| | I've decided that I don't care whether or not anybody reads these blogs. I'll just use them to jot down whatever is on my mind.
Has it really been 53 days since I moved into this place? 53 days in this single room? Hard to believe. How fast time slips by as you get older. I've done remarkably little with myself since I moved in. But hopefully things will be taking off soon.
It's hard not to just recap my life thus far, but I have to keep in mind that nobody is reading this anyway, so nobody needs to be filled in with backstory or anything. I'll just ramble on as if you know what I'm talking about.
Went into Games Workshop the other day to get some more information on the job openings they have available. I previously dropped by there once before, when trolling around the Alderwood Mall for jobs, but I didn't stay long enough to really look around. This time, the employees were occupied, and so I basically had to kill a little time.
It was....surreal.
Up in front of the store was a table where an employee was apparently demonstrating Warhammer 40,000 to some kids. Their dad was standing by looking on, and apparently this was just another fun outing with dad. Go eat at McDonalds, kill some orks, just another day... It struck me as absolutely hilarious that the employee was actually making Warhammer 40,000 - Warhammer 40,000 - seem like a game kids could play and enjoy.
Behind the kids' table were two desks (for lack of a better word) where guys were assembling/painting their models.
Behind these two was...another kids table! These kids were a little more serious though. They were just starting a game of Tau/Eldar vs. Tyranids, while a grunge-looking high-school guy looked on. I watched this for awhile, and had to stop myself from going "What are you doing? Don't send your Avatar out into an enemy melee army without support! This isn't a movie, he doesn't have Awesomeness Armor. Move up the damn Harlequins at least, geez." Or, "Dude, move your Kroot up. These are Tyranids, get a meat shield going!"
Up until now, I had been marvelling at all this. It's a culture which, as a "nerd", I ought to be familiar with, if not partly involved in, but it still struck me as quite the odd place. I could identify the models on the shelves, and the units on the tables, but I had never been tempted to collect and play with, let alone painstakingly paint, these things. It's a world I had never quite fallen into. I never crossed that event horizon of nerdiness. The scary thing is that now, as I strolled through this apparently-bustling store, I actually wanted to be a part of it. I knew how much disdain it would earn me from people on the outside, but here was a community that I could actually be a part of. Besides, they seemed nice, and I might even find some healthy competition among these players. I kept going.
Next to this was another table where some older players were engaged in some kind of urban scenario. I didn't see any armies on the table, so maybe it was the tail end of a 40k game.
In the very back was a larger table, where three even older players were playing what I assume was standard Warhammer. They were older, as in, older. They must have been veterans, so I didn't go back to see what they were doing. Instead, I wandered over to a rack of codexes and picked up the one for the Necrons. I was amazed that, through my Dawn of War background, I knew almost all of the units. Every time I turned a page, I wanted to grab the shoulder of the nearby model-painting guy and show him an Immortal, or a Grey Knight, or an xv88 Broadside Battlesuit and go "Hey, I know these guys!"
But all this aside, I was shocked at how Warhammer 40,000 is actually played. There is no grid, no hex, nothing on the playing area to denote distance or position. Instead, unit movement distance is measured in inches, and players move their units by literally pulling out a tape measure, measuring out so-and-so many inches, and just moving the piece accordingly. That's absurd! What's to stop someone from fudging it by a quarter of an inch and getting extra movement out of their units? And do determine line-of-sight, players literally get down behind their unit's piece and eyeball it. If they can see the enemy unit, they have line-of-sight.
Truly, a different world. How can such an imprecise system work? It's like ork technology...they believe that painting your vehicle red makes it go faster, and so vehicles painted red do go faster.
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| | Posted 2/22/2009 9:58 PM - 23 Views - 2 eProps - 1 Comment
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