Immediate Corrective Measures Taken

You find yourself wondering, is it me or just the die?

Maybe a new army will solve your dilemma?  A new build?

It surely isn’t me.

You can deny it all you want, blaming an old codex, lack of investment, whatever you need to do to get by.

But just the fact you found my corner of the web, tucked in so close to all the “expert” blogs that serve you a steady pile of quick fixes and list building, all covered generously in MathHammer (nay, “Statistical Analysis”) to give it a sheen of authority, the reality of the number of games needed for those statistical models to be relevant always ignored.

Lists and new army builds are the Sirens of 40K, MathHammer their song, enticing players towards the W.A.A.C. vision of the Golden Fleece, the rocks of wasted money spent and time lost never seen until too late.

See? I can make it sound like so much more than it is, when it’s a hobby, not a career, and I hope my initial post didn’t give you the wrong impression about me or my concept of the game’s importance.

It’s supposed to be fun and even though my first post seems more H.P. Lovecraft than H.R. Puff’nStuff I actually do have fun with 40K.  I get slaughtered, my attempts at figure painting routinely a source of comedy that only my completely tenuous grasp of the basic rules of the game can outdo,  yet I keep coming back through all of it.  Yes, I did total a car, I did change from Ultramarines to Black Templars solely based on the fact I used black as a base coat to paint (meaning unpainted units merely needed some details to be complete, a lie I am continuously happy to tell myself) and I did quit playing Battletech after 8 years immersed in the universe for reasons that seem absolutely insignificant, even petty,  compared to what I endured in my “Year of 13 Months” starting 40K.

I couldn’t be happier with that decision, either, because Battletech had stopped being fun, so much so I knew I was close to hating a universe I still love to this day.

The reality, that we can’t all be champions of the National Tournament, much less even win an Independent GT, is hard  for many people to take, their egos continuously stroked by their sycophants on blogs where their “celebrity” depends on publishing unending rants against anyone who dares to claim 40K to be a hobby and proclamations of list or unit superiority, their authority to issue these edicts derived from being more of a jerk than anyone else.

Not all of them, mind you.  There are many sites I visit, full of lists, where I have sent what I was playing for inspection.  These all have one thing in common:  none consider themselves anything beyond trying to share some knowledge and “do what you have more fun with” is implied in their response.

If you’re here then you know who the best (or worst) examples of the two “camps” are.  Since I won’t throw a link out just for traffic to a blog I consider a release, my career involving crafting a message designed to reach the widest spectrum of a targeted market and deliver the most favorable impressions.  And I have no time to pander in what I consider “hobby time”, so you got here either by accident or a link to a site I read because I enjoy it, a link placed while I was between reads.

So take the first post in the spirit of which it was written, accept that winning a 6 man tournament at your normal gaming spot might be the pinnacle of your 40K “career”, and ask yourself if what you wanted was another “career” in anything.

Lighten up,  Francis.  You might get a laugh along the way.