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January 21, 2019 10:41 AM   Subscribe

‘Heroin for middle-class nerds’: how Warhammer conquered gaming How has Games Workshop, a fantasy war games company founded in a London shop 40 years ago, become worth more than £1bn? By ruthlessly recruiting followers, and creating vast, fascinating worlds that diehard players never want to leave
posted by fearfulsymmetry (54 comments total) 17 users marked this as a favorite
 
Nicotine for the anorak set
Alcohol for adolecents
Cocaine for table-top gamers
Barbitates for the trench-coat mafia

Heroin for middle-class nerds 👍
posted by glonous keming at 10:52 AM on January 21, 2019 [9 favorites]


Ok, thanks, that explains this.
posted by otherchaz at 10:56 AM on January 21, 2019 [1 favorite]


I was looking at GW miniatures for the first time in many ages recently, and I was amused to notice that they no longer make any metal miniatures, just plastic and resin. Or course they still cost a fortune.

I think it makes sense to buy them if you are really into painting, but the games themselves are just kind of ok.

My wife is currently crocheting a Stichd goblin army and I kinda want to take it to a game night just to see people try to process a bunch of crocheted Orcs.
posted by selfnoise at 11:05 AM on January 21, 2019 [12 favorites]


Also, the article doesn't touch on the extremely aggressive video game licensing they've done in an age when licensed property video games are mostly dead. (Aside from EA but do they actually make games?)
posted by selfnoise at 11:08 AM on January 21, 2019 [2 favorites]




As someone who is certainly into board games and scifi and the broad milieu Warhammer occupies -

Is there any version of this that's fun if you're not super into painting figurines?
posted by PMdixon at 11:32 AM on January 21, 2019 [1 favorite]


My wife is currently crocheting a Stichd goblin army and I kinda want to take it to a game night just to see people try to process a bunch of crocheted Orcs.

So I've firmly avoided going anywhere near Warhammer (or any other board or card game with collectible stuff) but if I could make all my own out of yarn or thread... this has blown my mind. And the closest game shop to my home (by far) is a Games Workshop outpost. If I could combine game night with craft night, that'd be something.

I've heard good things about some of the tie-in novels.
posted by asperity at 11:34 AM on January 21, 2019 [2 favorites]


I smell... heresy.
posted by Homo neanderthalensis at 11:42 AM on January 21, 2019 [6 favorites]


vast, fascinating worlds that diehard players never want to leave

Well who wouldn't want to live in a perpetual totalitarian hellscape
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 11:50 AM on January 21, 2019 [37 favorites]


Judging from my Facebook feed,
posted by seanmpuckett at 11:59 AM on January 21, 2019 [8 favorites]


Something I find unsettling is the internet far right's embrace of WH40K iconography. At the local March For Our Lives protest, I kept one eye fixed on the solitary guy holding a black Chaos Star standard, worrying that he was about to produce an AR-15 painted in Go Fasta Red from somewhere.

Everyone else just saw a weird guy with a creepy black banner. After a few people expressed concerns, the police politely asked him to step aside and explain to them what was up with the banner, and he didn't return afterwards.
posted by zamboni at 12:21 PM on January 21, 2019 [9 favorites]


Still paint miniatures - sadly got sick of endless rule interpretation arguments.
posted by Samuel Farrow at 12:42 PM on January 21, 2019 [3 favorites]


I was super into it all from age 8 (when I started on twin gateway drugs Hero Quest and Space Crusade, both made in partnership with MB, where my uncle worked and who gave out free board games to relatives of employees at Christmas), to age 14 (when some giant music/girls light switches went off in my brain and my nerdy energy transferred dramatically to first listening to rock and then to playing guitar). I still remember my fairly working class mother speculating to her sister (who also had a son taken in by the whole thing) that it was all the invention of some idle aristocrats.
posted by kersplunk at 1:18 PM on January 21, 2019 [2 favorites]


I'm still salty about how GW pulled the WH/40k license out from under Fantasy Flight Games, who used to do board games set in the universe. Chaos in the Old World and Forbidden Stars—two absolute classics, some of my all-time favorites—were borne out of that collaboration, and GW hasn't shown me anything interesting in the board game space since then. Forbidden Stars in particular just screamed for expansions, and never got them, DIY fan creations notwithstanding.
posted by jklaiho at 1:21 PM on January 21, 2019 [9 favorites]


Roy Hodgson is a massive fan.
posted by ZipRibbons at 1:23 PM on January 21, 2019


Also, the article doesn't touch on the extremely aggressive video game licensing they've done in an age when licensed property video games are mostly dead.

