It's a while since I wrote about GW games... but then it's a while since I wrote anything...
Anywho...
As I have been busily working away on building trenches, and enjoying my hobby, I found myself over Christmas running out of podcasts to act as aural wallpaper... and so I started listening to shows that I have for one reason or another stopped listening to. From this it appears that the hysterical types who populate the GW hobby are on the verge of a nervous breakdown, for various reasons.
As with most nervous breakdowns the neurosis makes little sense when viewed with any sort of perspective - for instance the idea that being able to take super heavies in 'competative' games is the downfall of 40k is particularly ironic as the very same people who are currently raging are the self same types who for years have been telling 'fluff' players that they should either accept taking the hardest units possible or get lost.
I suspect that much of the angst is being generated by the thought of having to accept concepts that have until now have been macho reflex responses - for instance accepting comp, talking to your opponent to see what sort of game they want to play, realizing the limitations of the nihilism of the dogma that has been poisoning the 'community' for a very long time etc.
Anywho...
As much of the current nonsense relates to the fragility of the male ego - and many of the 'community leaders' (code for big mouth types) setting the agenda are TO's - one really needs to take much of the outrage with a pinch of salt. Not least because if one does actually bother to think about the current situation - and adopt a genuine historical perspective - all that is really happening is that GW has dug out some old copies of Tony Bath's scenario and campaign books, realized that the reason WRG went from being 'THE' ruleset to being the ebay bargain was because the rules were overly generalised and the lists overly specific - I am thinking here of the double ammo rule on chariots and elephants not really meshing with the 12 archer elephants in the Burmese army - and rather than accept that the rest fo the Burmese army was really rather bad - the decision was made to do away with the doubly ammo rule in order that the status quo remianed (bitter moi? non.... grrrr).
Because let's face it....
All the recent changes have been made to make GW more fun, less sterile, and to deflate the egos of the tossers who believe wargaming is an exercise in psychic vamperism.
The sane reaction to this would be to change the way in which 'tournaments' are organised in order to make them campaign events, in which the coveted table 1 becomes the focus for a wider game - rather than an insular game with itself - it appears that this is beyond anyone. Probably because the real secret of fight club is that no one has the wit to come up with thinking of anything more creative than punching each other.
All of which is a shame as lately I have been thinking about doing some more work on my Imperial Guard Police project - especially as I have got a airbrush and compressor.
And I can't help sorry for Jervis.
Yeah he's probably made a comfortable life for himself and his family out of GW - and good luck to him - but I came across (and not in a pervy way) an old copy of White Dwarf, and there he is in his dark glasses, looking all punk and dangerous, along with the other contributors (in their dark glasses looking all punk and dangerous) the difference being that Jervis is the only one who has not got his own range of figures, rules, novels or whatever. Instead he is locked into the world of accountants and pandering to Americans that has become GW.
At least Rick Priestly has managed to pander to yanks and accountants, from his barn conversion, from the safety of his'punk and dangerous' (if you consider Lily Alan punk) Bolt Action rules.
But poor old, decent, Jervis is stuck in the 4th level of hell that consists of the counter cultural anarchist games company that broke free from the constraints of the back biting Peter Pan world of wargaming broke all the rules, made money, made big money... in fact defied the stock market crash of 2008 by being a company without debt and an dividend (nerds will blather on about this and that codex but this is the realty of the recent stock price rise)...
He's kind of the Bono of wrgaming.... if you are being unkind.... and let's face it at the moment unkindness is the order of the day where GW is concerned.... but not...
If he were, he would have bailed long ago... have a tax haven in Holland and be on tap for the murderous Clinton's latest money making scheme for 'liberals'.... cholera in Haiti anyone?
It's really rather a tragic situation, in the truest sense.
As a hobby, we have gone from the Aurora Banana Splits models and converting Airfix Confederates to Greek Hoplites to....
Well who knows what will come?
For me it is Pendraken WWI minis...
peace:)
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