State of the Hobby - Falling Into Ruts and Campaign Medicine

The Battle for Kryo underway.

(Photo courtesy of Shane Grubb)

 
My gaming group started playing 40k together back in high school days. Some of my friends were already playing tabletop war games, but for me that was the introduction. I still remember a friend bringing me the 3rd edition rulebook to look through in an attempt to recruit me to play. Obviously, his ploy succeeded.

I remember the excitement I had at seeing the models and reading that first battle report featuring Space Marines (Andy Chambers) vs. Eldar (Gav Thorpe). I immediately took the book to the rest of my friends; all I can say is that my positive energy is incredibly contagious, because we all started playing the game.

I remember the first time I opened a box of models (Khorne Berserkers). I never constructed model cars or trains as a child, so the idea of figuring all the crazy pieces out was very intimidating to me. I also remember the first game we played, a strange free-for-all match between Dark Eldar, Chaos Space Marines, and a few Imperial Guard models. All those rules we got wrong spring back to mind, like my Aspiring Champions leaving their squads and charging toward the Dark Eldar line. Another friend’s Thousand Sons come to mind, where every member of his squads carried Inferno Bolts (back then, that meant S4 AP5 Small Blast markers for each guy!).

As we learned more about the game, we did many tournaments at Hangar 18 in Jamestown, and we did some at Game Depot in Cookeville. We even started traveling to play tournaments over the course of 4th and 5th edition, going to events in Murfreesboro, Cleveland, and Chattanooga. Through it all, we had that excitement of learning the game through and through, and becoming truly learned in regards to our codices.

Unfortunately, it was around the end of 5th edition that the excitement started to wane. At first I sadly assumed it was just the nature of the game; Internet lists were starting to take over the events, and armies were easier to learn because we had played through earlier incarnations as a group. After a while the taste of tournaments turned sour for me, and I withdrew from playing 40k publicly.

6th edition revived my gaming group, as we started playing almost every single weekend. We were learning a different edition together, and our army lists evolved quickly as we became used to Overwatch, Flyers, and random charge lengths in the Assault Phase. After two editions of bouncing from one army to another, I finally settled in with the Tau Empire Codex and found an army whose synergy fit my play style.

Eventually, these weekly games even fell into a static nature for me, and I found myself increasingly prone to simply watch others play the game. I still enjoyed 40k, but it had lost that initial excitement and depth that I fell in love with more than a decade ago.

I don’t remember what triggered my eventual epiphany, but I realized my aggravation with the game was due to the rinse and repeat way that we played the game. Every weekend we got together, rolled for a standard Eternal War mission, and then played with our polished 2,000 point lists. Every now and then we would change up a unit here or there, but it was essentially the same thing weekend after weekend. When we were playing tournaments regularly, this was how we tested our army lists. However, it was now creating some serious drag on the fun level of the game.

I decided I must attempt a cure for the disease that was eating at us. Eventually I settled on writing a campaign for my group to play, and set to work building the different planets and making rules for each faction. Apparently great minds think alike, because Shane Grubb at Dicehead Games came up with a similar idea at roughly the same time. When I received word of his campaign, I decided to put ours on the back burner and support his efforts during this event.

I can only speak for myself, but the campaign has been exactly what the doctor ordered. The missions have encouraged us to build towards a specific objective instead of a “take-all-comers” tournament approach, and we have experimented some with different points values. Best of all was the Apocalypse mega-battle that marked the halfway point of the campaign; the following is a link to Shane’s coverage of that game.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8jLALmmYjV4

All of my friends seemed to have a blast at this event. You can see my green and white Tau, along with the sea of Drop Pods that mark Josh’s Space Marines. Half of the metallic horde of Necrons belongs to Brian, and Jason’s Eldar loom out of the corner, supported by his Revenant Titan. My Tau and Brian’s Necrons pitched in and helped Chaos explode the moon, and the final moments of the game were truly epic to participate in! The sense of scaling the enemy’s bastions and overtaking his base of operations really breathed new life into the game, and made me want to go home and paint my Tau army so it would be completely ready for the next event.

If you have fallen into a hobby rut, I would suggest working in a campaign with your local gaming crew. Bring it to the attention of your local store owners; not all events have to be about winning money, or even winning for that matter! We all like to win, but the nature of our game means that for every winner, there is also a loser.

If you can’t manage a campaign, then at least strive for playing different points values or missions. Anything to change your standard way of playing and approaching the game will improve your chances of keeping the game interesting. No matter how you choose to approach the game, we should all focus more on the experience, and less on the end result.