Missions book (which I did wind up picking up last night, too– more on that in a bit). Of course, I lost, but I learned a lot more about the metagame and how other things work. I tried to analyze what I did wrong beyond “rolling poorly” and in the end I was pretty much able to identify my mistakes almost as soon as I made them. Didn’t help me all that much in the immediate, but I now have a far better understanding of what sorts of mechanics work in my favor and what don’t.

I then spent today, in between errands, putting together the last of the infantry for my highly-mechanized Imperial Guard army, which will play radically different from the Marines. At the very least my vehicles should last longer than the first turn.

Spent the evening putting together more for the Imperial Guard army, including the second Leman Russ tank. I’ve been doing a little bit of rethinking on my build plan, though, and while I’m proud of how the custom-hacked-together Exterminator turret came out, I’m probably going to just get two more of the Demolisher kits so as to switch out the projected second Exterminator for a Punisher. Something about being able to sling out twenty shots in a single turn really appeals to me. On the other hand, while the Exterminator only deals four shots a turn, they’re twin-linked, meaning I can reroll any failures on the first try, and they’re higher-powered. Having one of each really helps open up my options when building an army list.

My next building project is finishing up the 10-15 infantry models and the 2 Sentinels, which will give me a sparse but fieldable army. I’m thinking that if I do not lazy out with lazy laziness, I can get those together in time for next Friday’s open gaming night and start getting a feel for where I need to proceed with the build plan. Now that the weather’s warming up again, too, I can take a weekend at some point and get the Orks and Guard primed; since I’m planning on a very off-white and grey color scheme for the Guard, I’ll need to prime those a flat white rather than the black I’d used for the Space Marines and the Orks.

That’s all in the future, though. I’m off to bed now so that, in the morning, I may go and get red bean paste buns.