Seriously!
As a fully paid up member of the Historical Wargaming Master Race I am guilty on occasion of looking down my fine aquiline nose at the 40K crowd milling around below. Ok there are a lot of them, and tbh they can be a bit fragrant, but their games are "made up" and lack none of the authority and validation "our" games have, because we have HISTORY!! How can they compete with the vast span, scope depth and detail that historical games have? Space Pixies (or whatever) didn't exist. Winged Hussars, Persian Immortals, The Imperial Guard*, these all existed, Space Marines, not so much.
Except......................
40k does have a lot of background material. Since release in 1987 they have regularly updated rules and background, plus hundreds of Codex (army lists) novels and whatever. There is an awful lot of "stuff" built up over 33 years. I built a Dutch Marine force for Chain of Command and they fought for less than 6 days so there is probably more available info on Space Wolves than Dutch Marines. What I think I'm saying is there is now a depth of "lore" and info in 40K that probably outweighs the available info on something like Persian Immortals. OK the 40K info gets "retconned" regularly, but historical interpretation also changes - who remembers the Immortal figures from the 1980s with the viola shields and domed hats?
OK - it's not the same. But then again we should maybe recognise some 40k players spend a lot of time researching their armies just like the historical players do. There is more that connects us than sets us apart.
*Napoleon's, not the made up ones
Agree .. though I cannot say I can play actually 40K (because I cannot) but I really appreciate the "game engineering" that it (40K) and its stable mate Warhammer (rather more of a fan of the pre-Age-od-Sigmar aka regiments of things era) has had over the 33 years maturation you mention. Not that many historical rule sets have that longevity and popularity. I also applaud the craftsmanship and skill in the miniatures, that definitely crosses over and I like the paints as a good fall back to have in the high street. Well said Renko. I even have to say "heads-up" to their various spin offs .. such as Space Crusade, Hero Quest and Aeronautica Imperialis as it has given me many fun hours of modelling and play-time with my kids and non-wargamer friends .. GW stuff is not cheap but you get game mileage out of it.
ReplyDeleteI missed Warhammer and 40k...my gaming started a bit before they launched and, after an enforced break, by the time I returned to the fold my new gaming groups weren't playing them. My son loved it though... probably the collecting side and the fluff rather than the actual games. I always thought that if I'd been a 12 year old boy when 40k came out I would have loved the setting and all the chrome that goes with it. People get very sniffy about it but there's as much scope research and be creative as in CoC or anything else
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