Out of which, recently, we have received exactly two decent games, both the Vermintides. Literally every other WH game has been trash (Dawn of War and Space Marine are, what, a decade old now at least?)
posted by turbid dahlia at 1:38 PM on January 21, 2019


$110.50 for daemons of Khorne: skarbrand.

Yikes
posted by clavdivs at 1:41 PM on January 21, 2019


Man, Warhammer 40k was crazy addictive. I never played, but reading about the world was fascinating. Those dystopian vignettes and quotes stay with you for years, and seem particularly apt as our world descends into chaos. (heh)

"In an age of Darkness a blind man is the best guide. In an age of insanity look to the madman to show the way."

"An open mind is like a fortress with its gates unbarred and unguarded."

Also, Relic Studios made a War40k computer game called Dawn of War 2, which is in my opinion one of the best computer games ever made, assuming you had a computer powerful enough to run it. It really does capture the essential "feeling" of 40k - the voice acting is stellar and just as over the top as you would imagine. I still get chills remembering the epic lines those units used to bust out. The gameplay was designed for 3v3 and it still has a cult following, the graphics holding up surprisingly well, you could watch streams of games today on Youtube and it would look completely fine despite it being a 10 year old game.

(it is heresy to mention the travesty that is DOW3).
posted by xdvesper at 1:44 PM on January 21, 2019 [6 favorites]


The original Warhammer Fantasy Battles was a great circling back to war gaming (and far more satisfying than TSR's Battle System), for those of us who grew up on D&D post-chainmail and wanted to play out more epic contests. It is a brilliantly planned product line, able to hook each new generation as many (like I did) reach saturation about the time that an entire system is re-launched with new just different enough rules and armies to make all the old investment seem a bit out of fashion.

Also, Blood Bowl is zany fun that should not be forgotten.
posted by meinvt at 1:45 PM on January 21, 2019 [7 favorites]


I should also say, that having an opportunity to travel to England with my family in 1988 and making a side trip to a Games Workshop store in order to score a copy of Adeptus Titanicus - only to carry it around in my luggage for the remainder of the trip - was a nerdy highlight of my mid-teens. Again, it took the basic sci-fi concepts in Battletech and shot it off into zany over the top and epic scale. I don't recall playing many times, but the thinking about it was so fun!
posted by meinvt at 1:49 PM on January 21, 2019 [2 favorites]


Chaos in the Old World and Forbidden Stars—two absolute classics, some of my all-time favorites—were borne out of that collaboration

Those are great games. My fave is probably Relic, which is just a WH40K version of Talisman, but it's fun to crack out the board and solo three or four random characters while drinking beer. I'll note here that I've never actually finished a game...
posted by turbid dahlia at 2:02 PM on January 21, 2019


Something I find unsettling is the internet far right's embrace of WH40K iconography.

Unsettling, indeed, but a little unsurprising. The incredible fascism of Warhammer 40K's Imperium of Man hardly looks like satire anymore. It was pretty clearly intended as such in the early days, but overtime they've sold the humans -- and especially the Space Marines -- as the "heroes" of the franchise, glorifying their fascism as necessary in the face of endless inhuman hordes. It translates a little too easily onto actual fascist movements.

Granted, I've not played or payed much attention to the universe for the better part of a decade, but from the few things I've read recently, I don't get the impression that things have gotten better in this regard.
posted by asnider at 2:04 PM on January 21, 2019 [14 favorites]


I work with rules and rule writing in a professional context, and Games Workshop's drafting often makes me headdesk. The fluff and the models is where the success comes from, as there are definitely better rule sets.
It's still the best time to be in the hobby as the rules, combined with 3rd party list making software, make the game far more accessible compared to previous editions.
If someone wants to get into one of the games without having to paint a bunch, I'd suggest blood bowl on the computer. It's a blast.

