Gettting Back into the Game: Introducing a New Author

by | Jul 9, 2014

It's my pleasure to introduce a new author to the blog, my brother, who will be writing as D-Pow. He started playing Fantasy and 40K back when I did, but I'm afraid he lost his usual opponent when I left for college. In the interim, he hasn't had much to do with the hobby. Recently, he has started to get back into it. I'm very pleased that he wanted to share his experience here, and I hope that he'll bring a bit more gaming diversity to the Librarium. Enjoy!

It's been quite awhile since I've been really into wargaming, specifically Warhammer 40K, but awhile after graduating college and moving to Colorado I started feeling a little bit of an itch to get back in. Given Codicier Nate has kept it in the back of my head the whole time, I picked up a Black Library book about Space Wolves and jumped back in. That's how all of this started.

The first interaction I really had with the super new and improved world of gaming was on Kickstarter. I love Kickstarter and am inspired by so many things on there, but I had never even noticed the games section. I think I assumed it was all about indie video games, but then I discovered the miniatures and board games being crowd funded there. Checking out all of the great ideas for new games and innovations on existing games was awesome and opened my eyes to how huge a community there is now. Next, I started checking out some podcasts to go along with the ones I already listened to and have been pretty blown away by how many are out there. I've picked up some board games as well to broaden my gaming and have gotten some friends into board games as well. I could definitely make a lame pun about Kickstarter kickstarting my hobby again but I'll skip that. A lot of things came together and reignited my interest. 

At that point, I made the decision to start painting again. I had a ton of unpainted Space Wolves from my younger days in the hobby. After pulling out my Space Wolves and setting up a shelf for them to hang out, I wasn't too impressed with their paint job, given I was about 12 when I painted them. So, I slowly got to painting and repainting my army. It’s still a work in progress but I now have a bunch of grey hunters painted to a much higher standard than previously. I also improved on some previously completed models, rebuilding them and making them more dynamic, and looked at some of the models I had made during my hiatus. When not doing anything else in the hobby, I would still occasionally go back home, pull out my bits box and make some pretty awesome looking marine characters. I have always been most interested in the modeling aspect of the hobby.
 
Left: One of my old paint jobs. Center: An update Grey Hunter. Right: One of my favorite Wolf Guard.

So, fast forward a bit, I've been reading online about the new state of 40k and 6th edition while painting my Space Wolves; I decided to check out the gaming scene in Boulder. I'd never frequented a gaming store before, as I hadn't really played all that much in the past, so this was new for me. There are two stores here, one close and one further away, which had mostly teenagers for customers. Only the further store had any Warhammer players and they didn't play that often. Also, I bike everywhere. I hadn't really thought until then about the inconvenience and risk of biking with a Space Wolf army strapped to my back so the distance was pretty important. As a result, I was more interested in what was going on at the closer store to me. There are some former 40k players that have said they may play sometime, but they mostly focus on board games and Warmachine. 

I've been curious about Warmachine for awhile; with a smaller game size and new dynamics, it seemed interesting. Due to previously playing 40k, it wasn't that difficult to wrap my head around Warmachine. Once you get passed the similarities they share from both being tabletop war games though, there isn't really much in common between the two. But there's an active community at the store and they have models for demo games. After a long time with it stuck in the back of my head, I made some time and conveniently met someone at the store who was willing to teach a new guy. I haven't looked back since.

I love the story of 40k and my Space Wolves especially, but Warmachine seems perfect for me for a few reasons. First, as previously mentioned, I bike everywhere and I can't be the only wargamer who does. I can't safely carry even 1,000pts of Space Wolves on my bike, but 25pts of Hordes is easy. I should mention that I was initially interested in playing Warmachine using Cygnar for my army. I played a few demo games with them and liked how they worked on the table, but I was really having trouble getting into the miniatures. I don’t think I would have been able to stick with Cygnar for very long because of this, so I picked up a Hordes faction. These guys:


I know, I go from Space Wolves to a completely new game with a plethora of options and pick up the werewolf faction. What can I say, I have a type. Their play style is exactly what I was looking for, glass cannon guerrilla warfare, something Space Wolves really couldn't manage (not that they weren't fun to play with all my bikers). Smaller board, less models, giant werewolves that hit hard and teleport away, it's all still very new and awesome to me. I'm about 6 or 7 games deep now, a couple of those were with Cygnar but the rest have been with Circle Orboros. I'm having a great time so far with a new game system.

Some of my Swiftclaws and a Thunderwolf.

I'm looking to keep some status updates coming. We'll see because I'm still determining how much time I'll be able to put into the hobby and how often I'll be able to make it in to play.



Given this blog is 99.9% about Warhammer 40k, I'm just wondering, do any of you dabble in WarmaHordes? If not, have you considered it previously and what's keeping you away? The choice was somewhat made for me, but I'm glad it's turned out this way so far. I'm just curious about the rest of you. 

Cheers!