Tuesday, October 15, 2013

Flirting with the knife to cut the throat of 40K.

A few months ago my interest in 40K and the associated hobby aspect plummeted to a point where I completely lost interest. I tried multiple times to simply work on assembling some models, but the feeling was fruitless. I eventually packed all my 40K and related hobby stuff up and shelved it all. In the same circle, my interest in going to regular game nights dwindled as well to me not going anymore.

The past few months I have had plenty of opportunities to go play 40K, but I usually can find something else to fill my time. Even when I don't have anything planned I simply won't go or maybe deep down it is because I don't want to.

My Blood Angels have slowly dropped in usefulness in my opinion. I can take down certain units and opponents, but when it comes to character fights, flyers, and initiative in general the army falls apart or becomes a quick steady pile of auto-losses. My Tyranids are a bundle of useful and not useful units where I tend to proxy what I don't have or can't afford because it is stupid to spend so much. I still have a brand new Hive Tyrant and Tervigon, but I haven't had the urge to give a damn to assemble the models. Perhaps news of the new Codex might bring some joy, but I wonder of GW will just screw over Tyranids. My only hopes is the current 6th edition every army has some unique trait flows through them and they return as menacing horde and or heavy army.

In the meantime I plunged into the realm of Skyrim and found a huge world of possibilities and quests to keep my mind busy and soon came Diablo III and GTA V. All three of these games are huge and can take a long time to complete and can be repeated. I also now rent a Minecraft server and have my own small community of players I have come to enjoy the company of and watched a small world slowly develop. I can easily bide my time til BF4 and loose myself in a game I do enjoy and with the chance to rent your own server and run games with your friends multiplies the fun rate.

All the lack of gaming has made me question whether 40K is even worth it anymore. I have faced this demon before and I have held it at bay by limiting myself to only two armies. I somehow managed to purchase the new Chaos Codex with hopes to raise a small DIY chaos army from the Dark Vengeance. Sadly the models are still on the spruce like the Dark Angels models. Sadly it is where they may stay and be forever doomed. I guess the fact they came with the small rulebook gives them a pass. The cost of raising a chaos army is so far behind my Tyranid army its not even funny. These days I would rather through down $500 for a new XBOX One then pump money into something which may never get finish, used, or otherwise change for worse or better.

In the back of my mind I question whether buying into the Robotech Kickstarter was worth it. I backed a total of $246 into the Kickstarter so I could get two fully functional armies with plenty of options. This allows me to show the game or play the game not worrying if another player does not have the game. The one thing which saves this in my mind is I like the model and the Robotech saga in general. I am unsure if this game will ever pickup enough of a following or interest. Even more if any would care to try it, like it, and want to play it regularly.

Currently I am backing the Reaper Bones II Kickstarter mostly for some models to goof off with and paint. I missed out on the first Reaper Bones Kickstarter and they had some cool miniatures in there. Hilarious enough my daughter has begun lying claims to some of the miniatures in the current Kickstarter. The excellent compliment of heroes to villains gives me some ideas for a home brew fast paced hack and slash game. The idea may never bear fruit to anything at all, but I find it interesting.

About a month or so ago I managed to find a player who wanted to try the A Time of War RPG and I easily introduced the Battletech portion into our RPG campaign. So far the game is going smoothly with some hilarious RPG sessions. Mixing the ATOW and Battletech sessions is a challenge and more so to challenge the player, but otherwise is some serious fun.

Along the same lines I recently started assembling some Battletech battlemechs I still had in their packages. Some for reasons they might show up in the RPG campaign and other just for the sake of assembling them for hopeful future use. I even picked up a can or Army Painter Purple Alien spray paint to prime a few of my battlemechs. I have not gone further yet as I am looking into a purple wash to apply afterwards. It is easy to tell Battletech is my favorite game. I purchased and played it far before ever playing 40K. I may have found out about 40K before, but I am not sure.

Last week I started something hobby related. The picture below is a by product of the hobby for me and the picture was a good shot. Those who follow me will understand, those who can put clues together from previous posts should be able to figure it out as well. It is good news for me and good news to some on the internet and for anyone local remains hopeful. Perhaps it is an internal spark for the return of something. With this simple start I thought maybe I would go to one of the regular games and still I did not. Maybe I thought it was not right, not the time, but deep down its the feeling of why go, and I don't want to go. A feeling has been captured in my mind of what I can come to expect or not expect and it doesn't reflect everything, but it is enough to make me not want to go. Whether this means anything to anyone has me pondering and slowly tearing me apart.



For what it is worth, this is the only clue I will leave. Hopefully it or others will help kindle a flame which can just as easily burn out.