There seems to be a constant simmering (festering?) interest in 40K on Metafilter, has anyone ever tried doing a meetup about it?
posted by LegallyBread at 2:24 PM on January 21, 2019 [2 favorites]


I'll note here that I've never actually finished a game...

Relic, like Talisman, is a game that finishes you....
posted by GenjiandProust at 2:34 PM on January 21, 2019 [2 favorites]


The incredible fascism of Warhammer 40K's Imperium of Man hardly looks like satire anymore.

Oof, yeah, this. Much like it's almost impossible to make a truly anti-war movie, it's impossible to make a sci-fi faction so obviously fascistic and corrupt that there won't still be fanboys who un-ironically view them as the good guys and then later graduate to be the keepers of the canon. The Imperium of Man would be a lot less troubling if not for e.g. the number of straight-up Nazi themed Imperial Guard regiments I've seen.
posted by tocts at 2:41 PM on January 21, 2019 [18 favorites]


I “played” 40k and Epic (epic was great, really!) as a teen. And by played, I bought tons of models, assembled three armies (space marines and elder/harlequins, epic marines/imperial guard for the tanks/titans), painted them all (probably damaging my eyesight in the process enough to end up needing glasses), bought tons of the books, spending probably over $1000 total.

I played actual games maybe 8-10 times, or, broken down, paid over $100 per game I actually played, and half those games turned on someone throwing out some random obscure line of the rule book as justification for doing something that broke the game in their favor, admittedly sometimes it was me (it’s not my fault my cousin never read the section on bombardment from off table support).

I still love the idea of the game, but yes, a bit more understanding that the imperium is supposed to be the badguys instead of space Nazis to emulate would be nice. Unfortunately, it seemed like the fans that really loved the Nazi connotations are the ones that got jobs at GW.

The miniatures being resin has a bit to do with the fact that the original figures were made of frickin lead, and I and thousands of other kids were spending our free time handling lead with our bare hands. That was replaced with pewter when the States blocked import of lead figure, but pewter is pricey and resin casting has gotten really good.
posted by Ghidorah at 4:23 PM on January 21, 2019 [4 favorites]


I've described this to unfamiliar friends as "the game where you stand around a table and argue about rulers and dice and miniatures." merely watching was excruciatingly dull enough to cure me of any desire to play.
posted by bagel at 6:09 PM on January 21, 2019 [4 favorites]


Heh. I mean, not entirely wrong, though I will say I have enjoyed many a GW game (40k and Necromunda primarily).

The problem with Games Workshop games is that they care more about cool or thematic than good, solid rules. Consequently, basically every edition of their two flagship games (Warhammer 40k and Warhammer Fantasy Battle) has had a fair bit of totally fucked up, broken shit in them. I swear to god, their designers have a very poor understanding of probability, particularly the probability of dependent events and the likelihood of "outlier" results -- I have nightmares of fucking Plague Marines and the 3 successive rolls you had to make to take out a single goddamn one. They also tend to try to have "simple" rules to adjudicate things without considering edge cases (holy fuck, Nob Biker mobs :( :( :( ).

It kinda cannot be overstated that Games Workshop is primarily a miniatures company. They happen to also make rules to play games with those miniatures, but they have never really been about the rules.
posted by tocts at 6:33 PM on January 21, 2019 [1 favorite]


Also, I'm so traumatized by Plague Marines I got the number wrong. 4 rolls.

- To hit
- To wound
- Armor save
- Feel No Pain

The last one was the awful cherry on top. Take an Imperial Guard player trying to deal with any Space-Marine-like faction -- their infantry were going to need a 50% to-hit roll, a 33% to-wound roll, and then a 33% chance for the target's armor to not work to do anything. But Plague Marines? They get another 50% save, basically.

An imperial guardsman had a 1 in 36 chance to kill a Plague Marine per round, in a game that only lasts 5-7 rounds. Even in the best case with massed fire, it was common to just spend an insane amount of effort to kill barely a handful of them, and in the worst case (not that unlikely) you would just accomplish literally nothing.

Who could've thought adding a coin flip to an already seriously difficult set of dependent events would lead to awfulness?
posted by tocts at 6:51 PM on January 21, 2019 [4 favorites]


I’m pretty sure *heroin* is heroin for middle class nerds.
posted by Selena777 at 8:16 PM on January 21, 2019 [6 favorites]


But what did you expect, playing Imperial Guard? I mean, you’re willingly fielding an army whose in-canon purpose is to throw enough bodies into an impossible fight so as to slow the bad guys down until someone competent can stop by to take of things. I mean, it’s like someone at GW read an account of the Soviet army’s strategy for Stalingrad and thought, “yeah, we should definitely make a faction out of that, including having a model that will kill your other models if it retreats in any way.”*

Unless you’re just flooding the field with wonderful, wonderful tanks.

*honestly, that was just a throwaway idea, but the more I typed it out, the more it clicked, and I now have absolutely no doubt that’s essentially how the IG was designed.
posted by Ghidorah at 8:16 PM on January 21, 2019 [2 favorites]


Heh. I was never personally an IG player, but I had sympathy. Necrons (with their own BS) and Dark Angels (bikes and Terminators, oh my!) are all that's on my shelf gathering dust.
posted by tocts at 8:58 PM on January 21, 2019


As someone who is certainly into board games and scifi and the broad milieu Warhammer occupies -

Is there any version of this that's fun if you're not super into painting figurines?


Oh absolutely. I find painting minis to be frustrating, and my occasional foray as a Pretty Girl at cons in my early twenties were...um, poisonous?...so while I find the lore deeply entertaining you couldn't pay me thousands of dollars to play 40K as a mini game, which is basically the reverse of what happens.

Mostly I interact with the lore via the really great Fantasy Flight Games 40K role play series, starting with Dark Heresy and going on through to Rogue Trader.

As mentioned in the article, the Black Library is another pretty solid way to enjoy the setting without having to sit around covered in paint. I haven't read a lot of it, so this is largely based off recommendations from my friends (i.e "Jilder, dude, you absolutely have to read this like yesterday!!").

The Horus Heresy is a massive, epic war saga stretching generations. Book One.

The Caiphas Caine series is a more on the ground look at life in the Imperial Gaurd. Book One

The Blood Bowl games for PC and PS4 are fun, stupid and occasionally frustrating. The have the same problem with probablity so eloquently lamented by tocs upthread but much fun was had at our house with them.
posted by Jilder at 9:08 PM on January 21, 2019 [3 favorites]


Wouldn't touch WH or 40K with a ten-foot pole...

But Blood Bowl? I've been sucked in by the 2016 release. Am actually trying to paint minis!

And Warhammer: Invasion was a great LCG before FFG lost the license.

WAAAGH!

EDIT: FFG made a bunch of great GW games before they lost the license. Chaos in the Old World, is awesome, Blood Bowl Team Manager as well. You'll never be able to buy them at reasonable prices, but, if you get a chance to buy/play them, worth your money/time.
posted by Windopaene at 9:09 PM on January 21, 2019 [1 favorite]


Much like it's almost impossible to make a truly anti-war movie, it's impossible to make a sci-fi faction so obviously fascistic and corrupt that there won't still be fanboys who un-ironically view them as the good guys and then later graduate to be the keepers of the canon. The Imperium of Man would be a lot less troubling if not for e.g. the number of straight-up Nazi themed Imperial Guard regiments I've seen.

I honestly think that at the time of creation making their characters a hair's breadth away from being Nazis was a really clear way for a British company to signal that these dudes were Not The Good Guys. I mean most of the original content creators would have been living in Britain still rebuilding after the way, if not children during the bombing itself.

These days, not so obvious.
posted by Jilder at 9:15 PM on January 21, 2019 [1 favorite]


My Dune fascination mentioned occasionally elsewhere led me to attempt, however poorly, to build an army based, however loosely, on or in that universe. The Tallarn Desert Raiders, eyes painted pale blue, made great-looking Fremen.
posted by Mister Moofoo at 9:19 PM on January 21, 2019 [3 favorites]


I loved Warhammer 40k as a kid. Painted literal tons of lead (ok, pewter).
Never once actually played.
posted by rp at 9:31 PM on January 21, 2019 [1 favorite]


For those curious about the worlds, but unwilling to invest in the plastic and paint may I suggest the role playing games. There is a new one for each universe. Cubicle 7 has Warhammer Fantasy Role·Play which is based on the first and second preceding editions and avoids the ungainly madness of third. Ulisses Spiele offers Wrath and Glory which is the latest game to cover the 40K setting. I must admit that Wrath and Glory leaves me kind of cold with relation to the game engine so there are the earlier 40K games to look at by way of used copies or PDFs from DriveThruRPG. Dark Heresy and the second edition deal with the Inquisition. In a world where demons, aliens, heretics, and other things work to bring about the fall of the Imperium of Mankind Inquisitors work through their agents to ensure the safety of Emperor's people, at any cost. Only War offers you the opportunity to play an Imperial Guardsman. It is kind of the 40K version of Recon. Rogue Trader, an RPG inspired by the first 40K product Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader, gives you a chance to play on the fringes of the Imperium. Your party make up the bridge crew of an independent, armed merchant-man, licensed to do business with aliens, explore and exploit new found archaeo-tech, and push the limits of human knowledge in ways that others would never be allowed to do. Just don't go to far, the Inquisition has its limits. Deathwatch is the game that allows you to play Adeptus Astartes, Space Marines. You are among the best your Chapter has to offer and as such you are given the honour of serving with members of other Chapters in the Deathwatch. Devoted to destroying the alien incursions into the Imperium you and your new Battle-brothers will face Orks, Tyrannids, Tau, and limitless others in the grim dark future. Finally there is Black Crusade, which as a friend of mine puts it, "Let's you play on the winning side". You are aspirants on the path to power as a servant of the forces of Chaos. Reject the False Emperor. Embrace the true nature of the Universe. Blood, Change, Decay, Pleasure, these fundamental qualities are embodied by the Chaos Gods. Maneuver around other player's schemes to turn them into tools for your own purposes. Battle the forces of so-called Order and spread the Truth. Reality is not what they think it is.

As for the fiction Dan Abnett's, Gaunt's Ghosts, series is well worth the time of anyone who enjoys military SF. Brian Craig's The Wine of Dreams is a book I read years ago and it still lingers in the dark corners of my mind. Kim Newman, writing under the pseudonym of Jack Yeovil, gives us three novels; Drachenfels, Beasts in Velvet, and Genevieve Undead all of which make for wonderful Dark Fantasy/Horror experiences. Also worthy of note are the first three books of the Horus Heresy; Horus Rising, False Gods, and Galaxy in Flames. They provide a delightful entrée to the mythology of the 40K universe.
posted by Ignorantsavage at 9:32 PM on January 21, 2019 [2 favorites]


Having these two worlds meet is a weird feeling.

I'm been into GW stuff for about 30 years. It's all about the painting for me (literally as I type this, my desk is covered with little paint pots) even though I'm terribly terribly slow at it, being too much of a perfectionist. I'm pretty rural, so getting anywhere to play games with them is pretty much a non starter anyway with young kids. Though I'm hoping to train them up eventually!

In the hobby, it's usually called plastic crack. We all kid ourselves we're high functioning addicts... I have half a loft full of boxes of games and metal and plastic models collected over the years, with more stuffed under the sofa, and I do have real trouble resisting buying yet more as something new and awesome comes out. I did go in on a bunch of kickstarter campaigns to try and branch out to board games that I might have a hope in hells chance of playing with the missus, but realistically it's cos they had nice minis I might one day paint. But GW have changed management in the last couple of years, and they've started re-engaging with fans and producing stuff that's just outright cool - it's a big improvement from the old high-handed GW that were slowly pissing everyone off. They've even focused on trying to fix broken rules in a timely fashion with big updates every few months and many FAQs instead of letting them languish for years at a time. I mean, they're still GW-broken at times, but they're doing a lot better of late.

You don't have to paint the miniatures to play, they're easily distinctive enough plain, though painting is definitely part of the fun for many - some, like me, it's the main part, somewhat like painting model planes. Except with space nazis and humans worshipping the mind controlling alien that impregnated them so their children are monstrous clawed hybrids. Literally the intro to the 40k rulebook calls it the 'grim dark future'. It's a nice distraction from Brexit, ahaha. The fluff is very clear that the way things is going badly wrong, with the Imperium of man being a decaying theocratic dictatorship, that the loss of progress and understanding is as much a casualty of constant war as billions of lives lost. Though much like the PC gaming community, it alas has a good chunk of misogynist men that think a nazi future sounds pretty awesome - gaming clubs are the way to (mostly) avoid those.

Their new fantasy range, Age of Sigmar, is also a time of fear, loss, and mortals trying to survive in a world where the Gods literally wage war.

The minis designed in the last few years are simply state of the art plastic - GW are streets ahead of anyone else in terms of what they can do for detail and ease of assembly. Some of them (the easy-to-build ranges) don't even need glue, just a pair of clippers; you need to go resin to get equivalent detail from 3rd party bits and model makers (of which are a number of good ones) which is harder to work with.

Anyway. Black library, GW's book publishing arm (also available in good e-book stores) is a way to get that dystopian war-ravaged future fix without needing a hairy stick and a ruler. Can recommend anything written by Dan Abnett, with Gaunt's ghosts being a particular highlight. I'd probably to start with the 3rd book, Necropolis - the first two are collections of short stories, which make a bit more sense once you're used to the setting.

Total War: warhammer (and 2) is based on the previous fantasy setting so is more classic fantasy tropes, but is a great game in its own right if that's your thing.

There's also a *ton* of new games in the settings that are specifically designed to bring in new players. Warhammer 40k itself is the 'main' game, but also the biggest and most complex and expensive. Kill Team is getting some serious investment as mini-40k, a much shorter and simpler variant you play with a dozen minis at most. Or the board games; Blood Bowl is american football with dwarves and chainsaw-wielding goblins. Necromunda is about running your own gang turf (and fighting other gangs) in the decaying ruins miles below the surface of a dying industrial world that can be played as boxed game or a campaign of linked games with friends. 'Underworlds' is their new go at competitive fantasy with only a handful of minis, and they regularly release new mini games that are mainly about selling brand new models but are usually good little games in their own right - such as the latest, Speed Freeks, basically orks on ramshackle speedsters racing and fighting. Shiny and chrome...
posted by Absolutely No You-Know-What at 10:43 PM on January 21, 2019 [3 favorites]


As a teenager I collected these models, painted them (badly -- the people who are good at it can produce some pretty amazing looking minis), and even managed to play pretty regularly. The latter was mostly thanks to a local shop with dedicated tables and an attendant group of regular players. I probably still have a few hundred pewter figurines collecting dust in storage at my mom's. I have the faint recollection that Necromunda was easier to engage in than a full WH40K game, thus the most fun.
posted by axiom at 11:14 PM on January 21, 2019


Whoa. Was *deeply* into 40k as a mid-90s preteen, and whilst I don't think I thought of the space marines as heroic or necessarily the Good Guys, I had not worked out that thry were Space Nazis, which now seems... shriekingly obvious.

Maybe it was all the glue fumes.
posted by ominous_paws at 11:28 PM on January 21, 2019


Back in college my roommate played a ton of WH40K, and went down to the local gaming store often to play with folks there. I gather from him that the clique was a bit toxic overall, but it was his only choice to play with in town. He was good at painting figures though, so I think that gave him an in.
posted by JHarris at 1:47 AM on January 22, 2019


For those curious about the worlds, but unwilling to invest in the plastic and paint may I suggest the role playing games.

The new WFRP is great - I GM'd a game at Dragonmeet in December and had a lot of fun, it's very much in the spirit of the 2000AD meets Pratchett humour of 80s Games Workshop while stealing a lot of gameplay innovation from more modern RPG systems. It's also perfectly playable with no minis or just a handful of interesting ones. I no longer have the patience or time to paint an army but buying a few great models and spending some time getting them into shape is great fun.

Similarly I think a lot of the success of modern GW is their embrace of skirmish gaming rather than the massed ranks of old - things like Kill Team, the new Necromunda and the new Warhammer Quest boxes seem to be really successful and only need a handful of figures.
posted by brilliantmistake at 1:53 AM on January 22, 2019 [1 favorite]


I briefly played the fantasy version. Again more painting than playing by far.

I did enjoy Necromunda which was essentially gang battles in ruined undercities.
That had a nice 3D environment and cover mechanic and crucially required only about 10 minis per side.

I was also rather fond of Man O' War which was fantasy themed ship battles.
Also, a low number of minis needed, but nice movement rules and some very pretty elven catamaran.
posted by Just this guy, y'know at 4:19 AM on January 22, 2019 [3 favorites]


Milk for the Khorne flakes!
posted by Pyrogenesis at 4:23 AM on January 22, 2019 [5 favorites]


Necromunda! It came out just about as I was transitioning out of the whole business, but... cool 3D landscapes! Games that didn't take days! Games involving less than £500 of minis!

I'd say you could never drag me back in to Games Workshop, but an updated Necromunda with a queer cyberpunk asthetic... hrng

(endnote: I hear GW are just about to / have just entirely ripped off indie Mad Max With Minis game GASLANDS, so good to see they're still totally shitty people)
posted by ominous_paws at 5:47 AM on January 22, 2019


I liked Necromunda so much that I helped a friend write a (desktop) application to manage gangs, because all the stuff you have to do in-between games to figure out how they level up or get permanent injuries or whatever was a pain in the ass. Sadly kinda lost to time at this point I think, though. I still have on my shelf a gang I made of a mish-mash of original Necromunda minis plus Imperial Guard figures, representing a gang led by a fallen IG commander who took up residence in the underhive.

As I recall, at the height of my GW times Necromunda was the only "small scale" GW game that seemed to really work. They had rules for smaller scale 40k battles (the name of which escapes me) but they ultimately still took forever and didn't really work well because some factions could field a much more viable army at that point level/size than others.

Also, I too am someone who both likes to paint, and takes forever because I'm a perfectionist. I think I eventually realized that I found much more enjoyment just painting a random good-looking mini for no reason at all versus trying to paint a whole army. So, I have (after a long time playing) two not fully painted 40k armies (Necrons, Dark Angels), a Necromunda gang, and then a bunch of single painted minis either from 40k one-offs (I once wrote and ran a crazy campaign system in 40k with friends where I made up my own faction that was basically "what if 40k, but zombies") or that are minis I use as characters in RPGs or I just liked how they look. Oh, and a bunch of old Battletech stuff, like I have painted most of the original box set as roughly evenly ranked lances of 'mechs, because that's only 4 minis per force.

Painting: fun, but time consuming.
posted by tocts at 6:06 AM on January 22, 2019 [2 favorites]


Out of which, recently, we have received exactly two decent games, both the Vermintides.

I've been enjoying Vermintide 2, but I've loved both the Total War games, I've even made mods for them. To be fair, I was a fan of both WHFB and Total War games before; but I still find actually seeing frickin' dragons, magic vortices, and steam tanks laying waste to armies in real time to be an absolute delight. The third game will hopefully bring us Chaos Dwarfs and the various demons, although I hope it's more a generic Chaos incursion than the canon End Times.
posted by zombieflanders at 6:25 AM on January 22, 2019 [1 favorite]


Necromunda! It came out just about as I was transitioning out of the whole business, but... cool 3D landscapes! Games that didn't take days! Games involving less than £500 of minis!

I'd say you could never drag me back in to Games Workshop, but an updated Necromunda with a queer cyberpunk asthetic... hrng


Necromunda was relaunched a year ago, with all new plastic minis - no more sawing them up to change weapons! They did kinda trickle out the individual gangs, but there's now the original main 6, plus genestealer and chaos cult gangs, as well as a host of bounty hunters and mutated pets from forgeworld. You can buy the boxed set (escher and goliath) with a 2D board for simpler play, or play it the original way on 3D terrain with the updated rulebook and full ganglist/campaign supplement. GW do their own plastic gantry and platform 'sector mechanicus' sets that are insanely detailed but also pretty wallet-busting. 3rd party terrain like tabletopscenics mdf stuff or metro morph once they finish doing the kickstarter fulfillment are much more affordable.

There's also a fan community edition of the rulebook to fix some of the unclear bits of the official rules, as well as add new missions - the community edition kept necromunda going in the 'GW no care' years.

I'm not sure the aesthetic is queer, but it's definitely goth cyberpunk. The escher female-only gang has some very sweet possibilities for a paintjob.
posted by Absolutely No You-Know-What at 9:13 AM on January 22, 2019 [3 favorites]


I'd be game to play Warhammer if it seemed like a thing you could experiment with, but it seems like to get the experience at all you really need to invest, which i wasn't into as a teen and definitely don't have the space for now, though I maintain a mini painting hobby for its own sake.

I periodically consider painting a small squad of Noise Marines, because they are punk as fuck, but you basically have to buy a regular squad of marines, then a series of conversion kits to make them all chaotic and noise-y, and the ones I want are vintage (the noise blasters aren't guitars anymore for some horrifically misguided reason?) and the whole thing is going to cost like a hundred and fifty bucks at least for like a dozen army guys and a doof wagon, plus a lot of work on my end.

I think the larger problem I have is that despite the massive scale of the lore, both Fantasy and 40k Warhammers just don't seem like a world any people live in. It's all a deeply complicated and creative and stylish context for jibbering maniacs to throw tanks at one another and it's fun for a tabletop game about the throwing of the tanks, but for me it doesn't hold up to the deep-dive enthusiasm some of my friends seem to have.
posted by Phobos the Space Potato at 12:37 PM on January 22, 2019 [1 favorite]


Still paint miniatures - sadly got sick of endless rule interpretation arguments.

This was my experience. Assembling and painting the miniatures was really fun. Playing the games was rules lawyering and arguments about line of sight and cover. Casual games with friends was fun, but gaming at the game shop got old fast.
posted by Fleebnork at 12:58 PM on January 22, 2019


I periodically consider painting a small squad of Noise Marines, because they are punk as fuck, but you basically have to buy a regular squad of marines, then a series of conversion kits to make them all chaotic and noise-y, and the ones I want are vintage (the noise blasters aren't guitars anymore for some horrifically misguided reason?)

Funny you should say that, GW've literally just released a new Noise Marine in the classic style... Not cheap though, and single pose. But for a one off, it turns the nostalgia up to 11. There are 3rd party bits to convert others too, but obvs more work as you say.
posted by Absolutely No You-Know-What at 1:11 PM on January 22, 2019 [1 favorite]


... by creating a socially acceptable outlet for men* to do crafts as a hobby?

* a certain subset limited by one tendril of toxic masculinity.
posted by Gable Oak at 3:44 PM on January 22, 2019


I'd say you could never drag me back in to Games Workshop, but an updated Necromunda with a queer cyberpunk asthetic... hrng

Specifically about Necromunda and queerness, there was a good article a while back by Timothy Franklin exploring queerness in 40k and Necromunda (thinking Escher and Goliath, mainly). The whole site seems to be offline but via the wayback machine: https://web.archive.org/web/20180323041949/http://outermode.com/warhammer-40k-queer-darkness-fetish-first-millennium

Re: the goliaths:

The conflict between the visual language of sci-fi and fantasy in geek culture, which tends towards sexualization, and the iconography of militaria and a push for ever-greater-grimdarkness, creates a space where BDSM and queer physicalities can out-compete hetero-normative ones.

This classic illustration from 1990s skirmish game Necromunda shows a gang-fighter from a densely populated industrial world plainly dressed in a leather bondage harness; the combination of violently exaggerated muscularity and the coding of leather-and-studs for warfare have by design or accident created a very homoerotic figure


Some of that's kind of there in the updated Necromunda as Absolutely No You-Know-What notes. I think the aesthetic is there, even if it's almost never acknowledged explicitly in the background.

* I think a lesbian relationship between two gang members might have featured in a recent book? Either way,it's not foregrounded or even particularly mentioned in the other game stuff.
posted by ocular shenanigans at 8:50 AM on January 23, 2019 [1 favorite]


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